Uncanny X-Men #322

Uncanny X-Men #322
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Tom Grummett

What Went Down: Archangel receives a call from his ex-girlfriend, Detective Charlotte Jones. Warren tries to apologize for not calling her in months, but she brushes him off. Charlotte has called Warren in to get his opinion on a mutant specific case, and to warn him about possible backlash from the media. One of Charlotte’s subordinates decides that Archangel is dangerous and attacks him, but Warren deflects the energy weapon and temporarily paralyzes the cop with a wing dart. Charlotte chastises the men, and then leads Warren into the crime scene. It’s a nightclub full of dead bodies; Archangel is told that there is something he can see better from above, but we’re never told what this is referring to after he flies up.

Outside the mansion, Storm is reflecting on her friendship with Gambit as she worries about him in his coma. Wolverine shows up to talk for a bit, but then disappears when Siryn of X-Force comes by to ask for help.

Beast has decided to take Bishop to New Jersey to see a movie in hopes of helping him relax and get over his nightmares/visions about the Age of Apocalypse. In case you’re wondering, they go to see Pulp Fiction, which had just won a bunch of Academy Awards at the time. Beast tries to get Bishop to open up, but they are interrupted by something falling out of the sky, smashing through buildings and cars. That something turns out to be the Juggernaut, and he’s been beaten up pretty badly.

Jean and Cyclops are visiting Jean’s parents to tell them that they learned her sister was assimilated by the Phalanx during the Phalanx Covenant. This wraps up a story from the eighties that dates all the way back to X-Factor #2. Jean and her father talk, and Jean has a flashback about her sister because, according to her, telepaths’ brains never forget anything. Scott and Jean drive away, but an invisible, intangible Noah Dubois of Landau, Luckman, and Lake is observing them.

Beast examines the Juggernaut and determines that he has no pulse. Psylocke shows up just because, and the Juggernaut wakes up scared out of his mind. Everybody fights; Betsy stabs Juggernaut with her psychic knife and senses his overwhelming fear. Bishop covers himself with power lines to finish off Juggernaut, but not before the villain explains that he was knocked to New Jersey from Canada. Bishop subdues Juggernaut, but only because the bad guy was already weakened, and Juggernaut tells the X-Men that he was beaten up by someone named Onslaught.

How It Was: First of all, it’s important to note that the Blue/Gold Team split is pretty much dead starting with this issue; all the X-Men are free to come and go in any X-Men title and fight with whomever they want. This leads to a lot of stories that emphasize smaller groups of X-Men, which is nice because it gives the writers an opportunity explore a lot of different groupings, personalities, and relationships, although the inclusion of X-Force at the mansion serves as little more than a distraction to the main events. It’s also really nice that the main titles have more impact on each other.

Also starting this month, some moron at Marvel thought that a great way to improve their comics would be to take the issue numbers off of the covers to make collecting an even bigger pain in the butt. If you’re wondering, you can still find the issue number in tiny print inside the barcode, but this is still really inconvenient. Don’t worry; Marvel was bombarded with fan complaints, so this trend only lasted about a year.

Now as for the story—it’s a nice, slow set-up issue that brings up a couple of plot points that are sure to be explored in the next couple of issues, as well as farther down the line. There’s nothing really wrong with this except for the fact that X-Men Prime was already supposed to have done this. Future issues notwithstanding, the awkward interactions between Archangel and Charlotte are well handled, and Beast is pitch-perfect as always under Scott Lobdell.

The parts that stick out the worst are the scenes with Jean exploring the death of her sister. This “mystery” had been set up almost a decade before, and even the resolution to her sister’s whereabouts occurred ten months before this issue came out. It’s nice that Lobdell follows up on the point, but it’s too little, too late for anybody to actually care about this character that never really had any significance to the X-Men franchise. Plus Cyclops’ “what if we weren’t X-Men?” discussion is really cliché and has nothing to do with the situation. It appears that Scott Lobdell was setting up a storyline involving Noah Dubois, who appeared two years ago and appears in a couple of future stories, but nothing ever comes from these cameos.

The Juggernaut fight is well handled, even if it’s a blatant example of cutting down a strong character to make a new threat look more menacing. The impact is pretty much lost due to the fact that Juggernaut hasn't appeared in either of the main X-Men books since the eighties.  My one nerdy nitpick would be that Psylocke shouldn’t be able to use her powers on Juggernaut when he has his helmet on, and for that matter, why is she even there? And of course, this is the first we hear about the enigmatic Onslaught. Fair warning, the X-Books are going to be setting this one up for over a year, and a lot of the clues go absolutely nowhere. But this initial story actually works really well once we figure out who Onslaught is (SPOILER: IT’S PROFESSOR X). An inauspicious start, but it is nice to see that the writers are mixing it up a little bit with the presentation and structure of the books. Plus fill-in artist Tom Grummett draws a pretty awesome Juggernaut.

