Uncanny X-Men #355

Uncanny X-Men #355
Writing: Steve Seagle

Art: Chris Bachalo

What Went Down:  We start with a clever bookend involving the answering machine at the Xavier Institute.  We hear messages of Nightcrawler saying hi, department of education inspector Margaret Stone talking about a representative staying at the facilities, and Jean wanting to alert the group about their adventures in #352. 

Meanwhile, Wolverine has decided to chain Sauron up in a burlap blanket and drive him on his motorcycle to the authorities.  Sauron tries to get out of it, mentioning their time together in the Savage Land, but a low-flying aircraft interrupts them. 

In Manhattan, Rogue is meeting with Dr. Agee, a scientist who says he has a cure for being a mutant.  Rogue doesn’t fully trust him, as shown by her clever alias of Ms. Smith, but she does allow him to take a DNA sample. 

Wolverine continues riding until he is confronted by Alpha Flight--Canada’s premier super team. Alpha Flight has been tasked by the Canadian government to bring in Wolverine for killing their teammate Madison Jeffries; unknown to the team, their bosses at Department H are brainwashing them and faked the footage of Jeffries being murdered.  Wolverine goes through all the team members to introduce them to new readers, then nonchalantly ignores them and drives off.

All the way in Alaska, Jean is outside crying in her Phoenix uniform; she has also summoned a pretty large and fiery Phoenix effect.  Cyclops apologizes for yelling at her and tries to make her understand that he has a lot of bad memories associated with the Phoenix uniform.  Jean insists that she is claiming the Phoenix identity to empower herself and overcome the ghosts of Dark Phoenix and Madelyne Pryor

Believing he has convinced Alpha Flight not to pursue him, Wolverine is surprised when the team attacks.  AF members Murmur and Sasquatch catch Sauron making a run for it and stop him.  Rogue just happens to be flying home from Dr. Agee’s and spots Wolverine fighting all of Alpha Flight.  She flies off to get more X-Men. 

Wolverine holds his own against the team.  During the fight, Alpha Flight is shocked to notice that Wolverine has bone claws because Department H told them they were tracking his adamantium signature.  Wolverine points out that James and Heather Hudson have both examined him since he lost the metal skeleton, so they should already know his bones and claws aren’t metal anymore.  They seem to be coming to a consensus when Sasquatch attacks.

The X-Men show up to save Wolverine.  During the fight, Cannonball and Flight member Flex stop to discuss what the fight is all about.  At the same time Maggott gets beaten up (again) and Murmur tries reading his mind, but this causes her to scream.  Cannonball yells for everyone to stop fighting, and he and Flex explain that Wolverine and the X-Men were captives of Operation Zero Tolerance at the time the murder was supposed to have taken place.  Alpha Flight starts to realize that they are being manipulated.  Wolverine and Storm offer to help the team if they need it.  Wolverine also notes that Sauron has disappeared.

The issue ends with Cyclops leaving a message on the machine about his concerns for Jean.

How It Was:  Real quick to get out of the way…there is a minor continuity issue with this story.  It’s obviously written to take place right after Uncanny #354, with Rogue leaving to the Agee Institute and Scott and Jean fighting.  However, X-Men #73 has to take place in between these two issues because Joseph is there in #354, but gone in this issue.  You can write it off as Rogue making two trips, but it’s clear that this is her first meeting with Agee and the writer intended for this to be a continuous story.

Anyways, this is a tried-and-true example of a writer trying to leverage the popularity of a successful comic to boost the sales of a flagging one.  Steven Seagle was the writer of both Uncanny and Alpha Flight, and at the time the X-titles were consistently #1 and #2 in comic sales monthly.  It makes sense that you’d try to expose your less popular characters in a more popular book, and the two teams did have a history together, so it wasn’t totally out of the blue.

Just for some background, Seagle’s Alpha Flight involved a new team that was being manipulated by their handlers at Department H; any time the team would start to catch on, they’d be subdued and brainwashed to forget.  So we have our premise, where Department H wants Wolverine, so they come up with a false reason to compel Alpha Flight to action.

As an introduction to Alpha Flight from an X-Men point of view, it’s not very strong.  None of the characters really get to shine, Radius is a jerk, Flex is a wimp, and the other characters aren’t very well defined personality-wise.  The twist of Wolverine’s bones not being metal makes no sense since the team is obviously tracking him somehow, so why would their shady manipulators choose to create a lie that would be so quickly found out?  Wolverine hasn’t had metal claws or bones for almost five years at this point.  On the other hand, it doesn’t really make sense that Wolverine would take Sauron out on his bike by himself.  Can’t he just call the authorities and have Sauron taken away?

So the plot’s not strong, but that doesn’t matter because we all know the real purpose for this issue is some hot hero-on-hero action.  So how does it rate as a big, dumb fight scene?  Well…not spectacular.  The scenes with Wolverine fighting Alpha Flight are pretty fun, but once the other X-Men show up it soon devolves.  Storm takes out Vindicator with one lightning bolt, and the X-Men are able to pretty much dominate even though they’re outnumbered eight to five.  Except for Maggott, who once again gets taken out.  Even worse, the story struggles to find something to do with Sauron, but winds up just having him disappear.  Still, I will admit that I do have a soft spot for Alpha on X fights, even if this isn’t the best example of one.

The art is pretty good, although sometimes Bachalo’s distorted style looks off.  Dr. Agee’s head is just way too big, and Puck and Wolverine don’t seem to be proportioned right.  As a marketing ploy, I can’t say that this was too successful, as I can’t really see this inspiring too many people to pick up Alpha Flight.  There was even a tie-in issue to this story that was so poorly advertised that I, the X-enthusiast, didn’t pick it up until years later because I was unaware of its existence.  There’s a lot of weird plot mechanics going on with this one, but it is an amusing distraction as a big, dumb fight.

C+