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.

Uncanny X-Men #151-#152: Loss of Pryde

Uncanny X-Men #151-#152 is another momentous little story arc, setting up the Hellfire Club, Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw as recurring villains.

Emma's evil plan is: persuade Kitty's parents to withdraw her from the Xavier School and send her to the Massachusetts Academy instead, and then hope that Storm drives her there. This works, and she body-swaps with Storm, drives back to the X-Men, finds that Shaw is already attacking them with Sentinel-derived technology, defeats them. Storm manages to escape from her cell, persuades Kitty of her identity, drives back, liberates the X-Men, and leads them to victory against the Hellfire Club.

Where this body-swapping gun came from is never explained. Such a technology would be very scary: Whedon's Dollhouse begins to explore the possibilities. X-Men again picks up an idea, uses it, and then discards it just as easily without considering the deeper implications.

It came as a surprise to Storm that Frost is still alive, which implies that the X-Men have not been watching the Hellfire Club too closely. Xavier ought surely to have known, if he'd been monitoring them. And the plot only works because he's had a sudden case of ethics - the old Professor X would have short-circuited this by just changing Kitty's parents' minds.

Uncanny X-Men #150: "I, Magneto"

Uncanny X-Men #150 is a special double-size issue, wherein momentous stuff happens and in which is made possibly the single greatest retcon in the history of comics. †

Magneto has set up shop on an island in the Bermuda Triangle that he's caused to be risen from the depths, and has taken Cyclops (Scott Summers), who has temporarily taken up being a fisherman, and his captain (Lee Forrester, who is a romantic interest for him) prisoner after they were shipwrecked.

Magneto tries to blackmail all the world's leaders (we get a nice selection here - Reagan, Thatcher, Brezhnev, Deng, King Abdul, and Moi) into making him King of the World. He wants to scrap the world defence budget (which he says is trillions - in real life that'd be a massive overestimate in 1981 - it's not even 2 trillion today. maybe he's including the Sentinels). Instead, he will lead H. sapiens to a glorious golden age, planning to eliminate "hunger, disease, poverty", damn the cost (hmm!), and providing Bobby Kennedy with a retort. He chews the fat with Scott, catches up on the news about Jean, expresses his sympathy, reveals that he has an inhibitor field which is shutting off Scott's optic blasts, casually destroys some nuclear warheads that have been launched at the island, destroys the Soviet submarine that had launched them, opens up a volcano in a fictional place out of Doctor Zhivago and threatens to do the same in Moscow.

The X-Men have finally got their finger out and started looking for Scott - they've tracked him and Lee to a shipwreck in the Bermuda Triangle and are looking for it alongside Dr. Corbeau (the X-Men's go-to man if they need a boat, it seems, as well as being the official provider of space shuttles), and a random Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers), who might as well not be in this issue (except that she provides our first indication that Wolverine has a long and distinguished past in the superhero community - as he confirms that he used to work with her on special ops stuff).

We then get to the punching bit. They have to take down Magneto powerless, due to the inhibitor (which affects non-anatomy related powers - Kurt is still blue and has a tail, but can't 'port, Logan's claws still work but his senses are gone, and Peter shifts out of his steel form entering the zone). Can't work in these conditions, so they look to take it out.

It's a big issue for Storm - she has a moment to take down Magneto, but has sworn off killing people. She's there at the final confrontation with Magneto, where he comes close to killing Kitty, and then has a real change of heart, and well, let's quote it:

            MAGNETO
        She -- she is a child!

        What have I done?

        Why did you resist?  Why did you not understand?!
        Magda -- my beloved wife -- did not understand.
        When she saw me use my powers, she ran from me in
        terror.  It did not matter that I was defending her...

        ...that I was avenging our murdered daughter.

        I swore then that I would not rest 'til I had created
        a world where my kind -- mutants -- could live free
        and safe and unafraid.  Where such as you, little one,
        could be happy.

        Instead, I have slain you.

        I remember my own childhood - the gas chambers at 
        Auschwitz, the guards joking as they herded my family
        to their death.  As our lives were nothing to them,
        so human lives became to me.

            STORM
          (arriving)
        Magneto!  Goddess -- no!

