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Chapter Text

I’ve been deep-diving into this character’s publication history for team-up fic-writing purposes, and figured I should write up some notes, because I’m never going to remember all this otherwise.

Got here by following threads from a Moon Knight hyperfixation -- Aurora and Jeanne-Marie are Marvel’s other “extremely uneven attempt to write a relatively-realistic DID system.” (Both with close associations with canon-gay French-speaking characters named Jean-Paul!…that’s not plot-relevant, that’s just fun trivia.)

There’s an obvious direct inspiration from The Three Faces of Eve, the book+movie that launched “multiple personalities” into the public consciousness. (Check that out for the historical relevance! Then fact-check it with the memoirs written by the real system involved, unfiltered through the preconceptions of her/their therapists.)

I’m using the Marvel wiki’s list of the system’s appearances in the 616 universe. Running through this in publication history. And, uh, this whole Part 1 only covers the first Alpha Flight team book, because this run is long.

Onward!

Alpha Flight, Volume 1 (1983) – issues 1-10: Classic Origin Story

Alpha Flight, a Canadian government-sponsored super-team, start out as cameo appearances in other books, but the real development kicks off when they get their own team title.

Aurora and Jeanne-Marie are introduced with a dramatic, iconic, extremely tense relationship. These early issues lay down the basics. Carefree and fun-loving Aurora revels in being a superhero! Fearful and repressed Jeanne-Marie doesn’t want to deal with any of this.

Aurora, unsurprisingly, fronts for most of the superheroics. Look at our girl go!

No matter what other character developments, dramatic reveals, and/or costume changes they go through in later appearances, they usually get reset back to this baseline. Frustrating in some ways, a relief in others…because it means that any time a writer does “they have now been fused into a single cohesive personality!”, it never sticks.

The rest of the team is…not terribly sensitive about it, sigh.

Especially their twin brother Northstar. The twins were separated as infants and raised without knowing each other, so Jean-Paul seems to feel that he has 20+ years of brotherly overprotectiveness to catch up on.

(Sidenote: Northstar will come out as gay in an issue published almost 10 years later. But John Byrne said that was the intention from the jump, and if you read the early issues, you’ll see the hints and allusions the writers managed to slip past editorial.)

Shoutout to this one therapist Jean-Paul makes Jeanne-Marie see in issue 7, though. Some of his opinions are noticeably dated, but he nails it with “I cannot turn her into the person you wish her to be.”

(That aside about “she would likely become a third personality” is a straight-up Three Faces of Eve reference.)

The bonus story in issue 9 is a flashback to the Beaubier system’s origin: raised in an abusive Catholic all-girl orphanage, Jeanne-Marie tried to jump off the roof at age 13, which triggered (a) her mutant powers of super-speed and flight, and (b) protective headmate Aurora to do the flying.

The nuns disapprove of mutant powers, almost as much as they disapprove of sneaking out to wear makeup and go dancing. Jeanne-Marie ends up taking most of the punishments, and responds by doubling down even harder on trying to meet their standards. Aurora responds by rejecting the whole place.

By young adulthood, the headmates are generally aware of each other, and not happy about it.

Jeanne-Marie grows up, ages out of living at the orphanage, and…applies for a teaching job there. Aurora gets recruited for Alpha Flight after Wolverine spots her using her mutant powers, and immediately hops on the chance.

Part of their childhood punishments involved being locked alone in dark closets, and it’s pretty consistent that “being trapped in small and/or dark spaces” will overwhelm Aurora, triggering Jeanne-Marie to swap back in:

On the flip side, if there’s some abuse or injustice that Jeanne-Marie can’t handle, that’s the fastest way to call Aurora back out:

One more important early detail: Aurora has a long-running romance with teammate Walter Langkowski, aka Sasquatch. In spite of her image as a flirty, sexy party girl, she spends most of her time being monogamous with this guy — and he’s basically an earnest, good-hearted nerd! The only really ~scandalous~ thing here is that Aurora likes having sex with him, and doesn’t feel bad about admitting it.

