The Blink Profile

Real Time Blink

Clarice was born with lavender skin and the characteristic eye markings. (What If #75) No information has yet been revealed about her family, though it might be assumed that it included her parents and a brother as it did in the AOA. In Uncanny X-Men #316, the first part of the Phalanx Covenant, Blink's hometown seems to be placed in either New England or across the border in Quebec, Canada. This is established by a Cerebro map pinpointing the hometowns of the other Gen X'ers, and listing their names. Clarice is included in the list, and the dot which should be her is in that area, but the map is not precise enough to decide for sure where it is.

When Paige Guthrie awakes in Phalanx Captivity at the start of Uncanny X-Men #317, she finds herself in the company of the future core members of Generation X, and a shy, quiet girl named Clarice. During their captivity, Clarice begins to look up to Paige due to her confident assertions that the X-Men will come to rescue them, and she is greatly worried about the infection of Paige's outer "husk" with the Techno-Organic Virus. When their captor the Phalanx Harvest arrives to torment them, Clarice is willing to use her power to end his reign of tyranny. A caption states that the first time Blink used her power, she woke up in a pool of blood, and swore never again to use her powers against a living being, though we have never heard anything else about the circumstances of this event. Blink's power is first shown here cutting Harvest into pieces by sending the other parts somewhere else. Clarice is stopped from doing serious damage to him by the Phalanx plant "Gregor", and subsequentally escapes with the rest of the kids.

The last part of the crossover, X-Men #37, opens with Clarice being engulfed by the Phalanx. With encouragement from her teammates, she is able to disrupt her captors and break free. Using her powers causes her eyes to glow, and is stated to bathe her body in a warm glow. Blink's power levels are defined more clearly when it becomes clear that if Harvest is not stopped permantly, he will return and kill more people. First, she uses precision slicing to remove a chunk of deck under her friends, thus dropping them into the water, and leaving them safe. She then displaces the entire battleship, including Harvest and unfortunatly herself. It is to be noted that, because Blink displaces objects rather than destroying them outright, the battleship should have wound up SOMEWHERE. While this leaves a possibility for Blink to return, it also might leave her in custody of the Phalanx Harvest...

(pic from Ryoga's Blink Page)

Blink's earliest AoA appearance was being rescued as a child in Astonishing X-Men 3. Apparently having destroyed the Horseman of Apocalypse Abyss's death camp, Sabretooth and Weapon X are making their escape from the burning base. However, Sabretooth stops because he smells someone still alive inside. Wolvie helps free the person, who turns out to be Blink! (Lavender skinned and with eye markings, despite being a rather small child, supporting the idea that she had these from birth, without referring to the not-strictly-in-continuity What If #75.)

Blink's next chronological appearance is in the AoA prequel Tales of the Age of Apocalypse #1. This entire story essentially stars Blink, so I will humbly suggest the chronology entry on it (from the link above) for a basic plot summary. This issue established some interesting things about Clarice. First off, we are told that Clarice had a brother, who was killed along with her parents in the death camps. Secondly, Clarice is an artist, and is seen sketching X-People in her room. Thirdly, Blink's effective range as a teleporter is to the moon and back. Furthermore, this establishes Clarice's ability to send targets to multiple locations at once (Scott is dropped elsewhere from the X-Men), and is the first use of her power to create teleportals.
The issue also covers her basic relationships in the X-Men. She adores Sabretooth as a father figure, and accepts Morph as a friend, even if he is the class clown.

It is to be noted that these two appearances need to be separated by a space of some time. X-Men Chronicles #2 showed Logan and Jean leaving the X-Men from a base other than the Guthrie farm, where they are located for Tales. Clearly, Clarice has grown up quite a bit between the issues, as she is no longer the child shown in Astonishing 3. Also, she has probably had some training in the use of her powers since it is unlikely that she teleported to the moon on instinct alone as a first "combat" use of her powers. Incidentally, if Clarice can teleport to places she has never seen before based on a name and/or computer file, with enough range to hit the moon, several of the missions X-Men were sent on during the AoA proper were a bit useless. It would seem that she could have Blinked in to get Destiny and Illyana in a similar fashion.
All in all, this means there is an entire Blink time period we don't know about. If she was only a civilian during this time, they would probably not have kept her in the team's main base, which was a target in X-Men Chronicles #1. It is also noted that she met Colossus' team of young mutants called Generation NeXt during this time, or the time between Tales and the AoA proper, since she is upset by their deaths when she is informed of it in Amazing X-Men #4.

Blink's next chronological appearance is in the AoA bookend X-Men: Alpha. Alpha features the first use of the code name 'Blink', and the debut of the green costume and the metal darts after which this page is named. She is shown in this issue idealistically wishing that there was another way to get along without annihilating the minions of Apocalypse, to no avail as her teammates slaughter Infinities.

Blink then appears in Astonishing X-Men 1 returning from a scouting mission by teleporting herself and Sunfire into a meeting directly from a heated battle. Then she uses her portals in a novel way here, to chop a prelate in half by closing the portal on him. In terms of her comrades on the X-Men, this issue shows her working with Sunfire, who she saved in Tales. Also, she clearly views Magneto and Rogue as the "parents" of her "X-tended family", and makes every effort to remove Gambit when he appears to threaten that family through his old ties with Rogue.

Astonishing X-Men 2 features a scene between Blink and Sabretooth where he asks her to send him off to fight and delay Holocaust. Blink makes the same choice her counterpart made during the Phalanx Covenant; she is willing to make a sacrifice if it will mean saving lives in the long run, even if the sacrifice is someone she values as a surrogate father. Blink uses a stunt similar to her 616 tricks here, knocking out Rogue by displacing her for a fraction of a second. Also, Blink teleports 'Tooth into battle by hitting him with a "charged" dart, a trick we will also see again.

Astonishing X-Men 3 features the before mentioned scene as the X-Men are en route to shut down the Infinities' processing plant and rescue Creed. However, when they arrive, Blink believes that she sees 'Tooth dead, which leads up to ...

The ultimate Blink grudge match - Astonishing X-Men 4 - Blink vs Holocaust! As would be expected, the battle matches the raw power of the deadliest horseman against some of the most novel uses of Blink's power that will ever be seen. Blink uses charged darts to displace equipment and to punch holes in Holocaust's armor. She is able to avoid slamming into a wall by using a portal, and transferring that momentum into a devastating kick to the back of her rival. Finally, it comes down to a faceoff - Holocaust's cannon pressed against Blink, and a charged dart pointing through the hole in Holocaust's faceplate. Blink breaks the faceoff not by striking, but by teleporting Holocaust into the corrosive gene pool!

Blink plays a very small role in the final X-Men: Omega, other than dramatically teleporting most of the assembled X-Men into Apocalypse's base. She also creates multiple small portals through which Gambit throws multiple cards, taking out an entire group of shock troops. The interesting quote of the issue, though, belongs not to Clarice but to Destiny. She states "Only we three can go...for only we three no longer have counterparts in this other reality" in reference to herself, Illyana, and Bishop. In theory, Blink and Morph (based on a character who died in double digit Uncanny) can't go IF and ONLY IF they are actually dead in the real world. On the other hand, Destiny might just be lying to try and keep the combined X-Teams from storming the past and doing even more damage to the timestream. At any rate, after the future is changed, the bombs hit New York. However, given that Blink can teleport from an exploding ship orbiting the moon to Kansas, she ought to have been able to save ALL of the X-People. What does this mean? Maybe more AoA!

Creators

Return to the Blink Homepage.