Pretty's Perfunctory Persuasions

Meet Pretty Boy... a likeable, if not handsome guy. Why is that lady running away from him? Well, here goes... a post on Pretty Boy, maybe the ultimate of mind control goons, a cyborg capable of controlling minds, making his victims love what he does to them and looking positively hot while raping them. He'll make you like it, cos he's just that good.

Pretty Boy was introduced in Uncanny X-men # 228, as a member of the Reavers, a band of marauding cyborg thugs who used the mutant known only as Gateway to teleport them from their base in the Australian desert to wherever they had planned their next heist. And they weren't exactly subtle about it either...

But while most of his fellow Reavers were little more than cybernetically augmented humans with big guns, Pretty Boy possessed a few additional powers.

His foremost ability was to rewrite people's brains using filaments that shot forth from his eyes. He first used this power when he kidnapped banker Jessan Hoan, a gifted financial expert. The Reavers needed someone like her to make sure all the loot they recovered from their raids was put to good use. Jessan wasn't too eager to assist them, but that didn't stop Pretty Boy.

"No muss, no fuss, presto changeo... a whole new you! Isn't that nice?"

Marc Silvestri's art answers that question, Jessan is enjoying the sensation of being violated and reshaped into the person her assailant wants her to be. And Pretty Boy would have gotten away with it too, if not for the X-men who happened to pick this moment to attack the Reavers in their desert town.

Longshot's throwing knives cut off Pretty Boy's mind control tendrils (or, his eyes) causing him to be pretty miffed at the two X-men. He even tried to recruit Dazzler into the Reavers using the same trick, but her eyes proved to be just as dangerous...

"And once these fiber-optic filaments... burrow into your brain... you won't want to fight me anymore. You'll be a Reaver, body and soul!"

Ahhhh, yeah, that's the good stuff right there... Already claiming people body and soul in his first appearance... Lemme tell you, that Pretty Boy is going places!

As it turns out, the place he was going first was Gateway's teleporation gate. The X-men defeated the Reavers and took over their desert base, but Pretty Boy, Skullbuster and Bonebreaker managed to escape. They hooked up with Donald Pierce, former Hellfire Club member and cyborg in his own right to form a new incarnation of the Reavers.

They were later joined by Lady Deathstrike and Cole, Reese and Macon, three former Hellfire Club soldiers who were cybernetically enhanced as well. These Reavers managed to drive the X-men out, relishing in their victory and destroying the team's personal belongings out of pure spite. Here's Pretty Boy hacking away at stuff in Wolverine's quarters...

In a nice bit of characterisation, Claremont has Lady Deathstrike step in to prevent Pretty Boy from further defiling the blade of the Yashida family. Sure, she may be criminally insane and obsessed with killing Wolverine, but Yuriko still knows more about honouring and respecting a great house like the Yashida's than a hick like Pretty Boy ever could. Not that it stopped him from trying to get what he wanted, the only way he knew how...

Pretty Boy's fortright, even arrogant demeanor cost him dearly. Pierce got fed up with his constant lip and after Pretty was damaged during a confrontation with Wolverine and Jubilee, the Donald decided to play a cruel trick when he rebuilt his frame.

Still, his mostly robotic body didn't make him any less of a threat, quite the opposite. A fact Polaris discovered when the Reavers attacked Muir Island in Uncanny X-men # 255.

This time, it was the Banshee's wail that cut Pretty Boy's fiber optic mind control filaments. Pretty Boy didn't get to control any more people during Claremont's initial run on the X-books. And soon after Chris left, he was presumed to have died along with most of the Reavers during a Sentinel attack by future villain Trevor Fitzroy.

Luckily, you can't keep a good cyborg down... So by the time X-treme X-men Annual 2001 came along, Chris Claremont was back and so was Pretty Boy. As usual, both were up to no good...

Ahh, just look at those sensual, seductive and even downright pornorific poses Pretty Boy and his victim Sage are in. He is all ready to use his powers to scramble her computerlike brain and turn the X-men's mentat against them. And with no one to interrupt the process, how'd it turn out?

"I take it then, Pretty Boy's new program didn't take?"

Sage's computer mind proved to be the stronger mental CPU, easily overriding Pretty Boy's cybernetic commands and even using them to take control of him to boot. Considering that annual is the last time Chris Claremont ever wrote the character, one can only applaud the irony of Pretty Boy's story arc.

For close to 15 years, every single attempt to mind control people gets thwarted... And the minute he does succeed and has his (s)way, it backfires... Because he's actually the weaker party in the mind control.

Such delicious irony. One might even say pretty... boy.

Patchin' Up Some Mind Control

Are you sure, big guy? You look an awful lot like Wolverine to me.

Oy, Wolverine: The Patch era. Lets try and explain this as quickly as possible. During a recent mission, Wolverine and the other X-men died sacrificing themselves to save the universe. After they were brought back to life by the omniversal guardian Roma, the team decided it would be best to keep their resurrection a secret. If their enemies believed the X-men were still dead, they'd be less inclined to get revenge by hunting down the team's friends and relatives.

A sound enough plan, but it also meant the X-men couldn't even contact their loved ones to tell them they were fine. Instead, they went to live in a dusty ghost town in the Australian outback.

Not Wolverine though, he figured all he needed was a little disguise to slip back into the world unnoticed.  Never one for subtlety, he simply put on an eyepatch, called himself Patch and figured he was done. Of course, that eyepatch totally deflected the fact he still had the same hairstyle and basic bad attitude, not to mention those claws popping out of his wrists. But he can't be Wolverine, he's got an eyepatch!

Chris Claremont and John Buscema launched 'Patch' in the first ongoing Wolverine soloseries back in 1988. The opening arc featured Patch on an adventure in Madripoor.

Logan is in Madripoor to retrieve the Muramasa blade, also known as the Black Blade, a deadly weapon that belongs to the Japanese Yashida clan. The blade has the potential to corrupt and steal souls and... Know what, instead of typing up all this exposition, just read Claremont's recap in the second issue and we're right up to speed. 

The blade is in the possession of Jessica Drew, a private detective who also used to be the first Spider-Woman. If anyone can keep this dark, corrupting weapon away from the evil cultists who have been after it since issue 1, it has to be the dark angel herself, right?

Yeah, or not.

Jessica had clearly fallen under the spell of the evil blade, so it was up to Patch and the Silver Samurai of all people to fight her. Unfortunately, the blade greatly enhanced both her strength and agility, allowing her to easily ward off the two experienced fighters. That is, until Patch managed to grab the black blade himself. Big mistake.

After getting possessed by the Black Blade, Patch took off with Jessica Drew, as Silver Samurai and Jessica's best friend Lindsay McCabe gave chase. They followed them to their lair of the Muramasa cult, just as an interesting ritual was taking place...

... Owwww, yeah, that's the good stuff.

The Muramasa blade longed to taste blood, so a clearly mind controlled Jessica was about to fall victim to its hungry touch. Its hard to ignore the obvious master/slave subjugation undertones of this scene. From the victim all naked and submissive on the floor, to the agressor wearing a fright mask and getting ready to dole out some punishment.

But hey, not to worry, this is still a Marvel comic, not some sleazy smut mag. So, instead of blood and gore, this happens...

"I won't be... anybody's SLAVE!"

Proving himself stronger than the possession curse, Patch tossed away the demonic blade thereby freeing both himself and Jessica Drew. But, whatever happened to the blade itself? Well many years later it would play a hopelessly convoluted role in the needlessly complex Wolverine Origins series... so lets stick to this resolution.