Okay, so her can looks good in black leather- THAT DOESN'T EXCUSE TEN YEARS OF OVER-USING HER, CLAREMONT!!
SAGE (Tessa)
Created By: Chris Claremont & John Byrne
First Appearance: The X-Men #132 (April 1980)
Role: Chris Claremont's Ultimate Pet Character
Group Affiliations: The X-Men, Hellfire Club, Excalibur, The Exiles, S.W.O.R.D.
PL 8 (202)
STRENGTH 2
STAMINA 4
AGILITY 4
FIGHTING 11
DEXTERITY 6
INTELLIGENCE 5
AWARENESS 3
PRESENCE 2
Skills:
Acrobatics 4 (+8)
Athletics 4 (+6)
Deception 8 (+10)
Expertise (Business) 4 (+9)
Expertise (Computers) 12 (+17)
Expertise (Current Events) 5 (+10)
Expertise (Science) 4 (+9)
Expertise (Criminal) 4 (+9)
Insight 5 (+8)
Intimidation 2 (+4)
Investigation 5 (+8)
Perception 4 (+7)
Stealth 4 (+8)
Technology 5 (+10)
Treatment 2 (+7)
Vehicles 2 (+8)
Advantages:
All-Out Attack, Assessment, Defensive Roll, Equipment 3 (Cyber-Glasses: Allow Computer Access, Pistol +5, Knives), Precise Attack (Ranged/Concealment), Ranged Attack 4, Set-Up, Teamwork
Powers:
"Mutant Powers: Super-Mind"
"Computer-Like Brain"
Quickness 10 (Flaws: Limited to Mental Activities) [5]
Advantages 3: Beginner's Luck, Eidetic Memory, Jack-of-All-Trades [3]
Features 1: Can Engage in Multiple Mental Actions Simultaneously [1]
"Mind Shield" Enhanced Will Save 4 (Flaws: Limited to vs. Mental Attacks) [2]
"Minor Telepath"
"Psionic Blast" Blast 7 (Extras: Perception Range, Will Save) (28) -- [30]
-
AE: Communication (Mental) 2 (8)
- AE: Illusion (Vision & Hearing) 7 (Flaws: Phantasm) (14)
"Scanning & Control Over Mutant Powers"
Senses 5 (Detect X-Gene- Acute, Analytical, Ranged) [5]
Variable 4 (Others' Powers) (Extras: Affects Others Only +0) (Flaws: Limited to Mutant Powers of Those She's Scanned, Side-Effect: May Go Haywire) [20]
Offense:
Unarmed +11 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Knives +11 (+3 Damage, DC 18)
Pistol +10 (+5 Ranged Damage, DC 20)
Initiative +4
Defenses:
Dodge +11 (DC 21), Parry +11 (DC 21), Toughness +4 (+5 D.Roll), Fortitude +5, Will +7 (+11 vs. Mental Attacks)
Complications:
Secret- Sage is often a spy or a mole, and likes to keep herself separate from others.
Involuntary Transformation (Diana Fox)- Sage's alternate I.D. has occasionally taken her over completely- turning her pretty-well evil.
Total: Abilities: 74 / Skills: 74--37 / Advantages: 13 / Powers: 66 / Defenses: 12 (202)
-You know what would be awesome? If Sage NEVER FREAKING EXISTED!! UP YOURS, YOU SAD EXCUSE FOR A CHARACTERRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!
-Actually, you know what? I've lowered my Sage Hate over the past few years. It turns out the best way to make up for a crappy, over-pushed character is to keep her out of comics for several years. But MAN did I hate her in the era between 2000 & 2010. TECHNICALLY, a failed, dated character like Maggott or a rip-off like Marrow is worse than she is; you could also theorize that one of the nobody Mutant Liberation Front or Acolytes members are worse characters. The Dark Riders? Sure, Barrage The Guy With No Hands on that team probably sucks more than Sage. But the difference all those characters have from her? NOBODY WAS PUSHING THEM. Yet once Chris Claremont returned to the X-Books, he SHOVED this loser character down our throats, taking her from a "more than she seems" Hellfire Club assistant character (there's brief mentions in the early years) into a huge part of the X-Men, giving her a monster "Secret Past", made her a spy against the Hellfire Club, and a super-competent, ultra-savvy character that's ruled virtually every X-Book the guy has touched since the year 2000. I mean, at first I was like "That chick who worked for Sebastian Shaw? Uh... okay?" But then I saw her basically act like a "smarter than you" bad-ass who was always right. Then once
X-Treme X-Men was cancelled, she followed Claremont to
Excalibur,
Exiles and more!
Tessa Debuts:
-Sage debuted as Tessa, Sebastian Shaw's lingerie-clad "Girl Friday" in the Hellfire Club- here, she was given almost zero characterization, but tiny bits here and there show her as quite intelligent, with an expertise in observation and computers. When Karma possesses her in order to find information about her missing siblings, she points out "this woman is FAR more than she seems!", which is Claremont clearly telling the READERS that there's a lot to Tessa. However, Claremont never really dwelled on this too much, and moved the story too quickly to ever pay off on it, and so Tessa pretty much vanished from sight once the Hellfire Club concept was done away with in the early 1990s (with Shaw dead & Emma Frost rendered comatose).
