1991: A Great Year For Myriad Mind Control

Not too long ago, Not Blog X reviewed one of my absolute favorite X-men issues of yesteryear: Uncanny X-men # 273. In today's entry, we will also cover this comic, focussing on the multiple, mostly unrelated, mind control elements at play within these pages.

Call it an homage

A little background info: this is the first issue after the massive X-Tinction Agenda crossover. X-Tinction (re)united the X-men and saw them fighting alongside X-Factor and Cable's New Mutants against Cameron Hodge and his Genoshan cronies. After defeating Hodge, the three teams returned home to figure out their next move.

As Not Blog X-writer G. Kendall pointed out in his review, this is actually one of the first 'down time after a big crossover' issue in the X-franchise. A moment to catch your breath, take stock and set out in new, exciting directions. For my money, Claremont first told that type of story right after Inferno when he had the X-men and women enjoy some time off back in Uncanny X-men # 244 & 245.

But in # 273, all three teams enjoyed some time off together. And most of their shared interludes involved mind control in one form or another...

The issue opened with Storm, Cable, Cyclops and Jean reviewing their many enemies. It's quite the list...

Ever the soldier, Cable proposed to take them all out methodically, essentially turning the X-men into a squad of mercenaries under his command. Disgusted, Storm and Cyclops refused his offer to turn the team into an army (... how times change). But Cable's rant did spark a little concern within Storm who wondered if both X-Factor and the X-men hadn't outlasted their usefulness.

"Are we fit caretakers for longer, for Xavier's school and his dream? Or has the time come to turn that role over to others.. as it was handed first from him to you and you to us?"

And to think Ororo doesn't even recall yet how Kid Vulcan, Petra, Sway and Darwin all but died as the not-quite-so fantastic fill in X-men serving in that brief interval between the original and Storm's team.

The answer to Storm's question just sort of hangs there though, like the black cloud she generated. After the confrontation with Cable about the future of the team, the issue gradually focused on several ongoing plot points... Like Banshee finally being able to contact his lady love Moira MacTaggert to inform he hadn't in fact perished when the Reavers (remember them from the global threat map?) blew up his plane.

Unfortunately, Moira wasn't exactly the way Sean Cassidy remembered her to be.

"What has happened to her?! It's as though the fiercest highlander side of  her nature has overwhelmed all her gentler aspects."

Unbeknownst to Banshee, Moira and the other people on Muir Island had fallen under the subtle influence of the Shadow King. The ever present malevolent psychic entity had been working from the shadows for months, trying to form a viable power base.

Not only operating from Muir, but also taking over another physical form, one detective Jacob Reisz. As Reisz, the King chased after Storm and Gambit, even taking a Shadow Queen in the process. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

While Banshee struggled with how Moira had changed, elsewhere in the X-men's basement Forge and Beast pondered a somewhat similar problem...

"The more time passes... the more that genetic lock sets...
until it becomes permanent and unbreakable."

The two genius level mutants are talking about Rahne Sinclair. Back on Genosha, she was turned into a mutate which meant she not only lost all her hair, but also became a willing slave thing, blindly following the commands of the Magistrates...

But in her case, the genetic reprogramming harbored an additional, cruel twist. It also made mutate Rahne fall madly in love with Alex Summers, who had been reincarnated as a magistrate (long story). this provided a second layer of mind control: she wasn't just resequenced to obey a uniform, she was also bound to someone... body and soul.... Who didn't even remotely feel the same way about her. And what's even worse: the longer it remained untreated, the harder it will be to remove.

Ah well, no rush...

Let's move to another X-man who only recently recovered from excessive mental tampering...

"The Hand used magic as well as medicine to do the job.
Even Forge can't puzzle out quite how."

Y'know, for an alleged mutant miracle worker, Forge sure can be a bit of a let down sometimes. He was unable to figure out a cure to Rahne's mutation and now he's clueless on the subject of Psylocke's transformation... all the while, Betsy herself is openly wondering if she might not still be serving the Hand in some way.

She shared all this with Jean Grey, surprisingly enough...a woman she only met once, rather briefly, during Inferno. 

