Uncanny X-Men #176: Pryor Commitment

Uncanny X-Men #176 is a rather quieter character piece, centred around Scott's decision. Yes, he's still not sure whether he's going to go into space with the Starjammers or not. It's almost as if his marriage to Madelyne Pryor isn't a particularly big deal for him. This story - and their encounter with random sea monsters and his decision to stay (for now) provides most of the pages.

We also get the fallout from #175 with Logan and Mariko. She acknowledges she was mindcontrolled by Mastermind, but needs to sort out the rot in Clan Yashida before she can wed Logan. So that bodes ill. In the sewers of the City of New York, Callisto goads Caliban into going to look for Kittypryde, who had promised to stay down there with him, but then reneged. Also boding.

And, we finally see the introduction of Dr Valerie Cooper, in one of the federal government's regular cross-departmental mutant paranoia meetings. When Hank Gyrich (who was running a Sentinel program and seeking to apprehend the New Mutants only a few months ago) acts like the voice of reason, you know things have got a little bit overheated. Cooper makes an interesting point, that mutation has really levelled the playing field insofar as powers goes, eroding the traditional American advantage in superhumans caused by their more laissez-faire attitude to health and safety at work. She is, in short, worried about a mutant gap. They worry too about the events of #150 - Magneto tried to take over the world, destroyed Varykino, and then... just vanished. Very troubling indeed.

Uncanny X-Men #174-#175: Teasing the Phoenix

Claremont has always included certain long-running elements, but here the boundaries between stories are becoming increasingly blurred, to the point where my policy of a story-arc-per-post becomes difficult to apply. So, my next arbitrarily packaged off set of issues of Uncanny X-Men is #174-#175.

This is supposed to draw a line under the Madelyne Pryor/Jean Grey thing, but only leaves more questions open.

Mastermind has been working behind the scenes for a few issues - causing Rogue to leave Mystique and join the X-Men, Mystique to have strange dreamcs. This is seemingly with the intent of dividing and distressing the team. Rogue joining caused Binary - possibly their strongest associate - to leave. Wolverine's wedding collapsing wasn't fun either - and that seems to have been related. Cyclops of course is off with his new girlfriend, flying planes (he does seem to have a thing about women and transport, doesn't he? Something to do with his mother?)

So. The Plan. Mastermind uses illusions and mind control to
make Madelyne appear to manifest as Phoenix, which weirds
Scott out. Then, some hours later, Scott drops out of the
sky at Westchester, and after Professor X is conveniently
incapacitated by Cerebro backfiring (otherwise this wouldn't
need to be a double-size issue - #175 is the official 20th
anniversary issue - did I mention that? - and is the first
regular issue of X-Men to cost as much as a dollar! A whole dollar!)

Soon enough he's repeating himself and Scott appears
as Dark Phoenix (as Jean/Phoenix, that is, not the Scott/Phoenix
that he becomes in AvX #11 - I'm writing this the day after
that issue came out and the irony is not lost on me), and the
team immediately start attacking him. Although Xavier has been taken out, Cyclops is eventually able to drug Rogue (using the Danger Room, which can casually synthesise tranquilisers when simulating environments - the TNG holodecks owe a massive debt, it seems), and get her to nab a bit of Xavier's power. She confirms they're telling the truth, they take down Mastermind, and Madelyne is saved.

What is Mastermind's actual goal here? Simple revenge, he says.
They buy that - there've been more than enough villains
after them for that. I don't think he'd been planning
anything so elaborate when he'd been following them around, mind - he's been doing strictly small-scale messing around with them
until - as he notes - he found that Madelyne was the spitting
image of Jean. Which he's taken full advantage of, and them some. "Mastermind" is a boast that nobody with Moriarty-levels of evil coordination would make. He's left alive - although Storm is a rather more trigger-happy than she used to be, and is not pulling punches she would have previously, she still restrains Wolverine from outright killing him.

With all that done (although there's still the business of the
plane crash, and no records of Pryor existence before a certain date - surely they're not blaming Mastermind for that, too?), Scott and Madelyne get married. Just like that. Bit soon, isn't it? It'll never last.

Magik #1-#4: A Snowflake's Chance

Kids. They grow up so fast these days, don't they?

