Origin
As a teenager living in New Mexico, Siena Blaze found out she was a mutant who could manipulate the electromagnetic field of Earth. Despite her father’s best attempts to warn her of her tampering with the Earth’s energy endangering the entire planet, Siena didn’t really care and continued to abuse her powers for excitement and personal game.
Pursuing a life of crime, Siena was eventually approached by Trevor Fitzroy who aided Siena in escaping from the police and convinced her to join the Gamesmaster‘s Upstarts, a team of like-minded thrill-seekers who participate in contests to see who can kill the most mutants.
Creation
Siena Blaze was created by Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo and first appeared in X-Men Unlimited issue 1 (June 1993). Although, like several other characters from this period, her first published appearance was in a preview in Stryfe’s Strike File issue 1 (January 1993).
Character Evolution
Siena Blaze was one of many of the villains introduced in the 90s X-Men boom and was created mainly to capitalize on the popularity of the franchise. Despite featuring in merchandise such as trading cards and action figures, Siena’s appearances in comics were staggered apart and infrequent. In 1995, Marvel transitioned her over to the Malibu imprint (which Marvel had recently bought out), where she featured as a main character in The All New Exiles. Eventually, she returned to Marvel comics only to be abruptly killed off alongside a dozen other X-Men characters who were seen as superfluous. Despite a brief resurrection, Siena remains dead to this day.
Major Story Arcs
Fatal Attractions
In her first appearance, Siena, as a member of the Upstarts, attempted to score “points” by killing the leaders of the X-Men (Cyclops, Professor X and Storm). Siena attacked the three while they were travelling in the Blackbird and struck the jet down with a blast of electromagnetic energy. The jet landed in the middle of a blizard. There, Siena tried to take out the X-Men one by one, taking cover in the storm. Despite her attempts, the three survived and managed to overcome her due to Sienabeing inexperienced with her own power. After being defeated by the X-Men, Siena escaped to fight another day.
The Sinister Matrix
Next, Siena was sent to acquire DNA samples of Proteus for Mr. Sinister, a mission she accepted with the intention of also killing Moira MacTaggert in order to score points in the Upstarts contest. She was opposed by Excalibur and forced to evade capture again after she was defeated by the superheroes.
Child’s Play
Continuing to compete against her fellow Upstarts, Siena managed to score high when she was successful in capturing the New Mutants (Boom-Boom, Cannonball, Empath, Karma and Moonstar) but, as to be expected, the young heroes managed to free themselves and defeat Siena.
Black September
Siena was hunting the Mutant Liberation Front’s Reaper, hoping his capture would secure her some more points in the Gamesmaster’s contest, when both of them were sucked into another reality. Siena and Reaper, along with Juggernaut, found themselves stranded on Earth-93060 due to a superhuman native to that reality’s accidental tearing of the fabric of reality. Banding together with that Earth’s super-powered Amber Hunt, Shuriken and Strike, the six of them became a team calling themselves the Exiles.
The All New Exiles
When the six Exiles were blamed for an incident which destroyed most of Manhattan, Siena remained with the team but mostly out of attraction to the team’s leader Strike. The Exiles fought against various villains such as the Tradesmen and alien beast Moloch and had a skirmish with the X-Men who had been sent by Professor X to find the Juggernaut.
Eventually, the Exiles joined forces with the Avengers’ Black Knight in battling against Maxis. The villain opened a portal to Earth-616 and Siena and the rest of the outcasts, returned to their home reality.
Neverland
After returning to her Earth, Siena was eventually captured by Weapon X and was held prisoner in the Neverland concentration camp ran by The Director. She, alongside countless other mutants, were marched into incinerators and put to death when they were deemed of no use to Weapon X.
Necrosha
Siena was revived via the transmode virus by Eli Bard who resurrected several dead mutants to aid a quest to see Selene ascend to a Goddess. Siena was dispatched alongside others to attack the X-Men on their island nation of Utopia, where she fought against Sub-Mariner.
X-Men Disassembled
The Upstarts reformed when most of the X-Men were apparently killed by Nate Grey. They used and killed the Nasty Boys as bait to find the new team of X-Men formed by Cyclops and Wolverine. Siena, along with the other teammates were killed by the Sentinels.
Powers and Abilities
Siena absorbs the energy from the planet’s electromagnetic spectrum and can then channel that energy to various different effects such as using it for flight, offensive energy blasts or teleporting herself. However, even the smallest use of her powers disrupts the planet’s electromagnetic field and frequent use of her powers only serves to permanently damage the planet more.