During his run as a member of the team, Cypher was the least popular of the New Mutants, as series writer Louise Simonson recounted: "He wasn't fun to draw.

[volume & issue needed] Doug's mutant power is the ability to intuitively understand and translate any form of communication, be it written, spoken or non-verbal, and regardless of whether the origin of the language is human, computer or even completely alien.

[12] Despite being instrumental in many of his team's successful missions, including those involving saving lives, Doug suffered from occasional feelings of inadequacy.

This allowed them full access to both their powers, but ran a severe risk of irreversibly infecting Doug with the Transmode virus and turning him into a techno-organic being like Warlock.

He was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with her as evidenced by the illusion Emma Frost created to distract him,[16] but Kitty was uncertain and eventually they decided to remain friends.

[23] He later appeared in a fantasy staged by Captain Britain's patron Merlyn to aid Excalibur in exposing and battling the vengeful spirit of the late X-Men member Changeling.

[24] Warlock was subsequently murdered by Cameron Hodge during the "X-Tinction Agenda" storyline,[25] and his ashes were scattered on Doug's grave at the request of Wolfsbane.

[volume & issue needed] After Excalibur disbanded, Warlock's personality resurfaced, but exhibited more human speech patterns and appearance.

[32] Cypher was then kidnapped by the Hellions, who wished to reprogram him,[33] but was rescued by his teammates, who severed his connection to Selene, restoring his original personality and free will.

"[39] Cypher played a key role in defeating a future version of himself called Truefriend, which had taken over the world by splicing Warlock's tech into people under the guise of helping them.

[volume & issue needed] He also had sex with Danger, supposedly in an attempt to help the sentient female robot understand human behavior.

[48] As part of Moira MacTaggert's plan to safeguard the future of mutants, Cypher traveled to Krakoa with Professor Xavier and contacted the sentient island with his powers.

Though they were largely strangers to each other, Cypher was fascinated by Bei due to his inability to understand her (a result of her psionic powers conflicting with his own).

[56] During the subsequent invasion of Krakoa, Cypher convinced his new wife to betray Arakko and help the Krakoans fight off the invading forces of Annihilation.

[60] Distraught by the disappearance of her beloved husband, Bei employed numerous scent trackers and telepaths to locate him, but none could detect his presence on Krakoa.

[64] Cypher is a mutant who possesses a superhuman intuitive facility for translating languages, spoken or written, human or alien in origin.

[volume & issue needed] The presence of the virus has allowed him at times to cheat death and to demonstrate techno-organic shapeshifting, transmode infection, and life-absorption abilities.

His "translation field" allows everyone in Avalon to understand each other, no matter what language they speak (This is a much broader power than he had ever displayed in the main timeline at this time).

He is killed when he jumps in front of Destiny to protect her from the Shadow King's last desperate attack, a course of action that convinces his adoptive mother to become involved in defeating Apocalypse.

Around this same time, Doug's father agreed to undergo voluntary sterilization as an X-Gene carrier, but his mother committed suicide a year later.

[volume & issue needed] Haloke was not with Ramsey in the Finger Lakes area of New York State a year later when he was at ground zero for a meteor strike.

[80] The units on site were waiting for the arrival of Hazmat teams so that they could apprehend Ramsey without risk of infection, but they suffered simultaneous failure of all electronic systems.

Moments after Ramsey began speaking in an indecipherable, the Exonim units turned on each other, discharging all their weapons in a three-second exchange of fire which caused a forty-meter wide crater.

He also only responded to the name "Magus", seemingly confirming Warlock's fears that if infected by the transmode virus after merging into Douglock one time too many, Doug might take on the warlike aspects of the Technarch species.

[83] In the sequel one-shot graphic novel, "Knight of Terra", Rahne pays a return visit to Geshem, and discovers that in that world, Doug and Rain are now married and expecting their first child.

Garrison corners them and subdues Doug and Karma with fear pheromones and plans to kill them until Tag stops him with his powers and unintentionally causes him to commit suicide.

To this end, a new X-Force team, consisting of Cannonball, Siryn, Warlock, Darkchild (Illyana Rasputin), Sunspot, and Powerpax (Francine Power) returned to Shatterstar's dimension.

Assisted by the spineless ones and the geneticist, Arize, they overthrow Shatterstar, who had begun doing what Mojos I through V had done, creating a world based on the entertainment of killing the opposite race.

Traffic camera footage of Dane's apparent magnetically induced murder of several people had been reviewed time and again to no avail.

[91] In an issue that asks "What If the X-Men Had Stayed in Asgard," Cypher devoted himself to studying long-forgotten texts and lore, written in languages forgotten to the Asgardians, gaining respect as a scholar amongst the population for doing so.