Anole (Character) - Comic Vine (original) (raw)

Origin

Victor's School Photo

Victor Borkowski was born and raised in Fairbury, Illinois and belonged to a loving family. He lived a normal life, and was even accepted into the community when his mutation began to manifest at the age of 13. However, when the anti- mutant sentiment began to spread, his parents feared his safety so they sent him to the Xavier Institute where he could learn how to use and control his powers.

Creation

Anole was created by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir and Keron Grant and first appeared in New Mutants Vol.2 issue 2 (2003). It was originally intended that Anole would commit suicide early in the series after revealing his homosexuality and being rejected by his family and friends. The story was meant to serve as a message of intolerance, but was later scrapped due to Marvel writers being concerned about the effect it would have on the public. The story was changed and Anole survived, becoming a popular character and becoming a main character in many X-Men titles.

Character Evolution

Yearbook Photo

Anole started as a background character during the squad system at the Xavier Institute. His visually distinct look separated him from other background characters.

He was eventually thrown into the spotlight. Since then he has battled with the idea of being a mutant and an X-Men. After Northstar's death, Anole became distraught. Karma, his new advisor tried to comfort him but he truly missed Northstar. It was not until Northstar was revived and turned evil that Anole was able to get over his death.

Major Story Arcs

Quest for Magik

Anole with his new arm in Limbo

Once Anole was taken into Limbo, he was able to show his leadership abilities. After being told by Blindfold that he had to protect Pixie at all costs, he did all he could to stop Illyana from taking part of her soul. Anole ended up losing an arm during the battle against the Limbo demons. After this his powers true nature is revealed and he has a new arm, similar to his head carapace. After this mission he was told by Rockslide that he wanted both Anole and Pixie to be on the New X-Men team.

Messiah Complex

Anole's first mission is sneaking away with the other New X-Men to help to save the mutant messiah from the Purifiers. He is able to sneak in to one of their facilities and meets up with Rictor who had infiltrated the organization. After the final messiah battle, the X-Men disband and Anole goes back home.

Divided We Stand

Being back home, Anole realized how much living in the X-Men's world had affected him. He begins suffering from mild PTSD. He also begins to fall behind in classes. When Northstar is sent to go talk to him about how he is, Anole lashes out and hits Northstar in the face. After this he seemingly runs away and does not want to hurt his family and wants nothing to do with the X-Men.

Young X-Men

He is approached by Moonstar to rejoin the X-Men in San Francisco. After some coaxing he agrees to rejoin the X-Men. He becomes a member of the Young X-Men. He becomes good friends with Graymalkin, a mutant that was trapped underground for years because of his sexuality. Anole becomes better friends with Rockslide at this point as well. During his time with the Young X-Men he fought both the Y-Men and Neo.

Secret Invasion and Dark Reign

Anole after the riot

While staying with the X-Men in San Fransisco, Anole helps fight the Skrulls during the Secret Invasion. He is an asset because of his camouflage powers. Shortly after this Osborn takes power and creates HAMMER. One of Osborn's goals is to stop the X-Men. With the creation of the Dark X-Men, Anole is pitted against some of the strongest mutants that are left. It is during this time that all the Young X-Men become official members of the X-Men. Once dark Reign had ended, Dagger began training with the Young X-Men. Anole and the others were no match for her, she easily destroyed Rockslide.

She would go searching for Cloak who had gone missing, partially because he felt that she liked Anole and the others more. Anole quickly retorted that he was gay and Cloak and Dagger made up.

Nation X

A lot of the time Anole complained that he was not seeing enough action. It is Magik that sends him to the desert where he learned an important lesson about having and wanting. She didn't intend for that and just ante to get rid of him for a while. Some weeks later, Pixie and a couple of other girls go missing. Anole and Pixie have been connected since their time in Limbo so he leads the charge to go find them. Because of him a small team of X-Men come together in search of the missing girls and the team finds out the secret of Pixie's father and who her mother is.

