The Karma Conundrum part I: Xi'Ain't Coy About Mind Control...

Every comic book writer has a signature storyline that defines their run on a title. The Masters of Evil invading Avengers mansion was probably the hallmark of Roger Stern's Avengers. Frank Miller's greatest Daredevil tale is arguably 1986's Born Again... and when it comes to New Mutants, Chris Claremont had the Karma Conundrum, better known as  # 29 - 34.

And, this being a Claremont comic, it involved a truckload of mind control.

For those of you not in the know... 'Karma' was actually the former Vietnamese boat refugee Xi'an Coy Manh... An original Claremont creation first appearing in 1980's Marvel Team Up # 100 in which she used her mind control powers to keep both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four at bay. At the end of that particular issue, she was relegated to Charles Xavier where this initially one-off character became a charter member of the New Mutants.

But Karma wasn't exactly a mainstay of the team... Back in New Mutants # 6, right in the middle of the New Mutants' fight against Viper and the Silver Samurai, she was shocked and surprised when professor Xavier's mental manifestation changed into something intent on consuming her.

"Xi'an Coy Manh... I have come to claim you... body and soul... forever!"

And so it did... Possessed, Karma seemingly perished when she dropped into the ocean along with most of Viper's cliffside headquarters. The team searched for several days, but in the end professor Xavier declared Xi'an dead and ordered the team home. That was # 6, and close to two years no one gave Karma a second thought... until New Mutants # 29 hit the stands.

"Alert the Gladiators. We have most special guests. I want them given a show they will never forget. It will end with their joining us!"

Confused yet? Don't be... the Gladiators mentioned by the shadowy figure, are a band of super powered (mutant)creatures who make a living competing against one another in bloodsport type arena combat. Dazzler and Henry 'the Beast' McCoy first encountered this modern day 'blood and circuses' enterprise back the Beauty & The Beast miniseries. But the arena had obvious ties with the Hellfire Club, as this scene from New Mutants # 28 proves...

"I only wish I could be there to see them slaughter each other in your arena."

Here we have disgraced Hellion Empath messing with the New Mutants by bringing both Sunspot and Magma to the attention of the Arena. When professor Xavier was over on Muir Island dealing with his son Legion, Roberto and Amara were kidnapped by Arena henchmen... This had the remaining New Mutants all up in arms in # 29, with a little help from Dazzler.

Unfortunately for continuity, Secret Wars II literally broke in when Magneto lifted the dome off the arena and gathered the New Mutants so they could appear in the crossover to fight the Beyonder. Sunspot and Magma were blackmailed to stay behind, which gave the others something to do once their obligatory crossover involvement was done.

The unlikely team of Cannonball, Dazzler, Kitty Pryde, Magik and Rachel Grey were off to rescue them. Now what does all this have to do with a deceased New Mutant? Well, the Arena was run by a man called Alexander Flynn who claimed he was Doctor Doom's bastard son. But he wasn't exactly in charge any more, as Kitty Pryde found out when she was mind controlled, stuffed inside a giant medieval killer robot (yes, I know) and forced to fight the New Mutants in the arena...

God, you gotta love comics from the days of the Comics Code Authority... An institution that insisted giant red skulled killer robot savages had to cover their genitals, so put him in a metal loincloth already...

"The X-man is proving surprisingly stubborn... possessed as she is... totally under my mental control... she still resists! Charles Xavier, rot his soul, taught her well."

Yeah, that doesn't exactly look like Doctor Doom's son, bastard or otherwise. And what's with the possession? That was never his shtick... Still, he was nowhere near done...

"Ali's voice... but fatso's thoughts and words. She's possessed like I was..."

Yes, Dazzler gets herself mind controlled and in an added twist, her new owner uses Ali's light powers to hypnotise everyone who looks at her. Kitty is smart enough to look away, but...

"Regrettably, sweet Rachel... 

your own psionic abilities make you much more vulnerable to mine."

