Master Mold
| Master Mold | |
|---|---|
 Cover to Uncanny X-Men #16. Art by Jack Kirby. | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Uncanny X-Men #15 (December 1965) |
| Created by | Stan Lee Jack Kirby |
| In-story information | |
| Team affiliations | Sentinels, Project: Armageddon |
| Abilities | Superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, and durability, Ability to incorporate metal into itself, Concussive blasts, Plasma discharges, Ability to scan mutants, Flight |
Master Mold is a fictional character, a robot supervillain in the Marvel Universe. Since his primary purpose was to act as a portable Sentinel-creating factory, and the Sentinel robots were primarily used to hunt mutants, Master Mold has almost exclusively appeared in the X-Men and related, mutant-themed, comic books.
Fictional character biography
Master Mold was created by Dr. Bolivar Trask during the original run of X-Men comics. In the 1960s, out of fear of a race of superhuman mutants that could dominate the whole world and enslave normal human beings, Trask makes Master Mold, a super-computer, in the shape of a giant Sentinel robot, that will control and facilitate the construction of the Sentinels (mechanical warriors that are programmed to hunt and capture all superhuman mutants). Unbeknownst to all, the original Master Mold is also programmed by the time-traveling Tanya Trask (aka Madame Sanctity), part of the Askani Sisterhood, with the mission to find and destroy The Twelve: a group of mutants that are linked to the rise of Apocalypse, which the ruthless Sanctity considered an event that must be stopped at all costs. For unknown reasons, some of the mutants that are catalogued as the Twelve are not part of the group.
The original Master Mold is eventually destroyed, but several others are later built by other people who want to manufacture Sentinels. In the late 1980s, the remains of Master Mold merges with the advanced Sentinel from the future, Nimrod, thanks to the Siege Perilous to form the being called Bastion, which acts like an almost-human Master Mold during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Another Master Mold appeared in Incredible Hulk Annual #7. It claimed to be Steven Lang, who was thought to be dead after Project Armageddon. It said that he (as Steven Lang) did not die immediately from the crash of his flying gunship, he managed to pull himself out of the wreckage and crawl to his greatest weapon, Master Mold, which merged with Lang when he tried to activate it. It was nearly destroyed by Hulk, who was with Angel and Iceman in Master Mold's meteor space base. Then it was completely destroyed when the asteroid exploded, right after Hulk, Angel and Iceman managed to escape.
Master Mold also claimed the name and identity of Stephen Lang during a story arc running from issues 17 through 24 of Marvel Comics Presents. In this story, later reprinted in the graphic novel, Cyclops: Retribution, Master Mold creates a virus designed to wipe out mutantkind called the Retribution Virus. During this arc, it is revealed that he blames Cyclops entirely for his death as Stephen Lang. He hypnotizes Moira MacTaggart and uses her to unleash the virus, infecting Cyclops, Callisto, and Banshee, who is completely incapacitated. However, MacTaggart breaks free of his grasp. While she attempts to cure the virus, Cyclops and Callisto team up with Conscience, another artificial construct developed from Stephen Lang's brain engrams, to stop Master Mold and save not only mutantkind, but also humanity, which had become threatened by the virus. Cyclops, though weakened from the effects of the disease, nearly single-handedly destroys the Master Mold before finally succumbing to his illness and falling unconscious. As Master Mold prepares to kill Cyclops and finish unleashing the virus, he is suddenly attacked by a cured Banshee, who uses his sonic scream to "finish the job that Cyclops started" and destroys Master Mold. The virus is then cured before it has a chance to spread.
Another Master Mold is built in secret in the jungles of Ecuador. This particular Master Mold builds a new breed of Sentinels, known as Wild Sentinels, which are capable of assimilating non-organic materials to assume different shapes, most of them insectoid, as well as a breed of Nano-Sentinels. This Master Mold is taken over by Cassandra Nova, who uses the Wild Sentinels to destroy Genosha and in her subsequent plan to destroy the X-Men.
The Master Mold will return in Uncanny X-Men #500.
Capabilities
Dr. Bolivar Trask equipped Master Mold with powerful weaponry and the ability to speak; Master Mold was also mobile so that it could defend itself from mutant attackers or so that it can be relocated easily if Trask had to find a new headquarters.
Other versions
In Weapon X: Days of Future Now, one of Madison Jeffries's Boxbots dubbed Bot becomes the new Master Mold and traps Jeffries' within its body in order to use his powers to build new Sentinels without exhausting Jeffries.
Other media
X-Men animated series
Master Mold also serves an important role during the first season of the mid-1990s X-Men animated series. In one episode, the X-Men Gambit, Storm, and Jubilee are kidnapped by Sentinels, sent by Trask and Henry Peter Gyrich, while vacationing on the fictional island of Genosha. There, the three X-Men, along with several other mutants, are enslaved by Trask and Gyrich who are harnessing the mutants' powers to create a massive dam in Genosha whose water power will be used to run Trask's newly-created Master Mold.
The X-Men eventually escape Genosha and destroy most of the Sentinels by Storm's flooding the dam. Later on in the season, they learn that Trask has lost control of Master Mold, who is now stationed in Washington, D.C. Master Mold has Senator Kelly, and dozens of other important world leaders, kidnapped and demands that Trask replace their brains with computers that can be controlled by Master Mold. Master Mold rationalizes that his created purpose to protect ordinary humans from mutants is irrational, since mutants themselves are humans, so he tells Trask that he and his Sentinels are the only things that could protect humanity from itself. The X-Men help rescue Trask and Kelly from Master Mold, and at the end of the season's last episode, Professor Xavier, with the help of Magneto, flies the X-Men's jet full of explosives into Master Mold's torso.
Master Mold and all Sentinels are believed to be destroyed at this point, but they resurface in season four. It is revealed that several Sentinels, and Master Mold's head and intelligence, had survived Xavier's attack. Master Mold was commissioning Sentinels to steal top-secret, indestructible lightweight plastics in order to create a new body for himself. He also had Sentinels kidnap his creators, Trask and Gyrich, whom he felt had betrayed him, as well as Xavier, whom he blamed from having destroyed his body. The X-Men eventually freed them and Morph destroyed Master Mold's head once and for all.
However, in Bishop's timeline, Master Mold has been rebuilt and rules the United States (similar to Skynet in the post-apocalyptic future seen in the Terminator film series), using the Sentinels to hunt down mutants who are put in concentration camps.
Computer and video games
Although Sentinels appear in many computer and video games, Master Mold appears in only a few ones:
- He appears in the X-Men arcade game in the Stage 4 Boss; and returns in the stage 7, as the fourth boss - of five - after White Queen and before Juggernaut, on Magneto's base in Asteroid M.
- He appears in the background of the Sentinel processing plant combat area of the video game X-Men: Children of the Atom. He lifts off if the Sentinel wins, is destroyed if the Sentinel loses.
- In 2004's X-Men Legends, Master Mold, actually a giant Sentinel piloted by anti-mutant extremist General Kincaid, is the final boss of the game.
- Master Mold appears as the final boss for Cyclops' stage in the 1992 game Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, but his name was mistakenly put as Master Blast in the back of the box of the cartridges and the advertisements.
- In X-Men: The Official Game, Master Mold serves as the chief antagonist. In this continuity, Master Mold was a project developed by William Stryker in the bowels of Alkali Lake. On a trip back, The Master Mold is re-activated by Jason Stryker, who survived the events of X2, and set out to finish his father's work.