        If you have a deity, butcher, pray to it!

            MAGNETO
        As a boy, I believed.  As a boy, I turned my back
        on god forever.

        Kill me if you wish, wind-rider.  I will not stop you.

            STORM
        Is this some kind of trick?

            MAGNETO
        Yes.  Only it has been played on me.  I believed
        so much in my own personal vision, that I was prepared
        to pay any price, make any sacrifice to achieve it.
        But I forgot the innocents who would suffer in the
        process.  Can you not appreciate the irony, Ororo?

        In my zeal to remake the world, I have become much like
        those I have always hated and despised.

We learned about Magda running away in #125 and the contemporaneous Avengers #186, but most of this new information. Magneto's dialogue here is structured to pack as much punch as it can, by telling us what we know already and then, almost as an afterthought, revealing the new tidbit about a murdered daughte, and then going for the big thing. It must have been utterly shocking at the time for readers. This moustache-twirling villain has a motivation and not just one but two sets of personal tragedies (when Claremont comes to write Magneto's actual origin story six years from now, a third, less well-judged one will be added). Magneto is laid bare. How much of this does Storm actually overhear? Does Xavier find out about it? The idea that Magneto and Xavier are old friends is not yet present. These questions will never be answered: this is not treated as a dramatic revelation in-universe, and in fifty issues time it will be considered general knowledge.

This would seem to be Kitty's first Official Mission, although it's possible that she's stowed-away on this one, too. She's still in that multicoloured abomination of an outfit. As soon as she finds Scott, he sends her on a dangerous mission to mess up Magneto's computers, despite him realising that she's a child who really ought to be protected from that sort of thing. She succeeds, too, destroying a lot of his data (he should have had off-site backups!)

† other candidates in X-Men include the "Magneto/Professor X are old friends" bit, and my personal favourite "'Weapon X': It's pronounced 'ten'. Did we not mention that?" moment.

Avengers Annual #10: DARKHÖLME, Anna Marie

There's a reason this blog is covering Avengers Annual #10, and why it's included in Essential X-Men - it's the first appearance of Rogue, and sets up her situation of having stolen Ms. Marvel's powers (and in the process depriving Carol Danvers of them).

But I'm finding it difficult to find much to say about that. Maybe this is because I'm coming at it out of order - I've written many of the surrounding entries weeks ago and now I'm coming in and filling in a hole. But it's more that the elements I was expecting to see first hand have already happened. That Rogue-Ms. Marvel grudge has always been backstory, never news.

Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) finds Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel and former Avenger) being dumped into the San Francisco Bay on the first page, figures out who she is and what's happened to her with Xavier's help, and contacts the Avengers. During this, we get a bunch of flashbacks that rewrite another story (Avengers #200). It then moves to a large fight between the Avengers and Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (with the line-up from Days of Future Past), but now with Rogue. The Avengers defeat them, they run away, yadda yadda.

In the final segment of the annual ("chapter 5"), the Avengers visit Carol, who is recuperating at the X-Mansion. And she really gives them what for, for abandoning her in her time of need in #200. Which is completely fair - having briefly read Avengers #200, I can agree with the general consensus that what was done to her in that was abominable. What I wasn't expecting was that this is being treated here as a far more life-destroying incident than the mere wiping of her identity by Rogue, because it was a betrayal. For all that Rogue has broken Carol, it's the Avengers simply letting Marcus do what he wants with her, without considering the possibility of mind control, that matters. And this is absolutely not a problem inserted into an originally innocent story. It's there in any reading of #200. It's no wonder that Bendis has Carol champion Jessica Jones's cause after her similar ordeal at the hands of the Purple Man. I can see Carol reconciling with Rogue eventually, even at this point. It's more of a wonder that Carol ever signs up with the Avengers again.

Uncanny X-Men #149: Where in the world is Max Eisenhardt?

Uncanny X-Men #149 has the X-Men sent back to Magneto's Antarctic volcano base (last seen in #124) to scout for signs of him. Why exactly Professor X is doing this now is unclear, but may be related to his inability to telepathically contact Scott in #145. In a thought bubble on page 2 we get Xavier clearly thinking: "Magneto! Origin unknown. Although his features are Caucasian, probably Nordic -- antecedents, unknown", which is not entirely consistent with what we are soon about to be told, but not completely irreconcilable, either.

