Lord Imperial The
Lord Imperial is not a member of the Inner Circle or any particular branch of the Hellfire Club; the Lord Imperial is the true leader of the Hellfire Club and oversees all branches of it. As such, only a few individuals have held the title. Sir Gordon Phillips, while unknown at the time, ruled as Lord Imperial for most of the club's modern history, holding the position from before the club's introduction until his death: killed by Sabretooth on a cruise ship filled with humans infected with the
Legacy Virus. •
Sir Gordon Phillips •
Elias Bogan •
Sebastian Shaw •
Roberto da Costa (Sunspot) Inner Circle The constant intrigue, backstabbing, blackmailing and politicking that plague the Hellfire Club have resulted in many changes of the Inner Circle, as new players seek out membership in order to obtain influence, power and wealth. The following lists the membership of each incarnation of the Inner Circle and the title they held; in descending order of rank are Kings and Queens, followed by Bishops and Rooks.
The Council of the Chosen The original Inner Circle (existing prior to the club's introduction) consisted of: •
Edward Buckman - White King •
Paris Seville - White Queen •
Sebastian Shaw - Black Bishop Sebastian Shaw was instrumental in the Hellfire Club's funding of
Stephen Lang's resurrected
Sentinel program, but having completed his purpose, White King Edward Buckman sought to eliminate the ambitious Black Bishop. After a Sentinel attack on Shaw's beach house resulted in the death of his lover,
Lourdes Chantel, Shaw and his ally
Emma Frost purge the Council and appointed themselves Black King and White Queen. New members appointed during this period were: •
Selene - Black Queen •
Friedrich von Roehm - Black Rook •
Emmanuel da Costa - White Rook After Cannonball survives a near-fatal stabbing, Gideon turns on Sunspot, who is rescued by X-Force.
Shinobi Shaw's Upstart Inner Circle Selene had originally planned on creating a new Inner Circle with the help of the
Upstarts - among them
Shinobi Shaw, son of Sebastian Shaw - but they betrayed and imprisoned her. Believing to have successfully assassinated his father, Shinobi Shaw briefly took over the New York branch of the Club, seemingly with support from the
External Candra. He offered membership in his Inner Circle to
Archangel, and
Sunspot (also known as Roberto da Costa, son of former White Rook Emmanuel da Costa), but all declined. •
Shinobi Shaw - Black King •
Benedict Kine - White King •
Benazir Kaur - White Queen •
Reeva Payge - Black Queen •
Candra - Associate •
Cordelia Frost - Probationary member •
Ebon Knights - Shinobi Shaw's Black Guard •
Ivory Knights - Benedict Kine's White Guard The titles of Payge and Kaur are not established. When Cordelia Frost applies for membership to the Inner Circle, Shinobi states that the title of White Queen is already taken.
The London Branch The Hellfire Club's London branch is introduced briefly operating parallel to Shinobi's Inner Circle. Instead of Black and White, the titles of the London Inner Circle are designated Black and Red. •
Emma Steed - Black Queen •
Margali Szardos - Red Queen •
Quentin Templeton - Black King The Black Queen and Red King were taken into police custody.
