Blink (comics)

Blink
Blink. New Mutants v.3 #34 Art by Jorge Molina
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Uncanny X-Men #317 (October 1994)
Created by	Scott Lobdell Joe Madureira
In-story information
Alter ego	Clarice Ferguson
Species	Human Mutant
Partnerships	Selene
Abilities	Teleportation

Blink (Clarice Ferguson) is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero featured in various X-Men-related series. Created by Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira, the character first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #317 (1994).

Publication History

A mysterious, unstable mutant with the ability to teleport, Blink was one of the mutants captured by the Phalanx during the 1994 X-Universe crossover event Phalanx Covenant. In print, the character died within a month of her first appearance. However, Lobdell and Madureira redefined Blink as a more confident and assertive character in the parallel universe storyline "Age of Apocalypse" (1995). As a result of her redefinition and increased exposure during that event, Blink became a fan favorite, as exemplified in her return in the regular title Exiles in 2001. The primary-universe version of Blink returned to publication in 2009.^[1]

Fictional character biography

In the primary Earth-616 continuity of the Marvel Universe, Blink was first introduced in the "Phalanx Covenant" storyline, in which the extraterrestrially derived techno-organic beings called the Phalanx captured her and several other young mutants to assimilate their powers.^[2] This version of Blink was tense and panicky and frightened of her powers (having "woken up in a pool of blood" after her first use of them). Clarice could not properly control her powers, and apparently was unable to teleport anything in an intact form. Instead, any object or person caught in Blink's teleportation field, also known as a "blink wave", would be shredded. She eventually used her abilities to "cut up" Harvest, a Phalanx entity guarding her and her peers, but she was caught in her own teleportation field and apparently died in the process.^[3] Because of her sacrifice, the remaining captives were set free and became the X-Men junior team Generation X.^[4]

Dark Reign

When Hercules travels to the Underworld, Blink is among the dead characters seen in Erebus gambling for their resurrection. However unlike the other characters, Blink just stood there watching them gambling.^[5]

Necrosha

Prior to the events of Necrosha, Selene begins gathering her new Inner Circle consisting of mutants with death-related powers. She took a ship to the spot where Blink had fought Harvest and reaching her hand into the air, her hand soon disappeared and Blink was then pulled out of nowhere, still wearing the same clothes that the Phalanx had wrapped her in. Blink had actually been stranded in another realm after her fight with Harvest, where she remained in a not-quite-dead state, all the while suffering in agony. After retrieving her from that realm and healing her, Selene informs Blink that she's been looking for her for a while and could hear her crying out for help. Selene then tells her Emma Frost could hear her as well but did nothing and left her behind saying she was too dangerous to save. Selene convinces her to join her cause claiming to be able to put an end to her cycle of pain and betrayal. Several weeks later, Selene and Blink go to New Orleans where she kills a man, using her powers to split him into numerous fragments and takes his mansion as a new base.^[6]

She is later seen going with Selene to her birthplace, then to Rome and New York where they slaughter the New York branch of the Hellfire Club. She teleports Selene's forces to Utopia where they attack the X-Men before teleporting back to her their Queen.^[7]

When Selene dispatches her Inner Circle to retrieve the mystical knife necessary to complete her ritual, Blink teleports them onto Utopia. In the confrontation, she is recognised by Emma Frost. During the fight, she and Senyaka attack Archangel, Senyaka ensnaring him with his coils and restraining him before Blink uses her powers to obliterate Archangel's wings.^[8]

After finding the knife, Blink teleports to Genosha with a captured Warpath. Blink is present when Bard gives Selene the knife and is killed in the process. She is later sent along with Thunderbird to watch over Warpath, however he is eventually rescued by the Vanisher.^[9]

When Selene began absorbing the many souls around her, she commands them to get her more souls to which Blink teleports most of the resurrected mutants and former-mutants to Genosha so Selene could absorb them.^[10]

During the final fight, Blink evades Domino's shots, using her teleporting abilities to move too fast for her. However, she did not count on the similar abilities of the Vanisher, who plucks Blink back out of her teleports. He then holds her while Archangel slashes her with his wings, taking revenge for her earlier assault. During Selene's downfall, Blink flees, taking the heavily wounded Mortis with her.^[11]

To Serve and Protect

Sometime after the events of Necrosha; Emma Frost and a small team of X-Men consisting of Blindfold, Pixie, Husk, Warpath and former Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange track Blink down in Eastern Europe where she's attempting to resurrect Selene. After a brief battle, Blindfold predicts Blink is going to commit suicide but is stopped by Emma who manages to help her realize Selene lied to her. Doctor Strange steps in and casts a spell which successfully purges her of Selene's corruptive influence. Feeling remorse and guilt over killing for Selene, Blink breaks down and Emma tries to reassure her it wasn't her fault and offers to be there for her as well a place with the X-Men. Overwhelmed with emotion, Blink teleports off claiming she can't and is last seen looking out into the sunrise in San Francisco.^[12]

