Uncanny X-Men #219: Havok and Polaris

Uncanny X-Men #219 (and #218) feature the return of Havok and Polaris after... Quite a while. How long has it been, exactly? Let's have a look at Havok's character chronology:

UX 177 [January 1984]
UX 232-FB [August 1988]
UX 218 [June 1987]
UX 219-FB [July 1987]

Three years between appearances! He and Polaris have been living the quiet life in New Mexico. We can assume Alex knows he's a nuncle, but apart from that they've not been in contact at all. Alex is not impressed with what's been happening in his absence: Magneto joining, the alliance with the Hellfire Club, the plan to "kill" the X-Men. But then, who would be. Once they explain Recent Events, he feels obliged to offer to sign up on the team again.

Meanwhile, Lorna has been left in New Mexico and is promptly attacked by the Marauders. She does well, but is massively outnumbered. They weren't seeking to kill her, though: she is possessed instead, by Malice. There's still a lot of Marauders payoff to come: this issue strongly teases the name of Mr. Sinister (mentioned in passing during the Massacre); and it appears they are responsible for the attack on Maddy Pryor, the disappearance of little Baby X; and the kidnapping/bombing of Sara Grey and Leong and Nga.

This issue is fairly weak, and suffers from just moving around people in preparation for something bigger. The main team are still mostly injured, and the lack of progress on this plot line is frustrating - instead they are introducing the new guys. We know X-Books don't tend to have more than about 8 characters at a time, so either some of these n00bs are not staying long, or some of those injuries are going to be permanent.

Fallen Angels #1-#8: the Original Misfits

Fallen Angels is an 8-issue 1987 miniseries created by Jo Duffy (writer) and Kerry Gammill (penciller, although not for the entire run). It's not got "X-Men" on the covers (well, not the original covers anyway), but treating it here, as we'll see, is a no-brainer.

Our main X-characters are Bobby (Sunspot) and Warlock, who you know; Theresa Rourke (Siryn), who we just caught up on, and James Madrox (Multiple Man), who we thought we knew. I'd had difficulty seeing Peter David's Madrox in the young James we'd seen before, and this is why: Duffy invents him here. Bobby has run away from the mansion after a tantrum/ostracism escalation, and Terry and Jamie are sent to locate him in the bustle of New York City. They are shown to have a strong pre-existing friendship, and are being written as older than the New Mutants but still teens, perhaps Karma's age. Madrox is still a noob (this is only his second trip to Manhattan), but he quickly becomes a far more confident man than the mouselike chap that Claremont had him. There is even a rogue dupe!

It also picks up Boom Boom and the Vanisher, from X-Factor. Throw in a few new characters: Chance, Gomi, Ariel (who vanished without trace until the X-Office brought her back for 2010's Second Comings), and even a dinosaur, and voilá. In this it serves as much a prototype for Runaways as anything (Bobby, Warlock and Terry have supervillainry in the family, you'll note), except that Vaughan's group have no Fagin.

To describe it as lacking a strong plot would be entirely true. One of its chief weaknesses is that it's just events happening, with no real overall through-line. And yes, at the end nothing has changed, if you look at it that way. Unless you count that little detail of Bobby's personal growth - the thing that led to the series in the first place. And for all the faults with its dialogue (which are numerous), it manages to portray a much more relevant street scene than Claremont and Simonson are doing with the Morlocks: these are actual people, even the ones who are aliens and technoörganic entities, whereas the Morlocks - even those who are seeing development, such as Masque and Callisto - are treated as the Other, their backgrounds and motivations left obscure. What is missing is the marriage of the two approaches: the working out of the political and social implications of a real mutant subculture: a genuine look at the question "what if there were mutants with special powers? how would society treat them" from the tradition of speculative fiction. I am afraid we're going to have to wait until X-Men #114 before we get it. If not later.

Right, entry done. Now I'm going to watch series 4 episode 8 of Misfits on E4. It's this funny show about a bunch of delinquent youths who got powers in a storm one day. One of them is a chap who makes duplicates of himself which have different personalities. Funny how these things work out.

X-Factor #18-#19: No "I" in Horsemen

X-Factor #18 tries a sneaky retcon. It would have us believe that Scott and Jean never were romantically involved until the cute "I wanted to see your face, that's all" moment in Uncanny #132: the implication being that Scott and Jean had never been involved - it was only ever Scott and the Phoenix. This is clearly nonsense: they kissed on-panel in #98, which was so canon that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby actually were there in character to comment on it! And if you look back at the appropriate page of #132, Jean's immediately preceding speech calls him "Scott Summers, lover of Jean Grey". Not sure what they're trying there, other than complicating the Shag Chart.

Anyway, Scott has got very confused about the Jean/Phoenix/Madelyne/Jean thing, and frankly who can blame him. It's mostly Hodge's fault, though. Hodge, whose PR campaign - which is now pretty clearly an act of delibarate sabotage - is being treated as some kind of immutable natural order of things. The gang could try to fire him, or walk. Except for the fact that he's buggered off now he's been rumbled.

Meanwhile, Apocalypse is putting the finishing touches on his final Horseman: Death (the mutant formerly known as Angel), and sends the remaining three into action against the X-Terminators in #19 to learn the value of teamwork. This is now going very slowly and I'd like it just to get to the reveals already.

X-Factor #17: I regret to inform you that Warren Worthington is Death

X-Factor #17 has Angel's funeral. Very sad, etc. Slightly spoiled by the fact that he's not really dead, he's Death. We'll come back to that later.

