Meanwhile, Selene goes to her Hellfire Club buddies, who soon agree that it should be the policy of that club that this action should be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet UnionPhoenix.
The X-Men, with the help of Caliban, trace Rachel to Central Park, where she's been able to use her TK to keep the bleeding in check, but is in a bad way. This is of course the best possible time for the Hellfire Club to find her. A general fight emerges, only ceasing when Nimrod arrives, who wants to kill all mutants, which after a bit of three-way causes a truce between the two factions of mutants.
During all this, Rachel has slipped away quietly, to Spiral's "Body Shoppe" (now actually spelt like that), in hope of healing. This is a rather different and more mystical Body Shoppe to the cyberpunk one which we saw in #205, and I think I needed to have read the Longshot miniseries for this to have made any sense. Oh well.
After the battle's done Tessa offers the X-Men sanctuary at the Hellfire Club for a brief while. I think this (or rather, her battle analysis earlier in the arc) is the first clear indication we get that Tessa is actually important. First appearance: Sage?
I think I needed to have read the Longshot miniseries for this to have made any sense.
ReplyDeleteEh, I've read it, and it only adds a marginal amount of sense to things (the Longshot mini is kinda batshit crazy).
What you really need to read for Rachel's visit to the Body Shoppe to make sense is the Phoenix limited series Claremont was going to write that would detail what happened to her after disappearing into the Body Shoppe in these issues.
Unfortunately, that series slipped through the cracks and was never written/published, so this sequence of events makes sense to no one (except maybe Claremont), and Rachel goes from entering the Body Shoppe here to popping out of it in the one shot that sets up Excalibur.
I picked up that Excalibur one-shot today, as it happens. It's good to know that, as from what you say I might have tried fruitlessly looking for the material between the two. TBH it looks like Claremont just got bored with Rachel - especially since he wasn't allowed to use Scott any more - and decided to have Psylocke as team telepath instead.
Delete"Longshot mini is kinda batshit crazy)."
ReplyDeleteYeah, but it's GREAT batshit crazy. If anything I wish Claremont never got a hand on the Mojo/Longshot mythology since he devolved what was at first genuinely menacing into a joke concept.