Merge:Black Tom Cassidy

"Black Tom" Cassidy is a Marvel Comics supervillain, an enemy of the X-Men, particularly Banshee. Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Dave Cockrum, he first fully appeared in Uncanny X-Men #101 (October 1976). In addition to fighting the X-Men, he has clashed with Deadpool a number of times.

Black Tom is a mutant who can manipulate, bond with and project energy through plant life. He was the black sheep of a prominent Irish family. The X-Man Banshee is his cousin. Tom secretly raised Banshee's daughter Siryn, of whose existence Banshee was unaware, and conscripted her into his criminal gang. Black Tom was also a longtime partner of the superstrong villain Juggernaut, until Juggernaut's recent reformation.

Family
Black Tom is the cousin of Sean Cassidy, the Banshee, a member of the X-Men. He was also once the only friend of the Juggernaut. His original principal power was that he could generate blasts of heat through a wooden medium, such as the shillelagh that he is often found carrying. He has a rivalry with Sean, mainly because Sean won both Cassidy Keep, their estate, and the family fortune from Tom in a game of dice. They were also rivals for a woman named Maeve Rourke, whom Sean married.

While Sean was away, working for INTERPOL, Maeve gave birth to their daughter, Theresa. Not much later, Maeve died in an IRA bombing. With no means to contact Sean, Tom took care of Theresa. When Sean returned to learn of his wife's death, he was devastated. Before Tom could even tell him of the existence of his daughter, Sean lashed out at Tom with his sonic scream for not having taken better care of Maeve. While Sean flew away in anger, Tom fell into a chasm, breaking his leg as a result of the attack, which left him with a limp. Angrily, Tom swore to make Sean pay and vowed to never tell him about his daughter, raising her himself instead.

Later Tom became a criminal and came into conflict with the law and was apprehended. While serving time in prison, Tom met and befriended Juggernaut. The two became close friends and allies, and worked together on missions. On a mission in San Francisco with Juggernaut and Theresa (now under the codename Siryn), Tom encountered and fought the original Spider-Woman, along with several of the X-Men. This conflict ended in Black Tom's temporary capture. While in custody, Black Tom exonerated Theresa of responsibility for her crimes and wrote a letter to Sean explaining who she was. The X-Men brought Theresa back to their headquarters, where she was joyfully reunited with her father.

Transformation
After being shot by Cable, Tom was taken to France, where doctors grafted a wood-like substance onto his wounds, healing him and allowing him to channel his bio-blasts directly through his fists. Unfortunately, due to a genetic virus the substance spread over Tom's body, and only the mutated cells of the mercenary Deadpool (due to his healing factor) were able to help Tom stop the spread of the plant growth.



The effect of Deadpool's cells did not last for long. The spreading began again, to the point where Tom was completely composed of plant matter. As a result, his powers included control and manipulation of all manner of plant life, to the point where he could make plant dopplegangers of himself, or anyone else. He was completely insane as a result.

During this time, Black Tom resurfaced as a member of the latest incarnation of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Earlier, Juggernaut had inflitrated the X-Men for him as part of the Brotherhood's plan, though Juggernaut slowly changed during his time with the X-Men, mostly due to the positive influence of the young boy Sammy Pare.

Juggernaut rejoined the Brotherhood, secretly planning on turning them when the time was right. Sammy stumbled upon the group, and assuming that Juggernaut was betraying the X-Men, started lashing out. In retaliation Tom brutally murdered the boy, causing Juggernaut to attack Cassidy, dismembering him. Due to Tom's new connection with plants, this did not hurt him.

Juggernaut managed to escape and warn the X-Men, while Black Tom led an attack on the X-Mansion. Besides killing the school's cook, their mission was a failure. In the end Xorn sucked Black Tom and the rest of the Brotherhood into a black hole.

M-Day
After M-Day, Black Tom woke up as a human again, losing his secondary mutation but still retaining his old powers, along with his sanity. The organization Black Air hired Tom to attack the new incarnation of Excalibur, a group which Juggernaut was now a member of. Though he easily defeated the others, Juggernaut contfronted his former friend and convinced him to turn himself in for the death of Sammy, saying "He was a kid, Tom. An' you an' me, for all our faults, we used ta be better than that."

Tom also showed remorse for killing the child, "That wasn't me, Cain, you know that. I wasn't in my right mind... You've got to understand... that mad life, before... it was like some dream."

Powers and abilities
Originally, his principal power was generating concussive blasts of force through any wooden medium. He typically carried a shillelagh, a traditional Irish wooden fighting stick. He was originally immune to Banshee's sonic powers, though this is a moot point, as Banshee is currently dead.

Later, his chemistry, physiology, and morphology were radically changed, and he became a humanoid plant form capable of living in several different bodies and infecting folliage and trees to make them a part of his body. This made him difficult to restrain or destroy because it was nearly impossible to destroy every part of his body, as much of it could be underground and he could invade other plants with his life force. While in this form, he was also able to siphon off the life energy of living beings by sending specialized tendrils into their body cavities. However, the process seemed to have affected his mind, and he wasn't in full control.

After M-Day, in which most mutants lost their powers, he lost his secondary mutation and his humanoid form was restored, though he still retains his original abilities.

Other media
Black Tom was a villain in the X-Men Animated series. He teamed up with Juggernaut to kidnap Lilandra in the cartoon version of the Phoenix Saga. He and Sean are referred to as brothers in the series continuity with Sean being the elder. This was later parodied in the internet video The Juggernaut Bitch.