Defending Your Right To Mind Control Ms. Marvel's Supporting Cast

It's the 1970s again as Chris Claremont guest writes an issue of Defenders and even then his signature style was already in place. So roll on the mind control mirth plus half the cast of whatever book he'd been working on as well, Ms. Marvel in this case, thereby making the Defenders feel like guest stars in their own title. 

Fair's fair, opening the story with the Hulk smashing an image of Ms. Marvel that had mysteriously appeared is a nice way to pique the readers' interest... You'd think the Defenders would take this emantion serious enough to drop everything and go seek out Ms. Marvel. She might be in mortal danger, right? Instead, the team decided to call it a night and 'maybe look into it tomorrow'. Unfortunately, that 'tomorrow' never came... Wait, let's have Claremont captions explain it all while the story really begins...

We find psychiatrist Michael Barnett, straight from the Ms. Marvel supporting cast, contemplating his fate. He's feeling down and drowning his sorrows because he's starting to fall in love with his patient Carol Danvers, who he also knows is secretly Ms. Marvel. 

Doctor Barnett really is a terrible doctor. Not only is he totally unconcerned with violating the doctor/patient relationship, he also tells a man who might be a desperate even potentially suicidal person to go take a flying hike. Luckily, the only man in need of help is Barnett himself as the eyes of one Arthur Shaman start to burn into his mind... and soul!

After assuring the mind controlled Barnett he's no longer in command of his will, Shaman takes the good doctor away to a local AIM base.  

Picking up on a plot thread from Ms. Marvel, AIM still can't figure out how Carol Danvers was able to discover their New York base. So, what does a band of scientific geniuses with mind control equipment do to answer that question? Why... rely on a two bit hypnotist like Shaman to kidnap Carol's psychiatrist and mind control him of course! You know it makes sense. 

After what Claremont makes sure we know is a long, drawn-out and thoroughly unpleasant process the beehive hooded brainiacs figure out the way to destroy Carol Danvers: get the Hulk to do it. And on a side note: Barnett KNOWS Carol is Ms. Marvel. What are the odds he didn't spit out that tantalizing tidbit of personal information long before coughing up her fear of the Hulk? 

Meanwhile, let's see what the star of the show has been up to...

Ms. Marvel's seventh sense had told her both the Defenders and one of her close friends were in mortal danger. So it only makes sense she all but abandons her friends to go help out the Defenders...
A team that has the world's mightiest mortal and the sorceror supreme on the roster. Still, her seventh sense was right on the money as Doctor Strange's house is soon besieged by AIM warcrafts and... this guy.

One can't help but wonder what artist George Tuska was thinking when he came up with the design for this combat droid. It looks like Tuska took the Beetle's body armor and slapped on this guy's headgear.  

The AIM robot was a little tougher than the X-men's old foe Lucifer. Must be because of the added antenna. It managed to incapacitate most of the Defenders, encasing the Valkyrie within unbreakable crystal, knocking out Clea and flash freezing the one they came for: Hulk. As AIM departed, only Nighthawk and Hellcat were left standing.

Arthur Shaman must truly be one of the last moustache twirling bad guys, as he raves about the 'delicious irony' of his plan. Still, mind controlling the Hulk to kill a civilian seems about as convoluted as you can get. Not that he even gets a chance to execute his plan because Ms. Marvel, Nighthawk and Hellcat are waiting for the bad guys inside their lab.

Using the element of surprise, the severly underpowered trio manages to beat Shaman, AIM and the robot... which left Chris with only a few panels to clear up one final mystery... Just how did Ms. Marvel's image pop up from the orb of Agamotto months ago?

"Hmm. I have no magical powers. This is a puzzle, unless... my seventh-sense somehow interacted with the psychic energies of the orb. That's only guess work, of course."

Of. Course. 

Excuse that excellent Exiles mind control

And then there came a time... a time most fans of Exiles feared... the moment Chris Claremont took over.

As any writer is wont to do, he wasted no time making the book his own. His first act was returning recently introduced member Power Princess to the Squadron Supreme of her own dimension.

Then he made a point of subtly redefining the Exiles' mission statement. The team no longer observed and protected the multiverse... no, they were responsible for Claremont coined 'crosstime' and 'omniverse'.

