The Ultimate X-Men (14 page)

At one point, he was a member of the infamous mutant group, the X-Men, under the simpler codename the Angel, but later left them to found the Champions, the first team of heroes to operate on the West Coast. Just prior to his time with the Champions, he revealed his secret identity, becoming the most visible mutant in public life. After the group disbanded, he later joined the Defenders, then reorganized under the leadership of the former Avenger Dr. Henry McCoy, also known as the Beast. He was also briefly

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associated with a team of mutants calling themselves “the X-Terminators. ’ ’

Then tragedy struck when a crippling attack caused severe damage to his wings, and amputation was deemed necessary to prevent the spread of gangrene. Depressed, Worthington was seen taking off in his private plane, which then exploded in flight. He was believed dead, and with his death his financial empire began to disintegrate, aided by the discovery that he was funding the then-mutant-hunting organization, X-Factor. Then, months after his funeral services, he reappeared in the public eye, and we have him here tonight in his first extended interview since. We’ll be taking your calls later in the show. But right now, it is my pleasure to introduce Warren Worthington.

Worthington:
Thank you, Archer.

Finckley:
Thank you very much for coming on the show tonight, Warren. You’ve been something of a recluse—

Worthington:
Recluse?
I
wouldn’t go that far.

Finckley:
Well, this is the first interview you’ve given in the last couple of years, ever since your little, ah, accident.

Worthington:
Accident isn’t the term
I
would use. My disability happened as the result of a deliberate attack.

Finckley:
No, I’m not referring to the injur)? to your wings, I’m referring to the plane explosion shortly thereafter.

Worthington:
Oh, I’m sorry—that.

Finckley:
Yes, that. Once and for all, would you care to set the record straight on what happened?

Worthington:
As you said in your introduction, I’d been injured while fighting an organization dedicated to wiping out mutants, and had suffered severe damage to my wings.

on TIE AIR

Most doctors were, to put it mildly, stymied—they had no idea how to treat a body with wings attached. I felt the best thing I could do was get a long rest. However, I was very, very concerned that the same people who had injured me in the first place would take another shot at me, or someone else would take advantage. And I was incapable of defending myself, and any conventional form of protection would have been useless.

So we resorted to misdirection. Sleight of hand. We spread the story that my wings had been amputated, and I killed myself because I couldn’t fly again. I was on a plane and wanted to die in the air. Actually, I hid myself away and waited for my wings to heal. And I broke off all outside contact, because that was the only way I felt I wouldn’t be tracked and killed. Unfortunately, while I was in seclusion healing physically, one of my trusted associates decided this was a good time to wreck me financially, and since I was physically incapable and legally dead, there wasn’t much I could do. When I was out of immediate physical danger and my wings were as healed as they were going to get, I came out of hiding and I started to rebuild my life.

Finckley:
Since then, you haven’t been anywhere near as public a figure as you were. After all, you are one of the most prominent “out” mutants.

Worthington:
[laughs] Sorry, your choice of phrase— “out” mutants.

Finckley:
There’s something wrong with the phrase?

Worthington:
It’s an interesting crossover from the gay subculture. But unlike being gay, there are lots of mutants who can’t hide who they are, regardless of whether or not they might want to.

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Finckley:
Yet you did for a long time. In fact, right now, I can’t even tell there are wings underneath your suit.

Worthington:
And don’t think my tailor comes cheap. Look, such a nice blend of fabric—and these pleats! [laughs] My tailor is a miracle worker.

Finckley:
Why don’t you show your wings out more?

Worthington:
The best answer—well, it’s kind of embar-assing to look at it this way, but try to imagine walking around with a hoop skirt strapped to your back, covered with a cape.

Finckley: I
can imagine it must be very clumsy.

Worthington:
You bend down and knock over a table. What a pain in the tailfeathers. Literally.

Finckley:
So it’s not embarassment or a publicity thing, or hiding your mutant ability?

Worthington:
Now it’s a bit of vanity—my wings are not pretty to behold anymore. But for the most part, it’s just convenience for everybody else around me. I have nothing to hide, it’s not like my face is unknown—God knows my face shows up in the paper enough, between the business section and the society pages, never mind the battles with Professor Power and the Secret Empire on the front page.

Finckley:
How do you conceal your wings?

Worthington: I
wear a special harness that keeps them flat against my back.

Finckley:
Is it painful with your injured wings?

Worthington:
I’ve learned to adjust.

Finckley:
You were very publicly involved with two semi-prominent super-teams—the Champions and the Defenders—but both were quite brief. What led you to get involved

in those endeavors? The world is, after all, full of superteams.

Worthington:
Well, the Champions was made up of a number of people who just had many different irons in the fire. I got involved with them because—well, to be blunt, I was there at the same time on the west coast. This was before the days of a West Coast branch of the Avengers. I like to think we were a viability test. As for the Defenders . . . again, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Finckley:
Considering how long the Champions lasted, I’d say they weren’t terribly viable. Then again, the Avengers shut down their West Coast branch, too.

Worthington:
The Champions served their need and function at the time. I don’t know that it’s a good thing or bad that they disbanded when they did; I’m sure that a lot of people benefitted from them being together. For any super hero group, you don’t measure success by long-term cohesiveness or financial success, you measure it by the quality of the work they produced and the lives they touched. It’s kind of like a musical group. Besides, it was nice to be in a group with people with bigger PR problems than me.

Finckley:
And who would that be?

