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

X-Men #37

X-Men #37
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: The next generation of mutants start out this issue with Clarice getting captured by Harvest and the Phalanx. Clarice uses her power to escape, and Monet punches the crap out of the bad guys. Too bad for our heroes that the bad guys just reform afterwards.

In the water below the boat, Banshee and Everett climb up the anchor chain to rescue the children. Inside the boat, Emma and Jubilee have somehow found their way inside, where they fight Phalanx infected rats and discuss Jubilee’s fears about her powers.

When all seems lost for the young mutants, they are saved in the nick of time by …Sabretooth? Yes Sabretooth takes the time to track down the Phalanx base and help rescue the children. Banshee and Everett join in, and together they annihilate Harvest for the second time.

Sabretooth refuses to explain how or why he came back to save the children. The heroes discuss how best to help Paige, who has been infected by the Phalanx, when Sabretooth takes it upon himself to tear her skin off. Luckily, her mutant power turns out to be the ability to shed her top layer of skin to reveal a different material, in this case metal skin. Harvest then returns for a third time to try to kill everyone.

As Emma tries to escape with the kids, they discover the bodies of some people and a dog absorbed by the Phalanx. This inspires Clarice to stop running and stand up to Harvest. Using her powers she tears Harvest apart, but for some reason she gets caught in the effect herself. So Clarice dies and the X-Men’s victory comes at the tragic cost of a character that was two issues old.

How It Was: Nicieza sets up a climactic battle to end the crossover, and it succeeds in feeling like a final, brutal story ending fight. The problem is that the final baddie is too powerful, and it makes for an uneven final chapter. The Phalanx, and Harvest in particular, are all shallow characters with little motivation or personality. They’re supposed to be unbeatable, which is good for setting up adversity for the heroes, but they’re so unbeatable that the fight doesn’t make sense. There is a difference between creating a novel challenge for the heroes and having the bad guy come back over and over again with no logic or reason behind it. And why does Clarice have to die to defeat the bad guy?  Why can't she use her powers like she did in part 3?

The reason of course is because the writer wants to get a cheap emotional ending without having really earned it; Clarice wasn’t really developed enough to care about, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming very popular. This is mostly due to her return in Age of Apocalypse, which occurred four months after this book came out. It’s a much more successful take on the character whose only real purpose was to make the end of this story kind of sad.

Sabretooth’s return makes for an intriguing mystery of his allegiance. Unfortunately it is later forgotten, and Creed just says he was only pretending to be good even though there was no real reason behind it. The reveal of Paige’s power is well done, though.

This is an underwhelming conclusion with awful villains and some under-developed new characters. Plus there isn’t really any resolution at all to the question of where the X-Men have been taken to (that occurs in Wolverine and Cable of all places). It’s an epic finale, just not a very good epic finale.

C-

Uncanny X-Men #317

Uncanny X-Men #317
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Joe Madureira

What Went Down: Paige Guthrie wakes up to find herself a prisoner of the Phalanx, along with four other mutants: Monet, Clarice, Angelo, and Gregor. Angelo’s really negative and stretchy, Clarice cries a lot, Gregor is kind of hokey, and Monet just sits there. Paige is certain that the X-Men will come to rescue them all. Clarice points out that Paige has been infected with some kind of trans-mode virus, even though it appears on the outside of her clothes.

In San Francisco, Emma, Banshee, Jubilee, and Everett arrive at one of Emma’s luxurious town homes. Banshee lets Emma know that he doesn’t trust her and then destroys a number of targeting devices outside the house. Inside the absurdly large living area, Emma shows Banshee their next objective: a SHIELD safehouse in the San Francisco area.

Back in the Phalanx prison, Angelo tries to cheer Paige up. A member of the Phalanx named Harvest visits the captives and threatens all of them. Clarice uses her powers of teleportation to start to pull Harvest apart, but Gregor stops her because he is worried that she might be hurt. Harvest teleports away.

On what appears to be the Golden Gate Bridge, Jubilee talks with Everett about how worthless she feels for not being more adept with her powers, especially after Everett used them so effectively last issue. She is also fed up with all of the suffering that comes with the role of X-Man, even though she loves everyone on the team.

At the SHIELD base, Emma uses her powers to hide them from sight, while Banshee uses his powers to… errr hide them from the cameras somehow. In the prison, Monet takes the time to actually talk. She explains that she has manipulated her clothes, which are techno organic, into a weapon that can hide them from detection. She also kills Gregor because he was really a Phalanx spy.

Emma and Banshee find a techno organic reading using the SHIELD computers, but the agents discover them because Emma’s powers didn’t hide the rain puddles they brought in with them. Emma threatens the agents, but Banshee knocks them out first. Emma claims she was bluffing.

Monet uses her super strength to bust a hole in the prison and escape. Paige suggests that she should stay behind because she is infected, but Monet forces her to come with them. The group discovers that they are in the middle of the ocean on a giant boat.

How It Was: Alright then. We finally get a little bit of personality from the next generation of mutants. Angelo, the future Skin, is a pessimistic bastard. While most hideous characters like Beast or the Thing keep they’re regrets and sadness to themselves, Angelo is immature and allows it to taint his attitude and interactions; it actually comes off as fresh in a world of stoic comic book heroes, but it’s not necessarily fun to read. The rest of the characters aren’t nearly as interesting, but that’s okay because Lobdell ideally wants to save that development for the main Generation X series. The reveal of Gregor as a spy is well handled, although once again a little predictable due to his odd behavior.

Jubilee probably gets the most development in the brief scenes she appears in. Selling audiences on Jubilee wanting to leave the X-Men wasn’t an easy mandate, but I think Lobdell makes a compelling argument here. It is strange that the two characters go all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge to have their conversation, but oh well; meanwhile, Everett continues to be quiet and boring.

The plotline with Emma and Sean infiltrating SHIELD seems like a needless detour to pad out the story. If Emma has enough technology to find a top secret facility, why can’t she find the Phalanx ship as well? Shouldn’t they tell SHIELD about the Phalanx? And can’t Banshee just ask for their help, since they’re obviously aware of who is?

The art is pretty good, but for some reason Joe Mad has made Everett and Gregor’s bodies really over muscled. Everett’s girth might be a side effect of absorbing Sabretooth’s powers, but it still looks really weird. The layout of Emma’s home and the effects of Clarice’s powers on Harvest serve as stand out moments for the art. The spotlight on the young mutants isn’t great, and it leads to some stalling on the part of the heroes outside.

C+