Nothing is known about Mastermind’s life before the time when, while working as a carnival mentalist, he was enlisted by Magneto as a member in his Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants. More recently, Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost, the mutants who lead the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, invited Mastermind to test for admission to the Inner Circle as part of their ongoing program of recruiting super-powered mutants for their organization. To prove his worth, Mastermind, using both his natural powers and artificial means, psionically altered the personality of Jean Grey, so that she willingly became the Inner Circle’s new Black Queen. However, in doing so, Mastermind unintentionally triggered Grey’s transformation into the insane Dark Phoenix.

Grey broke free of Mastermind’s control, and opened his mind to all the various psionic sense impression that she herself received from the cosmos as Dark Phoenix, impressions which no ordinary person or even any ordinary psionic ever receives. The strain of dealing with such psychic awareness was a contributing factor to Grey’s insanity as Dark Phoenix; Mastermind, on being given such awareness all at once without any training in how to cope with it, immediately fell into a catatonic state. He is now a patient at the Jung Mental Institute, a Massachusetts institution for the mentally ill. The Inner Circle has rejected his application for membership. How long Mastermind will stay in a catatonic state, however, remains to be seen. Although Jason Wyngarde is gone, his name and powers live on through his daughters: Regan Wyngarde, calling herself Lady Mastermind and Martinique Jason, taking her father's codename.

Mastermind

Nothing is known about Mastermind’s life before the time when, while working as a carnival mentalist, he was enlisted by Magneto as a member in his Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants. More recently, Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost, the mutants who lead the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, invited Mastermind to test for admission to the Inner Circle as part of their ongoing program of recruiting super-powered mutants for their organization. To prove his worth, Mastermind, using both his natural powers and artificial means, psionically altered the personality of Jean Grey, so that she willingly became the Inner Circle’s new Black Queen. However, in doing so, Mastermind unintentionally triggered Grey’s transformation into the insane Dark Phoenix.

Powers

Mastermind is mutant with the power of illusion-casting. He can psionically cause other people to see, hear, touch, smell, and/or taste things which do not actually exist: for example, he can seem to make a solid wall appear in an empty space. He can also cause people to see, hear, touch, smell, and/or taste real things in ways that they would not do naturally: for example, he can make himself look and sound like a different person, or look and feel like a wall, or even seem invisible. Without artificial aids, Mastermind cannot cause only one person among many who are present to see his illusions; everyone within the range of his power, which can extend over an entire city (as when he helped Magneto capture Latin American nation of Santo Marco), will see his illusions. Since his power only affects the mind, his illusions cannot be recorded on film or tape or by other means. However, his power works so strongly on the mind that even if his victim or victims know they are being subjected to an illusion, they will still react to the illusion as if it were real unless they can rid themselves of all suspicions that it is unreal. Hence, if Mastermind creates the illusion of a wall, most people, even if they know it is an illusion, will still be unable to walk through it. Invariably Mastermind’s illusions are so skillful that most people are unable to help having the feeling, at least subconsciously, that they are real.

Abilities

Mastermind is below-average athlete with no knowledge of hand-to-hand combat

Weapons

Mastermind generally uses no weapons. However, in his psionic enthrallment of Jean Grey, Mastermind uses a miniature “mindtrap mechanism” designed by Emma Frost that allowed him to project illusions directly into Grey’s mind, so that only she saw them, and to monitor her thoughts, both over great distances

All data from the awesome folks at Marvel.

Mastermind Appears In