Arguably a change in name only, but it did allow Claremont to link the Exiles to his other Omniverse related creations like Merlin, Mad Jim Jaspers, the Fury and last but not least omniversal guardian Roma and her Captain Britain corps. Speaking of Captain Britain, lets see who will be replacing the Princess...

Well, at least the amount of purple in the team's uniforms remained roughly the same.

Meet Psylocke, fresh from 'our' 616 reality. Not only is Betsy Braddock one of the all time Claremont faves, she also happens to be the sister of Captain Britain and even a one time replacement Captain Britain herself so it's another tie to previously established continuity right there. This set things up nicely for a team up with the Excalibur series Claremont was also writing at the time. But that's a story for another time.

So why was Psylocke summoned anyways? Yes, Sabretooth claimed the team would miss Power Princess' super strength, but surely her brawn couldn't be all that stands between victory and defeat? Well... let's just see how the team did on their first mission without Zarda.

In a move reminiscent of 1975's classic Giant Sized X-men # 1, only one member of the team made it back to get help. In this case, it was Sabretooth and not Cyclops who returned to base and together with Heather 'Sasquatch' Hudson they scanned the multiv... Sorry, Omniverse... to find just the right person to help them out. As it turns out, it was Psylocke.

Credit Claremont for hitting the ground running and using established continuity to drive the story forward, even if it didn't directly involve any of his own stories. Case in point: Psylocke's reaction when seconds after landing in the Exiles' desert room, she encounters Sabretooth.

Keep in mind that in the 616 universe, Sabretooth almost killed her twice. Once during the Claremont penned Mutant Massacre storyline and a second time when Scott Lobdell had Psylocke step in to save X-Force's Boomer. So, how would you react when you find yourself in strange surroundings with a hated enemy approaching?

Yeah, that seems about right.

After all the usual misunderstandings had been cleared up, Psylocke agreed to help the Exiles out and joined Sabretooth in the rescue mission. So, what had caused all the troubles?

Seems like the Exiles had encountered heavy opposition from the ninjas of the Hand. A nuisance to be sure, but nothing they usually can't handle. What could possibly be...

Ah, yeah... this is a Claremont comic now. So 'adventures' are known as 'capers', the multiverse is decidedly omni and mind control is for everyone. Yes... for some unexplained reason, the Exiles ran right into this trap. Even the ones usually too lucky for that.

A mind controlled Longshot... right down to the nice little touch of altering his belt buckle to the 'H' for 'Hand' or even 'Hydra', considering who's the villain of the piece...

In this reality, Susan Storm isn't known as the Invisible Woman but actually the ruthless Madame Hydra. Forget Viper, Susie is as good a sadistic baddie as one could hope for. And then you haven't even met her lover...

"You like cutting their bodies to pieces, my love. Whereas I prefer reordering their minds, James... And putting them to use."

Yeah. That's how the former Susan Storm-Richards rolls.

After turning to evil and separating from her husband Reed Richards, Sue has used mind control technology to further her goals of total world domination. But, what was the mission the Exiles had to accomplish in this reality anyway? Surely, it has to be something as straightforward as 'beat the baddies and move on", right?

Not quite.

Well, lemme save you a dry summary of all the issues through # 94...

The Exiles fail.

Reed doesn't die and Madame Hydra escapes into the Omniverse, along with her lover Wolverine and their partner the Slaymaster. The mind control she subjected Longshot, Spider-Man 2099 and Blink to eventually fades, while the desolate Earth mentioned earlier suddenly becomes a whole lot less desolate when a necklace worn by Reed's daughter Valeria Richards turns out to contain 2.5 billion people Reed wanted to save from the tyranny of his ex-wife.

So, all is right in the world.

Well, in thát world at least.

Abdicating All Control Of Your Mind Part II: "Heavy Is The Mind Controlled Head That Wears The Crown...

In the second and final part of this mind control heavy tribute to Dutch queen Beatrix abdicating the throne, we'll get to the actual mind control as Kitty 'Kate' Pryde receives a marriage proposal from the British crown prince William... No, this isn't an example of bad 2011 fan fiction, its Chris Claremont writing Excalibur, apparently with a crystal ball, in 1989...

In order to marry Kitty, William had to sorely disappoint the lady Kate, who had previously been promised to him. The fact Kate and Kitty are actually alternate counterparts is an interesting one. William fell for Kitty's adventurous spirit, which left Kate severly annoyed. But first, she had to deal with her soon to be inlaws... the queen (who doesn't look like the late Diana at allll...)