Worthington:
Ghost Rider, clearly. When you hang out with someone with a flaming skull for a head, having a sixteen-foot wingspan sort of fades into the background. And of course Natasha [the Black Widow] was a Soviet defector, which brought its own special problems.

Finckley:
Which leads me to my next question . . .

Worthington:
Oh boy.

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Finckley:
You took quite a risk by publicly revealing your status as a mutant. What led to that decision?

Worthington: I
was tired of hiding it, really . . . after all the entire issue of “protecting” my family seemed to be moot after my parents died.

Finckley:
Weren’t you worried about what it would do to your social status, not to mention your business?

Worthington:
You have to consider the time and place. California is—or rather, was—more forgiving at the time of people different than themselves. Plus, having the name Angel and the appearance to go with it isn’t what you might necessarily call a minus in certain circles.

Finckley:
Still, Worthington Enterprises’ stock
did
go down significantly after you spread your wings, so to speak.

Worthington:
Ehh—it goes down, it. goes up.
I
look at the long term, not the short. We’ve run ourselves into the ground as a country, as a people, thinking short term.

Finckley:
Certainly that can’t be the only reason you went public.

Worthington:
No, it wasn’t. A big reason was to bring home the fact that anybody could be a mutant, that it cuts across race and class. Even the bluebloods can have a mutant baby. It’s not a “only gays, only Haitians, only poor white trash, only Jews, only blacks” sort of thing.

Finckley:
Was that a big problem?

Worthington:
Yes, it was and is. I found out that one of my oldest prep school friends, Cameron Hodge, a man I trusted with my finances and my life, hated mutants with a passion. He tried to destroy me and my friends numerous times—first from the inside of my own company, with embezzlement and spiteful PR while I was believed dead,

OR IRE ill

although I found out he’d been doing it ever since I brought him into the company, then later by joining and leading rabid anti-mutant groups.

Finckley:
Why would a man like that—from your comments, a man with the most pedigree of backgrounds—behave that way?

Worthington: I
don’t want to speculate on him in particular, but why does anybody do that who should know better? With some people if it’s not the mutants, it’s the moneylenders, it’s the Masons, it’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

I’ve personally always been much more impressed with Hank McCoy’s decision to go public. Hank has always been a courageous soul in that respect—there was no reason for him to reveal himself, he was unrecognizable.

Finckley:
Ah, yes, you and Dr. McCoy served with the Defenders together. Of course, he is heavily involved in the current foofuraw over the so-called “Legacy Virus.”

Worthington:
Yes, he is.

Finckley:
Now, as a mutant, you are suddenly at risk of contracting a deadly disease, in addition to any other problems being a mutant might cause.

Worthington:
Believe me, catching a “mutant-killer” disease goes straight to the end of my list of problems. Being audited
—that
worries me.

Finckley:
How do you feel about the fact that the existence of the virus was kept hidden from the general public for so long?

Worthington: I
don’t think “kept hidden from the general public” is an accurate phrase—it implies that there was a deliberate cover-up. Just as with AIDS, it took a long time

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to track down that such a disease was in operation—it took time to diagnose. The hysteria over making yourself known to be a mutant—indeed, many of the people who contracted it didn’t know that they were mutants themselves until they became sick. Come to think of it, the first news stories about the virus came out after the first infection in the general population, when Dr. [Moira] MacTaggart caught it herself.

Finckley:
Well, let’s hope that your friend Dr. McCoy and his colleagues can find a cure. Moving on to more pleasant subjects, you were recently sighted at a Hellfire Club reception with a very attractive young woman on your arm. Might she be part of the reason why you’ve been less public lately?

Worthington:
Yes? Which one? [laughs]

Finckley: I
believe we have a photo here—-Jim, can we get that up on screen? Yes, I believe that’s her there.

Worthington:
Oh, her! Betsy! [laughs] Boy, am
I
going to get in trouble for saying that.

Finckley:
[chuckles] In that case, I assume we can take it as read that your social life has
not
suffered?

Worthington:
Well, after the ordeal of putting my life back in order after the damage to my wings, it was more an issue of getting my head back together. But since then, I haven’t lacked for a social life, no.

Finckley:
Getting your head back together?

Worthington:
For a while after the injuries to my wings, I was really, really morbid. Preoccupied with death—that and getting my wings back. If I couldn’t fly again, I didn’t want to live.

Finckley:
How are your wings now? There were reports

OH THE AIR

at the time that your wings had been amputated, and you haven’t shown them in public since, yet now you’re claiming you still have them.

Worthington:
Functional, but not much more than that. I can still fly, on occasion. But I really don’t see myself getting involved in high-speed aerial combat as much as I used to, if ever.

Finckley:
A career-ending injury?

Worthington:
It was bound to end, sooner or later, just as with any athletic career. Well, any athletic career where people shoot at you on a regular basis.

Finckley: I
imagine dealing with super-villains can be trying.

Worthington:
Actually, I’ve never been comfortable with that phrase.

Finckley:
Huh?

Worthington:
“Super-villain.” Dumb phrase. Simplistic mentality. Think about it. Nikita Khruschev stood on the floor of the UN and said he wanted Communism to encircle the globe. Did anybody ever call him a super-villain? Of course not. If somebody feels required to break a person’s entire history and belief system into one word, I don’t want to discuss politics with them.

By the same token, I’m not real thrilled with the abbreviation “mutant.” WTiat I am is a mutant human. The human part is very important. Just calling me a mutant, or calling anybody a mutant, obscures the fact that we’re human at the core. Makes it easier to seperate us, deal with us as something from the outside.