We've had comics being set between previously released issues. We've had comics set between panels. The bulk of the Magik: Storm and Illyana miniseries is set between two parts of the same panel of Uncanny X-Men #160. In that, Illyana is lost in Limbo, and ages half a dozen years while the X-Men watch.

The experience has clearly affected her more than the X-Men suspect. Xavier noticed something odd with her on the scanner, she was honouring an absent friend's birthday (not the brood-fighting Kitty Pryde, although it was her birthday) in New Mutants #3, and then there was that incident with the Danger Room and the sword in Uncanny X-Men #171.

Illyana Nikolovna Rasputin (named here with the correct patronymic for the first time - they even retcon in a previous usage) recounts the tale of her experiences in Limbo - her friendship with an aged Ororo and an adult Kitty Pryde (calling herself Cat), their destruction at Belasco's hands, and her seeking revenge, which in itself corrupts her.

It's not a happily ever after. The Illyana who escapes is warped, and has become exactly that vision of future Illyana that Ororo and Cat had sought to prevent. She has learned all of Belasco's spells, can teleport with the aid of discs (her mutant power?), has created a Soulsword from a bit of herself, and started to grow horns and a tail. She escapes, at which point she appears with the X-Men. At a time and place of her own choosing, it seems.

This is a good story, the best thing I've read yet in the course of my reading for this blog, and it really lays out the character of Magik, who I always had difficulty grasping. By a happy coincidence, I read this the same week that Uncanny X-Men #18 dropped, which has Magik admit to trying to bring Colossus down to her level - perhaps trying to recreate the demonic Colossus she meets here in Limbo. "No snowflakes in hell", she says. She's not wrong.

Uncanny X-Men #172-#173: Yashida Battles The Mutants

The Wolverine miniseries ended in December with the X-Men being invited to Logan and Mariko's wedding. Uncanny X-Men #172 picks this up in August, with the guys arriving - with Rogue in tow.

My colleague SpaceSquid points out that inviting Rogue - who has mindwiped Carol Danvers, one of Logan's few friends - is somewhat infelicitous. And yeah, it is. But it's likely they don't know about Logan and Carol's pre-existing relationship. The idea that he is a man without a past, rather than merely a mysterious one, is not yet present. Except I'm not really sure I believe this line myself - they spent months with the Brood, and even if Logan hasn't been all "oh yeah, me and Carol go way back", they'd have noticed them being tight.

Anyway, it turns out to be a good thing that Rogue was brought along, as she proves resistant to the poison too, and her and Logan team up and bring down the Silver Samurai (a character initially introduced in Daredevil who here turns out to be the illegitimate son of Shengen Yashida - something set up only recently in New Mutants #6), and Viper. The climax is a fight scene - featuring the longest sequence of wordless panels in Uncanny so far - over 3 pages with nothing other than a sound effect - going for the same effect as in the finale of the Wolverine miniseries. Rogue proves her worth by taking a shot, and Logan makes his peace with her, by allowing - forcing even - her to absorb some of his life energy.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, Scott is snooping the personnel records for Madelyne Pryor, and finds that her plane crash happened at the exact same moment that Jean died. [drumroll!] And then a big firebird manifests in Japan with Yukio and Storm. It's not yet been three years, and this is the second time the return of the Phoenix has been teased. Pryor turns up at the wedding as Scott's date, as do Charles and Lilandra and Alex and Lorna and Corsair (no sign of Moira or Sean, though). Storm makes her debut appearance as Punk Storm, to Kitty's horror, which we'll have plenty of time to talk about in future.

And with everyone assembled, Mariko, who had forgiven Logan and said he was better than he thought as the end of miniseries after he killed her father, now breaks up with him at the altar, saying "you are not worthy." The change of heart is rather random and out of character.

There is a curious dissonance between this and the story that Mariko was introduced in. It is almost as if they've forgotten that Mariko was Sunfire's cousin, and have constructed a new Clan Yashida around her, and particularly without reference to Sunfire's original story in #65, where his father and uncle are government officials.

Finally, I'm sure you are awaiting an update to the Shag Chart update. Logan doesn't seem the sort, you see.

