Writing: Jorge Gonzalez
Art: Duncan Rouleau
What Went Down: Most of the setup for this story occurs in the Storm mini-series that I’ve not read. Storm, Cyclops, Jean, and Cannonball are in an African Village protecting the Gene Nationals, aka the remnants of the Morlocks, from Humanity’s Last Stand, an anti-mutant group armed with battle suits known as Razors. As the fight goes on, a mutant named Boost notices that Cannonball is wearing out, so he jumps inside Cannonball and uses his powers to enhance Sam’s. Boost’s girlfriend, a mutant lizard woman named Tether, is adamant that they kill the fleeing Razors, but Storm insists that they stay and look after their wounded.
We’re introduced to D’Gard, Storm’s interim leader who is a mutant empath. Since he can sense people’s feelings and emotions, it was decided he would be the best to follow the tribe’s wishes. Also, the reason that Gene Nation is in the middle of an African desert is that Storm deemed it so at the end of her mini-series; she thought it would be best since the Gene Nationals were brought up in the harsh conditions of Mikhail Rasputin’s “king of the hill” style society that they would be better off in a harsh African desert upon rescuing.
Tether accuses Storm of being a woeful leader, and she has a point since the village’s transmission tower has been down for over a month due to attacks from HLS, and Storm didn’t happen to notice until now. Storm makes an excuse that the X-Men have been busy and apologizes, but that is somehow not good enough for Tether. Storm explains that she exiled the mutants in Africa in the hopes that they would escape the bigotry that plagues the civilized world.
As night falls on the village, the X-Men prepare to sleep when Havok and his Brotherhood show up, consisting of the Dark Beast and Fatale. Cyclops immediately confronts his brother, asking what he is doing with the evil McCoy; Havok counters that the X-Men allowed Sabretooth to join and brings up Onslaught as well. Scott is still mad that Havok threw him out of a plane in Uncanny #339.
Havok offers the Gene Nationals a warning and protection. Dark Beast contemplates his inevitable betrayal of Havok while the members of Gene Nation consider Havok’s offer. Storm decides to set up a temporary truce between the two mutant teams.
At the base of Humanity’s Last Stand, we get to see the conflict from their perspective. They blame Gene Nation for the death of Graydon Creed and the series of murders that members of Gene Nation committed back in Uncanny #323. One of the Razor pilots even had a sister that died in the nightclub.
The battle begins; Beast breaks off with Jean Grey to find a more technical solution to their problem, while Cannonball saves Fatale. Some Razors cause a rockslide that buries a number of mutants, so Storm leads a group in rescuing them. D’gard can sense her fear from claustrophobia, and is impressed that she is able to conquer it to help their people. A group of four Razors breaks off to attack the shelters of the injured mutants; Cannonball and Boost try to stop them, but they are too late. Havok uses this as proof that tougher methods are needed to deal with the humans.
Nearby, Jean is using a teke shield to protect Evil Beast as he finds the emergency safeguards in one of the downed Razors. Using this, he is able to trigger the emergency protocols in all of the other suits, causing them to disengage. Storm uses the mutant Boost to amplify her powers and create an enormous sandstorm to wipe out all the retreating battlesuits.
After the battle, all the humans are taken prisoner. Tether and some of the others want to execute the humans who killed the injured mutants. Havok steps up to do it, but Cyclops confronts him and they get into a fight. Cyclops brings up how Havok almost killed him, and Alex brushes it off as “not being in his right mind” at the time. The brothers get into a fistfight, so Dark Beast takes the opportunity to construct a huge gun and execute all of the humans himself. Only he actually has Fatale teleport them all away at the last second so it would look like Beast killed them all. He is excited to have more guinea pigs for his experiments. Havok is as surprised as Cyclops that this occurs.
Boost and Tether decide to leave Africa with the Brotherhood, only they make it clear that they’re not joining, they just need Fatale to help them teleport away. D’gard announces that Storm no longer has claim to leadership, and that he will be the new leader of Gene Nation. Storm is saddened, but agrees it is for the best. Jean comforts Storm as they prepare to leave.
How It Was: This is surprisingly good for an annual, especially for this period in X-History. Not only does the story have actual stakes, but it also picks up on story details in other X-books (X-Factor, the Storm mini-series, last year’s annuals) to give a sense of cohesion in the wider X-Universe. I’ve never heard of Jorge Gonzalez before, but he has a fantastic handle on the characters, and he creates some better than average minor characters in Boost and Tether.
What Gonzalez does that makes the story work perfectly is that he presents the conflict from all sides, and neither side has the perfect answer. Storm wants to protect the village, but due to her commitments to the X-Men, and her terrible shortsightedness, she doesn’t have a practical answer. Havok thinks they should take the battle to HLS, but that will just escalate things. Tether and Boost, as the POV characters for the Gene Nation, represent how conflicted the group is about its purpose and identity, as well as seeing their reactions to various attrocities. Even the humans get a page to justify their motives, by using the events of Uncanny #323 as a validation for why they blame the mutants, since those terrorists did identify themselves as Gene Nation. D’gard offers a great point of view as well, as he is constantly analyzing the situation, trying to find a resolution that will work best for everybody. It’s all very well handled.
I only have two complaints. One is a minor nerdy nitpick: this is the team that regularly appears in X-Men during this time, and they’re in an Uncanny X-Men Annual. That just bothers me a little. The second is that Rouleau’s art isn’t really working for me. It’s so super exaggerated with lots of weird proportions and poses. It does have its moments, but more often than not it just looks odd to me. More importantly, there are moments, such as the landslide, where the frame is focused on Storm fighting bad guys when it should be focused on…well, the landslide. There are one or two other moments as well where the frame is of a character saying “Hey look at that thing over there,” when really the panel should just be showing the event. Plus we never get a feel for the scale of the battle, since the art pretty much focuses on the characters we’re familiar with. That’s an understandable decision, but it would be nice to have a few more establishing shots just to show off what a huge war this is supposed to be.
Overall, this is a pleasant surprise that feels less like filler than the actual stories running in X-Men and Uncanny around the same time. It’s the X-Men actually fighting for something, dealing with the themes of the series, and not always winning in the end. I would have loved to see this as a three or four issue arc as opposed to the Uncanny space farce, the X-Men meeting Shang-Chi in Hong Kong, or the entirety of Operation Zero Tolerance. Still, at least we got this much, and it works as a great one and done story as well as a great epilogue to the Storm mini.
A
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