Apocalypse Fact — November 4, 2026

Today's Fact

The transfusion saved Jonothon Starsmore's life, restored what his own power had destroyed, and left his ancestor's colours on his skin.

APOCALYPSE'S OWN BLOOD REBUILT A DYING X-MAN — AND PAINTED HIM GREY TO MATCH!

The Featured Fact

Jonothon Starsmore, the Generation X hero called Chamber, was secretly Apocalypse's descendant through his great-great-grandfather Jack Starsmore. When Chamber's psionic power first erupted it blew open his chest and jaw; for years the energy itself filled those wounds and kept him alive. Then M-Day stripped his powers away — and a body held together by its own mutation began, simply, to die.

The rescue came from the family cult. Agents of Clan Akkaba, the descendants who have guarded Apocalypse's legacy for millennia, lifted Chamber from his hospital bed and infused him with Apocalypse's blood, as chronicled from New Excalibur Vol. 1 #9 (2006) onward. The blood did what no surgery could: it rebuilt his ruined chest and mouth whole.

It also signed its work. Chamber woke with grey skin and blue markings in his ancestor's unmistakable pattern — a walking portrait of En Sabah Nur. Offered his birthright as a scion of the clan, the unimpressed Starsmore refused to join, and kept the new face anyway; only a later reality rewrite restored his original looks.

Why It's Obscure

Clan Akkaba offers free healthcare. The catch is the family resemblance, and it is not subtle.

The Starsmore line

Blood will out — Chamber descends from Jack Starsmore, who fought beside Apocalypse against Dracula in 1897 — a lineage Jono knew only as fireside stories.

M-Day

Depowered and dying — With his psionic energy gone, the wounds his power had been plugging since adolescence leave Chamber on death's door in a hospital bed.

2006

The transfusion — Clan Akkaba infuses him with Apocalypse's blood in the New Excalibur storyline; his chest and mouth are restored, his skin turns grey with blue markings like his ancestor's.

The refusal

Thanks, but no — Presented with his heritage and a place in the clan, Chamber declines the honour and walks away wearing Apocalypse's colours regardless.

Gallery

Chamber in both his forms beside his ancestor, En Sabah Nur unadorned, and the cover of the Blood of Apocalypse affair.

Chamber with his psionic chest blast, his grey-skinned transformed form, and Apocalypse, comic art — **The family resemblance**Centre, Chamber's psionic fire; at left, his post-transfusion form — grey skin and restored chest courtesy of Apocalypse's blood — with En Sabah Nur himself looming at right.

Apocalypse in his Celestial armour, comic art — **The donor**Apocalypse, whose blood carried enough of his Celestial-forged mutability to rebuild a descendant's shattered body.

X-Men issue 183 cover from the Blood of Apocalypse era — **Blood of Apocalypse**Cover from the same era's blood-elixir saga, when a few drops of Apocalypse's blood were being offered to a starving mutantkind.

Sources

Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.

Bullpen Bulletins

Clan Akkaba — WikipediaRecords that the depowered, near-death Chamber was rejuvenated by an infusion of Apocalypse's blood, which restored his destroyed chest and mouth and left him in a grey-skinned form resembling Apocalypse — and that he refused to join the clan.
Apocalypse: Marvel's Deadliest Mutant Dynasty, Explained — CBRWalks through the same transfusion: Frederick Slade brings the dying Jono to the clan, the blood heals him physically, and his appearance changes to grey skin with blue facial markings.