Breaking the mindcontrol mastermold

Is mind control always wrong?

Judging from the 75+ previous posts, the answer might seem obvious... but no, sometimes mind control isn't merely a tired writer's tool or a way to act out fanboyish obsessions with power and seduction.

Even Chris Claremont proved that on occassion... For instance, in today's entry covering Uncanny X-men 246 & 247 that feature two forms of mind control, written from a whole new angle.

The two parter starts with Carol Danvers in New York, visiting Arabella Jones, an old friend from her days as Ms. Marvel.

No, no worries, its not an error, that ís Rogue talking like she's Carol. Because, well, she kind of is. Rogue once used her absorption powers to drain Ms. Marvel, but she didn't just get her powerset, Carol's persona was imprinted on Rogue's mind as well. 

Until recently, it had remained dormant but during a traumatic trip to Genosha, Rogue was forced to relinquish control of her mind to the Carol aspect of her persona in order to survive... Causing the two to fight for dominance ever since.

Quite frankly, I'm not quite sure why the X-men were cutting 'Carol' so much slack. It may sound cruel, but she really wasn't much more than a psychic imprint of the real Carol Danvers... A woman who was still very much alive... Fighting alongside professor Xavier and the Starjammers in space at the time, as the cosmically powered Binary. Having this bitter afterimage torture Rogue seems cruel.

Of course Claremont didn't allow himself an easy way out and went out of his way to point out that the two personas in Rogue's head caused a form of static that made it impossible for telepaths to go in and sort stuff out. How... convenient.

Still... its powerful stuff, if you're willing to consider 'Carol' to be a real person. Speaking of people who aren't exactly real... Does anyone remember how Doctor Strange and Illyana altered the timeline to make sure the Hyborean wizard Kulan Gath wouldn't rise to power and turn Manhattan into his own private barbaric playpen?

Well, they did... and due to their tampering, a supersentinel from the future called Nimrod was shifted to our present. Nimrod is like the Terminator, capable of assuming humanoid form and learning from his mistakes... yet he always seemed unable to adapt his nigh fluorescent pink hue into something a little more imposing.

Anyhoo, whenever Nimrod wasn't wiping out mutants or fighting crime, he was enjoying a relatively quiet life as Nicholas Hunter, foreman of a New York explosives crew. So far so good, until one day he picked up a piece of metal on a jobsite that wasn't simply debris...

Turns out what seemed like an ordinary piece of shrapnel, was actually the command module of the prime Sentinel Master Mold... the grand poobah of all mutant hunting robots... and a very early predecessor of Nimrod. Which would explain why he would be mostly pink as well... Sigh.

One might argue that this, shall we say, familiarity allowed the Master Mold to take control of Nimrod... But following that exact same logic, shouldn't my Windows 3.11 from 1992 be able to completely hack and control Windows 7? After all, it came before... right? Ahh, suspension of disbelief.

Getting back to the story, Master Mold quickly used the materials of the building site to grow to gigantic size, adapting the advanced Nimrod technologies to gain even more upgrades in the process. Psylocke and Rogue (with 'Carol' behind the wheel) were the first to take notice of this threat and Carol flew into action wearing her old Ms. Marvel duds. Lets see how it went...

  

The Master Mold knocked out Carol, giving Rogue her own body back... Groggy or not, she helped the innocent bystanders get to safety and before long the X-men showed up to fight this massive menace. But, as it turns out, Master Mold was forced to fight another opponent on the inside as well...

So... when two entirely artificial intelligences are combined... a human telepath can still affect them? Wow, that's a real brain zinger. 

In the end, the X-men were able to blast the Master Mold to bits... but by then it had already incorporated Nimrod's capacity for preservation. If only a single shred remained intact, the robot could and would recover... and the nightmare would start again. Also, the internal bickering between a pink faced father of mutant killing robots and a futuristic killing machine who for no other reason dan too bee distinctive, started toiking like a Nooow Joisey tough guy... Ahhh, feggedaboutit!

Dazzler came up with a solution to the problem: simply send the Master Mold through the Siege Perilous... that mystical portal to the afterlife and reincarnation Roma gave the X-men a while back. Anyone who passes through the Siege, will be judged based upon his or her actions in life and given a new life based on the outcome.

Despite their inner monologues, Master Mold and Nimrod are still very much machines... So, Dazzler basically sent two toaster ovens to be reincarnated... And a few years later we ended up with Bastion and Operation: Zero Tolerance.

So much for balancing the scales and granting a new lease on life... There he is, still robotic, still fulfilling his notion of the prime directive.

And he STILL dressed in pink. I guess karma really is Boy George's bitch.

