The character in question is the film’s main antagonist Sebastian Shaw, leader of the Hellfire Club, played by Hollywood legend Kevin Bacon. But aside from his name, the Shaw depicted in First Class has very little in common at all with his comic book counterpart. In fact, there’s another prominent X-Men enemy from the comics who would have been an even better choice for the villain of First Class.
RELATED: X-Men: Why We Need Another Dark Phoenix Movie
Kevin Bacon’s Shaw is first introduced as Dr. Klaus Schmidt, a Nazi scientist performing cruel experiments on a young Erik Lehnsherr, aka the future Magneto. He even goes so far as to murder Erik’s mother in cold blood in order to activate his mutant powers, earning him a place as Magneto’s most hated enemy. Schmidt reappears in the 1960s under the name Sebastian Shaw, now the leader of the secret society known as the Hellfire Club. With the help of his lieutenants Emma Frost, Azazel, and Riptide, Shaw manipulates world leaders in order to kickstart a nuclear war, setting the stage for mutants to take control of the entire planet.
While the version of Sebastian Shaw depicted in X-Men: First Class serves as an effective antagonist for the film, especially with his role in Magneto’s character arc, he bears only the most basic surface-level resemblance to the Shaw of the comics. Shaw was originally created by the legendary team of Chris Claremont and John Byrne, making his debut in 1980’s Uncanny X-Men #129 — the first issue of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Like his film counterpart, the comic book Shaw is both a mutant with the power to absorb energy and the leader of the Hellfire Club, who uses political manipulation to advance his goal of world domination. However, that’s about where the similarities end.
For one thing, the Sebastian Shaw of the comics has not typically been portrayed as a mutant supremacist in the same vein as Magneto or Apocalypse, who seeks to conquer the world in the name of preserving mutantkind. Rather, he was characterized by Claremont as a greedy opportunist, who fuels the fire of human-mutant conflict in order to line his own pockets. He’s even the one who creates Sentinels for Senator Kelly in the wake of the “Days of Future Past” storyline. While his end goal is still world domination, he isn’t driven by any grand vision or ideology — merely petty, self-serving ambition.
Furthermore, Shaw was never a Nazi in the comics, and has no role in Magneto’s backstory. Even the First Class Shaw’s organization is essentially the Hellfire Club in name only. On a visual level, they lack the idiosyncratic 18th century aesthetic that makes the comic Hellfire Club so distinct. But more importantly, the Hellfire Club of the comics is a shadowy council composed of wealthy societal elites — each member is a powerful and prestigious figure in their own right. But in the film, the Hellfire Club is presented as little more than Shaw’s personal gang of henchmen, with no real backstory or characterization. However, while the live action Shaw has little in common with his comic counterpart, he actually shares many similarities with an even more prominent X-Men antagonist: Mister Sinister.
Mister Sinister, aka Dr. Nathaniel Essex, is another Claremont creation, making his debut in 1987’s Uncanny X-Men #221. A true mad scientist, Sinister is obsessed with unraveling the secrets of genetic mutation, and has frequently menaced the X-Men in order to further his research. Despite never appearing in a film adaptation to date, Mister Sinister’s cruel, cunning schemes and flamboyant personality have made him a fan favorite among comic readers. But more relevantly, Sinister is reminiscent of Kevin Bacon’s Shaw in several key ways.
First and foremost, both Mister Sinister and movie Shaw are ruthless scientists who firmly believe in the genetic superiority of mutantkind. In one of the character’s earliest appearances, Claremont depicts Sinister as having a similar ideology to First Class Shaw — he sees mutants as the next step in human evolution, and wishes to see a world where humanity has been completely supplanted by mutantkind. A later Claremont story, 2004’s Excalibur #7 even established that Sinister experimented on children at Auschwitz as part of his research, just like Shaw in his original Klaus Schmidt identity. And while Sinister never met Erik Lehnsherr directly during this time, Magneto still remembers the stories of the white-skinned scientist nicknamed “Nosferatu”.
Even Riptide, one member of the live-action Hellfire Club, was originally part of Sinister’s henchmen, the Marauders. Rather than a shadowy secret society, the Marauders are a team of hired guns meant specifically to do Sinister’s dirty work. As such, the Hellfire Club depicted in First Class bears more resemblance to the Marauders than the actual Hellfire Club of the comics. It’s enough to make one wonder if an earlier draft of the script featured Mister Sinister as the main villain in Shaw’s place.
As of now, Mister Sinister is the most high-profile X-Men villain who has yet to be featured in a live action film. Because of this, it’s entirely likely that he’ll serve as an early antagonist to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s X-Men once they’re inevitably introduced. But until then, the closest thing we have to a live action Sinister is using the name of a completely different villain. One can only imagine what X-Men: First Class would have been like if it featured Mister Sinister as its main villain instead of Sebastian Shaw.
MORE: Moon Knight: 5 Villains We Could See In A Season 2