Schism

During the Schism event Cyclops commissioned Moonstar and the New Mutants to search for her and recent advertising solicits show that Blink is set to make an appearance in the current series of New Mutants.^[13]

Ancestry

In the Apocalypse Vs Dracula mini series written by Frank Tieri, it is revealed that in London, 1897 Apocalypse's genetic descendants called the Clan Akkaba had a member called Frederick Slade. Slade was characterized with pink hair and eyes that were tinted green, and he had the ability to teleport himself, others, and selected objects with a 'blink' effect. In the hope that the Clan Akkaba would still continue, Apocalypse's servant Ozymandias, made sure that Frederick would sire a child with a woman known as Miss Ferguson. Given the similarity in powers and allusions made within the mini series, it is assumed that Clarice Ferguson/Blink is a descendant of the 19th Century Frederick Slade and Miss Ferguson and therefore a descendant of Apocalypse.

Recently, Slade showed up still alive but elderly in an issue of New Excalibur and leading a new Clan Akkaba along with Ozymandias.

Powers and abilities

Blink has the ability to teleport herself and others at will. Blink can teleport large masses, including sizable groups of people. She can also utilize these powers in a destructive manner by using her power to teleport only parts of objects. She can open portals that displace projectiles and even enemies that threaten her. Blink's portals are typically pink and accompanied by a "Blink" sound.

Blink also has a somewhat unusual appearance with lilac skin, dark pink hair, pointed ears and pupil-less green eyes (this was a change in Exiles: both MU and AoA Blink had white eyes with a blue sheen). She also has pink marks across her face: these were present at birth, and are not scars, tattoos, etc.

Other versions

Age of Apocalypse/Exiles Blink

Blink (Earth-295)
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	X-Men: Alpha #1 (February 1995)
Created by	Scott Lobdell Joe Madureira
In-story information
Alter ego	Clarice Ferguson
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	X-Men (AoA) Exiles
Abilities	Teleportation, Dimensional Energy Projection (Disruption via partial teleportation)

This version of Blink exhibited a more refined power set than her main-universe counterpart. While the regular Marvel Universe version of Blink originally had little control over her abilities that only evolved after her rescue, the Age of Apocalypse/Exiles Blink has mastered several methods of utilizing her powers. In addition to opening teleportational portals, she can also focus her ability into short, transparent, crystal-like javelins, which teleport whatever persons or objects they touch. She can charge her javelins so they can cut through objects by teleporting the matter elsewhere as they strike or they can be charged to stun opponents unconscious by putting them "out of phase". She usually keeps a supply of these in a quiver around her back, but can make them, one at a time, at will. Her teleportation is always accompanied by a "blink!" sound, from which she takes her codename. She has proven many times to be a skilled hand-to-hand fighter, and it is unknown whether her enhanced agility is the result of simple training or a consequence of her mutation.

Early years

In the Age of Apocalypse storyline, Professor X was killed years before he ever formed the X-Men. An alternate reality unfolded into which the 5,000-year old super mutant Apocalypse gained control of North America and implemented a genocide campaign against regular humans.

Clarice Ferguson was born in Cartusia, Bahamas. Her purple skin complexion revealed her to be a mutant at birth. Her parents accepted this fact but feared their daughter would not be accepted by the local population. When Clarice was four, the Fergusons moved to Miami, Florida, in the United States. They hoped Miami would be home to a mutant population where an older Clarice would be able to socialize.

Clarice was a child when Apocalypse took over Miami. Blink was discovered by Apocalypse's Horseman Mister Sinister and his right-hand, the Dark Beast, who experimented on her, refining her powers (thus explaining the differences in the abilities of the regular Marvel Universe Blink and her Age of Apocalypse counterpart).

In the 2000 Blink limited series, it is revealed via flashback that the mutant villain Sugar Man was at one point the jailer in charge of cellmates Illyana Rasputin (the longlost sister of fellow X-Man Colossus) and Clarice (before she was rescued as a young girl by Weapon-X and Sabretooth) in a prison facility, and that he sexually abused both of them on a nightly basis. This is also shown that in the Generation Next series, where Sugarman continued to regularly victimize the young girls who were part of the inmate population at Apocalypse's slave pits.

However, Sabretooth and Weapon X, members of the resistance force, the X-Men, raided Beast's laboratories and rescued Blink. She then became the unofficial adopted daughter of Sabretooth.

Blink grew into adulthood with the X-Men. She was impulsive and not always willing to follow orders, but became an important X-Man. In a limited series which focused uniquely on her character, Blink suffered partial amnesia and was briefly transported into the Negative Zone, where she became romantically involved with the amnesic Annihilus, although he forced her to leave when he began to transform back into his original form.

