50 Greatest Super Villains In Comic Book History

22. Mystique

(Write-up by Roger Lee, Bam Smack Pow Staff Writer)

The beautiful, blue-skinned, but decidedly dangerous mutant Raven Darkholme, a.k.a. Mystique, is #22 on our list of 50 greatest villains. Her abilities include the ability to shape-shift, enabling Mystique to assume any identity, male or female, that she wants. She has been portrayed in the X-Men movies by both Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and the very popular Jennifer Lawrence.

This ability, along with a strong dose of selfish amorality, makes Mystique the perfect spy, saboteur, and assassin. With her ability to literally manipulate and control the cells of her body, Mystique is able to heal her wounds quickly, and she does not age.

Gee, those last two parts sound a lot like powers associated with other mutants like Wolverine and Sabretooth. No surprise then, that among the “ageless healing factor mutants,” Mystique’s long history (she is well over 100 years old, perhaps much older), is intertwined with the histories of both Logan and Sabretooth.

Mystique’s role in the Marvel Universe, especially in the mutant-laden X-Men world, is pretty important. She is one of the X-Men’s most persistent foes, and has been in Wolverine’s hair since the 1920s.

The relationships that connect Mystique to other characters are also central to who she is and to her importance in the shared universe of Marvel comics. She is the adoptive mother of the X-Men’s Rogue, the birth mother of Nightcrawler, lover of future-seeing Destiny, wife of the late Professor Xavier, lover of Sabretooth (they had a kid together named Graydon Creed), and former lover and travelling companion to … Wolverine. Let’s just say that Mystique has enjoyed a complicated life.

Mystique is as a character is as malleable as her body’s cells. She often shows hints of doing the right thing, but in almost every key storyline, she shows that her top priorities are herself and those she truly loves.  Much of her motivation for her actions was her relationship with the late Irene Adler (Destiny), as she constantly tried to steal, manipulate, and/or conquer a place in the world for them to share. Since Destiny’s death, Mystique has been obsessed with finding and acting upon a series of diaries that Destiny wrote as she foresaw the future. This quest brings Mystique into both alliance and conflict with many other heroes and villains in the Marvel Universe.

Next: No. 21: The top Marvel crime boss