Blindfold (comics)

Blindfold (Ruth Aldine) is a fictional character, a mutant appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is usually depicted as a member of the student body of the Xavier Institute in X-Men-related comic books. She first appeared in ''Astonishing X-Men'', vol. 3 #7 and was created by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday.

Fictional character biography

Ruth Aldine is a student at the Xavier Institute. Since childhood, she had worn a blindfold to cover up her obvious mutation; this inspired her codename, Blindfold. She was first mentioned by Hisako Ichiki and Wing before their confrontation with Ord. Hisako and Wing both said she had a big mouth because she had read Wing's mind and informed Hisako of his dreams of one day becoming an X-Man. Wing was upset, but Hisako told him not to worry, as she wanted to be an X-Man too, and that Blindfold was just lonely.

Torn

When Emma Frost was struggling with survivor's guilt, Blindfold was found by Hisako "crying" in a restroom. While Hisako comforts her, Blindfold tries to convince Hisako that they are going to lose another X-Man. Wolverine, believing he is a defenseless child due to the manipulations of Cassandra Nova, barged into the restroom asking for help as a feral Beast followed him in. Hisako leaves Blindfold and hides with Wolverine, unfortunately Beast targets Blindfold and goes to attack her. Hisako powers up and scares the feral X-Man away but passes out from exhaustion. Blindfold then takes her to the infirmary because she believes someone was awake only to find the unconscious bodies of Colossus and Cyclops. Eventually Shadowcat makes her way back to the Institute and asks the girls to tell her everything they know. When Kitty leaves to find out who exactly is attacking, Cyclops manages to contact Blindfold and instruct her to give Beast a special box containing a ball of string. He also asks her to keep his mind safe from any sort of psychic attacks as he helps Emma. During the middle of the battle, Ord and the Danger Room entity interrupt and a battle begins between the X-Men, Hisako, Ord and Danger. Suddenly S.W.O.R.D. beamed the team, Danger, Ord, and Hisako into a spaceship headed for the Breakworld. Blindfold was last seen watching them along with a few other students and again commented that not all of them will come back, referring to Shadowcat who would be lost in space for a long time.

Quest for Magik

Blindfold, during an evening of storytelling, relayed the history of the deceased New Mutant Illyana Rasputin to her classmates. Her story emotionally bothered some of them as Blindfold began including aspects that both recently happened and were about to happen. She explained that the demon lord Belasco reclaimed the realm of Limbo by defeating its previous mistress, Amanda Sefton. Belasco cast her out of Limbo and began searching for a way to bring back Illyana Rasputin from the dead. After saying this, Blindfold and the other students were themselves attacked by demons from Limbo sent by Belasco. She continued to assist the students with advice throughout their time in Limbo, telling certain students when and how to react to their situations, especially concerning Pixie, who she declared "must not fall". She survived the final battle and was returned to the mansion with the rest of the students.

Blinded by the Light

Cannonball is given knowledge of the plans of the Marauders and implies that Blindfold is second on a targets list for elimination by them and the Acolytes, orchestrated by Mister Sinister. Blindfold speaks to the New X-Men saying that whatever is supposed to happen to her can be prevented by Elixir. She grabs his hands, touching the black part of his skin that represents death and the gold part that represents life at the same time. Blindfold then enters a form of stasis that makes her appear to be dead, but later awakens. She gives further cryptic predictions about the X-Men's challenging situation, saying that soon Hellion, Pixie, Nightcrawler, and someone else she cannot recall will be hurt.

Messiah Complex

Her predictions were soon proven correct when Lady Deathstrike maims Hellion, Scalphunter seriously injures Nightcrawler and Pixie injures herself by blindly teleporting the team from the Reavers. The other person Blindfold mentions was apparently Forge, who was injured by Bishop; or perhaps Professor X.

