Uncanny X-Men #200: "The Trial of Magneto"

So. Trial of the century. It's all going on in our special double-sized celebratory issue of Uncanny X-Men #200.

Magneto is to be tried by an ad-hoc international criminal court akin to the Nuremburg trials. (I suppose the United States wasn't willing to hand him over directly the Soviet Union? Sadly, the claim that it is the first court of its kind would no longer hold up, because it has been necessary to set up special ad hoc international criminal tribunals for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and eventually a standing International Criminal Court was established. Americans: you really should get around to joining that one of these years, it's making you look ridiculous.)

Our impromptu tribunal is in Paris, rather than the Hague, presumably as reference images of the City of Light are a tad easier to come by.

For the prosecution, we have Sir James Jaspers, Attorney General of England and Wales. This is slightly weird - Attorney General doesn't have the same hands-on role in prosecutions as they do in the United States (that department is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions), but it's at least true that he represents the British government at the ICJ, so we'll give it a pass.

More worrying is Magneto's defence team, which is the Ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom, Gaby Haller, and Charles Xavier. Now, let's accept that Haller and Xavier have perfectly good in-story reasons for supporting Magneto right now. Nonetheless, what on Earth are they thinking. Were they not able to find an actual legal team? Does Xavier really want to be known in public not only as a "mutant-lover", but also as an actual Magneto apologist?

And worse than that: what is the Israeli government thinking? Is Haller acting in an official capacity? If they wanted to do an Israel-offers-mutants-asylum storyline, that would be pretty interesting, but that's really not what's going on, and instead it seems like Haller is going rogue. She gotta end up being sacked as a result of this, right?

To the the trial itself. Our first bit of business is the stuff prior to X-Men #104. The defence argues that that was a different Magneto, and that the current one can only be held responsible for actions after he has been restored to adulthood. Which might be true, but the court just accepts this assertion without questioning how it can be proven. The defence asserts that it's an established fact that Magneto went to Auschwitz, must therefore be in his 60s, and has clearly been de-aged since, and this all means he shouldn't be put on trial for stuff before he got turned into a baby. No evidence is presented of this remarkable claim. I don't know how this works - maybe they got Johnnie Cochran to give them pre-trial coaching? - but it does, and so the trial is confined mostly to the destruction of the Soviet ship Leningrad and the city of Varykino.

Magneto gladly 'fesses up to both of these, but doesn't see the problem. The Leningrad had just tried to nuke him, after all, and he destroyed the city in a relatively nice way.

Meanwhile, back at the mansion, tumbleweed sits down and starts singing about gold.

The X-Men and New Mutants are in Paris for this excitement, having been 'ported there by Loki following the shenanigans of New Mutants Special Edition #1/X-Men Annual #8. There are anti-mutant demonstrations and, very worryingly, someone is framing the X-Men for a series of terrorist attacks. But there's hope, too: the largest demonstration Paris has ever seen, in some kind of solidarity with our mutants. Maybe some of them say "Magneto avait raison"?

During all this, Xavier has been getting weaker and weaker. He's totally unprepared for the moment when the Strucker twins - the ones who had gone after Storm in Africa arrive, and become Fenris by touching their skin together. They are the children of the Strucker seen in the flashback in #162, and they want their revenge. There is fighting. Magneto stops Jaspers from killing one of the Struckers after they've been separated, which gets him points with the judge. More scuffling, and Xavier is injured beyond any normal human healing, but is fished out by the Starjammers using a stargate, for Sirpinksi to heal. Xavier's parting wish is for Magneto to take over the school and the X-Men, although he doesn't do so within earshot of anyone other than Magneto himself, which will lead to complications.

The trial is left in ruins. The defendant absconds, although since he's very shortly to be found at his defence attorney's country mansion running his school for gifted youngsters, it should hardly be a problem to track him down. And maybe he was about to be acquitted anyway?

