| Armor | |
|---|---|
 Artwork fromX-Men: Nation X Vol 1 #3. (April 2010). Art by Dustin Weaver and Morry Holowel | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Astonishing X-Men #4 (October 2004) |
| Created by | Joss Whedon John Cassaday |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Hisako Ichiki |
| Species | Human mutant |
| Team affiliations | Xavier Institute New X-Men X-Men Jean Grey School Students |
| Notable aliases | The Shield |
| Abilities |
|
Armor (Hisako Ichiki (市来 久子,Ichiki Hisako)) is asuperhero appearing inAmerican comic books published byMarvel Comics. Created byJoss Whedon andJohn Cassaday, the characterfirst appeared inAstonishing X-Men vol. 3 #4.[1] Armor is a Japanesemutant who enrolled at theXavier Institute as a teenager and retained her powers after the events ofDecimation.
Armor first appeared inAstonishing X-Men vol. 3 #4, and was created byJoss Whedon andJohn Cassaday.[2]
Hisako Ichiki is a young girl whose greatest aspiration is one day to join theX-Men. While it was originally thought that Hisako was not a member of any of the X-Men's various training squads, a 2010 handbook entry reveals that she was a member ofKitty Pryde's Paladins squad.[3]
Along with her friend and fellow student, Wing (whom, after his death, she later describes as being her best friend), Hisako is attacked in the halls of the Xavier Institute by the alien villainOrd of the Breakworld. Hisako and Wing attempt to oppose Ord, but are overpowered. While both teenagers survive the attack, Wing discovers that he has been injected with a "cure" for his mutant ability of flight. Despondent, he commits suicide after some goading from aDanger Room hologram of her. In the wake of this tragedy, Hisako, her teacherKitty Pryde, and several Xavier students find themselves trapped in asentient and hostile Danger Room with Wing's reanimated corpse. Danger, as the intelligence is named by the X-Men, eventually leaves the institute.
Armor is among the 198 mutants who retain their powers followingM-Day, when theScarlet Witch depowered most mutants on Earth.
Hisako finds classmateBlindfold "crying" in the restroom.[4] While trying to comfort Blindfold, Blindfold tries to convince Hisako that they are soon "to lose another one", asWolverine, believing he is a defenseless child due to the manipulations ofCassandra Nova, barges into the restroom, followed closely byBeast. Beast attacks Blindfold, but Hisako uses her powers to fight off Beast with a large blast of psionic energy from her psi-body armor. Exhausting herself, she faints. Blindfold tells Hisako that someone is awake in the infirmary; they find the unconscious bodies ofColossus andCyclops.[5]
Soon after, both Ord and Danger attack the mansion, where they are confronted by Hisako and then Wolverine where the young girl holds her own only to be wounded by Wolverine's claws. Although she only receives minor injuries, when Cassandra Nova chooses Hisako to be her new host body. It is unknown if Nova was successful in gettingEmma Frost to transfer her consciousness into Hisako, asS.W.O.R.D. beams the team, Danger, Ord, and Hisako into a spaceship headed for the Breakworld.
The team and Hisako find that S.W.O.R.D. have abducted the X-Men and Hisako because they need heroes to fight a threat: Breakworld has a weapon capable of destroying the Earth. Ord sends the ship's coordinates to Breakworld's ruler, and he sends a fleet to attack the ship. The ship is heavily damaged and the X-Men are separated. Hisako ends up with Wolverine. Hisako is given membership to the X-Men andShadowcat's uniform.
Later, Wolverine and Armor are captured as Emma and the remaining X-Men try to free Cyclops. It is then revealed through a flashback that Leviathan is a fake and that Wolverine and Armor were told to be captured so the X-Men would have men inside Kruun's palace. Kruun only captured and brought Cyclops back to life so as to question him about the fake Leviathan. Cyclops then uses his newly regained powers to knock out Kruun and free Wolverine and Armor.