Walter fumbles with their multiplicity a lot too, but at least you can tell he’s trying. Jeanne-Marie doesn’t like him, but that’s not anything Walter personally did wrong, she just has general issues with sexuality.

(Later on, a sexually-abusive adult man will be retconned into their traumatic backstory. For now, Jeanne-Marie’s horror is about the religious trauma from being raised by a bunch of nuns who called her “sinful”, and claimed she deserved physical and emotional abuse because of it.)

Jean-Paul’s big issues, meanwhile, are the fear of being abandoned…which he also channels into unfair resentment toward Walter, and then into unfair slut-shaming of Aurora. This snowballs into the twins’ first big falling-out.

(That little “You of all people dare pass judgment on my love life” is another “yeah, he was canon gay already, and Aurora knows it” moment. She’ll come around.)

Alpha Flight, Volume 1 – issues 11-50: This Won’t Stick

The clash between Aurora and Jean-Paul prompts Aurora to ditch him, move in with Walter, and spend the next 40-odd issues trying to differentiate herself from her twin.

This whole chunk of comics is full of Trying New Things with the character that…don’t work super well. A new short haircut! Slightly-altered powers, thanks to some Comics Technobabble! A new costume:

This era includes X-Men/Alpha Flight Volume 1, a 2-issue crossover miniseries, which AFAICT is the first instance of “Aurora and Jeanne-Marie get fused into a single gestalt person, and this is totally great and healthy and not creepy at all.”

(It gets reversed pretty quickly, don’t worry.)

Issue 50 gives the Beaubier twins a retconned origin: they’re not mutants at all, they were half-elves all along! Their mother is from Alfheim, one of the Nine Realms from the Thor franchise.

…This, in turn, will get retconned into a trick by Loki. They’re not half-elves, they were mutants all along!

But not before the Beaubiers get temporarily retired from Alpha Flight: Northstar going to Alfheim, Aurora giving up her powers and letting Jeanne-Marie reassert control of the body, Jeanne-Marie going to a convent and becoming a nun.

Alpha Flight, Volume 1 – issues 81-130: Let’s Try This Again

The Beaubiers are back! Aurora gets summoned away from Sister Jeanne-Marie’s convent, Northstar gets rescued from Alfheim, he gives Aurora’s powers back (or maybe they were never really gone?)…

Look, the writers try a couple more innovations that don’t stick.

And then we get to issue 104, where Aurora gets kidnapped by a psychic villain, and she and Jeanne-Marie finally get to team up for a good old-fashioned Headspace Fight!

…also, we see what might be new headmates!

Left to right, as our bad guy describes them:

• “The supposedly ‘merged’ version of your two personalities, Aurora’s irresponsibility, and Jeanne-Marie’s cruel streak.” That’s right, we’re confirming a “fusion” did exist in the yellow-costume era, but she’s (a) a whole third person and (b) gets the worst traits of the first two. Oops.
• “Aurora as Messiah,” in the new costume they’ve been trying for the past dozen issues, along with what they thought was an “evolved” power set.
• The version of Aurora we’ve known this whole time!
• The “justifiably frightened child”, a version of Jeanne-Marie frozen at 13.
• A version of Jeanne-Marie in a nun habit, who…may or may not be the one we’ve known this whole time?

…and when our villain tries to torture them, the headmates pull a classic “being plural doesn’t mean we’re broken, it’s a goddamn superpower.”

Jeanne-Marie, one who definitely is the Jeanne-Marie we’ve known this whole time, gets to deal the finishing blow!

We don’t see any of the auxiliary headmates again…but for the whole rest of the run, Jeanne-Marie and Aurora get to work together! They can be co-conscious without fighting. They seamlessly swap places when it gives them a combat advantage!

They still pick on each other, but it’s not vicious like it used to be, and it doesn’t block their teamwork. Look at them go.

(And look at those wildly shifting art styles go, yikes.)

This…does not stick past the end of the run.

Not for any particular reason, either! I’m pretty sure the writers of the next several books didn’t review the full continuity at all, just read a summary of the original Aurora+Jeanne-Marie dynamic, and wrote more of that!

But hey — it was nice while it lasted.

