Samuel Zachary "Sam" Guthrie (Cannonball)
Personality[]
Sam is sweet, soft spoken, gentle and a little geeky. Sam can be a bit of a klutz and is a little uncomfortable dealing with the opposite sex (he has a few issues with his looks and height).
Powers and Abilities[]
Cannonball possesses the ability to generate thermo-chemical energy and release it through his skin. Accompanied by smoke and condensation, the equal and opposite reaction to this energy release propels his body through the air like a human rocket. Cannonball can cut off his propulsive power at will allowing him to achieve a form of flight. As a side effect of forming the thermo-chemical energies over the surface of his body, Cannonball is rendered virtually invulnerable while in flight seen crashing through solid stone walls and denting steel baracades with no harm to himself. Accompanying the release of energy is a half-inch thick energy field that channels the explosion and protects his body from the direct effects of the blast. It also negates momentum related effects, thereby cushioning his body from any impact up to a half-minute from the depletion of his energy. Cannonball's "blast field" extends to any person or object he is in physical contact with when using his propulsion powers rendering them invulnerable as well.
Early Life[]
Samuel Guthrie was born in Cumberland County, Kentucky, the eldest of eleven children to his parents Lucinda and Thomas Guthrie, a coal mine worker. After the death of his father, sixteen-year-old Samuel Guthrie became the man of the house to his large family. To help support his family, Sam decided to work in his father's occupational field as a coal miner. The dangerous nature of the occupation caught up with him one day when Sam found himself trapped in a collapsing mine shaft. While trying to rescue his fellow worker, a friend of his father's who had introduced him to the job, Sam subconsciously activated his mutant ability to propel himself at superhuman speeds and used it to bring the pair to safety. After the coal indicent, Professor Charles Xavier offered Sam to come and join his school which Sam accepted. At some point, Sam went to the Xavier Mansion as a member of the New Mutants, a younger generation of mutants who were to eventually help and possibly replace the X-Men.