And more notably, queen mother of England...

Upon meeting Kitty, the Queen Mom soon realises that the young American girl is in no way suited for her future role as ruler of all Britons. Also... Megan and Rachel are causing quite the stir as well.

"Rest assured, Katherine Pryde... We shall endeavor to teach you better!"

Using her magics to teleport them away, the Queen Mom takes Kitty to a band of technomages who analyse her rather unique genetic structure. She's similar to princess Kate in virtually every conceivable way... And yet she's not.

Yup... here we have the Queen Mom and several top notch mages using magicks to warp Shadowcat's very essence, molding her soul, into their prefered shape. Magic words or not, it's still mind control. But Kitty proves she's defiant to the very last...

During those final moments as her own self, a desperate Kitty succeeded in contacting her teammate Rachel, who is able to track her location following the trail of the psychic transmission. However, by the time Excalibur arrives to rescue her, the damage to Kitty already seems to be done...

In an interesting turn of events, Rachel can't detect any signs of mind control or even the slightest mental tampering. Baffled, Excalibur is soon forced to make peace with the situation and is ready to bid Kitty adieu when she is attacked by the same kind of Shaitan-esque demons that kidnapped her back in part I. 

Yes, turns out Lady Katherine Pryde was content having prince William chase after her, especially since it was pretty much a given he'd propose to her eventually. But all bets were off  with the arrival of Excalibur and her alternate reality counterpart. And to add insult to injury: William proposed to the wrong Pryde to boot.

Katherine relied on her magic powers to control a small army of monsters to kill Kitty but she hadn't counted on the fact Kitty was pretty much invulnerable after her phased state had become her normal way of being. Phasing also interfered with the Queen Mom's transformation spell, so Shadowcat was back in the game and soon came up with an ideal way to resolve this particular predicament...

And with that, the prince of the realm still willi(am)ngly ends up with his Katherine, despite the Harry-ing conditions...So much for clever puns, time to follow Excalibur's lead and get out while we're ahead.

Until next time!

... This blog entry is respectfully dedicated to princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, always a queen in my book...

Abdicating All Control Of Your Mind Part I: And Then There Came A Day To Give It All Away

In all honesty, this post wasn't supposed to show up for at least a month or two. But since yours truly is undeniably Dutch and queen Beatrix of the Netherlands formally announced her abdication today, we might as well take on the time Chris Claremont wrote about royal succession in the pages of Excalibur. Not too surprising, it involved mind control.

To establish a little background: By the time issues # 12 and 13 rolled around, Excalibur had been a little lost thanks to the dimension hopping creature Widget. For the past several issues, they'd been trying to get home, reluctantly visiting alternate realities in an equally alternate train which hailed from a world where the Nazis won World War II.

The dimensional train's arrival startles a young child, who is taken aboard and cared for by the team.

What are the odds... Excalibur almost crushes prince William, the heir to the throne... But William doesn't seem to care about that at all. Instead, he seems to fall head over heels for Katherine... Erm, Kitty for short... Pryde. Its interesting to see how Claremont managed to have this character fall for a woman with the same name as 'our' prince William would eventually end up with.

But before 'Billy the Kid' can proceed to make more googly eyes as Shadowcat, the train is attacked...

The Shaitan kidnaps Shadowcat, forcing her teammates to follow as best they can. But why would an ancient demon have any interest in a girl from an alternate dimension who had only just arrived here? The answer is, as always, shocking...

A good decade and a half before the first Shrek movie, Chris Claremont takes advantage of the bad reputation ogres have by revealing this particular butch character as the master of the shaitan who kidnapped Kitty Pryde.

The ogre is a little strapped for cash so he kidnapped princess Kate in hopes of fetching a handsome ransom fee... When that didn't happen, allegedly because Kate's kingdom is equally poor, the ogre sent out the shaitan once again and it returned with Shadowcat.

Just how someone whose natural state is being intangible gets abducted against her will is beyond me... but hey. It turns out princess Kate is actually that reality's Kitty Pryde without mutant powers so it makes a decent amount of sense the shaitan zoomed in on Shadowcat. Needless to say, Excalibur and prince William soon traced shaitan to the ogre's base and defeated both of them. Then, William dropped a bit of a bombshell...

For more on that, check back for part II of Abdicating All Control Of Your Mind: "Heavy Is The Mind Controlled Head That Wears The Crown...

