There are plenty of X-Men and their enemies who could be counted among Marvel's most violent heroes and antiheroes. Characters like Wolverine and Deadpool have violent impulses that they can never truly contain or control in the main Marvel Universe. However, that's not always the case across the various alternate timelines and parallel worlds of the Marvel Multiverse.
Across time and space, these brawlers found peace and embraced pacifism in some corners of the Marvel Universe. Now, we're taking a closer look at what happened when some of the X-Men's most violent members embraced a more peaceful existence.
ZENPOOL
When the Red Skull was briefly turned into Red Onslaught, he briefly changed the world with his newly gained telepathy, and Magneto recruited a veritable army of villains to attack him in the 2014 crossover AXIS. This turned the tide of the battle against Red Onslaught and allowed Scarlet Witch and Doctor Doom to work together and combine their magical abilities to alter the moral axis of the villain, but this also led to the personalities of everyone else on the island being inverted as well.
One of the many Marvel characters affected by this personality swap was Deadpool, whose naturally bizarre and chaotic personality transformed into the preternaturally calm "Zenpool" in Deadpool #36, by Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn and Mike Hawthorne. Completely at peace with the world around him, Zenpool preached peace to the other now-noble villains. Zenpool proved crucial to the event, with his advice helping convince the inverted Even Sabahnur, the usually heroic young Apocalypse clone, to help save the world. Although Zenpool was reverted to his regular self at the end of the event, his time as a pacifist reawakened his conscience and set up the final collapse of his marriage to the demon queen Shiklah, as she was no longer attracted to a calmer and more heroic version of Deadpool.
BROTHER CAIN
As a result of Legion traveling back in time to try and kill Magneto, his father Charles Xavier was accidentally killed instead. This set off a chain of events that transformed the Marvel Universe into a hellish landscape known as the Age of Apocalypse. One of the inhabitants of this world was Cain Marko, who had the energies of the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak absorbed into his body. In most realities, this led to him becoming the Juggernaut, a powerful X-Men villain and occasional team member, despite his lack of a mutant-gene.
Upon discovering the mysterious death of his stepbrother Charles Xavier, Cain renounced violence and became a monk in this world. He avoided conflict by becoming a peaceful servant of Destiny in the hidden sanctuary of Avalon, which was located in the heart of the Savage Land. When the Pale Riders are sent to Avalon to destroy the sanctuary, Cain is faced with an impossible internal conflict to either embrace his violent impulses or hold true to his pacifist beliefs. This resulted in the Juggernaut of this reality having a fatal brain aneurysm and collapsing dead before he ever threw a punch.
MONK WOLVERINE
During the events of the multiversal-ravaging Secret Wars, survivors of the decimated multiverse found themselves living in Battleworld. One location in this patchwork world was controlled by Mojo, who unleashed a host of Wolverines into battle against one another for the enjoyment of viewers across the world. While most of the Wolverine's immediately start fighting each other, acting on sheer instinct, Monk Wolverine resists this temptation in Ivan Brandon and Aaron Conley's story, "A Thousand Cuts," in Secret Wars: Battleworld #3. While this particular character hadn't previously appeared in a story, although a similar-looking version of Wolverine appeared on the cover of the X-Men: Millenial Visions.
This version of Wolverine has found peace and embraced a monastic way of life, turning his back on the violent impulses of his past. Mojo hoped that the sheer chaos of the mob of Wolverines would force Monk Wolverine to lash out and finally fight back to protect himself. However, Monk Wolverine proved incredibly patient, with his healing factor and forgiving nature keeping him ever fighting back against the rest of the other versions of Wolverine. He's even seen meditating and at peace, even as a mob of Wolverine's rush him out of anger for his peaceful ways.
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