How many times have superheroes used...? (Identity Crisis spoilers)

[Lorendiac]

I am looking for cases, in Marvel and DC comics both, where a superhero either committed a mindwipe against an unwilling victim, or else basically sat on his hands and didn't do anything about it when he knew some other person had done this in a way that would benefit the superhero. The "mindwipe" may have involved hypnotism, hypnotic drugs, futuristic technology, telepathy, sorcery, or any other excuse you care to name. The point is that it removed some memories of the victim, and/or was meant to change aspects of the victim's personality and behavior patterns, without the victim having volunteered for any such treatment.

By the way, I'd like to hear cases that were supposed to be accepted as happening "in continuity", either in the mainstream Marvel Universe or the mainstream DC Universe, when they were published - regardless of whether or not they may have been retconned out of existence later. I don't really care about any mindwipes that only happened in an "Elseworlds" or "What If?" story or anything like that.

A Few Examples

It is 1984. I am a kid who just bought Secret Wars #3, written by Jim Shooter. In it, Spider-Man overhears the X-Men planning to leave the base they share with the other Marvel heroes on the Beyonder's planet (Spidey, the Hulk, the Avengers, and three of the Fantastic Four) and go join forces with Magneto elsewhere. Professor X then detects Spidey and starts to say so - Spidey knocks him down, plows through the rest of the X-Men as if they were wheat and he were the thresher, knocks Wolverine sprawling with a single punch at one point, and swings away, meaning to find the other heroes and warn them the X-Men are deserting. Just as he spots Reed Richards and jumps down to talk to him, his mind goes blank and he swings away, saying something like, "Oh well, I guess it wasn't very important."

It was Professor X playing games with his mind, of course. He had needed a minute or two to fully recover from Spidey's knocking him down. But once he did, he had focused his telepathy and had been able to reach out into Spidey's mind from hundreds of feet away and mindwipe his short-term memory just in the nick of time. (Not that a few seconds mattered, really - if he had been ten seconds slower, I suppose he would have just had to mindwipe both Spidey and Mr. Fantastic before either of them could tell anyone else. As far as I know, Reed is no more immune to telepathic dirty tricks than Spidey is.)

I was shocked and disgusted when I first read that scene - but it still happened. (I have since heard rumors that in his early appearances in the 1960s, the Professor used to do that sort of thing as a regular habit, but has since cut way back on it. Usually. Is that accurate?)

Somewhere around the early 1980s, I also read a DC Digest collection of old Superman stories where he had taken on various other identities for one reason or another. One such story was originally published in Action Comics #408 (January 1972, according to http://darkmark6.tripod.com/supermanind1.htm), written by Cary Bates, in which Clark and Lana were both college students, and she opened up a textbook of his and found a Superman uniform compressed between the pages.

How was he going to wiggle out of this one? We found out on the last page of the story. He flew past at super-speed, reclaiming his costume while turning loose some weird experimental bacteria a scientist friend of his had come up with, ones which promptly erased her memory of the last couple of hours.

And then there's the fun and games we had at the end of Grant Morrison's first storyline in the relaunched JLA series, the story collected in TPB as "New World Order." At the end of it (JLA #4), J'onn J'onnz told the rest of the JLA to stay out of his way while he telepathically brainwashed all the evil White Martians to think they were ordinary human beings with no fancy powers.

It seems to me that Brad Meltzer could plausibly claim that any mindwipes in Identity Crisis were his tributes to what was already an old tradition in conventional superhero comics, rather than being some "shocking and disgusting Weird New Idea" he came up with!

[GMB]

Well, the two mindwipes (of a kind) that spring immediately to mind were in X-men (with Xavier wiping Magneto, tho that was later retconned into something horrible) and Squadron Supreme (the original mini) who's behaviour modification machine changed criminal's entire personalities and led to massive problems, the latter of which seems closest in spirit to Identity Crisis.

[Hyperion]

Definitely the Squadron Supreme springs foremost into mind. In fact, that was what I thought most about when I heard about the shenanigans in Identity Crisis.

If things work out in New Avengers the way it appears they will and the Sentry is truly a 616 character, then consider the entire Marvel Universe mind-wiped in the Sentry mini-series (except for the Hulk.)

