Maybe Mind Control Might Magikally Be But A Dream...

Today's entry is an interesting one...

Chris Claremont left New Mutants after issue # 54. However, he was credited with the plot to issue # 63, by which time former editor Louise Simonson had been writing the teenage mutants for close a little under a year already.

The tale touches on several then current storylines, like the apparent death of the X-men at the hands of Forge, and the changes within the New Mutants themselves. However, this still mainly feels like an inventory issue, a stock story that got dragged off the shelves to fill a hole in the schedule it really had no place filling.

Way back in New Mutants # 21, the team had a slumber party that was rudely interrupted by the arrival of Warlock. In time, the techno organic alien would be a valiant teammate, but in his first appearance, he was perceived as a villain. Illyana Rasputin engaged the creature, but when she got infected with the technovirus, she retreated to Limbo, grabbing Kitty's petdragon Lockheed for safekeeping.

Near the end of that issue, she returned...

"Professor Xavier! Boy, am I glad you're here.. Have I got a story to tell!"

However, Illyana and Chris never got around to telling that story... until New Mutants # 63 in which Kitty Pryde spotted the alien armor inside Illyana's closet and prodded her roomie to tell the story behind how she got it. Kitty's persuading turned into a little soft lesbian college dorm tickling fun, with some unexpected consequences...

After accidentally dropping into her brother's room while he was butt naked, Illyana started to wonder what was going on. After all, Kitty was still on Muir Island at the time, recovering from the injuries she received during her fight against the Marauders... and for all she knew, Peter had died with the other X-men. 

Still, in an attempt to make sense of the odd situation Illyana decided to tell Kitty all about the where and how she got that strange alien armor. After briefly bringing up the aforementioned slumber party, Illyana revealed how she desperately tried to get rid of the technovirus infecting her form once she was in Limbo. Her struggle didn't go unnoticed by the many vicious and power hungry creatures there...

"Miststress... what you do to poor loyal Skunge...?"

Inadvertent mind control, that's gotta be a new one.

Still, after catching her breath in timeless Limbo, Illyana decided to deal with the techno organic infection head on. She summoned the full power of her Belasco taught magics and performed what can best be described as an exorcism on herself. Exhausted, she teleported home via one of her light circles. And when she came to in her bedroom at Xavier's, everything seemed all right. Until she opened a random drawer and things went from bad to worse...

"I'm Illyana Rasputin, Peter's little sister! Don't you know me?"

As it turned out, the X-men really didn't know her... Even Kitty and Peter are totally unaware of her. Shocked, Illyana realises her unreliable teleportation powers might have stranded her in yet another alternate reality... It's not like it never happened before.

They also never heard of Lockheed, thinking Illyana meant the X-men's plane when she asked where he was. Even worse: she couldn't simply teleport away, something was blocking her abilities... and to add insult to injury, these X-men decided to lock her in her room until Professor Xavier could figure out what to make of her...Illyana wasn't planning on waiting that long...

The X-men overheard Lockheed's arrival, but the tiny dragon viciously attacked Colossus and Cyclops, before carrying off Illyana to safety. They both ran into the woods of the Xavier estate, while the X-men chased them. Illyana noticed how odd the team was behaving. Cyclops was clumsy at best with his optic blasts and why was Wolverine attacking her with a knife?

"Lockheed, did you see that? OUR Wolverine wouldn't have been fazed by a steel I-beam! And why the knife? Why not use his claws? Hey... he doesn't have claws!"

Her musings were interruped by Lockheed, who spit a huge ball of flame that revealed a rather disturbing truth. Illyana hadn't teleported into an alternate reality, she was on board a giant spaceship that had an area set up as Xavier's school for gifted youngster. And judging from the size of the vessel, it has plenty of room for that sort of thing...

"I crept closer to the observation window... spun a chair aside when it blocked my view...
And came face to face with one of the original inhabitants!"

One thing, though... that original inhabitant was dead. Courtesy of that other presence on the observation deck...

"At first, I thought Magneto was the villain. Then I recognized it... a Sleazoid!
The X-men had fought their kind before!"

