Brand New Brood Control part III: It's Not Just The Power Of Christ That Can Compel You...

The Brood saga ended in Uncanny X-men # 234, a comic with a cover so shockingly disturbing to kids, yours truly couldn't bear to look at it without getting nightmares... Well done, Marc Silvestri.

The X-men had been fighting medic Harry Palmer, who had accidentally been infected by the Brood. By the time the team tracked him down, Harry had implanted several mutants with Brood eggs as well, which made dealing with this particular Brood incursion a bit more of a challenge.

After their initial encounter, the X-men had lost both Psylocke and Rogue to the Brood, while Wolverine had been implanted with a Brood embryo. So things weren't looking too hot for the team when the fight moved to the scene of a giant outdoor church event led by reverend William Conover. For once, a religious figure who isn't against mutants.

In fact, he's more concerned with his wife Hannah's chronic rheumatic arthritis.

"If you'll let me... I've something that can fix that"

By the way, that paramedic offering to help Hannah Conover is Josey, colleague and partner to Harry 'Brood Embryos For Everyone!' Palmer... What a coincidence! Guess it *is* a small world after all, right? Speaking of the Brood, let's check in on Temptress, a pheromone fuelled mind controller who managed to snatch both Rogue and Wolverine.

"With each breath, my pheromones bind your will more tightly to the Brood. And soon, after Harry's implanted an egg in you...same as he did with Wolverine... you'll be one of us in flesh, as well as spirit."

After a sales pitch like that, all Rogue can say is: "Ohboyoboy! Ah can hardly wait". Unfortunately for her, Wolverine's metamorphosis was being hindered by his healing factor, just like it had during the previous Brood arc.

Incensed after watching him kill Temptress, a still clouded Rogue threw Wolverine to the ground and raced back to Harry Palmer and the others, who were trying to get away from the other X-men by car. But Storm, Colossus and the others put a stop to that. finally caught up with them.

"Brood got plans for you, Storm... You're gonna host the Queen's egg! An' it's my duty... my pleasure, sweetheart... to see those plans fulfilled!"

Luckily for Storm, she was saved by a well timed laserblast, courtesy of Dazzler. The Brood escaped by foot, heading towards the religious convention led by reverend Conover... Who was already entertaining a most unexpected guest...

"Poor fella must mean drugs."

Yeah, that's a nasty dose of MGH, to be sure. Usually, Logan's healing factor would have gotten rid of the egg with some effort. But Wolverine suffered additional severe injuries from his involuntary sky diving without a parachute incident. This meant his powers had trouble keeping up, allowing the rapidly maturing Brood embryo to gain the upperhand. But the reverend kept on praying...

 His voice and manner... as different, as changed as his body! The "demon"... it's real!"

At the last possible moment, Wolverine's healing powers come through and destroy the embryo. But it's not like Logan can rest easy. Contrary to what the reverend promises... the danger's far from past. Harry and the Brood arrive, almost strangling Conover before the X-men manage to kill most of them.

Yes... Kill. For once, the team has adopted a zero tolerance policy. Not a single Brood may survive, or Earth is doomed. That's why sweet, innocent souls like Colossus and Havok slay Brood left and right, until only Harry remains. And he's got a hostage: Hannah Conover.

Luckily, Wolverine's just about done with all of Harry's nonsense... He crawls underneath the podium the Brood is standing on and pulls a surprise move, before pulling a not too surprising move...

"You don't understand, bub... Harry Palmer died a long time ago.
Now, at last, he'll have a chance to rest in peace...."

 *SNIKT*

With Harry Palmer's death, the last of the Earth born Brood have been dealt with. For once, the X-men can enjoy a nice, clean victory that in no way will come back to haunt them somewhere down the road. Heck, even reverend Conover and his wife have extra reason to celebrate...

"Your hands!?! They can move again, are they healed?!!"

...

A woman finding herself spontaneously cured of debilitating, chronic arthritis? Surely, this miracle must be an act of divine intervention... Or, well...erm, wait, remember how Brood embryos are able to boost their host's immune system so they're in perfect health by the time they take over?

And wasn't nurse Josey riding around with Brood host Harry for lord knows how many weeks?

... Crap on a cracker. 

Brand New Brood Control part II: Temptress *IS* A Harsh Mistress...

The Brood are back, baby... And we all know what that means...

A few months ago a lone Brood Queen crashlanded her space shark on Earth, snacked on some unlucky campers and infected medic Harry Palmer with a royal embryo. The Queen herself conveniently enough vanished into thin air, but Harry set out to recruit new soldiers for the cause... And what better hosts than mutants? By the time the X-men caught up with Harry, he had gathered quite the, erm, brood.

