Scans_Daily

When we first met Rahne Sinclair, back in the New Mutants Graphic novel, she was a terrified 13 year old, being pursued across her Scottish island home by a literal pack of torch-wielding villagers, led by the Reverend Craig, a Presbyterian minister of, even by Presbyterian standards, excessively strict views. (Translation - The man was nuttier than squirrel shit and had about as much to do with the Christian concepts of love and charity as a slug has to do with tap dancing)

He had raised her as her guardian (though exactly how he came to that role was never made clear) when her mother died in childbirth (Moira MacTaggart delivered her) and spent the intervening years browbeating his version of religion into her, pointing out that her mother had been a... well, let's be kind and say "low woman" and so Rahne herself must be inherently evil. The poor girl believed him too. When he had seen Rahne's mutant power of lupine metamorphosis manifest for the first time he had decided that she needed to be purged of the evil that was obviously within her and set about organising an impromptu mob.

Thanks to the intervention of Moira MacTaggart she was rescued and removed from Craig's custody. Moira adopted her (and it's worth noting that Rahne always referred to Craig by his title and surname, but called Moira "Mummy"). But the damage had been done by then. Thanks to Craig's abusive (as far as is known, mental rather than physical or sexual) treatment Rahne spent years of her life as a painfully shy, completely introverted personality with pitifully poor self esteem. It took Moira and her friends in the New Mutants years to show her that being a mutant was NOT innately evil, or the work of the devil.

Years later, when she was with Excalibur (in Excalibur #93 to be precise), she came across a local girl who was a pyrokinetic mutant.. and discovered that she also lived in fear of Reverend Craig (who had seen her lighting candles in church without using a match). Rahne decides the time as come for a reckoning...

Please try to ignore the outfit she's wearing, especially below the waist, I'm no expert on the biology involved by surely there is no way that could ever be comfortable. I'm also not a fan of the art, but it's Warren Ellis on words and that can make up for a lot.

Anyway, Rahne walks into the kirk, and Craig immediately denounces her, saying he should have made sure and killed her years ago...









And with that, as the next caption box says, "The woman, Rahne Sinclair, turns and leaves the church"

I've never been a HUGE Woflsbane fan, but those pages made me want to cheer, because that's how you face down a bigot, not with hysteria or shouting, but with knowledge. I like that the reveal that Craig is her biological father is not dwelt upon, because it doesn't need to be, it's irrelevant to her life. Also that she hasn't entirely lost her faith as a result of her past, just that she has a more open approach to it now. i