Yet here they are, conversing like long lost friends while one takes a shower and the other watches. No implied subtext there whatsoever. Ow, grow up... After her talk with Psylocke, and still mulling over the things Cable said earlier, Jean found herself in the Cerebro room.

And even though she'd lost her telepathy over in X-Factor, she still donned the mutant scanning apparatus hoping to trace the missing X-men on the astral plane.

"Cerebro. Essentially, a psychic scanning system, keyed specifically to my brainwaves... 

and yours, Jean... Designed to amplify your latent psi-potential."

In the years that followed, Kitty Pryde had redesigned Cerebro so even non-telepaths could use it to track their fellow mutants, albeit with significantly more trouble and headache. But apparently, even though she was presumed dead at the time, the Cerebro system was still keyed to Jean's brainwaves and off she went on to the astral plane.

 However, she discovered a bit more than she bargained for.

 "As I was, as I am... As I might yet become! An infinity of aspects...
But always the Shadow King."

 Oh Lord, not this creep again...

"Does this hurt? Don't worry. You'll soon come to love it."

The King does make a good point. After Xavier went into space back in # 200, they didn't give the astral plane so much as a second look. Psylocke used it once or twice during the Morlock massacre and Magneto put on the helmet on occassion, but it had been long since a proper telepath explored the astral plane or even updated Cerebro's protocols, allowing the Shadow King to grow more powerful and even bring allies like Lian, his Shadow Queen...

"Embrace my Shadow Queen, Grey. Be ONE with me."

Luckily, Jean had allies too. Psylocke used her psychic knife to literally cut her out off the astral plane, beyond the Shadow King's reach. So, another threat to add to the big board, eh? Well, kinda.

'Who was it that attacked you?"

In a bit of a convenient cop out, Psylocke's psi-knife messed up Jean's memories of the incident. She has no idea it was the Shadow King, even though Psylocke was in earshot when Lian called herself the Shadow Queen, so assuming the big monster might be the Shadow... King... wouldn't be the biggest stretch. For now, all they knew that there was 'something' wrong on the astral plane...

"There be dragons"

Still, the point is moot, because the issue closes with the X-men getting kidnapped by Lila Cheney to the Shi'ar empire where they'd fight an evil, mind controlling Charles Xavier for a couple of issues before realising in # 278 he was actually a disguised Warskrull. We all covered it here.

Point is: within minutes of being rescued, Charles (still naked and covered in Skrull bio-gunk) became aware of the Shadow King when Banshee mentioned Moira's odd behaviour and Storm started infodumping, trying to cover the events of the past 75+ issues in a single panel.

"By the eternal... the Shadow King!"

So, how's that for keeping the story moving forward? When you least expect it, Chris Claremont neatly weaves multiple plotpoints from # 273's 'downtime' issue into a single, mind control heavy thread as professor Xavier returns home to deal with the Shadow King once and for all.

... And oh yeah, isn't that Jim Lee art fan-f-ckin' gorgeous? 

X-tremely Early X-men Mindcontrol

The year is 1991 and Chris Claremont has been forced into a corner.

During his impressive 15 year run on Uncanny X-men, Claremont made a bit of name for himself as a talent scout, handpicking the pencilers that worked with him on the title. Starting with Dave Cockrum and John Byrne, the selection of popular artists like Paul Smith, John Romita Jr. and Marc Silvestri were increasingly up to Claremont... and culminated with the pick of Jim Lee.

Lee's art was more than a little impressive. In fact, it was so stellar the X-men editors started to realise the artist might well be more important than the writer. Editor in chief Bob Harras spotted a rising star when he saw one and decided to cater more to Jim's needs than whatever Chris set out to do.

While Lee wanted to revisit X-men classics like the Sentinels and the Imperial Guard, Claremont wanted to look forward but was repeatedly overruled... until he finally decided to quit in 1991 after launching the second monthly X-men title with Jim Lee.

Adjectiveless X-men # 1 was a smash hit, with a record 7.1 million (!) copies printed up. It involved Claremont's final status quo changing story for both the X-men and their arch enemy Magneto... and oh yes, lots of mind control...