"Breathe deep, Storm! Flood your system with my pheromones."

But Harry had chosen his mutant brood wisely. Brickbat's strength rivalled that of Colossus, Tension could choke the life out of everyone from a safe distance and of course, there was Temptress, the mind controller...

"Don't you feel better now, dear? Don't you just adore me?
Won't you do simply anything I ask... to make me happy?"

Storm managed to get away before she was completely under Temptress' pheromone control. Unfortunately for her, one of the Brood spawned wings, announcing his name was Divebomber and went after the windrider. After all, Harry planned to have her carry a brood queen embryo.

Meanwhile, Temptress had to deal with Rogue... Who on second thought might not have been the best X-man to take her on.

"Can't help myself. Ah'm absorbin' Temptress's power.. an' psyche. Which seems to have overwhelmed your own, Rogue."

Ignoring the fact that even with Rogue out of commission, Carol Danvers was still inside her head at the time... Temptress effortlessly uses her powers in her new skunk haired body to mind control Psylocke. And together, they take on Wolverine...

 "The perfect one-two, my sweet. I telepathically seize your mind...
while my temptress pheromones make you worship me."

After a brief struggle, Wolverine finally gives in and is knocked out... which left him vulnerable to what we all knew was coming...

"And you know, X-man... what happens next!"

Before he could implant eggs in Rogue and Psylocke, the remaining X-men rallied their forces and Harry decided to play it safe, calling for a strategic retreat.

"Protect Temptress and Wolverine... with your lives!"

And so they did... Harry, Psylocke and the other Brood ran to the nearest getaway car, while Rogue picked up Temptress and Wolverine and flew off, straight into the third part of Brand New Brood Control: It's Not Just the Power Of Christ That Can Compel You...

Brand New Brood Control part I: Guess Who's Back?

 The BROOD is back!"

If you'll allow me to borrow a line from Stephen King: "Sometimes... they *do* come back."

'They' being the Brood, the massively popular alien race that almost turned the X-men into host bodies for their new queens back in 1982. Chris Claremont had refrained from bringing them back too quickly, finally giving in to popular demand with a three parter in 1987 that felt more like a modern day horror flick than the original Brood saga that felt very much like the 1979 cult movie Alien. 

But Claremont wouldn't be Claremont if he didn't subtly weave the return of the Brood into his ongoing storylines, months before the frightful aliens would actually appear in the book. Take for instance this scene from Uncanny X-men # 218, which features a frightening discovery by X-men reservists Havok and Polaris after getting run off the road by a frantic driver behind the wheel of a VW van.

"Lorna, if that one's a Broodqueen... if she lays her eggs, if they hatch... the human race is doomed."

No, that isn't a scene from Jaws VII, it just so happens Lorna and Alex encounter one of the Brood's space sharks, personal transports the aliens use in their stellar travels. It crashed near a New Mexico campsite, apparently killing everyone around. 

Claremont would pick up this thread a good fourteen months later in Uncanny X-men # 232, in which we discover the link between the crashed space shark and that VW-driver who ran Alex and Lorna off the road.

Meet Harry Palmer... a medic who was present when the space shark literally crashed his camping trip and everything went straight to hell...

"Harry... I fell... my ankle... broken... I can't WALK!"

Harry thought he'd been able to escape this gruesome scene unscathed, despite feeling horrible about leaving his friends behind to die. But he couldn't have been more wrong, as we see this issue when he visits a lawyer who suffered a heart attack when his mutant fire breathingpowers first manifested themselves in court. He has a rather... unique... way to heal his patient...

"Rest easy Bob. Your troubles are over. You're going to be fine. Just fine.
In fact, I can pretty much guarantee... that you'll live forever."

Oh snap, so Harry has been infected by the Brood as well! And by infecting the dying Bob with an egg, he quite rightly claimed the man would live forever. After all, as has been previously established, Brood embryos boost the human immune system to the extreme, making sure their host bodies recover from the most serious of injuries or ailments.  

After a hard day of saving people and/or turning them into Brood hosts, Harry returns home to find the X-men waiting for him. As Rogue thinks to herself during the ensuing fight, the team had been on Harry's trail ever since Havok (allegedly) clued them in on finding the crashed Brood vessel in New Mexico.

"Palmer was infected at the crash site in New Mexico...
I spotted that the moment I tagged his scent."

Harry however, still has no clue he's actually a Brood. Even though he effortlessly withstands and repels attacks from Colossus, Psylocke and several other X-men powerhouses. He runs for his life, even boarding a bus in order to cover his tracks. But he finds Rogue posing as one of the passengers, ready to take him down. Unfortunately, due to lack of experience with human/brood hybrids, Harry manages to gain the upperhand and this anything but phallic scene is a fact...