Back on earth, Armor attempts to console Wolverine after losing Shadowcat by forcing him to fight/train with her.[6]
During Messiah Complex, some of the New X-Men launch a pre-emptive strike against thePurifiers. Hisako joins them and while spying on the Purifers, she is impressed byX-23's senses. After breaking into the Washington base and getting into a brief tussle with the Purifers they are ambushed by theReavers, who woundHellion.[7]Pixie manages to teleport the team out, and they are spread between Washington and the institute.[8]
Hisako is brought back to the mansion byIceman with the other New X-Men. WhenPredator X shows up at the mansion, Hisako teams up withGentle and battles it in the infirmary. Pixie believes X-23 can defeat the monster and teleports it and the entire team, along with Hisako, to the battle between theMarauders and the X-Teams taking place onMuir Island.[9]
Hisako is currently a full member of the X-Men and is working alongside them in San Francisco. She is currently receiving classes from Wolverine in combat and classes from Cyclops in tactics. She is thinking of changing her codename because Wolverine keeps mocking her for her choice ofArmor. She later accompanies the team to a spaceship graveyard known as Chaparanga where she performs a fastball special with Wolverine and confronts a mysterious man, dubbed Subject X who they find fixing and restarting the eponymous "ghost box" in a spaceship. Subject X is defeated but kills himself rather than surrender information about his intentions and "the Annex".[10]
The X-Men locate Tian, which is an uncharted area of China that no surveillance or satellite system can get through, not even the Chinese government or Cerebra. The X-Men are able to sneak into Tian and discover the headquarters of a group of mutants from another dimension. Sadly, they seem to be dying because of the effects of M-Day.[11]
As Armor and Logan go off to search the temple for anyone else, they come across a man who can fire lasers from his fingers. Armor is shocked when the laser goes through her armor and hits her in the arm. After the X-Men take down their foes, they reveal to the X-Men they have a mutual friend, Forge.[12] After finding Forge on Mt. Wundegore and discovering he has gone mad, he tries to open the Ghost Box. Thanks to the assistance ofAbigail Brand and Beast, who borrows Hisako's phone, Brand fires a world-destroying laser at the Ghost Box and the phone, destroying it as well as much of the area while the X-Men escape.[13]
She is also sharing a room with Pixie and X-23.[14] During an attack by the Red Queen's Sisterhood, Armor is shown scared and hiding with X-23 when they are attacked by Chimera only to be teleported out by Pixie before her attack could succeed.[15]
Hisako is seen watching the protests between Humanity Now and Pro-Mutant Rights protestors. Hisako is then seen during the riots in San Francisco with Karma, Match, Angel and Bling! trying to keep calm.[16] She is later made a part of a team by Cyclops to take down the Dark X-Men[17] and participates in the final fight against Norman Osborn's forces, teaming up with X-23 and Pixie in taking onDaken.[18]
Hisako can generate full-body armor made of redpsionic energy that gives her superhuman physical abilities.[19][20] The body armor is depicted as enveloping her completely and protects her from tremendously strong and powerful attacks and greatly strengthens and amplifies the concussive force behind her unusually offensive and highly destructive blows. In some depictions, her psionic armor grants her enough strength to lift aSkrull ground tank and punch someone through several walls of a building.
Hisako's armor is strong and durable enough to survive the heat caused from a long fall through the atmosphere. Likewise, she is able to fully withstand the impact from falling to the ground from high up in the atmosphere without any physical or external injury. She can also cause her armor to release a large amount of solid, concussive energy at once,[21] though this is initially a difficult task.[22] Her armor is vulnerable to lasers, which are able to pass through it and harm her. This vulnerability is explained when she states later that her armor still has to let light through.[12]
Adamantium is also able to pierce through Hisako's armor, such as Wolverine's claws, although he is not able to go through it with the rest of his body.[23] In this case, she only remained uninjured because the distance between her armor's perimeter and her body was slightly greater than the length of Wolverine's claws. She can shape her armor, such as her ability to form Wolverine-like claws and make them extend outward. In instances of extreme duress, Hisako is also able to expand her armor, greatly strengthening and increasing its size and shape around her, though her own body remains the same at its center.
