Rachel's Grey For Mind Control part 2

When we last saw Rachel, she had just danced her way off the Spiral Path, straight into the Mojoverse.

After being used as Mojo's mindless, mind controlled puppet for heaven knows how long, Rachel finally returned to the 616 proper in the Claremont penned oneshot Excalibur: The sword is drawn. 

Rachel went on to join Excalibur, the UK based offshoot of the X-men, alongside Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and non-mutant members like Captain Britain and his girlfriend, the empathic omnimorph Megan.

Alas, even in this new book, Chris Claremont couldn't resist having Rachel subjected to mind control... The earliest case occured in the Inferno tie ins, in which Excalibur travelled to a demon infested New York city and Rachel, well... she went a little nuts:

This particular image is worth an entry of its very own. The inherent power of the demonic Inferno, causes Rachel to freeze up, literally turning into a mindless mannequin... Making her easy prey for the demon Crotus who falls head over heels for the stiff stunner and decides they should get married.

As a member of Excalibur, Rachel experiences several remarkable adventures. In one of those, chronicled in the limited series X-men: True Friends, Rachel and Kitty are transported through time to face off against the Shadow King in 1930s Scotland.

The Shadow King you say? Guess who got herself mind controlled!

As if that wasn't enough, not long after that Excalibur embarks on the Cross-Time Caper, an extended adventure that takes the team to several alternate Earths across the Omniverse. On one of those, Rachel not only discovers that her mother Jean Grey is alive and well, she's also a part of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club ánd mind controlled by the Shadow King...

An interesting page, showing just how eager everyone seems to be to catch and control young Rachel. The Excalibur Special Editions mentioned in the captions never saw print by the way. The tale however did get published 9 years after the fact as the aforementioned True Friends limited series.

After Chris Claremont left Excalibur, Rachel went through a decade and a half of other writers who did whatever they could think of to her... Some of it made sense, most of it sadly didn´t. For an overview of the highs and lows, click HERE.

It wasn´t until 2003 that Claremont brought in Rachel, when he was writing X-treme X-men. Back then, the team was under assault by Elias Bogan, an obscenely powerful, long lived telepath with connections to the Hellfire Club but in *NO* way resembling the Shadow King *cough*copout*cough.

Bogan had somehow managed to mind control Rachel and used her as an attack dog against the X-men.

Mainly due to the efforts of Kitty Pryde, the X-men managed to free Rachel from Bogan's influence, though he had left his ebon mark on her, as shown in X-treme X-men 46...

Rachel joined the rest of the X-treme team when they decided to return to New York and the other
X-men. That whole Bogan-caused blackness seemingly cleared up over night, because the next time she shows up in Uncanny X-men she gets herself a new uniform, a new haircut and a new codename: Marvel Girl, in honor of Jean Grey, her recently deceased mother from an alternate reality... You know, as one does.

Is that little nugget of backstory enough to make your head spin? Try this on for mind controlled size...

Uncanny X-men #454 saw the return of a new Hellfire Club and Selene attempting to sink her claws into Rachel once again. Still, that didn't quite work out for the raven haired vampire...

"I have been a slave before, Selene. Never again."

Yup, for those of you who love mind controlled women, but prefer them just a bit more primeval... its prehistoric dinosaur Rachel, better known as R'chel. She wasn't just transformed into a sentient dinosaur, she also found herself mind controlled as well...

Now, I'm not saying the resemblance between dinosaur Rachel and 1950s Phyllis Diller is remarkable... but you have eyes, you tell me.

Soon after the conclusion of the Selene story, Chris Claremont's health took a turn for the worse and he was forced to abandon Uncanny X-men. But not before he was able to kick Rachel in the proverbial nuts one final time.

Rachel had been showing signs of tapping into the cosmic Phoenix Force again. This made the interstellar Shi'ar race rather uncomfortable, considering the last time one of the Grey family got a little Phoenix craving, all existence was about to die.

Therefore, once it became obvious that Rachel had access to the Force, the decision was made to exterminate her and, just to be sure, the entire Grey family.

Claremont left the title shortly after the Shi'ar Death Commandos were done mass murdering Rachel's entire family... Chris left his character with a giant phoenix tattoo imprinted on her back, almost like a creator's watermark. Hard to ignore, yet even harder to work into your stories.

Chris Claremont made his mark on Rachel Grey-Summers... if only we were able to forget about as much as Rachel was allowed to...

The Sage Saga part II: Compelling The Living Computer

Your name is Sage and you are a living computer. This means your formidable brain has a natural immunity to outside influences.

Furthermore, you're also blessed with telepathy, a gift honed by Charles Xavier, the world's premier telepathic intellect, making it virtually impossible for you to ever get influenced, hijacked or controlled. You'll always be you.

Unless, of course, your name is Sage and you appear in a comic written by Chris "don't mindcontrol if I do!" Claremont. Lets take a look at the mind control influenced shenanigans Claremont had his pet character hop through in recent years.

First things first, lets find out how Sage ended up with the X-men to begin with... She was doing fine, serving as advisor to the Hellfire Club until 2000. Then, Chris Claremont took over the X-books and there was a line-wide 'six months later' gap, which allowed all the established status quos to be shaken up. Teams had new members, some old familiar faces were missing, what happened?

Sage was one of those new faces among the X-men, serving along with Forge in an advisory capacity.  It wasn't until about 5 years later when we found out what caused her to join the team.

The answer to that riddle no one really cared about came in the pages of X-treme X-men # 44. Which provided the origin of Elias Bogan, one of the founding fathers of the Hellfire Club and also a long lived telepath near the level of the Shadow King.

Sebastian Shaw had wrested control of the Inner circle from Bogan years ago, thanks to Sage (then called Tessa) and Bogan was out for revenge. He took over her mind and tried to offer her to Shaw for ransom. He wasn't too interested, but luckily Storm was around to save Sage.

Free from Bogan's mind control, Sage aided the X-men in several missions and developed a close working relationship with fellow X-man Bishop. The detective from the future and the woman with the impenetrable computer mind made a pretty good team. And then stuff like this happens...

Remember when Xavier's was turned into a public school for mutants and all sorts of super powered preteens covered the grounds? Sure you do, it was before Wanda Maximoff decimated the entire mutant population with three simple words.

"No more mutants" is something Sage and Bishop undoubtedly would have agreed with in X-treme X-men # 22.  Considering the little trick these kids pulled on them. And wait til you see what they made Bishop do...

Turning an angry black man with guns into a tree snogging weirdo and his deadly lady friend into a rat? No wonder all those young mutants tended to end up dead before their sweet 16... 

After some more adventures with the X-treme X-men team, Sage became a part of the X-men proper, serving as their mentat. Unfortunately, not long after that, this happened in Uncanny X-men # 446...

The background to this story can be found HERE, but suffice it to say, the computer crack'd again.

"Something's happened to Sage" sort of became the official tagline for whatever team she happened to be on in the latter years of Claremont's dealings with the character. That'll be the focus of the  Sage Saga part III: Semi Sapphic Symbolism.