"This is a moment long overdue, little X-girl..."

Sigh, threatening to stab Rogue with a claw that's rather clearly tentacle porn oriented is a minor kink of Claremont's, seeing as he would expose Rogue to pretty much the same thing years later in a 2000 X-men annual...

It didn't work then, either.

Rogue is saved and the team finally manages to corner their quarry. That is, until the police and some locals showed up to reveal they weren't exactly who they seemed to be...

"We're all of us Brood her. And soon, old enemies, very soon... YOU will be too!"

Oh boy, talk about a cliffhanger...

To find out who lived, who died, who spawned wings and tossed airplane engines around, check back for Brand New Brood Control part II: Temptress *IS* A Harsh Mistress...

....

But before all that good fun... consider this: remember how Harry was shocked to see the Brood that killed his friends and recruited him. So, whatever happened to her? She didn't just die off, or Havok and Polaris would have discovered her remains among the campers she killed. And given the Brood's strong matriarchal society, it's pretty hard to imagine an elder queenf would relinquish or even share power with Harry, her half human daughter. Anyone care to explain this away?

Rogue and Cyclops Get Mind Controlled: The Sinister Way

When one thinks of Inferno, it mostly summons up images of an unending horde of demons invading New York.

And while a lot of that did indeed go down, back in 1989, during the finale of Inferno, there were no more demons to be fought, only those ephemeral inner ones. Limbo's merger with Earth was halted well before the finale... Heck, even the Goblin Queen was defeated before that. Meaning the end game was played between just the X-men, X-Factor and... Mister Sinister.

I guess that explains this particular house ad...

With S'ym and N'astirh vanished and gone, the X-teams faced Mr. Sinister in X-Factor # 39. It was the first time the mastermind behind the Marauders, among other threats, fought Xavier's children head on. In an added, sadistic twist, their confrontation took place on the site of Professor Xavier's wrecked school for gifted youngsters...

One by one, the X-men and X-Factor tried to take down Sinister and the Marauders' leader Malice, who was still in control of Polaris. They didn't exactly have the best of luck, Sinister brushed off most of their assaults... And when Rogue tried to take him out by draining his essence... This classic example of reverse mind control happened.

"YOU... absorb me, child? Never. I am strongest... by far the dominant personality...
And I have become YOU!"

Yup, Sinister's physical form may have been incapicated, his mind is in control of Rogue's far more powerful form. He takes over her mind and knocks out Cyclops, who he's had a special interest in from the get go, which readers of Classic X-men (or this blog) already knew.

"On your knees to me, your master!"

Bless Sinister for posing like a cheesy 1950's movie villain... But he wasn't too wrong, after all he'd been subtly influencing young Scott Summers from the moment he was unfortunate enough to end up in an orphanage run by Sinister.

The master villain immediately realised Scott's genetic potential and just how he could put it to his advantage... But what's the one rule of creating a super weapon? Why, making sure you can't be harmed by it's effects, of course!

And in Scott's case, it involved a fair bit of mind control.

"How wonderful, child. How... deadly."

The Inferno crossover revealed it wasn't professor Xavier who first came up with the ruby quartz glasses that kept Cyclop's optical blasts in check... It was Sinister all along. For some reason, the seemingly omnipotent villain feared Scott's power and made sure he couldn't be harmed by it.

"Cyclops is under some form of mind control."

Storm was right... Or, as Rogue points out: he can't use his optic blast against Mr. Sinister. But leave it to the formerly mind controlled Havok, Scott's brother, to sort him out. After Jean uses her power to restrain Cyclops, Alex confronts his brother... And he's being a right diva about it.

"Well, well, well... look at poor Scott, all helpless! What's the matter, brother of mine?"

Hitting his brother senseless didn't exactly help him snap out of it... But luckily, Scott was able to rid himself of his conditioning it when he saw this...

"You see, Scott? He has Jean!" You know what he'll do to her!"

And that was enough to snap Scott out of his mind control madness. He rushed up to Sinister and took control... mostly by opening his visor wide...

Done and done? Oh, lord no...

But I don't mind controlling my wise ass'ed ness. Why ruin the moment for Scott and co?

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.

2nd post, brotherly love of mind control

And here we are again. These panels courtesy of Uncanny X-men # 97, one of Claremont's first stories.

This tale saw the introduction of Eric the Red, a mysterious Shi'ar agent who had a bone to pick with the X-men and used their former teammates Havok and Polaris in his schemes.

Naturally, Alex and Lorna were subjected to mind control to ensure their cooperation.

"It was Eric... he... my mind..." 

Indeed.