God Loves, But Mind Control Still Kills part III: Mind Control Is The Opiate Of The People

In the third and final part of God Loves, But Mind Control Still Kills, the mysteries surrounding Mount Haven are finally answered. Just why is the mutant hating reverend William Stryker after the inhabitants of this mountain town? How come Bishop and Shadowcat are the only two X-men who seem impervious to whatever is mind controlling everyone else and just what is the deal with minister Paul? Let's dive in...

                              

Issue # 29 opens with Lady Deathstrike standing triumphant over the unconscious body of her archenemy Wolverine. However, because her body is being controlled, lady Yuriko Oyama is unable to fully appreciate this victory...

Not that she would have had too much time to enjoy his death, because Logan's fellow X-man Cannonball races to the rescue... the sounds of which can be heard in Mount Haven, serving as a bit of a wake up call for the mind controlled Storm... However, the equally addled Sage tries to win her back...

Ah yes, when all else fails and the violent weather mirrors Storm's subconscious fighting back... Dial 'S' for either Sage or Sappho....the mind controlled mentat needed the X-treme X-men's team leader back in the game. After all, Bishop was still on the loose... So Sage resorted to this here.

Storm's near lesbian encounter had no effect on that cheerful, mindless grin on her face. In fact, it seemed prevalent in Mount Haven... all courtesy of minister Paul, as Kitty Pryde finds out in the labyrinth like catacombs of the city. 

Kitty finally realises Mount Haven's dirty secret. The place didn't exactly start out as a haven for mutants... quite the opposite in fact. The town was home to one of the largest mutant detention and research facilities in the country...Aaron Pankow, the convicted mass murderer William Ryker went to see in the opening issue of this arc, worked there and told the reverend about the atrocities in Mount Haven, causing Stryker to start up his crusade once again.

Long story short... Stryker has figured out just who minister Paul really is. Mount Haven did indeed house a government sponsored mutant R&D facility, outfitted with a top notch sentient computer system capable of sentient reasoning. During the many hours of supervising and facilitating horrific experiments on captured mutants, the 'innocent' A.I. started to see right from wrong and decided to take action. 

Taking over the form of one of the tortured mutants, Haven's A.I. used his body to reinvented itself as minister Paul. Soon, it figured out a way to protect everyone who wasn't a mutant, by unleashing swarms of nigh undetectable nannites into the air that infected everyone in town. Paul slowly killed every human within the city limits. This meant death came as an unexpected surprise to the general population and it also explained just why there were no adults, only mutant offspring running around carefree (and mind controlled). 

An apalled Stryker finally carried out his mission when he pushed Shadowcat into minister Paul. Her innate phasing abilities immediately short circuit whatever electronics they encounter... Not only did this ability make her impervious to the nannites, it also explained why the healer Cybil died after Kitty accidentally phased through here...

In this case, Kitty's phasing caused the computer controlling Paul to suffer the equivalent of a grand mal seizure, shutting down all the nannites in Mount Haven at once... Often with lethal results as Bishop discovered...

Yes, the entire town had been infected with the nannites that slowly turned their bodies into cybernetic organisms designed to be controlled by the not quite human cybernetic intelligence housing in minister Paul. When he short circuited, his followers paid the price... Only the most recent of arrivals lived to tell the tale.

In the end, Bishop was instrumental in ensuring all the X-men, including Cannonball, recovered from their bout with cybernetic mind control. In case you were wondering why Bishop wasn't infected himself... the answer is painfully obvious: coming from a future where cybernetic infestation is as common as chicken pox, Bishop was inocculated against nannites as a kid. A rather simple and effective deus ex machina... Speaking of machines of god...

'Paul' was left in a state of existential crisis. The only reason the evolved computer system did what it did was a rather silly misunderstanding. It believed the only real human beings were the ones showing 'the spark', actually meaning the energy flare indicative of mutagenic potential. Baseline human being were considered to be little more than vermin to be eradicated... after all, anything to protect the 'real human beings'.

The reverend Stryker offered a stunningly selfless solution for this dilemma...

Yup, here we have the mutant hating man of God, wearing a slave collar, freely sacrificing his life to keep a newly formed cybernetic intelligence in check. It's really one for the history books, if only future writers would have left the reverend alone...

