X-Men #125-#128: Proteus

X-Men #125 finally has Scott discover that Jean is alive, after very nearly a publishing year! This happens because, get this, Beast sneaks in to the mansion to check up on things, and is caught. So, apparently neither Beast's continued membership of the Avengers nor the X-Men reforming again made their mutual notice. Cyclops then decides to call Moira, and take a trip to Scotland in the newly-fixed Blackbird.

The proto-Muir Island X-Men are dealing with the escaped "Mutant X" (first hinted at in #104) - or "Proteus" as he calls himself - who it is dramatically revealed is Moira's son. He's killed, and will kill again - he burns up host bodies pretty quickly. The X-Men track him, worried he's going to go to a major city for noms. Moira takes aim and starts shooting, but is stopped by Cyclops before she can get the kill shot. Instead, he escapes and kills more people. Moira visits her husband Joe MacTaggert (er, I wonder if she's told Sean that she's not really a widow after all. Or about that Nobel Prize she's been keeping quiet. For that matter, how did Xavier manage to keep Moira a secret from the O5 all that time? I mean, I like the idea of Xavier having peers (the closest he got in the original run was I suppose Lykos!), but could this not have been done in a way that didn't imply such skullduggery). Joe is Proteus's father but doesn't know about it, and Moira retains just enough concern about her ex-husband - despite clear hints at it having been an abusive relationship - that she's prepared to warn him. Too late though, Proteus possesses Joe, and takes Moira hostage. Colossus takes him down in the end.

The reunion of Scott and Jean is slightly messed up by this Jason Wyngarde guy popping up again and inserting himself into her waking dreams. Carefully watching Wolverine's powers, I see that Scott uses his optic blasts to decelerate a falling Wolverine. These days he'd just let him hit the ground and heal.

Issue #125 is notable also for its little cutway to Magneto, wherein he reveals he had a wife called Magda once. This is a crossover with Avengers #186, which shows what happened to Magda - she fled to Wundagore and gave birth to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Watch, then vanished again. Her disappearance is probably the biggest unexploded bomb in comics. The image of her running away from Max, aghast at his powers (in this version he wants to rule the world from day 1 - there's nothing about a mob or a kid or the secret police) only to be perfectly OK with the High Evolutionary's talking animals is kinda hilarious.

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.

X-Men #122: AT&TvX

X-Men #122 finally has the X-Men back at the mansion (which is near Salem Center, finally being named here), for the first time in what seems like ages (since #110 - over a publication year ago). They've been missing in-story for two months or more. You might expect their homecoming to be a matter of drama, that something is lurking there for them, but that cliché is skipped, and instead they are straight in with a session in the Danger Room.

Colleen and Misty are lurking around, and Scott goes on a date with Colleen, still seemingly unaware that Jean is alive and well and living in Muir Isle with his brother. Seriously, guys, TAT-7 has just been laid down. 4,000 channels. Would it kill you to use it? And you, Colleen and Misty, what on Earth are you thinking? You don't even know she's supposed to be dead, and would quickly contradict Scott if you found out. But no, Scott has to get the lines reinstalled at the mansion first (Professor Xavier cancelled the phone when he want into space), and since this was in the bad old days of AT&T that could take a while.

Meanwhile in Space, Lilandra is made Empress, and her and her consort are getting bored; and in Stornoway, Jean Grey literally bumps into a chap named Jason Wyngarde. He's up to no good, as we can tell from his thoughtbubble where he plans to make her fall in love with him and have her be owned by the "Hellfire Club", whatever that is. Logan (we can call him that now) has randomly spotted Mariko in New York. And Storm takes a trip through Harlem and is shocked to find a crack house and fails to deal with confrontation properly, before being rescued by Power Man (Luke Cage) and Misty Knight, in a fairly non-subtle Public Service Announcement (permissible under the revised CCA revision of 1971).

Oh, and we get Colossus's proper name for the first time - Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin. So, "Piotr" is a perfectly reasonable - if not preferred these days - transliteration of Пётр. Nikolaievitch would be "Николаевич", which is a patronymic name, meaning he is the "son of "Nikolai". We don't meet his father properly for ages, by which time the writers have figured out what that name implies and he is properly called Nikolai. Curiously (alongside Распутин and Романовы, which I've already complained about), Николаевич is another famous name, being the patronymic borne by the son of the last Tsar, and the first President.

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).

X-Men #119: Christmas in Japan

After being effectively taken prisoner by a Japanese ship, X-Men #119 starts with them arriving in Honshu after a six-week voyage. Yes, that's right, they didn't try and bail out. In fairness, it's nothing but Pacific Ocean between the two places, but still - six weeks incommunicado, on top of the week or more they spent in the Savage Land. Instead, they've made friends with the crew.

Agarashima (another made-up Marvel place, in case you are keeping track) is ablaze. Storm uses her powers to summon wind to hold it back (? - why not a storm)?

They decide to make for Sunfire's house, hoping he'll help them. The city has been evacuated at least, as Wolverine discovers from reading a newspaper. Yes, Wolverine can read Japanese. We've got used to this now, but it would have been a very big deal in 1979. Nowadays every Western otaku is learning Japanese. In 1979, not so much.

