Many of the X-Men are bound together by their mysterious pasts, which have a tendency to catch up with them at the most inopportune times. The various X-Men’s mysterious origins have slowly been chipped away at over the years, but the forgotten ’90s villain Hazard was almost the key to unraveling the origins of several major Marvel mutants.
First debuting in 1992’s X-Men #12, Carter Ryking was created by Fabian Nicieza and Art Thibert. Hazard’s father was a famous scientist Alexander Ryking, who worked for Dr. Nathan Milllbury — an alias of Mister Sinister — alongside Brian Xavier and Kurt Marko. They all worked together in the Black Womb Project, a government-funded secret testing facility that researched mutant genetics and performed experiments on thousands of mutant babies, including the staff’s mutant children. Alexander noticed his son Carter Ryking’s demonstrated mutant abilities at an early age but had trouble controlling them. In response, Alexander sedated his son and outfitted his son with bionic machinery that attempted to control his newfound abilities. Carter was kept in this state for decades, only escaping once word of his father’s death reached him. He burst out of his almost-comatose state and killed all of the nurses attending him. Afterward, he secretly mailed Professor X a file containing the history of their father’s work, which the Professor kept hidden until it was found by Wolverine while searching for information on his own forgotten past. Carter, then calling himself Hazard, attacked Professor X, then forcibly took him to the Alamogordo facility.
There, Hazard confronted Xavier about their shared past and forced him to remember everything they endured together. Professor X, who forgot most of his youth, didn’t believe his childhood friend at first but slowly started piecing their history together as Hazard showed him around the building. A last-ditch effort to defeat Hazard by the newly arrived X-Men caused his bionics to malfunction, causing an energy buildup that reached critical levels. Thinking quickly, Professor X linked his mind with Hazard so that the explosion from the energy buildup would not hurt the X-Men. However, the explosion destroyed most of the Alamagordo facility and the secrets it held. Wolverine tried to interrogate the knocked-out Hazard about the Weapon X program, but the villain had no answers.
Eventually, the projects that Hazard and Xavier’s fathers worked on became the basis for Mister Sinister’s modern experiments on mutants. Years later, Hazard was contacted by the telepath Fontanelle through his dreams to gather information for New Sun about the Black Womb Project and Gambit’s role in the Mutant Massacre. When Professor Xavier lost most of his memory after Bishop shot him, he went to see Hazard in prison. Hazard, who had been de-powered after M-Day and was seemingly counting down to his own death, allowed his old friend to enter his mind to gather what precious few memories he could in X-Men: Legacy #211, by Mike Carey, Scott Eaton and Brandon Peterson.
The following night, Professor X was almost killed by an assassin only to be saved by Gambit. Gambit gave the Professor a hit list of everyone that was still alive who was involved in the Black Womb Project. Professor X and Gambit visited Hazard the next day to protect him, only to find him dead from a brain haemorrhage. Once Xavier regained all his memories of his past with Mister Sinister and connected them with Gambit’s own history with the villain, the duo were able to defeat Mister Sinister and destroy everything that was left of the Black Womb Project.
Hazard was always punished for his father’s mistakes. Hazard’s life had always been controlled and overshadowed by his father’s ties to the Black Womb Project and Weapon X. He was almost the key to solving the mysteries at the heart of several X-Men, but it turned out that his father was the real key to unravelling their secrets.
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