HEARTBREAK HOTEL

Membership:  Kate (leader/den mother), Link, Lucy, Poltergeist (Mickey Silke), three others shown but not named

Purpose:  To provide a home for society's misfit mutant outcasts

Affiliations:  Beast (Hank McCoy), Dazzler (Alison Blaire)

Enemies:  Gladiators, (Alexander Flynn (leader/founder), Horns, the "Howlers" ("Barker", "Bouncer", & Byter"), Ivich, Hugo Longride (leader/founder), Max Rocker, "Shockman", "Snaketongue", others)

Base of Operations:  26 Ocean Circle, California

First Appearance:  Beauty & the Beast I#1 (December 1984)

History:  The Heartbreak Hotel was a former beachside hotel later occupied by a group of mutants who were societal outcasts and who had no desire to become part of either a mutant hero or villain group.

(Beaty and the Beast I#1) - Kate unsuccessfully tried to sell Dazzler a flower on the streets of Los Angeles.  A week later Kate and six other mutants (including Link, Lucy, and Poltergeist?) found the drugged and out of control (powerwise, that is) Dazzler on the beach behind the Heartbreak Hotel and took her in to a room there.  Later that day Kate and Poltergeist unsuccessfully tried to hide Dazzler from the Beast when he came around looking for Alison.

(Beaty and the Beast I#2) - The next day Dazzler, Kate, Lucy, and Poltergeist had a walk along the beach while discussing the purpose of the Hotel, but they ended the conversation when it started to rain and Beast came out to talk to Dazzler.

(Beaty and the Beast I#3) - A week later Kate and Poltergeist advised a distraught and brooding Beast to follow his heart and try to rescue Dazzler from the Gladiators.  Later that night Link and Poltergeist decided to try and free Dazzler from the Gladiators themselves.

(Beaty and the Beast I#4) - After they helped rescue Beast and Dazzler from the Gladiators Link and Poltergeist decided to leave the Hotel and hit the road to either Texas or Wyoming to see -- and maybe become -- cowboys.

Comments:  Created by Ann Nocenti (writer), Don Perlin (Pencils), and Kim DeMulder (inks).

Poltergeist has his own entry on the Appendix.

If anyone out there in the viewing audience is familiar with the Hollywood/Los Angeles area, can you please e-mail me and tell me your best guess as to which city the Heartbreak Hotel would be located in?  I have never been out in that area of California before and have no clue where the boundary lines are drawn between the two cities.  The hotel was said to be a few hours' walk from one of the Hollywood studios, but beyond that. . . . . ?

The exact number of mutants staying at the Hotel is unknown.  While seven have been seen only four have been identified.  Presumably there were several more mutants there that were just in the background during this story.  While it is not mentioned anywhere in the story, I am assuming Kate owned the Hotel and paid the property taxes for it every year, and that the mutants who lived and/or stayed there had jobs and paid some sort of rent in order to live there.  Hopefully, since these guys seem to have been forgotten by the X-offices, they have survived unscathed all the various X-crossovers that have come down over the years and did not wind up in a 'Weapon X' -style concentration camp someplace...  or worse ...

Link:  I am not one hundred percent sure if the two Gladiator guards Link and Poltergeist ran into in#4 were simply rendered unconscious or outright killed by Link.  Whatever he did, it made enough of a mess to gross out Poltergeist.  If they were really dead, then Dazzler's "don't kill or you'll become like the people you're fighting" speech came a little too late to "save" him.  On the other hand, given Link's desire to never use his powers unless he absolutely positively had to, it is quite likely that he had used them in the past to kill (in self-defense?) before coming to the Hotel (he did seem to know what area of the head/brain to use his powers on to cause massive pain to his attackers) and that was the reason he was extremely reluctant to use them at all.

I am showing below the two looks Link has been know to employ, his 'work' look (the whiteface picture) and his 'special operative' look (the blackface look).  Personally I like the blackface look better.

Lucy:  While she was said to have gone to a school in Westchester when she was younger, it is clearly not supposed to be Xavier's school, since neither Lucy nor Beast recognized each other (Morrison's retcon involving the long-term presence of scores of other mutants at Xavier's came along almost twenty years after this story first saw print).  It is also unclear whether this Westchester is supposed to be the New York one, since there are several counties, towns, and boroughs in the USA with that name, and no other identifying information is given for her school's location.  I think Lucy may be the first 'low-powered' mutant seen in a Marvel comic (that I  know of, anyway).  It would be interesting to see if Lucy took Beast's advice and started using her color-changing powers as a performance artist in Los Angeles, or if she might have gotten a career in movies as a set builder or a special effects person, or something similar to that, with her powers.