[zeppelined]

There's a fairly major one that seems to go unmentioned: a few years ago (I believe it was 1999), Marvel did a bunch of annuals that weren't tied to any specific title. They were sort of like Marvel Team-Up one-shots. One of them featured Cap and Iron Man...my memory gets a little fuzzy here (could it be? no....no, it's not possible...).

In any case, what I *do* remember is that they took out some kind of bad guy island base (I'm pretty sure Hydra and/or MODOK were involved), and were left standing there with some kind of worldwide mind control machine. So Tony Stark takes control of the machine and decides that too many people are aware of his secret identity. He uses said device to erase that knowledge from everyone. Steve Rogers was royally pissed about it, and shortly thereafter, Stark revealed his secret ID to the Avengers, as well as Hogan and Pepper.

I also started collecting Flash a few months ago, and I came in at the tail end of a mind-erasure storyline. Flash was going around telling certain people about his secret ID (sound familiar) because he had somehow erased that info from the minds of anyone who knew it (sound familiarer?).

Point being: there's nothing new under the sun. Yellow or otherwise.

[Lorendiac]

Well, the two mindwipes (of a kind) that spring immediately to mind were in X-men (with Xavier wiping Magneto, tho that was later retconned into something horrible) and Squadron Supreme (the original mini) who's behaviour modification machine changed criminal's entire personalities and led to massive problems, the latter of which seems closest in spirit to Identity Crisis.Can you please tell me approximately when this Xavier mindwipe of Magneto occurred? Back in the 1960s, maybe?

And Xavier (and his students) have faced Magneto so many times . . . come to think of it, wasn't there a time early in the 90s - the first storyline of the second "X-Men" series, I believe - when Magneto discovered Moira McTaggert had once tinkered with his DNA in an effort to give him a more reasonable personality or something? Is that related to the event-and-retcon you're talking about, or is it an entirely seperate problem?

[A.Magik]

Can you please tell me approximately when this Xavier mindwipe of Magneto occurred? Back in the 1960s, maybe?

And Xavier (and his students) have faced Magneto so many times . . . come to think of it, wasn't there a time early in the 90s - the first storyline of the second "X-Men" series, I believe - when Magneto discovered Moira McTaggert had once tinkered with his DNA in an effort to give him a more reasonable personality or something? Is that related to the event-and-retcon you're talking about, or is it an entirely seperate problem?For the 60's Xavier mindwipes, I can think of two examples: In the Iceman origin, the poor kid was being lynched by a mob (and Cyclops almost joined him in being strung up). Xavier used his powers to mindwipe the town's knowledge of Bobby Drake's ice powers to protect him and his family.
In X-Men#3, the team made the mistake of letting the Blob know about the school and their identities (wanted to enroll him; didn't work out). The blob then took over the circus he was employed with and sent them to attack the mansion. Xavier did the telepathy on them. This wasn't a mindwipe, but a mental block to hide information. This was proven in issue 7, when the Blob remembered his experiences (Xavier wasn't the only one to do toy with the mind. Dr. Strange magically made characters forget information (Master Rasputin and his spells, the Squadron Sinister).

Come the Claremont era in X-Men, and mindwiping became a crime. Xavier comments about his earlier actions as being wrong, and any telepathic tampering he does is merely cosmetic, such as making bystanders see the costumed X-Men in civilain clothes. Thus, any use of mindwipe is wrong. Mystique and Thunderbird II use it as an excuse on how Professor Xavier was able to gain their respective siblings Rogue and Thunderbird I (actually, they came of their own free will). In Uncanny X-Men#131, Scott Summers sees Phoenix's use of mindwiping Mr. Pryde's distress as a sign of her moral de-evolution. In UXM#196, Rachel Summers mindwipes a racist group who beat up Xavier and tried to kill Kitty, stating that she doesn't care if the Professor has a problem with it. Later (UXM#207), Rogue browbeats Rachel with the possibility that her subconscious is doing some mind-tampering to make people see things her own way.

[In the SECRET WARS case, it has been generally agreed by many fans that writer Jim Shooter was doing some out-of-characterizations. For instance, Wolverine is depicted as the psycopath from his early appearances, ignoring the character development Claremont was giving him. Having Professor X do the mind wipe was another example.]