So far (if we avoid later implants) Kitty has avoided being sent on any official missions, by virtue of (a) there not being an official mission, (b) merely being in the mansion when the demons attacked, (c) not being on the boat with Scott and Lee, (d) being ill, and (e) merely being at the club when Caliban attacked. This time she sneaks onto the Blackbird, in her new costume, which I show here for reasons of sharing the pain around.

It's like she's trolling us. Wolverine has spotted she's attracted to Peter. Nightcrawler calls her Kätzchen for I think the first time, and we find out what's a "whiz at computers". Having been introduced as just your regular suburban young girl with superpowers, she's already being embellished.

There, they encounter Garokk, who underwhelmed me so much in his last appearance that I completely failed to mention him at all. He provides a brief scuffle while they verify that someone has cleaned the place out. What's Magneto up to?

Well, we know already. He's on a strange recently risen island in the Bermuda Triangle, with Scott and Lee (who have got themselves added to The Chart). Well, that explains what caused it to rise, at least. He outfits them in costumes that have probably been left by cultists, and guesses that Scott's Cyclops! Oh noes!

Uncanny X-Men #148: Featuring Dazzler and Spider-Woman!

There was once a time that comics would feature gratuitous Spider-Woman, promoted on the cover. Who knew? That time was August 1981, and that comic was Uncanny X-Men #148.

It's an issue of two halves. Some domestic stuff, some superhero stuff. First we get a few pages of Scott and Lee's continuing adventures in what I can only assume is the formerly sunken city of R'lyeh, but we'll come to that if something finally actually happens. A thing they're doing here is having Scott be separated from his glasses for a protracted time, and having to wear a blindfold, which is pretty cool and I'm surprised it's taken them this long to do.

It then picks up the aftermath of #147. Angel angrily quits the X-Men in protest at Wolverine being on the team. The idea of Wolverine being a kind of murderous rampager got a boost in the last issue, when he had to stop himself going berserk but then beheaded an android duplicate of yon Storm. Angel wasn't in the room at the time, so he must be relying on the account of either Arcade, DOOM, Storm, or Wolverine himself. Anyway, Angel leaves, not wanting to be part of any team that has Logan on it. (Little does Angel know that one day he'll be helping Wolverine cover up his little unsanctioned death squad.)

Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) is visiting after the events of Spider-Woman #38, which introduced young Theresa Rourke, Banshee's daughter by his dead wife that he didn't know he had. Moira, who's over from Muir, is a bit jealous (she and Sean have discussed having kids already! - but she daren't, not with Kevin having turned out the way he did). Little Illyana is still at the mansion, they're wondering whether she might be a mutant, too.

This is then followed by a sequence at a nightclub, where Jessica, Stevie, Ororo and Kitty (because 13½ year olds are totally allowed clubbing in NYC), to watch Dazzler perform. This bit manages to pass the Bechdel test incredibly well, as FOUR WOMEN have a GROUP DISCUSSION about LOTS OF STUFF.

We then get our action bit, in the form of Caliban, who can smell mutants, but only wants a friend, having lived underground alone. He eventually runs off, declining their offer for him to join up. The fight sequence is fairly well thought out, although of course it has to be contrived so that Dazzler can actually help. Turns out that Kitty can walk on air (i.e. fly, really rubbishly), which is a perfectly sensible corollary of her being able to phase and not fall through stuff.

Uncanny X-Men #145-#147: One does not simply walk out of Murderworld

Uncanny X-Men #145-#147 features Arcade again, I'm afraid. But it's worth talking about anyway.

I've had to go over it several times now and I still can't quite make sense of the plot.

It sees the X-Men be blackmailed through threats to their families and friends (the Greys, Colossus's sister, who we saw in Giant-Size #1 but now gets a name - Illyana, Amanda Sefton, Stevie Hunter, and Moira) by Miss Locke into helping rescue Arcade from the clutches of DOOM, who finally (after 18 years!) makes an appearance in these pages. It's serious business, even moreso than the loss of the team on Krakoa, as Xavier goes around summoning stray X-Men: he declines the help of the Avengers but contacts Beast, and calls on Alex and Lorna, and Bobby (who is doing some kind of economics course at university now), and tries to get hold of Scott. Banshee is already on the way on Concorde.