So in the space of two pages we have five mind control victims... High time for the big reveal, just who is this mind controlling master villain? Can you guess who it is? That's right, nót Alexander Flynn.

"Karma betrayed her best friends... she's trying to kill them...
 just like I did to Wolverine when I was possessed."

You'd think the team would be able to handle one corpulent woman, but Karma forced her harem of slaves and attendants to put knives to their throat, ready to kill themselves if she wasn't allowed to board her plane. So the New Mutants begrudginly watch her take off, swearing to bring their former teammate in. 

But more on that in part two of The Karma Conundrum: Mind Controlling in Madripoor

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.

Breaking the mindcontrol mastermold

Is mind control always wrong?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psylocke's first time...

The thing about telepaths: once you have them on your team, its pretty much a given you'll end up mind controlled. Comes with the territory... And the X-men have always had what seems to be a busload of mind readers and thought benders... Heck, the team was founded by one.

Nowadays, he's the team's undisputed moral conscience. But in the early days, Charles Xavier didn't think twice about stopping someone from thinking twice...

Charlie was king of the mind rape...From turning the Vanisher into a powerless amnesiac in
X-men # 2 to actually making Beast's parents forget they had a mutant son because Xavier figured it would be easier and less painful for everyone involved... All in a day's work.

Jean Grey must have been taking notes in class, because she used the old mind control trick too on occasion, for instance when she manipulated Kitty Pryde's parents. for instance.

Yet, of all the X-men's telepaths, Psylocke was the most conservative when it came to using her mental powers to control others.

Which is a little odd, considering she was created by Chris Claremont. But, no worries, Uncanny X-men # 252 finally saw Betsy Braddock lose her mind control virginity when she forced all her fellow X-men to go kill themselves. 

Confused? Don't be...

In the latter days of the X-men's stay in the Australian outback, the team was in rough shape after losing members left and right. Longshot had gone missing, Rogue was sucked into the Siege Perilous and vanished, Storm seemingly died and Wolverine was nowhere to be found either.

What's even worse: while they were away on a mission in the Savage Land, the Reavers had invaded the little desert town the X-men had been using as their base of operations. The criminal cyborgs planned a little ambush for their enemies.

Psylocke picked up on the Reavers' presence the second Gateway teleported them back home. Realising they were in no shape to take them on, Psylocke figured a self inflicted death would be preferable to being shot to bits by the approaching cyborg army. Of course, simply asking Gateway to teleport them to safety would have been an option too, but hey... who said this stuff has to make sense?

Betsy pulled out the Siege Perilous, a gem that's actually a portal to the afterlife. Wait, Roma will explain it...

Prefering this kind of death, Betsy turned her psi powers into overdrive and made sure everyone on the team agreed with her that suicide really is quite painless.

"It feels like we're running away" No, Dazzler, running away would be having Gateway teleport you away... You DO know he's sitting a few feet away from you, right? Anyways, Peter passes through the portal and Dazzler smells a rat.

With only Havok left to persuade, the following exchange is golden.

After Havok had passed on through, Psylocke awaited the approaching Reavers and said goodbye before entering the Siege herself.

"You'll kill no X-men today!"

True, you singlehandedly beat them to it. So take a bow, Betsy Braddock, you have succeeded  where Magneto and a half a dozen superbaddies failed: you killed off all the X-men. You're now the team's worst enemy. 

Accomplishing all that in only your first try at mind control? As far as first times go, that's like losing your virginity in a 12 body gang bang at a Tijuana donkey show. 

Sidenote: did anyone else notice the CHINK! sound effect the Siege gem made in the previous panel? I'm sure that was just a totally random occurence and has absolutely no influence whatsoever on Betsy's reincarnated new form...

Oops.

Lights, camera, mind control!

Dazzler sacrificed herself with the rest of the X-men, but she finally returned from the Siege Perilous as... well, Alison Blaire... also known as the Dazzler.

