Mystique appeared in 1978 Marvel Comics called Ms. Marvel.
Little is known about the origins of the shapeshifting mutant terrorist known as Mystique, the mutant name adopted by Raven Darkhölme which itself is an assumed name. As a consulting detective, her services were enlisted by Irene Adler, a mutant clairvoyant who had written confusing passages concerning the future of mutantkind that needed to be deciphered. In their quest, Darkhölme became 'Mystique' while Adler became 'Destiny'. The more they attempted to control the future the more they failed, a struggle that has made an angry Mystique embrace extremist solutions to achieve her objectives. Alongside her wife Destiny, Mystique reformed the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to assassinate anti-mutant politician Senator Robert Kelly, an attack that was prevented by the X-Men.
As a master deceiver and infiltrator, Mystique made her way inside mutant-related organizations, such as becoming the leader of Freedom Force and joining X-Factor, the Marauders, and even the X-Men. During Mystique's trajectory, the death of Destiny had the most tragic impact in her life. Seen as a treacherous ally, Mystique has proven her relevance for the fate of mutantkind with her actions aimed at shaping its future by forging her foster daughter Rogue into a significant mutant super-heroine, eliminating Mister Sinister, and building a mutant-ruled criminal empire on the island of Madripoor.
As Professor Xavier established a mutant nation-state on the island of Krakoa, Mystique has been granted a seat on the Krakoan government, the Quiet Council, in an attempt to give all factions of mutantkind some level of representation. However, once again Destiny's predictions would influence Mystique's actions, as she had knowledge about the rise of Krakoa, something that incited Mystique to work against Xavier's flawed plans.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Metamorph: Mystique can psionically alter the formation of her biological cells at will. As a result, she can cause herself to look and sound like an exact duplicate of any human, humanoid, or semi-humanoid being of any sex, wearing virtually any kind of clothing. Her control is so exact that she can precisely duplicate another person's retina pattern in her own eyes, finger, palm and skin-pore patterns on her own hands and skin, smell to overlap the original being, and vocal cords to match voices to the point of corresponding voice prints.
Mystique appears to have total control over every aspect of her physiology, allowing her to change the internal composition, primary function and pigmentation of each of her body's cells. Doctor Nemesis has confirmed that she is capable of rewriting the genomic instructions in every single cellular nucleus of her body and is therefore a gene-shaper.
Mystique was once exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in order to save the life of Toad. The process dramatically morphed Mystique's appearance, causing her skin to become reptilian, and boosted her powers so that she could now morph her body into taking certain desired physical traits depending on her situation at the time (note: this reptilian form was quickly discarded, whether it was because of retcon or if she simply shape-shifted back to her previous form remains to be seen).
Examples of this new ability included: night vision, wings on her back, talons in her fingers, sharp fanged teeth, natural body armor, mermaid-like tail, and she could even compress into a nearly two-dimensional state to glide on air currents (similar to Mr. Fantastic), which she used to survive an explosion.
Since her resurrection by The Hand, her powers have been enhanced to a higher level than they were before, to the degree that she could fool super-humanly acute senses such as Wolverine's sense of smell, something she couldn't do before her death. Other new facets of these abilities include tentacle generation, animal shifting, and partial liquefaction.
- Metamorphic Adaptation: After her first enhancement Mystique showed the ability to adapt her body depending on her situation at the time. She was able to camouflage her body to match her surroundings so well as to be invisible, shift her organs into her lower extremities, and mimic the textures of glass or metals (when she took on the form of Magneto and his helmet). She could conceal items in shapeshifted pouches inside her body and clearly stated that she was always naked and simply made her skin look and feel like other materials to fool others.
- Enhanced Physical Attributes: Able to enhance her strength, speed, agility, durability, reflexes, and senses.
- Accelerated Healing: Mystique's nature allows her to repair wounds, regrow limbs and regenerate herself from minor to near death injuries in a short span of time, much faster than an ordinary human. She is capable of retaining a mimicked form even when drugged or knocked unconscious.
- Toxin & Disease Resistance: She is capable of quickly developing resistance and immunity to toxins and diseases.
- Decelerated Aging: Raven's metamorphic powers have staved off the degenerative effects of aging. She has always had this ability even before her enhancement; she is over one hundred years old.
- Psychic Defense: Mystique's nature also provides her with a natural defense against telepathic intrusion.
- Enhanced Memory: Mystique has stated she knows the location of 'every security camera in every major airport of the United States and half the ones in Canada'.
- Expert Marksman
- Multilingual: Mystique has stated that she knows at least eleven languages; besides her presumably native German and English, she has demonstrated fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Farsi, Korean, Swedish, and Czech.
- Covert Operative: Strategist in terrorist and commando operations.
Weaknesses[]
- Appearance Limitation: Originally, it was clearly stated that Mystique's powers were limited to appearances only; she could not assume the powers of the people she morphed into or alter her body to adapt to different situations. Although Mystique's powers were enhanced, Mystique could never duplicate the powers of other superhumans, and she still cannot duplicate the powers of the person she imitates: for example, when she turned herself into a duplicate of Nightcrawler, she did not gain the ability to teleport. However, she can use her powers to mimic the powers of others; such as assuming the form of Sabretooth, and then using her powers to enhance her senses, strength, speed, agility, and of course naturally heal at an accelerated rate.
- Unchangeable Body Mass: While she can make herself look exactly like a person who is physically bigger than herself, she will not weigh as much as the real person does. As such, she will be considerably weaker than the true person she copies, as evidenced by her form of an impostor Sabretooth, where her powers were less effective than the genuine Sabretooth. Also, the longer she takes a form of someone with greater mass, the greater a strain on her body which could reach a "breaking point" where she is forced to turn back into her normal self. Since her enhancement, Mystique has stated that her body mass now changes when she does, although the truth as with everything concerning Raven Darkhölme, remains shrouded.
- Schizophrenia (formerly): Mystique's shape-changing physiology causes her brain to suffer from constant and subtle shifts in her brain tissue that manifested in the form of schizophrenia. Her personality constantly changed, making her volatile and unpredictable. Psylocke has since stabilized her mind.