And that's the first two hundred issues of X-Men. There have been line-up changes, there have been fake-outs. But never before has it done anything like this - sending Xavier away and having their former archenemy in charge. This is gonna be fun.

New Mutants Special Edition #1/X-Men Annual #9: For Asgard!

I'd known that the New Mutants share some vague sort of link with Asgardian stuff for a while - Dani goes and asks for that boon in Utopia if nothing else. And then of course Exiled happened. But it was always a bit obscure. Those stories were rather taking the relationship as read, but it wasn't the type of character background you can absorb through osmosis. Dani has Valkyrie powers and a horse, yes, but the effect that has on her character is not something that can be easily expressed in a one-sentence potted summary. It's an complex event that happened to her, and it's I suppose the same problem that legacy characters have. Mind, it's a sorry state of affairs when having complex chararacter motivations and background is a problem.

So, New Mutants Special Edition #1 and X-Men Annual #9 - which together consist of over 100 pages of comics - gave me my answer, and I feel better for having read them, in much the same way as I have a fuller understanding of Magik from reading Magik: Storm and Illyana.

There's too much plot to summarise sensibly, especially as the nine New Mutants are spread throughout the Nine Worlds (although seemingly not one per world - I think they missed a trick there). Consequences that matter are: Dani is a Valkyrie, with a pegasus, but doesn't understand the full implications of that yet. Karma loses weight. Rahne makes a friend, in Hrimhari, a more mythological wolf shapeshifter. And Rachel Summers new identity of "Phoenix" becomes known to the group, although she still hasn't told Scott who she is yet. He thinks it's a bit tasteless, which is a fair point. And Loki's plan, to make Storm a new thunder goddess and take control of Asgard, fails, as it must.

Uncanny X-Men #199: The Writing on the Wall

Mystique can see the writing on the wall: it reads "MUTIES". She's gone to Val Cooper and given herself and her Brotherhood up. See, I'd read a summary of Uncanny X-Men #199, but summaries are only good at saying what happened. They're no good at pointing out what doesn't happen.

In this issue, what doesn't happen is that Mystique blows her cover identity - Raven Darkholme, assisant to Val Cooper. The incident is therefore much easier to read as Mystique being typically tricksy, and much less a shocking moment for her character than I had thought it would be. Having said that, the idea of Mystique-as-betrayer doesn't really exist yet, does it? She's just a perfectly ordinary evil shapeshifter, not a perfidious one.

Val Cooper agrees for an amnesty for Mystique's team - to be renamed "Freedom Force" - if they are able to bring in the Mutant Enemy No. 1: Joss Whedon. Er, no, I mean, Magneto.

Magneto, Lee Forrester and Kitty Pryde are at a holocaust event in New York. Kitty's great-aunt died in it, and Magneto himself, as we've discussed, is a survivor. Kitty wonders aloud about her great-aunt, and it just so happens that another set of Holocaust survivors attending had heard of her. Someone also recognises Magneto, and therefore presumably know his real name, or at least the one he was using in the 1940s, but at no point refer to him by it. Coincidence is just how superhero comics work, but I think it's worth a special mention here: this is woeful plotting for something which is trying to make a point out of how large in scale the Holocaust was.

So, while they're there, who should arrive on the scene but Freedom Force! Or rather, Lee Forrester reveals herself to be Mystique really. It's not entirely obvious when the switch was made: but it seems likely Mystique has been delaying the confrontation specifically to do it in the Holocaust museum, so that she can score some extra points.

There's a little bit of fighting (during which Pyro calls someone "cobber" - so he's Australian now, or possibly just Claremont doesn't clearly distinguish different types of Commonwealth slang), and ultimately Magneto realises he can't win and more to the point, shouldn't. He gracefully gives himself up for trial.

