| “ | Human?! You dare call that...thing--human?!? | „ |
| ~ Stryker pointing to Nightcrawler. |
Reverend William Stryker is a prominent enemy of the X-Men originating in the "God Loves, Man Kills" story arc, depicted in the comic books as an insane, sadistic, and heartless fundamentalist televangelist who views mutants as a sin against nature and seeks to destroy them, forming a group of like-minded fanatics known as the Purifiers.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- He stabbed and seemingly killed his own newborn son for being a deformed mutant, and then killed his wife by breaking her neck for birthing a "monster." He then attempted suicide but failed, convinced that God spared his life so he could lead his crusade of persecution against all of mutantkind (although killing his son was later retconned into molding him into a mutant-hating supremacist like his own father).
- Furthermore, it's worth mentioning that in-universe genetics prove mutant genes are inherited from the father rather than the mother, meaning Stryker committed uxoricide over something that was literally nobody's fault but his own.
- He founded the like-minded Purifiers to commit hate crimes against any and all mutants they could find, at one point murdering two children and then hanging their corpses on a swing after murdering their parents.
- He kidnapped Professor X and tried to make him use a fake Cerebro in order to slowly and painfully eliminate every last mutant on Earth.
- He tried to shoot a teenage Kitty Pryde on live TV.
- He led an assault on the X-Mansion, killing a total of 45 underage depowered mutants (i.e. 42 on the exploded bus, followed later by Wallflower, Icarus, and Quill), the youngest of whom was about to turn 13 years old.
- He's a total hypocrite. Despite his claims of fighting mutants to protect humans (which is in and of itself a double standard since mutants are humans), Stryker is shown not only using mutants for his own goals but also killing his "fellow" humans for so much as supporting mutants.
- Case in point: after manipulating Icarus into luring him to the X-Mansion to kill more mutants under the pretense of helping them, Stryker twisted the knife, killing him by revealing he led his girlfriend Julia Cabot's family to the machines that indirectly drove her to suicide.
- He even went from Christianity to Satanism while in Hell, blaming the lack of divine support for his constant past failures. At the end of the day, Stryker's less of a well-intentioned extremist and more of an irrational xenophobe who can't bear to look at himself in the mirror.
- Case in point: after manipulating Icarus into luring him to the X-Mansion to kill more mutants under the pretense of helping them, Stryker twisted the knife, killing him by revealing he led his girlfriend Julia Cabot's family to the machines that indirectly drove her to suicide.
- Every time he died and went to Hell, he would sacrifice mutant souls (erasing their existence) to revive himself back to Earth, until he was eventually stopped by Weapon X-Force teams and had his soul destroyed by Sabretooth, ending his threat once and for all.
- In general, he's one of, if not the most realistically depraved, villains the X-Men have ever faced, exemplifying the real human monsters people like Magneto genuinely try to protect mutantkind from. It's even said he has an estimated kill count of 474 mutants.
Trivia[]
- At the end, if God Loves, Man Kills 2 has a storyline. Kitty Pryde was able to convince him to stop hating mutants. However, writers decided to have him revert back to villainy after M-day.
External Link[]
- William Stryker on the Villains Wiki.
