JOSETTE
Real Name: Josette (last name unrevealed)
Identity/Class: Human (French) mutant
Occupation: Unrevealed
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Angel (Warren Worthington III),
Iceman (Bobby Drake), Northstar (Jean-Paul Beaubier), Professor X (Charles
Xavier), unidentified Xavier Institute staff and students
Enemies: None
Known Relatives: Robert (husband, see comments)
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
formerly Xavier Institute, Salem Center, New York;
formerly Genosha;
formerly France
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men I#415 (January, 2003)
Powers/Abilities: Josette is an empath, able to sense other people's emotions. She might also have been able to manipulate those emotions, allowing her to befriend, convince or seduce those she met. She often tried to remedy whatever sadness or pain she felt from those around her and regularly offered herself to people if she felt physical interaction might help to lighten their load. Flirty to the point of lewd, her behavior caused her husband Robert to become jealous and agressive. A native of France, she still had trouble with English, although she often used her physicality to bring her point across.
Height: 5'6" (by approximation)
Weight: 130 lbs (by approximation)
Eyes: Green
Hair: White
History:
(Uncanny X-Men I#415 (fb) - BTS) - The French native Josette met and fell in love with Robert, a fellow mutant. After their marriage, they moved to Genosha to build a life together. However, Josie's flirtatious nature and powers caused her to regularly seduce men, which was something the insanely jealous Robert couldn't handle. He even killed some of her lovers in fits of rage. They nevertheless stayed together.
When Cassandra Nova's Sentinels decimated the island, the
couple happened to be in France visiting relatives. With their home
destroyed and nowhere left to go, they happened to meet Charles Xavier (see comments) who invited them to
accompany him back to America so they could stay at the Insitute. Josette
and her husband accepted his offer and took up temporary residence at
the Institute. However, Josette's flirty behavior continued.
(Uncanny X-Men I#415) - Josette spotted Angel and Iceman having a conversation on the estate grounds and decided to introduce herself. She revealed to Angel that she sensed he'd suffered a recent loss (his lover Psylocke, who was believed to have died at the hand of Vargas). She offered to help him forget the pain by having sex with her, claiming it was okay and already undoing her bra. Shocked and startled, Angel rebuffed her avances and quickly took off, leaving Josette to wonder why he was so frightened, after all it was only passion. She later ran into Iceman and Northstar who were heading to the commissary for dinner. Josette quickly put the moves on Iceman, much to the annoyance of Northstar (who had a secret crush on the X-Man himself at the time). Josette managed to convince Bobby to accompany her instead and pretty soon they were making out in the moonlight. Their affair was interrupted by the arrival of Josette's husband Robert who attacked Iceman and was ready to murder him for having touched his wife. As Robert was using his putty-like form to choke Bobby, he lamented to Josette that he had to keep killing these men if she kept seducing them. Josette begged him to stop, because Iceman was innocent but Robert rationalized his actions by calling it a murder of passion (crime passionnel). However, Northstar intervened and managed to free Iceman from Robert's clutches as Josette continued to plead with her husband to stop. Now completely unreasonable, Robert boasted he was ready to take on all the X-Men and easily absorbed Northstar's punch to the face at superspeed. In the end, Robert was temporarily stunned when Northstar ran through him, cutting the mutant in half while Josette cried for her husband, figuring he was dead.
(Uncanny X-Men I#415 - BTS) - Josette was presumably present when Robert's inert form was poured into a containment chamber in the Xavier Institute basement. Her final fate remains unrevealed.
Comments: Created by Chuck Austen (writer), Sean Phillips (pencils & inks).
Ah, Josette... From the early days of Chuck Austen's largely reviled X-Men run. To be fair, I didn't think it was *that* bad at the time, the best X-Men stories have soap opera style elements to them and Austen included plenty of that. Also, any storyline where Northstar gets to be a snarky queen is a win in my book. While seemingly innocent, if not a little slutty, one could consider Josette also used her empathic abilities to keep her husband from leaving, forcing him to endure her shameless sleeping around until he was driven insane and started killing her lovers.
Josette seems to be loosely based on the French cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew, who was equally hungry for love. And, the difference between a skunk and a similarly striped skank is, well, one little letter.
As for her husband's name, she calls him Rober', but given
her thick French accent we can safely assume his actual name is Robert.
In a surprising (but unconfirmed) tip of the hat to continuity,
it actually makes sense Xavier encountered Josette and Robert in France.
He'd recently been there, to attend the funeral of Darkstar (Laynia Petrovna)
in New X-Men I#130.
Profile by Norvo
CLARIFICATIONS:
Josette has no known connections to
images: (without ads)
Uncanny X-Men I#415, p1, pan2 (main image)
Uncanny X-Men I#415, p6, pan4 (head shot)
Uncanny X-Men I#415, p13, pan4 (new or used?)
Appearances:
Uncanny X-Men I#415 (January, 2003) - Chuck Austen (writer), Sean
Phillips (artist), Mike Marts (editor)
Last updated: 05/18/14
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
Non-Marvel
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