Mind control hyborean style: Kulan Gath's a bone to pick

Chris Claremont and John Byrne will probably always be identified with their fan favorite Uncanny X-men run. But they had actually cooperated on several books before taking on the merry mutants.

Today's entry in the annals of all things mind control hails from one of those early Claremont/Byrne collaborations: Marvel Team Up # 79, a delightful little tale of sweet talking, soul stealing jewelry and women warriors kicking butt in a thong made of prehistoric pennies.

A security guard in a museum falling under the spell of a mysterious necklace? Well, as far as generic openings go, this is about as bland as it gets... but its a perfectly serviceable way of kicking off the story. The guard gets mind controlled and tricked into putting on the necklace and all hell breaks loose as the entire museum is caught in a mystic blaze that can be seen from afar.

This curious fire also transforms the museum into an actual ancient Egyptian temple site, as Peter Parker discovers when he sneaks in dressed as Spider-Man to snap a few pictures for the Daily Bugle. Before long, he finds himself assaulted by the temple's legion of demonic guardians.

Right before he's about to get overrun, his ladyfriend Mary Jane Watson shows up. Never able to leave well enough alone, Mary Jane had followed him in and managed to get herself mind controlled by... a sword?

"And within that eldritch glow, Mary Jane Watson ceases to be"...
How right you are, Chris... because once she grabbed the sword, it was bye bye MJ and hello Comics Code approved slice of ginger cheesecake:

Penny for your thoughts, sailor... And no, you can't borrow them from her bra.

Mary Jane's body got transformed into Red Sonja, a character from Robert E. Howard's Conan: the barbarian mythos that Marvel had recently gained the publishing rights to. After the licensing deal ended, Marvel lost the rights to reprinting this tale for years, until  it appeared as a back up in the hard cover edition of 2007's Spider-Man/Red Sonja miniseries.

Be that as it may, Sonja the She-Devil was there and ready to help out Spider-Man.
Sidenote: in a nice little bit of added realism, neither one knew what the other was saying, since Sonja only spoke in an ancient Hyborean dialect.

No matter, all language barriers were torn down once the baddie of the book showed up, sporting that overly familiar necklace from page 1...

As far as origins go, this one's a doozy. Kulan Gath was an ancient devil priest who escaped death by transferring his essence into a dark jewel that in turn got mounted on a gold necklace. Anyone who willingly put it on was instantly taken over by Gath, whose magics also transformed their bodies to resemble his. 

Ah, do forgive that overly wordy piece of plot exposition... Kulan is far more eloquent in explaining this sort of shtick. 

Ah, do forgive that overly wordy piece of plot explanation just now... Kulan is far more eloquent in explaining this sort of shtick. 

Despite his somewhat goofy looks, he almost succeeded in killing Sonja and Spider-Man (who he kept referring to as Man-Spider for some unknown reason)... but during the fight, he was knocked out of the museum and on to the busy streets of modern day New York. 

"By the great python!" 

One can never be too sure if Kulan is calling on the elder god Set for help, or is trying to find comfort in the size of his manhood. Either way, the sudden change of scenery catches Gath off guard as he struggles to grasp just how how much the world has changed.

Imagine for a second how this scene might appear to the crowd gathered outside the museum, let alone to people at home watching the footage that newscrew is shooting. They have no idea what's been going on at the museum, the first thing they see is Spider-Man and a half naked woman knocking around an obviously frightened, elderly man.

Having him yell "And one more thing, bozo! Its not 'Man-Spider'... It's SPIDER-MAN!" ... as he knocks Gath out isn't the best move either. What does the crowd get from this? They just witnessed Spider-Man punch out an old timer because, by the wallcrawler's own admission, he didn't get his name right?

Good job Spidey... If that doesn't put to bed all those nasty rumours the Daily Bugle's been spreading about you being a menace... NOTHING will.

Still, Spidey's punch did more than just further wreck his public image. It knocked out Gath as well, which caused everything and everyone to revert back to normal.

After this particular caper, Peter realised the necklace was too powerful to simply leave on display at the museum and he decided to dispose of it.

