MYTHCOMICS: “WHY DO WE DO THESE THINGS WE DO” (NEW MUTANTS ANNUAL #2, 1986)

 

In this story—hitherto abbreviated as “Things”—the roster for the New Mutants included Mirage, Cannonball, Magma, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Magik, Warlock and Cipher—though to be sure, the narrative strongly emphasizes the actions of the last two. A three-page prologue sets up the action when two of the villains of the LONGSHOT universe, Mojo and Spiral, capture Betsy Braddock, the blind-but-psychically-endowed sister of Captain Britain. (Mojo, by the way, is the first to bestow the name of “Psylocke” upon Betsy, foreshadowing the intent of either Claremont or his editors to bring the character into the Marvel mainstream.) “Things” then shifts to the New Mutants’ training academy. Doug Ramsey, a.k.a. Cipher, complains to his team-leader Mirage about the problem that most assails Marvel heroes: a discontent with their existential status. In Cipher’s case, he feels alienated not only by virtue of being a mutant, but also for being unable to talk to anyone about his experiences but his fellow mutants. Mirage counsels him to avoid self-pity and “make the best of things.”

Ironically, though the other mutants on the team have much more power than Doug, they appear to be more vulnerable than he to a psychic seduction via that most insidious seducer: the idiot box. Most of the New Mutants, as well as the younger siblings of Karma (who’s not in the story proper), are caught up in a TV-show called Wildways, starring Mojo, Spiral, and a brainwashed Betsy, now given the name of Psylocke. Over in England, though, Captain Britain recognizes his missing sister in the program and jets over to the former colonies to investigate, though he’s quickly nullified by an unseen foe.

For the New Mutants, life seems normal, though only the reader sees it when Mojo and Spiral manifest to young Sunspot and seduce him to enter Wildways, like a couple of extra-dimensional Pied Pipers.Then, in the midst of a mundane task, Cipher—who has learned how to wear the metamorphic Warlock as a suit if armor—accidentally kills Sunspot. Almost all of the young heroes mourn their loss, but Warlock points out to Cipher that the body is a fake, a “changeling” of sorts.

A shift to Mojo’s dimension shows that he’s also managed to kidnap Wolfsbane, three kids from the LONGSHOT series, and the two grade-school siblings of Karma. All were lured into the Mojoverse by the seductive Wildways program, and Mojo remakes all of them into hyper-sexualized adults, implicitly unleashing their own latent fantasies to serve the madman’s purpose. The two siblings, despite coming from Vietnam, take on a sort of “Siamese twin” image—albeit without being literally bound to each other—and are given the shared name of Template. When the New Mutants show up at the same site that Britain explored earlier, Mojo causes Psylocke to make the heroes quarrel with one another. The brainwashed pawns appear and rough up the good guys, after which Template, acting the part of a disappointed father and mother, also mindwipe most of the heroes into thinking they’re naughty children. Magma alone proves able to resist Template’s power, so Template regresses Magma into a literal child,

Warlock spirits his best friend Cipher away from the villains before the two of them can be suborned. Moments later they come across Captain Britain, also regressed to childhood, and half-brainwashed into thinking that he really is a rebellious child. Cipher has to give Britain the same “buck up and hang tough” speech that Mirage gave him earlier. Britain then rushes forth to rescue the fugitive Magma, and Cipher/Warliock invade Mojo’s sanctum to nullify Psylocke’s influence. Psylocke retaliates, drawing the two heroes into her psychc matrix. There Cipher must fight not only the mental defenss of Psylocke, but also the influence of Spiral, who has somehow bonded herself with Psylocke’s inner self. Cipher’s heroism gives Psylocke the power to disassociate herself from Spiral, though once again Spiral speaks the language of the seducer:

The Wildway offers wonders beyond comprehension, adventures beyond imagining, eternal youth and beauty, the fulfillment of every heart’s desire.

Not surprisingly, Psylocke, being a hero, rejects Spiral’s offer and brings all the good guys back to the real world. As a nice touch, though, Betsy still retains one of the bounties given her by the devilish Mojo—a pair of bionic eyes-- and she can’t quite give up this particular gift—which for all I know may have presaged a later plot-thread. Cipher gets to wind it all up, reflecting that all the things that happened to the heroes and their allies could have happened to “the souls of innocent kids.” Claremont’s trope of Faustian seduction applies particularly well to teenagers, discontent with their lot by virtue of burgeoning hormones, but even better to real children. Indeed, one of Alan Davis’s outstanding images in the Psylocke-world is that of artificially grinning New Mutants riding a Wildways carousel. I don’t think the majority of journeymen artists could have pulled off the seductive horror of the Wildways world, so “Things” is one story which absolutely required both artist and writer to be giving their utmost to the project.

NULL-MYTHS: LONGSHOT 1-6 (1985-86)

 

I would assume that Longshot, as created by writer Ann Nocenti and penciller Art Adams, has his fans. But from what I can judge, the character never caught on with most readers as much as did the villains Nocenti and Adams created for the hero. In one interview Nocenti mentioned that during her tenure on DAREDEVIL, she tended to construct most of her stories around the villains than around the established hero, so perhaps she’s more comfortable delineating the darker areas of the human mind.

The hero, a loner with only a few passing allies, is not only opposed by impossible odds, he doesn’t even have the asset of self-knowledge. His memory pretty much starts with the events of LONGSHOT #1, when he finds himself on the planet Earth, fleeing from the monstrous minions of his enemies. An Earthman dubs the agile, blonde-haired battler “Longshot” because he seems to possess uncanny luck even when faced with overwhelming opposition. In the course of this six-issue debut, Longshot never regains his memory, though he learns various incidental things about his past: that he’s a humanoid from another dimension, where humanoids are genetically manufactured to serve the whims of their masters, and that he in some way rebelled against that rule. In the course of six issues, Longshot gets a girlfriend, fights Spider-Man and the She-Hulk, and renders aid to Earthpeople even when he doesn’t truly understand their desires.

The trope of “the hero as naif” is hard to pull off, and Nocenti doesn’t do so, even with the help of Adams’ dazzling visuals. Thus, Longshot never got his own ongoing series, but joined the X-Men for a time and then largely faded from prominence. His villains Mojo and Spiral, however, seem to remain popular. Mojo, a huge yellow slug-man, rules the Other Dimension by using his manufacutured humans in various gladiatorial games, in a play upon the “bread and circuses” trope, though in the six-issue series one sees little of the masses Mojo is supposedly placating. His sometimes rebellios lieutenant Spiral takes some inspiration from the iconography of Hindu deities like Shiva and Kali, in that she’s a woman with six arms who can cause assorted magical effects through the medium of dance. Neither character gets any more explicit backstory than does Longshot, though there’s some mysterious connection between Longshot and Spiral that might have been explored by Nocenti had a regular series materialized. However, given in the course of six issues the plot is erratic and the characterization precious, I can’t say that I think much in the way of a “Longshot myth” would have been articulated.