X-Men Annual #3
Writing: Ian Edington and Jim Krueger
Art: Gene Ha and Steve Yeowell
What Went Down: So…many…pages. ACK!
We open on a scene of a woman named Benazir playing chess with Shinobi Shaw. Coincidentally, the floor of the room they’re playing in has the same pattern as the chessboard. Of course, any time you have villains playing chess, it’s meant to symbolize how cunning they are and how strategically intricate their plan is.
Storm is taking time for a recreational flight over the mansion. When she returns, she watches a news report on a civil war in a war-torn country, most probably located in Africa. Archangel delivers some roses to her, which we find out were sent by Shinobi Shaw; he wants Storm to meet with him. She cuts herself on the thorns and goes upstairs to get a bandage; along the way, she can’t help thinking about a young boy shown on the news. Storm also starts to act short with the others, starting with Jubilee.
Storm reappears in her old leather outfit; at least she hasn’t given herself a mohawk again. Everyone is quite surprised by the change of wardrobe, and Storm gets in an argument with Professor X over whether or not it is safe for her to go to the Hellfire Club. Storm accuses him of thinking of her as an obedient daughter and “storms” out. Get it? Outside, Gambit gives her a ride on his motorcycle to the Hellfire Club.
At the club, Shinobi pulls out all of the stops to impress Storm with dinner and champagne. In the indoor rose garden, he invites Storm to join the Hellfire Club, claiming that he has reformed and his ultimate goal is now to help the world rather than rule it. He brings up the point that the X-Men, for all their battles, have failed to significantly impact the world, causing Storm to flip out and turn her powers on him. Storm agrees to consider the proposal and leaves. Candra comes out of hiding afterwards, and Shinobi reveals that the roses and dinner were laced with a drug that messes with her brain chemistry. This explains her erratic behavior, new outfit, and hostility towards the X-Men.
Professor X worries a lot in his study and considers reading Storm’s mind, but he decides against it. Storm has a surreal dream with doctors cutting open her brain to take her powers because she has wasted them by just fighting super villains. The powers are going to the boy on the news. When she awakens, Storm freaks out, busts through the wall in her room, and files to the Hellfire Club. The X-Men are all awakened by this.
After arriving, Storm shares her dream with Shinobi. Rather than prey on her sympathies, the villain reveals that he’s been drugging her instead. Conveniently, the drugs also mellow her powers. He then introduces her to the all-new Hellfire Club. Benedict, who can affect people’s nervous systems, subdues her.
The X-Men are flying around trying to detect Storm. Shinobi is about to give her a super dose of the drug to eradicate her personality. Xavier is able to use his powers to restore Storm’s. Storm attacks the group, and Gambit and Bishop show up to back her up.
During the big climactic fight, we are introduced to the other members of the new Hellfire Club. There is Benazir, from earlier in the issue, who can give people tumors…no, seriously. There’s also Reeva Payge who can distort people’s senses. Storm corners Shaw and threatens to kill him, even if she dies with him. The end features Storm and Xavier having a tearful reconciliation.
What Else What Down: The backup stars Banshee. It starts with Banshee bursting into the modern day Interpol headquarters; in case you didn’t know, before he was an X-Man, Sean was an agent of Interpol. Banshee is angry that the Interpol head has intel about an important person. Elsewhere, an old man named Patrick Lipton is on his deathbed.
We then flashback to an early mission of Banshee’s where he was assigned to protect Lipton from Hydra because he is a genius scientist. Hydra invades the train that the two men are on, but they escape. Instead of running, Banshee decides to push the tree blocking the rails out of the way, which leads to him getting shot.
Back in the present, Banshee invades the castle Lipton is dying in, which also happens to be a Hydra base. After beating up all of the Hydra agents, we flashback to Lipton using a grenade on the enemy soldiers. Rather than let the reinforcements kill Banshee, Lipton is inspired by his sacrifice, so he decides to give himself up to save Cassidy. Banshee comforts the man, right before Lipton dies.
How It Was: This turns out to be a fabulously written issue, by a writer I’m fairly unfamiliar with, that deals with a number of characters that we will never see again. Where this issue excels is in its exploration of Storm’s character, her role in the X-Men, and her history in that role. Storm is forced to confront the purpose of the X-Men itself, both its goals and actual accomplishments. Much like other peacekeeping organizations, the fact that there is still suffering in the world casts doubt on the idea that there is any justice, and Storm’s struggling with this idea is very intriguing. We also get a return of the uninhibited wild Storm from Claremont’s 80s run, which I would normally groan at, but it is actually used pretty effectively as a symbol for Storm’s crisis of conscience and her struggle for meaning and identity. Shinobi Shaw also gets an opportunity to come off as a worthy successor to his father’s legacy as a master manipulator for the first time ever, until he abruptly foils his own plot by explaining it to the person he is trying to manipulate. The script does a great job of placing real life conflicts and issues into the story, and reflecting on the helplessness that can result through the context of the heroes. Oh, and Storm’s nightmare sequence is very well done.
The issue does have its faults which revolve around Shaw’s actual goal and his new Hellfire Club. Really, Edington is tying his story to a premise that Fabian Nicieza started with Shaw asking Archangel and Psylocke to join the Hellfire Club in X-Men #29, but even that really never made all that much sense. It’s hard to tell if Shaw was serious with these invitations, which would make him an idiot, or if he had a grander scheme, which never got revealed. As far as I can remember, this is Shinobi’s last appearance in the X-Men books, and he floats around the Marvel Universe for a while before getting killed by his father Sebastian Shaw, who was supposed to have been killed by Shinobi himself.
The other real problem with this story is that the new Hellfire Club is really lame. There is a guy who attacks nervous systems and a girl who can give you tumors; I’ll give credit to the writer for trying to create some new powers, but these are dumb. This is the only appearance of Shinobi’s new club, to the best of my knowledge, so you don’t have to bother remembering any of them, unless you are into obscure X-Villain trivia. Also, Candra shows up for no apparent reason at all in the middle of the story, and then she just disappears.
Gene Ha’s art is superb—there is no better way of putting it. Some of the colors do come off as a bit muddy, but it works with the tone of this story. It’s not quite as amazing as his work on The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, but it still works surprisingly well given the difference in tone of the settings of both stories.
As for the backup, once again it is nothing to write home about. Jim Krueger, who would later go on to write a number of things for Marvel—including the Earth X series, tries really hard to stick this story into Banshee’s past in order to give it a sense of meaning to Banshee and his development. Ultimately it fails because nobody really cares about the scientist; there isn’t enough room to make him that sympathetic. And other than that, it’s a bunch of panels of Banshee beating up generic Hydra agents. Still, the main story is actually fairly compelling and worth checking out, despite the mediocre villains.
B+
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