Uncanny X-Men #310

Uncanny X-Men #310
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: John Romita Jr.

What Went Down: The opening splash involves Banshee and Cyclops responding to an intruder alert, which is postponing their journey to Cyclops’ bachelor party. They enter the Danger Room to discover a program replaying Cyclops’ past with X-Factor, specifically the scene when he had to give up his son Nathan to the Askani so he could be cured of a techno-organic virus in the future. Cyclops shuts down the Danger Room with an optic blast. It turns out that Cable is the one responsible for programming the scene to play; Cable is curious about an invitation to Cyclops’ wedding, so Cyclops asks Banshee to leave so he can have a long talk with his son.

At the party, all of the X-Men, plus Nightcrawler, are waiting for Cyclops’ arrival. Bishop doesn’t understand the purpose of marriage, leading to a lecture on relations in the future, leading to all of the heroes begging him to shut up.

Following Cable’s bodyslide signal, the X-Cutioner teleports into another part of the mansion. Meanwhile, Cable is convinced that Cyclops abandoned him. Cyclops is angered by these accusations, so he brings up another simulation that shows him breaking down and questioning his decision. Cyclops tells Cable how much he regrets not being able to raise him, and Cable tells him that it is okay because there were two people who helped bring him up. These two people turn out to be a time displaced Cyclops and Jean Grey, but this occurs after their wedding in their own mini-series. At the party, Gambit is attempting to stir up animosity against Sabretooth. Back at the mansion, Sabretooth smells an intruder from his cell, and he calls Cyclops and Cable to let them know.

It turns out that the X-Cutioner’s master plan is to kill Emma Frost because he thinks she is responsible for the deaths of the Hellions, and killing evil mutants is his gimmick. Cyclops and Cable defeat him pretty easily. Cable says he’ll attend the wedding and teleports Scott to his bachelor party.

How It Was: This month’s Uncanny dives headfirst into the quagmire that is X-continuity, and the results are pretty good. Up to this point Cable and Cyclops’ relationship hadn’t really been addressed, due to the fact that it is a weird mixture of time travel and soap opera. Lobdell finds a good balance by approaching Cable as an abandoned son and ignoring the absurd fact that Cable is now older than his father. By having Cyclops reconcile with his son, we also get some scenes that build on the original X-Factor stories that really underplayed Scott’s initial reactions.

The bachelor party scenes are okay, but really they’re just reiterating points that have already been addressed in other issues; Gambit doesn’t like Sabretooth, Archangel is somewhat jealous of Cyclops, Bishop talks too much about the future. The villain of the issue is also kind of underwhelming; X-Cutioner’s only real purpose is to remind us that Emma Frost is still around and establish that she’s been in the mansion for the past two years so Lobdell can dust her off and use her in the next couple of issues. Plus it feels like the villain could have found a stronger motivation to kill her since Emma used to be a pretty major villain in her day.

The art is not really representative of Romita’s best work. While the majority of it is good, there are some scratchy looking panels, especially the X-Factor flashback with baby Nate. His Cable sometimes has shoulders that are too wide (although he is definitely not the only artist to have this problem), and I’ve always felt that he draws Sabretooth too skinny. Consequently it’s not an amazing issue, but it does have some pretty good character moments for Cyke and Cable to recommend.

B

Uncanny X-Men #281

Uncanny X-Men #281
Writing: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, and John Byrne
Art: Whilce Portacio

What Went Down: Our story starts with the unsuspecting Reavers drinking and discussing how boring it is being cyborg villains located in the middle of the Australian Outback. Suddenly, a squad of Sentinels shows up to kill them all.

Over in New York, the White Queen, Emma Frost, has invited the Gold Squad to a party at the Hellfire Club. Traditionally, the Hellfire Club was a group of evil mutants who wanted to control the world, but after this story they go through several different concepts.

Jean Grey is uncomfortable since the last time she was at the HC, she was coerced into becoming the Dark Phoenix and almost destroyed the universe. Actually, these aren’t her memories; they are the Phoenix’s, but after the Inferno storyline Jean gained all of the memories that the Phoenix had when it was impersonating her.