Hisako's body armor is partially explained as being composed of something related to her family lineage and ancestors. It is later described as being composed of memory. This is stated in an issue ofWolverine: Origins, when Hisako's armor is able to withstand blows from the Muramasa blade, which can cut through any material, since memory is "the only material that the blade cannot cut through." Similarly, inAstonishing X-Men vol. 3 #39, Armor's armor expands and grows to the size of a building due to the fact she feels strongly about not attending her recently deceased mother and brother's wake.[24]
Hisako has also received combat training from Wolverine and classes in tactics from Cyclops.[25]
George Marston ofNewsarama included Armor in their "20 X-Men characters that should make the jump from Marvel comics to the MCU" list.[26] Marc Buxton ofDen of Geek included Armor in their "40 X-Men Characters Who Haven't Appeared in the Movies But Should" list.[27]CBR.com ranked Armor 5th in their "10 Best X-Men Mutants Who Haven't Been In A Movie Yet" list,[28] 5th in their "10 X-Men That Are Surprisingly More Powerful Than Hulk" list,[29] 6th in their "10 Powerful X-Mutants Who Still Haven't Shown Up On The Big Screen" list,[30] 7th in their "X-Men: 10 Classic Mutants The MCU Needs To Introduce ASAP" list,[31] 9th in their "10 Most Powerful Female X-Men" list,[32] 9th in their "Marvel's 15 Fiercest Female Mutants" list,[33] 9th in their "15 Most Powerful Ultimate Universe X-Men" list,[34] 12th in their "20 Most Physically Strong Mutants" list,[35] 15th in their "X-Men: The 15 Strongest Members Ever" list,[36] 17th in their "25 Strongest Marvel Mutants" list,[20] and 23rd in their "25 Most Powerful Young X-Men" list.[37] Darren Franich ofEntertainment Weekly ranked Armor 58th in their "Let's rank every X-Man ever" list.[38]
InRunaways, a time-displaced future version ofGertrude Yorkes mentioned a future team of X-Men led by Hisako. Like Gertrude's Avengers, they were decimated by the villainous incarnation ofVictor Mancha, known as "Victorious". Hisako and Gert are stated to be the last of the X-Men and Avengers, respectively and Hisako mentions that she does not have enough energy to generate her armor in a fight against Victorious.[39]
In a variation of the Ghost Boxes storyline, two alternate versions of Hisako have been depicted. The first is a different ending toAstonishing X-Men vol. 3 #26. Cyclops and Wolverine are taken out by the Annex. The Annex then opens a Ghost Box and a Sentinel merged Magneto comes through and kills Emma Frost andStorm leaving Hisako the only surviving member of the Astonishing X-Men.[40]
In another alternate future, set 5 years after the Annex destroy the world, Hisako, Beast, who now has a childlike mentality, and Wolverine, who uses a wheelchair, are the last people on Earth. Kitty Pryde apparently returns to Earth and organizes an evacuation. After traveling to the evacuation point and finding out it was really a trap, Hisako breaks Beast's neck and burns Wolverine until his healing factor cancels out and dies leaving her as the last of the X-Men and possibly the last person on Earth.[41]
TheUltimate Marvel version of Hisako first appears as a young Japanese child being held captive in one ofWilliam Stryker Jr.'s Mutant internment camps. After being rescued byIceman andHusk, she joins their Mutant resistance movement. In this continuity, Hisako's energy armor takes the form of a large, glowing dragon.[42]
An alternate universe version of Hisako Ichiki fromEarth-6160 appears inUltimate X-Men (2024). This version is a resident of Hi no Kuni, a power bloc which includes Japan's territories. Shortly before graduating from middle school, Hisako meets ashadowy figure who gives her a specialomamori charm. The charm activates Hisako's mutant abilities, giving her the ability to summon a pink humanoid figure resembling asamurai.[43]
