X-Men #97: I'm Erik the Red, and so is my wife

X-Men #97 is a funny one.

Xavier's been having these dreams about fighting spaceships, it seems, and he's a bit worried if he tells his team they'll laugh at him. (This is a man who, you will remember, has already foiled at least two alien invasions: Lucifer's people, whoever they were, and the Z'Nox). He's able to tell Moira though, and you get a sense they have a real closeness as friends. He decides he needs a holiday.

At JFK Airport (or rather, Kennedy Airport, as they keep calling it) - the X-Men - that is Scott, Ororo, Kurt, Peter and Jean - are seeing the Professor off. Wolverine, Sean and Moira are back at the mansion - Wolverine doing the whole loner thing, and Sean and Moira possibly having the "coffee" that Sean had suggested in #96. There's no mention of the others, but at this point Hank was with the Avengers and Bobby and Warren have co-founded the Champions.

Alex and Lorna also turn up, at the last moment, having been mind-controlled by someone calling himself Erik the Red. (Apparently they've become a couple some time since we've last seen them, which is a bit of a surprise because I'd assumed they hooked up in the hiatus.) This new power - who has adopted Scott's cover identity from #49-#52, possibly just to mess with him - although god knows how he knew - is clearly intent on destroying Professor Xavier's plane, but they manage to stop him in time, without, unfortunately, breaking Alex and Lorna's conditioning. During this incident, Lorna gets a power-up - the ability to fly, and is bestowed with the name "Polaris" - meaning they are two for two in codenames not actually picked by themselves. Mind, Xavier picks most of the other ones, so it's not exactly as if mutant name selection is some kind of rite of passage.

Actually, the most surprising thing in this issue for me was nothing to do with the X-Men at all - it's that it has a Boeing 747 in there. It's been 36 years since the issue was published, and the 747 is still the default large airliner in fiction, and will be for a couple of decades more. That's longevity for you.