Chapter Text

Previously, on Part One of the Beaubier System Primer: an overview of Aurora and/or Jeanne-Marie’s appearances and development in the first Alpha Flight team book. At 130 issues, even with the system getting written out for a hefty chunk of the middle, there was a lot of good material!

…And then the book got canceled, and it’s been a real mixed bag ever since.

Aurora, often along with her brother Northstar, gets a ton of “looking cool in the background of a fight scene” kinds of cameos. Hard to argue, because the twins do look cool! But frustrating when you’re digging through a bunch of one-off appearances looking for characterization details, and it’s another “I flipped through 27 pages for nothing but one cool-looking panel” issue.

So, full disclosure: in the Marvel wiki’s list of Aurora/Jeanne-Marie issues, I skipped a fair number of “they’re in the character list, but don’t rate a mention in the summary” cameos. If this overview ends up skipping something good, feel free to rec it to me in the comments!

With that, let’s dive into the Beaubier system content from 1997 through 2011:

Post-cancellation appearances (the rest of the ’90s): What Do We Do With Them Now?

We immediately launch into the “writers didn’t review the full continuity at all, just read a summary of the original Aurora+Jeanne-Marie dynamic, and wrote more of that” era.

Alpha Flight, Volume 2 (1997) – An attempt to revive the team book, which doesn’t last nearly as long. Aurora+Jeanne-Marie appear in half a dozen issues, they spend most of their time getting yanked around by the plot and/or being floridly wacky for “lol crazy” reasons, it’s not good.

Also, they’re supposedly fused again, because of something something sentient bacteria? It doesn’t make sense and it never comes back, so who cares.

Wolverine, Volume 2 (1998) – Bringing this up mostly for issue 172, where Alpha Flight guest-stars…and Aurora and Jeanne-Marie are back to the classic dynamic.

Didn’t keep the exaggerated wackiness or contrived fusion from the (now also-canceled) Team Book #2: awesome! Also didn’t keep their hard-earned connection and teamwork from the end of Team Book #1: sigh.

Weapon X Volume 2 (2002) – The writers, possibly sensing that we’re not getting another Alpha Flight revival any time soon, send the Beaubier twins onto other teams. Northstar gets to join the cool mainstream X-Men — more on that later — while Aurora becomes an operative for the latest version of the Weapon X program.

They do a thing you see in some Moon Knight runs too, where she pushes people to call her by one headmate’s name (Jeanne-Marie), but her characterization is way closer to another one (Aurora).

I’m…honestly not sure what she’s doing there? For one thing, these guys are evil. “We are literally running concentration camps” levels of evil.

And, look, I would buy an in-character scenario. Like “Aurora is so distracted with cool challenging missions, she doesn’t notice the team is evil.” But we don’t get that! She spends half her time in a hospital bed after getting beat up on a mission, and the other half flirting with the Director — which leads to her getting beat up by the Director, because of how much he hates mutants, did I mention mutants are the people he’s putting in the concentration camps?

All of this is terrible and I hate it. Dishonor on the writers, dishonor on their cows, etcetera.

(…the artists give her a nice outfit, though. No dishonor on the artists. She could’ve kept the outfit.)

X-Men Annual Volume 3 (2007): Soft Reboot

So, okay, at some point the Beaubier twins got mind-controlled to fight the X-Men, right? As you do.

This is the special one-shot where the X-Men bring them back to life. Because hey, when you kill someone under mind control, that’s just good manners.

Comics!

There’s a nice full-page refresher on each twin’s origins. Here we see teacher Jeanne-Marie, getting-recruited-by-Wolverine Aurora, and just enough of Sister Anne (their primary abuser) to give you the idea.

At first they Come Back Wrong, minds linked together. So, hey, Northstar kinda gets a taste of what it’s like to be plural and blendy? That’s a cool thing to add.

They manage to split neatly apart on their own, too!

Future writers don’t do anything with the implications here, but: I like to think Aurora and Jeanne-Marie’s expertise in mind-sharing helped them get Jean-Paul separated out safely.