Second Coming and Hellbound

Once the mutant messiah, now called Hope, came back to the present, the world turned on it's head. Anole was sent to go back into limbo with Pixie and a team, lead by Cannonball. Anole was the one that had to convince Pixie that she had to go back, because they were X-Men and that's what they do. While in Limbo, Gambit's Death persona returned with a vengeance and it was up to Anole and Cannonball to save the team.

X-Men: To Serve and Protect

Anole and Rockslide are serving and protecting

Rockslide is able to convince Anole that they should become super heroes for San Fransisco at night. They Fight a couple low level criminals but stumble onto the evil plot of Doctor Negative.

It is now up to the duo to save San Francisco with no help from the rest of the X-Men. After having to fight the possessed Rockslide, he reveals that Rockslide is indeed his best friend. Cyclops told the duo to keep up the good work when the X-Men finally were able to meet up with them.

Some months later, Anole was the first mutant to contract the mutant flu created by Lobe and Sublime corp. Because of his physical mutation he began showing signs early on and was one of the hardest hit. When Cyclops decided to send the X-Men to attack SublimeCorp, Anole was one of the most determined to be a part of the team. Luckily, the flu was cured, and so did Anole not soon afterwards.

First To Last

Anole is among the New X-Men members that protect Cyclops during the attack on Utopia by the Evolutionaries. Anole is also among the other student that save Irma from the attack of Toad, Dragoness, Bliss, and Litterbug.

Regenesis

He decided to leave Utopia after the Schism. He is one of the new students of Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. He still attends the school as a student, even after the apparent death of Wolverine.

Krakoa

Anole joined the X-men when they moved onto the island of Krakoa, where the mutants established the first ever independent mutant nation. He sometimes worked as a bartender in the Green Lagoon.

He formed a close friendship with a group of teen mutants that had physical mutations like him, they formed the Lost Club together.

NYX

Joining the Morlocks

Following the Fall of Krakoa, Victor, like many of his mutant peers, moved to New York City to maintain as normal a life as a gay repitilian mutant can. He uses his bartending experience from working at the Green Lagoon to get a job in one of NYC's bars, often serving fellow Academy X alumni Sophie Cuckoo and her new friend Kamala Khan. One night while working Anole is confronted by anti-mutant bigots, but Kamala and Sophie help him fend them off. After the altercation Victor is fired from Key Turn, and soon finds himself amongst Caliban and Sobunar's new Morlocks. His discovery attracts the attention of the anti-mutant Truthseekers who attack the mutant Morlocks, but are stopped by the NYX team. Kamala, Sophie and Laura Kinney depart the tunnels and leave Anole, who chooses to join them as a Morlock but live on the surface.

Powers and Abilities

Playing Frisbee with his Tongue

In appearance Anole resembles that of a lizard/human hybrid. He is covered in green scales, has no hair, spikes covering a small portion of his body which includes a spiked carapace atop his head and a prehensile tongue. In addition to his physical features he has a number of superhuman attributes including:

Capable of moving and running slightly faster than a normal human, but he is not on par with powered speedsters. Anole's muscles produce far less fatigue toxins during physical activity than the muscles of an average human. He can exert himself at peak capacity for several hours before fatigue impairs him.

Anole possess a healing factor, though not on par with Wolverine. He has shown the ability to re-grow limbs from his body once the older one has been removed. In such an incident the body part the replaces the old is larger and more reptilian in appearance and apparently stronger as well. It is unknown if his entire body with share the same mutation or if it is a limited mutation.

Anole's natural agility, balance, and coordination are enhanced to increased levels, allowing him to perform feats that those of normal agility would find incredibly hard to do. He has the reaction time that is roughly half of that of normal base-line human's.

As part of his physical mutation, Anole has spikes that appear on his scalp. His regrown arm also has razor sharp claws allowing for greater battle prowess.