Eventually, the X-Men encountered the time travelling X-Man Bishop, who set a course of events that prevented the death of Professor X, eliminating the Age of Apocalypse reality.

Miniseries

Blink had her own four-part miniseries within the setup of the Age of Apocalypse storyline. In it, she has a falling out with Magneto and travels to the Negative Zone to seek aid in defeating Apocalypse but, due to the travel, loses her memory. She meets a man named Ahmyor who turns out to be the leader of a freedom force dedicated in removing Blastaar from the throne of the Negative Zone. Blink, not knowing who she is or where she came from, joins this force and, in turn, falls in love with Ahmyor- who, they both later learn, is a previous stage of Annihilus, who regressed back to this point in his life after his last confrontation with Blastaar and lost his memories. He was the one who Blastaar took the throne from. Blink regains her memory and manages to save Annihilus before teleporting back to her own world to the X-Men who were looking for her.

In a flashback in this series, it is revealed that Blink was once cellmates with the AoA version of Illyana before she was rescued by Weapon-X and Sabretooth, and that both of them were sexually abused on a nightly basis by the Sugarman, who was their jailer at the time.

Exiles

Main article: Exiles (Marvel Comics)

Blink was later on mysteriously transported to a strange desert plateau, where she met a group of other mutants from various realities who had been unstuck in time. A cosmic monitor called the Timebroker explained that each had become "unhinged" from reality, and their new mission was to visit various parallel worlds and "correct wrongs." While the other Exiles would each be returned to their own realities, but altered in some horrible way as a result of being unhinged, if they failed to correct things, Blink was told that she would cease to exist.

Blink became the leader of this group of Exiles and formed a relationship with her teammate Mimic. They went to many worlds, fighting the Hulk, Galactus, Weapon X, Mojo, and the Vi-Locks among other enemies. On the world where a mutated strain combining the Legacy Virus and the Techno-organic virus was taking over, Blink was infected by it. She was later cured, however, by the intervention of the Norse gods. The Exiles were celebrating when the Timebroker appeared, saying that Blink was going home. Blink was teleported away and was replaced by Magik.

However, the Timebroker lied and instead of sending her to her home dimension, she was quarantined in a previous reality the team had visited. There, the Exiles were paired up with Weapon X and given the assignment to kill a young child named David Richards, who, left unchecked, would become an all-powerful megalomaniac. Instead, Sabretooth opted to stay and raise the child so that he would not become evil. He had failed. When Blink landed in Sabretooth’s reality and helped him destroy Sentinels, David hijacked her teleporting ability and made her kill dozens of humans. Blink was emotionally scarred by the experience, and it was hinted that she would have succumbed to this destructive tendencies up to the point of potential suicide had Sabretooth not saved her.

She was later rescued and came back to the Exiles after Sunfire died. For the next mission, they were given the task of dwindling down the ranks of the two teams to only six members by killing each other. While fighting Hyperion, who seemed invincible, Blink prevailed by teleporting his own laser attack back at him. Then, Gambit—the official leader of the Exiles at the time—blew himself and Hyperion up, thus completing the mission.

Trying to throw off the team dynamic, the Timebroker introduced Sabretooth onto the team. This caused Clarice to doubt her leadership abilities and defer to Sabretooth's advice, a fact that Mimic was not happy about. The Timebroker gave Blink a mission in which she was instructed to kill Mimic soon after, but she refused. When she did, the Tallus shifted from her arm to Sabretooth's, making him the de facto leader.

The Timebroker then tried to disrupt the team by introducing Holocaust, from Sabretooth and Blink's home reality, into their ranks. He also sent the team back to the Age of Apocalypse (implying that by repairing their damaged timelines, Blink and Sabertooth had prevented the erasure of this timeline). However, this had a rather productive effect. Holocaust became obsessed with finding the source of the Timebroker's broadcasts and, experimenting with a shard of the M'Kraan Crystal, the Exiles teleported into the Timebroker's base—Panoptichron. Once there, the team found that the resurrected evil Hyperion had taken over the crystal citadel and had been manipulating their missions for quite some time. The Exiles began to fight him again, suffering the death of Namora and Holocaust as well as the near-fatal wounding of Morph and Mimic. However, it was Blink, once again, who saved the day. Since Hyperion had learned his mistake from their last battle, Blink had to come up with a new strategy for defeating the powerful foe. She did this by teleporting a lot of sand into him, effectively incapacitating him, and then marooning him on his desolate home dimension.

