New Mutants V3 #8 page 21 - Warlock and Cypher

When I saw that jay leisten had these three pages from the recent issue which saw the restoration of Cypher to the Marvel universe I had to pounce!



As part of the Necrosha storyarc, Selene, former Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, and evil mutant immortal sort-of-goddess used a variation on the technorganic virus to reanimate lots and lots and lots of dead mutants, and her own magical powers to turn them into her slaves/soldiers/lackeys/whatever.



Doug "Cypher" Ramsey was one such returnee. But since he had had a LOT of experience with the technorganic virus through contact with Warlock, and had a mutant gift for hacking computer code, he was about the only one to retain some sort of sanity, though still under Selene's control.



On finding this out, Warlock wasn't about to lose his best friend again without a fight, and since he has even MORE experience with the transmode virus, since he's more or less made of the stuff, used his own being, along with the spell-breaking soulsword that belongs to team-mate Magik to combine them into something to help Doug.



And rather violent imagery though it may be, and worried though Warlock is that he's done more harm than good, help it does. It breaks Selene's hold over Doug's mind, and allows his own thoughts and memories to start to resurface.