X-Men Unlimited #11

X-Men Unlimited #11

Writing: Scott Lobdell and Terry Kavagh

Art: Steve Epting and Mark Millar??

This takes place after X-Men #53.  Go back to Uncanny #334.

What Went Down:  Melody Watkins (Rogue’s landlady from X-Men #52) is at the local Humanity’s Last Stand headquarters to report Rogue as a potential threat to her son.  Unbeknownst to her, Rogue is enjoying her life as a Hollywood Café waitress, free of the frustrations of superheroing.  On her drive home from work, she notices a construction crew that has been working for four nights and hasn’t gotten a lot of work done. 

Once home, Melody confronts Rogue to confess that she turned Rogue into Humanity’s Last Stand, saying she was worried about her son and the Legacy Virus.  This leads to an attack by soldiers in power armor who try to capture Rogue.  Rogue beats them all, but she stops when she sees Bastion holding Melody’s son Stevie as a hostage.  Rogue takes a laser blast to save Melody.

At Humanity’s Last Stand’s compound, a shadowy figure named Mr. Trask tells Bastion that Rogue can’t stay.  Bastion explains his plot to Rogue: he is going to burn down the compound, murder her and all the occupants, then blame the deaths of all the humans on Rogue.  This will then stir up anti-mutant hysteria.

Before the soldiers can carry out Bastion’s plan, one of them starts using super powers to defeat the others and free Rogue.  Bastion runs off while Joseph introduces himself to Rogue.  He explains that after the page in X-Men #53, he joined Humanity’s Last Stand to go undercover and hopefully run into the X-Men.  Rogue, thinking this is regular Magneto, attacks Joseph.  Joseph manages to convince Rogue of his sincerity, and the two team up to save all the compound dwellers from being murdered by soldiers.  Rogue and Joseph defeat the soldiers, but the civilians train weapons on them, telling them to leave.  Joseph demonstrates that he could kill the people if he wanted to before lecturing them on prejudice and flying off. 

After flying for a while, Joseph asks Rogue about his past as Magneto.  Rogue tells him she’d rather wait until they’re around the other X-Men, and Joseph explains how Sister Maria told him about the X-Men.  Their conversation is interrupted by an attack helicopter with Trask on board.  Joseph uses his powers to catch two missiles, but instead of killing the humans, he just detonates the missiles and uses the explosion to cover their retreat.  Rogue and Joseph return to her apartment to get her car.  Melody apologizes, and Rogue and Stevie say goodbye. 

How It Was:  Some stories like to surprise you with plot turns and revelations that make a reader stand up and take notice.  While there is one pretty big surprise in the plot, this story still reads like a predictable, by the numbers story; you pretty much know how it’s going to end five pages in.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing—having one of the X-Men become fed up with the lifestyle after the previous months of hardship is a legitimately interesting direction to go.  Like most of these Unlimited stories, it’s just unfortunate that Rogue’s taste of everyday living is all but forgotten as soon as she returns to the X-books.  Lobdell sets up and explores a simple, if tragic, idea that the X-Man who can’t touch would crave a normal life more than others by way of the fact that she can never really have one. 

What really works in this story is that Rogue actually succeeds at her normal life, and it’s prejudice and persecution, i.e. other people’s issues with her, that destroy what she’s built.  Lobdell wisely avoids bringing up Gambit too much, choosing instead to deal with Rogue’s personality—she is outgoing and desires to be around people, but she can never get too close.  He also tries to make Rogue’s landlady Melody come off as sympathetic, constantly bringing up her concerns for her son, but really she just comes off as stupid and unlikable; she’s going to report her friend to this group, and they’re going to “take care of her” somehow—frankly I’m glad when her house gets destroyed.

While Humanity’s Last Stand is the same generic bigoted human group the X-Men always come across (this one situated as a survivalist militia), I must admit that I do love the designs for their power armor.  And the fight with Rogue is well done.  The one twist of the story (ruined by the cover) is that Joseph has actually joined the racist organization that persecutes mutants.  His idea to infiltrate the group to learn about the X-Men seems farfetched, but if you can ignore the huge coincidence, it’s an efficient enough means of getting them to meet. 

What really feels odd is that once Rogue and Joseph fight each other, stop the soldiers from killing everyone, and have the civilians turn on them; it feels like the story is over.  Unfortunately, due to the format of the book, the story has to keep going, so we see Rogue refuse to tell Joseph anything and an anticlimactic show down between the Master of Magnetism and a metal helicopter.  The end does have a nice moment with Melody’s son and Rogue, but it feels like it would’ve meant more right after they were turned away by the humans they helped saved.  This issue works for Rogue fans, and it goes through all the beats Joseph needed to after his previous appearance to line him up to join the X-Men. 

