Tag

Brian Cruz is a mutant student at the Xavier Institute whose power allows him to make others irresistibly flee from or flock toward a chosen target. He enrolled at the school alongside fellow young mutants, joining the next generation of students learning to navigate life with their abilities.

Debuting in New X-Men #6 in 2004, Tag is a Modern Age Marvel creation from the writing team of Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, with art by Michael Ryan — part of a wave of fresh mutant faces introduced to energize the X-Men corner of the Marvel Universe. Though their catalog footprint is compact at just seven appearances, a remarkable three of those are collector-recognized key issues, making Tag a surprisingly significant find for completionists hunting that era. Tag shares the page with some genuinely beloved Modern Age mutants — Mercury, Rockslide, Julian Keller, Sofia Mantega, and Dust among them — placing this character squarely within the rich, character-dense world of early 2000s Xavier's School storytelling. A niche gem with outsized key-issue weight, Tag is exactly the kind of deep-cut discovery that reminds you why digging through the Modern Age is always worth your time.