Nanny (comics)

Nanny
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	X-Factor #30 (July 1988)
Created by	Louise Simonson Walt Simonson
In-story information
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	The Right
Abilities	Mind control, Ability to de-age mutants, Genius inventor, Wears Cybernetic armor

Nanny is the name of two different fictional characters in X-Men and related titles in the Marvel Comics Universe.

The more well known Nanny is a mutant.

Publication history

Nanny's first appearance was in X-Factor #30 (July 1988), and she was created by Louise Simonson and Walt Simonson.

The character subsequently appears in X-Factor #35 (December 1988), #40 (May 1989), The Uncanny X-Men #247-248 (August–September 1989), #265-267 (August–September 1990), Generation X #4 (February 1995), Generation X Holiday Special #1 (February 1998), Slingers #9 (August 1999), and Wolverine: Killing Made Simple #1 (October 2008).

Nanny received an entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update '89 #5.

Fictional character biography

The woman now known as the Nanny was once a scientist employed by the Right in the field of cyborg technology. When she learned of the Right's anti-mutant agenda, she tried to stop them. The Right sealed her in one of her cyborg designs, an egg-shaped armored suit; she escaped their custody, but the ordeal unbalanced her to borderline insanity. At some later date, she rescued a young mutant named Peter, crafted a battle suit for him and christened him the Orphan-Maker. She also obtained (possibly self-manufactured) high-tech weaponry and a flying craft.

Nanny and her Orphan-Maker became a pair of would-be saviors of mutant children, with Nanny as the brains and guiding force and Orphan-Maker as the brawn. In her mentally addled perception, Nanny believes that parents of mutant children are evil, especially those who abandon their children, or at the very least incompetent and ill-equipped to properly raise and protect young mutants from danger and exploitation. She and Orphan-Maker travelled the world, searching for young mutants to take care of, murdering their parents to sever any family connections and using her minor telepathic powers to control her new charges. Nanny dubbed these children her "Lost Boys and Girls", after the Lost Boys from the story of Peter Pan; in her psychosis, Nanny had developed a near-obsession with children's tales and nursery rhymes, often quoting passages from them appropriate (in her mind) to the situation at hand.

Nanny’s first major mission was at the State Home for Foundlings in Omaha, Nebraska, in reality a facility where Mister Sinister kept many mutant children for observation and experimentation, including the young Scott Summers, who became the X-Man Cyclops; at the time of Nanny's raid on the Home, Nathan Christopher Summers, the son of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor, was among the children held there. Nanny sought to "liberate" several of the mutant children into her own custody, with the aid of the Orphan-Maker and some of her "Lost" children, but were opposed by Cyclops and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), then members of X-Factor, who were there to retrieve Cyclops' son. In the course of their battle, Marvel Girl discovered that two of Nanny's "Lost" children were in fact Gailyn and Joey Bailey, the children of Sara Grey, Marvel Girl’s sister, who had been missing for some time. Thwarted by Cyclops and Marvel Girl, as well as demons in the service of N'astirh (there to acquire Nathan Christopher Summers and other mutant children for sacrifice), Nanny fled with her Orphan-Maker and "Lost" children in tow; Marvel Girl was forced to let her niece and nephew go with Nanny, who posed little danger to the children in her care, to pursue the demons who had taken Nathan Christopher. This initial appearance of Nanny left the impression to the heroes that she and the Orphan-Maker were robots.

Later, Nanny and the Orphan-Maker attack the X-Men in their Australian outback-town headquarters in an effort to save them. Nanny seals Psylocke, Dazzler, and Havok in battle suits and mentally regresses them to childlike behavior. She confronts Jubilee, who is secretly living in the town. Jubilee evades her reaching grasp and uses her firework powers to negate Nanny's hypnotic dust. The tide of battle turns and Nanny and the Orphan-Maker flee in their ship. Storm pursues and is caught by the ship's appendages. After being freed from his battle suit, a confused Havok unleashes his plasma blast on the ship, seemingly killing Nanny, the Orphan-Maker, and Storm.

In reality, Nanny deployed a decoy ship containing a Life Model Decoy to impersonate the corpse of Storm in the wreckage. Nanny then regresses Storm's body to that of a child. Storm escapes, but with her memories of her adult life blurred and her childhood persona dominant. With the aid of Gambit, Storm regains her adult memories and defeats Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, sending the cyborg duo and their ship crashing into a swamp.

Nanny reappears much later in Generation X. In the course of acquiring another "Lost" child, the Orphan-Maker's armor begins to malfunction; Nanny determines that his (still unrevealed) mutant power is growing stronger, and she has to create a new armor to contain it. She later sends the Orphan-Maker to protect a deformed child trapped in a schoolhouse by a mob believing him to be a mutant. This brings them into conflict with the Generation X team, who have the same goal. The heroes protect the mob and the boy's parents from the Orphan-Maker's violent methods. After the situation ends with an innocent death, Orphan-Maker escapes in a technologically advanced vehicle disguised as an ice-cream truck.

In this appearance, Nanny's egg-shaped battlesuit is shown in pieces outside her base of operations, and Nanny herself appears only in shadow as a vague shape.

It was revealed within the Slingers series that Nanny and the Orphan-Maker were responsible for killing Ricochet's mother. They battle with Wolverine after they tried to make Trance an orphan.

Powers and abilities

Nanny's mutant power is a type of low-level telepathy/mind control, which she enhances by projecting a chemical "pixie dust" at her victims. By unknown means, Nanny can regress the bodies of adult mutants to those of children. Nanny can also mentally regress adults to a childlike mindset, or maintain that mindset in children despite their physically continuing to age; whether this is a facet of her telepathy or a technologically derived effect is unknown.

Nanny is encased within a battle suit of her own design: an egg-shaped suit of armor that is capable of flight, teleportation, producing a repulsor field, firing rockets and has an inbuilt machine pistol.

Magneto's robot Nanny

The first Marvel character to bear the name Nanny was a robot created by Magneto that first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #112 (August 1978). Magneto used computerized chairs to impair the nervous systems of the X-Men and reduce them to the capabilities of infants, and programmed Nanny to care for them as if they were children, as psychological torture. Nanny is damaged by the X-Men upon their escape and used as bait to draw Magneto into the open. She is destroyed when lava floods the installation.

Much later, a rebuilt Nanny returns, attacking the X-Men and holding them hostage. She is destroyed by Trish Tilby in #349, who (as an ordinary human, could not be detected by Nanny) was able to get close enough to the robot to attack her. Right before she was destroyed, Nanny began to display more advanced weaponry, as she was finally angry with the X-Men.

Another version of Magneto's Nanny appeared in the alternate reality dubbed the Age of Apocalypse. This Nanny was the caretaker of Charles Lehnsherr, the toddler son of that reality's Magneto and Rogue. This Nanny was equipped with retractable offensive weaponry and a defensive capability that let her envelop Charles in a protective cocoon formed from her own body mass; her primary function was to protect the child above all else. She was destroyed while performing this function, and failed to prevent Charles' abduction by agents of Apocalypse.

External links

• Nanny at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
• Nanny's Lost Boys and Girls at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
• Magneto's robot Nanny at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe