- Name: It depends
- Code Names: Penance, Hollow
- First Appearance: Generation X #1 (Nov ’94)
- Powers: Diamon hard, razor sharp skin
- Teams Affiliation: Generation X, The Loners, Avengers Academy
About
I’ve been doing this site for like two and a half years now. In that time, I have tried to make things like the Summer’s family tree or the Age of Apocalypse simple enough to comprehend. I think to think I have been mostly successful breaking things down into bite-sized chunks of continuity that most people can at least follow, if not actually understand. Rarely does dense continuity break me, but here we are. I have reached my limit. I don’t even know how to start explaining Penance.
The very first thing we need to do is establish some verbiage for our key players, as well as our codenames. The St. Croix family has 4 children, Marius, Monet, and the twins, Claudette and Nicole. Among them are 3 superhero codenames which are not explicitly tied to any one of them, Emplate, M, and Penance. Marius was a mutant vampire and also a jerk. Monet was the perfect daughter and daddy’s favorite. The twins have no defining characteristics besides being twins. They are all mutants. Marius became Emplate and turned Monet into a red skinned creature with a diamond hard body and fetish gear called Penance. In response, the twins melded into a single entity that looked and acted exactly like Monet, that took on the codename M. Emplate stole Penance away and merged into a different plane of reality and the twins pretended to be Monet, eventually joining Generation X. Confused yet? Well so am I. Just keep all this straight and we will be good.
In the pocket dimension, Emplate fed on the mutant energy of Penance. He kept her restrained and alone, only visiting her when he needed sustenance. Time passed, maybe it was years, and the mysterious mutant Gateway opened a portal to free Penance, leaving her on the lawn of the Massachusetts Academy. There she was found by Generation X headmaster Banshee and taken to the infirmary. Unwilling to escape one prison only to be trapped in another, Penance broke out as Generation X followed. They searched the grounds for the girl, but their aggressive attitudes didn’t work well. It took kindness from the deformed Chamber for Penance to understand that these people didn’t want to hurt her. That for the first time in years, she was safe.
Penance struggled to communicate with her teammates. She was mute and her razor-sharp skin made physical contact a challenge. Jubilee reached out to her and tried to integrate her more and more into the group’s activities, and Penance liked it. Emplate came to the school in search of Penance, and the other students were unaware what Penance would do. However, Penance stayed true to her friends and helped fight off her one-time captor.
Here is where things start to get nonsensical. Generation X teammates Synch and M were attacked by Prime Sentinels from Operation: Zero Tolerance and M was split into the twins, Claudette and Nicole. Soon Emplate returned, this time looking for the twins. They merged with him to form a super being known as M-Plate who unsuccessfully tried to take over the universe. Synch finally understood the whole history of the St. Croix family (which I don’t, so good on him) and convinced the twins to make things right. They switched places with their sister Monet, who became the new M, and they became the new Penance
In an important and odd decision, neither the new Penance or the new M acted any different than they used to, making the whole confusing escapade feel a bit pointless. They still did Generation X stuff until an explosion separated the twins from the body of Penance. The body of Penance, throwing out all internal logic or consistency, continued to operate as a unique entity and the twins went back to Monaco with the body.
Years later the superhero Ricochet broke into a lab that was creating mutant growth hormone. He battled a guard there but in there melee one of the tanks holding the mutant subjects broke, and out walked Penance. She tried to communicate but being mute and having knife hands made that difficult. Ricochet’s teammates (well more of a support group), the Loners, went after her. They tried to be kind, Julie Powers of the Power Pack reached out to her and laid her hands on Penance’s shoulders. Penance tried to follow suit, but knife hands being what they are, skewered Julie’s shoulders.
Feeling guilty, Penance made her way to the hospital where Julie was being held and came across the Loners. Penance tried to show that she wasn’t dangerous and kissed Phil Ulrich, the one-time Green Goblin. Soon Penance was found by the woman who had held her captive, and a fight ensued. She called Penance by a different name, Hollow, adding ambiguity if this was the same Penance from Generation X, but things got resolved. Penance moved in with Phil where they began uncomfortably dating. They continued until Phil went all evil Green Goblin-y and Penance teamed up with the Loners to stop him. She eventually enrolled in the Avengers Academy (where up until recently an unrelated teacher had also been going by the name Penance) but she hasn’t been seen since.
Must Read
Mute characters are notoriously difficult to recommend stories about. Penance, being a character that things happen to and not one that does things, makes this much more difficult. I am not going to recommend any of the St. Croix family drama because I don’t hate you, dear reader. Instead, I am going to recommend the first arc of Generation X. It is 3 fun issues with Scott Lobdell writing sad teens and Chris Bachalo doing some fantastic design work. It harkens back to a time when Penance was a deaf, Yugoslavian girl named Yvette and not a black hole of continuity.
Ranking
Penance is carried by that good Bachalo design and nothing else. She isn’t an interesting character, she just hasn’t been developed enough to be one. The nightmare that is her continuity drops her down to the bottle of the list. She isn’t as good as fellow Gen X’er Synch, and I’m way more pumped about seeing Adam-X the X-Treme again than seeing her. I like her better than the Bachalo designed Children of the Vault but I think Random is a character from that era who works better. That slots Penance in as the new number 104 in the Xavier Files.
Penance was requested by Patreon supporter James Layman. Thank you for your support! 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 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 36 is up and we talk about some freaky Friday stories. Make sure you subscribe to any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.
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Next week I’m not going to have an article up but we do get some Evan Sabah Nur the week after! See you then!
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.