Despite heavily relying on mind control, God Loves Man Kills II is a remarkable story that mirrors the original graphic novel in having William Stryker starting out as a protector of humanity, but eventually merging with a mechanized man hunter to safeguard both man ánd mutantkind in the process... It's a rare case of perfect symmetry and a worthy send off for the character of the reverend William Stryker. His story arc had reached a natural climax... what else could be done?

... *sigh*... Yeah, instead of leaving a powerful and unique character alone, granting him the story arc his creator had intended, you could of course turn the reverend Stryker into a platitudes spouting hate filled bigot stereotype, literally armed with a piece of the futuristic Sentinel Nimrod. Y'know, for shits and giggles...

"Oh heavenly father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those indebted to us" ... indeed. Thankfully, the X-men weren't too bothered with all of that after their experiences in Mount Haven.

Sage Under Pressure: Purging The Mind Controller

So, yeah...

Time to come clean. While post 125 bragged all the Sage related mind control stories had been told... today's Sage centered entry kind of disproves that statement. And yes, while its true the content of this post was previously featured, however briefly, in the final part of the Sage Saga... It does require further examination.

In a way, this post is a sequel of sorts to the anniversary blog... Turns out, Sage was facing identical problems as teammate Psylocke was at the time: someone who was essentially them was trying to usurp control of their minds... In the case of Betsy Braddock, it was her evil alternate reality counterpart Lady Mandarin...

But before we get to Sage's adversary, lets set the scene first. The book is New Exiles, obviously the writer is Chris Claremont, and the situation?

Well, the Exiles had teleported to an Earth where Atlantis had literally emerged to become a super power centuries earlier than they would in 'our' universe. In a world of warring empires, the Atlanteans controlled the seas and therefor  all warfare and technology. As all of this occurred well before the American revolutionary war of the 1770s, this meant the British were still in control of North America, while France had become a major world dominating nation in its own right.

Britain and France were on the brink of war, with France planning to invade America. The French invasion force was set to land in New York, just as the Exiles arrived to aid in the city's defense.

Alas, during one of the initial confrontations, both Sage and Morph were kidnapped by the French... And that's where the mind control comes in...

Take a few seconds to read Purge's dialogue. He is a French operative, ever so clearly enjoying his task... that is controlling the minds of his victims. Even Sage seemed unable to deal with his powers because, well... you've read all of this so far, right? Go on...

Yes, there are just so many things wrong here. From Purge manhandling the sweaty, bound Sage to her desperate and slightly unbelievable promise she'd break free... Purge, whose gloves are awfully reminiscent of Nightcrawler's original costume, seems to be the man in charge and takes active glee in watching Sage suffer while her personality is being erased. However, he did not expect this...

Ah yeah... Way before Chris Claremont wrote Sage in New Exiles, he made her star in New Excalibur in which Sage had offered to infiltrate the criminal organisation of Albion, an evil Captain Britain counterpart.

To make sure she couldn't be detected, Sage's computer brain produced the persona of Diana Fox and made herself believe she was indeed the aforementioned blonde bombshell. It allowed her to do her work undetected, but it also had a lasting effect on Sage, as 'Diana Fox' became a new, seperate identity within her mind, taking every chance to wrest control away from her... And with Purge taking care of Sage's dominant personality, Diana was allowed free reign....

So how did Sage's actual body transform into Diana's form? That's never truly explained... It might be an unexpected effect of her powers to catalyse (physical) mutations in others. Or not... but hey, whatever works right? Purge wasn't so easily beaten and he once again tried to take control of Diana/Sage by taking the fight to the astral plane... Alas, that didn't exactly work out for him either...

All the dialogue speaks for itself. While Sage is knocked out, keep that in mind, the Diana Fox aspect of her mind appears without a face in her astral form... yet is indeed capable of transforming Sage's physical form into hers? Yeah, that makes a decent amount of sense...*cough* NOT * cough*

Anyhoo, how will all of this end then?

With Purge out of the picture, Morph and Sage quickly recovered and helped prevent the French invasion of New York harbour. But despite the fact Sage passed out on deck in her Diana Fox form, she wakes up as her old self and no one seemed to have a clue about what had just happened...

"... So HOW did we defeat Purge?"

