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Quote1 Humans took me and tore my brain from my body, and instead of the X-Men undoing what those monsters had done, I was left to figure out how to fend for myself. They even gave me a name that pokes fun at what I went through. No-Girl. Quote2
Martha Johansson[src]

History

Sublime (Earth-616) and Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from New X-Men Vol 1 119 01

John Sublime with Martha Johansson

Origin[]

Little is known about Martha's past. As a teenage mutant runaway, Martha was captured by the human supremacist group, the U-Men.[6] Their founder John Sublime had her brain removed from her body, keeping the disembodied brain alive in a capsule. Sublime controlled her through drugs and syringes, and used her to subdue his opponents.[7] He used this method against the two X-Men, Cyclops and Emma Frost. The pair eventually broke free of her control, and liberated Martha. After gaining her freedom, Martha then took her revenge on Sublime by causing him to fall to his apparent death.[8]

New X-Men Vol 1 135 page 02 Special Class (Earth-616)

Martha in the Special Class

Xavier Institute[]

After Martha was freed, Cyclops and Emma enrolled her in the Xavier Institute where she became a member of Xorn's Special Class. Fellow student, Quentin Quire invented a special hovering case to hold Martha's brain. Martha seemed to have developed a friendship with Ernst, a super-strong mutant whose appearance resembled an old woman, who often pulled Martha's case by a chain and repeated Martha's telepathic communications.[9]

When Xorn impersonated Magneto and formed his new Brotherhood of Mutants, Martha joined along with most of the Special Class. However, Martha's loyalty to Xorn seemed tenuous as she predicted Xorn's plans would fail miserably.[10]

After Xorn's death, Martha returned to the newly rebuilt Xavier Institute. In the wake of M-Day, only 27 students (including Martha) retained their mutant powers.[11][12] Although Martha remained at the school, she was excluded from trying out for the New X-Men.[13]

Manifest Destiny & Nation X[]

Ernst (Earth-616) and Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from New X-Men Vol 1 140 0001

Ernst and Martha

Following the destruction of the X-Mansion by Sentinels,[14] Beast returned to the school grounds to retrieve some of his research and Martha, to bring both to Graymalkin Industries in San Francisco.[15]

Following the movement of the majority of the mutant populace to the floating island of Utopia, Martha was instrumental in stopping a plot to take over Utopia by fellow disembodied mutant Kid Omega, almost sacrificing herself in the process.[3]

Curse of the Mutants[]

During Xarus' vampire invasion of San Francisco, Martha possessed a sleeping Rogue to experience further heroics. Ernst assisted in watch after Martha's brain and following between in case of trouble. While inhabiting Rogue's body, Martha met Damen, a charming vampire claiming she was the reincarnated of his lover, Rue. At first Martha was enamored with Damen and the idea running away with him, but after sharing a kiss she realized he was soulless. Heartbroken, Damen allowed Martha to end his existence.[16]

Lights (Earth-616) from Generation Hope Vol 1 13 001

Martha joining the Lights

Schism & Regenesis[]

Following the schism between Wolverine and Cyclops, Martha chose to stay on Utopia[17][18] and joined Hope Summers' Lights at the request of Zero.[4]


During her first mission with Hope's team, Martha's glass tank was broken by a suicide bomber, none other than a recently mindwiped Sebastian Shaw. Without Pixie available to teleport her to back to Utopia, Zero used his own mutant powers to create a body for her.

Upon returning to Utopia, Kenji and Martha remained connected within the same techno-organic form, and began to harbor romantic feelings for one another. She initiated the relationship, somewhat; she was incredibly grateful to not just be a "brain in a jar" any longer, and was eager to interact and feel once again. After a while, however, Martha began to realize that Kenji was just showing her his "works of art"-- his dreams-- because he had been connected to her for so long. When she asked him why he showed her this, rather than the real world, he was vague about his plans. She used her powers to return to reality, and realized that she'd been alone, in the borrowed body, for some time.

Martha went to Hope's aid once Kenji controlled most of Utopia, after he influenced its resident mutants into a frenzy to destroy her. Using her powers, Martha presumably made Kenji "see" that she wasn't there as he confessed to Hope that he had, in fact, only been infatuated with her due to her immense psychic abilities.

After lifting the illusion, Martha approached Kenji, stating that she had heard everything, and was able to bypass his psychic blocks with the help of Hope's power mimicry. Desperate, Kenji made a plea for her to listen to him, and that it wasn't what she thought. She approached him and, using an as-yet unidentified (presumably psychic) attack, comforted him telling him that, "if it were any consolation, I had no heart to break."

