MICHAEL ROSSI
Real Name: Michael "Mickey" Jonathan Rossi
Identity/Class: Human
Occupation: Colonel, military field officer, spy
Group Membership: United States Air Force Special Operations, also known as Special Investigations (cover identity); CIA (real employers)
Affiliations: Norman Osborn, Ghazi Rashid;
formerly Stevie Hunter;
occasional agent for Charles Xavier;
former partner/lover/teacher to Carol Danvers
Enemies: Agent (Rick Mason), Edward Buckman, Carol Danvers, Stephen Lang, Project Wideawake, Rogue, Ultron
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: "Ace" (nickname given Rossi by Carol Danvers), Vitamin; presumably has multiple unrevealed undercover identities
Base of Operations: None
First Appearance: X-Men I#96 (December, 1975)
Powers/Abilities: Michael Rossi is a normal human with no powers. He is, however, a trained U.S. Air Force operative, with extensive training in armed and unarmed combat, including a variety of martial arts. He speaks fluent Russian. Since his infection by Ultron, Rossi's nervous system is composed of living circuitry, however, this apparently incurs no significant physical or mental advantages or disadvantages.
History:
(Ms. Marvel II#32 (fb) - BTS) - Rossi was Ghazi Rashid's contact at the CIA and kept Rashid on informed on the status of Project Ascension.
(Ms. Marvel II#33 (fb) - BTS) - To find Carold Danvers Rossi was sent to Afghanistan by Air Force Special Operations under the guise to negotiate a trans-Afghanistan pipeline Roxxon wanted to build there. Rossi established a safe house in Mazir-E Sharif.
(Uncanny X-Men I#182 (fb) ) - Carol Danvers and Rossi first met just after Carol joined the Air Force.
(Ms. Marvel II#33 (fb) ) - Danvers was brought to Rossi's safe house after she had escaped from Ghazi Rashid. She didn't trust Rossi at first, but he gained her trust and revealed everything she had gone through with Rashid, but didn't tell him what secret she wanted to get to the United States. When he wanted to know where Rashid was Carol told Rossi that she had killed him.
(Ms. Marvel II#33 (fb) ) - Back in the United States Rossi approached Carol to ask her to become a member of the AFSO. She accepted the offer. They kept working on the Rashid/Ascension/Vitamin case and Carol was soon sure they would be able to find one of Rashid's Vitamin informants.
(Ms. Marvel II#37 (fb) - BTS) - Rossi planned to turn Carol into a mole within the AFSO. The information they gathered brought them to Berlin where Rossi had to get rid of an agent.
(Uncanny X-Men I#182 (fb) ) - Carol Danvers and Rossi's first field mission together was in Berlin. On that mission, Carol nicknamed Rossi "Ace."
(Ms. Marvel II#33 (fb) ) - Rossi and Carol tried to catch Vitamin in Berlin, but Vitamin's hotel room was blown up by the Agent (Rick Mason). They hunted Mason through Berlin, but eventually he escaped them.
(Uncanny X-Men I#182 (fb) ) - At some point, Rossi and Carol Danvers spent time at Carol's family's Cape Cod home; she later referred to the home as a place where he was happy.
(Ms. Marvel I#9, 19 (fb) ) - Rossi had been Carol Danvers' teacher, friend, and first love; he once referred to her as his "lady of the clouds." As an operations team, they became something of a legend. However, they eventually drifted apart and the romance ended.
(Ms. Marvel II#36 (fb) ) - As lovers Michael and Carol spent some time in Paris, France.
(Uncanny X-Men I#182 (fb) ) - Logan and Michael Rossi disobeyed orders to free Carol Danvers from Lubyanka prison, where the KGB were holding her.
(Uncanny X-Men I#236 (fb) - BTS) - At Lubyanka, Carol Danvers pleaded with her rescuers to leave her behind as she was in no shape to travel, and would only slow them down. They refused to leave her.
(Marvel Fanfare#24/2 - BTS) - Carol Danvers placed the timing of Rossi's rescue of her from Lubyanka as being just before she left the U.S.A.F. for NASA.
(X-Men I#100 (fb) ) - Stephen Lang was appointed head of a government project trying to determine why mutants existed, and Michael Rossi was eventually assigned to serve under him. Lang decided that mutants were a threat to humanity, and became involved with the Council of the Chosen (secretly members of the Hellfire Club), many of whom were seeking to learn how to control mutants and were unaware that Lang was taking their money with the intent to destroy mutantkind.
(X-Men I#96) - Colonel Michael Rossi was sent from Washington D.C. to Dr. Lang's Project Armageddon base in the Adirondack Mountain Preserves of northern New York state, with instructions to interview Lang before giving the Council of the Chosen a final recommendation on Lang's Sentinel project, which had taken six years to date but was nearing fruition. Rossi was the middle man between Lang and the Council, and had observed as Lang took a billion dollars in illegal appropriations to, so far as Rossi knew, kidnap and study mutants. When Lang revealed that he intended to kill all mutants, Rossi decided that the U.S. couldn't survive the kind of "witch hunt" that Lang proposed. Rossi told him that he would advise the Council to close the project down. When Rossi flew back, Lang had the plane destroyed and it crashed in an apple orchard outside Red Hook, New York.
