I Vant To Control Your Mind (... and suck a lil blood as vell!)

For today's entry, we'll remain in New Exiles territory. During the team's first real adventure together, they visited an alternate Earth that had been ravaged by a meteor storm 50 years earlier. This cataclysmic event caused massive changes in both climate and power balance which slowly tilts to all out global warfare.

Sabretooth picks Psylocke, Mystiq, Rogue and Sage to go in and help him prevent this. No small order, especially considering that upon arriving they almost immediately run into Black Dog and the Bloodforce, a super powered group from Wakanda determined to stop them... And succeeding.

Just who Black Dog is, not to mention the other Bloodforce members, is never reallyexplained. Luckily this is still a Chris Claremont comic, so alternate Earth or not, chances are pretty decent everyone will yell out his or her codename sooner or later. So lets have the mysterious woman Sabretooth is punching take care of her own introduction...

Ahhhh yeah... Bloodwitch turns out to be a vampire who decides to feast on Creed. Or maybe she isn't, after all its daytime and she doesn't seem affected by the sunlight, despite being pale and half naked in the desert. But who has time to waste on such minutiae? Luckily, his teammates have his back.

"Oh bloody hell...!"

Ya gotta love the continued stream of vampiric puns. It seems Claremont managed to tap a... rich...vein... of and the comedy, it flows... like blood.

Ignoring all conventional notions on how a vampire's control over his victims are supposed to work, Bloodwitch proved able to mind control Creed with a single bite... As he obediently follows her instructions and attacks Psylocke. 

But right before Bloodwitch can claim her second victim of the day, the blackening skies erupt in a furious thunderstorm, courtesy of Queen Ororo, archenemy of the Black Panther.

Figuring any enemy of the Panther's might be a potential ally, Ororo invites the Exiles to her palace in Alexandria to plan their next move. There, Psylocke and Sabretooth realise Bloodwitch's influences isn't as easily shaken as they'd hoped  judging from the way they suddenly can't seem to keep their hands off each other. 

Try and ignore the dialogue straight from a dimestore romance novel as we try and find out what's really going on here...

"GOTCHA! I tagged your leader, little Psylocke and through him Bloodwitch's fangs have bitten deep into your soul! Both of you now belong to ME!"

Ah, yeah, so... vampiric mind control is like an STD now? Easily spread with the exchange of bodily fluids? That's going to be an interesting public service announcement in the age of the Twilight movie saga. "Kids, only you can prevent third party mind control... Go team Jacob!" 

In New Exiles # 3, the team faced off against Blackdog and the Bloodforce again and Bloodwitch was more than a little prepared...

Not to mention overconfident, as she mindjacks Sabretooth and Psylocke and plans to bend them to her will forever (... and when a vampire says something is 'forever', you can take that literally). 

But, considering this is New Exiles and not Bloodwitch featuring the Bloodforce, it doesn't exactly turn out the way she'd planned.

Defeating a vampire without garlic and overcoming mind control thanks to your healing factor... The Omniversal world of New Exiles truly is the gift that keeps on giving!