Oh, and for those of you waiting and wondering what's keeping the whole mind control motif... Check out these scenes taken from Excalibur's daring rescue... During the raid, Rachel 'Baby Phoenix' Grey touches the waters in the castle mote and hilarity ensues...

I Vant To Control Your Mind (... and suck a lil blood as vell!)

For today's entry, we'll remain in New Exiles territory. During the team's first real adventure together, they visited an alternate Earth that had been ravaged by a meteor storm 50 years earlier. This cataclysmic event caused massive changes in both climate and power balance which slowly tilts to all out global warfare.

Sabretooth picks Psylocke, Mystiq, Rogue and Sage to go in and help him prevent this. No small order, especially considering that upon arriving they almost immediately run into Black Dog and the Bloodforce, a super powered group from Wakanda determined to stop them... And succeeding.

Just who Black Dog is, not to mention the other Bloodforce members, is never reallyexplained. Luckily this is still a Chris Claremont comic, so alternate Earth or not, chances are pretty decent everyone will yell out his or her codename sooner or later. So lets have the mysterious woman Sabretooth is punching take care of her own introduction...

Ahhhh yeah... Bloodwitch turns out to be a vampire who decides to feast on Creed. Or maybe she isn't, after all its daytime and she doesn't seem affected by the sunlight, despite being pale and half naked in the desert. But who has time to waste on such minutiae? Luckily, his teammates have his back.

"Oh bloody hell...!"

Ya gotta love the continued stream of vampiric puns. It seems Claremont managed to tap a... rich...vein... of and the comedy, it flows... like blood.

Ignoring all conventional notions on how a vampire's control over his victims are supposed to work, Bloodwitch proved able to mind control Creed with a single bite... As he obediently follows her instructions and attacks Psylocke. 

But right before Bloodwitch can claim her second victim of the day, the blackening skies erupt in a furious thunderstorm, courtesy of Queen Ororo, archenemy of the Black Panther.

Figuring any enemy of the Panther's might be a potential ally, Ororo invites the Exiles to her palace in Alexandria to plan their next move. There, Psylocke and Sabretooth realise Bloodwitch's influences isn't as easily shaken as they'd hoped  judging from the way they suddenly can't seem to keep their hands off each other. 

Try and ignore the dialogue straight from a dimestore romance novel as we try and find out what's really going on here...

"GOTCHA! I tagged your leader, little Psylocke and through him Bloodwitch's fangs have bitten deep into your soul! Both of you now belong to ME!"

Ah, yeah, so... vampiric mind control is like an STD now? Easily spread with the exchange of bodily fluids? That's going to be an interesting public service announcement in the age of the Twilight movie saga. "Kids, only you can prevent third party mind control... Go team Jacob!" 

In New Exiles # 3, the team faced off against Blackdog and the Bloodforce again and Bloodwitch was more than a little prepared...

Not to mention overconfident, as she mindjacks Sabretooth and Psylocke and plans to bend them to her will forever (... and when a vampire says something is 'forever', you can take that literally). 

But, considering this is New Exiles and not Bloodwitch featuring the Bloodforce, it doesn't exactly turn out the way she'd planned.

Defeating a vampire without garlic and overcoming mind control thanks to your healing factor... The Omniversal world of New Exiles truly is the gift that keeps on giving!

Profusely Protesting Proteus' Premedidated Morphin'

Sometimes, one can't blame Chris Claremont for using mind control.

When Claremont took over Exiles, he was handed a bit of a conundrum regarding long time, shapeshifting member Morph. Y'see, he wasn't exactly the same, fun loving miscreant everyone had grown to love. 

Shortly before Claremont was announed the new Exiles writer, long time scribe Tony Bedard had put the team through the wringer during their World Tour. This extended storyline saw the Exiles chasing Kevin MacTaggert, better known as the reality warping mutant Proteus. Due to the nature of his powers, Kevin was a discorpeal energy form in a never ending need for host bodies. However, each and everyone he inhabited soon was consumed by his powers...Everyone, that is... until he inhabited Morph.

The Exiles finally came up with a way of defeating Proteus, by using B-Mod technology from the Squadron Supreme reality they visited during their hunt. 'B-Mod' is short for 'behaviour modification' and that's exactly what happened to Proteus Morph when he donned a crown that was secretly lined with B-Mod circuitry. It essentially reset Morph's mind, returning him to his old self, while Proteus aspect was rendered dormant... Bottled up, ever ready to resurface.

