X-Men #7

X-Men #7
Writing: Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell
Art: Jim Lee and Art Thibert

What Went Down: The finale of the Omega Red Saga… sounds more epic than it actually is. In any case, Wolverine is once again strapped to the memory-restoring device.

Sabretooth is acting weird; he can’t stop repeating his last line of dialogue from issue #6. The Hand ninjas with him notice this, but choose to ignore it because Creed is just so intimidating.

Andrea of Fenris is pressuring Dr. Cornelius to turn up the juice on his machine even though it might kill Logan. Although hesitant, he still does, and we learn that Logan had “one more assignment” for Janice as she was dying.

Matsuo figures out where the c-synthesizer is and orders Cornelius to finish off Wolverine, but before he can, Psylocke attacks. She states that Wolverine’s near death last issue freed her from Matsuo’s control, which is weird since that occurred before she was under his thrall in the first place.

At the same time, Maverick breaks free, attacks the Hand guards, and finds the location of the X-Men. It is revealed that Sabretooth is actually under Psylocke’s control (in case you didn’t see that coming).

As Maverick arrives to free the X-Men, Psylocke gets knocked out, and Creed regains his freedom. Beast and Jubilee free themselves and take him out.

Wolverine breaks free and attacks Omega, and the rest of the Blue Team show up and a big fight proceeds. During the fight, some stored chemicals ignite, so the X-Men have to make a big dramatic escape before the building blows up, which they do.

Over in Mojoworld, Longshot’s rebellion didn’t go so well since most of his forces are dead in the street, and Mojo is holding Longshot’s beaten body. Dazzler thinks to herself that she needs to summon more X-Men.

Back in Germany, Wolverine tells the rest of the team he has one more job to do. Cyclops tells him if he needs help, he can always ask. It’s very touching.

Later, Matsuo has some of the Hand digging up Janice Hollenbeck’s grave to get the carbonadium synthesizer. Unfortunately for him, Wolverine has already dug up the body, hidden in its casket, and reburied himself somehow. He bursts out, kills the ninjas, and chops off Matsuo’s hand. Dr. Cornelius threatens Wolverine with a gun to his head, but Maverick shows up and pops the good doctor in the head instead. Wolverine gives the synthesizer to Maverick because he senses it belongs to him. The End.

How It Was: This story always feels longer than it actually is; it could easily lose an issue and not lose much. The main problem with this story is that a lot of the twists don’t feel like they were thought out ahead of time; they just don’t fit with the continuity of the story and feel added in at the last minute. When the book claims Psylocke overcame her conditioning when Wolverine almost died last issue, the reader knows it doesn’t make sense because Matsuo didn’t take control of her until after Wolverine almost died. As for the villains, Psylocke manages to take down half of Fenris and Omega Red by herself, which makes it all the more perplexing how the whole team had so much trouble with them. Also, Sabretooth doesn’t contribute a whole heck of a lot this issue except for getting controlled and beat up, and his sidekick Birdy has completely vanished.

On the other hand, the ending sequence at the graveyard is excellently done and provides great atmosphere with the rain and dark shading. Even though it’s only two pages it is a very effective, gritty, fast paced scene, which is helped a lot by the panel layout. As for the Mojoverse scene, it’s very disappointing that we don’t get to see the doomed assault on Mojo. Yes, we all knew it was going to fail so the X-Men could show up and fix it, but it still would have been nice to watch them try.

As I’ve stated before, it’s hard to get excited about this story because most of it gets forgotten after Jim Lee leaves in a few issues. Fenris disappear, Omega Red goes on to appear as a reoccurring villain just about any time the X-Men go to Russia (like in issue #18), and Matsuo forgets about the Upstarts and moves onto the Psylocke/Revanche storyline in issue 21. Even the carbondadium synthesizer gets completely forgotten about for almost 15 years, until Daniel Way brings it up again in Wolverine Origins #6-10, so don’t hold your breath waiting for the significance of that maguffin to show up in this blog.

C+

Next Week: Uncanny #281-283