(Ms. Marvel II#33 (fb) - BTS) - Rossi was publicly held to have died in the plane crash; his body was officially never recovered.
(Classic X-Men#7/2) - Following the attack on Lang's plane by Sentinels, Emma Frost rescued Michael and moved the barely alive agent to a beach house owned by Sebastian Shaw. She reported to Sebastian Shaw that he would eventually recover with proper care, and read Rossi's mind to discover that Lang and human Hellfire Club White King Edward "Ned" an were conspiring to destroy mutantkind. This led to Shaw's elimination of the anti-mutant Council members, and the creation of an all-mutant Inner Circle.
(New Mutants I#2) - Henry Peter Gyrich of Project Wideawake sent a team of agents to the Salem Center Mall to bring in the New Mutants. Though its unclear how he learned of this, Michael Rossi went to the mall in an attempt to keep the children out of their clutches. After briefly kidnapping Stevie Hunter (one of their teachers) he rescued the students and then aided them when two Sentinels attacked them as well. During the fight Rossi claims that he was still working for the Air Force, that he was generally believed dead (including by Carol Danvers), and that he wanted to keep it that way as it was very useful to him.
(New Mutants I#5) - Rossi remained at Xavier's, and following the kidnapping of Danielle Moonstar, he delivered files to Xavier on Viper, Silver Samurai, and the Dark Rider, all of whom were present at the kidnapping.
(Uncanny X-Men I#182) - After infiltrating a SHIELD helicarrier, Rossi uncovered information on the Hellfire Club and Sebastian Shaw. He left a message on Xavier's answering machine that "our worst fears have been confirmed," but was attacked before he could finish the message. Rogue received the message, and the Carol Danvers portion of her personality took over, driving her to fly to Rossi's rescue. Agents Price and Garwood were assigned to investigate, but Garwood was a Hellfire Club operative. He contacted Shaw, who ordered Rossi's murder. Price had beaten Rossi bloody, and Garwood shot Price, planning to make it looked like Rossi had killed him in an escape attempt before being killed, but Rogue intervened and freed Rossi. She took Michael to Carol Danvers' family's Cape Cod home, where, once her personality stabilized, Rogue revealed that she'd accidentally drained Carol's memories and personality, leaving Carol with no emotional ties to her past. In anger and disgust, Rossi stated that he wished he could kill Rogue for what she'd done to his former love, and stormed off.
(Blackwulf#3/2) - Working for an unrevealed government organization, and apparently for an agent known only as Mason, Rossi was investigating a report of an a giant extraterrestrial robot in Ottsburg, Pennsylvania when he was captured by Ultron. Ultron placed wires into Rossi's brain, allowing him to control him, and used him to help him capture Sparrow (H.P. O'Damia), who had known Rossi as an Air Force agent and had come to look into his disappearance.
(Blackwulf#4/2) - Rossi remained impassive while Ultron captured Sparrow and placed the same living circuitry into her head.
(Blackwulf#5) - With Dr. Henry Pym, Blackwulf's Underground Legion came to Ottsville. Ultron dispatched Sparrow and Rossi to mislead them, but the ruse was seen through and Rossi incapacitated when they removed the device controlling him. Pym was unable to cure those infected (he merely reprogrammed their living circuitry to remove Ultron's command and resume their prior functionality), and as a result Rossi now possessed a nervous system composed of living circuitry.
(Ms. Marvel II#33 (fb) - BTS) - Rossi sent Carol Danvers and Rick Mason a letter to meet him at his grave. He left them in the dark as to who sent them the letter.
(Ms. Marvel II#33) - Rossi arrived in a limousine to reveal to Carol and Rick that he was still alive. He then told them that Rashid was alive as well and that Rashid now possessed Ascension thanks to Norman Osborn. He informed Rick and Carol that there was a shoot-to-kill order on all three of them at the CIA and that he needed them to save the world.
(Ms. Marvel II#35) - Working at the NSA in Fort George, Maryland, Rossi delivered a fake passport to Carol and told her everything she needed to know about her new identity (as Catherine Donovan). They went through the data they had received from Essential, which held everything in it that Norman Osborn had ever done, including selling Ascension to Rashid. Their discussion about Osborn's reasons for dealing with Rashid were interrupted by the news of a mass suicide among the ranks of the Church of Hala in South Carolina. Carol went there when she saw that Noh-Varr, the new Captain Marvel, was there as well; Rossi tried to stop her but failed. When she returned, Rossi reminded her that her old life as Ms. Marvel was over. Mason then informed them that he now knew how Osborn got Ascension to Rashid.