The story opens with a battle in space, near Magneto's orbital home base Asteroid M. Involving himself in the skirmish, the master of magnetism is stunned to learn one of the involved parties is a band of mutants who have come to pledge them to his cause. Intrigued, he takes them in...

The fight didn't go unnoticed on Earth either. The Russians picked it up, handed it over to SHIELD which sent Nick Fury to deliver it to the X-men.

The X-men go on high alert and split up into two teams: X-men blue and gold. A clever way to maintain seperate casts of characters for the two main X-men titles. X-men blue, scheduled to be X-men's main cast, was comprised of Cyclops, Beast, Gambit, Rogue, Psylocke and Wolverine. 

After fighting the X-men in the Atlantic, Magneto makes an appearance in Genosha where his newly minted Acolytes are cutting a bloody swath through the mutant oppressing magistrates. He has a bit of news to share with the world...

Proclaiming Asteroid M a sovereign nation and threatening to avenge any mutant is bound to get a response from the global super powers... But for now, the X-men fought Magneto and the Acolytes while Genosha burned. So just who are these Acolytes, what can they do?

Well, there's their red headed leader Fabian Cortez for one. After planting a kiss on Psylocke, he used his abilities to regulate mutant powers to amp her telepathy up to the Nth degree... Causing her to lose control of her self as her mind almost drowned in other people's thoughts.

Luckily, she recovered in time for the next Acolyte to make his move. Meet Chrome, he can do stuff like this...

Yup, he turned most of the team into living statues with just a wave of his hand. Of course, he could have done it half an issue earlier, but then it wouldn't have been much of a slobberknocker, now would it?  Magneto takes the X-men blue team prisoner as he and the Acolytes return to Asteroid M where a stunning discovery awaits them.

Someone has been messing with Magneto's genetic codes... And he knows full well who is responsible...

Way back in the 1970s, Magneto fought the Defenders and professor X with the help of Alpha, the ultimate mutant. During the fight, Alpha realised Magneto was the real enemy and turned him into a baby. Charles Xavier took the helpless child to Moira's Muir Island facility so the young Magnus might have a chance for redemption. 

Unfortunately, Moira instead used all her time to mess with Magneto's mind, in an attempt to 'cure' the once and future master of magnetism of his more... insane... tendencies. Let's see how Magneto appreciated her efforts.

Comparing Moira to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele might be a bit harsh... Then again, both doctors experimented on young children with complete disregard of their professional ethics and morality. 

It is truly horrific to see what Magneto puts Moira through. Torturing her until she agrees to something that will truly haunt her for the rest of her life: using the same techniques to mind control the captured X-men. The procedure goes off without a hitch and the X-men blue team swear allegiance to Magneto's cause, just as the X-men gold team is mounting a rescue operation. The clock is ticking though, because the UN has decided to blow Asteroid M out of the sky, no matter who's on it.

But, how can Storm, Jean Grey, Colossus, Archangel, Iceman, Banshee and Forge possibly beat their fellow X-men, the Acolytes ánd Magneto?

Not easily. 

But sometimes, the only way to end a fight is to fight.

Rogue's back to her old self again and the others are soon to follow as the third issue of X-men draws to a close. Y'see, Moira's mind control technique doesn't really stick because, well, let's have her explain it... She's the Nobelprize winning geneticist here after all...

Yup, Moira's mindwipe won't stick if a mutant has already used his or her powers. It's a bit of a pop psychology psychobabble cop out, but hey... At least it established Magneto's fully responsible for his own actions and can't pin his crimes on Moira's handiwork. With that established, the UN deadline conveniently runs out and, as promised, Asteroid M gets hit with an orbital laser cannon.

Preferring to go down with their home, Magneto and the Acolytes stay behind as the X-men race for their ship. And in the closing moments of a 15 year run, Chris Claremont has professor Xavier offer up a few last nuggets of wisdom

Even dead X-men get mindcontrolled

By his own admission, Chris Claremont has very little interest in writing comics these days.