Anole possesses superhuman ability to alter his skin color and appearance enabling him to copy that of any surface he stands against. Anole has the ability to stick to and climb walls or any substance. It is very similar to that of Spider-Man.

Anole has an incredibly long tongue (apparently longer than his own body length) which he is capable of rapidly and abruptly extending out of his mouth. The tongue has a sticky tip on the end which serves to catch anything that he would otherwise never be able to reach.

Anole possesses superhuman strength enabling him to lift weights to, as of yet, unmeasured levels. However this power is only in his right arm, and only appeared after regrowing his limb. The rest of his body remains in general human strength.

New Arm

During the Quest For Magik arc, his right arm was severed at the shoulder and he has grown it back covered with the same carapace that covers his scalp. This arm has been shown to provide Anole with super-strength. The new arm also has sharp spikes and claws on the hand. Beast has examined him and confirmed that whenever he would lose a limb a new one would grow out, stronger than before. Rockslide and X-23 offered him help with dismembering, but Anole declined.

Anole is a formidable hand to hand combatant, trained by none other than the likes of Wolverine and others that taught him at the Xavier Institute. Anole is very interested in Theater, and as a result, Victor is a very talented actor. In fact, he was voted 'Best Actor' by the student body of the Xavier Institute. He is also very into sports, liking basketball and likes frisbee best. Because he plays a bit, he is naturally very agile without his mutation. He also enjoys playing pool. Victor's chosen language of study is French. Victor has shown a natural aptitude for leadership. He was the squad leader for his group the Alpha Squadron and has been referred to and defaulted to leader in multiple missions where he was promoted to active field duty in the New X-Men.

Alternate Earths

Earth-58163 (House of M)

For further details: House of M

House of M

In this re-envisioned/recreated version of Earth-616 by Scarlet Witch, mutants are the majority and are in power and baseline humans are forced to live in hiding. Here the roles are very much the opposite of the mainstream Earth. Young mutants and their burgeoning mutant powers now have two options for their future schools and futures as mutants in society.

They can either pick between the New Mutant Leadership Institute, run by Xi'an Coy Mahn (Karma), where here they develop the future diplomats and leaders of the world, though they do not get combat training and tend to enroll mutants with passive powers. The other option is to join the SHIELD training program, run by Sebastian Shaw. It is here they have a more military training focusing on warfare and covert operations and enroll mutants with active battle ready powers. The training team is called the Hellions. This group included Scion (Earth-616's Hellion), Magik ( Illyana Rasputin), Synch, Quill, Surge, Wind Dancer (now known as Renascence), Anole & Danielle Moonstar. Moonstar is a fully-fledged S.H.I.E.L.D. operative and is assigned to the training of the Hellions. Though she is the trainer she does participate in active battle with them. Her assistant trainers are the twin mutant siblings Aurora and Northstar.

In this reality Anole is not yet field ready and is in the beginning stages of the SHIELD training department. He is shown being training by Aurora and Northstar along with a few other newer recruits.

Young X-Men: End of Days

End of Days

In this alternate future, Anole, Graymalkin, Diamondheart (aka Emma Frost) and Wolverine are the last X-Men alive.

Dust has killed many, believing mutants are a plague. She kills Wolverine, and proceeds to kill the others. She claims that when Ink saved her life, he took away her soul. It is unclear if Anole and Graymalkin were in a relationship.

Age of X

For further details: Age of X

Age of X

In the reality created by Legions out of control personality Moira, Anole is living on Fortress X.

He like many praises the Force Warriors for keeping them safe. When Legacy makes contact with Xavier and "attacks" all the mutants, Anole and Domino try to take her out. Rogue fends both of and uses Anole's camouflage to get away for a while.

In Other Media

X-Men: The Last Stand

For further details: X-Men: The Last Stand

Anole appears as one of the Omega's and later one of Magneto's Brotherhood. He gets hit with a needle that contains the cure.