Tuesday 18 September 2012

X-Men #120-#121: Blame Canada

X-Men #120 has the X-Men still in Japan, and catching a plane (with Misty and Colleen) back to the United States. Scott and Colleen have a long conversation, but somehow the topic of Jean never comes up?

The flight gets diverted to Calgary, where they are met by James Hudson, who has been authorised by Pierre Trudeau to bring Wolverine in. There is a big fight between the X-Men and the newly formed Alpha Flight (Hudson with Northstar, Shaman, Snow-Bird, Sasquatch and Aurora). Wolverine eventually agrees to be taken in, but gives them the slip... so that resolves nothing, really. And so the X-Men finally get back on the plane. Are they really going to make it back to Westchester this time? What will they find there?

This is all a big joke of course. That is: Canadian government acting unethically by running secret unethical operations on human subjects and them forcing them to remain in service is a hilarious concept. Like they would. Over the decades this has been taken so seriously and such a mythology has been built around it, that it's easy to ignore its inherent absurdity and that it's just a short throwaway gag by Wein and Cockrum (embellished, of course, by Claremont and Byrne).

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