Dark X-Men: The Beginning (2009): The One That Got Away

A limited-edition miniseries about Norman Osborn’s big tour to recruit “the X-Men, but shadier.” Issue 3 gives us his attempt to court Aurora. She’s been dormant for a while — this is where we learn Jeanne-Marie has been fronting since they came back from the dead, living a mundane life, even getting therapy — so Osborn bribes the therapist to sabotage her.

Someone clearly gave the colorist the wrong notes for Aurora’s outfit…but her personality is spot-on.

This is how Aurora would react to a creep in a suit trying to be Director of a super-team with sinister motives! Completely unimpressed. Disarms him, messes up his office, vents for a while, ultimately turns his offer down.

Osborn has some sci-fi tech he used to suppress Jeanne-Marie, and tries to use it to control Aurora…

…and bam, the Tactical Combat Switching is back.

The otherwise-unnamed headmates, with new ones rotating in until the fight is won, are:

• Three: Likes fine wines, horse racing, and casual ultra-violence
• Four: Weekend goth, occasionally self-harms, has an inexplicable aversion to shellfish
• Five: Likes sports, photography, and amateur paleontology; spoke only in French
• Six: Likes opera, gardening, and creationist literature
• Seven: Likes graffiti, mild S&M, and gambling
• Eight: Reckless, a committed masochist

Don’t think they were intended to map to any of the bonus headmates from issue 104 back in the day, but it’s fun to imagine they do.

(Taking a shot at it: “Merged Aurora/Jeanne-Marie” is Three, “Messiah Aurora” is Eight, “Sister Jeanne-Marie” is Six. “Child Jeanne-Marie” can’t fight, so she doesn’t come out for this one.)

Alpha Flight Volume 4 (2011): Actual Character (re)Development

Another shot at an Alpha Flight team book…and this time, it’s an 8-issue miniseries that tells a single, complete, well-plotted-out story! It has coherent character arcs and everything.

This year’s shady government bad guys are the covert-fascist Unity Party. They do the reverse of what Osborn did, recruiting Jeanne-Marie to be an operative by promising to get rid of Aurora.

Which is so much smarter. Aurora is way too skeptical of authority to fall for that kind of ploy! And Jeanne-Marie has a deep well of anger and stubbornness that almost nobody appreciates, just sitting there waiting to be tapped.

the girls are fightinggggg:

On the one hand: this level of active hostility hurts the soul.

On the other: they’re talking! About important, meaningful things! A conversation they deserve to have, that they probably should’ve had before coming to a big understanding in the first place!

(Nice character detail: Jeanne-Marie’s speech bubbles are translated from French, while Aurora speaks directly in English.)

Jean-Paul is in this too, and still has the old hang-ups about how his sister is “shattered” and needs to be “fixed”. Which becomes a parallel to Jeanne-Marie’s counter-hang-ups about how her brother’s sexuality is a “sickness” that needs to be “cured”.

And, I mean…Jean-Paul’s not right, but: can you imagine how stressful and upsetting this is, having his sister flip from “caring, supportive ally” to “full-on conversion-therapy homophobe” in the blink of an eye?

Jeanne-Marie’s not right either, but: the homophobia was instilled in her by religious abusers, it’s being actively encouraged by present-day bad guys, and, is there anybody in her life working to discourage it? At this point Jean-Paul has a boyfriend, they’re having Healthy Heartwarming Couple Moments together…but I don’t think Jeanne-Marie is around for those. I think Aurora is the only one who’s seen them.

So many layers! So many realistic character flaws, interacting in complex and well-thought-out ways! Everybody needs a hug.

There’s so much good stuff in this run. Co-conscious arguments. One headmate getting locked in headspace while the other tries (poorly) to impersonate her. A blendy mode that isn’t just “you have been handwave handwave Healed of your Affliction,” it’s Aurora and Jeanne-Marie working through their feelings, reconciling around a shared goal, and choosing to work together.

It’s the writing they’ve deserved, and not gotten, for like 20 years now.

Again, we’re ending this chunk of the overview on a high point. Future runs will really drop the ball on following up with any of these developments, and there’s more rough writing in general to come.

Lucky for us, it never falls to the depths of that Weapon X run again. (Knock wood.)