Link's real name was revealed in the Civil War: Battle Damage Report.

Profile by Elf with a gun

Clarifications:

The Heartbreak Hotel has no know connection to:

• HEARTBREAKER 2099 -former exotic dancer Maggie Megaton@Ghost Rider 2099#15
• HEARTBREAK KID (Daniel Atherton Shepard) - mental powers, used self as martyr to draw hatred off of a town@Defenders#140
• or anyone or anything else with 'heart' in its name
• any other hotels

Kate has no known connection to

• to anyone else named Kate or Katherine.

Link has no known connection to

• LINK - of the Rejects, agent of Arcade, enemy of Northstar. @Northstar I#3
• LINK - identity used as leader of cult of hades @-XForce/Champions An1998
• LINK - of earth-Chronomancer @Bishop: Last X-Man vol. 2#2
• LINK, Mr. + Mrs. - mysterious caretakers of Darkmoor @Dark Angel I#8
• Or to anyone or anything else with a similar name.

Lucy has no known connection to

• LUCY in the SKY (Karolina Dean) ? Runaway @Runaways#1
• anyone else named Lucy

Kate

Name presumably short for Katherine. Founder and leader/den-mother to the mutants of Heartbreak Hotel.  She was a self-described old lady with leftover hippie dreams.  While she was a mutant, for unknown reasons she long ago decided to stop using her powers, and apparently could no longer access them in any meaningful way, if at all.  What these powers were remains unknown.  She also had a job selling flowers to passersby on the streets of Los Angeles.  She took in both the Dazzler and the Beast when they landed on her doorstep seeking a shelter to sort out their lives in.  Later she encouraged the Beast to follow his heart and try to rescue Dazzler from the Gladiators, but refused to go along with Poltergeist and Link when they later decided to rescue Dazzler themselves, saying that her 'super hero' days were long behind her.

-  Beaty and the Beast I#1 (#2-3

Link

Lorne Lincoln was a telekinetic who was the same age as Poltergeist.  His main job while staying at the Hotel was as a street mime (though he was not always paid by his audience when he passed the hat to them). and to help keep Poltergeist's powers from wrecking too much havoc at the Hotel.  He tried to cheer up Dazzler with his jokes and stories, but ultimately failed.  He later teamed with Poltergeist when he decided to try and rescue Dazzler from the Gladiators himself.  After disabling (killing?) the two Gladiators who confronted them when they first entered the Underground Theater they quickly encountered the other Gladiators trying to kill Dazzler and Beast.  When Flynn took Poltergeist hostage and threatened to kill him Link used his powers to force Flynn to release Poltergeist.  Link then tried to choke Flynn to death, but was talked out of it by Dazzler.  Later that night after Beast and Dazzler returned to the Hotel Link and Poltergeist decided to leave the Hotel and see what else life had to offer them.  When last seen they were thinking about going out to either Texas or Wyoming and becoming cowboys for a while....

(Civil War: Battle Damage Report) - Tony Stark considered Link as a potential Initiative recruit.

-  Beaty and the Beast I#2 (#3-4 (he may have been one of the unnamed members in#1, but this is unconfirmed), Civil War: Battle Damage Report

Lucy

One of the mutants that Kate had taken in.  She had the power to change the color of an object, as shown in these three panels.  When the Beast saw her power, he suggested that she could become a "performance painter" or something along those lines.

-  Beaty and the Beast I#2 (she may have been one of the unnamed members in#1, but this is unconfirmed)

Unnamed members

This is one of the two group shots of the other Heartbreak mutants at the hotel.  Neither one showed many details of who, besides Kate, went out to rescue Dazzler.  A couple seemed to be adult women, one seemed to be a stocky male, and two who looked small enough to be older children.  Who they really were, and whether this was the full membership of the Hotel or just who happened to be awake that night was not revealed.  While I have said that Lucy, Link, and Poltergeist are in this particular group, it is hard to tell for sure based on these panels alone.

- Beaty and the Beast I#1

images:  page count does not includes ads

Beauty & the  Beast I#1, p22, panel 1 (Heartbreak Hotel)
Beauty & the Beast I#3, p13, panel 7 (Kate)
Beauty & the Beast I#2, p6, panel 2 (Link whiteface)
Beauty & the Beast I#4, p17, panel 1 (Link blackface)
Beauty & the Beast I#2, p 5, panels 3-5 (Lucy)
Beauty & the Beast I#1, p 19, panel 4 (unnamed members)

Appearances:
Beauty & the Beast#1-4 (December, 1984 - June, 1985) - Ann Nocenti (writer), Don Perlin (pencils), Kim DeMulder (inks), Michael Higgins (editor)
Civil War: Battle Damage Report (2007)