And The World Burns To White Hot Mind Control Part II: All New, All Different, Ah Heck, Not This Again

The backstory Chris Claremont came up with for Uncanny X-men's participation in 2005's Summer crossover House Of M is a little... convoluted.

Right before the Scarlet Witch's reality altering wave hit, Psylocke and Marvel Girl were somehow able to escape its effects by teleporting into the outerdimensional home of the Phoenix, the White Hot Room. Meanwhile, the creation of the 'House of M' as the new reality got to be called caused severe ripples in the Omniverse, resulting in a transdimensional tsunami that threated to tear all of reality asunder.

Omniversal guardians Roma and Opal Luna Saturnyne sent Captain Britain and Meggan to Earth to deal with whatever was causing these problems. If they failed in their mission, Roma would wipe the reality from existence after two days.

Unfortunately, the second Cap and Meggan entered the House of M, they were immediately incorporated into the fabric of the newly structured world and forgot all about their mission... Heck, they were too busy being the king and queen of England. And that's when Phoenix and Psylocke arrive, only to fall prey to this reality wide form of mind control as well.

So, are we up to speed? Good. Let's deal with the question how Betsy and Rachel were even able to enter the White Hot Room... neither of them are pandimensional teleporters, after all.

"That's enough downtime, sweeties. No more revelations. Back to the salt mines."

The man in the loin cloth is Jamie Braddock, the reality warping older brother of Betsy and Brian. He had saved Rachel and his sister from the initial effects of the House of M, for reasons entirely his own. Being a reality mucker, he undoubtedly would have been able to return them with their memories of the real world intact, but they fell prey to the mind control as well.

Reuniting with king Brian and queen Meggan, the two X-(wo)men enjoy a proper breakfast when Captain Britain reveals he's been having certain... odd feelings. Like the life he's been leading is fake, or something. But being a king, I'm pretty sure he'll handle this with proper decorum.

"You're not Courtney Ross! She's Opal-Lun Sat-Yr... Opposed tyrant of Earth 839!"

Well, no, not exactly... this is actually the real Courtney Ross, well, from this Earth at least. Several of her alternate reality counterparts have become variations of Opal Luna Saturnyne, the omniversal guardian who's threatened to destroy our reality in order to save the omniverse. That's why Brian calls her a murderer... but the Scarlet Witch's mind control spell doesn't allow him to put two and two together just yet.

After calming down a little, courtesy of a little telepathy and psychic katana action, king Brian commences his daily duties, starting with the morning briefing...

"Flash analysis suggests that one of the may be genetically related to lord Magneto."

Intrigued by the notion that Magneto or one of his children might be up to something in his backyard, Brian quickly forgets his confusion and suits up... ready to check this report out. Rachel and Betsy join him in his investigation and it doesn't take long for them to run into this reality's version of the Marauders.

Callisto and her team are ordered to apprehend the two superhumans Brian and company came here to find. One of them is the Juggernaut, who is by no means related to Magneto and his brood... So who is this mystery mutant? Not who you'd expect... 

"Betsy, she looks... Nothing like Magneto."

How very observant, ladies. Meet Talia Josephine Wagner, aka Nocturne and yes, she really is a Magneto's granddaughter... Albeit from Earth-2182. On this world, the Scarlet Witch (her again) fell in love with Nightcrawler and started a family together. Nocture had been a key player and founding member of Exiles, before getting herself exiled in the 616 right when the House of M hit.

Ow, you wonder what her powers are? Well, there's a reason Chris Claremont took a liking to her, see if you can guess why...

"She's trying to possess you!"

She failed to possess Psylocke, but just as the Marauders were closing in on the three of them, Rachel decided getting herself (mind)controlled might just be their ticket out of there.

"You want to possess someone, Nocturne... Try me."

Welcome to Uncanny X-men # 464, by the way... the reason for the sudden artistic shift is rather simple: Chris Bachalo had replaced Alan Davis as regular penciller which really altered the feel of the story, but, thankfully, not the amount of mind control... heavens to murgatroyd. 

Nocturne took over Rachel and used her telekinetic powers to fly to safety at incredible speed. Psylocke followed the duo using her own telekinesis and once she caught up with them, Betsy realised there was something wrong...

"I'll fight if I have to. And I'll WIN!"

So fight they did, after all this is a superhero comic which means the good guys will duke it out amongst themselves to kill some time and pages... In the end, you can guess what happened.

"For the moment, she's better off where she is"

Rachel really is very kind... Not only allowing herself to get taken over by a complete stranger, but generously sharing her body with Nocturne. The three of them plan to rejoin Captain Britain and Meggan, but they are suddenly caught in one of Jamie Braddock's reality warps...