Sage Debuts:
-YEARS later, when Claremont had left the X-Books and then returned to them once they'd gotten so bad they were like "Why not?", Tessa returned, this time being called "Sage", and having a whole different look. Now, she was Retconned as having been one of Charles Xavier's FIRST students- a woman who helped him when he was crippled by the villain Lucifer (his Silver Age nemesis who was the reason Charles was wheelchair-bound). Inexplicably, Xavier chooses not to put her on the original X-Men, but as a mole in the HELLFIRE CLUB, which of course he never bothers to tell his other students about.
-Eventually we learn all of this in
X-Treme X-Men, a Claremont Vanity Project that let him play with his own favorite toys for a while, while the "important" X-Books were left to others (Claremont's return to the X-Books was considered a big disappointment by this time, but they still wanted him around). Here, she suddenly starts "Jump-Starting" Mutants' powers, and is the reason why Beast was put into his hard-to-draw leonine form for a while. Sage then joins the
New Excalibur book when Claremont takes over THAT. And then, when Claremont takes over the
Exiles book, Sage joins THAT team as well! Not an Alternate Universe version of Sage, which was the general rule of that book (aside from when Beak joined), but THIS EXACT SAGE. So yes, Claremont had, in fact, brought this Special Pet Character to ALL THREE of his post-2000 books. She ended up rendered comatose and merged with the Exiles' universe-hopping "Crystal Palace" base, but has turned up as a background character here and there since, so she's still around. But with Claremont not writing anything, she pretty much immediately vanished from comics.
The Problem With Sage:
-I must emphasize at this point how annoying this was for a lot of fans- to the point where complaints showed up on Wikipedia (Back when you could do "some felt that _______"-type comments criticizing certain creators) and TV Tropes. Because the thing was... Sage was
never interesting. There was never a point when any fan I've ever seen went "Hey, y'know, I really like this SAGE character" She was just this amorphous "blah" nothing that kind of just traipsed around doing uninteresting "spy stuff" and doing things almost any other character could do just as well. So the fact that precious "character slots" went to this boring piece of nothing REALLY started to irk some people, especially once it became clear that Claremont LOVED her and she was going to follow him to every book he worked on. Various writers have done this- Peter David & Linda Danvers/Supergirl and Steve Englehart/Mantis are the most-obvious ones to me. But it is always
so weird and annoying, because it seems like no FANS ever care about these characters the same way (even Supergirl's book wasn't big enough to save her). There's just something about when an aging male creator comes up with... I dunno, an "ideal girlfriend"? Is that what these characters are? They don't have as many of the same traits (with David/Danvers, I'd argue "Father/Daughter"), but it's generally Male Creator/Female Creation... it's off-putting.
-What's worst is that nobody ELSE likes her. Much like Wesley Crusher in
Star Trek: The Next Generation (who was created by Gene Roddenberry as a self-insert, super-competent wunderkind who proved everyone else wrong while smirking), this character is really disliked (or at best, ignored) by a chunk of the fandom, yet the creator loves her SO MUCH that he's willing to bring her to every single book he touches (Steve Englehart is notorious for this with Mantis- a character he brought to nearly every book he worked on).
X-Treme X-Men, Excalibur and finally
Exiles; with each cancelled book, there she is in another one, because NO OTHER WRITER WANTS HER. THIS is what makes her stand out over the Dark Rider who can't wipe his own butt, or the Acolyte who can phase through stuff. THEY don't get cases of "In This Issue: BARRAGE!" or "Cover Shot: An angry-looking FOREARM!", but Sage was everywhere in Claremont's stuff for
years- if you read a Claremont X-book, there she was. But like I said... the sheer force of my hatred (in a prior build, I suggested that my first action as a Marvel Editor would be to have her fail at something, then explode) has been dulled with time, and with Claremont's absence from the world of mainstream comics. No Claremont = No Sage, and thus I don't feel the need to hate on her so much.
-And I mean, she was a secret mole in the Hellfire Club... so what? She doesn't really interact with others on a meaningful level, or have an interesting backstory. It's like there's really nothing TO her, which makes the push all the more mystifying. The whole "oh, she developed a secret personality after working undercover- SO COOL!" thing is like a baby-version of
Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary, and not much for characterization, anyway.
Sage's Stats:
-Hm, an expensive character, but limited in PL, since she's basically a martial artist outside of her Boost powers. Using them, though, she can power-up any teammate for a long period of time (Continuous is not allowed for the power), but needs to 'read' them first, needs a Full Round, and it only works on Mutants. Oh, and sometimes their powers go out of control (sort of a Side-Effect Flaw with an Unreliable on THAT Flaw). She can sense & detect mutant powers at range down to the specifics, she has a mental shield, great computer skills, she can do multiple things at once, and is overall a Skillmonkey personified, which makes up for her lower PL than her teammates.