Meanwhile the rest of the team is talking with members of the Hellions: a group of students taught by Emma Frost who used to fight the New Mutants a lot. Iceman is flirting with Hellion member Roulette, while Hellion member Beef gets in Colossus’s face. The Hellion Empath tells them to stop, but later stories decided he wasn’t there, even though he clearly is.

Emma Frost slams a female soldier through the door, claiming that the mystery soldier was trying to kill her. This is the reason why she asked the X-Men to come.

Next, the reader is introduced to Shinobi Shaw, son of former Hellfire leader Sebastian Shaw, and Trevor Fitzroy, a time traveler from the future. Shinobi is in a pool surrounded by beautiful men and women to demonstrate how spoiled he is. They are discussing the Upstarts: a team of people competing for a prize by killing mutants to score points. Fitzroy is trying to become a member of the Upstarts after killing the Reavers (even though they were cyborgs, not mutants); Shinobi is in the lead because he allegedly killed his father, although Sebastian gets better. Fitzroy threatens Shaw and then leaves to go to the Hellfire Club.

In the meantime, Emma is using her powers to torture the assassin when Storm demands that she stop. This starts a battle between the Gold Team and the Hellions. Jean gets angry and stops them all with her powers, insisting that they should be helping each other. Fitzroy appears and kills the Hellion Jetstream.

Back in Australia, Donald Pierce and Lady Deathstrike are still fighting Fitzroy’s Sentinels. These Sentinels demonstrate that they can repair themselves automatically. Deathstrike escapes when she realizes that they are only after Pierce.

Pierce goes to the mute teleporting mutant/plot device Gateway and asks to be teleported to whoever is responsible. Since Fitzroy is at the HC, that’s where he goes with Sentinels pursuing.

Back in New York, Fitzroy kills Beef, and the X-Men and Hellions attack him. Fitzroy’s armor protects him from telepathy and grants him super strength and invisibility. We learn later that his mutant power is to absorb people’s life force to power portals between time and space.

The X-Men have Fitzroy under control until Pierce and the Sentinels pop in. Pierce gets killed, but he also comes back later, and the White Queen apparently gets killed, although she is actually just in a coma. The Sentinels also apparently kill Tarot, but she shows up in the next issue to get killed again by Fitzroy. Finally Jean Grey also apparently gets killed, but we all know that isn’t going to stick.  Please note the emphasis on apparently in all of these cases.

The issue ends with Senator Kelly storming into the completely decimated club and demanding that the X-Men be held accountable for endangering people; they respond by showing Jean’s apparent corpse, but she isn’t really dead, I promise.

How It Was: Ah, finally an adventure starring the Gold Team. Although it features arguably the less interesting of the two squads, there are still a lot of major developments with this issue—namely the deaths of a whole lot of characters. Of course these are comic book deaths, so most of them are currently alive and kicking again, but at the time this felt pretty significant. Unfortunately, the concept of the Upstarts is pretty limited since their whole purpose is to kill mutants for points, and you can’t have major characters dying every other issue. It’s also difficult to get worked up about the Upstarts themselves, since the concept kind of fizzles after the introduction of the Legacy Virus, when creators just decided to end the concept over in X-Force and the New Warriors. So there is no closure to this storyline to be had in the pages of X-Men. Fitzroy might also be another question mark for present fans, but he was a major bad guy at the time and has a lot to do with Bishop’s origin.

The characterization is hit or miss. I really like Jean’s foreboding feelings about returning to the Hellfire Club since they act as a good connection to her history and also act as foreshadowing for her eventual “death” at the end of the issue. The rest of the team is kind of bland; the Gold Team never had the chemistry or humor that the Blue Squad did, although Iceman tries his darndest. Some of the dialogue is just out of place; why does Storm feel it is necessary to remark that Fitzroy’s powers are similar to the Super Skrull when there is absolutely no connection between the two characters? Plus once the Hellions start dropping, nobody acts concerned other than Emma; Iceman even cracks some inappropriate jokes which further deter the seriousness that should be present, but isn’t. These are characters that fans have known for a very long time, and one could argue that their deaths aren’t allowed enough impact. Also, the ending is horribly flubbed, but more on that next issue.

B-