I'm going to digress for a moment now to talk about travel arrangements, if only to avoid talking about Arcade for a little bit longer. Let's assume Banshee is on Muir Island when he realises Moira has been kidnapped. If they are popping over to Stornoway as often as they do, it seems to be fairly close to Lewis, but it's definitely stated as being off the north coast, north of Cape Wrath. So, it's probably near Durness. We could pretend it's Eilean Hoan. Now, we know Banshee drives, so once he's got to the mainland, it's two and a half hour's journey to Inverness, where he'll probably fly direct to Heathrow, and then transfer onto the Concorde to JFK. During this epic journey, he at no point thinks to pick up the phone. He just knows he has to be in New York as soon as possible. Why should he assume that Moira has even been taken to the US (faster than he was?) Never mind that mobile phones break horror stories, landlines break 1980s X-Men.

With the X-Men assembled (so to speak), they are divided into two squads. Ororo, Peter, Kurt and Logan go and assault DOOM's medieval castle in upstate New York. That had been constructed by DOOM but had been recently sublet or squatted by Toad as an amusement park, in Marvel Two-in-One #68, we are helpfully informed. Whatever. Storm is sent in as a decoy to try and chat to Doom and distract him, while the others infiltrate. This plan doesn't go so well, and Arcade turns out to be in league with Doom rather than a prisoner! (Or maybe not?) They all end up trapped in custom-designed puzzle prisons. Oddly, we're told that DOOM is the one responsible for these, not Arcade, which smells a bit like a late dialogue change or miscommunication in plotting? It's never made clear what Arcade actually did against DOOM, and he's eventually happy to let him go with an apology. This doesn't sound like DOOM to me, nor to John Byrne, who will later retcon this as being a DOOMbot.

The X-Men imprisoned at DOOM's Murderworld escape cleverly. Nightcrawler is first, using gravity and momentum and updrafts in an unusual outbreak of actual physics. As Logan escapes, we are reminded of his berserker rages, something we were told of in #96, but not really seen since (justified by him saying that he's not really had them since joining the X-Men but is slipping). Warren and Peter also break free, leaving only Ororo, who's been trapped in a steel form not unlike Colossus, only without the ability to move. The weather is getting worse, and when she's freed she goes, well, a bit Dark Phoenix. In a way that's not merely reminiscent of that, but explicitly mentioned in the text. She's able to control it, eventually. This gives us some strikingly similar imagery: compare these three covers of #50, #101 and now #147.

There's clearly a thing here, about powerful women and whether or not they are able to control the forces of nature that are unleashed through them, or whether their poor branes might overheat from all of the raw energy. Even the very words on the cover: "Rogue Storm", "Dark Phoenix". What's next - "Stray Polaris"? Now, I can't point to any specific instance of this and say "that one, that's sexist". But there's a pattern, and it's an unfortunate one. You can do this trope with men, it's just that... well, the X-Men hasn't, not yet. Well, not until September 2012, anyway. On the other hand, issue #145 thoroughly passes the Bechdel test, as it begins with Stevie and Ororo having a conservation about the ballet they are attending. (There had been an earlier pass, when Misty and Jean talked about Misty's trip to Japan, and studiously avoided talking about boys because that would break the plot).

What happened to the other guys? Well, the B-team - Alex, Lorna, Sean and Bobby, went to the Murderworld to free the hostages directly. There, they are a confronted by a series of custom-made traps and stop me if you've heard this one before.

Uncanny X-Men #144: I always wanted to be a fisherman

Uncanny X-Men #143 had a brief few panels with Cyclops. He's left the X-Men, you will remember, after the death of Jean Grey, and has now decided to become a fisherman, on a ship captained by one Lee Forrester.