The attack destroyed Kenji's body, and by extension, the body he had created for Martha as well. Hope rushed Martha to the infirmary, where they had constructed a new containment vessel for her. She continued to live on Utopia, but reverted to a severed brain that only interacted telepathically.[19]

Avengers vs. X-Men[]

After the Avengers attacked and took Utopia, they didn't want the kids to join the war and hurt themselves or someone else. Consequently, it was decided to send them to the Avengers Academy.[20] However, the teenage mutants didn't want to stay there after a brief fight occurred (that Martha didn't take part in).[21] When the mutants started to leave Utopia, the teenage mutants (including Martha) went to the Jean Grey School For Higher Learning. While there, Martha talked to Genesis and showed that she had a crush on him, telling him she found him to be cute.[22]

Spider-Man and the X-Men[]

Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from Nation X Vol 1 2 001

Shortly after Wolverine’s death, Spider-Man arrived at the Jean Grey School claiming to be honoring one of Logan’s final wishes by teaching an all-new Special Class. He was met with suspicion from the X-Men, especially Storm and Rachel Grey, and total disrespect from his new students which included Hellion, Rockslide, Shark Girl, Eye-Boy, and Glob Herman. No-Girl, alongside Ernst, also found herself in Spider-Man’s class, and was one of the few students to take him seriously, even requesting a syllabus and grading standards. However, Spider-Man’s class was anything but typical and the group of students stumbled upon one villainous scheme after another. Ernst once again took on the role of No-Girl’s protector when the class was captured by Sauron and Stegron. No-Girl managed to hold her own though when the class was stranded in Mojoverse, defeating many of Mojo’s mind slaves and freeing the rest of the group from mind control.

Despite the chaos that surrounded the Special Class, Spider-Man attempted to teach them that with their power came a responsibility to protect all people, not just mutants. He began to take his students with him on patrol but as the Special Class’s admiration for Spider-Man grew, Rachel Grey only became more skeptical of his true intentions. Her misgivings about Spider-Man were well-founded as he was keeping his true motive a secret. Wolverine had tasked him with finding a mole amongst the student body and his Special Class was his narrowed down suspects. At the school science fair, Rachel Grey used the opportunity of Spider-Man being distracted to break down his psychic defenses and enter his mind. She was shocked to find No-Girl in his head, ready to engage her in psychic combat on the astral plane to protect her teacher. Appearing in the glory of her former body, No-Girl not only managed to forcefully kick Rachel out of Spider-Man’s mind but even mind wiped her so that she forgot all she had found out, which included Spider-Man’s real identity.

Rachel was furious and despite No-Girl’s best intentions, Spider-Man immediately suspected her as the mole. Before he could fully question her, the Special Class spiralled into another adventure, taking off to save S.W.O.R.D. headquarters from a symbiote invasion led by Deathbird. Spider-Man decided to put his trust in Martha and asked her to go inside his mind so that he could bond with a symbiote without his mind being taken over. No-Girl barely managed to fight back the symbiote before it overwhelmed her and Spider-Man’s mind but having risked her life for him, she had regained his support. When they arrived back at the Jean Grey School, Spider-Man gave Martha a chance to explain her actions but there was no need because the true mole was revealed to be none other than Ernst who had been working with Mister Sinister.

In return for providing him with DNA samples of every student and teacher at the Jean Grey School, Mister Sinister promised Ernst that he would create a new body for Martha. He captured Spider-Man and No-Girl and brought them back to his base with the help of Ernst, where he fulfilled his end of the deal by placing Martha’s brain inside the body of a Storm clone. When the rest of the Special Class came to the rescue, Sinister forced Martha to relentlessly attack Ernst who had finally turned against him. Martha told her friend that although her heart was in the right place, Ernst had acted completely irresponsibly. Martha knew what Ernst had to do and Ernst regrettably complied and ripped Martha’s brain out of her new body. Spider-Man and his special class defeated Sinister and returned back to school where Martha and her classmates defended Ernst and managed to excuse her from serious punishment.

Despite another botched opportunity at acquiring a new body, No-Girl seemed to be doing better than ever, practicing real-world heroics on a weekly basis with Spider-Man and even starting a romantic relationship with Eye-Boy, who swore that if he squinted hard enough, he could see Martha smile.[citation needed]

Becoming a X-Men[]

In the wake of a massive wave of anti-mutant sentiment combined with the discovery that the Terrigen Mists spread in the atmosphere were harmful to mutants, No-Girl, as well as many other mutants, was sheltered on a sanctuary called X-Haven. Once the X-Men were rebuilt, No-Girl and a few other young mutants (Ernst, Glob, and Anole) were assembled by Colossus to be trained in order to become X-Men.[23]

Omega World[]

Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from Extraordinary X-Men Vol 1 9 001

No-Girl's new body

When Cerebra detected the sudden appearance of six hundred new mutant signatures in Tokyo, Storm sent Colossus and his team of young mutants to investigate it.

