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, 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 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 Christopher. This initial appearance of Nanny left the impression to the heroes that she and the Orphan-Maker were robots.

Origin

Later, following Inferno, Nanny tried to capture several other mutant children whom X-Factor had rescued from N'astirh's demons, attacking X-Factor's aircraft as they were transporting the children to U.S. government custody. Nanny was injured in the fight when her battlesuit was damaged by Archangel, leading the heroes to discover that both she and the Orphan-Maker were in fact humans in armor. The two revealed much of their background to X-Factor, including the revelation that Nanny had rescued young Peter from Sinister's clutches; Peter's unrevealed mutant power, suppressed by his Orphan-Maker armor, was apparently so potentially dangerous that Sinister had planned to kill him. Nanny and the Orphan-Maker teleported away before they could be apprehended, and X-Factor discovered several of the "Lost" children held in stasis on their airship, including the Baileys, who were placed in the care of their grandparents.

X-Men Battles

Later, Nanny and the Orphan-Maker attack the X-Men in their Australian outback-town headquarters in an effort to "save" them. At first, Nanny was succeeded in sealing Psylocke, Dazzler, and Havok in battle suits and mentally regressing them to child-like behavior. She also confronts Jubilee, who is secretly living in the town, Jubilee literally evades her reaching grasp and uses her own firework powers to negate Nanny's hynotic dust. Eventually, the tide of battle turned and Nanny and the Orphan-Maker flee in their ship. Storm pursues and was caught by the ship's appendages. In a panic, confused by the ordeal Nanny has put him through, 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 regressed Storm's body to that of a child. Storm eventually escaped, but with her memories of her adult life blurred and her childhood persona dominant. With the aid of Gambit, Storm regained her adult memories and defeated Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, sending the cyborg duo and their ship crashing into a swamp. (Storm would later be restored to physical adulthood during the crossover storyline, "The X-Tinction Agenda".)

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

It is notable that 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.

At present, Nanny and the Orphan-Maker are at large, but and it was revealed within the Slingers series that both she and the Orphan-Maker were responsible for killing Ricochet's mother.

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; this is likely a technological process, as Storm was shown strapped to a machine as she was transformed, with Nanny operating a control console. Nanny can also mentally regress adults to a child-like 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.

Battle Suit

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 an obscure 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. He programmed Nanny to care for them as if they were children, as psychological torture; she had no other functions or offensive capabilities. This Nanny was damaged by the X-Men upon their escape and used as bait to draw Magneto into the open.

Much later, a rebuilt Nanny returned in Uncanny X-Men #347, attacking the X-Men and holding them hostage like before. She was 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's Lost Boys and Girls at Marvel Appendix
• Magneto's robot Nanny at Marvel Appendix