Half paralyzed by the Brood's unexplained gunk spray, Illyana scrambled for safety while the Brood took on Lockheed... and found time to deliver some exposition...

"And now, my dear, since you are Colossus' sister,
you, too, will make an excellent host subject!"

Instinctly using her powers to escape the Brood, Magik teleported herself away to the relative safety of a snowy glen. Here, she mastered the use of the energy weapon she'd taken from the deceased alien on the observation deck. Once confident in its use, Magik 'ported back to the ship, ready for action. When she realised the Brood had already left, she donned the dead alien woman's armor, just to be safe.

The second Illyana got suited up, the X-men charged in, ready to take her into custody. She managed to evade them long enough to run into the Brood again, who was about to do what all Brood do best...

"As the egg hatches within him, it will absorb all his knowledge, memories, abilities... and he himself will be... transformed... or perhaps I should say... subsumed into one of us!"
It's a fascinating process. Perhaps you'd care to watch?"

Turns out, Illyana wasn't... Fortunately, the Brood had plenty of other things to discuss and reveal...

"I found this ship, slaughtered its crew, cloned adult X-men, altered their memories and injected them with the eggs! You see, they are under my influence! They think *I* am their adored mentor..."

So, that's the Brood's big plan. The actual X-men might have defeated the embryos implanted in them by the Brood queen, it's always a possibility to clone the team and infect them. A host body's a host body, after all... right?

Unfortunately for the Brood, the cloned X-men overhead his ranting as they came in chasing after Illyana... With the enchantment broken, they were in no mood to aid their 'professor Xavier'. After an entertaining struggle, Lockheed kills the 'Xavier Brood' with a fire blast, but the survivors were still feeling pretty guilty...

"We were hypnotized... he made us believe he was our teacher... our friend!"

Even worse, Cy-clone-ops... he also implanted an embryo deep inside all of you. So do try and say hello to that tiny Brood baby just waiting to hatch and take over. Wolverine is ready to die to keep the rest of humanity safe, begging Magik to finish him and the others, but the mistress of Limbo has a better idea...

"I swung it with all my might... and the darkness faded and there was only the light."

So, Illyana's soulsword, specifically designed to be ineffective against material objects, is able to perform an instantaneous multiple abortion of sorts? And what about Wolverine's healing factor? Shouldn't that have taken care of the embryo?

After exorcising the Brood embryos, Magik soon found herself back in her own proper time and place... presumably popping up during the aforementioned scene in New Mutants # 21. But after hearing this story, Kitty really wanted to try Illyana's alien armor on...

So that's it... Illyana used her magics to engage in a little mind control of her own, changing the thoughts and memories of the cloned X-men so they'd eventually develop their own seperate identities, no longer restricted by their genetic mold like most other clones.

Keeping the armor as a memento of a rather special adventure, Illyana returned with Lockheed in time to grace the closing pages of New Mutants # 21. After that, Claremont spends the closing pages of the issue with Illyana and Kitty discussing Magik's caper, while Kitty wore hér armor...

And then, Illyana woke up.

Yup... the space adventure against the Brood had been nothing but a dream inside Illyana's bigger dream of being with her absent best friend, deceased brother and the other X-men. A very understandable desire, but this story simply doesn't seem like the right vehicle to tell this.

New Mutants # 63 was cover dated May 1988, but for it to have real impact it should have been published at least 3.5 years earlier. That way, this rather interesting tale about a band of cloned X-men running a planet size starship would be in continuity... and not a dream. It also doesn't make sense, because # 21, in which the armor first debuted, ís still in continuity which means there's quite the mystery left to explain...

And no, Marvel editors, don't be too smart for your own good. While this might be the 80s and the X-men *did* die in Dallas... It'll be a cold day in hell before anyone buys someone coming out of the shower to tell Illyana it was all a bad dream...

... No, not even Bobby 'Iceman' Drake.

Subtle Brooding part II: Embry-whoa! 'tcherdoin' there?

When we last left the X-men, professor Charles Xavier had just woken up from a long, self induced coma... seemingly looking none the worse for wear.

