Midweek MC: Old School Comics With Mind Control Edition

This week I didn't find anything new that tickled my particular fancies on the EMCSA, though if you haven't read Uplink yet, I would encourage you to do so since a second chapter has been added.

This happens fairly frequently for me, but there's a lot of good stuff that gets posted every week which might tickle YOUR fancy, so it's always a good idea to browse.

Perusing one of the authors I mentioned last week, nevermind, I did discover (rediscover?) a story titled Black Swan by the same author. The method of mind control is too quick for my taste, but the relationships between the characters almost makes up for that. Definitely recommended.

And now, without further ado, let's get into the meat of this week's post.

Comics From Another Era

I, like many people, have an archive of comics from a time when... they were more accessible to me. This has given me a brief glimpse into a world I honestly know little about. These days I know far more about Anime than I do western comics, and even at my prime I was never much of a comic geek.

Luckily, the comics I do have access to contain two really fun stories that are germane to this blog - corruption/transformation/mind control. Let's take a short tour.

Vampirella

This first story is from June/July/August of 1998. Vampirella tales are usually good, bloody fun, but this story amps it up quite a bit.

Ah, red heads and vampires, a great combination. An evil, red headed vampire with a penchant for body swapping and mind control of her victims? Even better!

I gotta say, the nipple caps really do it for me, though this story does get a bit grotesque.

I find it interesting that she can be extracted like a tarot card and plugged into someone else as if she's a floppy disk. I wonder where her stylized nipple caps, forehead heart decoration, and heart panties go when she's extracted. A trans dimensional pocket?

Of course, nobody can resist the evil vampiress for long, and she starts to cause problems for our heroines. If you consider what she does next to be a problem...

Ejecting your soul in a tarot card? No problem! Tossing that card like Gambit into a new host body? No problem!

It was inevitable. And the best part of the this story. More red headed Vampirella? Yes, please!

Our heroines are helpless to prevent themselves from being controlled like pawns by our villainess! Ho ho ho!

I'm sorry Vampirella, you've caught a sudden case of the evils. There's an app for that.

Our co-heroine, Shi, seems pretty useless here. Maybe that's why the villainess didn't even consider trying to swap bodies with her.

The image of the bloody red queen here is reminiscent of Kerrigan from Starcraft. Another crush of mine. Have I ever mentioned how much I liked the second episode of Starcraft II where you get to play as Kerrigan and rebuild the Zerg Hive back into a bastion of power?

All good things must come to an end, after all, and eventually she gets defeated. But not REALLY defeated.

I like how any body she takes gets pumped up to supermodel state, inheriting her physical characteristics. It's like instant full body plastic surgery!

Back down to the denouement. This ending seems pretty weak sauce given the powers the Red Queen has shown elsewhere. And threatening to kill a baby ain't cool, yo.

I debated including this, but it's here for completeness. What a sad end for such a fun villainess. How convenient that this women has more will power to resist the Red Queen than Vampirella did. They don't even give the villainess an ambiguous ending!

A paltry end for such a fun idea. That's the way the blood flows for one shot villains, I suppose!

In my head canon, the Red Queen ejects herself from her current host when it appears that she's starting to lose her grip on the body. Shi retrieves the card and keeps it for safekeeping. Later on, in a teaser, Shi gets taken over by the Red Queen. She ends up doing her bidding for a while until Vampirella catches up to her. Another battle ensues and eventually she is driven off again.

Vampirella tries to kill the Red Queen by burning her card, but this only sets her free from her prison. Her spirit possesses another and more fun times are had trying to get rid of her. I would imagine at this point her body hopping days might be over and she might have to strike a deal with whomever her new host is, and become less of a random killer. Ah, what could have been!

Ascension

This next story of corruption comes from a series of comics called 'Ascension.' This is another Image series, but I don't quite know when it was published. Likely the late nineties, as all of my collection is from around that time period.

On a second read through of this tale, I realize I still can't really make heads or tails of what's actually going on in the world of this comic. It's a fun ride, regardless.

Before bad things happen, our heroine is already pretty kick ass.

However, things go sour for her once she is captured by her enemies. In a dream, our heroine is accosted by a specter of her lover.

As it turns out, however, the image of her lover is actually the big bad dude, who's pretty ugly in the real world.

Bamboozled by the fake images he's providing her brain, she is swayed and under his control.

 Somehow winged angel girl can visit her in her brain, but it unable to break creepy blue dude's control!

Ooh, a really cool looking badass blue woman. I wonder who that could be?

Oh yes, the corruption has changed her body color for unknown reasons. And added gratuitous chains and piercings. They don't quite explain how this happened. And they also kind of spoiled the upcoming corruption on the cover of their comic - they hadn't actually done a reveal of her new form until this cover! I do still love the change that happened, but I kind of wish it was handled in a less abrupt fashion than 'yeah, she's bad now.'

She's blue, pierced, and brainwashed!

She's totally under his control! I love the glowing blue eyes the corruption gives her.

Smashing through windows is probably a bad idea, even if you're a super amped up mind controlled woman.

Voivodul has great taste in women. He also needs plastic surgery. Dude, you're ugly!

Now she looks more like a Drow, but she's still a human. Maybe.

For more unexplained reasons, the evil bad dude's control over her wanes. We see here that when he's not in full control, her body gets less blue.

The linkage between our heroine and the big bad leads to his inevitable downfall.

The strange thing is, after she defeats him using her mind link, her body turns permanently blue. I'm not arguing against this artistic choice, but they never really explain why. Maybe a part of him was left in her after his death? That would be a fun story line, but they never take advantage of it. She never shows any evidence that a seed of his personality has been left behind to fester in the depths of her pliant mind. Bummer!

A sexy image of our corrupted/Blued heroine. Just because.

Inevitably, it all ends in angst.

I leave you with one more amazing image of our blue heroine in a collar. Yum.

She and her paramour Lucien get exiled from Angel land due to the bad things she did while under the bad dude's control. Never mind the fact that she wasn't exactly in her right mind.

The story takes a weird twist and turns into kind of a detective tale. Unfortunately, that story line meanders on for another ten comics and never really recaptures my interest. Too bad!

Do any of you know of fun comics like this that have great mind control scenes? I'd love to hear about them!