Ms. Marvel's Mark Missing Mindcontrol

After five elaborate posts on all the mind control misery Claremont put the X-men's Sage through, lets flip the script a little and take a look at something rather rare: Chris Claremont judging another writer for using mind control.

Over 30 years ago in Avengers # 200, writer David Michelinie and artist George Perez celebrated Earth's mightiest heroes' anniversary by having Ms. Marvel give birth to a baby she didn't even know she was having until a few days before she went into labour.

One might think that the unexplained, accelerated pregnancy of one of their own would cause the world's premiere superhero team to be, at the very least, a little cautious. But look at them gushing over the infant.

Yet, that's not even the worst part: the child quickly grows up to be a man who calls himself Marcus Immortus, son of the ruler of Limbo and... the man who got Carol pregnant in the first place. Guess that explains that convoluted storytitle The child is father too... And wouldn't that make a great episode of Maury?

Without batting an eye, the Avengers accept Marcus' story about how he was trapped in Limbo after his father Immortus died and that his only way of escape was by being born in 'our' dimension. He fell in love with Ms. Marvel while using Limbo's time scanning machinery to study Earth and an idea formed: He yanked her to his domain for, well... see for yourself...

"With a subtle boost from Immortus' machines... you became mine"? 

As if dragging someone to your place against their will and holding them hostage for weeks weren't enough reasons for concern, he freely admits he was mind controlling her so she'd be more open to him... impregnating her with himself. Impregnating? Lets just call it what it really is: he drugged and raped her.

Yet, the Avengers didn't seem to notice or care. Not even when Carol suddenly declared she'd realised he might be the best thing that happened to her in a long time, prompting the decision to return to Limbo with her 'son'/'lover'/abducter...

Sheesh, who knew Limbo was a suburb of Stockholm?

Avengers # 200 caused a lot of controversy among fans, and rightfully so. Even Chris Claremont, who wrote Ms. Marvel's first solo title a few years before that, got upset by how she was literally shipped off to Limbo. So, he set off to right a wrong by having Carol return to Earth in Avengers Annual # 10 (1981). 

As a coda to the annual and the storyline from Avengers, Carol confronted her former teammates who were still blissfully unaware of what they'd let happen. They even wanted to know what happened to Marcus, because the two of them appeared so much in love. 

Ouch.

And she went on from there...

Amen.

(But, to play devil's advocate for a second, no one took into account the possibility that Carol wasn't the only one Marcus was mentally influencing back in Avengers # 200. Who's to say he didn't use Immortus' machines to make the team less suspicious of him?)

Getting back to Chris Claremont...Some might say his little tirade is a little unfair, considering he does this sort of thing all the time. Even to Carol herself. Heck, you could even make the case that Claremont was being a little childish, lashing out at another writer for what he had done to 'his' character...

Either way Avengers Annual # 10 reads like the pot calling the kettle mind controlled. But fair's fair...

... He's not wrong.

Be that as it may: not being wrong doesn't necessarily mean you're less of a hypocrite, as we'll see next time.

Ms Marvel and the big bloated brain busters

While returning to this blog after almost three years, I noticed an unfinished vintage post that had been lingering in the data buffer all that time.

Might as well polish it off and present a little tale of the 1970s, when Chris Claremont wrote the first ongoing Ms. Marvel series..

Carol Danvers developed as a strong female character under Chris' guidance, often juggling responsibilities as a superhero with her private life and her real job as editor of WOMAN magazine (yes, this was after all the 1970s, so Carol rode in on the fiery waves of the women's lib movement, making sure everyone could hear her roar).

Still, strong, independent females and Chris Claremont tend to be, well... an unfortunate combination.
Take a look at what happened in issue #23...

"It will be a simple matter... to remold her mind and soul... in MY image." 

Ahhh, don't you just love the smell of male domination in the morning?

The Mysterio-lookalike, in case you were wondering, is known as the Faceless One. This one-off baddy is an alien, hellbent on destruction, conquest and all that other good, fun stuff maniacal menaces are in to.

Still, despite all his grandiose claims, Marvel breaks free of the Faceless One's control and strikes back...

                                       

So, yeah... not only does the bad guy not have a face, he turns out to be bodiless as well. Yes people, Carol got mentally enslaved by little more than a disembodied head. 

Needless to say, so weird and unbelievable a villain like the Faceless One would never be seen again. Surely, the notion that a mere floating head is enough to conquer the lead character of your book is utterly ridiculous and...

Ow.

Well.

Yeah... There was that other time the Kree Supreme Intelligence and that other big floating head thingie MODOK teamed up to turn Carol into a slave.

... I am woman, hear me roar indeed.                  

Well, in Chris' defence, he worked out his obsession with big giant male heads dominating womenfolk when the 80s dawned.

I guess thát's something, at least...