As the events of the House of M warped reality, the Exiles found themselves in the midst of it (since they had decided to drop Beak back home). The mad, reality warping mutant Proteus found himself reborn and was able to escape to another reality before Earth-616 was set right again. The Exiles endeavored to track him down since they felt responsible for his release—Proteus had discovered the existence of alternate realities via accessing the Tallus. Shockingly, Proteus infected Mimic, and Blink was unable to save him before his body withered away into a lifeless husk. This severely affected Blink, and Proteus seemed to retain some of Mimic's memories of he and Blink's relationship and purported to love her. Her relationship with Sabretooth was also affected. The man that she once looked up to as a mentor and called "Mr. Creed" was now only referred to as "Victor", showing the distance that was growing between them.

Swearing revenge, the Exiles tracked Proteus down to the Future Imperfect reality, but were unable to prevent the madman from taking another life. This time Proteus took the body of Morph, but with Blink's quick thinking she was able to trap Proteus in Morph's body by blinking a behavior modification crown onto his head, causing him to believe he really is Morph. With the hunt for Proteus at an end, Blink remained an Exile to continue fixing damaged realities. She and the other Exiles returned all former members of the Exiles and Weapon X that were trapped in the Stasis Gallery to their home realities, dead or alive. Blink was going to bury Mimic in the Panoptichron desert until Power Princess suggested that she check with Mimic's family on burial wishes. Blink returned Mimic to his home reality for burial, and spent some time with his version of the X-Men, almost accepting their wish for her to join their team.

Recently after a mission where the Exiles had to save Galactus, Blink once more called Sabretooth 'Mister Creed.' Blink later left the team to take a break with Nocturne and Thunderbird on Heather's Earth. However, Blink is called back into action when the New Exiles (minus Morph and Psylocke) are left inoperable after being immersed within the Crystal Palace. Morph summons her, Nocturne, and Heather to help create a new team of Exiles: Beast, Forge, Polaris, Panther, and the Witch. Blink is put in charge of this new team, and pretends to be new just like the others. However, she is found out at the end of their first mission.^[14]

Blink's current status is unknown. Neither she nor Morph have appeared since the abrupt cancellation of Exiles, volume 2, after six issues.

What if?

Blink as the In-Betweener

An alternate version of this Blink appeared in What If? vol. 2 #75. In this story, Blink survives, but the other young mutants die in her place. Blink ends up in the realm of the cosmic entity known as the In-Betweener, and seems to kill him in battle. Blink uses her newfound reality-warping powers to "improve" the world, and among other things causes human/mutant conflict to end. However, when she attempts to save the members of Generation X from their deaths, the resulting paradox (if Generation X survived, then Blink could never gain her new powers in the first place) caused reality itself to begin disintegrating. Ultimately, Blink undid all the changes she had made, and the In-Betweener revealed that he had not died at all. He then took Blink on as his apprentice, training her in the proper use of her new powers.

Ultimate Marvel

In the Ultimate Marvel universe, a pink-skinned young girl with purple hair and a diamond in the center of the forehead is one of the mutants who appear on-screen as potential candidates for Emma Frost's mutant group. However, she was ultimately rejected.

Later, Blink is mentioned as having participated in the premiere episode of a mutant-hunting game show run by Mojo Adams.

In other media

Television

• Blink appeared briefly in a non-speaking cameo in a fifth season episode of the 1990s X-Men animated series titled "Bloodlines". The Age of Apocalypse version of Blink appeared in the two-part episode "One Man's Worth" as a member of Magneto's Mutant Resistance. Living up to her name, this appearance is rather quick and lasts less than a second.
• Blink first appeared in the Wolverine and the X-Men episode "Battle Lines." This version resembles the Age of Apocalypse version and is seen as a member of Magneto's Acolytes. Blink accompanied Magneto to where Senator Kelly is and used her ability to transport Dr. Sybil Zane into moving traffic. She is later seen teleporting Magneto and Quicksilver when the Scarlet Witch have them removed from Genosha.

Video games

• Blink is an essential non playable character in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse voiced by Tara Strong. She provides her teleportation abilities for the player after she is rescued on Genosha. When first encountered, she has special dialogue with Toad.

References

1. ^ Necrosha: The Gathering #1
2. ^ Uncanny X-Men #317
3. ^ X-Men #37
4. ^ Generation X #1
5. ^ Incredible Hercules #129
6. ^ X-Necrosha: The Gathering One-Shot #1
7. ^ X-Necrosha One-Shot #1
8. ^ X-Force #23
9. ^ X-Force #24
10. ^ X-Force #25
11. ^ X-Force #25
12. ^ X-Men: To Serve and Protect #3
13. ^ New Mutants Volume 3 #33
14. ^ Exiles vol. 2 #1-6

External links

• Blink at Marvel.com
• AoA Blink at Marvel.com
• Blink at UncannyXmen.net
• (archive.org mirror)