So, it turns out that Lee's dad, Jack, is suffering from terminal cancer (I dunno, this is about the time of the Death of Captain Marvel - I guess cancer just became un-taboo enough that comics are talking about it) and about to attempt normal suicide with a gun (which is pretty grim, even today).

Because the Marvel universe has what, about 50 people in it, this suicide cannot be allowed to proceed as normal but instead some sort of weird ghost thing called D'Spayre turns up, who - and I kid you not - feeds on despair. Or something. Anyway, Man-Thing also happens by and so does Cyclops and Lee and I don't even care any more. Defeated power of love, blah blah blah. During this we get our proper flashback to him and lil Alex falling out of a plane (and their ages - 6 and 10, rather older than I was expecting).

Back at the mansion, they're a bit shocked at the bill for leaving Kitty unattended for just a single issue (Danger Room and the Blackbird both wrecked), and Warren offers his chequebook for help for the first time.

The best bit of this issue is Cyclops cheating at pool with his optic blasts in a massive improbable way which implies he's has some kind of super-geometry power too.

Uncanny X-Men #143: Rite of Passage

Uncanny X-Men #143 turns its attention to the new girl. Ordinarily an issue doing this ought to be a good idea. However, this isn't just Kitty-centric, it's a solo story, with her fighting the monsters alone for page after page. At this point I'd rather be finding more about how she interacts with the team - but then I'm not reading this for the punching. The N'Garai demons aren't Claremont and Cockrums's best invention, either, and their appearance here is more or less random. I believe this is the first time that the Danger Room gets trashed, something that will become a staple.

This issue is the first to establish that Kitty is Jewish. I wonder if this was always the plan. "Katherine" is a saint name, but that's no impediment.

At the end we find out there have been some "gruesome murders" in Salem Center, which oddly appears to be a throwaway to delay the X-Men arriving back at the mansion, rather than a plot point worthy of investigation.

X-Men #141-#142: "It's 2013. Do you know what your children are?"

It's the distant future. The year 2013.¹ Yes, time has nearly caught up with Days of Future Past, the story that occupies X-Men #141 and Uncanny X-Men #142 (the series changed its formal title between issues, although we've had "Uncanny" on the covers for a good long while now).

2013 is a horrible dystopia in which Sentinels - giant robots with funny hats - have overthrown the U.S. government, and killed or put in camps all mutants and other superhumans, and spread through the rest of North America. In doing so, they've wrecked the place, - I love here the "express train" that Pryde takes, being a bus pulled by animals. Other nations aren't looking too kindly on the proposed sentinel invasion of the rest of the world, and a nuclear apocalypse is about to start.

Many of the heroes are dead or captured (as we see on the now-iconic cover: expect to see that as a movie poster in 2014), and only a few holdouts remain: Wolverine, Kate Pryde (who would be 46 by now), her husband Peter Rasputin (well, they moved quickly on hinting at that, didn't they, although this is the future and so no, I'm not putting it in the chart), Ororo (who is surely in her 60s, if we're still supposed to think she was orphaned by Suez), Franklin Richards, Rachel (surname carefully left unspecified), and Magneto (called Magnus - the first time we've got a "real" name for him). Together they have decided to do something about it, by sending Kate Pryde's consciousness back in time to 1980, to avert the assassination of Senator Kelly. The only problem is, they're not quite sure how time travel works in the Marvel universe (which is fair enough, neither do the writers). Will it change their timeline and they vanish, or just create a new one and they get to experience a fiery nuclear death anyhow? That giant robots are in charge and are treating even baseline humans badly undermines the "It Can't Happen Here" undertones a bit, but nonetheless the future it presents is quite stark.

Kelly was is going to be assassinated by Mystique, and her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Mystique makes her first full appearance in X-Men here, having debuted as a character in Claremont's Ms. Marvel #17, 4 years ago. She's put together a team that consists of herself, her um-friend the blind precog Destiny, Pyro (described as a "Limey", which has got to hurt, considering we'll eventually learn he's supposed to be Australian) and Avalanche, all being introduced here for the first time. The Blob - who was given the name Fred J. Dukes in his prison-break scene in #140 - joins them.

