Don't mind (control) me, I'm crazy!

The fourth issue of Excalibur starts out in the offices of influental London banker Courtney Ross. She is quietly lamenting her relationship with Captain Britain that went sour after Brian Braddock mysteriously disappeared. Thinking him dead, she moved on with her life, but when Brian returned to the superhero scene, she found herself to be a target yet again...

Meet the Crazy Gang, an Alice in Wonderland inspired band of villains that are as inept as they are colorful. It didn't take Courteney much effort at all to escape from their clutches. Fleeing from the bank, she thinks she's safe when a police car happens to pass by. 

Alas, the car is driven by the real villain of the piece, Arcade. Using Arcade for this story actually makes sense, not only is he a well established X-men villain but he's also part of Captain Britain's rogues' gallery. By kidnapping Courteney, Arcade hoped to lure Captain Britain to his Murderworld for a rematch. Unfortunately, his way of luring the good Captain makes little to no sense.

Rachel and Kitty were enjoying a day off, living out the tired cliche of what all young women love to do: go shopping. But, at the cash register they noticed their paper pounds didn't have the actual queen on 'em but the Crazy Gang's Red Queen.

Now, from this they derived it was Arcade who was up to no good. A bit of a stretch, considering both Rachel and Kitty had never fought the Crazy Gang, nor did they have any knowledge about the Crazy Gang's recent alliance with Arcade. But hey, whatever gets you the furthest in those 22 pages a month, eh?

Meanwhile in a subplot that has nothing to do with mind control, but is still an interesting side note... Doctor Moira MacTaggert is travelling with her bodyguard Callisto to meet with Excalibur. Moira's found some anomalies in one of the team members' DNA which she wants to sort out. Nothing ever came of this, and not just because Moira, Callisto and the entire train were teleported off the face of the Earth.


If Claremont had gotten his way, it would have been revealed that the anomalous DNA readings meant Rachel didn't have a biological father. She would have been a Christ like figure, her mother Jean impregnated by the Phoenix Force acting like the biblical Holy Spirit. Sounds interesting, but still uncomfortably close to religious blasphemy for the PC 80s.


Getting back to the story at hand, it didn't take Excalibur very long to trace Arcade, the Crazy Gang and Courtney to an old, abandoned amusement park. But the fight didn't go exactly as planned, mostly because Captain Britain hadn't really figured out how to be a team player at that point.

Using an advanced piece of technology of his own design, the idiot savant Crazy Gang member Tweedledope switched his mind with Captain Britain's, causing some confusion. Which only got worse when he used a similar device on most of the other Excalibur members.

After Nightcrawler and Meggan got themselves swapped with the Crazy Gang's Jester and Knave, only Phoenix and Shadowcat were left in their proper minds and Captain "Tweedledope" Britain was hard at work to remedy that.

Admittely, as impressive as this looks, Phoenix is actually more affected by the psychic summons she receives from her baby brother Nathan Summers, covered in THIS entry. But that didn't mean Tweedledope's switcheroo tech didn't do the trick.

Never one to miss out on a brutal slaughter with zero odds of surviving, Arcade had Courtney Ross dressed up as the actual Alice in Wonderland, and the mind controlled Rachel was ever ready to obey the Red Queen's command to decapitate her. 

Yup... that's Tweedledope in the body of Captain Britain, biting the hiney of the actual Captain. Sure, why not. But, enough levity... Take us home, Shadowcat!   

"Was afraid of this. She didn't body-switch with the Executioner, she was possessed by him! To exorcise his influence... I'll have to slip completely inside her body... and open my mind totally to Ray's telepathic power... Gambling that the image of herself she sees through my thoughts...Will be enough to break her free..."

...Geez, and they still wonder why narrative thought bubbles are dead and gone. 

Still, Kitty saved Excalibur and Courtney and so far 4 of the published 5 issues of Excalibur relied heavily one one form of mind control or another. Wonder what issues 6 and 7 bring...

Oh. Right. 

Well, stick to what you know, I guess.