While this is all happening, Rachel Summers is visiting the Greys in Annandale-on-Hudson (well, creepily trespassing in their house, anyway). She finds the memory crystal thing that had been left there in #136, and laments the fact that she'll never exist in this universe. Scott is about to has a child, certainly, but with Madelyne Pryor, and not her mother.

Oh, and she declares herself to be Phoenix, and makes herself a new costume. This will be awkward to explain to Scott, who still isn't aware of her connection with the Greys, and with him. There's something about Scott Summers and people not wanting to admit to his face about being his relative.

New Mutants #29-#34: Bad Karma

The next run of issues in New Mutants is the first to be seriously derailed by a crossover. I'm going to try to ignore the existence of Secret Wars II and the Beyonder, and focus on the latter pair of issues.

In #29, Bobby and Amara are kidnapped by the Gladiators, a kind of evil. Sam and Illyana team up with Lila Cheney and Dazzler to rescue them. In #30 they are joined by Rachel and Kitty. In #31 it is revealed who the mastermind behind all this is: Xi'an - it looks like her uncle took her up on that promise. She flees.

In #4, the New Mutants proper (Dani, now going by "Mirage"; Sam, Bobby, Amara, Rahne, Illyana and Doug and Warlock - minus Rachel and Kitty) track Karma down in Madripoor (making its first appearance here). If Madripoor is Mos Eisley, it has to be said that Karma now bears a striking resemblance to Jabba the Hutt. The attack does not go well, and Karma takes slaves. Dani and Illyana prove resistant to mind control and follow her to Cairo, while Warlock tracks down Storm and gets her to meet them there.

We discover that something evil is possessing Karma - although it is not yet named as the Shadow King, it is the same thing possessing Amahl Farouk that Xavier found in Cairo in the flashback for #117 (when he met Storm for the first time). Illyana is eventually able to break the psychic control by sending everyone to Limbo, while Warlock provides a distraction by pretending to be her. A liberated Karma herself banishes the force.

I find this a bit of a let-down, as it seems rather a mundane possession story. I was hoping for emotional pay-off of the deal between her and her uncle, but that was just teased and then seemingly forgotten about. Maybe to be revisited at a later date?

Uncanny X-Men #197-#198: Lifedeath 2

I've been disregarding the Storm bits of the last few issues, which is good, because now it means I totally ignore the A-plot of #197 (Arcade) and talk about her instead, although not before saying that Colossus has noticed Kitty is being written older, too.

Storm, as we know, has been depowered by Forge's gun, and after a brief spell leading the X-Men anyway, has left New York to go back to her teenage stomping ground in Kenya. She rescued someone from the Struckers (their first appearance), got shot by them and was left to die. We don't know who they are but they appear to be South African racists (they're calling people "kaffir", you see, just like we saw the confirmed South African racist call people in Marvel Team-Up #100). In #197 we find her recovering from that, and #198 focuses on her adventures in Kenya. This issue is drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith (who also drew #186, "Lifedeath", and also way back in 1969, issue #53 with Blastaar).

Storm finds a young pregnant woman, Shani, the sole survivor of a bus accident, and helps her back to her village, and then aids in the birth. This ability to help someone, despite her powerless, proves a turning point for Storm - her descent started with rejection of life (even if it was evil alien implanted life) in that second Brood arc, and now her ascent starts with bringing new life into the world. Nicely done.

This is yet another issue with no actual punching in it. Storm's story will continue in a more traditional style in New Mutants.

Uncanny X-Men #196: Welcome to the X-Men, Magneto

Some things happened in Secret Wars II 1, but I'm not going to read that miniseries, because it can't get any better than Luke Cage misunderstanding monetary theory and the Beyonder turning a building into gold (as my favourite comment on that post points out, he's not called BUYING POWER MAN).

So, let's look at our tie-in issue in isolation. Uncanny X-Men #196 starts with Dr Xavier (hrm, had it actually been confirmed he had a PhD beforehand?) lecturing at Columbia University, and getting the impression there's someone in this room who is intent on murder. Who, exactly, he doesn't know, because since he was mugged he's been taking telepathic-suppressant drugs (which he is, incidentally, lying about). He brings the X-Men to him (and Magneto and Lee), and asks them to go check on the various students.

