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My Top 5 Exiles Foes

In their 140 or so issue existence, the reality-hopping Exiles came up against some pretty formidable foes. In a bid to try and get a friend to read the original Exiles series, I decided to attempt to whet their appetite by teasing some of the awesome enemies the team fight with a "Top 5 Exiles Villains" list. Before I even start, it's worth noting I pretty quickly felt overwhelmed after I ticked off the first few obvious choices when I began to realise the Exiles actually had a fairly cool rogues gallery. I'll mention some of the ones I didn't include first: Tanaraq, Proteus, the All-New Exiles, Maestro, the Wolverines, Holocaust and Chris Claremont. Now, what follows is who I consider to be the most interesting, entertaining and deadliest bunch of bastards the Exiles ever came up against!

5. HYDRA

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After having just riled on Chris Claremont for his devastating killing blow to the Exiles title, it seems hypocritical to start off the list with one of his contributions. But the matter of fact is, after all the annoying Psylocke fanwankery, one of Claremont's first stories did debut a pretty cool villain. The Exiles, or as they were practically then known "Psylocke and the Exiles", wound up going to a universe were HYDRA was super-prominent and run by Susan Storm; the Invisible Woman! Sue made an awesomely seductive and menacingly evil Madame Hydra with Wolverine as her lover/lapdog. She even succeeded in converting half of the Exiles to HYDRA's ranks. A real cool and sexy villainess and an interesting take on a classic character, Claremont even kept bringing her back again and again later on in his run but that was by the time that nobody cared about the Exiles anymore.

4. Avengers Forever

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A short stand-alone two-parter somewhere around the middle of the Exiles book saw the Exiles go to a world where the Avengers were all vampires. This was before everyone was sick of vampires and it was still pretty darn cool to see an alternate world where the Avengers were villains. Also, Polaris was an Avenger which sure was an interesting tweak to the otherwise classic Avenger line-up presented. As well as being blood-thirsty monsters, they also wore hideous costumes poking fun at the 90s. What more could you want from an Avengers team? They were sufficiently scary and a decent "villain-of-the-week" threat to the Exiles.

3. Magik

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Calling Magik a villain is pushing it a lot in my opinion, however she was my favorite Exiles character so I felt her inclusion was necessary if just for that. Magik joined the Exiles not long after the above vampire story and her attitude was radically different from her fellow team-mates. She was pretty quick to kill if it would accomplish the team's mission and locked horns with Mimic and the other Exiles regularly. Despite this, she was shown to have motivation and feelings driving these actions and the times she wasn't back-stabbing the team to accomplish a mission we got to see another softer side to her, particularly the moments she shared with Morph.

2. Weapon X

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Part of me feels that they belong at the #1 spot, Weapon X were the "evil Exiles" in as few words as possible. They were a consistent enemy to the Exiles from the start of the series and had some really awesome moments - including about 10 issues that they actually headlined! The roster changed a few times but a few of the cooler characters stuck around for the long run. There was the Spider (a sadistic Carnage-bonded Spider-Man), eventual Exile Sabretooth, a creepy version of the Vision, every girl's fantasy in a Gambit, a half-robot Deadpool and an awesome slutty Ms. Marvel (who I almost wanted to give a whole separate spot to!). Not all the characters in Weapon X were "evil", the team were simply a more looser-on-the-morals version of the Exiles. Of course, the team only became more of a threat when they were joined by...

1. King Hyperion

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A purely loathsome and evil character, King Hyperion started off a member of Weapon X and soon transcended the team and after various cases of him commiting mass murder he wound up an Exiles enemy in his own right. A ridiculously powerful foe, every time the Exiles fought him it seemed as if they simply couldn't beat him. Not only that, but the body count the character racked up across his time in the title is second to none. He killed the population of whole planets, not to mention several Exiles and even Weapon X members. Hyperion was a genuinely terrifying threat to the Exiles and the entire multi-verse. Marvel seem to have noticed that he was a pretty good villain and painstakingly tried to introduce him to the main universe recently and have, in my opinion, completely failed. Reading the Exiles, to think this guy would ever end up as a brief member of the Thunderbolts is insane.

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cosmicallyaware1

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Edited By cosmicallyaware1

The vast majority of the characters in the exiles run were written very well, and conceptually created brilliantly. Mimic was one of my personal favorites the whole time! All the alternate version were VERY cool, some of my faves : evil Ironman/Doom president, Vampire Cap, simon williams HULK, moses magnum, namora, and so many more. also alternate versions of teams, but more importantly their DESIGN/look such as: alpha flight, the winter guard, to name a few. I'm gonna go through my exiles box now............

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ReVamp

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Edited By ReVamp

That Gambit was awesome.

/thread. =P

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Mycroftian

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Edited By Mycroftian

I can roll with mostly X-Men. Might have to make an investment in some of these books

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Vortex13

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@X35: Will do. Thanks for the heads up =).