"The wizard almost had my soul. But his amulet's at the bottom of the Atlantic now (...) It'll never harm anyone again."

Ah. Yeah. About that...

A few years later, in Uncanny X-men # 189, the Gath Gem popped up again when it was found by a construction worker called Jaime Rodriguez. He was able to withstand its demonic temptations. Unfortunately, on his way home, this happened...

Jaime's mugger was considerably weaker willed and Kulan Gath rose again. Unopposed, he was able to weave a spell that transformed Manhattan into his private Hyborean age island kingdom. Fortunately for Spider-Man, Kulan's not the type to carry grudges, thank the great Python....

... Oops.

Trouble taming Tigra? Try mind control!

The previous entry dealt with the events of 1981's Avengers Annual # 10, in which Chris Claremont railed against the use of mind control by fellow writer David Michelinie.

Michelinie wrote Avengers # 200 which saw the superheroine Ms. Marvel get taken, mind controlled and impregnated by her captor Marcus Immortus. Claremont felt this course of action was very much like rape.

Claremont, through Ms. Marvel, gave the Avengers a stern talking to and accused them of (emotional) negligence. A point well made, something as traumatic as being enslaved and forced to perform unspeakable acts against your will isn't something you just gloss over.

Yet... its exactly what Chris Claremont did three years earlier in an issue of Marvel Team Up. In this story, Claremont pitted Spider-Man against his old foe Kraven the Hunter and his new pet...

Take a look...

Gotta love that vintage John Byrne artwork. Yep, that's Tigra the Were Woman, captured by Kraven to be his mindless pet. Kraven had a bone to pick with Tigra because she had him arrested for murder. So, the master of jungle fever and skintight leopard pants swore revenge... He had taken her as his personal slave, plaything and attack dog.

'Oboy!' is right, Spidey... De-humanising a woman, regressing her to the mere animal whose name she uses is debasing enough, but lets find out how Kraven managed to get her to comply...

Ah, why, thank you exposition heavy flashback... That clears it right up. Kraven forced a collar on Tigra that scrambled her higher brain functions, basically turning her into his mindless slave. In this state of mind, she would have been unable to defend herself from even the most vulgar of his whims.

Mind you, the word 'rape' is never used, but dialogue like "You will be my willing slave, cat-thing, forever" certainly hints at the fact that this goes far beyond your traditional, non-sexual, super villain revenge scheme.

Still, Spider-Man was a bit too busy to take all this into full consideration... Sometimes trying to stay alive takes precedence so I suppose that oversight can be overlooked. And hey, he *DID* figure out what made the lady so feral and unwelcoming.

"I wonder if this little gizmo has something to do with the tiger-lady's anti-social behavior!" Nah, probably not, maybe she's just suffering from that certain 'curse' that comes once a month and gives you cramps and a bad mood. Sigh... Spider-Man broke the collar and set Tigra free.

"She couldn't care less about me. She wants..." 

Ow, yeah... way to make it about you, Spider-Man. You just freed a proud, strong woman from what must have seemed like an eternity of demeaning servitude to a man who made her do God knows what... And you automatically assume YOU are her first concern?

Tigra goes after Kraven in an attempt to get revenge and, preferably, her pound of flesh. But Kraven is a master of conquering animals, wild or otherwise, and soon gains the upper hand again...

"Pain more than I can bear...I...I...I...can't..."

No worries Greer, that's Spider-Man in the background there, coming to rescue you from a man with a lion face for a jacket... Don't you worry, little woman, Spidey will keep you safe from the bad man. And he did, actually. He knocked down Kraven and helped Tigra regain her senses a little. And then, this happened on the very last page..

After all that humiliation she had to bear as Kraven's slave, after all the unvoiced trauma she most likely suffered through, Tigra had no part at all in defeating her tormentor.

As he lunges at them, Kraven gets knocked out by Spider-Man with a single punch. One could argue his spider-sense clued him in before Tigra even noticed Kraven coming at them, but don't forget Tigra has supremely enhanced senses as well.