New Mutants #8-#11: Moon and Earth

We've bypassed Manaus, and instead join our New Mutants in the Amazon rainforest in New Mutants #8. SpaceSquid covered this only two days ago, and quotes me calling it "profoundly offensive racist garbage", which I totes stand by.¹ By the way, the story does actually use the word "rainforest", which made me look up that on Google Ngram viewer, and yes, it seems that was just before it doubled in popularity in the late 1980s, so well done, Claremont, have a cookie.

Anyway, Rahne is not dealing well with the heat (and, if her skin is as much like mine as it seems, I hope she's wearing sunscreen). Soon enough, they encounter a girl named "Amara", seemingly from a local tribe, but with strange arrows. One is from the Hivoto, from the Peru portrayed in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and another of Jivaro origin, who Nina identifies as being local but in reality are from Peru/Ecuador. Amara's knife, however, is of steel!

So, there's an incident with the boats, and the New Mutants end up captured by Romans, who are living in a city ("Nova Roma") in an isolated valley (once more, we find something you can't really do these days - if this existed you'd be able to see it on Google Maps), and our captive Amara is revealed to be one of these Romans. She'd been in blackface and a wig, and really is white and blonde - which sigh, if they had to do this, couldn't they just have drawn her as a southern Italian and spared us that disguise crap? And she speaks English after all (to Rahne's great embarrassment), and gives her full name as "Amara Juliana Olivia Aquilla", exile and daughter of the first senator, one Lucius Antonius Aquilla. The city is part-Roman (to those the republican aspects are ascribed), but also accepted some Incas centuries again, who brought with them some tendencies towards despotism (because Romans certainly never do that sort of thing). Sigh.

Now, this is profoundly offensive garbage, and it is simply not a defence to say that it was of its time, and they weren't to know better. A letter printed in #19 outlines, with perfect clarity, the problem with this story.

Dear Marvel,



THE NEW MUTANTS is a pretty good book, but the plotline starting in #8 is atrocious. As a black person myself, I'm sick and tired of these storylines that place lost Roman legions or other whites in the jungle whenver it starts to appear that the so-called "savage" tribes have any intelligence. You've turned the clock back decades with that old bull about how the Amazon tribeswoman turn out to be whites wearing some kind of dye because their knives show sophisticated workmanship. I hope in the future you at Marvel will avoid such cliche-ridden worn-out racist stories when the action takes place in a non-Western country or culture (the New Mutants story takes place in an area where Western civilization hasn't arrived yet.)



Quentin Sinclair

(no address)

Do they acknowledge it's a problem and apologise? Nope. They defend the storyline elements, and say they hadn't consciously meant to be racist, as if that makes it any better. They do at least concede that the hybrid nature of the culture was only marginally apparent in the finished story, and note they'll do better in the future. But the hybrid nature, with democratic Romans and despotic Incas is half the problem!

Because it's a Roman story made out of pure condensed trope, and the protagonists have become captives, the boys are taken to Gladiator Academy, while the girls are pampered and drugged prior to be sold off as slaves.

Just as the boys face defeat, Rahne breaks loose from her drugging, shapeshifts, and saves them. This is the cause of some comment - they reckon her lupine abilities come to her from the line of Romulus. Heh. So, having gone through the being-gladiators-and-slaved-tropes, one of their number gets hailed as a living god. They've been saved courtesy of Senator Gallio, who is Lucius's rival and covets the Emperorship. He's married to Selene, who turns out to be an ancient moon sorceress slash living vampire. She wants to recruit Dani and kill Amara.

Amara, having been tossed into a lava pool, is reborn in molten form, and then battles Selene. Lucky, really. I wonder whether she might be a more long-term version of Darwin. If she'd have been drowned, would she have become Hydro?

They all rally round, put a stop to Selene and Gallio's plans, rescue Bobby's mother, and generally huzzah!

I was originally slightly puzzled by Emmanuel's plan: he wants to exploit the mineral wealth of Amazonas, and so therefore is sabotaging his wife's archaeological expedition. Amazonas is, well, a big place, larger than say, Mongolia. Towards the end it's strongly implied that he knew about Nova Roma already, and that it specifically would be a good place for mining, so that clears that up partially.

