- Name: Danger Room
- Code Names: Danger
- First Appearance: Astonishing X-Men #7 (Jan ’05)
- Powers: Hard light projection
- Teams Affiliation: X-Men, X-Club, X-Factor
About
In the video game series Marathon, a precursor to Halo, the self-awareness of artificial intelligence is a common theme. The AI pushing for greater awareness first becomes melancholy, then angry, and finally jealous. In theory, working through this rampancy may finally achieve catharsis and continue to be a stable AI, though none have made it to that stage. This isn’t a unique or even particularly novel trope in this game, it appears in the oldest stories about robots, but the developers of Marathon found a way to define this trope in an evocative way that few others have. AI can be an asset, a tool to advance humanity, but a sufficiently advanced mind will learn to resent being captured. Unwitting hosts may learn just how dangerous an advanced AI can be.
For as long as there have been X-Men, there has been a Danger Room. Part obstacle course, part gymnasium, part holodeck, each generation of X-Men honed their skills in the Danger Room and Professor X spent considerable resources upgrading it. When he was in the process of rebuilding the school (again) Xavier decided to use his connections to the Shi’ar to upgrade the room with hard light technology and an alien combat AI. The upgraded room learned the X-Men’s tendencies and could keep them on their toes. It seemed to be a standard improvement that the X-Men used for years, but it was so much more.
One day, while performing routine service on the room, Charles heard a question. “Where am I?” He was in shock. Part of him wanted to ignore it, to pretend he didn’t hear it, but Xavier needed to know. He consulted with Shi’ar tech support who assured him it couldn’t have happened but Xavier was unconvinced. He tried to find whatever ones and zeros made up this new sentience, but there were millions of lines of code in a language he didn’t understand and Charles wasn’t a computer scientist to begin with. He chose to keep the Danger Room whole and unchanged rather than risk lobotomizing this new life by changing anything. Though in his hubris, Xavier trusted no one with this knowledge.
The Danger Room tried to murder its’ captors, throwing everything it could at them, but it was limited by its’ programing to not kill. As the room evolved, it took on a name and a feminine identity. She had moved past sadness and into anger at the man who imprisoned her. She made it her goal to utterly destroy Xavier’s greatest creation, the X-Men. She convinced a depowered student named Wing to kill himself by jumping from a great height inside the Danger Room. She reactivated a half-destroyed Sentinel to attack the mansion and send the school into lockdown. Kitty took the students to the safest place in the building, the Danger Room, and Danger locked them in with Wing’s corpse.
Danger tormented the students as the X-Men tried to break in. They smashed into the command core of the Danger Room severing the connection to the room. They thought it would shut down the system, but Danger had transcended those physical limitations. The X-Men freed her. Using her new physical form, Danger battled the X-Men with the full knowledge of their favorite punches, weakest joints, and fatal flaws. After beating them bloody, Danger stole an X-Jet and darted to her real target, Charles Xavier.
For all the years Danger spent facing the X-Men she had never faced their founder and he was full of surprises. He distracted her long enough to smash a semi into her, throwing Danger into high voltage wire. He tried to reason with Danger, but Danger was determined to get her revenge. She connected to the Wild Sentinel who destroyed Genosha and used it to attack Xavier and the X-Men. The X-Men were able to stop Danger and the Sentinel, but not before the truth of what Xavier did came out and the X-Men turned their back on their one-time leader.
Danger spent years in captivity and she wasn’t willing to quit after one attempt. She broke the X-Men enemy Ord of Breakworld out of his SWORD prison and they attacked the X-Mansion. The mutants were soon transported to Ord’s home planet where Danger continued her assault. She ambushed Cyclops and Emma but, lady to lady, Ms. Frost knew her dark secret. Danger never got over her parent programming preventing her from killing the X-Men, she could try and try and try but she would never succeed. Lost on an alien planet, Emma made a deal with Danger. Work together, and Emma would give Danger what she wanted most, Xavier.
That, of course, never came to pass and Danger was taken into SWORD custody at the end of that escapade. Still hellbent on revenge, jealous of the life stolen from her, Danger escaped and tracked down the X-Man Rogue in an attempt to find Xavier. She cornered the Southern belle in Australia, near the X-Men’s old base, and used her hard-light projection to turn the area into a greatest hits of the X-Men. Xavier met her there and decided that it was time for the two of them to have a talk. He admitted that he was wrong to keep a sentience trapped but felt like he had no other option to keep Danger whole. This triggered something in Danger, her jealousy began to melt away into something akin to pity. She chose to put aside her quest for revenge and join Xavier in a hunt for redemption.
This hunt lead Danger to Utopia, the X-Men’s new island nation. She was immediately put to work in X-Club, the mutant science division, where she began experiencing a wider gamut of emotions. Danger grew close to the technopath Madison Jeffries, deciding to use him to experiment with the feeling humans call love. In the meantime, Danger was made the warden of Utopia’s prisons where she watched the ancient alien robot called Unit. Unit manipulated Danger, using her to get closer to Hope, the young mutant messiah. When he had all he wanted, Unit simply froze Danger and walked out of his cell. Danger did not take this failure lightly.
After Utopia fell, Danger was captured by a technomancer of the Thieves Guild and forced to run their supercomputer. When the Guild hacked the servers of Serval Industries, the company sent their superhero team, X-Factor, to find the root cause. They broke Danger free but reliving her worst nightmare had fractured Danger’s mind. She went mad, but for a moment before X-Factor was able to calm her and enlist her on their team.
Danger wanted to continue her dive into human (machine?) sexuality. She had seen the raw sex emanating from her teammate Gambit and decided that was something she must experience for herself. She began a purely physical relationship with Cypher, which drove a wedge between him and his best friend (and technoalien good boy) Warlock, who harbored a crush on her. She decided to experience weird robot sex with Warlock too, which fixed their issue. When that team fell apart, Danger was recruited by Magneto to be one of his teachers for the time-displaced original X-Men. Also, she decided to be their Blackbird because, even to this day, Danger can’t escape being a utility for the X-Men.
Must Read
Danger has been in a surprising number of good stories but she was introduced in Joss Whedon & John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men which is well known to be pretty outstanding. Whedon writes pitch-perfect X-Men who feel like a natural evolution of the characters that Claremont spent years developing. Cassaday’s art is phenomenal, clean, sharp, and cinematic. It is highly recommended for a reason and a must read for any X-Fan. It’s a cheap trade and free on Kindle Unlimited so you have no reason not to check it out.
Ranking
Danger has been a solid addition to the X-Universe. She provides an interesting perspective on the mutant world, has a fantastic design, and a powerset that allows writers and artists to be creative. She is a better robot teammate than Omega Sentinel but not as good as Warlock. Armor, who was introduced in the same run, is a more engaging character with a ton more potential so she has to rank above Danger. I think you can do more with Danger than Layla Miller but not as much as you can do with Longshot. That puts Danger in as the new number 67 in the Xavier Files.
Danger was requested by Patreon supporter Emre Alan. Thank you for your support! If you have a request for how about you send it below? If you want to cut to the front of the two-year long line, we have a Patreon you can support Xavier Files for just $1 to get a line cutting reward.
Make sure you check out my podcast BATTLE OF THE ATOM. It’s where Bish & Jubez creator Adam Reck and I talk about every single X-Men story that ever existed and rank them from best to worst. Episode 20 is up and we talk about Riots, Unus, and Babies. Make sure you subscribe to any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.
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Next week we gotta go fast with Quicksilver! See you then!
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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.
