Quentin Quire

Kid Omega
File:Quentin.png Art by Frank Quitely
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	New X-Men #122
Created by	Grant Morrison Frank Quitely
In-story information
Alter ego	Quentin Quire
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	The Phoenix Corps Omega Gang Xavier Institute
Notable aliases	Kid Omega
Abilities	Omega level psionic powers including telepathy and telekinesis Genius-level intellect

Quentin Quire, also known as Kid Omega, is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. He first appeared in New X-Men #122 (March 2002), although unnamed until New X-Men #134 (Jan. 2003). He was created by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely.

Fictional character biography

Xavier Institute

Quentin Quire joined the student body of the Xavier Institute after Professor X's return from averting a war with Genosha and the rebuilding of the X-Mansion. He immediately stood out as a brilliant intellect and quickly became Xavier's prize pupil who taught him how to control his powers when it first appeared leaving him confused, though the extent and type of his mutant abilities were never clearly defined. Quire appeared to be a very powerful telepath, and the Stepford Cuckoos described him as having a 'see-through mind', but he was not necessarily limited to that.

Quentin often hung out with Glob Herman, and had a crush on Sophie, one of the Stepford Cuckoos. However, something about Quire disturbed the Cuckoos, though Emma Frost dismissed it as academic rivalry.

Omega Gang: New X-Men

While a student at Xavier's, Quire invented the anti-gravity floats for Martha Johansson's brain canister, and exposed the charisma-powered Slick's true, ugly body to the other students. On his birthday, Quentin received a call from his parents, who told him he was adopted. This seemed to destabilize him and he went to town, getting a haircut reminiscent of Bolivar Trask's depiction of a mutant overlord, from a newspaper that was published the day Quire was born. Quire also seemed to hop on the bandwagon calling for vengeance for the recently murdered mutant designer Jumbo Carnation, and took to wearing clothing based on the Trask mutant overlord illustration, which happened to be one of Jumbo's creations. He also debated with Professor X about the merits of the school's policies, wondering if Xavier would allow any dream other than his own to exist.

Shortly afterward, Quire and a group of like-minded students visit town wearing the Trask-overlord clothes, and Quire convinces them to take the mutant drug Kick. They accost a gang of humans in an alley and kill or maim them all. When Herman asks what had happened to a human Quentin himself had murdered, Quire replies he had carved his name across the man's mind. Back at school, Xavier confronts the students, but Quire is not implicated. Quire and his gang later go to a mutant tattooist and have their arms marked with an Omega symbol over an X, then attack U-Men Central. Returning to school, the "Omega Gang" ambushes Professor X with a baseball bat and clamps his head in a thought-proof helmet. The next day, the school's "Open Day" to parents and the media, Quire publicly proclaims it is "open season on humans" and starts a riot.

Riot at Xavier's

Main article: Riot at Xavier's

Some of the students joined Quire in protesting Xaviers' policies, but most of the damage was done by the Omegas themselves, until they were subdued by Cyclops, Beast, Emma Frost, and Xorn. However, with Quire still guarding Professor X, the situation threatened to continue, Quire even mentally subduing Wolverine with a memory of his past life. Xavier eventually freed himself of the helmet and confronted Quentin, calling his thought-proof helmet and his plans of revolution "flimsy." However, the altercation was not officially ended until the Stepford Cuckoos, led by Sophie, used Cerebra and a dose of Kick to boost their shared powers. They blasted through to the grounds and confronted Quire, who confessed that his motivation for the ordeal was to impress Sophie, to whom he was attracted. This uniformly disgusted the Cuckoos, who mocked his motivations and defeated him with a massive telepathic shockwave. Disoriented, Quentin apologized, stating that he started everything because of his desire to impress Sophie and his own disrupted sense of identity upon discovering he was adopted. Emma Frost chastises him for his recklessness, as she reveals the now deceased Sophie in her arms.

Quire was taken to the Infirmary, where Henry McCoy tried to stabilize him, but his body was being burnt out by his own psionic energy. This was apparently the result of his overdoses of Kick, which caused a secondary mutation that changed his brain into faster-than-light energy, apparently putting him in telepathic contact with everyone on the planet simultaneously and across time. Seeing that Quire was terminal, Professor X called for Xorn, who opened his helmet to expose Quire to the mini star in his head, and Quire "left the mortal plane." Quire's final words when Xorn "healed" him were vaguely prophetic of many of the coming events in Morrison's final run of New X-Men, such as Xorn later being revealed to be Magneto, Xorn's eventual destruction of Manhattan, and the actions of Sublime, a bacterial entity that claimed to be the cause of some of the human/mutant hatred and aggression then occurring.