B-

X-Men '95 Annual

X-Men ’95 (Annual)
Writing: J.M. Dematteis, Ralph Macchio, Scott Lobdell, and Matt Idelson
Art: Terry Dodson, John Paul Leon, and Ramon Bernardo

What Went Down: Starting with 1995, all Marvel Comics annuals discard their old numbering systems and are solely distinguished by the year…for a while at least. It’s hard to say when exactly this one takes place; it’s sometime after X-Men Prime, but before X-Men #45, which is still a really large time frame.

The issue starts off in a convalescents’ home where an old woman disappears from her room. We cut to the Beast running through the woods and diving off a cliff into a river for fun. Jean Grey is at the bottom, and the teammates joke with each other and reflect on recent events. Beast has invited the original X-Men to a cabin to reconnect, and Jean empathizes with his need to immerse himself in the comfortable and familiar.

Back at the nursing home Nathaniel Essex, who is really Mr. Sinister, is visiting the old woman from earlier, Faye Livingstone. A nurse leads Essex into her room, but the only person in the room is Genesis. For those who don’t know, Genesis is Cable’s stepson that was abducted in the future by Apocalypse and brainwashed. Genesis kills the nurse, and tells Sinister that he has observed Sinister visiting this woman every year. Thinking that he has discovered Sinister’s weakness, Genesis has abducted Faye and used genetic engineering to temporarily de-age her. Also, Genesis has gained the leadership of the Dark Riders.

After Genesis and the Dark Riders teleport away, Sinister has a flashback to when he first met Faye. Posing as Nathaniel Essex, Sinister lived in a large mansion in Hollywood during the 1930s. Essex throws a party and Faye Livingstone, a radio comedienne of the time, gets to dance with the host. Faye finds Essex very attractive and ends up staying over. In the middle of the night, Faye finds Sinister in his lab with his normal white skin.

Back at the cabin, Beast eats popcorn with his feet, and Jean goes to bed. Beast stays up and contemplates his bachelor status. The Dark Riders teleport in and tell Beast that they are going to kidnap Jean Grey. A fight ensues, and Jean is captured, but she is able to leave a psychic trail for Beast to follow in the Blackbird.

Genesis, Sinister, and Faye are located at Sinister’s old lab in Hollywood. Jean is suspended above them in a power cage, but she breaks out after a page. Genesis hides behind Faye, and Sinister asks Jean to stay back.

The flashback continues with Sinister holding Faye in his mansion for weeks while he conducts experiments on her. Her DNA has the potential to have a powerful mutant offspring. After weeks of her being terrified and imprisoned, Sinister sets her free without a word.

Beast arrives at the mansion and is attacked by goblin creatures engineered by Sinister. The scene ends with Beast appearing to be overwhelmed, but later he shows up and is fine. Inside, Genesis wants Jean to mind-link Sinister and Faye to force Sinister to reveal his feelings. Jean refuses, and Beast shows up to rescue her. Jean tries to lift Faye out of there, but Sinister begs her to let it play out; Beast tells Jean to listen to him after seeing distress on Sinister’s face.

In the mind-link, Faye and Sinister dance. Faye tells Sinister that she knows he loved her and he couldn’t find a way to express it. Faye then turns old again and dies. Sinister claims that her final thoughts were delusions and he shows no emotion at all. Genesis admits he was wrong and teleports away. Sinister tells the X-Men to leave. Beast puts an arm on Sinister’s shoulder, showing that he empathizes with his pain.

After the X-Men leave, the mansion bursts into flames. Sinister stares off in the distance silently. Genesis talks with one of the Dark Riders about his next plan, which deals with Wolverine and occurs in Wolverine #99-101. The next day, Cyclops and Archangel show up at the cabin. Cyclops wants to clean up after the battle with the Dark Riders, but Jean tells him there is nothing wrong and they kiss.

What Else Went Down: In the back-up story, Captain Britain—aka Brian Braddock is at a post office while the postmaster searches for a letter from Brian’s sister Psylocke. Brian then reads Psylocke’s letter about her new relationship with Archangel.

With the letter serving as Psylocke’s narration, we get a scene of Warren and Betsy at a carnival and discussing their relationship. They get cotton candy from a vendor who has a crush on Warren. Then the couple talks about their relationship some more, and they go off to ride the Ferris Wheel. The ride jams, they talk about their relationship some more, and Archangel flies off carrying Psylocke. While flying, they talk some more and determine that they really care about each other. After reading the letter, Brian feels inspired and flies off, leaving his boat behind for some reason.

