Doomed If One Can Divine The Celestial Mind Control Motif

Today's entry, much to my own surprise, still deals with Claremont's Fantastic Four...

More specifically... # 25, a double sized anniversary issue cover dated January 2000, that properly reintroduced Doctor Doom to the Marvel Universe after the Heroes Reborn experiment of the mid 90s.

Before his triumphant comeback, Doom had spent most of his time as caretaker of the Heroes Reborn Earth, a world plagued by numerous catastrophies and natural disasters. That is, until Doom got involved in an attempt to save the world from itself ánd the dreaming Celestial who seemed to be at the core of all the shenanigans too convoluted or uninteresting to cover here.

What you need to know: Doom had just shifted 'his' Earth from the Heroes Reborn pocket universe into his home dimension and he now stood ready to deal with the Dreaming Celestial, along with his trusty aide Lancer (Samantha Dunbar) and his four generals: Lady Dorma of Atlantis, the battlemage Shakti, the mind controlling Divinity and the equally mind and body controlling Technarx.

Doom and his generals encountered the Fantastic Four in the opening pages of # 25 and, after the obligatory fight scene, decided to pool their resources to deal with their common enemy: the Dreaming Celestial who was now actively trying to destroy both groups in order to achieve, erm... something. Trust me, it really doesn't matter in the end.

So, how did he plan to achieve this? Well, have you heard of a little thing called mind control?

"Too much talking. Better by far to let Divinity assimilate them.
That gains Doom all of their powers... but none of their attitude."

As soon as the champions of two worlds entered the Dreaming Celestial's sanctuary, the mind controlling Divinity was attacked and absorbed by an equally shadowy creature that effortlessly took control of Divinity's form, as Doom's ebon general started claiming victims left and right. The Invisible Woman was the first to fall, when she got coated with the dark gunk. And well... you can guess what happened next, right?

"There's something else... as though the very darkness itself was a living entity!"

Ow boy, you're not kidding... and Sue and Divinity were just the warm up act. Moments later, the tendrils growing behind them struck out. While Johnny tried to burn through them, he was struck by something rather familiar...

"No joy, Reed. Something just hit me! It's Sue's forcefield!"

Yup, a mind controlled Invisible Woman was now working for the Dreaming Celestial, using her powers to knock everyone into the Celestial creature so they would share her fate. Overcome by emotions, Mr. Fantastic tried to free his brother and law, only to be saved by Doom, who stunned him into temporary helplessness with a shock blast. Doom ordered Lancer to aid the Thing in buying him, Mr. Fantastic and young Valeria Richards (another long story) time to solve this mess, by going deeper inside the Celestial's tomb.

So, in case anyone was wondering what chance one rockmonster and a woman with laserfire fingertips have against a Celestial born living darkness ánd at least 6 of their mind controlled allies?

None whatsoever. And they knew it.

Still, as they fell, they provided Reed, Doom and Valeria with a pretty important clue as they proceeded to venture deeper into the labyrinthian Celestial slumberpit (on a sidenote: don't you just love words like that?). The tentacle thing is taking over the FF and Doom's allies for a very good reason.

"You realize, of course, what will happen when all twelve are transformed."

Not specifically, no. Because Claremont's hopelessly convoluted, overly wordy script fails to clearly explain the significance of a Celestial guard dog taking over the form of twelve, apparently random, mortals. All Reed and Doom need to know from reading a few of the tomb's glyphs: they can actually stop the Celestial if they work together to simultaneously activate a number of switches that unlock a pair of levers that will allow them to deal with the Celestial.

In order to buy her two dads (I know...) the time needed to either stretch or manipulate the levers with a forcefield, Valeria quietly sacrifices herself as well.

"The brat is no more. And I am one step closer to my freedom!"

After consuming the daughter of two men (again, don't worry about it...), the Celestial sent his creature to deal with Reed and Doom. It proved remarkably capable of claiming both in record speed.

"Be so easy to give in! But they fought to the last for me. Can I do less?"