Kate-as-Kitty quickly gets believed, and is sent to Washington to talk with Professor X. Now, this suffers from the a common problem with time travel stories, that Ryan North identifies in Back to the Future, in that why on Earth have they sent her back with so little time to spare? It's almost as if she's arrived close to the events in question as an artificial thing to induce drama... Oh.

So, there is a FIGHT and the X-MEN save SENATOR KELLY'S LIFE and they ALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Apart from the future-X-Men who die. Oh, and Kitty becomes herself again...

This, along with the Dark Phoenix Sage, is often pointed at as one of the highpoints of the Claremont/Byrne run, in a "you, go read that" sense. In this case, I agree. It's quick and mostly self-contained, and it has a point to it that still resonates today - this trope is by now well-worn but is usually used as disaster porn rather than politically. But apart from that, it's also a major turning point in Claremont's run of X-Men, and marks a decisive shift to a world where the X-Men are actively feared and hated.

Non-American readers may not know that the title (used as a campaign slogan by whoever won the '84 election here) is a play on the quite creepy It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are? public service announcements to be found on U.S. television. American readers may not know that the rest of world does not have such televised messages, and find them rather bizarre and unsettling. So I thought I'd mention that here.

So, this scenario, of people going back in time to stop a post-apocalyptic future where robots are hunting down and killing people? Remind you of anything? It anticipates the later Terminator films, without really appearing to be inspired by Ellison's work "Soldier [from Tomorrow]". Is it basically just "Day of the Daleks"? Well, I've not seen that, but from reading summaries, not really as similar as it is made out to be. Claremont Byrne does plenty of outright lifting from film and television, but they repay the favour from time to time, it seems. Of course, now that they're adapting this into a film (see my earlier post about is - shooting right now!), then they're going to have to be very careful to avoid comparisons to Terminator and for that matter to Transformers.

1. When I originally wrote this post I had dropped to a weekly schedule and this was going to post in 2013. But now I've boosted it to daily for September as well, so you'll just have to imagine it's 2013 and laugh.

the non-origin of Jean Grey

X-Men #57 has our by now regular backup feature in which a member of the X-Men breaks the fourth wall and shows off their powers. This issue, it's Jean Grey's turn, in five pages written by Linda Fite (and pencilled by Werner Roth), who thus becomes the first woman ever to write for X-Men. It wouldn't exactly pass muster today (or even ten years later), but it's a bit of inconsequential fluff rather than being deeply problematic.

Next issue, #58, we would expect to see the start of a short backup serial regarding Jean Grey's origin and how she was recruited by Xavier to be part of the X-Men. This does not happen. Instead, the main story goes back to being 20 pages, for the first time since #37. This is what's really telling. I've seen it claimed that this happened because Jean didn't need this treatment - she was already shown arriving at the mansion back in #1. This strikes me rather as clutching at straws. Yes, X-Men #1 has her arriving at the school not knowing anything about it (having received a message from the Professor somehow, maybe he sent an owl or something). But this is Xavier here we're talking about, who is a little trigger-happy with the mindwipes and, in that same issue, claimed to have lost the use of his legs in a childhood accident.

And clearly, there is an interesting backstory for Jean Grey that could be told. We know this because Chris Claremont would tell it twelve years later, in Bizarre Adventures #27. We learn of Annie, Jean's childhood friend, who died in a car accident when they were young, and Jean's subsequent shutdown when a part of her telepathically sensed Annie's dying moments. It is quite dark stuff for comics - a deeply lasting childhood trauma versus Scott's romanticised orphanhood, and Hank and Bobby's painful but ultimately consequence-free outings. It certainly could not have been told in X-Men in 1969.

The story has been revisited from time to time. 2008's X-Men Origins: Jean Grey (Sean McKeever/Mike Mayhew) and the 2011 Marvel Girl one-shot (Joshua Hale Fialkov/Nuno Plati) both look at Annie's death in the context of Jean coming to terms with it early in the O5 period. Marvel Girl weaves into this a rather wonderful plotline about Jean discovering a supervillain who is trapping people in their pasts, only for her to realise that's just what happens to some people... If the 1960s had been a little less sexist, and we'd got our Jean Grey origin backups, we'd be denied a place for a powerful story of loss.