Purpose: Super-soldiers and espionage agents serving the Russian government

Affiliations: Dr. Niles Roman, the Russian Dumae and the Executive Security Committee

Enemies: Dr. Constantin Racal, Major Valentina Rychenko, X-Force (Jesse Bedlam, Cannonball, Domino, Meltdown, James Proudstar)

Base of Operations: A base in the Ural Mountains, presumably among others

First Appearance: X-Force I#110 (January 2001)

Weapons & Abilities Warborgs are heavily armed and armored. They presumably have enhanced strength and resistance to damage, and may be faster and have greater stamina than normal humans.

    Warborgs are designed to operate in post-nuclear conditions. They're shielded against electromagnetic pulses, and they have photo-reflective cells to deflect lasers and other destructive forms of directed light.

    Every Warborg and Rawborg has a large energy cannon replacing their right forearm. At least some of the Rawborgs can also fire foot-long, spine-like tranquilizer darts. For fighting in close-quarters, Warborgs have large spines on their backs and shoulders, sharp enough to pierce superhumanly-tough flesh. The spines are coated in a neurotoxin so lethal it can kill superhumans whose powers are focused on strength and invulnerability.

    A data cluster inserted between their cerebral hemispheres links them to other Warborg cells in the region, and even shares and stores visual data. It also allows them to operate when up to 80% of their organics are gone.

    Rawborgs are Warborgs designed for infiltration. They appear to be normal humans until they trigger their mutagenic augmentations. After that, they don't appear to be able to revert to a human shape. Rawborgs are frequently disguised as police officers.

History
Warborgs seem to be the most common Russian super-soldier; they even come in 'model years.' Warborgs are corpses that have been reanimated somehow through cybernetics and genetic alteration. (The logic being: After their losses in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Russia no longer likes wasting 'resources.' Even the corpses of the dead.) Major Valentia Rychenko of the Russia army commented that "They don't make [Warborgs] like they used to," which could mean the technology has declined over time.

(X-Force I#112-FB/BTS) -- The first Warborgs were created in the late '70s or early '80s by Dr. Constantin Racal. They were based on theories Russia had acquired from the U.S. intelligence agency Cuckoo. Racal created them after the Meatspores, and before the Russian Sleeper Agents.

(X-Force I#111-FB/BTS) -- At some point, Major Valentina Rychenko saw a single Warborg kill 300 men and boys, an entire Muhajadin rebel camp in Afghanistan. "Cut to pieces small enough to fit in a shot glass."

    In the present day, the Kremlin decided to deactivate the superhuman Sleeper Agents they'd smuggled into the U.S. in the early 1980s. They sent in Rawborg kill teams, who discovered that many of the Sleepers had somehow reproduced. Since the children were superhuman mutants, more powerful than their parents, the kill teams were ordered to retrieve the children.

    When Dr. Racal found out about this, he went AWOL to try and save the Sleepers' children. His daughter, Major Valentina Rychenko, also went AWOL to try to protect him. The Russian Dumae put kill orders on both of them, and sent three pairs of Warborgs and Rawborgs to carry out their field execution.

(X-Force I#110) -- Two Rawborgs disguised as police officers entered the NYC home of the Russian Sleeper in the identity of Frank Casey. They killed Casey and his wife, and abducted the Caseys' daughter, one of the 'Anomalies,' before blowing up the building.

    In San Diego, a squad of Rawborgs seeking the two Russian deserters found Major Rychenko at a shipyard. Rychenko killed them both, and used electronics she cut out of the chest of one Rawborg to signal X-Force, by taking advantage of Jesse Bedlam's electromagnetic powers.

(X-Force I#111-FB) -- SHIELD recovered the corpses of the two Rawborgs in San Diego, and became involved with the situation.

(X-Force I#111) -- In Bitter River, California, two Warborgs hunted Major Valentina Rychenko. As they were about to commence with her field execution, they were engaged by X-Force. Meltdown and Jesse Bedlam both proved unable to damage them, and though Proudstar managed to deactivate the two, one Warborg managed to stab him with a spike coated in a neutrotoxin that nearly killed him.

A pair of Rawborgs looking for the Sleepers in La Jolla, California found them just as Racal was finishing sending the remaining Sleeper on her mission, and was loading their Anomaly children into his minivan. The Rawborgs followed him to his bunker, where he destroyed them.

(X-Force I#113) -- X-Force assaulted Dr. Roman's base in the Ural Mountains. Proudstar used SHIELD mini-guns with adamantium bullets to destroy the base's Warborg contingent.

COMMENTS: Warborgs created by Ian Edgington and Jorge Lucas.

    I really liked the Warborgs and Rawborgs. They had a great visual, and they proved to be pretty badass. I'd love to see them again, especially fighting Captain America or Wolverine or some other U.S. super-soldier.

    So far, we've seen lots of individual super-soldiers representing different countries. But as far as I'm aware, the Warborgs are the first mass-produced super-army we've seen. And since they've been around in Russia since before the fall of Communism, the U.S. has got to have developed something comparable.
    A discussion of the various super-soldier can be found in the comments of the Nuke profile

    Considering the way the Cold War powers have traditionally been about selling weapons of mass destruction to other countries, it's quite likely there are other nations in the MU with Warborg capacity. Saddam's regime in Iraq is pretty high up on the list, considering how everyone was selling him WMD back in the '80s... (I actually had a script I was planning to write for EPIC Comics where Pete Wisdom goes into Iraq right before the U.S. invaded, to take out their superhuman weapons of mass destruction. Including Warborgs. But then EPIC folded.)

Profile by Flank Mclargehuge.

CLARIFICATIONS: Warborgs have no known connection to:

• Psi-Borg, Aldo Ferro, the cyborg telepath who assisted the original Weapon X Project @ Wolverine II#62
• Psi-Borg, the Latverian HYDRA double agent in SHIELD @ Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD II#33
• Orphan Maker, the armored mutant who works with Nanny, a fellow large purple mechanical guy with a gun for a right arm @ X-Factor I#30
• Cyborg-X, an American brought back to life as a cyborg super-soldier @ Spider-Man I#18 (though Cyborg-X may have been inspired by Russia's Warborgs)
• Any other cyborgs, super-soldiers, or 'war' characters

• The Nazi Sleepers, robots created in case the Third Reich should lose World War II Sleepers 1-3 @ Tales of Suspense I#72-74
• The British Sleepers, created during WWI, WWII and Operation: Desert Storm in case Britain should fall @ Plasmer#1

The Anomalies have no known connection to

• Anomaly, a metaphysical being @ Quasar#20
• Anomaly, Koyami Sazaki of Counter Earth-Franklin @ Thunderbolts#64
• The Anomaly that contained the Baloneyverse @ Sensational She-Hulk II#13
• The Anomaly that allowed Iron Fist to contact the Contemplator @ Marvel Comics Presents#125/4

Images:

X-Force I#110: Page 4, panel 1 (Rawborgs)
X-Force I#111: Page 2, panel 1 (Warborgs)

Other appearances:
X-Force I#111 (February, 2001) - Ian Edginton (writer), Jorge Pereira Lucas (pencils/inks)
X-Force I#113 (March, 2001) - Ian Edginton (writer), Jorge Pereira Lucas (pencils/inks)

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.