"Professor, you're awake! You're all right!"

If only they knew that Xavier had been overcome by the very reason he put himself into a coma: the Brood egg growing inside him.

In fact, the only reason he woke up at all was the fact the alien embryo had gained control of Charles' mind. As would be revealed in later issues, a Brood zygote had superior regenerative abilities. So if Charles' coma had purely been the cause of a physical or mental injury, it would have cleared it right up. Since Xavier went into a voluntary coma, the fact he woke up with the embryo still inside him was definitive proof the Brood was running the show.

Speaking of the Brood being in control, a few days after the professor woke up, the Shi'ar royal cruiser Z'reee Shar appeared in orbit over Earth to take Lilandra home. But before she returned to challenge her sister Deathbird, a banquet was held on board the vessel to thank the X-men for their help.

Charles was still too weak to attend (which also ensured there would be at least one Brood still on Earth). But the other X-men and their houseguest Carol 'formerly Ms. Marvel' Danvers attended...

"We're among friends, so why am I on edge?!
I keep spottin' traces of familiar scents, but I can't place 'em."

Turns out Wolverine had every reason to be suspicious when Lilandra suffered a seizure halfway during her speech...

Sheesh, looks like the princess can't hold her liquour...

"Your courage does you credit, Cyclops... but your cause is lost."

And Deathbird wasn't kidding. A hidden explosive device took out the entire team, leaving them vulnerable to whatever the Brood were planning...

"Satisfied, clan master Ram'n'ehan?"

That Ram'n'ehan was, and then some... He promised the X-men would serve as host-forms for the spawn of their blessed ruler, the 'mother-of-us-all'. The Brood Queen by any other name... And when they came to in Uncanny X-men # 162, they were decidedly being mind controlled, thinking they were on the Shi'ar throneworld.

"Sleazoids! The Brood... we're their prisoners!"

Chalk it up to Logan's healing factor overcoming the effects of the mind control, but he got brief flashes of what was really going on. His fellow X-men and Carol Danvers were mostly oblivious to the actual reality of the situation, and even his partial clarity didn't save him from suffering this fate...

"Look into my eyes, hear my voice... am I truly so terrible to behold?"

And with that, the corruption of the X-men was done...  

Masque minus mind control: Tea & Tentacles

After 100 entries on mind control, lets give that particular quirk of Chris' a little rest and focus on another of his guilty pleasures: the physical alteration and mutilation of his leading ladies... Preferably by having them grow tentacles for hands.

Now, before anyone stands up and yells 'tentacle porn alert!'... Keep in mind it might not be as Freudian as it sounds. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, even if its being written by a man whose female characters enjoy dressing up in black leather whenever they're feeling either naughty or evil.

In fact, involuntary body modification goes as far back as the 1950s and the dozens of goofy Superman stories involving mishaps with multicolored Kryptonite. Even Stan Lee had Spider-Man grow some extra arms, not to mention the Thing's unfortunate transformation or Bruce Banner's uncontrollable shifts into the Hulk.

Chris's dabbling in the genre really started during the Brood saga. The parasitic aliens allowed him to combine his first love mind control with his new sweetheart: unwanted transformation.

Speaking of tentacle porn, look at the stingers on thát one...

Pretty quickly after that storyline, Claremont decided to explore body modification and notions of beauty some more by having Angel captured by Callisto and her Morlocks Uncanny X-men # 169 & 170. Callisto planned to marry the beautiful X-man, no matter what the other X-men had to say. These issues also introduced the Morlock known as Masque, who... oh, let him explain his own shtick.

Incidentally, Uncanny X-men # 170 was one of the first X-men issues yours truly ever read. These scenes had a lasting impact on an eight year old's mind. 

"STOP IT!! She's not a toy, she's a human being... who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect!"

...Words to live by, Chris...

Anyhoo, Masque molds flesh as easily as clay, reshaping a person's body any way he sees fit... Unfortunately, he can't affect his own deformed figure, making him rather resentful of people he considers 'pretty'...

