Erica Marr (Comet)



Erica's flame powers did not manifest until she was in her twenties. She is older than most students, already has an undergraduate degree, and has come to the Xavier Institute as a graduate student, hoping for a teaching assistant position. She is overweight and insecure about her body, but confident in her intellectual abilities. She has long admired the late Emma Frost, and often tries to boost her own confidence by asking herself, "What would Emma Frost do?"

Erica discovered while she was in high school that she could create a small flame in the palm of her hand, which did not burn her. Fascinated by this ability, she spent several years trying to focus and develop it through meditation. She was already in college when her powers took a sudden leap forward after a fire broke out in one of the dorms on campus. She felt drawn to the flames and when she heard someone crying out for help, she discovered that she could walk through the flames without being burned. As she pressed forward, trying to find where the voice was coming from, she found that the hotter the air around her grew, the more transparent she became, until she was only a ghostly outline. This allowed her to save the trapped student without being recognized, but she had to dash back into the flames when she started to become visible again, more afraid of being outed as a mutant than she was of the fire. She escaped the building by a series of leaps and found that when she was in her extremely hot and transparent state, she had a limited power of flight (limited to long/high leaps). After that experience had jolted her powers into greater development, she became able to generate flame on a larger scale, no longer limited to the palm of her hand.

After obtaining her undergraduate degree in history, Erica applied to the Xavier Institute to pursue graduate studies.

Powers: Can generate and manipulate flame, cannot be harmed by fire or extreme heat (which does, however, cause her to become transparent), limited power of flight.

Weaknesses: Anything that can douse flame will temporarily disable her powers, although she generally recovers quickly. She also has all of the other physical vulnerabilities of normal humans. She does not have super-strength, nor impenetrable skin, nor enhanced self-healing abilities, so she is at risk in combat situations and tries to avoid them.