Chapter Text

Previously, on Part One: the first run of Alpha Flight! Then, on Part Two: writers scrambling to figure out what the heck to do with all the characters after Alpha Flight got canceled.

Jean-Paul Beaubier, Marvel figured out pretty quickly. He joined the more-mainstream X-Men in 2001 (Uncanny X-Men Volume 1 issue 392), and has been on-and-off with them ever since — and it’s been great. He’s a breakout hit!

Aurora and/or Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, on the other hand, Marvel is still trying to figure out. Doesn’t help that “hey, they’re canon plural” — the system’s biggest source of Unique Story Material You Couldn’t Do With Any Other Character(s) — is a trait the writers seems to just straight-up forget half the time.

Part Three covers the rest of the major Beaubier system content, up to the present day. The main reason it got long is, I keep stopping to think in detail about the continuity errors. And then trying to reverse-engineer the Headmate Action we aren’t getting on-page.

Onward!

Various X-Books (2009-2015): Second Fiddle to Northstar

Jean-Paul, as mentioned, is doing great as a major X-Men character. He gets character development. He gets significant roles in ongoing plots. He gets a romance!

And remember, this starts back when canon m/m relationships were overwhelmingly Not Done. Much less non-tragic romances that lead to a happy marriage where nobody dies.

…I mean, sometimes these guys die, but not permanently. Other times, one of them gets kidnapped and brainwashed to attack the other, but it always gets fixed, and they make up afterward.

Comics!

So, aside from Alpha Flight 2011 (covered in part 2), most of Aurora and/or Jeanne-Marie’s appearances for a solid decade are “here’s a book where Jean-Paul is a main character, we should wrangle in a guest spot for his sister.”

Some highlights:

Uncanny X-Men Volume 1: Northstar goes from “off” back to “on” with the X-Men in issue 508 (published 2009). In the meantime, he’s been the CEO and famous face of an extreme-sports company.

His sister is the COO. Kyle Jinadu, his eventual husband, is a public-relations rep. (Seen here with Jean-Paul in the top panel.)

Look at the twins in their fluffy sweaters! Both knit with the pattern from their matching superhero costumes! Extra props to the artist for adding that in.

…and, uh, let’s talk about the timeline. This is very close in time to the Dark X-Men special (also covered in part 2). Even if Aurora has mellowed over the years, it’s not so far that I can see her being patient or responsible enough to run a company. But this is before Alpha Flight 2011, so Jeanne-Marie wouldn’t be this happy and relaxed in general, let alone around her brother and his (gasp!) boyfriend.

Listen, it would feel cheap to use “this is one of the secret bonus headmates” to handwave every character point that doesn’t make sense. But if I only got to use it once? I’d put it here.

Astonishing X-Men Volume 3: Jean-Paul and Kyle have Marvel’s first gay wedding in issue 51 (published 2012). Aurora shows up to stand by her brother’s side.

Jean-Paul addresses her as Aurora, even when they’re not in costume, and yeah, I believe it’s Aurora fronting. Totally supportive of the gay stuff, as long as her brother is happy! Comfortable in a sleeveless, backless dress! Not as frenetic as the last time we saw definitely-her, but totally up for a race!

Look at them, just having a cute happy moment together in the air.

Amazing X-Men Volume 2: A guest appearance from Alpha Flight in issue 10 (published 2014), with some more typical bad-guy fighting, and a much tenser relationship between the twins.

Northstar addresses her as Jeanne-Marie, even when she is in costume…and, again, I buy that Jeanne-Marie is the one fronting. Mostly because of the line “They told me you were married, Jean-Paul” — which reinforces the idea that she wasn’t co-fronting with Aurora at the wedding, she only got brought up-to-speed afterward.

(…I mean, the alternative explanation is that the writers totally forgot Jean-Paul’s sister was at the wedding at all. But I like this take better.)

Captain Marvel Volume 9 (2016): We’re Saying “DID” Now, But…

Finally, Marvel finally takes another shot at “giving the Beaubier system their own regular spot in a team book.”

Good news: this is the point when someone finally learned the term “dissociative identity disorder”, and put it whatever Master Character File the Marvel writers have on Aurora!