This didn't exactly help her get rid of old enemies, as Uncanny X-men # 260 proved. Alison was assaulted by Eric Beale, a Hollywood producer who took a chance on her and invested in Dazzler: The Movie. But once it came public knowledge Dazzler was a mutant, the movie tanked... which bankrupted Beale. Luckily, he took the news lightly...


He finally got his chance in this issue, tracking Allison down and knocking her out, ready for some payback. And here's where Claremont's supposed fetish really shows.

Suppose you are so mad with a person you're ready to commit murder... Hey, it happens... But, after you've knocked her out, would you go to the trouble of dressing her in the exact same outfit she wore when she inadvertently hurt you...

And would you cover her head with a tight bag? It just screams SM fetishist... Especially the end of the issue where Dazzler manages to use her light powers to... ow read it yourself...she uses light to calm him down and he drops to the floor, crying and worshipping her bound and gagged female form...

...Hey kids, comics!

Malice Masters Mindcontrol

John Byrne and Chris Claremont have very different creative processes. Byrne loves to plan ahead, while Clarmont prefers to have plenty of room for last minute improvisations. Yet, when they were co-plotting Uncanny X-men together, these disparate styles led to some truly creative, great storytelling.

And as this post will show, great minds *do* think alike. Sort of. Confused? Don't be. We'll get to the point eventually.

First, lets revisit Uncanny X-men # 214, in which Storm, Rogue and Wolverine meet up with Allison Blaire, the mutant songstress Dazzler. After she'd been publicly outed as a mutant in the Dazzler graphic novel, she'd changed... carelessly showing off her mutant light powers on stage, which isn't the smartest thing to do in a world that hates and fears you.

What's gotten into Dazzler, you might ask? Well, its more of a question WHO, as we meet Malice, a psychic entity capable of controlling both mind and body. As as a sign of her presence, Malice's hosts manifest a slave-collar like choker around their necks. Very tasteful. Malice bodyhops around quite a bit during her first appearance... Which causes fun scenes like this...

"There's more malice in her sweet soul than she gives herself credit for.
But I go where I can have the most fun... and do the most harm!"

Ah, exciting... Wolverine in a berseker rage about to attack his teammates. When has that ever happened before, eh?

In the end, Malice is driven out... yet, a few issues later, we discover Malice was actually part of Mr. Sinister's Marauders. In order to be a more effective part of the team, Malice decides she wants to bond permanently to a host. Awww... it's truly heart warming to see even violent psychic entities feel the need to settle down and be exclusive.

Oh, look who she picked to go steady with, by the way...

"Malice... you possessed her!"

Her being Lorna Dane, better known as the X-men's Polaris! Quite a nice reveal back in the day and one of the few instances Claremont's dabbling with mind controlled heroes wasn't quickly reversed. Malice stuck with Polaris for a good few years before she was cast out. She briefly reappeared alongside Sinister in X-Factor during the mid 90s but remained mostly forgotten after that. It wasn't until Mike Carey's run on X-men  (Legacy) that Malice showed up again to take control of Karima Shapandar, the Prime Sentinel... A possession that gave us the immortal soundbite "I've gone digital, bitches"*

Soo, what does all this have to do with John Byrne ? Well... At about the same time Malice appeared in X-men... Just look who the Fantastic Four had to deal with...



Meet Malice, mistress of hate. And no She-Hulk, she's not kidding. Malice was mean and nasty, dressed in black leather with a spikey slave collar to boot. If that doesn't sound like a typical Chris Claremont female, I don't know what does... Ow, and here's the final straw...


Surprise, surprise... Malice was actually a mind controlled Sue Richards... Ow Invisible Woman, when will your suffering end?**




* No, the actual panel didn't say 'bitches', but it sure felt like she meant to say it.
** Not quite as sarcastically hypothetical as you'd expect, considering Millar's current run on FF is called 'The Death of the Invisible Woman"