Whether or not this is a positive development is open for debate, but judging from today's entry, the two part mini series Chaos War: X-men, taking a break might actually be for the best.

As it turns out, Claremont's participation in the early 2011 company wide crossover Chaos War was actually his last Marvel work to date. He co-wrote it with another 80s comics icon: Louise Simonson,  long time editor of Uncanny X-men and writer of New Mutants and X-Force.

Their Chaos War tie-in actually didn't really tie in to the main storyline. In fact, the main villain, Japanese god of evil Amatsu-Mikaboshi, made a grand total of zero appearances. Instead, Claremont and Simonson focussed on several deceased X-men that had come back to life for reasons they themselves barely understood.

This resulted in an uneven, choppy story full of hazy events that were hard to follow despite the overwrought captioning... A tale that tried so hard to be atmospheric and dreamlike, it made itself absolutely irrelevant because of it. But oh my, did it feature mind control!

Barely four pages into the first issue, as lead characters like John 'Thunderbird' Proudstar, Banshee, Multiple Man and Moira McTaggert are trying to figure out what the heck is going on, the malevolent Stepford Cuckoo Esme forces their minds together so its 'easier to compare notes'.

Esme really is a bit of a handful, her fellow Stepford sister Sophie constantly complains about Esme's behavior and alledged superior power. Still, all the telepathic power in the world doesn't save her from the villain of the book:

Forget Amatsu-Mikaboshi, who needs a god of evil when you can fight Carrion Crow, a mind controlling, flesh warping bad guy who is chasing the group of recently resurrected dead X-men and it all involves one of Destiny's lost diaries.

*SIGH*

Okay, enough is enough... This two parter is a convoluted mess, check out Wikipedia's brave attempt to make sense of it all:

During the Chaos War, Moira MacTaggart, Thunderbird, Banshee, Esme and Sophie of the Stepford Cuckoos, and Multiple Man's fallen clones are resurrected and appear on the former grounds of the X-Men school. There, Moira MacTaggart finds one of Destiny's diaries which contains a passage depicting the events of the war and apparently the key to defeating Amatsu-Mikaboshi.

After Thunderbird prayed to the Thunderbird God to teleport the group away from the attacking Carrion Crow, Thunderbird and the group learned that Moira has been possessed by Destiny's ghost.

Yeahhh... And that was just the first issue.

Issue two had Carrion Crow and the transformed Cuckoo pick off the dead X-men one by one... Starting with her own sister Sophie.

This went on for a good half of the issue until Thunderbird suddenly developed near mystical powers connected to the actual mythological thunderbird... Who is somewhat related to the Phoenix Force, but not quite, and... Ah well, there's more mind control:

Yup... Thunderbird, a man who died after only three appearances in an X-men comic in the late 70s... A man whose main characteristics were anger issues and the fact that his mutant abilities of enhanced strength, speed and senses made him little more than a bargain basement Wolverine... minus the claws... That man returns from the dead as a conduit for a previously unheard of primal force of the Earth? 

Chris Claremont may be done with writing comics, but... As far as swansongs go, Chaos War: X-men  isn't something to look back on with pride. 

Spin the karmic mind control wheel

So, how about them New Mutants?

Back in 1982, riding high on the huge sales of Uncanny X-men, Chris Claremont was approached by then-editor in chief Jim Shooter to produce a spin off to the series. After all, more of the same popular thing, equals even bigger sales, right? Ah, the eighties... a stunningly innocent age, in retrospect.

Still, creating a second X-men series wasn't exactly something Claremont wasn't too sure how to do, never mind the fact that he wasn't too eager about rehashing the same formula. Still, alongside his longtime editor Louise "Weezie" Simonson, he came up with a format for a new series based around a group of young mutants studying at Xavier's school for gifted youngsters.

A perfectly legitimate notion, considering the X-men had started out as a book about teenagers coming to terms with their powers, themselves and a world that hates and fears them. But by 1982, the team only had one preteen in Kitty Pryde. The book had strayed off considerably from what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had set out to accomplish, way back in 1963.