Well, Sage... mainly because you're being written by Chris Claremont, the man who loves you and mind control so much, he doesn't mind controlling the forces of logic... Shine on, you crazy diamond!

Celebrating 125 Mind Control Moments: Psy versus Psy

Its official! It took close to 5 years, but this is blogpost 125!

And what better way to celebrate 125 moments of mind control than by focussing on Psylocke, star of this blog's second most popular post? Well, focussing on the most popular blog, sure, but that's the first part of the Sage Saga and though it took five mind control stuffed chapters, her story has pretty much been told.

Still, Sage does make an appearance in today's entry, because she was part of Chris Claremont's 2008 Exiles reboot, the rather unimaginatively called New Exiles. Fans of the original Exiles were a little afraid Claremont would blatantly ignore the beloved continuity outgoing writer Tony Bedard had created in favor of his own pet characters...

They weren't too wrong.

Claremont came on board with issue 90 and did indeed get rid of most of the cast, replacing them with his personal favorites. As is any incoming writer's prerogative, to be fair. Claremont decidedly made the book his own by writing out everyone but Sabretooth and Morph, bringing in the 616-versions of Psylocke and Sage, and pairing them with alternate reality versions of other favored Claremont creations such as Kitty Pryde (Cat), Rogue (erm, Rogue), Mystiq (Mystique) and Gambit (the son of a black Namor and the Invisible Woman!) Staying on from the team's previous incarnation were Morph and Sabretooth.

But make no mistake, this really became the Psylocke show, as Betsy quickly took center stage and  remained there for all of the 18 issues New Exiles lasted.  Of course, when you're the feature star in a Chris Claremont comic, getting mind controlled is as inevitable as death and taxes. But this time around, she actually mind controlled herself... No really!

In New Exiles # 7, the team lands on an alternate Earth where the French are a world power and are about to invade the United States. The Exiles are sent in to right some wrongs, but seconds after arriving Psylocke is struck down by a mysterious force.

Just as her teammates come to her aid, Betsy wakes up a totally different person; speaking Mandarin Chinese and not recognizing any of them, Betsy uses her telekinetic powers to flee the scene.

For some unknown reason, she flies halfway across the globe to Shanghai, all the while feeling like she should be someone else. 

The rings she thinks of are actually the powerful Mak'luan artifacts worn by Iron Man's arch enemy the Mandarin. Late in Claremont's first run on Uncanny X-men, Betsy was brainwashed into believing she was Lady Mandarin, and wielded the same power rings as the villain. Arriving in Shanghai, she makes a terrible discovery.

Finding her alternative self dead at the hands of an equally alternate Slaymaster brings back unpleasant memories for Psylocke. She herself was once blinded by the Slaymaster of her own reality and this incident always left her more than a little afraid to face the villain. With good reason, because for a man without superpowers, the ruthless Slaymaster is remarkably lethal...

And now it seems a Slaymaster is killing Betsy Braddock in every alternative world he visits. Psylocke is so rattled by this discovery, she doesn't notice that someone is sneaking up behind her until its too late and he knocks her out. Much to her chagrin, she doesn't find it was all a bad dream after she recovers.... And worse than that, this world's Lady Mandarin might not be as dead as she looked.

But before we get to that, Psylocke is confronted by the owner of the house she just broke into: it happens to be none other than everyone's favorite immortal sensei/demon Ogun. Lady Mandarin was his prized pupil and he is more than a little annoyed at Slaymaster for killing her. After a brief struggle, Ogun makes an offer Psylocke can't refuse: he will train her to face her fears so she can stop Slaymaster and avenge his victims.

Naturally, she agrees, but during the intense training sessions in New Exiles # 10, it becomes apparent that, in her dying moments, Lady Mandarin used her own psychic powers to place her mind inside Psylocke. Lady Mandarin is slowly changing Betsy's body to mirror her deceased form, starting with the Crimson Dawn tattoo appearing on her face. As the training continues, the differences between Betsy and the assassin's apprentice slowly melt away. They become one.

But before she is allowed to pursue Slaymaster, Ogun asks his obedient pupil to perform one final, tiny little task: go to Paris and kill France's emperor Bonaparte. She merrily agrees and takes off for Europe, only to discover nothing was quite the way it seemed.