Anti-mutant prejudice has reached the status of a moral panic. Our bad guys are turning on Kitty Pryde and declaring her to be a mutant just for being a student at the School (I guess the secret of what "gifted youngsters" is a euphemism for is out, then). Kitty loses the moral high ground by comparing mutie with her favourite shocking word, to someone's face, before then getting chloroformed, in the face. We then discover that the murder that the students were planning was... of Xavier! They've left a kind of mindbomb, which Xavier doesn't trigger on account of his drugs, but Rachel does.

That sends Rachel raging, and showing her hound-face to the other X-Men. She's ready enough to kill Phil and his gang, but Magneto, of all people, talks her out of it. Magneto's development here is rather sudden. Is this still all building out of the moment in #150 with Kitty, or is there other stuff that we're not privy to? I suppose the Lee Forrester stuff was working toward this.

Meanwhile, Nightcrawler is visiting Father Bowen, Marvel New York's go-to guy if you need a Catholic priest. He's Tandy's uncle (I think what's happened here is that Claremont has noticed there are two characters with the surname Bowen and then decided they should be related?), aided Karma and her siblings, and now now makes his first appearance in Uncanny, and now helps Nightcrawler deal with a crisis of faith. Kurt has been a believer ever since that Brood arc, and here we see what that actually means for him in a world of marvels and miracles. Is there a room for the Christian god when your team is on first-name terms with Thor?

It's been a while. Have a chart. This is an important one, as it marks the first interlinking of two previously separate groups.

Uncanny X-Men #195/Power Pack #12: Power Pack

Uncanny X-Men #195 is a cross-over with Power Pack #12. Power Pack are a relatively recent creation (1984), and are a bunch of pre-teen siblings (the Powers) who get superpowers from a space horse (but not the same type of space horse as Beta Ray Bill) and have adventures.

#195 starts with the Power children finding their parents have forgotten them. This is part of a sinister plan by the Morlock Annalee to abduct them, with the aid of Masque (who has reshaped their faces), and Beautiful Dreamer (who has the ability to alter memories), and presumably Sunder (who has the power to steal furniture). Katie Power - the youngest - avoids being captured by the Morlocks.

So, this is another Morlocks stealing people story. So far they have tried to steal Kitty Pryde, Angel, Kitty Pryde (again) and now Katie Power. Their existence was problematic at best already (as no realistic effort has been made to extend a hand to them by the heroic characters), and now they seem to be acting as stand-ins in unsavoury tales about gypsies. We have privilege hierarchy here: the respectable heroes (the Avengers as typified by Captain America), looking down at the X-Men, who themselves look down on the Morlocks. Callisto has some sense (I suppose she knows she'll get it in the chest if this continues), and puts a stop to it, so that's all sorted. I count at least 40 Morlocks on the front row of that crowd, by the way. There must be hundreds of them.

Our X-Men in this issue are Wolverine, Rachel, Rogue and Shadowcat, which is oddly enough (bar a couple of members of the O5 and Gambit, who doesn't exist yet) the initial core staff of the Jean Grey School. Nightcrawler is off having a solo series. Wolverine makes the decision to place Shadowcat in charge, which is a bit curious. On the one hand, he's clearly not ready for leadership, and doesn't really want people to rely on him. But his ability to do this will means he sees himself as a king-maker. She manages it well, though, and I'd say she's being written as a competent 17 or 18 year old (#196 will say she's 15). That trip to Japan sure aged her!

Uncanny X-Men #194: Nimrod vs Juggernaut

Uncanny X-Men #194 features the X-Men in one of those days where they probably just should have stayed in bed. The news is reporting the re-appearance of Juggernaut in New York City, and our team of mutants grudgingly realise they should probably do something about that.