(Ms. Marvel II#36) - On board a plane, Rossi told Carol and Rick that they considered Ascension in play and that Rashid had killed Asif Kambhampati and other crimelords in Islamabad to gain control over their syndicates. The plane brought Rossi, Rick, and Carol to Hong Kong where they thought Rashid would come looking for the syndicates' money. Rick caught Zhou Chao, vice president of the Victoria Banking Initiative, and brought him to Rossi, who asked Chao to bring him face to face with Rashid. Chao's info brought them to a party in Hong Kong. Rossi allowed Carol to approach Rashid. Rick realized before Rossi that Carol was going to kill Rashid and not just obverse him.
(Ms. Marvel II#37) - Rossi observed Rashid's first attack on Carol and was shocked when Rashid revealed that Rossi was Vitamin, which was a secret Rashid wasn't supposed to know. Rossi then left his station. After Carol seemingly died by overloading her powers, Rossi approached the beaten Rashid and knocked him out. Three days later Rossi stayed at a hotel in Rio de Janeiro. Via a laptop, he talked to Osborn, who had hired him for the job with Rashid and Carol. Rick Mason found Rossi there and shot him, as Osborn had hired him to get rid of Rossi.
Comments: Created by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Sam Grainger.
In Uncanny X-Men I#182, the time between Michael's freeing Carol from Lubyanka and that date as being eight years. Given the way dates expand I'm noting this here as topical rather than as a "fact".
The "worst fears" in Uncanny X-Men I#182 presumably relate to Sebastian Shaw's involvement in Project Wideawake, though this is never stated outright.
In Uncanny X-Men I#182, Sebastian Shaw does not recognize Rossi. This implies either that Shaw was not one of the Council of the Chosen (something supported by Classic X-Men#7/2 but never really stated there) or that Rossi never dealt directly with the Council (or perhaps never dealt with them unmasked - as the Council was hooded, perhaps those brought in front of it were as well?). The White Queen and Harry Leland were the only two members of the Inner Circle who had seen Rossi when they rescued him from his airplane crash.
Carol Danvers believed Rossi to be dead (after the X-Men I#96 plane crash) until he revealed himself in Ms. MArvel II#33, as neither Rogue nor Xavier tell her that Michael still lived.
In the (almost certainly) out-of-continuity 2007 novel X-Men: the Return, Rogue has a quick Carol Danvers' flashback to Rossi's days in Air Force Intelligence, recalling one of his sayings: "Precision and speed win out over brute strength every time."
Profile by SQUEAK
CLARIFICATIONS:
Michael Rossi has no known connections to
images: (without ads)
Ms. Marvel II#33, p22, pan1 (main image)
New Mutants I#2, p12, pan3 (closeup)
New Mutants I#2, p20, pan4 (in action)
Other Appearances:
X-Men I#96 (December, 1975) - Chris Claremont (writer), Dave Cockrum (pencils), Sam Grainger (inks), Marv Wolfman (editor)
X-Men I#100 (August, 1976) - Chris Claremont (writer), Dave Cockrum (pencils), Dave Cockrum (inks), Marv Wolfman (editor)
Ms. Marvel I#9 (September, 1977) - Chris Claremont (writer), Keith Pollard (pencils), Joe Sinnott (inks), Archie Goodwin (editor)
Ms. Marvel I#19 (August, 1978) - Chris Claremont (writer), Carmine Infantino (pencils), Bob McLeod (inks), Roger Stern (editor)
New Mutants I#2 (April, 1983) - Chris Claremont (writer), Bob McLeod (pencils), Mike Gustovich (inks), Louise Jones (editor)
New Mutants I#5 (July, 1983) - Chris Claremont (writer), Sal Buscema (pencils), Bob McLeod (inks), Louise Jones (editor)
Uncanny X-Men I#182 (June, 1984) - Chris Claremont (writer), John Romita Jr. (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Louise Jones & Ann Nocenti (editor)
Classic X-Men#7/2 (March, 1987) - Chris Claremont (writer), John Bolton (pencils), John Bolton (inks), Ann Nocenti (editor)
Uncanny X-Men I#236 (Late October, 1988) - Chris Claremont (writer), Marc Silvestri (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Bob Harras (editor)
Blackwulf#3/2-4/2 (August-September, 1994) - Glenn Herdling (writer), Mike Gustovich (pencils), Bill Anderson (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
Blackwulf#5 (October, 1994) - Glenn Herdling (writer), Keith Pollard (pencils), Sandu Florea (inks), Ralph Macchio (editor)
X-Men: The Return (April, 2007) - Chris Roberson(author)
Ms. Marvel II#33 (January, 2009) - Brian Reed (writer), Adriano Melo (pencils), Mariah Benes (inks), Stephen Wacker (editor)
Ms. Marvel II#35 (March, 2009) - Brian Reed (writer), Patrick Olliffe (pencils), Serge LaPointe & Kris Justice (inks), Stephen Wacker (editor)
Ms. Marvel II#36 (April, 2009) - Brian Reed (writer), Patrick Olliffe (pencils), Serge LaPointe (inks), Stephen Wacker (editor)
Ms. Marvel II#37 (May, 2009) - Brian Reed (writer), Patrick Olliffe (pencils), Serge LaPointe & Livesay (inks), Stephen Wacker (editor)
First Posted: 12/27/2006
Last updated: 11/13/2013
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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