Shaw's Second Circle Sebastian Shaw, despite his apparent death, later re-emerged and retook control of the Hellfire Club in attempt to restore its former power and glory. Selene, freed from her imprisonment by the Upstarts, took under her influence a resurrected
Madelyne Pryor in her quest for revenge. Shaw meanwhile attempted to ally with the
AOA-exile
Holocaust. Meeting in New York, Shaw proposes a reformation of the Inner Circle with the following line-up: At first operating in secret from outside the Hellfire Club (still under Shinobi Shaw's control), Sebastian's group soon reasserted control over the organization. •
Sebastian Shaw - Black King •
Selene - Black Queen •
Trevor Fitzroy - White Rook •
Madelyne Pryor - Red Queen •
Donald Pierce - Applicant for White Bishop •
Tessa - Shaw's personal aide •
Ella - Selene's personal servant •
Holocaust - Associate •
Miss Hoo - Associate Selene's mind control over Madelyne Pryor eventually waned, and the Black Rook's allegiance soon turned to Sebastian Shaw. Concerned, Selene contacted Fitzroy and Tessa to counteract the changing balance of power. however his failure in attaining the alien technology of
Apocalypse resulted in his expulsion from the group. Pryor meanwhile had betrayed and deserted the club. Shaw, presented with a mysterious offer, decided to accept its terms and resign from the Inner Circle, advising Fitzroy to do the same. Selene would later successfully induct Sunspot into the Inner Circle, offering the resurrection of his long-dead girlfriend, Julianna, who died saving his life. •
Selene - Black Queen •
Blackheart - Black King •
Daimon Hellstrom - White King •
Roberto da Costa (Sunspot) - Black Rook It is unknown what led to the dissolution of this incarnation. The Hellfire Club was found closed and abandoned, covered in blackbriar thorns; Selene herself was trapped inside the mansion, unable to leave.
The Fifth Inner Circle After the death of Sir Gordon Phillips at the hands of the Brotherhood of Mutants, •
Sebastian Shaw - Lord Imperial •
Roberto da Costa (Sunspot) - Black King •
Selene - Black Queen •
Sat-Yr-9 (as Courtney Ross) - White Queen •
Viper - White Warrior Princess •
Tessa - Shaw's personal aide and Sunspot's personal adviser. •
Red Lotus - Associate Selene, despite remaining imprisoned underneath the Hellfire Club's New York mansion and not actively participating in the Inner Circle, has apparently retained her title of Black Queen. It was also revealed that Emma Frost, despite having left the club long ago and having since joined the X-Men, still retained her membership and White Queen title.
Sat-Yr-9 confronts Frost and, assuming her title, becomes the newest addition to the Inner Circle, bringing with her bodyguard and self-appointed "White Warrior Princess"
Viper. A confrontation with Donald Pierce leaves Sebastian Shaw gravely injured, and Sunspot takes over as Lord Imperial, which was Tessa's plan all along. Tessa left the Club, still under Sunspot's rule, and joined
New Excalibur in the wake of
M-Day. Shaw has since returned as the Black King, seemingly plotting to rebuild his power base. During the same period, Sat-Yr-9 sends Viper to command an attack on Zanzibar, which she does with the help of the piratical militia the Weaponeers. However, Viper is betrayed by the Weaponeers and makes a truce with mutants from the rebuilding nation of Genosha against her former allies.
Nova's Inner Circle •
Emma Frost •
Sebastian Shaw •
Perfection •
Cassandra Nova •
Negasonic Teenage Warhead A mysterious new Inner Circle appears in the third volume of
Astonishing X-Men. Members of this version were never given titles, since they were revealed to be psionic projections created by Emma Frost at the behest of
Cassandra Nova. In an attempt to free herself from confinement by the X-Men, Cassandra had placed a portion of her consciousness in Frost's prior to being mentally imprisoned, and launched an assault on the
X-Mansion using Frost as a Trojan horse. Other than Nova, each member appears to represent a different aspect of Frost's past, with
Negasonic Teenage Warhead being a former student of hers who died in
Genosha; Perfection, a manifestation of Frost's younger, evil self; and Sebastian Shaw representing her time with the Hellfire Club.
Selene's second Inner Circle Selene, finding herself once again the sole remaining member of the Inner Circle, and disappointed by the many betrayals from Sebastian Shaw and his Hellfire Club, decided it was time to rise to goddesshood, a state she believed she was destined for. To accomplish that, she specifically recruited a Coven of deadly mutants to seek revenge against all those that had betrayed her or stood in her way in the past. Together they went to the New York branch of the Hellfire Club, where she cut all ties with them by using her new Inner Circle to kill every person there. This Inner Circle was made up of mostly by mutants whose abilities were designed for killing. Membership consisted of: •
Blink •
Senyaka •
Mortis •
Wither •
Eli Bard - The group's only non-mutant member. Bard was turned into a vampire-like creature by Selene.
