X-Men #25-#26: on the other hand, they save some orphans

X-Men #25-#26 is the first X-Men story I have a real problem with. Like the previous issue, it is inessential, with X-Men taking the role of generic superheroes fighting a menace completely unrelated to mutantkind. Jean is still gone from the team - she appears briefly, used to research the main plot. In her absence, the Jean/Scott/Warren triangle does see a bit of development, with Warren and Scott actually coming to conflict, and Scott resolving to do something about it.

But the real problem is the primary story, which features a GuatemalanSan Rican explorer by the name of "El Tigre" finding a pendant which gives him mind-control powers. He travels to New York to find the other part of his pendant, and with his lazily-stereotyped minions (one of whom blows poison darts!) takes down the X-Men one by one. When he unites the two parts of the pendant he becomes the god Kukulkan, and goes all supervillain. I was about to be all sarcastic about how he was the first villain that X-Men has introduced that it has never used again. But then I looked it up and it turns out he was in some issues of Ka-Zar, which I think says more than I could manage.

Continuity notes

First appearance of Le Tigre. Mimic re-appears as a student at Metro College.