During Chris' run on both Exiles and New Exiles, the threat of Proteus reemerging was repeatedly hinted at. The notion of your teammate effectively being a single moment of clarity away from turning into a genocidal omniversal overlord gave everyone the shivers...

Yet, everything seemed pretty much okay, until the events of New Exiles Annual # 1. Morph was put in charge of the team as they responded to a distress call from an alternate Earth specifically asking for their assistance...

As it turns out, it was Valeria Richards, the daughter of Reed and Sue Richards they had encountered during one of their earliest missions. This Valeria was pretty similar to the Valeria that Chris introduced during his late 1990s Fantastic Four run. This meant she possessed many of the traits a typical, young Claremontian leading lady has: acting both chipper and delightfully snarky, with a genius level intellect and amazing powers to boot.

How amazing, you wonder? Well... after their initial encounter, Valeria constructed a means of following the Exiles on their adventures across the omniverse, even travelling to the alternate Earths they would eventually visit.

However, for some unknown reason, Valeria arrived early on a world that also happened to be in the grips of  The Maker, an alternate reality Shaper of Worlds who had gone mad. Instead of longing to improve worlds, this one actually got his kicks from causing as much destruction as possible. In this case, by challenging five supervillains to outdo themselves.

Valeria called in the Exiles to set things right. And so they did, defeating crossdimensional counterparts of Doctor Doom, Magneto, Red Skull, Green Goblin and a Baron Mordo/Dormammu mix who wasn't beyond using mind control, by the way.

Making short work of the five baddies meant the Maker was forced to deal with the team himself. Teleporting everyone to his base on a second, smaller Moon orbiting Earth, the final confrontation got underway just as something went wrong with Morph....

For some reason, Proteus was starting to break free from his mental prison, but the Exiles were a tad too distracted to notice. Psylocke and Valeria combined their telekinesis and force field powers to protect everyone from the Maker's fury... But simply throwing up a shield doesn't save you from a being capable of reshuffling existence at a whim.

Ow yeah... the bad guy has managed to sink his claws into one of the good guys... We all know what happens next, right?

Yeah... that's the Shaper of Worlds for ya... mad or otherwise, he is always at the ready to reshape and remold everything you once held as true about yourself or those you trust. Speaking of reshaping those you could trust, Proteus finally makes his move...

"There's someone else inside my head!"

Well of course there is, Morph/Proteus! After all, this is New Exiles, the comic in which Chris Claremont had  no less than 4 main characters go through the exact same thing in the space of 18 issues. It happened to Cat, Sage fell prey to it as well and even Psylocke had to fight her way through it... So why not you?

One might simply dismiss this as a case of lazy writing or even call it a blatant copycat approach to character development... But consider this: maybe Claremont was going for a motif...? Perhaps he was trying to do a subtle study on how everyone deals differently with their less than desirable traits and urges? Do we vehemently deny and cast them out, like Pylocke did? Do we let them overwhelm and change us, like Cat? Or do we accept our darker sides, becoming more powerful in the process... like Sage and Morph...

Ow wait, did I just give away the ending?

"You're not alone inside this head, this body, this soul".

Defeated by the Shaper, sorry Maker, Proteus retreats into his own mind and finds the spirit of Morph there. Kevin Sydney happened to be alive and well... or something... and grabbed the chance to stage an intervention of sorts. "I can sense all this supervillainy stuff isn't making you happy... let me help you learn to help yourself".

Before those lines cause all of us to burst into a rousing rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson, let's see if Mister Proteus took the long dead former inhabitant of his body up on his offer...

Oh, right, right... more talking... Guess convincing someone to essentially give up being themselves isn't done in a panel or two. But finally, this happens...

And in a flurry of bright, pink lights, Morph and Proteus become one... Morph's cheery nature washes away the hurt and pain that made Proteus into a supervillain. Just like one appeases an angry dog by removing the thorn from its paw. The new patchwork persona was immediately accepted by the others and all was right in the world again.

Forget the fact he's essentially a lobotomized supervillain responsible for burning through at least a dozen host bodies during his reign of terror across the multiverse... I guess being given a new lease on life in an immortal, shape shifting body is punishment enough, right?

Well, if anything it also made Proteus into Doctor Phil clone, with a similarly annoying accent.

... #whitepeopleproblems.