John Allardyce himself, aka Pyro! St. John, as he was named in the comics, was a long time member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, introduced in 1981 as part of the iconic “Days of Future Past” storyline where the villainous team attempted to assassinate anti-mutant senator Robert Kelly, inadvertently establishing an apocalyptic timeline where mutantkind is hunted down and slaughtered. Pyro eventually transitions from the Brotherhood into its reformation as Freedom Force, Mystique’s compromise with Val Cooper and the U.S. government to trade pardons for their past crimes for working as an official federal task force. Eventually, he succumbed to the Legacy Virus, dying in a heroic act to protect Senator Kelly, and in turn changing his opinions on mutants—but Pyro eventually got resurrected, first by the sinister ancient external Selene as part of the Necrosha event, and then eventually on Krakoa as part of early experiments by the mutant circuit known as the Five, where he signed up with Kitty Pryde’s Marauders.
Another holder of the Pyro mantle, a queer mutant named Simon Lasker, was introduced in X-Men Gold, first as a brainwashed member of Mesmero’s Brotherhood and then a turned-good romantic interest for the teenage, time-displaced Iceman, but the Allardyce version of the character was brought into the Fox X-Men universe in X2 and The Last Stand, played by Aaron Stanford, who has returned decades later to play him once more in Deadpool & Wolverine.