As best he can, the maddened reality twister tells them what they need to know about the House of M and Roma's deadline, before spitting them back...

"I'm fine, it's the universe that's sick"

Describing a quantum tear in the fabric of creation as 'the universe is sick' is a bit of a stretch. But what the hey... that "EeEeEeE" is the sound of the Banshee's wail, knocking out Rachel and Psylocke. And while Nocturne escapes from Rachel's body, Psylocke has another vision of sorts of the Omega Sentinel attacking Brian and Meggan because they opposed lord Magneto... Which leads to the end game in Uncanny X-men # 465 in which quite a bit happens...

Psylocke and company are fighting the Marauders some more... With Nocturne possessing Banshee to take out several of their number before forcing Sean Cassidy to knock himself unconscious. Ahh, mind control.

While back at Braddock Manor, Karima Shapandar and her Sentinels get overrun by members of the Captain Britain corps who had been working as members of the royal court who suddenly, for no discernable reason, remember who they are...

While Psylocke and company are fighting the Marauders some more... With Nocturne possessing Banshee to take out several of their number before forcing Sean Cassidy to knock himself unconscious. Ahh, mind control.

And then, that pesky little tear in the fabric of reality reared its ugly head again...

"I'm guessin', it's a hole. Gotta be plugged?"

'A' for effort there, Juggernaut... But in spite of his massive girth, stuffing the Blob into the rip didn't exactly fill 'er up... And Roma is getting ready to annihilate everyone and everything. Which doesn't mean there can't still be a bit of mind control before the end... Not including the many, many times Meggan has been brutally taken over in order for either Roma or Jamie Braddock to deliver some kind of dire message.

Speaking of Meggan, she's the key to solving this. That and a little mind control.

"My possessing you didn't work before..."

 "We use our strengths to close the seams of the tear... so Rachel can seal them."

In case anyone was wondering... No, there is no explanation for the fact that a) Nocture takes over Psylocke or b) Meggan is sacrificing herself, not to mention c) why that whole song and dance was even necessary, considering anyone can grab this supposedly metaphysical rip and yank the edges together so it can be stuffed like an old sock. 

During the closing moments of the issue, Captain Britain is allowed to honor his wife's sacrifice... A heartfelt moment to be sure, but continuitywise this took place during House of M... And that crossover not only ended with the Scarlet Witch wishing for no more mutants, it also restored reality to the way it was... Which meant that the entire world hit the reset button, save for those few heroes who were near Wanda when she cast her spell.

Captain Britian wasn't one of them, so he should have reverted to his pre-House of M-state of mind... Which would also mean he'd have no clue as to what just happened to Meggan.

But hey, whoever said comics about multiple time and reality warps had to make sense? 

The Sage Saga part III: Semi Sapphic Symbolism

And in part three of The Sage Saga, we cover the 2005+ era of Chris Claremonts' love affair with the character.

Sage had recently left the cast of Uncanny X-men to guide Roberto DaCosta, aka Sunspot, who had taken over as the leader of a new Hellfire Club. Sage planned to guide him in a Tessa-like capacity, the way she used to for Sebastian Shaw. But nothing much came of this...  Shortly after her departure from Uncanny X-men, she popped up in the early issues of New Excalibur, to help out Captain Britain and his team in the UK after the events of House of M (the 2005 company wide crossover that decimated the mutant race when Wanda Maximoff wished most of them away).

She made her entrance right in the middle of a classic Claremontian scene...

Meet Shadow Xavier, leader of Shadow X... A group of X-men from an alternate dimension where Xavier and his first team of pupils had been turned evil by the Shadow King, hence the snappy name.

Shadow X had recently invaded 616-London, and (new) Excalibur was trying its darndest to keep the black leather clad band of mutants at bay. Shadow Cyclops was a handful, Shadow Beast, Iceman and Angel were mean as can be... Not to mention Shadow Jean who used her telekinetic powers to stop hearts.

But the Shadow King possessed Xavier turned out to be the real powerhouse of the group. He was fighting Excalibur on multiple fronts, carefully trying to mind control Nocturne, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Grey and Psylocke, who had used her telepathic abilities to send Rachel and Kitty into Nocturne's mind to save her. Despite all their efforts, it seemed like a hopeless cause until THIS happened...

That Sage... Say what you will about her... How she might have a detached, cold, aloof and nigh impenetrable computerlike mind with a personality to match... That doesn't mean she's unable to pull off a last minute rescue like nobody's business... 

Also? Appearing as glazy eyed and dazed as the mind controlled folks you're trying to free? Nice touch indeed!

Sage quickly became a part of New Excalibur, which meant she had to face her turn at bat when it came to mind control. Take for instance the time the Warwolves showed up...

