Spoilers through the end of the Muir Island Saga, including Uncanny X-Men #280 and X-Factor #70. That’s where I’m at, so I’m stopping there.

Spoilers through the end of the Muir Island Saga, including Uncanny X-Men #280 and X-Factor #70. That’s where I’m at, so I’m stopping there. Professor Xavier is one of my favorite X-Men characters, and I wanted to spend some time on how much he’s been through up to this point. He started off in a wheelchair, stayed with the X-Men and raised them up, went off into space, and now he’s finally back. Just when everything starts coming together again, he loses the ability to walk. I genuinely wasn’t expecting that. Reading all of this in order makes that hit differently, because there’s a whole history between the Xavier we started with and the one who comes back for Muir Island. Before he ever founded the X-Men, Xavier confronted Lucifer, an alien operating on Earth. Lucifer brought a massive stone block down on him, causing the injuries that left him unable to walk. The original X-Men stories gradually fill in what happened, with the full confrontation shown in #20. So when we meet him running the school, that injury has already happened. He builds the original team and helps those kids learn to control their powers while living with it. And then there’s the mechanical walking aid, which is easy to forget about. In X-Men #23, he has powered metal braces for his legs, connected to a power source on his belt. He uses them again during the Locust story in #24. They let him stand and walk for limited periods, but they don’t heal him. The power source fails in #25, and the braces turn up again in #30. This is Xavier finding a way to move around with technology, well before the later change to his body. The big change comes after the Brood. In Uncanny X-Men #167, the Brood Queen inside him takes over and transforms his original body. Moira and the Starjammers’ doctor, Sikorsky, save him by transferring his mind into a cloned body. That body doesn’t have the damage to his legs. But even then, it isn’t as simple as getting up and being fine. He tries to stand, and the pain comes back. His new body can walk, but his mind is still carrying the response to the old injury. In #168, Lilandra is helping him work through that in the Danger Room. He can manage steps, but it takes an enormous amount of effort. The actual breakthrough comes in New Mutants #14, when he gets up and dances with Illyana. Then in Uncanny #180, he’s playing basketball. Those are part of the same recovery, rather than separate times somebody magically fixed his legs. He has the healthy body, works through the lingering mental barrier, and gets to use it. Meanwhile, his relationship with the X-Men keeps changing. He’s still their professor, but they’ve grown up, and the newer team doesn’t always respond to him the way the original students did. Scott has to tell him that directly when he returns from his earlier trip with Lilandra. These aren’t all children waiting for him to tell them what to do anymore. Then his health starts failing after the attack by anti-mutant students. By the time of Magneto’s trial in Uncanny #200, Xavier is dying and asks Magneto to take care of the school. Lilandra and the Starjammers take him away to save his life. That’s the departure that leaves him out of the X-Men’s day-to-day lives for such a long time. A lot happens while he’s gone. The teams change, people leave, new people come in, and the X-Men go through absolute hell. When they find him again during the War-Skrull story, it takes getting past an impostor and freeing the real Xavier before they can properly reunite. Then he learns what’s been happening back on Earth, including the Shadow King’s return. That fight goes back years. Long before the school, Xavier fought Amahl Farouk in Cairo, during the same encounter where a young Storm picked his pocket. We see that history in Uncanny #117. So Muir Island brings him back against someone tied to the beginning of his life as a mutant fighting other mutants. Now the Shadow King has taken his son, Legion, as a host. Xavier goes onto the astral plane to fight him, with Jean and the others helping. He can’t just handle the whole thing by himself. Forge has to use Psylocke’s psychic knife to break the connection through Polaris while the others fight to keep everyone alive. During the fight, Xavier’s psychic injuries carry over into his physical body. They win, but his spine is damaged, and he can’t walk anymore. That’s the full-circle part that got me. I’ve watched him get that ability back, struggle with it, leave, and finally return. Now he’s back with the people he helped raise, facing another major change in his life. And he’s still trying to help David afterward, even while everyone else is worried about him. By the end of X-Factor #70, he’s looking at this reunited group and asking, “What am I going to do with fourteen X-Men?!” I mentioned that line in the relationship posts, but looking at Xavier’s own history makes it mean more. He started with five students. Now he’s back, there are fourteen X-Men, and we’re right on the edge of the next era. That’s where I’m at now, and it felt like the right time to give Xavier his own post.