U-GO GIRL: Page 2 of 2

Publication Date: 23rd Aug 2021
Written By: WorldWideWade.
Image Work: Douglas Mangum.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 2

Fairly quickly after this incident, Guy and Edie entered into a romantic relationship. She actually seemed fairly happy for once and was trying to break into acting roles once again. She created a pilot for a trashy television show and booked a guest-hosting gig for the Larry King Show. There was some drama on the team about who should fill out the rest of the roster, with the two leading candidates being the antagonistic Spike and the mischievous, time-stopping Lacuna. Edie decided to interview the Spike and her team on the Larry King Show, but things got chaotic super quickly and the show ended with the time stopping Lacuna undressing the team on air. Guy suggested that maybe Edie was jealous of Lacuna for being younger and more in control of her powers, which was not taken very well by Edie. Ultimately, Lacuna didn’t end up on X-Force because she instead became the lead of a show that replaced Edie’s pilot. [X-Force (1st series) #121-122]

After several incidents of Edie’s erratic teleporting putting the team into dangerous situations, it was suggested by the antagonistic Spike that they replace her. While more sensitive about it, as team leader, Orphan was forced to give Edie the ultimatum of fixing her powers within a week or she would be out. Later that night, Edie came to Guy’s room and reasoned that her problems stemmed from the emotional ambiguity of what was going on between the two of them. Guy suggested that maybe they should just “do it” and get it out of the way.

Determined to work out what was causing Edie’s power problems, the couple began a physical road trip back to Edie’s childhood home. They stopped at a small motel for the night where Edie conceded that taking the time to travel for once felt pretty good and then proceeded to tell Guy about her childhood. Edie admitted that her backstory of being a disaffected alienated teenager was cliché and that she was very nervous about seeing her family tomorrow. Nevertheless, Guy pushed Edie to see this through, as he felt it was what she needed.

When they reached the Ozarks, Edie was able to talk with her mother alone and Edie was determined against her mother’s advice that Katie should know that Edie was her real mother. Ultimately, when Katie came home, Edie decided to still pretend to be her big sister, probably because she was afraid of what her possible future death would do to her daughter. However, this did not stop her from taking Katie and Guy on a teleportation-filled world tour to spend some quality time with the daughter she had abandoned. After having so much fun, Katie asked if Edie would die like her teammates. Fooling only Katie, Edie promised that she was indestructible.

On the drive back, Guy noted that Edie’s teleportation was flawless, which he presumed was due to her facing up to her past. Edie burst his bubble and explained that she was actually on a new medical concoction that helped her concentration. However, Edie did teleport them back to the motel where they shared a very romantic evening together that involved teleporting to the moon for extra privacy. [X-Force (1st series) #124]

X-Force’s next mission went poorly and their public perception took a hit because some civilians had been killed. Spike suggested to Edie and Guy that maybe they should change the team’s name. It was soon thereafter that the team went to pick up their new recruit: Dead Girl. When the three arrived in a graveyard, Dead Girl’s home, a spooky incident occurred in which a massive figure made up of dirt, worms and dead bodies pointed vaguely in their direction. All three of the senior members interpreted it as a sign that they were the ones being targeted by death itself. It was Edie that suggested that maybe it was pointing at all three of them.

Soon thereafter, Spike Freeman introduced X-Force to C.I.A. Agent Wright, who would explain their next mission. He was very rude to them and Edie decided to teach the man a lesson for threatening her boyfriend. Using her effective move of teleporting her enemy miles into the air, she quickly learned from the terrified falling man that he had actually prevented Guy from taking major PR backlash from the angry pharmaceutical companies that wanted to know where he had hid Paco Perez. X-Force was on the hook if they didn’t want their leader publicly taken down. When the full mission was explained to be that X-Force would travel to a space station to be captured by “aliens” (actually the C.I.A.’s attempt to artificially create mutants from death row inmates), Edie sided with Guy when the team disagreed on taking the mission. She even turned down the chance to replace Guy as leader for the mission, though she slyly told Guy that she didn’t want her first mission as leader to be the one they failed on purpose. [X-Force (1st series) #125]

