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Mister Sinister has vaguely-defined powers. He has exhibited vast shape-changing and regenerative abilities, incredible resistance to injury, teleportation, blasts of concussive force, and he has apparently survived having the flesh blasted off his bones at the climax of the Inferno crossover. However, he has also demonstrated telepathic abilities in the past, suggesting that any number of potential uses of his powers may have actually been mentally projected illusions.
Sinister is a geneticist of the highest order, able to predict genetic mutations and splice DNA to create mutants to his whim. He can also produce large amounts of clones; he has done so with his Marauders, and with Jean Grey. He is also a master surgeon, having excised a portion of Gambit's brain, and then later restoring it (or from Sinister's point of view, restoring a portion of Gambit's brain, then excising it).
Unfortunately, Sinister has no conscience, and does not care how many lives are destroyed in pursuit of his ultimate goals; he is known to have collaborated with members of the Nazi party.
Mister Sinister was formerly known as Nathaniel Essex, a biologist in Victorian England, who was fascinated with Charles Darwin's concept of natural selection and genetic mutations. His radical theories and experiments, however, received derision from his colleagues in the London Royal Society, and they cut off his work.
Without funding or a proper facility, Essex resorted to experimenting on the dregs of society, using a group of thugs he called Marauders to bring him material to experiment on. The Marauders disturbed the resting place of an ancient evil, the entity known as Apocalypse. When Apocalypse learned of Essex's work, he realized that it explained his existence. Apocalypse convinced Essex to work for him, after being rejected by his contemporaries and his wife, and transformed him into a new breed of being.
At that moment, Nathaniel Essex discarded his old name, and called himself "Sinister." Apocalypse's first command was to create a plague to destroy the weak of the world, but Sinister would not do it; he had clarity of purpose, and cruelty for its own sake was not part of it. The plague Sinister created attacked only Apocalypse, driving him into hibernation.
Sinister's next plan was to use selective breeding to create a mutant that could destroy Apocalypse, and over the course of a hundred years, he found the ideal genetic match between Marvel Girl (Jean Grey) and Cyclops (Scott Summers).
He created Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Grey, and set her up to meet Summers and eventually bear his child. She did, but Sinister's plan hit a snag when Apocalypse infected the child with a techno-organic virus that would soon kill him. The child was taken far into the future, where he became CableCable is a superhero spun off from the X-Men, created by Marvel Comics. He was created in the late 1980s by Rob Liefeld, then-artist on the New Mutants title, while writer Fabian Nicieza gave him his character. Originally, Cable was intended to be a futur.
The villain StryfeStryfe is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics supervillain, who has perpetrated several heinous acts. Powers Stryfe is an alpha-class telepath and telekinetic, with raw potential equal to that of Professor X. Unlike his genetic template Cable, he has n tricked Sinister into unleashing the Legacy VirusIn the fictional Marvel Universe, Legacy was a devastating plague that ripped through the mutant population, killing hundreds, and mutating so that it affected baseline humans as well, until it was cured almost overnight by the selfless sacrifice of the g, decimating the mutant population, and let slip to Cyclops that he has more than one brother (the one known brother being HavokHavok (Alexander "Alex" Summers) is a comic book superhero in the Marvel Comics universe, and a member of the X-Men. Created by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, he first appeared in X-Men #54 ( 1969). Havok is a mutant possessing the power to absorb ambient cos). (Speculation abounds as to who that third brother is, though most evidence (and some semi-official statements) indicate Adam-X, the X-Treme , is that brother. It is theorized that Adam-X is the product of the rape of Cyclops' mother by D'Ken, thus making Adam-X the illegitimate heir to the throne of the Shi'ar Empire.)
Fortunately for Sinister, Cable also had a deep grudge against Apocalypse, and when Apocalypse merged with Cyclops at the climax of "The Twelve," Cable and Jean Grey ( PhoenixThere have been several characters published by Marvel Comics to use the alias of the Phoenix . The first one, Baron Zemo, only used that alias once; the later bearers of the identity are far more notable, and all are associated with the Phoenix Force . IV) tracked the merged being, separated them, and Cable killed Apocalypse, fulfilling his destiny as written by Sinister.
Sinister continues his research into mutant genetics, and recently reappeared in the pages of the new Weapon XWeapon X a clandestine government project in the Marvel Universe, which turns mutants into living weapons. The project often captures mutants and experiments on them to enchance their superpowers. It also conditions them to be savage killers. It is most f series.