Bad news: nobody since 2011 has thought real hard about what that means.

So we regularly get lines like “she has worked to get her disorder under control” or “I have learned to live with DID.” But never “they have worked so hard to understand each other” or “we have learned to be co-conscious.”

This Captain Marvel miniseries sets the pattern. There’s just one headmate in play (Aurora, the more-mature version we’ve seen since the wedding). She doesn’t communicate with Jeanne-Marie, or any of the auxiliary headmates we’ve seen over the years. None of them get their own relationships, feelings, opinions or needs.

…To be fair, the first half of the series relegates all its Alpha Flight alumni (Aurora, Walter, and Puck) to “mostly-background staff members.”

But then — when they finally get more panel time — it involves a “has someone betrayed the team?” subplot. In which Carol invokes “hey Aurora, since you have DID, maybe one of your headmates did it behind your back?”

There’s not even a second of considering, say, “which headmate would do that? What would their motivations be? Can you, Aurora, confer with your headmates and look into this? If one of them is responsible, can we talk to that person directly, and work out a deal?”

Such a huge letdown after Alpha Flight 2011! Which did a headmate-betrayal plot where all these character details mattered.

X-Factor Volume 4 (2020): Yes, More Mutants

Another miniseries, set in the new, all-mutant nation of Krakoa. Northstar has been roped into running the latest incarnation of X-Factor Investigations, a mutant detective agency. Their first case: solving Aurora’s suspicious death!

…it’s fine, she’s back in the next issue. Marvel has gotten amazingly cavalier about character resurrections. There’s a team of mutants for whom this is their day job. They have offices. Jean-Paul brings Aurora’s body to the front desk, and they put her in the resurrection queue.

Comics!

Aurora doesn’t full-on join X-Factor. But she moves into their base, and hangs out with them as a secondary character. Honestly, she gets more development here than in some books where she’s supposedly on the headlining team.

For one thing, they let her have some great, heartwarming sibling moments with Jean-Paul.

For another, she gets a romance that feels in-character! As with Walter back in the day, her thing with Akihiro (currently an X-Factor team member) is a stable, monogamous relationship with a decent guy who treats her well.

Also, he’s hot and spends a lot of time shirtless, and she enjoys the sex. (In the panel above, Jean-Paul just called her away from a hot tub…which a naked Akihiro is still in.)

This is another run where they mention DID by name, but totally starve us for headmate action. No internal conversations. No switching — or at least, nothing I would peg as “deliberately-written switching.” Jean-Paul mostly calls his sister Jeanne-Marie, the other X-Factor members mostly call her Aurora, and we don’t even get a single “that’s not my name, she’s the other one” scene.

A partial-fix-it headcanon: at this point in their lives, the system has reached a mutual agreement to go stealth with the general public. With the rest of their new housemates, too. That would make sense!

But come on. After all this time? We deserve a scene with Jean-Paul openly acknowledging and accepting both his sisters.

There is one nice scene in issue 5 that I’m gonna go ahead and interpret as “tonight it’s actually Jeanne-Marie, not Aurora answering to her name.” For one thing, most of the conversation is (translated from) French. For another…memory issues:

The "generic experiments" line is a reference to Walter’s power-altering Comics Technobabble from the 1980s. Originally, Aurora and Northstar could use Wonder Twin Zappy Light Powers when they held hands. One of the effects of the Technobabble was to reverse that, so touching each other would drain their powers.

But that hasn’t been an issue for years. They’ve used the restored Zappy Light Powers in multiple cameos before now! They hugged at Jean-Paul’s wedding, while flying! If dying and being brought back was the fix, that explains it: both of them have already died!

So, another headcanon: this isn’t a continuity failing on the writers’ part, it’s a memory hole on Jeanne-Marie’s part. Aurora was fronting for so many of those experiences, Jeanne-Marie straight-up missed the reveal that “holding hands” is an option again.

And, good news: she knows it now.

Marauders Volume 2 (2022): Well, Now I’m Mad

The plot from the X-Factor miniseries wraps up, so Aurora leaves Earth again, to join the crew of Kitty Pryde’s cool new spaceship. A lot of her co-stars are more popular with fans, and/or have unique powers that lend themselves to cool story ideas. Once again, Aurora keeps getting sidelined.