Still, the solution to this problem seemingly originated from Kitty Pryde as well, as a 1978 character design by John Byrne proves. After designing 'Ariel', Byrne jotted down some ideas on how she could be used in the book. Go on, you can read it yourself...

So, if it had been up to Byrne, Kitty would have been the first member of a second team of "X-men in training." Of course, things turned out differently when Kitty joined the main team and the notion of a rookie class ended up on the backburner. 

Yet, Claremont was forced to come up with a cast for his new teambook... Kitty was off limits, with the The X-men lost in space, fighting (and getting mindcontrolled by) the Brood at that point. Still, he had plenty of young mutants to choose from...the first being Karma, a character he had created a year or so earlier.

                                   

Meet Karma, Xi'an Coy Manh to friends, basically the living embodiment of Chris Claremont's mind control obsession... Karma's mutant power allows her to control other people's mind, taking over their bodies and essentially steering them to do whatever she wants them to. She discovered her powers back in her native country of Vietnam, when she instinctively tried to stop a Vietcong soldier from harming her family.

In her first appearance, she pitted the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man against one another in a somewhat enjoyable yet convoluted tale in which she jumped from hero to hero, causing Spidey and the FF to fight for a few pages. In a nuthsell: Xi'ans brother Tran enjoyed his mind control powers and used them for personal gain, even entering the employ of his uncle, the crimelord Nguyen Ngoc Coy.

What's worse, Tran had taken his two younger siblings with him, and Xi'an tried her darndest to get them back, by any means necessary... Even taking over famous heroes to help her. At the end of the tale, Karma was forced to 'absorb' her brother, into herself which caused her considerable grief.


                                              

Traumatic as it might have been, it set Xi'an on the path to becoming Charles Xavier's newest pupil, even though she was already a young adult by that time. Still, Charles can't resist a good attempt at having mutants show off their powers and causing harm to common citizens. He's like Magneto that way, with less hair and more moral fibre. Or does he?

                                  

During her initiation at the school back in Marvel Graphic Novel # 4, Xi'an was forced to give a demonstration of her power by taking over Xavier's long suffering associate Moira MacTaggert. Everyone seemed shocked at Xi'an's capabilities. 

But Xavier couldn't be happier about it and even offered her a job on the spot and promoting her to team leader of the New Mutants before the issue was through.

Having a girl in your midst who can take over your mind and body, without you even realising it? Not sure how you feel about that, but it would creep me out, to say the least. Yet, everyone seemed to accept Karma without a second thought, even when she pulled stuff like this:

               
                                         

Ahhh, so her very reason to be on the team was to dominate and control others, yet... she won't allow that power or anyone else to corrupt her.

Yeah, funny story.

Early on in their run, the New Mutants came across Viper and her partner the Silver Samurai. During that mission, Xi'an was mentally contacted and corrupted by the X-men's old enemy the Shadow King. For more on this disembodied mind control maniac, click HERE. 

The Shadow King took over Karma's body and turned her evil (and fat), thereby proving that Chris isn't above subjecting his characters to cruel twists of fate.

Having the mind controller get mindcontrolled?

I do suppose karma *IS* a bitch, after all.

... Sidenote: with a frowning, scowling look like that, turning out to be the bitchy puppet of an evil psychic overlord isn't that unlikely at all. And the hair, well... yeah. Did I mention Karma came out as a lesbian in the early 2000s? Twas a big surprise then. 

Not to her hairdresser, though. 

Mutant X spells Mind Control

And so we reach Uncanny X-men # 127, the one where we finally meet Moira McTaggert's son: Kevin, better known as Mutant X or Proteus. Anyways: he can change reality but his mutant energies consume his physical form so he needs to body-jack others in order to survive.

He takes over their bodies and consumes their lifeforce and souls. Kevin jumped from his own form to that of curmudgeon Angus McWirther, one of Multiple Man's clones and then by way of the Scottish police officer in this picture to the girl who finally led him to his father, Joe McTaggert.

In the end, Colossus destabilised Proteus' energy form, dispersing and seemingly killing him.