X-Men #123-#124: that was your first mistake

The last couple of pages of X-Men #122 sets up our threat for #123. Tom Cassidy has grown tired of his and Juggernaut's own inability to kill the X-Men and have decided to hire a specialist assassin called Arcade.

This is their first mistake. Well, like, their twentieth or something. Arcade is a notoriously useless assassin, even by the standards of the Marvel Universe, and I detest the character with an unrivalled ferocity. Arcade's plan is to capture the X-Men and rather than killing them place them into his "Murderworld", a converted building or something filled with a number of deadly traps which shall surely kill them. However, the X-Men unite and use teamwork to defeat the traps, going after Arcade, who just manages to escape.

I wrote that paragraph before I read the story, because you don't actually need to read an Arcade story to know what happens in it. Somehow I eventually forced myself to read it anyway, just for the sake of completeness, and would you believe it, I'm not wrong. I was rewarded by one mildly redeeming feature - the Soviet-themed hero that Arcade brainwashes Colossus into being: "The Proletarian - workers' hero of the Soviet Union" - complete with boiler suit bearing a hammer and sickle and picture of Lenin - who forms the cover of #125.

Meanwhile, Logan has dinner with Mariko in New York and then returns her to the Japanese embassy. Something is stirring in the Wolverine. The phone is now working - we know that because Spider-Man calls to warn them about Arcade, but Cyclops still doesn't appear to have picked up the phone to call Moira, the twit. This is very soapy generic superhero stuff, and I hope it picks up again soon. It's been ages since we had anything strictly mutant - and we haven't had a new mutant ally since the relaunch.