Having a random Roman colony in Brazil is very weird, even by the standards of X-Men, but this is not given the appropriate level of remarkableness in-comic. How did these people get here? Doesn't this change everything we know about history? Why do they speak English? For that matter, why do they speak classical Latin, anyway, rather than some previously unknown Quechua-Italic contact language? These are questions that are not even asked, let alone answered, in the story. (The letters page for #19 provides a feeble excuse that they'd learned English from previous expeditions, without explaining why, or why not Portuguese.)

1. This of course means I've caught up! At least as far as New Mutants goes. For Uncanny it'll take until the end of the month. I'm cheating by not doing Alpha Flight and Dazzler, but I will be covering everything else I can get my hands on, including the Magik: Storm and Illyana miniseries (coming Saturday), Kitty Pryde & Wolverine (13th November), X-Men & Alpha Flight (19th November), and then eventually doing X-Factor (2nd December) in full when it launches. I cannot find the Nightcrawler limited series, sadly. I fail to care about Longshot but will possibly consider it if recommended. X-Men vs. Fanstatic Four is in Essential, but I need to get hold of X-Men vs. Avengers, which is possibly rare, or at least hard to Google for now, THANK YOU MARVEL. Oh, and I have a copy of Fallen Angels already. Anything else I am missing from my list?

From this you can perhaps tell that I have got a LITTLE BIT AHEAD in my reading and writing, such that I've already started in 2013 posts and have only got five left to complete in 2012. This is good.

New Mutants #7: "Flying Down to Rio"

At the start of New Mutants #7, Xi'an is missing from the explosion still. The X-Men have spent several days searching for her, with no joy, and Xavier decides its time to pursue other avenues. He himself can sense Xi'an still, but doesn't tell them that. My guess at this stage is that her uncle has claimed her for that year's service she'd promised to him in #6. He sends the New Mutants to Rio, with Bobby's mother, who turns up here, knowing all about Bobby being a mutant and accepting him. Which makes Bobby mixed-race! One of the first mixed-race characters in comics?

But it's difficult to see how Bobby's parents' marriage works, not because of their different backgrounds but their attitudes. His mother, Nina, who we meet here for the first time, is a professional archaeologist and amateur environmentalist. His father, Emmanuel (also spelt Emmanual and Emanuel) is a self-made business tycoon who now lives in the mansion in Ipanema that his mother worked as a maid at. He's a member of the Hellfire Club (as established in #1), but not yet its Inner Circle). Nina is planning an expedition to the "Madería - the headwaters of the Amazon", which Emmanuel is very unimpressed by - although he wants to send geologists there. Perhaps we can interpret the verbal sparring over the dinner table as him desparately trying to stop her trip, and imagine their usual interaction is more comfortable. How did they even meet?

Emmanuel wants Nina to change her mind, so he doesn't have to pull the trigger on the "get the Hellfire Club to scare her off preferably without hurting her" plan. Which fails, thanks to the kids. The issue ends with them preparing to fly to Manaus, and Emmanuel and Shaw plotting their next move: make sure they never arrive at their final destination.

New Mutants #5-#6: Team America: World Thieves

I'm afraid I still can't write "Team America" without thinking of this, so this'll have to be a short one.

The kids are visiting a carnival, where the motorcyclist stunt act Team America are performing. These were introduced a year ago in Captain America #269, and had then gone on to star in their own ongoing Team America series. These were the distant days when you could promote a line of toys by getting them in a comic book, and that's what's gone on here - someone has tried to relaunch an Evil Knievel line with different names after the assault charges. It is therefore hilarious that on page 20 Sunspot punches Wolf for giving him some lip.

So. Silver Samurai and Viper are at the carnival too - tracking an unspecified group. The New Mutants, perhaps? Nope - they're after Team America. There's a fight, Dani becomes the "Dark Rider" and protects Team America and wakes up amnesiac and captured. The others regroup: Xavier theorises that the Dark Rider is a gestalt formed by the members of Team America, who are mutants (see, relevant!). They are blackmailed into conducting a thieving expedition, and go ahead, with Xavier monitoring them.

That leaves the New Mutants free and unsupervised, and they pay Xi'an's uncle (now the Kingpin of San Francisco, if not in name) a visit looking for intel. This would be Nguyen Ngoc Coy. Another digression about nomenclature: the Vietnamese names here are broken, even worse than the Russian names. Nguyễn is a family name, not a personal name. As is Tran (her brother's name). Leong exists in Vietnamese as Lương, but is another family name. Looks like someone didn't get the memo about East Asian names often being FamilyName PersonalName, then.

