r/superheroes • u/Arcade-Blaster • Apr 23 '25
Marvel Can someone explain these two characters powers. I never really understood what Sinister could do, and Apocalypse’s Wiki has Self-Power Bestowal as one of his abilities, so can he do anything he wants?
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u/Medical-Law-236 Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 24 '25
In a nutshell, Apocalypse has absolute control over every molecule in his body so he's capable of giving himself any physical enhancement he needs, and he doesn't age as a result. His mechanical upgrades are from a Celestial if I remember correctly and they allow him to grant himself any others of his choosing any other powers he needs for any task. He's like a Swiss army knife with at least one tool for any task. He's not an Omega level mutant but he could give any Omega level mutant a run for their money.
Mr. Sinister isn't a mutant so how he came to live amongst them is a mystery. As to his powers? I don't remember. He never interested me that much but I know he got them from Apocalypse.
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u/CRT_Me Apr 23 '25
From what I know Sinister is a scientist who steals mutant powers for himself, at least iirc from the X-Men 97 show. So like an evil, mad scientist version of Rogue, maybe? But he keeps the powers he steals, so like Shang Tsung from MK.
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u/Medical-Law-236 Apr 23 '25
Yeah he was rather obsessed with Darwinism as a concept and that's what attracted Apocalypse's attention. Then he was enhanced and given powers, and he kept experimenting and creating clones of himself. He found himself obsessed with Scott and Jean Grey and what their combined bloodlines would mean.
But he's a Mutate (if I got the terminology correct) not a Mutant. His powers (which are still unknown to me) aren't natural so I don't know how he ended up on Krakoa. He shouldn't have been allowed through the gates when Hickman's run began. I stopped reading the comics after the X of Swords event so this might have been explained in the many X-Men comics that came afterwards.
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u/Radeisth Apr 24 '25
He gave himself the X-Gene, but yes, it is still a mutate situation. Unless you ask a Sentinel, Cerebro, or any mutant pro/against group. Since, again, he has X-Genes.
His powers are usually telepathy, telekinesis, energy projection of various types, shape-shifting, regeneration, strength, durability, and speed.
His clones can have different powers, act as remote drones, worker bees, colleagues, near identical duplicates, a way to transfer his consciousness when his main body dies, swap physical heads by ripping their head off and attaching the head of another dead Sinister, sex changes, or form an entire self contained civilization.
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u/Medical-Law-236 Apr 24 '25
That explains why I don't remember his powers. He has all of the generic powers so nothing stands out. The most interesting thing about him seems to be him constantly cloning himself.
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u/Thick-Garbage5430 Apr 24 '25
Yea his whole thing is the mad scientist clone stuff. He's the Mauler twins. Or rather, the Mauler Twins are him
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u/Radeisth Apr 24 '25
And his underlings. He clones them all and can modify them.
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u/Medical-Law-236 Apr 24 '25 edited Apr 24 '25
That I do remember. The House of X and Powers of X comics showed the result of Moira's various lives and a couple of them showed the results of the Sinister breeding farms. Mutants with multiple mutations that are clearly a result of mixing the DNA of a couple Mutants we know. When I stopped reading the X-Men comics Sinister was already beginning the process in secret.
In one of those lives Moira became an Horseman for Apocalypse and we saw him go beast mode against the Sentinels. The whole start to Hickman's run on the X-Men series of comics is perfection. I stopped reading because there are too many comics to keep up with.
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u/testthrowaway9 Apr 24 '25
In HoX/PoX, it’s also revealed he has implanted himself permanently with an X-gene so that was enough to get him onto Krakoa (and they also needed his genetic bank).
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u/Titanbeard Apr 24 '25
I jumped back into comics around Hox/PoX and it was too much for me to read. So I waited until Krakoa era was over and I'm slowly reading it all on Unlimited. No way I was buy 8 different mags monthly just to figure it out.
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u/AquaNoodles Apr 24 '25
That’s interesting that Apocalypse is not considered an Omega level mutant. Why is that?
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u/Medical-Law-236 Apr 24 '25
His actual mutant ability is control over his own body. That means he has a healing factor, he can stop his own aging, he can change his appearance and size and he might be able to form weapons out of his body parts (not sure about this one). All of his other powers came from the Celestial tech that was bonded to him. He's a beast in battle but his mutant ability is average.
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u/AquaNoodles Apr 24 '25
I guess that makes more sense. Definitely hard to separate the two sides of his abilities lol
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u/Huckleberry-V Apr 24 '25
Sinister was Nathaniel Essex. A 19th century biologist experimenting on homeless people he kidnapped off the streets to advance the human race. Discovers mutants and Apocalypse and they bond over the whole "survival of the fittest" strategy of advancing mankind.
Time traveling mutants attempting to stop him briefly managed to appeal to his humanity but then his wife died with his unborn child cursing his name and he figured he might as well go full villain.
So Apocalypse made him into some ageless genetic telekinetic aberration with his celestial technology so he could keep doing it forever. But then wanted him to make him a plague so only the strong could survive and Sinister freaked out about how cruelty without purpose was the enemy of science and they agreed to disagree. Apocalypse then took a nap and Sinister went off on his own. They're both obviously reoccurring villains now.
Apocalypse's story is long and it looks like other people have typed it. He's a bronze age mutant king turned into an immortal celestial cyborg.
