- Name: Ariel
- Code Names: Ariel
- First Appearance: Fallen Angels #2 (May ‘87)
- Powers: Persuasion, ability to make doors open into different doors
- Teams Affiliation: Fallen Angels, X-Men
About
In 1983 recording artist Cyndi Lauper took the world by storm with her massive hit single “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. With its amusing lyrics and an inescapable music video, the song became one of the staples of 80’s culture. To this day there isn’t a shopping mall montage that couldn’t be made better by this song. Being so stuck in time can be a challenge, many characters have had their aesthetic updated year after year just to keep up with the times. Some, however, revel in it like the living embodiment of a Cyndi Lauper song that is Ariel.
Ariel came from a planet known as Coconut Grove. This Miami Vice poster turned planet had one concern, pleasure. The world was a den of desire, a plane focused on living the most extravagant lifestyle possible without regard for consequences and it had been going surprisingly well. One care began to appear in the carefree lives of those in Coconut Grove, they had apparently reached an evolutionary dead end. They recruited the young Ariel to travel to a planet ripe with evolutionary potential, a planet called Earth.
It wasn’t hard to get to, there weren’t any spaceships or transporters, there was simply a door. Not a specific door mind you, just any door. The people of Coconut Grove had developed a process to any door open into any other one, a skill that Ariel had become a master at. It wasn’t magic or mutation, it was a trick anyone could do if they had the right kind of hands and a good grounding in subjective physics. Ariel simply stepped into a door in Coconut Grove and stepped out on Earth.
Meanwhile on Earth, Telford Porter, a villain known as the Vanisher, was recruiting youths Fagin style to fund his lifestyle. Ariel fell right in with the group that included Gomi, his pet cybernetic lobsters/best friends Bill and Don, and a street rat named Chance. Though their personalities differed, Ariel and Chance became fast friends as their recruited Sunspot, Boom Boom, Warlock, Siryn, Madrox, Moon Boy, and Devil Dinosaur to their cause. Human or otherwise, this was a group with ripe evolutionary potential. Potential that could save the future of Coconut Grove.
As the team’s mutant powers began mysteriously acting up, Ariel suggested that they retreat to her world of Coconut Grove. The flamboyant residents of the Grove made the Fallen Angels feel like popstars and gave them new outfits to match. There, Ariel told Chance that she knew something was different about her. People always seemed to agree with Ariel and do what she wanted, though Ariel insisted that mutation in Coconut Grove had long since ended. The leaders of Coconut Grove revealed that the Fallen Angels would be long-term guests of the Grove whether they wanted to or not. They intended to experiment on the mutants to find a way to jumpstart evolution again. Ariel was shocked to discover what her people had planned for the Angels but she mortified to discover that there was one natural mutant among the Coconut Grove. Her powers of persuasion weren’t just charm, they were Ariel’s mutation. She was captured with the rest of the Angels and placed in captivity.
The Fallen Angels were taken aback by Ariel’s betrayal but, at the behest of Chase, forgave their misguided friend. Between Bill the Lobster’s Die Hard style assault on Coconut Grove and good old fashion teamwork, the Fallen Angels escaped their captors and revealed something they really should have recognized. If Ariel was a captured for being a mutant, and she was from Coconut Grove, then evolution was not at a dead end among the children of the Grove, it just worked slowly. Like a man desperately searching for his glasses only to find them sitting on top of his head, the elders of Coconut Grove felt both shame and relief as they let the Fallen Angels go home.
Over twenty real-world years later, Ariel just showed up in San Francisco during the mutant riots. She was tasked by mutant leaders to rescue mutants trapped in the streets and worked with Gambit and Rogue to do so. When the nation of Utopia was formed, Ariel joined her fellow mutants. She mostly just relaxed around the island but assisted the X-Men when asked nicely. She was key in finding a way to enter Emplate’s dimension and save Trance. When the mutant messiah Hope came back to the prime timeline, Ariel was enlisted to help bring her safely back to Utopia. Bastion, the evolved Sentinel had other plans for Hope, and they involved taking all of the X-Men’s teleporters out of commission. As she was traveling to Hope with X-Force, Bastion launched a missile at Ariel’s vehicle, seemingly killing her.
Unknown to others, Ariel opened a dimensional portal in the car door at the last minute. The destruction of the vehicle did trap her between dimensions in a perpetual state of burning. Rogue was able to combine the efforts of Pixie, Hellion, Frenzy, Rachel Grey, and Doctor Nemesis to rescue her from the burning dimension. The most important thing on Ariel’s mind at the time was where her heels were. She stayed with Rogue for a time but Ariel soon wandered off. She didn’t want all the pressure of being an X-Man, this girl just wanted to have fun.
Must Read
Man, Ariel’s been in, like, no comics. you know? Her debut, however, is a fantastic hidden gem. Mary Jo Duffy and her rotating art team tell a story about the misfits of the Marvel universe. It is the kind of fun, fancy-free storytelling where Devil Dinosaur doesn’t feel out of place. Most importantly, it has Bill and Don, cybernetic lobsters willing to go on revenge rampages when the moment calls for it. It is inconsequential, it is silly, and it is a ton of fun. It isn’t on Marvel Unlimited for some unknown reason but you can get all eight issues on Comixology for $3 right now.
Ranking
Ariel is a weird character for me. She is very much in the vain of Boom Boom, Dazzler, or Jubilee but without any of the energy of those characters. On a team with Warlock, a T-Rex, and cybernetic lobsters it takes a lot to stick out, and Ariel just doesn’t. She is little more than a look and an attitude, both of which are done better on the same team by Boom Boom. Her return in X-Men: Legacy is the least successful use of a D-List character in a run filled with them and her death in Second Coming is a non-event. She is a very disposable character without a real place in the world. I don’t think I’d rather read another Sage story than another Ariel one, but I think I’d be OK with more Polaris. That puts Ariel in as the new number 75 in the Xavier Files.
Ariel was requested by Luke Herr on Patreon. Thank you for the request. If you have a request for how about you send it below? If you want to cut to the front of the two-year long line, we have a Patreon you can support Xavier Files for just $1 to get a line cutting reward.
Make sure you check out my brand new podcast BATTLE OF THE ATOM. It’s where Bish & Jubez creator Adam Reck and I talk about every single X-Men story that ever existed and rank them from best to worst. Episode 7 is up and talk alternate realities with special guest Luke Herr. Make sure you subscribe on any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.
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Next week we unleash the Beast! See you then!
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Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