Now, for those of you who aren't too well versed in early Excalibur issues... the Warwolves are hound-like aliens that have the uncanny ability to track prey and absorb their mind and soul, leaving behind only an empty husk they can take over. 

Its like mind control, but without any pesky host lingering around to take over, should you get thrown out. Lets see how it worked out for this Wolf.

Ouch... Ah well,  for a change, the Warwolves found Sage's computer mind too much to deal with.

Still, that didn't mean Sage was safe from any other mind control shenanigans... After having escaped the Warwolves in New Excalibur # 4 and # 5, lets see what went down in issue 6.

While en route to question Shadow X, it became apparent that Shadow Xavier was still causing mayhem, despite being drugged out of his mind. Here's a sample of the naughty shenanigans he tried to pull.

A classic example of mind control, if ever there was one. Shadow Xavier very gleefully tries to suade Sage over to his cause by causing a mental gimp mask to form over her... If it remained there long enough, she'd be his... Body, mind and soul forever... Ah, the usual Claremont cliches still work. Or do they?

Truth be told, I *DID* cheer a little while reading this the first time. Despite his best efforts, Shadow Xavier doesn't succeed in turning Sage over to his cause. Even worse for him: she seems thoroughly unaffected by his blustering and uses the fact that he is in *HER* mind to devastating effect.

Shortly after those issues, Chris Claremont experienced something of a health scare. On March 5th 2006, while attending a comics conference in Italy, he collapsed due to what was later officially diagnosed as 'cardiac stress'.

To be fair, cardiac stress is but a byproduct of something greater, so its generally assumed Claremont suffered what should at the very least be considered a mild cardiac episode. Still, even the mildest of myocardial trauma isn't to be taken lightly... It took him months to recover from this incident and when he returned to writing full time with issue 16 of New Excalibur, all of a sudden *THIS* happened to Nocturne...

Thank goodness she collapsed right in the middle of a hospital, this allowed the main characters to voice what all of the readers were collectively thinking at this point:

Yet, the diagnosis was blatantly simple. Chris Claremont was working through his recent brush with death by projecting his own health scare on one of his characters. In this case, it wasn't a 50+ year old slightly overweight British writer who almost died when his heart stopped, but a blue skinned otherdimensional atlethic mutant girl in her early twenties who gets diagnosed with...

A stroke.

And a pretty brutal one at that, even though the writing clearly points out it could have been much worse. Try telling that to Nocturne, a natural acrobat who suddenly found the right side of her body totally unresponsive. The recovery process was long, hard and ultimately rather reflective of what actual stroke victims go through to in their efforts to regain what they have lost.

Throughout all this, there was Sage, sitting in the corner of Nocturne's hospital room, subtly urging the demoralised girl to give it her all. Not by cheery peptalks or offering a sympathetic ear, nothing quite so boorish. No, she used her telepathy to ever so gingerly confront Nocturne with who she had been. Resulting in scenes like this...

Sage knew better, of course... that's her job. She kept coaxing Nocturne to keep on trying, but also showed a softer, gentler side. One of the more interesting things to consider about Nocturne suffering a debilitating illness, was the fact that access to her mutant abilities was left intact.

She was still able to jump into another person, essentially taking them over and using their bodies as  her own. Ideal for a stroke victim who was basically a prisoner in her actual body. Yet, despite all this, she wouldn't even try. So, after subtly controlling her mind, Sage had this exchange with Nocturne in a classic example of turnabout is fair play...

Now, call me subtext crazy or plain old dirty minded... but if you skip over the thought balloon that stressed they were talking about possession... their whole dialogue is dripping with lesbian subtext. "You probably figure you're the only one who can handle it"... tee-hee. 

Ahhh, the living computer allows herself to be taken over... A nice change of routine for Claremont and Sage, because usually mind control means violent take overs and fights to the death over your own sanity.

Still, this is a nice scene that sort of dove tails one from years earlier, when Storm and a desperate Rogue had a heart to heart about the nature of Rogue's absorption powers, ending with Storm freely offering herself to Rogue...

... The symbolism is ever so striking... Two half naked women hugging (both in black, one in leather!), one freely offering herself to another, willing to hand over body and soul to her partner, who carries her in her arms, fondling her flesh and then exclaiming "I never imagined the world could be so... beautiful". 

Semi sapphic symbolism so potent, you still wonder how the Comics Code Authority let this pass...

Next time in the fourth and probably final part of the Sage Saga: Taking A Big, Steaming Info Dump On The Living Computer, we touch upon the remainder of New Excalibur and X-men: Die By The Sword, right up until we end end up in New Exiles. Best be prepared for plenty of special guest appearances by a little lady called Diana Fox.