University of Panels

22: The Hellfire Club

 

Alongside the likes of Magneto, Mystique, the Sentinels and Apocalypse, the Hellfire Club has earned it's rank among the X-Men's most famous adversaries. Making their debut in the immortal DARK PHOENIX SAGA, the Hellfire Club on the surface is a elite gentleman's club made up of the world's wealthiest philantrophists, economists, and politicans. But unknown to the majority of it's members, the organization's Inner Circle is made up of a group of deadly mutants whose ultimate ambition is to use both their mutant powers and political and economic influence to gain domination over the world. The Inner Circle's leadership has always followed a chess board motif (with a white & black king and queen), and while the group's membership has drastically changed over the years (at one point devolving into a strip club and now being run by a group of delinquent teenagers in Jason Aaron's awesome WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN series), in my eyes the group's most memorable member will always be its first Black King, Sebastian Shaw. Shaw is a mutant with the ability to absorb the kinetic energy of any attack and redirect it at his opponent. He once hired Jason Wyngarde (the mutant Mastermind) to brainwash Jean Grey into becoming the group's Black Queen, but unknowingly contributed to her transformation as the malevolent Dark Phoenix. Emma Frost was also the Hellfire Club's White Queen at this point, but has since reformed her ways as a prominent member of the X-Men. But no matter what incarnation of the group's membership, the Hellfire Club's wealth and influence will always be a persitent threat to the X-Men's cause of peace between humans and mutants.