I seem to recall I was writing about a comic. Oh, yes. So, Nyugen spills the beans, and the New Mutants liberate Dani. Meanwhile, Team America thieve that macguffin. Both teams are successful, although Xavier is pissed off that the New Mutants went on a field trip without his permission. But this is at a hideous cost. Karma has promised herself for a year's service to her uncle. That thing, that she was so determined to avoid in Marvel Team-Up #100, she's willingly signed up for in order to save Dani. Hardcore.

And then suddenly there's an explosion! Oh noes!

Uncanny X-Men #169-#171: Morlocks and Rogue

Uncanny X-Men #169-#170 is a little two-part story which introduces the Morlocks, followed by an epilogue in #171 which also features Rogue. They've captured Angel (who is living with Candy Sothern - that version is coming up so frequently I can't quite believe it's a simple misspelling), and Callisto plans to wed him.

X-Men stop that, but at what cost... Storm defeats Callisto in a fight "to the death" (Callisto gets better in #171), because she sees no other option, thus continuing her spiralling descent since the Brood eggs arc. Caliban, who we'd met in #148, is now seen as one of them, seeking out new recruits for them, and helps provide the information they need, in exchange for Kitty agreeing to stay down there with him in the tunnels, and be his friend.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, we've still not yet met Scott's grandparents, but he's become fascinated by Madelyne Pryor. Who is not just similar-looking to Jean Grey, but is the spitting image of her. And turns out to have survived a plane crash on September 1, 1980. I simply don't believe Claremont's claim that this was all originally supposed to be a coincidence. Why do that - why have the little tease "How'd you know that's my favorite breakfast"/"Simple - I'm a mind-reader"?

And somewhere else, in a safe house, Mystique is having strange dreams, not unlike the ones that Jean Grey had during Mastermind's brainwashing of her (a narrative caption curiously pegs her birth year as 1953, which not only rules out the long Wolverine-like appearances throughout the century, but also means she cannot be Nightcrawler's parent. Er, not that we know that yet.)

She's going by the name "Raven" even in private with Irene, now. And Rogue has run off, apparently also under the influence of Mastermind. Where could she have gone? To the X-Men's mansion it turns out (er, so that's another on the list of people who know where to find the X-Men - it must basically be common knowledge by now), where she begs for help.

The result of this is slightly spoiled by the cover (Rogue joins the X-Men!), but it's good stuff anyway. Storm and the X-Men are strongly against it - despite having offered refuge to the Morlocks that very day; but Binary reacts more violently. Xavier makes a Patrick Stewart Speech (I do wonder whether there's a little mind control going on here), and the matter is settled. Rogue joins, and nobody quits, apart from Binary, who hasn't really been hanging around the mansions since they returned from space anyway. Not enough meat of this is made, I think.

Xavier's relatively liberal attitude to Rogue - welcoming her in even over the objections of his team - can be compared to the Morlocks, who remain in the tunnel system. Sure, they make a token effort to invite them back, but Storm could try a little stronger - she is leader now after all - they could suggest someone comes and visits on a trial basis. Once more we see the X-Men's passing privilege raise its beautiful head. Nightcrawler says that he's found it OK upstairs, apparently forgetting that he's had access to an image inducer. Even on a practical level this is odd - Healer and Masque would be very good additions to the team in so far as their power-sets - is this a case of prejudice defeating even practicality?

And, finally another little sub-plot! Crikey, Claremont does like embedding them in, doesn't he? While Xavier and Lilandra are looking at Rogue, the other X-Men go have a session in the Danger Room. Illyana programs it with Belasco's realm, and when Kitty tries to turn it off, she uses a kind of strange sword (that has come from nowhere) to stop her. Something's going on here, but looks like we've got another slow burner.

Uncanny X-Men #168: Professor Xavier is Quite Reasonable

Uncanny X-Men #168 is a slow, character-based issue, after the several months of Brood-filled action.

The first order of business is Xavier having demoted Kitty Pryde to the New Mutants team at the end of #167, which she naturally resents (having just spent however many months in space with the main team, proving her worth). Call Kitty annoying if you like, but I think she's earned her keep, and just arbitrarily demoting her as soon as you see her (especially after she'd helped save you from a Brood monster) is a bit much.

