54 – CALIBAN

Subject: Caliban
Real Name: Unrevealed
Height: 6’4″ Weight: 250lbs.
Group Affiliation: None
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #148, July 1981

Power Ratings:

• Energy Projection: 1/7
• Mental Powers: 3/7
• Strength: 1/7
• Fighting Ability: 1/7
• Intelligence: 2/7

Caliban was one of the more interesting side mutants to debut during Claremont’s run, named after Prospero’s freaky servant from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He was a lonely, simple-minded, grotesque mutant who had the ironic power to detect other mutants around him (like a short-range Cerebro). He was used to good effect during more humanizing story moments, though most of the time his (original) lack of combat ability meant he never took much of a center stage.

That is, until his insecurity and need for revenge caused him to beg Apocalypse to be turned into the next Death, one of his Four Horsemen (a position formerly held by Archangel). Suddenly, he went from being short, scrawny with bug-eyes, to a huge, hulking, snarling, villainous monster.

He’s since pretty much returned to his old look, but those were during books that I haven’t really read (basically anything after the Zero Tolerance storyline… my stupid completist nature precludes me from reading more recent books until I’ve read everything else that came before).

I’m gonna glance over Lee’s competent drawing for the front and back (I actually liked this otherwise bland design as a kid, he was different enough from the other villains) and focus on his Power Ratings. Specifically, why does Caliban only have a 1/7 for Strength?? I figured maybe the Side-B copy was written before he was transformed into Death, but not only did that happened in X-Factor #50 written two years prior to the cards’ release, the stupid bio SAYS “Caliban was found by the fiend Apocalypse and given incredible strength“!

That plus his abysmally low 1/7 Fighting Ability rating (his Wikipedia entry says that “[he] is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, having been trained by Iceman and later Apocalypse,” just inclines me to assume the Power Ratings graph was either meant for someone else, or just completely wrong. I don’t even think he should rate a 2/7 for intelligence.