Digging through a pile of comics, I found this melancholy little tale

[icon_uk]

From Excalibur Annual #2 back in 1994. This was about eight years after Cypher was killed, and about three months after Douglock was introduced in the pages of "The Phalanx Covenant", and was perhaps meant to provide a primer..


We open with Kitty Pryde in Excalibur HQ, receiving a parcel in the post. Her mother had found some old thing of Kitty's from 'her Westchester days' and forwarded them on. Kitty hasn't been on the best of terms with either of her parents since their divorce, so she is not enthused, especially when she see's that the computer discs included in the box were packed loose in a plastic bag. Basically thinking "What the hell..." Kitty boots up her computer to see what's on the them (If they haven't been accidentally wiped by EM exposure or the like)

She is not prepared for what she finds on the disc. It IS from her Xavier days, but they aren't HER files.




As I recall, the only verbalisation we ever got of the above process was "Wow?!?", and that doesn't look like it was a "Wow?!?" moment to me, but I suppose I've never actually bodymerged with a technorganic alien so who knows...



That's.... quite the haircut there Dougie boy...



I like that last page, not least because I happen to own it! :) (Click on the image above to see the inked page)

Doug then covers the period when Warlock left the team to chase after a runaway Sunspot, about how abandoned and betrayed he'd felt by that. About the nightmares he'd had, and the fear he felt all the time because without Warlock to protect him and make him useful in combat, why was he still on the team?

Kitty decides there's only one thing to do with these files. She passes Kurt (Who knew about the package) as she goes looking for new Excalibur member Douglock. and asks him to scan the discs... (Douglock had been busy cross referencing all the sentient AI's he could find, hoping to understand his own Phalanx-derived nature better... just think, if she hadn't interrupted him we might have had Avengers AI twenty years ago!)





With that, polite but uninterested, he turns back to what he was doing. Kitty wanders away, heartbroken, to find Kurt waiting for her.



So she shows Kurt Doug's files too, and he finds the last entry...





"No katzen" he replies, as Douglock watches from the hall outside, "...only human."

Awww... :(

I think my only issue with this story is that it's all about Kitty, which seems fair enough I guess, but Douglock, who already has something of an identity crisis about looking like someone who had already died as far, is more or less tossed aside the moment he's said anything remotely germane to the discussion. No one asks him how he's doing after the umpteenth comparison to Doug (The name didn't help I suppose).

Comments

[arbre_rieur]

So who was Douglock anyway? A phalanx that got Doug's memories?

[icon_uk]

There were a variety of different origins as to who Douglock was...

1) The Phalanx hive-mind kept a copy of Doug's personality and memories (Where it got them from was left unclear, but Douglock had his memories right up to Doug's actual death) to use as a decryption program. The android Zero freed the program, and using a body made out of Phalanx material it achieved independence and free will and rejected the Phalanx and all it's aims. He had Doug's appearance, and his memories but no emotional connections to them, like someone else holiday snaps I suppose.

2) Some sort of randomly rebel Phalanx which assumed Doug's form and name out of respect for his courage

3) He had no clue at all.

4) The eventual reveal some years later, after Excalibur ended, was that Douglock had been, the entire time, not Doug, but 'Lock, a reprogrammed Warlock (Who had also been killed in the Liefled New Mutants era). The Phalanx had planned on using him as a Trojan Horse, someone they could make it appear had "escaped" from the hive mind, and whose appearance would engender sympathy (Hey, who DIDN'T want Doug back) until the Phalanx could reactivate him as a Phalanx to attack from the inside of the X-Men. That hadn't worked, and in the subsequent M-Tech Warlock series (Which I must post some from sometime, it was fun) had Warlock coming to terms with having Doug's DNA fused with his own, giving him Doug's powers as well as his own usual ones.

[arbre_rieur]

For #4, why use a reprogrammed Warlock for that? Or why have him look like Doug Ramsay if his actual form, as another deceased teammate, would engender plenty of sympathy on its own?

[cainofdreaming]

There's also the fact that Technarchs tend to eat them. So it's kinda like pigs, succulent tender pigs, using a tiger as their catspaw.

[md84]

Technically, the Technarchs simply destroy Phalanx out of disgust when they find them. The Technarchs use the Transmode Virus to convert organic matter into tasty technorganic matter, and that matter becomes Phalanx if the Technarchs don't reach it in time. Imagine if the meal you prepared grew talking mold that wanted you to acknowledge it as your child.

So it's more like disgusting bread mold using a human as its catspaw.

[cainofdreaming]

Yes, but they still get ate after the Technarchs come calling to the Babel Spire's call. Usually along with the whole planet, unfortunately.

[icon_uk]

I loved the reveal in the Warlock series that the "Babel Spire" that was the focus of the entire big bad Phalanx Covenant was not, as the Phalanx believed, a summoning tower so the Technarchs would come and collect them, but was actually the Technarch equivalent of "Clean up in Aisle 3!" and they'd happily send along a Magus to rip the entire infected planet in half.

[icon_uk]

At a guess, they didn't have much choice, the Warlock material they had (Which had been stolen from Doug's grave and given to the Phalanx for their use) was already encoded with Doug's DNA.

Warlock didn't use to have a default shape, but the implication that his more Doug-like form (as Douglock and Warlock in the solo series) now WAS his default shape.