BAB #2: "Heartbreak Hotel"

("Down at the end of Lonely Street...")

Comments

Come with me now, ladies and gentlemen, as we take to the highway in search of Metaphor City.

Young Alison Blaire dreams of being a star. She dreams of it so totally that she actually shines herself, and the less control she feels she had over her career, the more she loses her grip on her radiating. All this existential stress has finally become too much for her, so now she lives in a broken-down commune with people who like her for what she is, not what she can do.  Their powers are useless, even ridiculous, but it doesn't matter, because showing off for people isn't what it should all be about.

Young Hank McCoy dreams of the normality Alison seems so afraid of. He's got a really good heart, he just can't catch a break, owing to how he's he's kind of simian, and covered in blue hair.  You couldn't get much further from the George Clooney-type an aspiring singer-actress with a white hot body would be expected to court. He sees something to love in Alison, and doesn't understand why she can't. Women with low self-esteem can be so alluring, can't they? Well, they can if they're also unfeasibly beautiful. It's strange how that somehow becomes unattractive in those that aren't attractive.

As the days go past, Beast's constant drooling attention somehow begins to make Alison feel better about herself.  But she still yearns to be a star, even knowing the damage her ambition has already done to her, and when Alex Flynn arrives to ask her to honour her deal with Longride, she finds she cannot resist.

What Longride has in mind is entertainment for the rich and powerful of Hollywood. They want to see the young and the desperate for glory tear each other apart in front of them.  Dazzler simply singing for them doesn't hold their interest for more than a few bars.  What is talent without cut-throat competition? Why give fame to those who haven't proved they themselves hungry enough for it, by climbing over the bodies that got in the way? Even when Dazzler learns the truth, she can't break free.  "It's all pretend", they tell her; "all just a game". Desperate to believe anything that will get her her dream, she believes this - her reaction to the drugs her new "friends" are spiking her drinks with no doubt help here.

Only Beast can save our damsel in distress!  But will he stick by her, despite her poor decisions, and the fact she is no longer relying on him totally to validation? No!  No, he'll throw a tantrum and abandon her, so he can sulk all alone.

Tough when a woman leaves you for her career, isn't it? And by "leave you", I mean "not let you utterly control her every step of the way through that career".  Gods, I love Beast more than any other character in the X-Universe.  But that Beast is not this Beast.

Fuck this Beast.

Clues

The narrative here uses the phrase "days pass" twice here, and it seems clear we're rejoining the action at least a day after the previous issue ended, so we'll more or less arbitrarily assume we're looking at around a fortnight of time.

As mentioned when looking at DAZ #35, that issue clearly takes place before this miniseries, so we'll move all dates one week into the future to compensate.

Date

Sunday 22^nd October to Saturday 4^th November, 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+235 to X+6Y+248.

Contemporary Events

The EEC stump up £1.8 million to help combat the famine in Ethiopia.

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated.

Standout Line

"Sometimes just getting up in the morning is like getting hit with a shovel full of dirt."

Poor old Hank. It's not easy being an unpretty academic. Of course, it may be that I'm over-identifying.