M397--Brood

Brood

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men #155 (March 1982)

A Brood infestation was considered one of the most nightmare inducing scenarios in the cosmos.  Highly intelligent insectoid beings from a distant galaxy, it was said the Shi’ar originally attempted to induct them into the imperium before discovering how the Brood reproduced.  They were obligate parasites that injected embryos into other creatures, which would then slowly overtake their host body and force them to metamorphosize into a new Brood.  How this reproductive strategy even originally evolved was a mystery, one the Shi’ar were not willing to explore any further when they extirpated them from Shi’ar space, and then worked in tandem with other empires to exterminate them elsewhere in the known cosmos.  It was the hope that this would be the last anyone had to see of the Brood.

In secret, however, a colony of Broodlings had been kept in stasis in a most unlikely location: Mojoworld.  The spineless ones saw potential in using them and the very real threat they posed as a ratings stunt in the future.  When the X-Men were forcibly brought to the entertainment capital of the supercluster to “guest star” in Longshot, the jealous starlet Spiral unleashed them mid broadcast in an attempt to enact revenge on her producers.  In the ensuing chaos, Mojo’s media empire collapsed under the strain of the infestation and the X-Men’s rebellion, and by the time the mutants escaped, Mojoworld was placed under Nova Corps quarantine.  But there was no way of knowing just how many Brood embryos managed to escape the planet in the initial chaos.

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Including, potentially, within the escaping mutants…

The Brood are a fun part of the X-Men (and Carol Danvers') rogues gallery--sometimes they need to take a break from the real world symbolism and fight wacky space bugs. I wasn't sure at first what role the Brood would have in my universe outside of just being the Brood, and came up with this concept of them being the thing that causes Mojoworld to fall and this is where the Brood first get their taste of mutants. I thought it would be an interesting angle to explore just how depraved Mojoworld really is to the point that they had these awful parasitic monstrosities in the wings "just in case" they needed some ratings stunt somewhere, which gave Spiral the idea to use them to ruin the X-Men's guest star appearance on Longshot, which then causes the situation to completely lose control. Seemed like a fun idea for a story.

This is obviously an opportunity to flex the monster drawing skills. My take on the Brood is a relatively straight adaptation of their normal design save a couple changes--jaw shape and the presence of a long tongue being the biggest changes I guess. But my own personal tough comes from that gruesome looking skull in the middle of its forehead--in the comics all Brood are born with a distinct "birthmark" on their forehead (when the artists remember anyway), and I thought it would be wicked if here that was still the case, but this "birthmark" is rather the blackened husk of the remains of the person that the Brood used to be. In this poor soul's case the last bits of their skull forever haunt their new form's head, their final cries of pain and horror frozen in time. So that's a fun bit of body horror for you to think about.