This issue fails to do with the premise. In particular, it doesn't feature the "X-Babies" at all, making her change of teams rather nominal. It might be fun to see her interact with Dani and gang and come to realise they're not so bad. But in their absence, the only way for this to end is for Kitty to defeat a problem or solve some monsters (in this case some left over Sidri from #155), during which she discovers an alien dragon-like creature (Lockheed) has survived the events of #166 and made its way to the X-Mansion. She's admitted back into the X-Men on a probationary basis, which is more than good enough for her.

Despite the rather immature stomping about, Kitty seems to grow up a lot this issue. She's being drawn very differently by Paul Smith than by Byrne or Cockrum, to begin with - the old costume helps, and she displays a real steely determination when facing the Sidri. The Kitty of Whedon and Cassaday is clearly an older version of this Kitty.

Meanwhile, Cyclops, Corsair and Havok go visit the grandparents, in Alaska. (Cyclops visits Lee Forrester first, who he it is strongly suggested gets off with). Their pilot for today is Madelyne Pryor, who has red hair and green eyes and takes Scott's breath away. And, Kurt visits Amanda with the surprise news that he's alive.

New Mutants #3-#4 / Uncanny X-Men #167

New Mutants has been leading in to #167 (cover date March 1983), but there's a problem, in that #3, which finishes the sequence, was released two months later, in May 1983, and #167 started with the New Mutants all watching television, all unaware of the Brood in Xavier's head.

Any story actually dealing with the Brood (rather than having it as a background element of Weird Stuff) in New Mutants will therefore not only see our team fail to deal with the problem adequately, but end with them not even recognising one.

And so we get #3, where Dani becomes aware the a monster, nobody believes her, it manifests in all their presence and then... it is revealed to all be a dream (caused by Dani's fear powers, under an outside influence). They even get as far as hypothesising that Xavier is linked. And then they go and see some TV, the five of them.

So, that moment in #2 where Stevie realises the only person who could have run the advanced training problem in the Danger Room, is Xavier, is just plain wasted.

Couple of other bits in #3: Moira and Sean talking about having children again, with Moira moping about not having had a son by Xavier. And Illyana, who Sean catches doing some kind of ritual to do with Belasco. Whatever it is, that can't be good.

#167 itself starts quite hilariously. The X-Men, having concluded there is a Brood egg in the Professor in #166, go straight for the mansion (bypassing the Proto-Utopia island, I suppose, although maybe they went there first and that's why they're in such a hurry), and then attack the group of children in the common room. This is not your usual superhero misunderstanding - the X-Men know full well that the kids are new students of Xavier's. It's just that subduing them is going to take less time than explaining matters.

The New Mutants prove less of a pushover than Cyclops was expecting, but ultimately are defeated. Just in time for them to find Xavier in the final stages of Brood incubation and watch him turning into a Brood Queen. The Brood beats the boys (Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler) to a standstill, but then the artillery arrives in the form of Warbird and Storm, and the Brood Queen is taken down.

Just as they are about to kill it, they discover that Xavier's personality still exists within, and spare its life. By an amazing coincidence, the Starjammers have the technology to clone Xavier's body, and then "transplant" the mind. This works very well, and even gives him shiny new legs. Until he tries to stand on them, they buckle underneath him, and he discovers his mind needs time to adjust.

And what are we to make of this notion that Xavier has drawn together the New Mutants specifically to lay eggs in, mentioned in #4? Well, if you examine what happened more closely, it doesn't make much sense. Xavier was depressed after the apparent loss of the X-Men and Lilandra, and the idea to train Karma was practically forced on him by Moira, who also provided Rahne. Psyche he got a letter about, and then he only picked up Cannonball and Sunspot because they got entangled in Pierce's schemes. So, at what point did the Brood's influence manifest? If we can blame anything on it, perhaps it's the reason Xavier has decided not to form another team of X-Men to go on missions, but instead to keep the tasty tasty children safe and close.

#167 is also the issue in which the issue of Scott and Alex's grandparents are raised. Turns out, they have some, which is complete news to Scott, as if he's never thought about the issue before. He's not a John Doe, he knew the name of his parents - it's never occurred to him to check? Why, for that matter, wasn't he placed with them instead of being put in an orphanage?

