Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Mike Harris
What Went Down: In view of the fact that all of the other X-Men have been the focus of an issue, this issue spotlights the final three: Bishop, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. Using some crazy machine, Bishop and Cyclops are planning to enter cyberspace to purge the virus from the computer. Jean is serving as a kind of anchor for them, which means that she doesn’t do anything in this issue except lay there and moan in pain the whole time. Cue another clunky description of the previous issues, and Cyclops and Bishop are ready to go.
In case you didn’t know, cyberspace is a yellow space with red lines where all the people are colored green. As Cyclops and Bishop explore the area, the terrain transforms into the head of the villain Arcade, leading us to believe that he is behind the Cerebro virus. In the physical realm, the computer Jean is strapped into starts to attack her. Wolverine wants to cut her loose, but Storm prevents him because if the connection is severed, it could kill all three X-Men.
Arcade creates “icons” of all the X-Men that are not in cyberspace out of the yellow and red lined environment. The evil X-Men attack Cyclops and Bishop. In a really lame scene, Bishop gets excited about finally having an opportunity to use his guns, but then he is attacked before he gets the chance to use them. Cyclops shoots a bunch of the icons with his optic blasts.
Arcade announces that even if they defeat the evil X-Men, Cyclops and Bishop will still have to face an endless stream of icons based on the X-Men’s other allies and villains. Cyclops and Bishop reveal that Bishop has been supercharged with energy from the battle with the evil X-Men icons, and he uses that energy to destroy Arcade and all of the other icons. Jean Grey is shown in the real world smiling because the villain of the story has been revealed, and it wasn’t really Arcade.
And now, for the twist ending of the X-Men/Pizza Hut promotional, the mystery villain was… Professor X! GASP! It turns out that there was no virus in Cerebro, and Xavier was using this lie as an opportunity to create situations that would test his X-Men’s abilities, since they do live in a school, and he is still a teacher. If you’re wondering where Sabretooth, Sauron, and Magneto came into this plan, well it just turns out that their appearances were unhappy coincidences that Xavier couldn’t possibly foresee. Instead of being angry that Xavier has wasted all of their time and put all their lives in jeopardy, the X-Men seem proud that they have passed the test. Then Jubilee suggests pizza, in a meta-fictional shout out to the entire purpose of the story. Profound.
How It Was: Well if you hadn’t guessed it from all the final panels that showed a Xavier shaped shadow monitoring the X-Men, this issue is something of an enormous let down. Not just for the ending, mind you, but for the entire issue in general. Where to begin?
Well cyberspace is probably the ugliest location that I’ve ever seen in a comic book. Even if you can ignore the hideous green and yellow color palette, there is still the basic fact that the X-Men are entering cyberspace; apparently Lobdell thought the best way to end his introduction for new readers was with a Tron homage. Also it is really disappointing that Jean Grey doesn’t get anything interesting to do for the entire story since the narrative is designed to show how each X-Man can be cool and likable. This issue is probably the heaviest on the exposition since the first issue; the X-Men have to explain cyberspace, Bishop essentially repeats his treatise on why Cerebro is so important, and Jubilee and Beast recap the previous issues in a totally forced manner. Add on the fact that the final fight is with evil, and ugly looking, X-Men clones, and the fact that the fight is resolved because the bad guy didn’t understand how Bishop’s powers work when he definitely should, and this entire plot comes off as bad.
But let’s look a little harder at the twist ending of Xavier being the mastermind, and why this reveal doesn’t work whatsoever. First we are to believe that Xavier would potentially kill his students all in the name of a training exercise. Now one might bring up the existence of the Danger Room to validate this story, but the Danger Room has safeguards built into it; it can be shut down when an X-Man gets injured and he or she can then be taken to the X-Men’s state of the art medical facilities. So I guess issue one is excusable since it takes place in the Danger Room, and issue four might also work since the fake cyberspace is basically a fabricated situation similar to the Danger Room. However, in issue two Xavier straps plastic explosives to the Blackbird in order to “test” Wolverine and Jubilee, which is pretty messed up.
The next problem with this twist is the fact that issue three doesn’t fit in with Xavier’s explanation that he was testing his students. Xavier claims that the appearance of the villains was a coincidence, but the only thing that Beast and Storm do in that issue is fight Magneto. Where was the test that they were supposed to be challenged with? Perhaps their plane was also strapped with explosives, but Xavier didn’t trigger them because it would have been a #*&$ move after they had just gone head to head with Magneto. Still, it just doesn’t work. And then there is the X-Men’s reaction to Xavier's manipulations. This is the kind of thing the X-Men used to get really pissed off at Xavier for in the sixties and seventies. Since they are all adults, and they all put their lives on the line on a regular basis, you would think that they might be able to muster a little outrage. Add in the random super villain attacks and Xavier’s test comes off as down right reckless. But I guess the story is for kids, so it’s kind of a waste of time putting too much thought into it because kids are stupid. Before any kids or parents get angry at me for saying that, remember that I got these comics when I was nine years old and I didn’t question the ending whatsoever at the time (well, maybe a little). But really, Pizza Hut met their goal of getting my parents to buy me four kids’ pizza meals, so I guess that’s all that really matters. A disappointing ending to a brief, mediocre, dumbed down story.
D+
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