Masque would be responsible for several forced physical transformations, specifically the aforementioned tentacled ladies trick. But he was usually just plain cruel. Case in point: Look at what he put poor Kitty Pryde through in Uncanny X-men # 179. 

This scene only happened because Kitty was forced to honor the promise she made Caliban after he helped the X-men save Angel. In return, she would marry him and join the Morlocks. However, as part of the Morlock initiation ritual, Masque gets to radically alter your old appearance so you can truly start your new sewer life... fresh faced.

Kitty didn't really take to Masque's meddling, in a scene that nicely mirrors Nightcrawler's reaction nine issues earlier.

Angering a disfigured mutant who can turn you into anything he wants? Sheesh, and I thought Kitty was supposed to be the smart one.

Not exactly a pretty picture. But, easily reverted. In the years that followed, Claremont found Masque's real niche: tentacles! 

Jean Grey's transformation was all part of a plot too complex to explain here. But it involved Masque recasting some of the Morlocks into twisted versions of the X-men who at that time were presumed missing and/or dead.

After being utterly horrified by her new appendages, Jean actually learned how to control and use them in battle effectively. Naturally, this look was reversed before long. That didn't stop Claremont from having Masque try it again during the events of 2003's X-treme X-men storyline Storm: The Arena.

Targetting his old boss Callisto, Masque gave her a set of python like tendrils... an addition Cal actually welcomed and gladly kept her altered appearance at the end of the story.

Speaking of altered appearances... Remember how Masque's main frustration was being trapped in a horrifyingly scarred body his powers couldn't affect. This drove him to commit most of his violent, antisocial acts. Such a cruel twist of fate, if only he could help himself...

Say what? Claremont had Masque experience a secondary mutation that removed this limitation?

Wow, that means he'll jump at the chance to finally fix himself up. Can inner peace be far behind when one's greatest hang up has been dealt with?

Lets see how zen Masque looked when he appeared next...

Yup, he changed himself alright. From a sadistic, crusty, old disfigured man in the sewers to a beach blonde Marilyn Monroe-esque bimbo who likes to wear geisha outfits, and runs an underground superhuman fighting arena with her entourage of SM inspired lackies.

...

What an arc! Chris, you magnificent bastard you. Never...ever change, y'hear?

The long and winding road... leads me to your mind control!

Dear readers, please be aware: the following post will be a long and hopelessly convoluted one, dealing with different types of mind control that tend to combine into one rather difficult to grasp mess. I considered chopping it up, but hey... that would distract from the fact that Fantastic Four issues # 13-18 are really a gawdful rollercoaster ride filled with stale plots, cheap pastiches and... urgh, here we gooooo...


Issue #13 mainly serves as buildup to a confrontation with the Kree Accuser Ronan on the Moon. The actual fun starts in issue # 14 when Ronan decides to enlist the Invisible Woman, after having easily warded off attacks from the FF and guest stars Iron Man and X-men Z-lister detective Charlotte Jones (...For those of you keeping count: Its been 10 issues since he started on the book and Charlotte Jones is the 5th X-universe character Claremont blatantly inserted in the book).



So... Sue's body is being taken over by an alien parasite with the snappy nickname Mannequin. Mannequin? As in 'genitalia-lacking-doll-you-model-clothes-on'? Wow... Well... I'm sure all the other good names were taken. But hey, all kidding aside... the pink, blobby Mannequin is an actual threat. Sue is completely under Ronan's spell and attacks her former teammates. The Mannequin quickly turns Sue's body into something quite horrific. Becoming more monstrous by the minute, her thoughts are becoming more savage and predatorlike as well. And the worst part is: there's no way to reverse the process, Sue is stuck like this forever...

Now and here's when it gets hopelessly complicated. Being the strongwilled woman she is, Sue breaks free from the Mannequin's mental control. She then helps out to kick some Kree butt. All's well that ends well? Not quite... one) she's still turning into a monster and two) she's turning into a monster in the Negative Zone of all places! Yes, at the end of their battle against the Accuser, one of Reed's dimensional teleportation gizmos malfunctions, causing the FF to get stranded in the Zone... desperately teleporting blind, hoping to get home...