Last time they met him in the pages of Uncanny, he was keeping to himself and the X-Men made a fight happen that wouldn't have any way. So this time they take the smart approach of not going in all powers flaring, and instead just sending Kitty and Rachel to spy on him. (Xavier might have been helpful, but he's off in Scotland dealing with Legion).

Nimrod has no such compunction. (Nimrod, by the way, is a sentinel from Rachel's future that's been dragged to the present by her timestorm. It rescued a guy in #190 and has become his lodger. The Terminator came out in 1984, by the way.) Nimrod attacks Juggernaut, and the X-Men, and there is an unfortunate battle in which it seems the X-Men and the Juggernaut are on the same side - an impression only emphasises by their decision to let him escape, under truce, at the end. They probably wouldn't have done that if they'd seen the cameras, but too late. After #193 they were wanted fugitives, and this does them no favours at all. By the end of the issue, even the Russians have found out about Nimrod (I don't know how his name got out - did Nimrod start giving press conferences or something?)

Maybe just going into hiding wouldn't be such a bad idea...

New Mutants #26-#28: Xavier's Shame

New Mutants #26 starts on Muir Isle, where Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander (our cop and nurse who had their bodies changed in #20) are training. Well, Tom is training - Sharon is standing around in a pullover. He's found out that he has superhuman strength, which isn't much of a consolation for being unable to show your face to your family ever again. Things start flying everywhere. David is having a fit.

Who's David? He's been mentioned before, and a facsimile note of Moira's at the end of #25 gave the full details. He's Charles Xavier's son, by Gabrielle Haller, who was mentioned in #1. Moira has been looking after him. Recently, he has developed scary psionic abilities that he can't control, and although she agreed with Gabrielle to keep things quiet, she's left with no choice but to ask Charles for help.

Xavier, Moira, Gaby and the New Mutants (really, there's no need for the New Mutants to actually have come, but it's their book still, technically) go to Scotland, and check things out. This is a homecoming for Rahne, and she bumps into Reverend Craig, who curtly dismisses her. Later, Moira makes a clumsy attempt at bonding with Rahne, who manages to call her "Mum". In X-Factor spotting, Jamie Madrox makes his first appearance since Uncanny #129 here.

The book addresses the ethics of Charles's relationship with Gaby before he's presented with incontrovertible evidence in the form of David's paternity. This is good. He unconditionally apologises, saying it was "criminal". Which is not an exaggeration. She brushes it off, of course, the story isn't about that, and this is about the minimum effort it has to put into addressing it without pretending it was acceptable. Still, why even bother doing this, if the intent isn't to portray as Xavier as a severely unethical problem. His bastard son doesn't have to be by a former patient, and we could write off #161 as a cheese dream.

So, the story eventually delves into David's mind. Charles and Dani enter his dreamscape, to see what's going on there. Sienkiewicz's art is perfect for this, just as it was for the "Demon Bear" arc, and Warlock. What they discover is that he has multiple personalities, each with their own different powers, since a traumatic experience with a character sensitively referred to here as "the Arab" (in fairness, this is a plot point). This is called schizophrenia by the text which I could rant about, but even in 2012 storytellers don't seem to understand the difference. I blame the etymology mostly. Apart from the terminology and mental health fail, this is quite a novel idea, I don't think it had been done to this extent before. The resolution: that the Jemail was trying to fix things all along, and is finally allowed to, is a good one. He doesn't manage to reintegrate all the personalities, of course, which'll provide no end of hooks for terribly repetitive stories about a chap whose (a trend, I am happy to say, that Si Spurrier and Tan Eng Huat's X-Men: Legacy shows every indication of avoiding.)

