Supreme Confessions

• Writer - Joe Casey
• Penciler - Cully Hammer
• Penciler - Ashley Wood
• Penciler - Eddie Campbell
• Penciler - Javier Pulido
• Penciler - Sean Phillips
• Penciler - Matt Smith
• Colorist - Hi-Fi Design
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Ass't Editor - Pete Franco
• Editor - Mark Powers
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  The COH attacks the Center for Disease Control's lab in Atlanta for being pro-mutant. The X-Men counter-attack, and the COH retreat by teleporting, but Bobby puts one on ice.

  The Cathedral is the COH HQ, in Montana, (and is drawn muddily). The Pontiff pontificates, proclaiming war on mutants and saying he's seen the edge of the universe.

  Warren analyzes the COH's hi-tech robe at Worthington Industries in Manhattan. Stacy picks up the teleportation net, which activates, and everyone scrambles to find her.

  Logan takes the captured COH member to a cabin on James Bay for a proper interrogation. A dead stag and a slap, and the guy tells all: centuries ago a frontiersman and an Indian girl had a child, born under an eclipse. Dad did magic and Mom did rituals, and they summoned a charming, intelligent beast from another world who bedded Mom and killed Dad. The son witnessed it and used his father's magic books to kill the beast and Mom.

  Stacy, in the Cathedral, is immediately captured.

  The Pontiff grew up, had his picture painted by a blind artist, and met social scientists and occultists who built a lab to explore the subconscious and the cosmos. He volunteered as the first test subject and was instantaneously stretched across the universe and embued with dark energy. His body was ruined, so he survived in an isolation tank, then reemerged and established a church, with the scientists as worshippers.

  The Pontiff says Stacy is unnatural and God is in the human race. He has her tortured for info on the X-Men. She says she was a popular teenager till puberty, when her skin turned scaly. Then her friends threw things at her (maybe because she was a Milli Vanilli fan?), and her mom's boyfriend grabbed her and got violently ill from her pheromone power. Mom threw her out, and she lived on the streets. Cops beat her, but Xavier stopped them and took her to the mansion, training her as one of the original X-Men (instead of Jean), where she hooked up with Scott. Xavier sent her undercover to Nevada, till the COH attacked.

  The Pontiff doesn't buy these lies and tortures her. She fakes masturbation in her cell and overpowers a guard who came to watch, while the X-Men track her using Cerebra and attack the Cathedral. Jon frees Stacy, Bobby lets loose with ice, and Kurt confronts the Pontiff and gets zapped. The Pontiff tells him to look into his abyss, while Stacy gives another guard an orgasm or a fit or something (cf. X-Men II:118), and the Pontiff calls evacuation. The X-Men find Kurt near death, so Stacy gives him an andrenalyne rush; he wakes with partial amnesia.

  The X-Men return to the mansion and give Stacy a tour. Kurt thinks something was erased from his mind; Logan: "You ain't an X-Man if you ain't dealin' with a memory lapse or two…"