X-Fans Only

Uncanny X-Men Annual '97

Uncanny X-Men Annual ‘97
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

Uncanny X-Men '95 Annual

Uncanny X-Men ‘95
Writing: Terry Kavanagh
Art: Bryan Hitch

What Went Down: Cannonball stops by the Massachusetts Academy, interrupting a game of basketball between the members of Generation X. There’s some tension between Sam and Emma since she used to lead the New Mutants’ old enemies, the Hellions. Sam’s sister Husk tackles him, but it’s just for fun. Sam warns Paige about Emma, and then says that they have family business to take care of.

Sam and Paige’s sister Joelle is staying with mutant named Preacher, although nobody knows he’s a mutant. His power causes him to paint scenes of different events and the future, so lately he has been painting scenes from the Age of Apocalypse. We learn that Joelle and Preacher are members of Humanity’s Last Stand, a survivalist compound dedicated to preserving humanity.

Bishop, Storm, and Wolverine go with the Guthries for their visit home. Because they live in Kentucky, Sam’s mother has about seven or eight children. The oldest of the kids at home, Josh, is rather abrupt with X-Men, and Mrs. Guthrie blames herself for all her kids feeling trapped. She tells the X-Men about the pro-human cult, but Cannonball insists that he can take care of it himself.

Cannonball and Husk go to a Last Stand rally, which basically blames mutants for being an abomination in God’s eyes. Preacher is brought up to explain his visions as a cautionary tale of the dangerous future that mutants might bring. A mystery person sends a group of armored robots to stop Cannonball and Husk.

Sam and Paige find Joelle and learn that she is essentially acting out for attention. Paige follows the leader of the group, while Cannonball is attacked by the armored figures. He gets beat up, but manages to fly away. At the same time, Paige learns that the HLS is run by a member of the Trask family, and that he has manipulated the truth about Preacher’s visions to fit his needs.

Cannonball crashes in front of the Guthrie farm and asks for help from the other X-Men. A member of the Stand named Garibaldi ambushes Husk, and she is captured. Cannonball remembers hearing the Trask name while he was down, so the X-Men set off to rescue his sisters. Meanwhile Preacher tells Joelle that they need to escape after he sees members beating up Paige. Cannonball rescues her, but they are ambushed by more armored soldiers. Bishop finds Joelle and Preacher, but even more soldiers attack him.

Wolverine and Storm assist the Guthrie siblings, and Wolverine lets us know that they are fighting Nimrod technology. Since they’re only robots, Bishop creates a cave-in that traps the robots right as his friends escape. Girabaldi tells the X-Men to leave because they don’t have a legal right to be there, but they are content with knowing that they have uncovered the truth.

The X-Men say goodbye and Bishop asks about the boy Joelle was with. We then see a panel of Preacher painting a portrait of Joelle somewhere else.

How It Was: Wow, out of the last twelve reviews, half of them have been double-sized; my brain can’t take much more of this. Anywho, this is another of Marvel’s 1995 annuals, this one written by Terry Kavanagh. One of the first things to stand out is that this writer knows how to write Cannonball. He’s confident, competent, and not afraid to confront any of the “senior” X-Men. He has no trouble standing up to Emma Frost or telling Storm and Wolverine that he doesn’t want their help. This, my friends, is the Sam Guthrie we all know and love.

It’s unfortunate that Marvel feels the need to portray people who live in rural areas as bumpkins that spit out umpteen amounts of children, but that precedent was established well before Kavanagh got here. And while Humanity’s Last Stand is based on many real world survivalist movements, it’s disappointing to see that the members are so easily tricked into following the organization. Joelle and Preacher come off as slightly less sympathetic since they were both dumb enough to get involved with this group in the first place. And while Hitch’s art is very good, the designs for the nimrods are completely wrong, and they should be more difficult to defeat.

This is a pretty standard set up for a one-off X-Men story: rescuing someone from some form of supremacist group. This particular one seems to focus on hatred through religion, but without any of the articulate spiritual or political views that past antagonists like William Stryker or Robert Kelly have presented in the past. Plus, to my knowledge, we never actually meet the mystery Trask member who is in charge of the organization. This is competent, but nothing outstanding, along with some awesome Bryan Hitch art.

C