How It Was: This is a pretty big character piece for the Beast and Mr. Sinister; Jean’s around but she doesn’t get as much characterization to work with. Beast is presented with all of his personality and humor intact, and it’s nice to see him get the spotlight since over in the main titles he hasn’t had a lot to do other than work on the Legacy Virus.

The real surprise of the issue is the attempt to turn Sinister into a sympathetic character. It’s a decent attempt, but it’s hard to empathize with a guy that locks a woman in a room, experiments and degrades her for weeks, sets her free, and calls it love. It works if you look at it as exploring Sinister’s inability to express love and emotion, but Faye’s admission of love really makes her look weak and pathetic; sure it could be written off as Stockholm Syndrome, but Faye would have come off as a stronger character if she stood up to her abuser instead. And it’s really difficult to believe that the Beast would put his hand on Sinister’s shoulder as a sign of understanding, given all of the ways that Sinister has manipulated and threatened his friends over the years.

The other anomaly to this story is the presence of Genesis, Cable’s son. The reasoning behind his attack is pretty faulty, and the story seems to present Sinister as more powerful than him, so I can’t understand why Sinister doesn’t just kill him at the end. The end is silly with Genesis essentially apologizing for wasting everyone’s time and teleporting away. Plus Genesis brings the Dark Riders with him, one of the worst super villain groups ever; so bad in fact that they disappear midway through the story so that the Beast can fight some generic, but visually interesting monsters instead.

The art is really the star here. Leon’s dark, almost scratchy style works incredibly well for the gothic interiors and horror movie tone of the flashbacks, while Dodson’s smooth, clean style works fantastic with the scenes of Jean and Beast having fun and the flashy super hero battles.

If you couldn’t tell from my synopsis of the back-up story, it’s terrible…truly terrible…possibly the worst thing that Scott Lobdell has ever written. It’s good that Lobdell is keeping up with his vow to play the couple completely straight and realistic, but this is a little too realistic in that it is as boring as listening to two people talk about their relationship in real life. Plus there are so many pointless moments that serve to slow that story down even more, like the cotton candy girl with a crush on Warren or the postmaster who loses Brian’s letter. Worst of all is probably the portrayal of Brian Braddock as an apathetic loser, who basically has lost the will to live until he reads a letter about the boring, mundane happenings of his sister and her relationship. It’s hard to see what he finds so invigorating about this story whatsoever. So, this leaves us with an average main story and a terribly below average back-up all in one.

C+

X-Men: Prime

X-Men Prime
Writing: Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza
Art: I’m not writing seven names in here. Look it up somewhere else.

What Went Down: It’s been two weeks since the Legion Quest storyline. Jean is in the woods searching for Wolverine. Wolverine is staying in the woods partly because he broke his promise to the X-Men about not hurting Sabretooth and partly because this latest fight has unleashed more of his feral nature, and he’s having trouble controlling it.

In the mansion, Bishop is discussing recent nightmares that he’s been having; he doesn’t know that they are a side effect of the Age of Apocalypse storyline.

A man named Dennis, whose mutation is beginning to surface, is trying to get to the Xavier Institute in hopes of finding the X-Men. He stops at a diner to get some food.

In a newsroom, a man named Clay asks Beast’s girlfriend Trish Tilby if she’s sure she wants to air a story about the Legacy Virus.

At a damn in Wyoming, Forge is leading X-Factor on a mission that involves disarming a bomb and capturing the villain Mystique. Mystique is about to escape, but a mystery person, who I think is supposed to be Onslaught, attacks her.

Cyclops and Beast are making food when Bishop has a flashback to the A of A. Since Cyclops and Beast were both villains in that reality, Bishop attacks them, but then he realizes his mistake.

Inside the diner, Dennis gets nervous about the other customers possibly discovering he’s a mutant. Also, a woman named Marrow kills a homeless man. She announces that she is a former Morlock, and that she is lighting a candle to contact the very first of her people.

Back at the mansion, we learn that Gambit is in a coma after kissing Rogue during the crystal event. This also seems to have had an effect on Rogue since she’s run off on a road trip with Iceman. In Florida, she dances with a bunch of guys, but Iceman interrupts when he feels that they are getting too close to touching Rogue.

At that moment, Trish Tilby goes on air and breaks the story of the Legacy Virus and the fact that it has spread to a normal human, Moira Mactaggert. We get some response scenes from the Gen X kids, Senator Kelly, and Moira and Rory Campbell.