Of course, this isn't allowed to be self-contained. In a cutaway to the the Massachusetts Academy, Emma is pissed with Empath for messing around in #193, and possibly ruining her manipulation of Firestar. We get the idea that Emma Frost is old colonial aristocracy for the first time. Meanwhile, Magneto and Lee Forrester kiss, apparently get added to the chart, and Magneto explains about Magda to her. This is an expansion from what we learned back in Avengers #186 - there's mention of saving them from secret police, but not, you will note, anything about Anya, as she hadn't been invented yet. If she had been, it would have been a very good time for Claremont to mention her, what with Charles's son being in the issue.

The episode of Star Trek referred to in #29 is "The Managerie", if you're wondering.

X-Men & Alpha Flight: A Bit More Complicated Than That

X-Men/Alpha Flight is a two-part limited series by Claremont, with Paul Smith returning briefly. It is about unintended consequences, and wears its influence proudly on its sleeve: a character talks about the book The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.

In that book, a man, George Orr, has "effective" dreams, which can change the world. To begin with, little things happen. He imagines the wall decoration of his psyschiatrist, Haber, is different, and it becomes so. Haber becoms aware of the power, and directs Orr on a series of dreams to eliminate the world's problems. These wishes are seemingly fulfilled by a Literal Genie. He eradicates racism by everyone becoming a monocultural grey; overpopulation by a plague; and causes peace on Earth by an alien invasion. The original timeline is thought to have had a nuclear war. Better George Orr than that, though.

X-Men/Alpha Flight covers similar ground. A geological research expedition has chartered a plane, piloted by our Madelyne Pryor and her husband Scott Summers. It falls into a situation set up by Loki, who is trying to curry with Those Who Sit Above In Shadow, which are some kind of metagods. Loki has set up a sweet fountain from which the unpowered people get powers (Maddy becomes a healer named Anodyne; Cornucopia can provide for their material needs and so on). Anodyne fixes various Alpha Flighters and X-Men of their problems - Rogue and Scott gain control over their abilities, Aurora becomes more stable, and Wolverine becomes a man. (Happily, this does not seem to include whatever is troubling Northstar - that's society's problem, not his.)

They are initially quite taken by the idea of fixing all the world's ills through powers (partly direct - but also the notion of forcing everyone to have powers will remove their prejudice), and don't wholly reject it when part of the price - the death of magic - is made clear to them, despite the chance it will lead to the passing of Michael and Elizabeth Twoyoungmen (Shaman and Talisman). But they've obviously not been keeping up on their Alan Moore, otherwise they'd have remembered that art is magic. Faced with a world without creativity, they don't see that there's much of a choice, and spurn the "gift", enraging Loki, and causing him to vow his revenge upon the X-Men.

I did this series now as this is when the Chronology Project reckons it happens, but in fact, it was published a bit later. This is unfortunately timed, as Scott will go from learning the news about the pregnancy (in December 1985) to abandoning his wife and child for his dead girlfriend two months later (in February 1986). Still, despite the oncoming tragedy, there are good moments for Scott in this with Rachel, who is still slowly coming to terms with being in the wrong past. She doesn't quite acknowledge Scott is her father, but it seems he knows it anyway. Let's see how long they milk that one for.

Uncanny X-Men #192-#193: If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be X

Things have got very dark, very quickly.

Uncanny X-Men #192 follows two strands. Some of our X-Men wait for Kitty and Wolverine at the airport, where Xavier and Rachel survey passing thoughts and are shocked at the extent of anti-mutant prejudice which has erupted recently. Meanwhile, the others fight Warlock's father, Magus, at the mansion, and drive him off (again, if you hadn't been following New Mutants this would be very opaque).

Several months later, Xavier is finished with today's lecture at Columbia, musing to himself how he's enjoying his new part-time job. As he is presented with a good-will card, he is beaten to a bloody pulp - as a "mutant lover" - by some of his students, no less. Callisto saves him, outfits him in bondage gear, and spirits him away through the underground tunnels that we learn spread even to Westchester.

