Superhero Origins: Domino

If you want to make it in the superhero world you’ve got to have a fair bit of luck on your side, and this deadly mercenary has more than her share. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today, we’re breaking down the origins of Domino, a longtime member of X-Force who made her official debut in 1992’s “X-Force” #8.

Domino’s story began in a top-secret government project with the not-at-all-ominous name of “Project Armageddon.” The aim of this group was to create the next generation of enhanced super soldiers through artificial insemination. Domino was one of the byproducts of this experiment, branded as a test subject with a dot over one eye. Despite being the only subject to survive, her abilities were deemed unsatisfactory. In a desperate bid to save her life, Domino’s biological mother had her infant child smuggled out of the facility and left in the care of a Chicago priest.

It was during her time living at the church that her powers first began to manifest. Domino’s power can best be described as “super luck”, a propensity for happy accidents or random turns of chance that help keep her out of danger or accomplish whatever she’s trying to do at any given time. This can mean everything from an opponent’s gun failing to fire to lightning suddenly striking her enemies.

After leaving the church where she was raised, Domino settled into a life as a mercenary, her innate abilities giving her a leg up in combat situations. Like any self-respecting merc, she mastered hand-to-hand and armed combat, turning her into an incredibly effective special operative even without her luck abilities. One of her earliest jobs was guarding an analyst by the name of Milo Thurman, whose near-supernatural analytical abilities convinced the government to keep him under lock and key. While serving as his guard, Domino and Thurman even fell in love and got married, though the two were separated after Thurman appeared to die in an attack on the facility. Their time together left a lasting impression on Domino, who was given the name Beatrice by her then-husband, after the character in “Dante’s Inferno”.

Not long after, Domino helped start a mercenary band known as Six Pack, and it was during this time that she first met Cable. Cable’s presence would define much of Domino’s life to come, with the two mercs working together and even becoming lovers. Domino eventually left the group but was reunited with Cable years later.

By this point, Cable had become the leader of The New Mutants, a group of young mutants struggling to find their place in the world. After Cable transformed the group into X-Force, Domino joined them as Cable’s field leader…....or so it seemed. As Cable and company learned much later, the woman they had thought was Domino was actually the shapeshifter Copycat, and the real Domino was being held prisoner by the villain Tolliver. After X-Force rescued the real Domino, she officially joined the team.

Since then, her presence has been almost a constant for X-Force, with Domino even leading the team after Cable’s exit. Of course, she’s still done some mercenary work on the side and even went on a mission to track down her birth mother. But when she’s not off on solo adventures she’s remained a regular presence in the X-Men’s sphere of influence, rejoining X-Force when it was reformed by Cable as the X-Men’s black-ops team.

While the X-Men have always represented the hopeful optimism of Charles Xavier’s dream for peace between mutants and humans, sometimes Marvel’s Merry Mutants need to get their hands dirty. X-Force has become their go-to team for situations like these, and the team just wouldn’t be complete without Domino on the roster. She may have luck on her side, but the X-Force are lucky to have her.