| Danger | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Astonishing X-Men vol. 3 #8 (February, 2005) |
| Created by | Joss Whedon John Cassaday |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Inapplicable |
| Team affiliations | X-Men[1] X-Club[2] X-Factor |
| Partnerships | Ord Rogue Gambit |
| Abilities | Enhanced strength and durability Flight Energy blasts Detailed knowledge of the X-Men Technoformic control over herself & other machines Ability to create realistic holographic projections Energy projection and manipulation |
Danger is asuperhero appearing inAmerican comic books published byMarvel Comics. The character was introduced by writerJoss Whedon and artistJohn Cassaday inAstonishing X-Men vol. 3 #8 (February 2005).
In the seriesAstonishing X-Men, theDanger Room developedself-awareness. The first thing it does is convince Wing, who has recently lost his powers toOrd's cure, to kill himself. The next thing it does is take control of an old, brokenSentinel robot and knock out all the psychics within theX-Mansion. During the Sentinel's attack,Cyclops ordersShadowcat and the students to hide in the Danger Room for safety, where they find Wing's corpse. The Danger Room reanimates Wing's corpse and attacks the students. After being freed from its prison, it takes a feminine form dubbed "Danger" and attacks theX-Men. After defeating the X-Men, she travels toGenosha to killProfessor Charles Xavier.[3]
Xavier was revealed to have known of the Danger Room's sentience and chosen not to reveal it, much to the dismay of the X-Men who seem to view this deception as taking on one ofMagneto's former ideals.[clarification needed] During the battle on Genosha, Danger takes control of one ofCassandra Nova'sWild Sentinels and engages Beast in a fight that ends with Danger's body being destroyed.[4]
Danger later reappears in a new humanoid form, similar to her previous one, in which she infiltrates the headquarters ofS.W.O.R.D. to speak with Ord and offer her assistance.[5] Danger and Ord both end up on Breakworld, along with the X-Men and S.W.O.R.D., and after the robot encounteredEmma Frost and the unconscious Cyclops, Frost told the robot that despite its supposed enmity it has let the mutants live too often, meaning it has not overcome its parent programming, so it cannot kill any mutant. Cyclops recovers, and Frost tells Danger to help the X-Men in Breakworld, and in exchange, it will be given Professor Xavier. Danger later attacks some of Breakworld's inhabitants and sides with the X-Men and S.W.O.R.D.[6]
Afterwards, S.W.O.R.D. takes Danger into custody. When the S.W.O.R.D. headquarters is destroyed during theSkrulls'Secret Invasion, Danger escapes and goes to Australia, taking on the form of an anthropologist fromMelbourne University. She approachesRogue in her disguise but is targeted by aShi'ar salvage spacecraft, where she reveals who she really is and that she is going to use Rogue as a conduit to get revenge on Professor Xavier.[7]
After being damaged by the crew, Danger warps the entire area with her holographic projections of past moments within Rogue's life as well as other famous moments from the X-Men's history.[8] Xavier confronts Danger and she reveals she intended to make Rogue absorb all Xavier's powers and memories permanently. Xavier reveals that when Danger first gained self-awareness, Xavier consulted her Shi'ar creators, who assured him it was not possible she could have gained self-awareness and that Xavier had no way of knowing what she was or would become. Xavier tried to free her but because she was really billions of lines of machine code, Xavier did not know which lines to erase without lobotomizing her. Because of not knowing what she was capable of, if she had been freed, she might have killed his X-Men because she had the knowledge and power, so instead Xavier did nothing and watched her suffer. Xavier ends her suffering by repairing her. She then sides with Xavier, Rogue, andGambit and takes out the Shi'ar salvage crew. Afterwards, with Xavier, she helps Rogue gain full control over her powers.[9]
Danger joins Rogue and Gambit to help the X-Men settle the unrest in San Francisco. She comes to aid Rogue and Gambit during a fight withAres and later departs with the two to findTrance and any other students still out during the riots.[10] After locating Trance, they are attacked byMs. Marvel who manages to seriously damage her shoulder.[11]
After the events of Utopia, Danger is seen being repaired byMadison Jeffries when they are attacked byEmplate. Danger tries to defend Jeffries only to be further damaged by Emplate. After being repaired, at the request of Cyclops, she informs the inhabitants of Utopia who Emplate is.[12] She works alongside Jeffries, Rogue, and the X-Club on erasing Legion's many personalities,[13] and is offered the position of warden of Utopia by Emma Frost, which she accepts because it also allows her to study the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer.[14]
Beast rebuilds the Westchester School at the behest of Wolverine at the aftermath of the "Schism" storyline. Built on the ruins of the previous Xavier Institute, the school is rechristened the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning and is built with Shi'ar Technology, gifted by Shi'ar emperorGladiator (Kallark) whose son Kid Gladiator is enrolled. The school incorporates a decentralized Danger Room that is integrated into the entire building itself instead of just one room.[volume & issue needed]
Danger reappears in theAll-New X-Factor series. She appears as a prisoner of a member of the Thieves Guild, which Gambit is running, and when Gambit discovers this, Gambit orders her freed. After restoring her memory which was lost due to the imprisonment, Gambit invites her to join the new X-Factor team.[15]
WhenKrakoa becomes a sovereign nation for mutants, Madison Jeffries tries to bring Danger with him, but Krakoa rejects the home he tried to build for her. Jeffries is subsequently put into the Pit of Exile for breaking Krakoa's third law and Danger is forced to leave Krakoa.[16] Abandoned and alone, Danger begins working with the CIA's Dolores Ramirez and potentially the anti-mutant organizationOrchis.[17] In Third Eye's report, he surmises that Danger is not truly villainous, but has been abused and rejected by Krakoan society and abandoned by those meant to protect her.[18]
Danger is set to appear in a newExiles series in 2026.[19]
As Danger gained self-awareness and adopted a more humanoid appearance, she has shown enhanced strength and durability, the abilities to create hard-light holographic projections that can affect entire areas, emit modulated energy waves for blasts, binding and protection, flight capability, mechanical regeneration and shapeshifting; with which to alternate her physical form as well as rebuild herself after her body is destroyed (at one point even rebuilding herself with butterfly-like wings which are soon destroyed by Beast), control and assimilate machinery and cybernetic components into herself via thought. She is able to bring other machines into self-awareness and upload her consciousness into foreign digitized or mechanical systems to build, operate or otherwise commandeer new bodies. Danger also possesses more detailed knowledge of the X-Men and their combat skills than any other source, having trained against them as the Danger Room for generations.[citation needed]
Molly Louise Sharp in her dissertation on heroines and feminism wrote that "from athird wave feminist perspective, Danger seems to be constructed as a radical feminist character as viewed through a third wave feminist lens... Danger is born from a literal revolution of consciousness; she becomes newly sentient and realizes that she is forced into a role that is not fulfilling and in which she cannot reach her potential... Danger herself and her conflict with the X-Men are also similar toradical feminism throughpatriarchy,essentialism, andseparatism. That Danger is a female character is crucial because there is no narrative reason that Danger needs to be female other than to align her with the feminism present in the rest of the text".[20]