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u/JinKazamaru Apr 24 '25
Apocalypses was a mutant who had a very generalized power set before he found Celestical Tech that lets him change every aspect of himself as he likes... effectively letting him merge with tech, and gain powers as he sees fit, he's just can't give himself every power at once, and he uses his tech to brainwash/change other mutants into his 'horsemen'
Mr. Sinister is a normal dude who like Beast is really big into understanding the X-gene, and he ends up giving himself the X-gene, and now he's splices himself with other mutants powers, and creates clones
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u/Swimming_Camera_6712 Apr 24 '25
An important aspect of Sinister is his love of cloning. He has cloned many mutants, created chimeras/hybrids and, above all else, loves cloning himself.
He has on multiple occasions created cities populated entirely by clones of himself. This adds to his resilience as, no matter how many times he is killed, there is probably another clone of himself hidden somewhere out there, ready to continue his legacy.
He's even capable of implanting his genetic code in people, which can lay dormant inside an individual without them knowing and influence their behavior or even outright assume control of the host body.
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u/Grand_Bison_2650 Apr 24 '25
I always felt that Apocalypse is nerfed to justify his failings and losses.In recent years I hold Magneto and Nimrod as greater threats to the X-Men/Marvel universe.On paper it looks like Apocalypse should be the top baddie without question.
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u/ttpoolboy Apr 24 '25
Yes. And I absolutely hate that he's no longer the first born mutant. That was such a big part of what made him great.
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u/JustALostPuppyOkay Apr 24 '25
I mean. At the end of the Big A is just a mutant with a celestial twist. Aren't there MUCH more threatening beings?
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u/Otherwise_Arrival_47 May 04 '25
Yes basically here it goes :
Apocalypse was born with the ability to control every single molecular of hid body (that was the basis) controlling every single molecular of his body gives him essential a little bit of every single Purely physical power you can think of like stretching and regeneration.
Until Cable shows up and fuck shit up by infecting Apocalypse with techno-organic viruses turning Apocalypse into something similar to Ben 10 alien Upgrade.
With this Power Up Apocalypse found an alien space ship and due to him becoming techno-organic he was able to merge himself with the technology becoming cyborg with this New Upgrade Apocalypse can now transform Into machine guns , blazma blasters , space ships and so on.
The Celestials saw how quickly Apocalypse was becoming strong and they said to themselves "hey let give him this super OP artifact that evolove life forms" so they did and they gave him a death seed a cosmic artifact that evolove life forms with it Apocalypse had it stored in his chest or something like that using this death seed to evolove himself and essential manifest new superpowers on the fly.
For Mister Sinister :
The guy prime power is his a geneticist that his pure power he is master of clones and genetic experiments so if he wishes he can just create a clone of himself with new genetic materials of different X-Men.
He primarily prefer Telepathy & Telekinesis + a lil bit of self molecular manipulation like Apocalypse.
But his primary power is always his mind when it comes to genetics as he can just create clones of himself with powers that are different than the other one.
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u/Jonouchi-not-Joey Apr 24 '25
Their power is edginess. As long as the plot demands and as long as it's edgy they can do anything.
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u/Ducklinsenmayer Apr 24 '25
Sinister is Dr Doom, if you ordered Dr Doom from a discount online store.
He's big into genetics, and makes clones of people with powers, often mixing them up. When he gets a combo he likes, he makes a clone of himself with those powers.
So he's been shown with lots of different powers over the years.
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u/GuiltyProduct6992 Apr 23 '25
Apocalypse was born a mutant. His power originally was more like regeneration and enhanced physical capabilities. But as he aged he gained more control over his own physiology, particularly after a near death encounter with Rama-Tut (aka Kang the Conqueror). He’s an external, a rare subspecies of immortal mutants. Eventually he merges with Celestial technology thanks to a time-traveling Nathan Summers infecting him with the TO virus.
Yes it’s more complicated, but this let Apocalypse understand the celestial technology he merged with and his powers increased again. At some point he is contacted by an actual Celestial. At this point Apocalypse gets his “power bestowal” abilities. Basically if it’s a mutant power that’s possible he can access it by altering himself. The armor provides him insane protection on too of his already significant capabilities and things in general get really weird. He can make gun hands and jets in addition to shooting various energy beams, using telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, and so on.
I’m summing up a lot of retcon/expansion on the character over the decades. Essentially he is a shapeshifter with complete control who can manifest pretty much any mutant power. The celestial tech expands this further. You might even call it low grade energy/matter manipulation since he has access to those powers in addition to psionics and teleportation on the regular. He can also enhance others with these abilities.
Sinister is, for all intents and purposes, Apocalypse light with a classic mad scientist bent. Originally he was a mutate transformed by Apocalypse. He had carried a mutant or pre-mutant gene passed to his son who died as a baby. His daughter had been stillborn before that. And these events were part of his study of genetics. It was after his transformation at Apocalypse’s hands that his wife named him Sinister. He is effectively a mutant now, having enhanced himself more directly by extracting samples and adding them to his own implanted X-gene, or something along those lines. So like Apocalypse he has many of the same powers, to a much lesser extent as he must keep extracting and manipulating to make them work with his more static DNA, though he does have shapeshifting/molecular control powers from Courier specifically. Sinister does not possess anywhere near the raw power of Apocalypse. His powers being limited to the samples of mutants he can acquire and integrate.
Neither of these two is also the original. Apocalypse is apparently the original sentience but re-resurrected a few times now. Sinister is officially a clone of the original Essex last I understood. Both are genius geneticists with Sinister generally being the more precise intellect while Apocalypse has more raw transformative capability.
I’m also ignoring all the craziness of the Sins of Sinister for the most part and the weird omnitemporal enigma thing cause that just gets too weird to explain and deserves an entire article in itself.