As the team boarded a space shuttle for the mission, Edie asked Dead Girl if she could use her powers to contact the deceased Zeitgeist, but Dead Girl said her powers weren’t like texting a buddy. When the team arrived on the station, they did not realize that the civilians they were sent to save were actually the inmates using their shapeshifting powers to fool them. Edie and Guy split off and argued over Edie still wanting to talk to Zeitgeist until Guy suddenly realized that they had been duped. The two of them found and fought a few of the imposters but not before Edie was knocked unconscious. The team regrouped in the space shuttle and Edie tried to convince Guy that they should just go home and face the consequences of hiding Paco. However, Guy’s desire to be liked by the public made him push forward with the mission. After the team managed to find and neutralize all of the remaining mutants, the C.I.A. showed up on a second shuttle to “save the day.” However, their real mission was to eliminate all witnesses, including X-Force. Edie barely managed to save herself, Guy, Tike and cameraman Doop by teleporting them into a small passing satellite rocketing away from the station.

Agent Wright appeared on a screen to the doomed passengers and described their fate as being in a metal coffin in space for all eternity. This was all to avenge his dead daughter, who would have been cured of her deadly disease if Paco had been handed over as intended. However, there happened to be a mini escape shuttle that could save at least two of them plus the small Doop. Tike pulled out a die and suggested they leave it to luck who would stay behind. [X-Force (1st series) #126-127]

As the three of them rolled, Edie and Guy both managed to roll higher than Tike. They boarded the shuttle and managed to make it back to the space station to find their teammates had wiped out the C.I.A. agents. They also learned that Tike had rigged his roll to lose on purpose. Fortunately, they figured out how to reverse the satellite and save him from death. This happy reunion was short-lived, as it turned out that their teammate the Spike had been replaced by one of the shapeshifters. They managed to kill the imposter but not before he threw out a spike that impaled Edie. A desperate Guy told Edie she would be alright, but she told him that the reaper had been pointing at her after all. She reassured Guy that he would continue to be a great leader after she was gone and then asked to be buried among the stars. As she said her final goodbye to Guy, she whispered in his ear the perfect name to replace X-Force. Just after this, she was wrapped in cloth and given a space burial while her teammates mourned their friend.

U-Go Girl left a lasting impact on her teammates and the fans as no other member of X-Force had before. U-Go Girl merchandise flew off the shelves, purchased by devastated fans. One particular obsessed fan was an extremely powerful, reality-bending mutant named Arnie, who wanted to make X-Force pay for letting her die. However, for all of their devotion, none of the fans really knew Edie like Guy Smith. The leader of X-Force renamed the team X-Statix, as Edie had suggested with her last breath. Additionally, her memory haunted Guy long after her death, with him consistently seeing her pop up as hallucinations and negatively affecting his future relationship. [X-Statix series]

The specter of Edie appeared a few times outside of Guy’s mind as well, including when Dead Girl took a trip to the afterlife and recruited Guy and Edie to help her navigate Hell. [X-Statix presents Dead Girl #3-5] Edie was next seen gambling along with other dead characters in Greek god Erebus’ casino for a chance to return to life. [Incredible Hercules #129] Finally, when the strange and powerful Doop traveled to Marginalia, the realm between moments, he encountered a past version of Edie crashing there. She would occasionally come out of the realm to help her teammates, but mostly she slept, lounged in the hot tub and got drunk. However, this version of Edie eventually left the realm to resume her life and face her fate. [All-New Doop #3-5]

The legacy of U-Go Girl additionally continued when her daughter Katie eventually found out that her older sister was actually her mother. Katie decided to honor her mother’s memory by becoming the new U-Go Girl and joining a new version of X-Statix. [Giant-Size X-Statix #1]