Doom's goading inadvertently fired up Mr. Fantastic and the two men manage to simultaneously hit all the switches ánd activate the levers in the exact way the glyphs instructed them. This set in motion a termination mechanism built into the Dreaming Celestial's tomb.

Apparently, the D.C. (surely a 'subtle' reference to a fellow New York based comics company) tried to to circumvent this lethal safeguard. Its idea was to replacing the essence of the twelve living Celestial guardian statues with those of others, any others. However, since Mr. Fantastic and Doctor Doom had managed to escape capture, the cycle wasnt complete so hitting the kill switch restored all twelve Celestial statues as they lethally wounded their wayward brother by proxy.

It also released some rather familiar faces...

"It was... Awful! I was aware of everything I was doing... But I couldn't stop myself!"

However, Mr. Fantastic and Doctor Doom weren't quite so lucky. In its dying moments, the Dreaming Celestial planned to take both of them with him to the grave. In the end, only one would survive...

Well, that's not exactly true, as these posts point out... 

• Doctor Doom threatens the Wizard into surrendering
• Reed Is Doom & Doom Is Reed (we all mind control together)

Spoiler alert: It's actually Reed inside Doom's armor. Fun ánd games!

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.

There's nothing like mindcontrolling Paris in springtime...

Lets start off with a positive comment regarding Claremont's writing: he never considers himself too good to use characters or plots he didn't create himself.

Case in point: Fantastic Four # 20, which features the FF's triumphant return to the 616, after being stranded in the Negative Zone for weeks. The team reappears in Paris and its a good thing they showed when they did because the capital of France is suffering from major mystical problems... All because of The Ruined, a band of interdimensional beings Scott Lobdell introduced back in Fantastic Four vol. 3 # 1. Back then, the team was just in time to stop the Ruined from changing our dimension into theirs, converting people and matter alike. Mindcontrol on a universal level, a first!


But now, the team is a little too late. The transformation's already begun. What to do? Well... turns out there's still a whole lot left to do. The FF manage to reverse the dimensional shift... no harm done. But their presence in Paris leads to the meeting with Margali Szardos (whee-hay! Another character from the X-men mythos... Who's keeping count, anyways?)

The FF get detained in Paris, so lets skip ahead to issue # 21, which features a mind control centered appearance by everyone's favourite Norse Goddess of Death, the ever divalicious Hela!

Read the panel? So, who is Valeria, you ask? Well, she appeared to be the extradimensional second child of Reed and Sue, the daughter they thought they'd lost back in 1984 after a very sad and unfortunate miscarriage. This Valeria all of a sudden 'time-danced' into Pier Four, the FF's base of operations, while the team was still presumed lost in the Negative Zone. Valeria's older (but because she time-shifted also still younger) brother Franklin and his nannies were dumbstruck by her appearance, but Valeria proved her worth soon enough.


Before they had a proper chance to say hello, FF Headquarters was invaded by the Bacchae, a group of old enemies looking for revenge. Valeria got Franklin's Inhuman puppy to teleport them all to safety, but 'safety' apparently included the domain of Hela... The Goddess of death took a keen interest in Valeria and proceeded in an attempt to mindcontrol her... Before she succeeded, Puppy 'ported the group away again, in their quest to locate the Fantastic Four... Of course, before issue's end they all got reunited again. Talk about a happy ending.. That is, until the next issue featuring earth's mightiest mind control!

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By the way, on a completely unrelated sidenote: when he took over FF, Claremont had planned to introduce none other than Kitty Pryde to the team. This of course, would have made using other X-men characters more than extremely easy. Kitty was supposed to serve as a big sister to Franklin and her natural genius would make her click with Reed. Even Sue would be hard pressed to not regard her as part of the family. Marvel Editiorial decided against that, judging Kitty's place was with the X-men. Sooo... We got Valeria. In all fairness, not the worst character in the world, still her timetravel/teleporting shenanigans do resemble the early Rachel Grey and teenage Illyana Rasputin arcs.