"A Higher Plane of Existence"

However, Quire was not truly dead, and Xavier announced to the student body that they literally believed him to have ascended to a higher plane of existence. Quentin remained in a dormant, semi-alive, energy form in a containment unit on Beast's lab table. The potential future shown in the New X-Men story "Here Comes Tomorrow" indicated that Quentin was destined to become an avatar for the Phoenix Force. A young boy, wearing a Phoenix costume and Quentin's distinct pink haircut, is seen telling Jean Grey, who vaguely recognizes him, that she doesn't have long to set the events in the timeline right.

A few months later, when a fragment of the shattered Phoenix Force returned to Earth, it sensed Quire and investigated him, thinking he might be Jean Grey. Though the Phoenix passed up Quire, it shocked him back to consciousness and he reconstituted his body. Furthermore, he sought out and reanimated Sophie's corpse, but was unable to complete the process, so he set off to find the Phoenix Force so he could be with his love. Quire found the Phoenix, which had resurrected Jean Grey to attract Cyclops' attention, engaged in battle with the X-Men. Just prior to his arrival on the scene, the X-Men got the Phoenix to inhabit Emma Frost, Cyclops's current lover, and imprisoned both her and Scott inside a containment vessel. Quire arrived and broke the containment chamber open, releasing the Phoenix fragment. Quentin then asked the Phoenix to resurrect Sophie, which she did. Sophie was still disgusted by him (and/or his actions) and chose to return to death. Quire broke down in anguish, and the Phoenix left him to his "sickness". Having spent too much of his energy, Quire apologized to the X-Men for his rash behavior and returned to his non-corporeal state. He remains in the beaker in Beast's lab.

Messiah Complex & Utopia

It is unknown what happened to him and his containment chamber when the Institute was destroyed and ultimately abandoned after the events of Messiah Complex. However, he made his return after apparently hiding in Cerebra.

Powers and abilities

In New X-Men, Quire is depicted as an Omega level mutant possessing advanced cognitive and telepathic abilities that enable him to organize and construct his thoughts at accelerated rates, overtly or covertly manipulate the minds of others, resist mind probes, and disable other forms of psychic manipulation. Xavier explains that Quentin's psychic powers are "deep, subtle and he's able to influence minds around him." Emma Frost also states that his mind processes several thousand "brilliant" thoughts a second. In the miniseries X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong, Quire generated massive amounts of telekinetic energy which manifests in the form of tentacles, allowing him to break free of his containment chamber, blast through the Xavier School's foundation, pull Sophie's body out of the ground, restructure it a bit, instantly heal wounds on his body inflicted through Wolverine's claws, and fly at supersonic speed.

Quentin Quire was also depicted as being a future host of the Phoenix Force in the White Hot Room, suggesting that he can potentially ascend to the level of an avatar and gain access to the level of power granted by the Phoenix.

Other versions

Exiles: Days of Then and Now

Quentin Quire was one of the surviving heroes during the Annihilation Wave, which was led to Earth by a banished Hulk who had killed Annihilus. Quentin leads a group that includes Speedball, Patriot, Wiccan, Lightspeed, and three of the Stepford Cuckoos: Sophie, Esme, and Mindee. Quentin has begun a relationship with Sophie whose powers have changed to include limited precognition. After listening to Sophie's dream about a group of heroes that help restore order within damaged realities called the Exiles, Quentin went on an interdimensional mission to find the original Exiles. Instead, he eventually recruited a group of heroes from the worlds he visited into a new group of Exiles. He also came up against an alternate version of himself; in the same world he meets and recruits Nighthawk.

House of M

Along with most of the 'New' X-Men characters, Quentin appears as a student of the New Mutant Leadership Institute in the House of M reality. Upon confronting the spying Wallflower, and boasting that no one could stop his mind, Wallflower uses her pheromones to fill him with self-loathing, forcing him to commit mental suicide. In this version, Quentin retained his more clean-cut appearance.

What If?

Quentin briefly appears in the What If: Rise & Fall of the Shi'ar Empire one-shot. After Vulcan is transported into the White Hot Room, he tells Vulcan that he is not meant to be there. He is ultimately killed by Vulcan.

In other media

Film

In the film X-Men: The Last Stand, the character played by Ken Leung is listed in the screen credits as "Kid Omega"; however, his powers are those of Quill. He kills Dr. Kavita Rao and almost kills Dr. Worthington, but his son Warren saves him. By the end, he is destroyed by Phoenix, alongside fellow Omegas Psylocke and Arclight.