Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Art Thibert
What Went Down: This issue opens at the Ryking Hospital…please note that Ryking was the name of the guy Maverick killed in the back up story to issues 9-10. Inside the doctors are trying to subdue a mutant patient named Ryking…please note that Ryking was the name of the guy Maverick killed in the back up story to issues 9-10. This Ryking, however, is the son of the man from that story. Anyway, the doctors shoot him full of drugs and tasers to stop him from seizing and shooting energy everywhere. The episode was caused by a story on CNN about his father being killed.
Over at the mansion, Rogue is having a swim, and Gambit is flirting with her…what a twist. Also the Beast is driving Psylocke to the airport so she can guest star in Excalibur next month with her brother Captain Britain. Cyclops watches Psylocke leave through a window, and then he melodramatically flings a picture of his girlfriend Jean on the ground because he is so tortured over his attraction to Betsy.
Then Scott joins the Professor in the Danger Room where he is busy training Jubilee. Jubilee dislikes the Danger Room because she doesn’t want to be hurt, and she hates fighting ugly villains like the Blob and Sauron.
Wolverine interrupts the session, accusing Xavier of lying to him. Apparently Wolverine believes that Xavier’s investigation into his father’s past somehow connects to his own past, although it is quite unclear how. Later Wolverine realizes that there is no connection and apologizes.
Back at the hospital, Carter Ryking escapes and kills a lot of people; his power involves shooting energy through the taser lines that have somehow fused to his body or something.
Xavier and Logan discuss the file on Xavier’s father; Charles has no idea where it came from, and then coincidentally the CNN story on Ryking’s death appears. Charles and Carter were childhood friends and their fathers worked together.
Charles attends the funeral, and he is reminded of his own father’s funeral when he was younger. In the middle of his flashback, Carter contacts the Professor telepathically, and then he attacks the funeral and kills some cops. Also he found some battle armor somewhere. Carter is convinced that their parents had lots of secrets, and he wants Charles to come with him to find out what they were. Charles agrees in order to prevent more deaths.
Val Cooper calls the X-Men to brief them on what happened. She offers to have X-Factor take care of it, but the X-Men want first crack at Carter…because it’s personal. They find out that they are going to the Almagordo Nuclear Plant—the place where Xavier’s father worked.
How It Was: The dawn of new villain Hazard, except nobody calls him Hazard except on the cover and on his trading card. So really it’s just plain Carter Ryking. He’s only remotely interesting because he says he has secrets about Xavier’s father, but as we’ll learn next issue, he doesn’t really. The creators probably had grand plans for the character that never came to fruition. This means that Carter is basically a one-shot villain who acts vaguely crazy and disturbed, and then disappears.
As for Almagordo, it became one of those pieces of X-Men canon that the writers would allude to over the years, get your hopes up that they were actually going somewhere, and then be promptly forgotten again. Mike Carey finally revealed that the factory was a front for Mr. Sinister’s research into prolonging his life in X-Men Legacy—over fifteen years after the plot line was first introduced! And we still never get an answer to why Maverick had to kill Carter’s father, or what Warhawk had to do with any of this.
Well the villain is a dud, so everyone else has to pick up the slack, but nobody is doing anything new or interesting. Cyclops’ is worried about Psylocke. Gambit is flirting with Rogue. Wolverine is bitching about his past. We’ve seen it all before, so there is nothing to get excited about. There are some okay scenes where Xavier reflects on his paralysis and his childhood, but it’s nothing groundbreaking.
Also, this is Fabian Nicieza’s first issue writing after Jim Lee jumped ship to go co-found Image Comics. So a lot of the repetition might just be Nicieza underlining the subplots he wants to focus on. Art Thibert is filling in on art; eventually regular artist Andy Kubert’ll replace him. He does some great work with the scenes outside the mansion as well as the scenes where Ryking kills people; who can resist a good flaming skeleton scene?
It’s a really slow issue that had potential, but fails to live up to it. If the Xavier stuff had panned out, this comic wouldn’t be such a disappointment.
C
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