Young X-Men

Blindfold has a nightmare in which one of her future teammates, the Young X-Men, is killed by Donald Pierce. She tells Rockslide her premonition of the soon-to-be-formed team and mentions the death of one of their future teammates. Rockslide appears more interested in the team uniforms she saw. As predicted, Cyclops arrives at the cafe and offers Rockslide a place on the team, but he also reveals that he did not wish to recruit Ruth. Rockslide refuses to join the team unless she is allowed to as well, noting that Ruth's vision included her on the squad as well. Cyclops concedes, and Ruth takes her place on the squad.

Cyclops orders Ruth and Ink to bring in Danielle Moonstar, who is apparently a member of a new Brotherhood of Mutants. However Ink betrays Ruth and delivers both girls to Donald Pierce, who is revealed to be impersonating Cyclops. Eventually they are freed. Ruth's prediction comes true when Wolf Cub is killed. Ruth relocates to San Francisco with the rest of the Young X-Men, but she leaves the team. Cyclops states that Ruth will only be called in as needed.

When Cipher reveals her presence to the Young X-Men, Cyclops explains that she had been there in secret under his orders helping the Young X-Men and much earlier, including during Beast's attack on Blindfold during ''Astonishing X-Men''. Blindfold's seemingly one-sided conversation during that time (and others) is revealed to have actually been a conversation between herself and Cipher, who was able to mask her part of the conversation using her stealth powers. Blindfold is the only other besides Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Graymalkin who were aware of Cipher's existence prior to the events of ''Young X-Men''. The two develop a friendship during this time.

Necrosha

Blindfold is shown battling the resurrected Tower without the aid of any other X-Men.

Blindfold is contacted by the newly resurrected Destiny by accident when she was trying to reach her foster daughter Rogue. Destiny saves her life from being crushed by falling rubble and gives her some information to help combat Selene's forces. After Destiny breaks contact with her, she believes she made a grave mistake. This mistake is revealed to be that Ruth is possessed by Proteus.

Blindfold is eventually freed thanks to Magneto who uses his powers to disrupt Proteus' energy matrix. During a conversation with Destiny, it is revealed that she and Destiny are distant relatives and that Ruth's mother had sacrificed herself to save Ruth from her brother, for what reason has yet to be revealed.

Age of X

Blindfold later confides in Rogue that she had visions of an entity, a mysterious force that wanted to change everything, and once it started it would not stop until everything had been destroyed. However, she cannot identify what it is because it keeps hiding around the periphery of her visions. Rogue, along with Madison Jeffries, eventually find a squid-like spider-monster that had escaped from Emplate's dimension, which they think to be the entity Blindfold sensed. However, after Rogue defeats the creature, Blindfold reveals that the threat is still out there.

The world around Blindfold changed dramatically and Blindfold is next seen in the jail of Fortress X during the " Age of X" storyline. She is one of the mutants considered too dangerous to roam free and is under Danger's supervision. She seems to be the Earth-616 version of the character and the only person seen so far with any memory of the mainstream reality.

Destiny of X

While back in The Altar she and Legion were approached by a mysterious being called Mother Righteous, she used her powers on Ruth and showed them many possible future's as well as something happening in the present involving a being that resembled Loki. She then offered David a deal for more power in exchange for his worship. He talked it through with Ruth but after she told him she'd love him either way. She demonstrated her new powers when she helped Nightcrawler and Weaponless Zsen look for a fugitive deity in the Astral Plane and when she forced Switch out of David's mind before he destroyed the House of L.

Characteristics

Powers and abilities

Blindfold was born without eyes, a condition known as anophthalmia. Her blindness is part of her mutation in the sense that she has no eyes, but rather has skin where eyes would normally be. However, in exchange, she is psionic, though the full extent of her abilities is unknown. She has been shown using telepathy and can sometimes psychically sense events when other telepaths apparently did not, such as Belasco pulling everyone inside the mansion into Limbo. She is able to use telepathy has been said to be a clairvoyant, retrocognitive, and precognitive mutant, meaning that she is able to see distant, past, and future places or events. With her level of power, she was immune — albeit to a limited degree — to the reality warp caused by Legion's 'Moira' personality that created the ' Age of X', allowing her to be aware that something was wrong with the world. This goes into full reality anchoring when Legion undid his own birth erasing himself from existence, Ruth was the only individual to remember David even lived after time and space had reset itself when her missing abilities were restored.

