Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Tom Raney
What Went Down: Random Fact About the X-Men #1: they are fans of Jay Leno. Random Fact #2: some of them need more appropriate pajamas to wear while they watch together. The X-Men’s Leno viewing is interrupted by a beaten up woman at the front door; Colossus answers the door in his boxers. The badly beaten woman turns out to be Calisto, and the badly beaten Morlock Healer is with her.
Upstairs Mikhail is having hallucinations about all of the people he killed with his powers back in the Void. Rather than act terrified, he seems to just grudgingly acknowledge them.
In the medlab, Professor X scans Calisto’s mind to discover what happened. Basically the Healer came by to ask if Calisto would reassume her role as leader of the Morlocks, and she refused because she likes being pretty and not living in the sewers (due to the mutant Masque’s ability to shapshift other people). Unfortunately, all of the Morlocks have been made even more hideous by Masque, and this has made them a tad insane. After she says no, the other Morlocks freak out and beat both of them senseless.
Everyone is startled to discover that Mikhail was able to listen in on the Professor’s psychic frequency. Mikhail also expresses his sympathy for Calisto since she is also responsible for the fall of a group of people entrusted to her. Storm declares that she is going to try to stop the Morlocks by herself (because she was technically the Morlocks’ leader until Masque took over), but Archangel talks her out of it by explaining that the Morlocks are everybody’s responsibility.
As the X-Men are planning their next move, the Healer heals all of Calisto’s wounds, but at the cost of his life and Calisto’s beauty for some reason.
There is a subplot scene about a man in sunglasses from the Friends of Humanity collecting someone at a nursing home…I have no idea what this refers to; I think it was a dropped plotline.
Well the X-Men, plus Professor X, journey to the sewers, and Iceman stays at the mansion to watch Calisto. Mikhail gets in Iceman’s face and tells him he is going to free Calisto.
Down in the sewers, Storm tries to talk to the Morlocks, but they all swarm around her. She flips out because of her claustrophobia, and blasts a hole through the sewer to the surface, setting free all of the unstable Morlocks.
How It Was: And so begins “The Last Morlock Story.” Except it’s not really, the last issue of this arc just has those words on the cover. Between this story and the Mutant Massacre, you’d think the Morlocks would be all gone by now, but they always find a way to come back.
This is a pretty good intro to the story, although in the next couple of issues the narrative starts to abandon logic. But the badly beaten Calisto does start the issue off with a sense of urgency, as does the death of the Healer, even if he was an inconsequential mid-1980s comic book bit character (Random Fact: the Healer actually appears in the X-Men Legends video game voiced by Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning actor Ed Asner, so maybe he’s not that minor). However, Mikhail’s perceived connection with Calisto doesn’t really make much sense since she completely abandoned the Morlocks without reservations and remorselessly killed some in the process. Future stories tend to forget the whole “pretty Calisto” plot, and in a few years she will be accusing Storm of abandoning her people without any sense of guilt or irony. But back to Mikhail, he turns into a total tool over the course of this story, and Lobdell keeps giving him more and more applications for his vaguely defined powers.
It’s also nice to see characters like Archangel and Storm react to having to deal with the Morlocks again, although it is funny how every Morlock story starts with Storm feeling guilty about not taking her role as leader seriously, and then afterwards she completely ignores them until the next Morlock crisis.
The art by fill in artist Tom Raney is rather nice. Sometimes the proportions on characters are a little off, and the two page spread on the second and third pages contains characters in some completely unnecessary action poses, but for the most part the characters are depicted clearly, and with some great expressions. There is a really gross scene of one of the Morlock’s taking out Calisto’s eye, followed by a great shot of her tearing the Morlocks apart with her arms covered in blood. Unfortunately the coloring scheme in Calisto’s flashback consists of hot pink and neon orange.
It’s a decent story up until the last couple of pages where we get some of the most boring banter between the gold team yet (Jean worries about the Professor some more, Colossus bores Warren with his theories on his brother’s powers), and then Storm freaks out and blasts a hole in the sewer. I don’t really understand why this is such big deal since the Morlocks could have easily just used the manholes to get to the surface and terrorize New York if Storm hadn’t freaked out.
Some interesting and memorable moments, but the parts with Mikhail and the end kind of ruin it.
B-
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