There, they find a ransom demand from James Proudstar, younger brother of the deceased X-Man John Proudstar, a Hellion and calling himself Thunderbird. He's taken Banshee captive, and hidden him somewhere bitterly ironic: Cheyenne Mountain, the place that John died. He blames the X-Men, and in particular Xavier, reasoning that Xavier must have been using mind control to get James to die. He's unaware that Xavier simply used cheap reverse psychology.

The X-Men are faced with a dilemma, in the truest sense of the word. James has set them up. They can rescue Banshee and render themselves outlaws, or let him die. Wolverine doesn't think they've got much choice, but he lays it out clearly for them. What they probably should have done (as I pointed out for #158) is have a deniable dirty ops squad that wears different costumes, but that'll have to wait a while.

The raid goes badly. Thunderbird has been trailed by three of his classmates from the massachusetts Academy: Empath (Manuel), Roulette (Jenny), and new girl Angelica Jones/Firestar (originally invented for the TV show Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, being brought into the comics for the first time here), who cause all sorts of confusion. Also, they'd hoped to be able to use Rachel to track, but she's having flashforwards to her days as a hound (and also, to how she got taken back in time in the first place - Kate triggering a post-hypnotic suggestion when all was lost on a mission). Instead, this is Kitty's job, and she gets him to safety. But much of the rest of the team is left in there, and Thunderbird has gone after Xavier.

This is Nightcrawler's first real mission as field leader (Storm has gone on a second attempt to go back to Africa, again by ship. Maybe she's developed a thing about flying now she's depowered), and in the true tradition of X-Men leadership skills, angsts about botching it.

Ultimately Thunderbird can't make that killing blow, and matters are patched up. But he's done his real damage: the X-Men are now clearly implicated in an attack on NORAD. And remember, the government knows where they live. The Hellions are evacuated back to the mansion, and are offered places at the Academy, but decline. The X-Men agree to let them leave, which is a bit curious when you consider Emma Frost's previously established recruitment tactics, but hey, I guess they've got some considerably bigger fish. The X-Men certainly seem to have abandoned the strategy of pre-emptively visiting every new mutant they find on Cerebro. Apart from the Hellions there are also the Morlocks, so perhaps sometime since the #120s (when they went after Kitty and Dazzler) mutants have become common enough that this is impractical? Which would also tie in nicely to the increased mutaphobia.

On the other hand, the Hellfire Club are involved in a naked power play at this point. They want control, not material social change for mutants in general - and they "pass" as human and know their money will protect them if they can't. So - a rich elite throwing a minority (which they are a part of) under the bus to gain power! Pretty cutting stuff. May as well make the senator be called Larry Craig and be done with it.

That dystopia that Rachel comes from is not just something that might happen in the future. It is happening, now.

Uncanny X-Men #190-#191: X-Manhattan

Uncanny X-Men #190 is another fantastically weird one.

New York has gone a bit odd. Specifically, it has been turned into a giant Ren Fayre, by the wizard Kulan Gath (who escaped from a piece of jewellery in #189), with the Morlocks as minions. Buildings, people. Outside, in DC, they're having a crisis meeting about this, as people in DC tend to do. Val Cooper is forced to put her faith in those people in brightly coloured costumes and capes.

But the heroes are affected, too. Well, most of them. Not Spider-Man, and not Warlock (making his first appearance in Uncanny only a few months after being introduced in New Mutants). Storm and Callisto are able to escape to New Jersey (not a phrase anyone uses much), and are contacted there by Selene, who has hijacked Rachel's powers, and wants to stop this madness as much as anyone else.

Together, those that remember anything persuade those that don't that Kulan Gath needs overthrowing, while they remain suspicious of Selene's motivations. And so the X-Men are included in that rallying call: "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE", and help defeat the evil wizard.

