Who are the Marauders
The Marauders are Mr. Sinister’s assassins: a squad built for one purpose, killing mutants, and remembered for the worst thing they did. They first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #210, cover-dated October 1986, by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr.
The Mutant Massacre (1986)
The Marauders exist for the Mutant Massacre, the crossover where they descend into the tunnels beneath New York and slaughter the Morlocks, the community of mutants living underground. It was one of the bleakest X-stories of its era, and the Marauders, Sabretooth among them, were its faceless engine. Sinister keeps cloned copies of the whole team, so the X-Men can kill them and find them alive again next time, which made them genuinely hard to stop.
The name reused (2019)
In 2019, the Krakoan-era X-line gave the name to an entirely different, heroic team: Gerry Duggan’s Marauders, a crew led by Kate Pryde running a ship to rescue mutants. It shares the name and nothing else with Sinister’s killers.
Notable issues
- Uncanny X-Men #210 (1986): first appearance of the Marauders.
- Uncanny X-Men #211 (1986): their full assault opens the Mutant Massacre.
For collectors
The key is Uncanny X-Men #210 (1986), the Marauders’ first appearance and a Mutant Massacre lead-in. The crossover’s issues across Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants are tracked together as a Bronze-to-Copper Age event run.
