As seen in Deadpool, portrayed by Brianna Hildebrand
- Name: Ellie Phimister
- Code Names: Negasonic Teenage Warhead
- First Appearance: New X-Men #115 (Aug ’01)
- Powers: Telepathy, Precogntion, Taking her name literally in the movie
- Teams Affiliation: None
When it was announced that Negasonic Teenage Warhead would be appearing in the Deadpool film in a supporting role my jaw hit the floor. The Guardians were a surprise when they were announced but at least they had a much beloved recent series. When Legion was announced as in development at FX it was out of left field but the character had existed for thirty plus years and was coming off a recent series that mirrored the prestige drama format that FX had been excelling in. Negasonic Teenage Warhead appeared on one page in 2001 and then died. Why the hell was she making it to the silver screen before established X-Men like Psylocke or Maggott?
Art by Frank Quietly, Tim Townsend, Mark Morales, & Hi-Fi Design
To understand Ellie Phimister one must first understand Emma Frost. Emma had been the White Queen of the Hellfire Club and constant foe of the Xavier Academy for years, but behind the manipulation and BDSM casual ware Emma Frost was a teacher to a group of young mutants known as the Hellions. The Hellions were the magenta wearing counterparts to Xavier’s New Mutants and while the White Queen’s methods were questionable at best, it could never be argued that she didn’t care about her students. A group of young mutants, calling themselves The Upstarts, decided to take control of the Hellfire club and destroy any remnants of the old guard. The time traveling Fitzroy took it upon himself to eliminate the Hellions and their teacher. Emma was stricken comatose but her students weren’t so lucky.
Art by Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning, & Dave McCaig
When she awoke, confused and weak in the Med Lab of the Xavier Institute, Emma was hell bent on discovering what happened to her students. When she found out her students had been killed it broke her, no icy exterior could hide the pain she felt at failing to protect those under her care. After the events of the Phalanx Covenant, Charles Xavier found himself a group of young mutants in need of instruction, and a teacher in need of a reason to live. Emma, alongside Banshee, reopened the Massachusetts Academy and founded Generation X. Emma found peace and success there until the school disbanded after one of its students, Synch, was killed in an attack by Emma’s sister. Still desiring to teach, and looking for a safe haven for mutants, Emma traveled to the mutant nation of Genosha to teach its youth.
Every teacher has a student that they end up fixating on, and for Emma, that student was Ellie Phimister. She was young, showed some mental aptitude, and rejected the establishment. Ellie was every goth teenager from her dour attitude, long black jacket, and name taken straight from a Monster Magnet song. Emma loved it. Emma was teaching Negasonic Teenage Warhead alongside her other students when Cassondra Nova sent her wild Sentinel to destroy the island nation. Negasonic Teenage Warhead had precongnitive nightmares about the attack but didn’t heed the warnings, within minutes Ellie alongside sixteen million other mutants were wiped off the face of the Earth.
Art by Frank Quietly, Tim Townsend, Mark Morales, & Hi-Fi Design
Emma survived the attack thanks to her diamond form but the guilt never left. That guilt eventually overwhelmed Emma and ushered the temporary return of Negasonic Teenage Warhead. Emma, at the time a member of the X-Men and the lover of Cyclops, began collaborating with a new Hellfire Club including Sebastian Shaw, Cassandra Nova, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. They went about incapacitating the X-Men and Negasonic Teenage Warhead used her formidable psychic abilities to convince Kitty Pryde to phase deep through the heart of the mansion grounds. It was later revealed that this version of Ellie never really existed, it was only a psychic manifestation of Emma’s survivor’s guilt. The entire new Hellfire Club was just the remnants of Cassandra Nova in Emma’s mind trying to manipulate Ms. Frost into orchestrating the return of Nova into a new body.
Art by John Cassaday and Laura Martin
When Selene resurrected the island of Genosha with the transmode virus during the Nercosha event, Ellie Phimister was resurrected with it. She stood beside Selene as one of her top lieutenants during the event, representing sixteen million who died on Genosha. When Selene began absorbing souls to complete her ascension to godhood, Ellie’s was among the first she took. Negasonic Teenage Warhead has been laid to rest since.
Art by Clayton Crain
Must Read
This one is tough, Negasonic Teenage Warhead has only appeared in three arcs but has been a supporting character at best in all of them. All three (E is for Extinction, Torn, and Necrosha) are fantastic X-Men stories with some amazing moments but in all of them Ellie is just wallpaper.Astonishing X-Men: Torn by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday takes it for the importance that Negasonic Teenage Warhead has on the story. She work really well as the outward manifestation of Emma’s guilt and it gives her some more fun, gothy characterization. This arc (#13-18) is available on Marvel Unlimited, as a trade paperback, or in a motion comic.
Art by John Cassaday
Ranking
Negasonic Teenage Warhead does everything that is asked of her as a character. She is a distinctive and relatable character who exists to give a human cost to an inconceivable amount of death. Her death works to humanize Emma, who would go on to become a mainstay of the X-Men ever since. The problem is there isn’t much to the character beyond goth girl with a fantastic name. She isn’t a bad character, just a very shallow one but it says a lot about Morrison and Quitely’s design that she is memorable at all. I would get more excited to see her show up again than the X-Cutioner so that’s why she enters the list at number 13 in the Xavier Files.
Negasonic Teenage Warhead wasn’t requested by anyone, I’m just jumping on the Deadpool hype train.If YOU have a character you want me to do, send me a message on my Ask Box and I’ll get it added to the list.
If you liked what you read be sure to subscribe to the tumblr so you never miss an update. You can also follow me on twitter @Xavierfiles where I throw out my thoughts about the X-Books that come out each week. That’s also where I harass Cullen Bunn and Dennis Hopeless about getting Maggott back into the X-Men books, join in on that fun with #BringBackMaggott!
Next week we travel down to the bluegrass state to meet the leader of the next generation of X-Men, as Cannonball blasts into our coverage. See you Tuesday!
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