The Sixth Inner Circle Sebastian Shaw's Inner Circle eventually reemerged.
Wolverine came into confrontation with a new "Inner Circle", under the false impression (by Sebastian Shaw and "
Miss Sinister") that they are behind the kidnapping of his son,
Daken. •
Sebastian Shaw •
Claudine Renko (Miss Sinister) •
Mr. Castlemere •
Turner •
Peter Scholl (Leonine) •
Mercedes The Seventh Inner Circle In the event "Schism", there has apparently been a pro-human coup in the Hellfire Club, all mutant members have been removed, and 12-year-old supergenius Kade Kilgore is named the new Black King. Kilgore then called together a cabal of prepubescent geniuses to secretly rule the Hellfire Club and eradicate mutantkind, then proceeding to poison the other remaining Hellfire Club members, making them the sole leadership. Kilgore later had a change of heart and began recruiting mutants to his side to train the newly manifested mutants at the Hellfire Academy. The Hellfire Academy is destroyed by the staff of the Jean Grey School. •
Kade Kilgore - Black King. A twelve-year-old sociopath who is also the leader of the group. •
Doctor Maximilian Frankenstein (formerly
Baron Maximilian von Katzenelnbogen) - Black Bishop. Descendant of
Victor Frankenstein. He was responsible for creating the
Krakoa that the X-Men befriended and the Krakoas that defended the unnamed island where the Hellfire Academy is located. •
Manuel Enduque - White King. He is well-versed in weaponry with his family reportedly being a dynasty of slavers in Africa with Manuel having strangled his own father to death, thus resulting in him taking control of the business. •
Wilhemina Kensington - White Queen. She is an eleven year old with a love of martial arts and beauty pageants who inherited the company after her mother died. She is also both psychopathic and sociopathic, having killed human guards and alien warriors and is also alleged to have mutilated both cats and penguins. ; Associates: •
Sabretooth •
Ezekiel Stane •
Sebastian Shaw - Black King •
Briar Raleigh - Black Bishop - Magneto's former associate and the only non-mutant within the Inner Circle •
Monet St. Croix - White Queen •
Black Tom Cassidy - White Bishop
The Ninth Inner Circle Eventually Emma Frost decided to rid of Shaw, by spiking his wine with a paralytic agent she made sure there was no way for him to release his body's absorbed energies which overloaded his Mothervine-induced secondary mutation, resulting in his death. She then reformed the Inner Circle in her image and using
Vanisher as her personal transportation, she worked behind the scenes to get the X-Men to handle certain affairs. •
Black King: Emma Frost •
White King:
Mystique •
Black Bishop:
Elixir •
Black Rook:
Marrow The Tenth Inner Circle With mutants congregating on Krakoa, Kade Kilgore is able to retake control of the Hellfire Club branch in New York City. Opting later to rename themselves as "
Homines Verendi", a Latin name which roughly translates to "man must be revered and feared", Kade and his group (Maximilian Frankenstein, Manuel Enduque, and Wilhemina Kensington) recruited Taiwanese millionaire and anti-mutant activist, Chen Zhao and stands poised ready to tear down the new age of mutantkind as they are involved in the Krakoans' problems. With each of the founding members already in possession of massive fortunes, they succeeded in taking over Madripoor, an island in Southeast Asia, and are using it as its base of power. While it is unknown whether or not the royal family of Madripoor has been detained, fled or simply murdered, the island is no longer a safe haven for mutants. Once used as a base of operations for the X-Man Wolverine while using the alias "Patch", Madripoor has now degenerated into a country that is openly hostile toward mutants and has even gone so far as to offer its citizens payment for killing mutants. It has almost become a dark reflection of Krakoa and everything that it stands for and recruited long-time X-Men foe