Shadowy Charley: Mindcontrol Xavier style

So, just where had Charles been while the King was busy conquering Earth?

Well... long story short... A while ago, Xavier got mugged by an anti mutant mob and would have died if the Morlocks hadn't taken him to their healer. He managed to put ol' humpty dumpty head back together again, but Charles didn't allow himself any time to fully heal. This caused him to have a fatal heartattack in Uncanny X-men # 200.

Luckily, his ladylove Shi'ar empress Lilandra had been aware of his anguish thanks to their mental link. She came to his aid and teleported him away so he could get the proper medical attention on board the Starjammer. But when the stargate to Earth got destroyed, Charles was left stranded in space.

This meant the X-men were cut off from their mentor for an extended period of time. But as luck would have it, another crisis brought the X-men and Xavier together again. Lilandra's terrorist sister Deathbird asked intergalactic teleporter (and singing sensation!) Lila Cheney to bring the X-men to her. Lila complied and after a brief struggle, Deathbird told the X-men what was wrong. Well, take a look. She wasn't kidding: something was very-very wrong indeed...



Professor Xavier, using his mental powers to enslave the Imperial Guard along with the Shi'ar empire itself? Surely, its still years before every writer started to paint the X-men's benign leader as an evil mastermind, so this is totally out of character for the man. But the mind control fun didn't stop there, because when the X-men confronted their mentor, he got a few new playthings.

"The X-men are mine"

But who are you, anyways? Turns out the real professor Xavier was being kept in a stasis jar, while his body and powers were copied by... A Skrull. More than 15 years before Secret Invasion, Claremont had undercover Skrulls trying to destabilise other worlds. After his ruse was discovered, the Skrull dropped the Xavier guise and took on Psylocke's form when the team tried to free Xavier. Luckily, Forge wasn't as vulnerable to Psy-Skrull's psychic knife as he'd hoped.





 "You've disrupted my pattern... triggered a partial reversion to my base form..." 

You just gotta love Claremont's knack for over-X-plaining the obvious. But still, Forge's battle with the Skrull formerly known as Xavier/Psylocke marked the end of the battle for domination of the Shi'ar empire. Professor Xavier was freed and, when told about the Shadow King threat, he decided to return home and deal with the crisis. Lets take a look how he chose to start the fight against his mind controlling arch nemesis.

That's Charles, dressed in Shi'ar battle armor (hence the triangular helmet), mind controlling a group of Scottish soldiers to hand over the X-men's old Blackbird jet. Charles had hoped the King wouldn't notice his return until it was too late, but the Shadow King was very much aware.

In fact, he sent someone very close to Xavier to take care of the professor. The King mind controlled Peter Nicholas to confront Charles when he was at the X-men's former headquarters in Salem Center. Peter who? Remember how Psylocke suckered Colossus into the Siege Perilous?

No? Well, it was one of his better deaths... Colossus was reincarnated as Peter Nicholas, a New York artist who, rather conveniently, was a dead ringer for Peter Rasputin. So much for advancing on the karmic scale. Of course, once the Shadow King found out about him, Nicholas was forced to attack Xavier and Stevie Hunter. Close to death, Xavier found himself with no other alternative than this...


Yup, that's Charles Xavier for ya... Destroying an entire person (a soul, if you will) to save his own life. He erased Peter Nicholas and brought back the original template of Peter Rasputin, who the Shadow King hadn't managed to get his claws into.

Talk about character suicide... Still, it worked and good ol' Colossus was back in the game... And did we need him! Shadow King finally revealed himself to Xavier... take a look.

Ow yeah, the King meant business. He had taken over the mutants on Muir Island: Legion, Strong Guy, Multiple Man, Siryn, Rogue and Moira McTaggert as his personal strikeforce.

His 'Islanders' had already taken out most of the X-men, but Xavier alongside X-Factor managed to defeat the King. However, it turned out to be a costly victory...

The Muir Island/Shadow King saga brought Claremont's 16 year run on Uncanny X-men to a close. He would later return for two more mind controlled runs, which we'll cover next time!