The Moira-Magneto is not the example the others are using, but let me explain that in a better detail. Y'see since UXM#150, Claremont was developing Magneto's character, having him depart from his villainous ways and reform, even making him replace Xavier as headmaster of the School for Gifted Youngsters and the New Mutants. Unfortunately, other writers like Louise Simonson and John Byrne worked against this, attempting to bring the villainy back to Magneto (Byrne even went so far to have Magneto state that he was pretending he was reforming, something that Claremont retconned into something like 'Magneto was pretending to be a villain again to protect his fellow mutants'). Claremont was pressured by Marvel to follow suit, creating a story in UXM#275 where Magneto turns back on Xavier's ways. However, it appears that Claremont was planning this as a minor setback, creating a story where Xavier gets killed and Magneto decides to try again. This never happened because Marvel wanted Magneto to remain a villain.

In the last story of Claremont's 1st run (X-Men Vol.2 #1-3), he created a plot that first retconned, then de-retconned the reasons for Magneto's redemption. Right around the first stories of the 2nd X-Men group, Magneto had been de-evolved into a baby, and placed under Moira's care. Moira learned that Magneto's villainy was caused by power overload on his nervous system, and attempted to regulate his DNA so such an effect wouldn't happen, giving Magneto a chance to start life again on his own choice (keep in mind that Moira was worrying about her own son, another power-mad mutant named Proteus, and used Magneto as a guinea pig so she could give the same treatment to him. Evidently, maternal nature overrulled morality and hippocratic oath). Soon after, Magneto was restored back to manhood by Erik the Red and fought the X-Men again, eventually going through the reformation and back. Moira thought her experiments had a hand in this (and was beginning to suffer for it, crying and drinking). So it looked like the whole redemption thing was proven false because Magneto was brainwashed.

However, Claremont continues his story with Magneto learning about the tampering. He gets PO'd, hating Moira for it. He then forces Moira to do the same treatment on the X-Men, only it would have them follow HIS ideas. Sure enough, the brainwashed X-Men follow Magneto at first, but once they use their powers, the manipulations wear off! Moira realizes that the treatments could only work as long as the subject didn't use his or her powers. Since the 1st thing the adult Magneto did post-experiment was use his powers, he had undone the treatments long before his reformation. That meant his choice for redemption was really his own. However, Moira still did a bad thing, and she suffered over it.

What everyone is talking about is in X-Men#25, Professor Xavier mindwiped Magneto's mind. Other writers had written Magneto into a corner, making Magneto into this one-dimesnional psycopath who threatens his other mutants, like tearing the adamantium out of Wolverine. Xavier seemed to have no choice but to erase Magneto's entire mind, which haunted him (however, it was retconned into having Xavier instead pulling Magneto's mind into his own, an act that led to Onslaught). It must be noted that the Xavier in Ultimate X-Men doesn't seem to care about such morality, using his powers to brainwash Ultimate Magneto into a good guy.

A.Magik

[Lorendiac]

Come the Claremont era in X-Men, and mindwiping became a crime. Xavier comments about his earlier actions as being wrong, and any telepathic tampering he does is merely cosmetic, such as making bystanders see the costumed X-Men in civilain clothes. Thus, any use of mindwipe is wrong. Mystique and Thunderbird II use it as an excuse on how Professor Xavier was able to gain their respective siblings Rogue and Thunderbird I (actually, they came of their own free will). In Uncanny X-Men#131, Scott Summers sees Phoenix's use of mindwiping Mr. Pryde's distress as a sign of her moral de-evolution. In UXM#196, Rachel Summers mindwipes a racist group who beat up Xavier and tried to kill Kitty, stating that she doesn't care if the Professor has a problem with it. Later (UXM#207), Rogue browbeats Rachel with the possibility that her subconscious is doing some mind-tampering to make people see things her own way.I remembered the whole Dark Phoenix Saga scene with the Pryde parents as I was typing that post, but since as you say she was already going bad/mad with power, and since it later turned out it wasn't really Jean after all, I decided it wasn't exactly a case of a bona fide superhero abusing power. (Even though Claremont and Byrne thought that was exactly what it was at the time they did that scene!)