She’ll be in the corner of panels, in the background of fight scenes. Her lines are usually generic exposition that anyone could’ve said. Her expressive, energetic body language is replaced with “just kinda standing there.”

(That’s Akihiro behind her in this panel. The one without the shirt. He came on the trip, and they’re still dating, but I don’t feel like their relationship gets much material here, either.)

But! There is one major exception.

See, there’s another ongoing Threat To The Entire Marvel Universe. As usual. The flavor of the week is basically the Inquisitor from Red Dwarf back in 1992: bopping around the cosmos, ordering every individual Earth-being to justify their existence.

So Aurora tells the crew, “Hey, I conveniently have a psychic therapist — me being in therapy hasn’t come up before or since, the narrative has no interest in what feelings or personal traumas I need ongoing mental-health treatment for, it’s not like I’m Moon Knight or anything — but what if she walked everyone through a simulation of the Inquisitor Knockoff, so we feel more mentally-prepared for it?”

Captain Pryde goes with it.

Issue 6 is mostly a montage of psychic therapy sessions, every teammate getting a couple pages.

Aurora’s turn comes around — and, suddenly!

Headspace!

And it’s crowded!

And as I stop to look closely at the crowd, all of a sudden it hits:

Pink undercut — goth fashion and covered wrists — that must be Four! Teal workout gear, sitting with a camera and a toy dinosaur — that’s Five! Red dress — opera gloves and gardening shears — definitely Six! In the background, holding the riding crop — gonna guess that’s Three (likes horse racing), so the red corset and handcuffs can be for Seven (likes mild S&M), and the one with the skateboard and all the bandages can be Eight (the reckless masochist)!

(We’ve never had more than 8 headmates listed in a group, and there are 9 here. I have no theories about the one in the bunny hat.)

And that’ll be Original Jeanne-Marie (or, as you might say, One) in the buttoned-up shirt and pencil skirt. With Original Aurora (Two) in the black bodysuit and cape — that’s her superhero outfit this run, which is a nice little way to confirm that she’s been the one fronting.

So here I am, super excited to see Headmate Action. And not just any headmate action, but this incredible deep-cut continuity reference.

And then I turn the page.

And here’s how the system handles Knockoff Inquisitor:

Excuse me?

Jeanne-Marie stays sitting sitting meekly in a chair? While the other headmates gather around to defend her, and Aurora fights her battles for her?

This Jeanne-Marie?

This Jeanne-Marie?

This Jeanne-Marie??

Look, I get how it can be confusing. On a normal day, in a non-traumatic environment, she’s a soft-spoken, churchgoing, mild-mannered schoolteacher.

When she’s just trying to live her life, this is Jeanne-Marie:

But when she’s trapped? And scared? And doesn’t see any option but to defend herself?

This is also Jeanne-Marie:

Writers. Writers, what are you even doing??

Jeanne-Marie is not the weak one! Our girl doesn’t recklessly throw herself into combat situations the way Aurora does — fighting isn’t fun for her — but if you get her cornered, and there’s no way out except fighting back? She’ll do whatever she has to! She’ll shiv you with a piece of broken glass. She’ll shiv herself with a piece of broken glass!

Trapped and threatened Jeanne-Marie is terrifying. She scares Aurora. She should scare you.

If another psychic villain burst into their headspace like this, in the present day? Aurora would smirk and say “uh-oh, you’ve made her angry, you won’t like her when she’s angry.”

While Jeanne-Marie would grab the nearest possible weapon — Six’s gardening shears, Eight’s skateboard, Five’s toy plastic dinosaur — and lead the charge.

And they would all attack as a team.

Ugh.

This Marauders book is, as far as I can tell, still ongoing as of now (May 2023). If you’re reading this post from The Future, and there’s been more good Beaubier system content in the meantime? Drop a comment and tell us about it.

In the meantime…I’ve, ah, gotten myself annoyed enough to write a whole comicverse fix-it fic about that Marauders issue. Enjoy.