In their quest to get home, the FF fight several different not very interesting foes, including Kree Avengers and the alien Brood (another X-men villain!) and then... its time for a visit to Shadow City, featuring Lockdown and Rosetta Stone!

Okay, here we go: Shadow City is a virtual reality construct, created by a society on the brink of extinction. In order to survive, they locked themselves away inside a virtual reality universe where they could leisurely sit out whatever is threatening their world. Problem is: no one seems to remember they are in a VR-world in the first place! The Fantastic Four arrive on the scene by accident, quickly get knocked out by robots that guard and monitor the VR-systems (yah, I know... believable) and soon, they're plugged into the Shadow City simulation as well.

In Shadow City, the FF is actually a team of villains known as the Tetrad. You got your Stormy Sue, you got your Matchstick Johnny, your Richard Reed and of course Grim Ben. The Tetrad is continuously thwarted by the hero of Shadow City... Lockdown and his young ward Rosetta Stone.


Dark protector of a corrupt city filled with dangerous villains no one else dares stand up to? Battling evil with gadgets, martial arts and his own genius intellect? Cruising the streets with his high tech car? Remind you of anyone... Nana-nana-nana... copyright violation!

Anyways, the Tetrad aren't the only villains in Shadow City, Lockdown also had dealing with an all female team known as the Twisted Sisters. Their superpowers compliment each other... The girls Helix, Coil, Ringtoss and Gyre are able to completely transform a person into their own image... Twisting and changing their bodies and personalities into whatever they please. Here, take a look at how they try and change Sue...



So... Lets see what's happened to Susan Storm-Richards in the space of five issues... Got her body taken over by an alien parasite that changed her into a flesh hungry monster... Only to get mind controlled by a Virtual Reality System that made her believe she's the Shadow City criminal known as Stormy Sue... And then to top it all off, her essence is molded into Torque, the latest Twisted Sister!

In short: the mind controlled victim of an alien parasite is digitally remastered and then mentally recast as a trampy SM-enthusiast with teeth for shoes? Chris, Chris, Chris....CHRIST!

Let the mind control games begin!

Ow, how time flies. Excuse the long delay in posting (but, judging from both the number of page views and the comments not too many of you noticed I was gone. Its 2009 and Chris Claremont is still writing comics. Oh well, there's something to be said for consistency in the universe. So, to celebrate the new year, lets look back at a comic Claremont wrote back in 1999. These are scenes from the sequel to Contest of Champions, a miniseries from the early 80s.
Contest of Champions only came to be because the Americans withdrew from the 1980s Olympics. Say what? Ow, its quite simple... Marvel Comics had planned to celebrate the 1980 Summer Olympics in Soviet Russia by releasing a limited series in which international heroes competed against each other in a big game. Sounds Olympic enough, right? But then tragedy struck: Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and the US reacted by not competing in the Games.

A nice symbolic gesture, to be sure... But Marvel had about 40 pages of art and story done. So, now what? The answer came when Marvel editor Mark Gruenwald decided to revive the project, using the cosmic gamesman the Grandmaster as impetus for the heroes to fight. When Contest of Champions was released in 1982, it was a big hit... So, it took 17 years for a sequel to be made and who better to write it than Chris Claremont?

Claremont's basic premise: a previously unknown band of aliens known as The Coterie come to Earth and recruit many heroes to prove their mettle against each other. The winners win... wel, something. As it turns out, The Coterie don't actually exist... the real instigators are the Badoon and the Brood, two alien races with a score to settle...

In true Claremontian fashion, the heroes are duped into fighting each other thanks to nannites... a very post modern way of mind control. The second they got kidnapped, they were exposed to mind altering microscopic nannites that made them more agressive and careless.


And ow yes, the Brood wanted to implant the winners of the matches with Brood eggs so they could breed the perfect, unbeatable warriors... Of course, they failed... Hey, the good guys still win.

"Brood her? I hardly know her!"