For what it's worth, although I didn't bother to mention this in my original post (which was already getting long enough), I remember that later in that series, Shooter had Xavier tell Magneto that he already bitterly regretted pulling that mindwipe on Spidey in the heat of the moment, and that he'd resolved not to do it again to a good guy. Or something like that. (I think that might have been when Magneto was having a hissy fit over the way Wasp had played along with him and then mocked him.)



The Moira-Magneto is not the example the others are using, but let me explain that in a better detail. Y'see since UXM#150, Claremont was developing Magneto's character, having him depart from his villainous ways and reform, even making him replace Xavier as headmaster of the School for Gifted Youngsters and the New Mutants. Unfortunately, other writers like Louise Simonson and John Byrne worked against this, attempting to bring the villainy back to Magneto (Byrne even went so far to have Magneto state that he was pretending he was reforming, something that Claremont retconned into something like 'Magneto was pretending to be a villain again to protect his fellow mutants'). Claremont was pressured by Marvel to follow suit, creating a story in UXM#275 where Magneto turns back on Xavier's ways. However, it appears that Claremont was planning this as a minor setback, creating a story where Xavier gets killed and Magneto decides to try again. This never happened because Marvel wanted Magneto to remain a villain.I've read a fair number of the stories about Magneto's kinda-sorta reformation back around the mid-80s. I knew he also popped up in other (non-Claremont) titles from time to time during the 80s, but didn't realize other writers were actively at war against the interpretation of "he's really trying to fit in better!" When did Byrne find a chance to have Magneto say that? Maybe in one of his appearances in the West Coast Avengers or something when Byrne was writing?

(I do recall that in an interview for comicbookresources.com, Jim Shooter said that after Claremont and Byrne broke up their collaboration on Uncanny, they'd sometimes find ways to snipe at each other's stories in whatever they were independently writing later on. He made them sound very childish, I believe.)



What everyone is talking about is in [i]X-Men#25, Professor Xavier mindwiped Magneto's mind. Other writers had written Magneto into a corner, making Magneto into this one-dimesnional psycopath who threatens his other mutants, like tearing the adamantium out of Wolverine. Xavier seemed to have no choice but to erase Magneto's entire mind, which haunted him (however, it was retconned into having Xavier instead pulling Magneto's mind into his own, an act that led to Onslaught). It must be noted that the Xavier in Ultimate X-Men doesn't seem to care about such morality, using his powers to brainwash Ultimate Magneto into a good guy.

A.MagikBeen so long since I read X-Men #25 that I'd forgotten exactly who did what to whom before the dust had cleared. (Was that the same storyline that dumped Prof X back in a wheelchair? Or am I thinking of something else?)

And I do remember the moment when Wolverine's body regenerated some bone claws, leading him to conclude that he'd had the silly things before he ever got adamantium added to his body, and then forgotten that he'd had them, which I thought was a particularly stupid retcon "twist" even by the very low standards of storytelling that seemed to apply to Post-Claremont X-Men stuff in the 1990s?)

[A.Magik]

I've read a fair number of the stories about Magneto's kinda-sorta reformation back around the mid-80s. I knew he also popped up in other (non-Claremont) titles from time to time during the 80s, but didn't realize other writers were actively at war against the interpretation of "he's really trying to fit in better!" When did Byrne find a chance to have Magneto say that? Maybe in one of his appearances in the West Coast Avengers or something when Byrne was writing?It started out as a kind-sorta reformation (Magneto assisting the X-Men in Secret Wars, promising an end to his war with mankind to his children and grandaughter in Vision and the Scarlet Witch vol. 1#4, falling in love with Scott's human ex Lee Forrester in New Mutants#23-28). However, once Xavier asked Magneto to lead the X-Men in New Mutants#29 and Secret Wars II, Magneto was all for reformation, culminating in Xavier making him his successor in UXM#200.

John Byrne's 'Magneto pretends he was reforming' occurred in his only issue of New Mutants#75 (his declaration, according to one fan, was a total contradiction to every thought balloon Claremont gave Magneto in NM#35-54). Fortunately, since Mag didn't give any thoughts in that story, Claremont was able to change things to 'Magneto pretends that he was pretending to be reformed.'