Yup, turns out Ogun was just grooming her to be a lethal weapon in Bonaparte's war with the Atlanteans. Namor's race rules the oceans with an iron fist and doesn't allow mankind to defile their waters. All they're allowed to use are wooden galleys from the 18th century. As fascinating a story idea as this really is, let's get back to the mind control mirth at hand...

Emperor Bonaparte uses a mind lock on Lady Mandarin's psyche in hopes of controlling her. However, the lock actually allows Psylocke to regain control of her mind and body. Quickly seizing the emperor, she uses him as a hostage to end the crisis the Exiles had come to prevent and everyone went home happy. Except for one little thing: Lady Mandarin was still in Betsy's mind and she brought company...

In New Exiles # 13, Betsy discovers both Lady Mandarin and Ogun have taken up residence within her mind, once more ready to completely take over. But just as the battle seemed hopeless, Betsy was pushed to the limits....

"Its not fair. I just want to live. I swear I'll be good. I can help..."

Ignoring Lady Mandarin's soul rendering pleas for life, Betsy finishes what Slaymaster started and kills her other self in a flurry of all things pink.

"Finally... I'm free."

Well, for the moment at least... So long as you're in a Chris Claremont comic, one is never truly safe... as we'll continue to highlight!

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.

The Sage Saga Part V: Upgrading The Living Computer

Calling Chris Claremont's New Exiles a bit of a convoluted mess might not be too charitable...

But it is the truth.

Fans never were too eager to have Claremont take over Exiles, a book that had been doing just fine under longtime writer Tony Bedard. When Chris took over in issue # 90, he quickly made it his own by bringing in Psylocke, another one of his pet characters. After ten issues, Exiles ended with issue # 100, making way for Claremont to introduce a whole new cast in New Exiles.

One of those New Exiles was Sage, who just recently had all the knowledge of Roma, eternal ruler of the Omniverse, dumped into her mind.

Needless to say, what happened next was Sage getting a little crazy. In almost every issue, she'd have to fight with some incarnation of the evils Roma had been aware of, and even her former fake personality Diana Fox popped back up from time to time.

Its got to be a little confusing when you're fighting in your own mind while also trying to survive the fight on the outside of your skull... Here, Sage takes on bad guys ánd Diana Fox in scenes from New Exiles # 5 and 6.

The Diana Fox persona was subtly trying to take over Sage by influencing her actions in the field.

So, the essence of Roma and a fake personality are fighting to take over her mind... Two mind controlling influences in one single brain. That's pushing it, even for Claremont.

Thankfully, there's also some old fashioned outside mind control to deal with... Meet the mind controller Purge in New Exiles # 10.

Ahhh, vintage Claremont mindcontrol... you have your victims all chained up, nowhere to go, a little sweat, some passionate pleas and a smirking bad guy who assures you that resistance is very futile indeed. Almost makes one nostalgic for the old days....

Despite his best efforts, Claremont never managed to make New Exiles the powerhouse of a title he had hoped it would be. Sales floundered and Marvel decided he'd better wrap things up. Claremont had a lot of ground to cover, especially if he wanted to solve the big drama he had set in motion: the multiverse was destabilising, causing entire realities to literally dissolve into nothingness...

In order to stop the unravelling of all that is, someone had to become one with the living computers of the Panoptichron. Yes, apparently the omniversal observatory the Exiles had been using as their base, was actually the source of the disturbance... That makes about as much sense as believing looking at shooting stars through a telescope won't cause them to burn up in the atmosphere.

Ignoring all that pesky common sense, lets see who volunteered to become the heart and soul of the Panoptichron...

                                                       

Sage herself seems pretty content with her new status quo, Psylocke appears less happy about it in the eighteenth and final issue of New Exiles.

 If anyone is trying to run, its you Sage... Running away from any semblance of common sense, that is. Check out what else she had to say about her new role as the voice of the omniversal GPS tracking system...

"I always wanted to play on a bigger stage. I certainly can't improve on this".

Thus ends the Sage Saga... The tragic tale of a proud, strong woman who valued her personal autonomy above everything else, a woman who had been locked in a struggle for her very sanity with two competing personalities in her own mind... freely gives up everything she is, to serve as the user interface of a computer system.

And to add insult to injury: she wasn't even the system's first choice.