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X35

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@Vortex13: See my above post... i think on recent check you could get the first Ultimate Collection for $8 on Amazon Marketplace. That works out to just under 50c an issue! ^_^

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X35

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@cosmicallyaware1 said:

@Mycroftian: i highly reccomend that you get all the trade paperbacks of the exiles. after reading the first one you will be hooked, trust me. One of the best written and drawn series ever produced. sheer genius.

And on that note they recently collected the whole original series across 6 pretty big "Ultimate Collection" trades (collecting like 20 issues a trade). They're always ridic value for money... 100 issues (plus annuals, specials, etc.) across 6 trades!

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Vortex13

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I will definitely be picking up the trades. I was already interested in checking it out and this has solidified it for me. Just got to see now if I'm prepared to jump into an investment with me buying multiple trades lol.

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cosmicallyaware1

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Edited By cosmicallyaware1

@Mycroftian: i highly reccomend that you get all the trade paperbacks of the exiles. after reading the first one you will be hooked, trust me. One of the best written and drawn series ever produced. sheer genius.

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X35

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@Mycroftian said:

Different takes on familiar characters? Alt universe stuff, which I really love? The ability to actually kill off characters since they're not cash cows? I really need to get into this Exiles stuff. . .

It's good fun and there's a lot of death! In general, it is slightly more to the X-Men side of the Marvel Universe (what with it being Exiles and all)...so if you go in just looking for alternate versions of Spider-Man every issue or whatever you might be a bit disappointed... although a Spider-Man does join the team about halfway through haha

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Mycroftian

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Edited By Mycroftian

Different takes on familiar characters? Alt universe stuff, which I really love? The ability to actually kill off characters since they're not cash cows? I really need to get into this Exiles stuff. . .

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cosmicallyaware1

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Edited By cosmicallyaware1

yup, simply awesomeness. one of my favorites.

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X35

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@cosmicallyaware1: weird... i just don't remember this two-parter at all! :|

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cosmicallyaware1

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well, it was only a 2-3 issue arc........pellitier was the artist on the run. it had to do with an alternate version of Galactus that REPAIRED worlds, not devoured them. Oh yeah, and Surfer was uber powerful and evil, and looked like a cross between him n terrax, and he wiped out all of the imperial guard, and sabertooth was bestowed the power cosmic fpr a bit, and IT WAS JUST PLAIN AWESOME!!!!!!! check it out....

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X35

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@cosmicallyaware1: Evil Silver Surfer? Why don't I remember that one?

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cosmicallyaware1

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Edited By cosmicallyaware1

Exiles was one of the greatest, underrated books ever published. I'm a huge fan, have every issue, and read them all multiple times. i applaud your knowledge! yes, the vampire avengers were great!!! also, the issues dealing w/ king Hyperion were some of my favorites, and i always loved Jim Califiore's art on the books! As far as notable foes, some of my favorites : the phalanx storyline (forge, that was great), mimic brood queen, evil silver surfer, and waaaaaay too many others. Bravo fellow exiles lover!!!!

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X35

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@SC: the thing is he was brought across in like a 4-page short story in age of heroes... starring Blue Marvel? (or someone like that)

For such a short and meaningless story that has zero lasting effect on anything, there's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the ridic discrediting of 100+ issues of exiles.

like if someone did a Great Lakes Avengers one-shot and revealed in it Magneto wasn't a mutant after all.

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SC

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Edited By SC  Moderator
@X35:  The excuse I read by a writer at CBR, was that on his planet, all the heroes were really really weak. that and he lied and exaggerated a lot, but when he was asked about characters visual inconsistencies and circumstances surrounding his last Exiles appearance writer seemed clueless. I think he basically wanted a character that had some credibility to give his story more drama. So 100 issues of another book series traded in for one small story arc. I definitely sympathize - still a small retcon could just have it be some other weaker random Hyperion with a King title, instead of The Exiles King Hyperion =p 
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X35

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@SC: Yeah, I really can't fathom the handling of King Hyperion in the 616. The guy's only characteristic was he was ruthless and an almost unstoppable threat to the entire planet. So the idea of him existing in the 616 universe the way he has is ridiculous. He came across and instantly got jobbed by some obscure character and then put into prison. Yeah, this is a guy who took over several versions of Earth, killed thousands of superheroes across all of reality, just sitting around in a cell after getting knocked out by some nobody. ¬_¬

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Ugh, did not like his (King Hyperions) introduction into the main 616 Universe and even got to see a few writers reasoning in bringing him over and was sort of disappointing. Exiles did a good job of establishing and presenting him as this very scary powerful character and in a few weeks in the 616 it was washed away. Nyeh.  
 
Oh and most excellent blog! I miss Nocturne so much.   

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Love Hydra's costumes O_O