Mutation in the Marvel Universe comes in many different forms, and while some mutants receive powerful offensive or defensive capabilities, others deal with physical mutations or even mental ones that can grant powerful abilities like telepathy and telekinetics.
The mutant ability of Forge allows him to invent and engineer any mechanical device, which has made him quite useful to various organizations including the X-Men, especially now that he's equipping X-Force with Krakoan tech. However, Forge hasn't always had the best luck with his inventions, so today we are going to take a look at a few of his hits and misses.
10 BEST: NEONEUTRALIZER
Rom the Space Knight existed in the Marvel Universe for years as a licensed character in his own series Rom: Spaceknight, where Rom defended the galaxy from the threat of the alien Dire Wraiths.
When the Wraiths set their sights on Earth, Rom enlisted Forge to help create the space-based NeoNeutralizer, based on Rom's own Neutralizer weapon. The Neoneutralizer was able to destroy Wraithworld and Forge saved the world with his invention, despite the government's attempt to use it improperly.
9 WENT BAD: POWER NEUTRALIZER
Forge worked for the government as a weapon designer and invented many devices for them, including an untested power neutralizer that Forge had created to use against the Dire Wraiths (which he would later upgrade into the Newneutralizer).
During a confrontation with the X-Men, government agent Henry Peter Gyrich attempted to use the power neutralizer against Rogue, though when Forge attempted to stop him, the beam hit Storm instead and she lost her powers until Forge was eventually able to restore her.
8 BEST: CYBERNETIC LIMBS
Before Forge worked with the government, Rom, or the X-Men, he joined the military and fought in the Vietnam War. After he lost his platoon in battle and used dark magic to save himself, Forge called in an airstrike that cost him his right hand and right leg.
Using his mutant ability, Forge created incredibly advanced cybernetic prosthetics to replace his missing limbs. These limbs are capable of repairing themselves and he has built-in weapons, tools, and even spare parts for emergencies.
7 WENT BAD: POWER AMPLIFIER
The Ultimate Universe featured a modern take on Marvel's most popular characters including the X-Men, though Ultimate Forge fell on a different side of the line in that universe and allied himself with Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants.
Forge constructed a power amplifier for Magneto that he planned to use to reverse the Earth's magnetic poles in order to eradicate every living being, which he later managed to do in the Ultimatum event.
6 BEST: TIME MACHINE
There are a small number of working time machines in the Marvel Universe, as Doctor Doom has his Time Platform and Kang has his Time Chair, but Forge has also created his own version that he calls a Chronal Tracer.
He first created this machine to peer into possible future timelines hoping to see a future where mutantkind survived. The machine was initially only able to send mutants forward through time, though it was later improved so they could bring X-Force back home during the "Messiah War."
5 WENT BAD: NEO-MUTANTS
After the mutant x-gene was erased from reality by the Scarlet Witch in the House of M event, Forge took it upon himself to fix the problem, which he began to do by searching the multiverse for other mutants.
Hope Summers was then born and the spark of mutantkind was reignited, the X-Men's reality fell under attack by an alternate world of mutants that was at war with a group of artificially-created mutants that were revealed to have been created by Forge, though he had become mentally unbalanced and his Neo-Mutants were monstrous disasters.
4 BEST: CEREBRO
While Forge didn't create the original Cerebro device that was able to enhance telepaths and track mutants across the globe, he was instrumental in updating Cerebro for the "Dawn of X" era by upgrading it to also backup those mutants' minds.
This has become a crucial component in the X-Men's resurrection process on Krakoa, and something nobody but Forge could have accomplished thanks to his unique gift and the Shi'ar technology that powers Cerebro and allows them to store all of the mutants' data.
3 WENT BAD: MAESTRO'S GUN
Forge was called in by Cable and the X-Men to create a weapon capable of dealing with the Hulk after Wolverine brought the unconscious powerhouse to the Xavier Institute, which Forge was quickly able to design and build.
However, when Hulk inevitably woke up and Forge threatened him with the weapon, he instantly recognized it as the weapon wielded by the Maestro, a despotic future version of the Hulk. Not only did the weapon not stop Maestro from taking over the world, but he went on to use it against the present-day Hulk.
2 BEST: BLACKBIRD
While the X-Men used versions of the Blackbird for years, it wasn't until Forge redesigned the vehicle in Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's X-Men #1 that fans were introduced to the most recognizable version of the Blackbird.
This version of the vehicle was heavily upgraded with Shi'ar tech by Forge that included holographic capabilities and even featured portable Cerebro units. This version of the Blackbird would appear in the hit X-Men: The Animated Series, though it would become known as the X-Jet for the live-action films and later comics.
1 WENT BAD: DANGER ROOM
The Danger Room has existed in a number of different iterations as a training room for the X-Men that has been rebuilt as often as the X-Mansion, and while Forge wasn't the original inventor, he helped Xavier integrate the Danger Room with Shi'ar tech.
While this made it a much more effective training room capable of creating holographic images and hard-light constructs, it also eventually gained sentience and lashed out at the X-Men, resulting in the death of the student known as Wing.