As if it wasn't too obvious by now... Chris Claremont sure loves mind control. Take Uncanny X-men # 155 for instance, in which the team has to face Deathbird, an old Ms. Marvel villain who turns out to be princess Lilandra's sister.

Kidnapping both Lilandra and professor Xavier, she almost got Earth destroyed by the Shi'ar imperial fleet. But despite all these grand schemes, she was also ready for some one on one action. For instance, in the panel above where one of Deathbird's henchmen fires on Storm and Corsair.

Apparently, it was some form of mind altering beam, which caused them to hallucinate and attack their friends. Same old, same old, you might say... Yes. But the tentacle pulling the trigger actually belonged to a member of the Brood species. Artist Dave Cockrum originally designed it as a one off character, but both he and Claremont agreed that the creature's look merited further stories... So,  a few issues later (Uncanny X-men # 162) we are treated to this delicious scene...



Gotta love that Dave Cockrum artwork.

Fleshing out their backstory, Claremont reveals the Brood are parasitic race of insectoids that infect other species with their offspring. The Brood eggs slowly mature in the host's body and once they hatch, they literally transform the body and mind of their victims.

The Brood are led by a gigantic queen who showed up shortly after the X-men's fight with Deathbird. The team was mind controlled by the queen, thinking they were at a fancy Shi'ar banquet in their honour when in fact, the queen was planting her royal embryos in each and every one of them.


But the Brood queen hadn't taken Wolverine's mutant healing factor into account. His immune system saw the Brood egg as an infection and proceeded to deal with it accordingly, very nearly killing Wolverine in the process.




Naturally, Wolverine survived.

Learning of his fate from a Brood he ambushed, Wolverine rejoined the X-men but couldn't bring himself to tell them they were carrying young Brood queens. Through various rather well plotted means, the other X-men (and Lilandra!) eventually did find out and in the end managed to beat the embryos.

And that, as they say, is that... Well, no... There's just one little snag. The Brood queen boasted that the X-men had already lost, despite the fact they just beat her on the Brood homeworld of Madrizar. Y'see, there was one egg left. Guess who got it...






You guessed it! None other than the X-men's leader had become infected by the Brood. Racing back to Earth, the X-men tried to save their leader but to no avail. Charles Xavier turned and in his place, a young Brood queen arose.

After a fierce battle, Xavier briefly managed to regain control of his mind, begging his students to kill him. Luckily, thanks to the advanced Shi'ar medical knowledge no one had to off the prof. Using some skincells, the Starjammer's doctor Sikorski cloned a new body and managed to remove Xavier's mind from the Brood creature.

Incidentally, the Brood embryo had been infuencing Charles' decisions for quite a while. Long before he turned, Xavier was doing the Brood's bidding. For instance, by gathering a new group of young mutants around him. Officially, he merely wanted to help them learn to control their powers... unoffically, the Brood wanted to infect these New Mutants as well in their first steps to conquer Earth




In New Mutants # 3, semi-psychic mutant Danni Moonstar finally discovers the source of the nightmares she's been having. Its the alien Brood queen, prepping her and her teammates for the big change. The Queen would have succeeded too, if not for the timely intervention of the X-men, the Starjammers and Binary.

With all the Brood eggs destroyed, Earth seemed safe... But heck, you just can't keep a good space parasite down. A few years later, a band of Brood crashlanded their space shark (don't ask) on Earth and the game was on again.

Their game plan hadn't really changed: conquer Earth, but this time around the Brood only infected mutants so they could create a formidable fighting force of super powered Broodlings. Naturally, once the X-men got wind of the Brood's presence, they came a-running to do some emergency extermination.

That didn't go exactly as planned... The Brood had infected a mutant called Temptress, who was able to use her pheromones to... wait for it... mind control people. Temptress took control of Rogue and was bringing her and the recently re-infected Wolverine to the Brood Queen when the inevitable happened back in Uncanny X-men # 234.



Sigh... You'd think the Brood would have caught on after the first time. You just don't waste a perfectly fine egg on the Wolverine...

Or, to coin one of Claremont's own pet phrases "That trick NEVER works!"