They quickly arrive at Sunfire's manor (I don't even know how they find it - maybe they look him up in a directory), which is happily within walking distance of the port they happened to land at. Sunfire is unimpressed and orders them arrested, only to be contradicted by Misty Knight! Scott phones home to find the mansion's phone lines disconnected. Apparently he doesn't think to call Moira in Scotland, or even the Avengers Mansion, who'll surely be worried about Beast. Misty carefully avoids telling Scott "oh, hey, yeah, I saw Jean at the airport, she didn't mention you were gonna be here", and similarly Scott avoids telling Misty, "I'm sorry, I have some bad news. Jean didn't make it out", as otherwise Scott would cease to assume that Jean and Hank were dead. Why even have bothered having Jean and Misty see each other so recently if you're not going to do anything with it? Wolverine meets Sunfire's cousin, Mariko, chats to her in Japanese, and almost introduces himself to her as Logan (the first time he's done that! We only know it at this point because the leprechauns in Cassidy Keep somehow abstracted it from his brain.)

But anyway, there's a madman threatening Japan with earthquakes, Moses Magnum. He's already demonstrated he can cause them whenever he likes, and is now threatening to sink Japan entirely. His demand is to be made dictator. Colleen and Misty at least have found out where he is based (the Kuril Islands, which do exist, but were under the control of the Soviet Union), although how a couple of NYC-based detectives with no superpowers were the best people to figure it out it unclear. Oh, except Colleen's grand-uncle, Mr. Osama, is in charge, so maybe it is actual bona fide nepotism.

They get their planning on and assault the base. It works out quite well, despite unexpected mandroids, resulting only in the sinking of the entire Kuril island group. The X-Men celebrate Christmas in Japan, and realise that although they started as loners, they've bonded and become a family. Oddly, Colossus particularly misses his real family at Christmas, which is strange because (a) Christmas is not going to be celebrated so much in the collective farm and (b) even if it were, Russian Christmas is 6th January anyway.

Cut to: Edinburgh [Waverley] station, where the "legendary Flying Scot [sic]" has arrived from London. The appear to have got some decent photo reference of this at least, as it looks plausibly like a Class 43, and bears the excellent British Rail double-arrowhead logo. It's carrying Jean Grey (who had spent six weeks in the Greek isles), and is met by Alex, Moira Lorna and Jamie, who've made the trip down. They're gonna hang out in Edinburgh for a while before heading back to Muir Isle. Which we get a location for - it's not a fictional Hebridean island, as I'd imagined, but north of Cape Wrath, a place there aren't really any islands at all...

X-Men #118: ...and breathe...

The X-Men escaped from the Savage Land last issue, and now find themselves in the Drake Passage on a rubbishy little boat as X-Men #118 opens. They are rescued by a ship, which just happens to be on a secret mission for the Japanese government. The X-Men immediately ask to contact base, thankfully, but the ship is maintaining radio science and the X-Men are taken below as "guests". That's it for the X-Men this issue.

Back at Westchester, Jean is leaving the mansion (possibly for the last time), while Lilandra tries to figure out how to make coffee and bagels for Xavier, who has done his usual thing when he loses a team of X-Men and sunk into a depressive funk. Before we know it, Xavier has launched into a flashback, where he gives us a good chunk of his life story, or at least bits we'd not seen before.

First up, we get the full skinny between him and Moira. They'd met when he was doing his doctorate, and quickly fell in love. They became engaged, but then Xavier was drafted, and spent three years serving (during which the stuff with his step-brother happened, but it elides mention of that). When he was convalescing from wounds, she broke off things by letter, and returned to Scotland. He then went travelling in the Med, first to Kirinos and then to Cairo, where he'd been pickpocketed by a young Storm. Chasing her, he encounted his first Evil Mutant - Amahl Farouk (the Shadow King) and defeated him. He omits his trip to Israel (because Claremont hasn't yet invented it), and then mentions his journey east to defeat Lucifer. He then formed the X-Men, and after a number of adventures in which he nearly got them killed, has got them killed.

Rather than be supportive and suggest they might not be dead, or even that young mutants still need support and training, Lilandra instead begs Xavier to go back with her to Shi'ar space, which he assents to.

On our last page, Jean is at JFK airport, and bumps into Misty Knight (they are no longer roomies, unless the comic is using the Whovian usage of the word "erstwhile"), who is taking a flight to, by a strange coincidence, Japan, to help out Colleen Wing. So, I've got a good idea what's going to be happening in #119. Misty doesn't know the X-Men are missing, and Jean doesn't tell her, which will provide no end of complaints for me in subsequent entries.

X-Men #115-#117: Return of the Shadow

X-Men #115 is another landmark issue, introducing as it does the concept of Cyclops' moustache.

Cyclops reckons he looks a bit like Corsair, which triggers a one-panel hint at his origin (him and Alex were pushed out of a plane carrying his father, Corsair and mother, Kate, we don't know why yet).

Both sets of X-Men (Jean and Hank, who are back at the mansion with Xavier and Lilandra) and the others, who are recuperating in the Savage Land (back in Antarctica, after it's brief trip to Tierra del Fuego in the late 1960s), think the rest of the X-Men are dead and are mourning. You couldn't do this today, as surely Ka-Zar would have a satellite phone. Well, Scott isn't able to mourn for Jean. He, rather prophetically says that "after the shuttle flight [...] she wasn't the girl I'd loved anymore", which Storm is quite harsh on. Wolverine is properly mourning for her, though, his first love, we are told! And in #117 we get the first claim that he can "heal real fast".