Blindfold's precognitive abilities are neutralized while in the presence of Destiny, another precognitive (and vice versa). Destiny explains that this is because two precogs in close presence to one another "are like two magnets pressed together positive pole to positive pole" and will negatively affect one another's precognitive abilities and powers.

Ruth also had a slew of other psychic abilities tied to her mutant powers which she had been developing since her early childhood. Possibly boasting an advanced intellect since she had developed a cognitive capacity for vocalization abilities at an early newborn age. Displaying telekinesis and the ability to read and analyze all possible futures and probabilistic outcomes, but those powers were taken from her by her abusive brother's own ghostly projection which resulted in her impaired mind state. Over time however she has shown remarkable leaps in bounds with her initial ability, similar to Nate Grey, Blindfold can materialize Astral Plane Energy to give her own astral projection a tangible form. With some coaxing from David Haller would showcase herself an adequate match for other powerful telepaths such as the Stepford Cuckoos, and once at the fullest manifest of her powers were returned to her Ruth not only regained her mental stability but also the majority of her missing power. Being able to materialize energy from the Astral Plane as a form of psionic armor enabling her to battle the psionic entity that sprang forth from Legions damaged psyche.

Mannerisms

Blindfold has a unique speech pattern. It includes the odd insertion into her sentences of words of politeness, including "''please''," "''thank you''," "''you're welcome''," and "''pardon''." She's also been known to oddly insert the words "''yes''" and "''no''" into her sentences. The reason she has this pattern is explained in ''X-Men Legacy'' when Legion tries to wake her up from her coma: her brother, Luca, was a mutant hater and tried to kill her when she was little, but in a fit of rage, he killed their mother. Years later, Blindfold attended his execution and, just after he died, his astral projection attacked her and stole half of her powers, leaving her "broken". When telepathically projecting herself into Legion's mind in the same issue, Blindfold did not demonstrate this speech pattern, instead speaking in a normal manner and acting with more confidence than is usually the case.

Given that she is both a telepath and a precognitive, she often answers questions before they are asked and responds to comments before they are spoken aloud. As a result, she tends to turn what would ordinarily be a two-way conversation into a monologue. While she does not always do this, it may be assumed that she is allowing the other person or persons to say what she already knows they will say out of politeness' sake.

Some of her "one-sided" conversations in ''Astonishing X-Men'' and ''Young X-Men'' were explained as having been with her friend Cipher, who remained concealed from all others around them by using her complete stealth mutant powers. After the end of Simon Spurrier's run on ''X-Men Legacy'' Ruth had regained her centre of focus now showcasing complete sentences and no more added adjectives between words. Now showcasing her whole and healed persona, Ruth Aldine states to a befuddled Pixie that she's fine and proudly stating "I Rule Me".

Reception

Accolades

* In 2014, ''BuzzFeed'' ranked Blindfold 79th in their "95 X-Men Members Ranked From Worst To Best" list.
* In 2016, ''CBR.com'' ranked Blindfold 9th in their "X-Men's Most Mentally Mighty Mutants" list.
* In 2020, ''Scary Mommy'' included Blindfold in their "Looking For A Role Model? These 195+ Marvel Female Characters Are Truly Heroic" list.

References

Bibliography

*''Astonishing X-Men'', vol. 3 #4, 7–8, 15–18
*''New X-Men'', vol. 2 #23
*''New X-Men'', vol. 2 #37–40

{{Joss Whedon

Astral projection in popular culture
Comics characters introduced in 2005
Characters created by Joss Whedon
Fictional blind characters
Fictional characters from North Carolina
Fictional characters with precognition
Fictional characters with retrocognition
Marvel Comics psychics
Marvel Comics telekinetics
Marvel Comics telepaths
Marvel Comics mutants
Marvel Comics female superheroes