(I do recall that in an interview for comicbookresources.com, Jim Shooter said that after Claremont and Byrne broke up their collaboration on Uncanny, they'd sometimes find ways to snipe at each other's stories in whatever they were independently writing later on. He made them sound very childish, I believe.)Not where Byrne is concerned. Byrne destroyed Steve Englehart's Vision and Wanda stories (dismantled Vision, got rid of the kids, threw Wanda to Wonder Man) out of spite for the author (Byrne claims that he wanted to restore Vision to his original emotionless android characterization. OK, so what was that tear the 'emotionless android' Vision cried in his 2nd-ever appearance?).



Been so long since I read X-Men #25 that I'd forgotten exactly who did what to whom before the dust had cleared. (Was that the same storyline that dumped Prof X back in a wheelchair? Or am I thinking of something else?) Thinking of something else. Xavier's return to the wheelchair happened in his battle with the Shadow King in UXM#280 (the story that Claremont planned to kill Xavier and cement Magneto as successor). In X-Men#25, Xavier was wearing a special suit that enabled him to walk with effort.

A.Magik

[Chad Bonin]

Flipping through one of the Green Lantern trades... when Hal Jordan was arrested for drunk driving, he had to sneak out of the police car without the cops noticing. He said something like "I hope they don't realize the Hal Jordan in the back of the car is a hologram! If they do, I might have to erase their memories of it!".

And this is the Green Lantern everyone wants to see return? A drunk driver who would resort to mindwiping law-abiding cops?

[Anthonynotes]

Flipping through one of the Green Lantern trades... when Hal Jordan was arrested for drunk driving, he had to sneak out of the police car without the cops noticing. He said something like "I hope they don't realize the Hal Jordan in the back of the car is a hologram! If they do, I might have to erase their memories of it!".

And this is the Green Lantern everyone wants to see return? A drunk driver who would resort to mindwiping law-abiding cops?

IIRC this was part of the "Emerald Dawn"(sp?) miniseries of the late 80's or early 90's---part of the "grim and gritty" trend of trying to "darken" up various lighter-hearted heroes to make them sell better/"more realistic"/cheap shock value/etc.; before this story, there was zero indication of Hal sharing certain problems in common with Tony Stark...

Pre-Crisis, the Legion of Superheroes (via either Supergirl or Saturn Girl) fixed it so that whenever Superboy went back to his own time-era, he'd lose any memories about his own future existence that he might've inadvertently learned while in the 30th century.

-B.

[Lorendiac]

(I do recall that in an interview for comicbookresources.com, Jim Shooter said that after Claremont and Byrne broke up their collaboration on Uncanny, they'd sometimes find ways to snipe at each other's stories in whatever they were independently writing later on. He made them sound very childish, I believe.)
Not where Byrne is concerned. Byrne destroyed Steve Englehart's Vision and Wanda stories (dismantled Vision, got rid of the kids, threw Wanda to Wonder Man) out of spite for the author (Byrne claims that he wanted to restore Vision to his original emotionless android characterization. OK, so what was that tear the 'emotionless android' Vision cried in his 2nd-ever appearance?). This is pure nitpicking on my part, but when you quoted my paragraph above, and then said "not where Byrne is concerned," it seemed as if you were saying Shooter's claim that Byrne in the 1980s acted childish was not accurate. But then you talked about what Byrne did to the nuclear family of Vision, Scarlet Witch, and their twins, which I remember vividly (I was buying West Coast Avengers during Byrne's run on it). So I got a little confused on the first pass as to just what you were saying about Byrne. It almost seems as if you meant to say something like, "Shooter's charge of sheer childish spite is not unfair where Byrne is concerned"?

I was buying the stuff at the time, so I could see very clearly that Byrne wanted to kill the Scarlet Witch/Vision romance, and erase those inconvenient children to boot, so that he could pair off Wanda with Simon (Wonder Man). But it didn't occur to me at the time that some sort of personal grudge against Steve Englehart might be involved. I was thinking more in terms of a personal obsession with seeing Wanda and Simon get together, one that might have been smoldering in Byrne's heart for decades for some obscure reason. (Of course, at that point I had not yet bought back issues of the 12-part miniseries and didn't even know just what writer had brought those twins into the world, or anything like that.)

I suppose Byrne would say that tear was just a bit of leaky hydraulic fluid :D