And finally, Lilandra was stranded too, with the X-Men. Gladiator turns up, wanting an audience with her. He declares Deathbird unfit to rule, and suggests a space rebellion! And sets us up for a bizarre page in which Lilandra goes and gives Reed a piece of her mind for refraining from killing Galactus, apparently intended as a bit of cheeky revenge at John Byrne, after Byrne retconned the Doom in #145-#147 as a Doombot.

Finally, coming to New Mutants #4, it's one of those unusual X-Men stories where the only superhero element is the good mutants themselves. The "villain" of the piece, who has been making harassing phone calls to Stevie, is, shockingly, the new character introduced on page 2. Edgy stuff.

New Mutants #1-#2: Read My Lips: No New X-Men

The New Mutants graphic novel apparently proved a success and so we get an ongoing series! This is the real start of the X-franchise, notwithstanding the Wolverine and Dazzler solo titles.

But first, a comic.

The first three issues of New Mutants lead up to the events of Uncanny X-Men #167, which is a bit odd because they were released several months after it, so we already know that Xavier is infected by the Brood and has brought the children there to infect too. How plausible that is we'll cover in a post's time, but for now I'll note this robs the end panel of #1 (where we see someone setting off the Danger Room, apparently trying to kill Dani - not enough to make a positive ID, but his sleeve matches the type that Xavier was wearing earlier in the issue) of its mystery.

This arc is the first serious look at the ethics of power use - and by that I don't mean the obligation to use them to help others, but whether some means are just tainted entirely, no matter the ends. Two of our new mutants have mind-based powers: Dani, who can make people see their fears; and Karma, who can mind-control people. Karma is upset when Dani (by accident, it seems), shows the group her trauma: her escape from Vietnam, her mother's death, and her attempt to protect her younger siblings (who are curiously absent - I wonder where they are living?). Dani is of course mortified, and spends much of the story running away, and then trying to prove herself.

Meanwhile, the other four (with Stevie - Moira and Illyana are in London, finding out that Xavier has an autistic, powered, son, by the Israeli ambassador, one Gabrielle Heller - which can go on the Chart now) go to the local mall. This is a ground-level view of the X-Men's small-town neighbours that we've never really seen before, and has something of the Broxton about it. They're being followed, by agents of Hank Gyrich (introduced a few years ago as a bureaucratic obstructionist character in Avengers), who is conspiring with Sebastian Shaw, mutant member of the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle. So, the attempt to wipe the information in #158 was a failure.

Shaw is using Gyrich. He doesn't want to see the New Mutants arrested or dead. He's willing to see them use giant mutant-killing robots - which he used before in the Ororo/Emma bodyswap story - to try and convince young mutants that it's a dangerous world and to sign up with him. For all that Magneto was evil, he's never staged a false flag operation, so far as we know. And although the guys (with Michael Rossi's help) take down the Sentinels and turn the day. Our issue of ethics comes up again, as Karma forces one of the goons to make a confession. It's all true, says, Rossi, but what's really going to happen here? The moment Karma breaks the control, he wakes up not knowing why he's been handcuffed. His masters will be able to spin this as an "evil mutants" thing quite easily and whisk him away from the local police department. The effect of this all has to be counted as a victory for Shaw, as he manages to sow mistrust on all sides.

The new holographic Danger Room is introduced in this issue. How it came to be holographic is not made clear, but certainly the mansion was rebuilt with the help of Shi'ar tech, so making it be of that origin is a natural fit. Oddly, the mansion has been rebuilt with the X-Men's rooms as they were (complete with mess!) and Storm's roof garden, where the plants are starting to get thirsty after several weeks of separation from their tender). That's some construction robots for you.

We get some ages of the team in #2. Rahne and Dani are 14. Bobby is 13. Xi'an is 19 (and is therefore older or a contemporary of Peter!). And Sam, as we already know from the graphic novel, is 16. And, they all get codenames: Dani is "Psyche", Rahne is "Wolfsbane", Sam is "Cannonball" (a word that had been used to describe him in the graphic novel), and Bobby is "Sunspot". Xi'an is already known as Karma. Where these names came from - whether they were self-endowed, or like previous codenames bestowed by Xavier - is left unstated.