Donald Pierce to act as Madripoor’s official representative to the United Nations. They also secretly aid Hellfire Club member Sebastian Shaw in the murder of
Kitty Pryde. Shaw paid Verendi to participate in his scheme to get Kitty alone on Verendi's ship so that he could ensnare her in Krakoan vines and sink her with the ship. •
Kade Kilgore - Black King •
Manuel Enduque - White King •
Chen Zhao - White Bishop •
Maximilian Frankenstein - Black Bishop •
X-Cutioner •
Donald Pierce •
Hate-Monger •
Yellowjacket/Darren Cross Members The following characters are members of the Hellfire Club, many of them being extremely influential, but were not part of any of the Inner Circle incarnations mentioned above. Membership is either
hereditary, or obtained through personal invitation from the branch's King. Known members include: •
Warren Worthington Jr. and
Kathryn Worthington - inherited membership from his father. •
Candace "Candy" Southern - inherited membership. •
James Braddock Jr. - inherited membership. •
Berhard Van Ostamgen - failed entry into Inner Circle •
Ronald Parvenue - inherited membership from his father •
Norman Osborn (Green Goblin) - deceased
Past members •
Philadelphia, 1780/81: Sir Patrick Clemens (King title), Lady Diana Knight (Queen title),
Lady Grey (Queen title), Elizabeth Shaw-Worthington, Major General Wallace Worthington, Commander Clinton •
London, 1859: Lord Braddock, Mr. Shaw (Sebastian Shaw's great-grandfather and Cornelius Shaw's father) •
Boston, 1872/74: Anton Pierce (Member of the Inner Circle) •
London, 1915: Brigadier-General Cornelius Shaw, Sir Harry Manners, Waltham Pierce
Staff The Hellfire Club has employed a large number of mostly-anonymous armed guards. A few have been named: • Wade Cole • Angelo Macon • Randall Chase • Chet Andrews Cole, Macon and Reese were savagely wounded by
Wolverine in the Hellfire Club's first confrontation with the X-Men. before leaving the Club to join
Lady Deathstrike in seeking revenge against Wolverine, eventually joining the
Reavers. Sam Guthrie worked as a Hellfire guard for a brief period before joining the
New Mutants as Cannonball. The Hellfire Club also employs a number of servants, escorts and strippers. Sharon Kelly was a waitress at the New York branch who was chosen by Sebastian Shaw to seduce
Senator Robert Kelly. The couple quickly married, but soon afterwards Sharon was killed in a battle involving the X-Men, In addition to its large, traditional, student body, the Academy secretly trained a team of young
mutants known as the
Hellions. Due to their affiliation with the Club, the Hellions were often present at its social functions. This group would entertain a rivalry with
Professor Charles Xavier's students at the time, the
New Mutants. After the death of the Hellions in an attack orchestrated by the
Upstarts, Frost left the Hellfire Club. Re-aligning herself with Professor Xavier, the Massachusetts Academy became the new site for
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and a new class, known as
Generation X.
Hellfire Academy The seventh incarnation of the Hellfire Club have since founded the
Hellfire Academy, a rival to the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. It is located on an unnamed island.
Staff members Staff outside the Hellfire Club's leadership include: •
Mystique - Headmistress who also teaches Intro to Evil. Joined in
Wolverine and the X-Men #20. •
White Palace •
White Queen:
Stepford Cuckoos:
Emma Frost (
formerly) •
White Bishop:
Christian Frost •
White Knight:
Callisto •
Blackstone •
Black Queen:
Lourdes Chantel;
Sebastian Shaw (
formerly Black King) •
Black Bishop:
Shinobi Shaw •
Black Knights:
Andrea and Andreas Strucker •
Red Keep •
Red Queen:
Katherine Pryde •
Red Bishop:
Lucas Bishop ==Other versions==