Cerebra took them to the warehouse where all the mutant signatures were coming from, and for their surprise, it served as the base of the Sugar Man, an old enemy of the X-Men. Sugar Man had genetically engineered six hundred mutant embryos in total isolation from the Terrigen Mists and planned to send them to the future, where they would be safe from the M-Pox caused by the Mists and would grow to become the next generation of mutants, with Sugar Man as their leader. However, Colossus' interference separated Sugar Man from his ark and Colossus, along with his team, ended up being teleported with the embryos to the future.[24]

Arriving a thousand of years into Earth's future, Colossus and his team ended up on Omega World, composed of what had remained of Earth after Apocalypse's uprising. Some days after Colossus sacrificed himself in order to save his students from the Horsemen of Apocalypse, No-Girl was attacked and the capsule containing her brain damaged, but thanks to the Stark-Self, the last A.I. created by Tony Stark, No-Girl managed to survive and gained a new body. No-Girl and the other young mutants spent an entire year fighting their way through Apocalypse's Omega World to try and find a way to return to their home, but in vain.[25]

While wandering a destroyed New York City, now home to one of the few races that survived Apocalypse's trials, the Moloids, No-Girl and her friends encountered the X-Men, who had followed them through the timestream to there. They were attacked by the Horsemen of Apocalypse and their newest member, Colossus, soon afterwards.[24]

Krakoa[]

Like countless other mutants, she joined the mutant-only nation of Krakoa living at Akademos Habitat.[26] Under the guidance of Amahl Farouk, Martha and her friends began experimenting with the corpses in the Boneyard but were interrupted by Scout who was concerned about them.[27]

On the night of the Hellfire Gala, they found Scout dead while exploring Planet Arakko.[28] Deciding they couldn't trust the adults after their recent secretive and unhelpful behavior and not wanting to get Farouk caught up in something he'd probably get blamed for, they decided to get Gabby resurrected themselves by going to Arbor Magna and using Cerebro to put a copy of her mind back into her body (which was she was controlling at the time.) When they got there No-Girl tried to mind control Tempus but they were confronted by Wolfsbane in wolf form.[29]

Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from New Mutants Vol 4 24 002

Reborn

On a visit to Astral Plane in order to combat the Shadow King, No-Girl manifested an astral body which she imagined herself to be: wearing the X-Men uniform and spotting a hairless transparent cranium that showed her brain.[30] After that experience, Martha requested her brain to be put in a new husk body created by the Five, which was modified to her preferred look. Finally inside a body of her own once again, Martha changed her mutant name to Cerebella.[1]

Attributes

Power Grid[34]
:Category:Power Grid/Fighting Skills/Poor:Category:Power Grid/Energy Projection/Multiple Types:Category:Power Grid/Durability/Weak:Category:Power Grid/Speed/Below Normal:Category:Power Grid/Strength/Weak:Category:Power Grid/Intelligence/Normal

Powers

Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from New Mutants Vol 4 32 001

Martha using her powers

Martha is a mutant with psychically based powers, including:

  • Telepathy: Martha is a telepath, and her powers in this area are shown as being quite advanced. At one time she was capable of overpowering Emma Frost's subconscious defenses; however, this was while Emma's telepathy was inoperative due to her diamond form.[8]
    • Psycho-Chaff: Martha can broadcast disruptive psionic signals in her immediate vicinity. These signals cloud the minds of her victims, inhibiting their concentration and autonomic nervous functions to the point of stupor.[8]
    • Mind Possession: The ability to project a psionic energy surge that overwhelms her victims' consciousness while placing her mind in command, allowing her full control of their physical body.[8][3][16] The range and upper limits of this ability are undetermined.
    • Power Negation: Martha is able to negate or block the use of others' mutant's powers. This power is much like the Morlock Leech's, but unlike Leech, Martha has conscious control of her powers. The range and upper limits of this ability are undetermined.
    • Reanimation: Marth revealed she could use her psychic powers to dig into the cerebral cortex of deceased individuals and hot wire their neurons in order to temporarily operate their bodies for a short period. As she did with Scout in order to pass along unabated while searching for answers regarding her demise.[29]
  • Bioluminescent Blood: Martha's blood has luminescent properties. After running away from home, she wrote her parents a note using her own blood.[7]

Weaknesses

Martha formerly lived as a disembodied brain, and required regular injections of medical fluids to live.

Paraphernalia

Transportation

Pixie's teleportation. Martha previously lived in a glass tank, which was created by John Sublime[7] and improved by Quentin Quire.[31]

Notes

  • "No-Girl" was originally presented as a student in Xavier's Special Class. However, there was some confusion over No-Girl's true identity. Since No-Girl was never seen, and Martha was specifically called No-Girl in the future,[2] it was believed that the existence of a separate being named No-Girl was not true, but rather a fabrication made up by Martha. Not until later was it confirmed that Martha is in fact No-Girl.[3][4]
  • Prior to Zero creating a body for her,[19] Martha lived in a glass tank, which was created by John Sublime. The device had been improved by Quentin Quire, who attached anti-gravity floats to it, allowing Martha to move.[31]
  • Martha was incredibly resentful that other mutants refused to help her get a human form even when other mutants were able to go into the Crucible for relatively minor issues.[29]
Martha Johansson (Earth-616) from New Mutants Vol 4 23 001

Martha's self-image on the Astral Plane

Trivia

  • Martha's arch nemesis is Kid Omega,[3] which can seem a tad strange, as he has improved her brain tank before.[31]
  • According to Sublime, Martha is a metal fan.[8] However, according to Martha, her taste in music frequently changes.[32]
  • According to Anole, Martha using her powers on him makes his scales itch.[26]

See Also

Links and References

References

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