The customers in the diner became very agitated by the story, so Dennis decides to leave; the customers take note and decide to follow him because he might be a sick mutant.

The X-Men try to comfort Beast, but he is very distraught that his girlfriend has sold them out. Professor X tells Cyclops to contact Cable, but he is interrupted by a huge psychic event that affects both him and Psylocke. This event turns out to be the arrival of Nate Grey from the Age of the Apocalypse universe.

In England, a villain named Emplates visits a woman named Gayle Edgerton. He asks her about Chamber from Generation X. In New York, Dennis is running, but the mob of angry humans catches up to him. Dennis accidentally turns into a lizard person, which scares the mob into attacking him.

Professor X feels this attack, but he cannot pinpoint where it is coming from due to all the interference from Nate Grey’s arrival. Apparently X-Force has moved into Arcade’s headquarters, Murderworld. They are busy training when a self-destruct sequence activates, forcing the team to flee.

In the X-Factor storyline, Mystique tries to impersonate Val Cooper, but Forge figures out the ruse. The team is about to leave when Havok explodes.

In Genosha, Excalibur is searching for information about mutate acceleration with the first mutate ever. The Sugar Man is observing them, and he activates a device that incinerates the mutate. Sugar Man also announces that he has existed in our time for twenty years now.

Up in space, Colossus is leading a group of Acolytes to inspect a piece of space debris that unbeknownst to them turns out to be the frozen remains of Holocaust. Marrow signals the first Morlock, who turns out to be the Dark Beast from the AOA.

Xavier and Storm are trying to save Dennis, but they can’t find him. Because of his telepathy, Xavier can feel every injury Dennis receives. The X-Men find him, but they’re too late; Dennis is dead. Xavier gives a sad speech to end the issue.

How It Was: Presenting X-Men Prime: either because we’re back in the prime Marvel Universe, or because the X-Men are only divisible by one and themselves. Bad math jokes aside, this issue is pretty important because it sets the direction of the X-books for months and months to come. Well…at least for half of them. The rest of the scenes are basically filler to pad out the comic, since there are no ads, although the central X-Men storyline is solid and does a good job with the central themes of the book.

Since we’ve already established that the Legacy Virus is a blatant metaphor for the AIDS epidemic, the writers choose to center the book on the consequences of people learning about it. The fear, the hysteria, the unjustified hatred of people who have no control over their condition: this issue handles them all pretty well. And even though Dennis is a pretty boring, generic guy, the scene where Xavier feels every bruise and broken bone does build tension, empathy, and sympathy. The scene is very jarring in how it basically mirrors very real world current events where youths were beaten to death for being homosexuals. It’s a powerful moment that feels as relevant today as it did a decade ago, and I’m impressed that the writers were brave enough to not let the X-Men save the victim to emphasize the seriousness of prejudice.

Unfortunately, teasers for all of the other X-book storylines keep sporadically interrupting the main story. The other stories range in quality, but the major problem is that most of them don’t tie into the main story in any important or thematic way; they’re just shoved into random parts of the book. As for what we get, well there’s one page of Generation X sitting on the couch and two more pages that introduce a new villain, so completely unnecessary. X-Force’s new headquarters blows up, so they’re “exciting” new direction involves moving into the X-mansion with the X-Men for a while…yawn. However, X-Factor and Excalibur’s scenes seem to be very significant and do a good job of making the reader possibly want to buy those books.

As for the effects of the Age of Apocalypse, the characters from the reality are seemingly slipped into continuity in the most convenient and contrived ways possible. Sugar Man has actually been in the Marvel U for twenty years? What the heck was he doing that he’s chosen right after the crossover he debuted in to make his move. Having Dark Beast as the retroactive founder of the Morlocks is kind of interesting, but nothing is ever really done with this.

The art is a mess here. The scenes with the main X-Men are pretty good, but this definitely wasn’t Bryan Hitch’s best work, a lot of characters have noses that are too big, and Storm’s hair is the wrong color in her scenes for some reason. The worst art easily belongs to the scenes with Rogue and Iceman in the dance club; it looks like an art style better suited for a comic strip in a newspaper with all the awkward looking figures and expressions.

It’s hard to believe that there was a $5 comic in the 1990s, especially when the regular books were still being sold for $1.95. While there are some good sequences, most of the book feels tacked on and unnecessary. This definitely would have worked better if it had stuck to the PRIMEary X-Men (get it), but Marvel was trying to bring all the X-Teams closer together so more people would start buying the side books. With its gimmicky see-through lenticular cover and needless side scenes, this book represents some of the best and worst aspects of comic books in the 90s. Nevertheless, it’s worth a look if you can get it on the cheap like I did.

C+