In addition to that, she must have been intimately familiar with Kraven's scent after all that time in his presence, so there's no reason she couldn't have been the first to respond. At the very least, it would have gotten her a small measure of regained self respect.

Truth be told, while it would have made more sense storywise to have Tigra deliver the coup de grace, Marvel Team Up is still a Spider-Man book, so its half expected that the main star gets to save the day.

That's usually all well and good, but in this story it sticks out like a sore thumb, considering the message it sends:  After 22 pages, Tigra is still the assaulted, battered female who needs a man to stand up for her.

By comparison, this single issue of Marvel Team Up is worse than the entire Ms. Marvel storyline Chris Claremont took offense to over in Avengers. 

At least Ms. Marvel managed to break free on her own and took the chance to protest and even defend herself... Whereas Tigra, well... she had to be rescued not once but twice in a single issue and wasn't even allowed to assist in helping to bring her bully down. 

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.

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.

The Sage Saga part IV: Taking A Big, Steaming Info Dump On The Living Computer

Meet Albion, a Brian Braddock from an alternative reality in which World War I didn't end in 1918. Instead, the conflict raged on well into our modern day, ending only when this Brian was given powers by Roma and Merlin. With his superpowers, he managed to end the global conflict, but after decades of brutal and exhausting war, Earth was decimated. This drove Albion over the edge, swearing vengeance on Roma, Merlin and all the alternate Captain Britains because, well...

I dunno, its as good a reason as any to drag him to the 616-reality. Upon his arrival, he caused considerable trouble and Sage devised a way to stop him: by going undercover.

Dying her hair blonde and creating the new identity of Diana Fox, Sage went to join up with Albion and his forces so she could help defeat them from the inside. Smart thinking, but she soon discovered there was something odd about the costume Albion gave her...

A costume that not only shapes your body to be the ultimate weapon, but also mindcontrols you into believing it? If I had one of those, I'd never have to go to the gym again. Still, Sage's computermind sort of kept her own identity intact. But that caused another problem: the Diana Fox persona became a seperate personality in her own mind.

Still, that's not half as bad as it sounds, right? Its not like Sage would do anything rash or give in to the murderous rage and bloodlust all of Albion's other corpsmen seem plagued by...

... Well, maybe yeah, maybe not. Sage, or Britannia as Albion called her, got in a fight with the alternate reality X-men team known as Shadow X... and she didn't think twice to decapitate Cyclops. Oops. After that, Sage pretty much lost control, giving Diana Fox/Britannia free reign. It was only after Captain Britain gave her a stern talking to that she came to her senses again.

"You are Sage". 

That proverbial splash of verbal cold water reset the computer and Sage was Sage again. It was also near the end of New Excalibur, the book got cancelled due to poor sales. The remaining storylines were dealt with in a miniseries called X-men: Die By The Sword and featured a team up with the Claremont-penned otherdimensional Exiles. 

Now, I would be committing a crime against all that is decent and holy if I took the time to provide a full recap of that five issue catastrophe of a miniseries. All you need to now: Mad Jim Jaspers, an old foe of Captain Britain's, had returned to life and was using his reality warping powers to cause incredible destruction in the Omniverse. 

The Exiles and New Excalibur teamed up to stop Jaspers and his allies, but not before one of the bad guys fatally injured Roma, the guardian of all that is, was and will be. Luckily, Roma was able to pass on her knowledge right before she died. 

Who? Ow, three guesses and the first two don't count...

Roma used her final moments to transfer all that she knew about everything that ever was, is and will be in the entire Omniverse... into Sage. Sure, she may have a computer-like mind and can store and analyse data faster than anyone else... But even living computers can be overwhelmed... 

Uploading an Omniverse worth of data into your skull is like force feeding your Windows 3.11 computer the entire internet. Needless to say, Sage didn't react too well....

With New Excalibur coming to a close, Claremont had Sage jump ship so she could join his New Exiles. Her exploits with that team will be the focus of the fifth and final part of the Sage Saga.

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.