But first, there's an evil mutant threatening to earthquake San Francisco. Much to Jean's umbrage, the chap, named Rictor, is taking the good name of the X-Terminators to do it with. You remember the X-Terminators: the fake "evil mutants" that X-Factor sometimes pretend to be. She's worried about their reputation being besmirched, is she? In fairness, they probably have better reputations than X-Factor itself at this point. Except by page 17, the group is called "The Right" by Bobby. So Hodge lied (he certainly appears to have set the whole thing up, down to using cheap reverse psychology to make them go), and the radio that they'd been listening to on the way set them right.

So, they (as X-Terminators) fly over to the left coast to sort things out. Joining the four of them is Caliban, now with a costume. I am greatly pleased by this. It's about time they started treating him as an equal. And it's a completely practical decision too: they have to find a mutant quickly, he's the mutant tracker. This works out well, and they are able to find Rictor in no time, and rescue him (turns out he was just being used). This is not going to plan, not for Hodge.

So, is "Rictor" in this issue just a misspelling or what? Because if I were making up a codename for an earthquake-themed mutant which was pronounced /ˈrɪktər/, it wouldn't be spelled like that. It's especially funny given that we'll find out later down the line that his real name actually is "Richter". I'm not sure whether to hail it as an example of nominative determinism (my favourite recent example being the head judge in England and Wales, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge), or whether to decry it as the Worst. Codename. Ever.

Spider-Woman #37-#38: Siryn

I should have done this one in September or October. Oh well. Still, not too late now. So, let's pretend it is six years ago, 1981 again. Uncanny is still in the #140s, there's no Rogue, no New Mutants, Kitty Pryde is a n00b. Jean Grey is dead, there are no Morlocks to massacre, Magneto is evil, and nothing could stop the Juggernaut. That last one's easy, at least.

So. Spider-Woman #37-#38. Jessica Drew wants to get a P.I. license, and is trying to persuade Nick Fury to be a character reference, but without admitting her name to him. (hmm, a superpowered private detective, there's mileage in that idea.) She is caught in a scheme by Black Tom, the Juggernaut and Black Tom's niece, Theresa, using the codename Siryn. She is Banshee's daughter that he never knew existed and gets rescued from their clutches, obv, but is mostly there as a story hook. The X-Men arrive, tracking her on Cerebro (it still being early enough that they seem to be following every lead they can, even though we'll later find out this cannot be true). Siryn's relationship with her father ought to be part of this, but it will not be immediately explored: Banshee isn't even part of the team at this point. Siryn makes a brief appearance in Uncanny #148, but then is just forgotten about, and won't appear again until 1987's Fallen Angels.

Her absence from New Mutants is difficult to explain. One could make the case that Moira wouldn't send her not!stepdaughter to the Westchester meatgrinder... except that she did send Rahne. And why did the Mutants never meet her when they visited? They even met Jamie! In this context the fact that Michelle vanishes makes a lot more sense.

Incidentally, I found the use of a character called "Ben Disraeli" in this story really distracting. Imagine if a British comic called a character "Ulysses Grant" and then didn't have anyone make any jokes or references to it.

New Mutants #52: Didn't This Book Used To Be Set In A School, Or Something?

The New Mutants are back at Westchester. They left during the Mutant Massacre to rescue Karma but then things have happened, and they've fought Magus, been to Limbo, met Robert the Bruce, seen two different futures, and encountered Professor X and the Starjammers. Although they've often only scraped through these adventures, this clearly puts them at a power level and competency that questions the premise.

So. Back at Westchester, and they are in the Danger Room with an extended sequence versus the Marauders. They lose badly, which conveniently nerfs them back to an appropriate power level for the format of the series: a bunch of students who get into japes despite the wishes of their teachers and escape by the skin of their teeth.

That's half the plot, anyway. The rest is Magik and Magneto. The comparison between the two is made a little blunter than usual: Magik has her demons to deal with (they're rebelling against her, and she dare not use the full extent of her power to put them down), and so does Magneto, as he points out. Except that his are metaphorical, and hers are literal. You see what he did there! Subtle.

So, that's about it. Nerfing and some characterisation. Will it work, though? The New Mutants have and done so much in the last few issues that going back to the school feels so... small. Coming back to my Buffy analogy, it feels like that scene of "The Body" where we're just following Dawn at school and she has no idea what's happening. After what has happened, you can't go back. You just can't. And there is still that outstanding question of Karma's brother and sister (Magneto assures her that he's doing what he can - presumably through the Hellfire Club).

In a reply to a letter, an announcement is made that Louise Simonson will be taking over New Mutants from #55 for a brief period while Chris Claremont takes a break to write a novel, "Firstflight" (Ace). I know the publication history: Claremont'll never come back, and eventually Rob Liefeld will start doing the art, and turn the series into X-Force. You can see the germ of it here.

New Mutants #51: Starjam

New Mutants #51 is more about the mentors than about the teens themselves. Our kids are still in space (after the events of #48-#50), and Xavier is deciding whether or not to return with them. He hoovers up memories: the Mutant Massacre is shocking, but not enough. The real surprise is seeing an advert for X-Factor on the tellybox: he recognises his original X-Men on screen.

Oh.

So, the main team really were just not paying attention: they only started noticing the adverts for X-Factor around the time of the Battle of Sheep Meadow. Maybe the kids just watch more TV?

Xavier decides to let go. The Starjammers need him and he can rely on Magneto. I suppose he must have done research on how that had been working out. One problem though: Magik is on strike. This is quickly worked round by Xavier ordering Karma to possess her and do it directly, something that is ruthless even for Professor X. Dani protests, so good on her.

Can Magneto be trusted? That's the question that Magneto himself has been pondering. He's got an offer to join the Hellfire Club as White King, and consults with Storm, who strongly urges he take it up. He doesn't, though - not on their terms anyway. Instead, Storm and Magneto join together, and wearing their own costumes. This is supposed to be an alliance, after all, not a supplication.