It's just the X-Men's luck that they were an essential part of the solution which winds back time so that none of this ever happened, and nobody remembers it. Not even Val Cooper, who was looking like she might be turnable. Captain America is going to remember it, though. Shouldn't he be doing something against this anti-mutant hysteria that's being whipped up? Mutants must lead the struggle, but they need allies, especially when they are in such urgent danger. Topical!

New Mutants #23-#25: Cloak and Dagger

I'm off to Thought Bubble in Leeds today, assuming I feel up to it. If you see me say hello. I'm the one with the geeky t-shirts and the dyed hair.

New Mutants #23 follows up from Selene in Uncanny #189 - she gets ratified as Black Queen. Also, Emmanuel de Costa is confirmed.

In Westchester, Bobby is moping in a saloon that he shouldn't even be in (possibly he's mad about Amara and Rachel going on a date), and reacts very badly at Peter trying to talk to him. Peter ends up in a coma. Elsewhere, Rahne has gone missing. Dani and Sam track her to a hotel room in the city, with no memory of how she got there.

What we have here is a crossover with Cloak and Dagger (who are "between series" right now, as they put it in the trade), and more specifically the aftermath of Marvel Team-Up #6, which I have failed to get hold of a copy of. Bobby and Rahne are acting weird from the after-effects of that. Various attempts fail, including an informal first try by Illyana to fix it, but after some planning, she is able to successfully exorcise the wrongness. The fairly unsubtle drugs-are-bad-mkay message is leavened with the notion that black magic can save you from them, which is fantastic trollery.

There's a short re-appearance of Karma's younger siblings, seen here for the first time in New Mutants, and still under the care of Father Bowen.

Meanwhile, in the Bermuda triangle, Lee takes Magneto to his old island base, our Proto-Utopia. They start to explore it. Lee doesn't think he's been seen since #150 (which marks against God Love Man Kills being in continuity, because he made a pretty noticeable appearance on live television at that point). Lee calls him on his ungratefulness, and after some consideration, he very nearly apologises. Meanwhile, Lee reckons the people who built the strange sunken city full of fish-people statutes and non-Euclidian geometric horrors might not be even human. On that, all I can say is that I'm certainly going to continue to enjoy Bill Sienkiewicz.

New Mutants #22/Uncanny X-Men #189: Young Females Desire Simply Revenge. Failing That, Amusement.

I remember reading Uncanny X-Men #189 before. It actually makes sense this time, particularly in the context of New Mutants #22. At this stage, the interlinkings between the two have become so close that reading just Uncanny makes no sense. In fairness, it does have captions to explain the characters it needs here, so one can get the sense of it, but it didn't have any emotional resonance for me the first time.

A team-up story with Amara and Rachel, and the X-Men only the background is a pretty radical thing to be trying at this stage. Claremont is nine years into his run, and he's still shaking things up. New Mutants has become the home of the more trad stuff, and meanwhile every issue of Uncanny since Scott left has been off-format in some respect.

At the mansion, everyone is quiet and training. Rahne is trapped in her perpetual self-loathing interspersed with moments of loathing other people. Nightcrawler is her target here, and he sadly doesn't try and talk to her in terms she might understand. Moira and the Professor, who might be able to help, are busy trying to figure out how Warlock works.

Cutting away, Selene arrives in New York city, and finds her local High Priest, Friedrich von Roehm (is she supposed to be an actual Olympian at this point or is there another Selene wandering around the Marvel universe?), who suggests she join the Hellfire Club's, and presents her as a candidate.

Going on to the issue of Uncanny, Rachel and Amara - two fish-out-of-water - have a date in New York City. Rachel is from the future, and recently in #188 found out that her mother is dead, which means she's not going to exist in this timeline. Amara is from some colony of the Roman Republic that was set up 2000 years ago, during Julius Caesar's time.

The issue contains large swathes of Rachel's future dystopia, and one can't help but shudder at the panel where she remembers seeing the Twin Towers fall. But more personally moving is her experiences as a hound, seeking mutants, and the tale of how the mansion fell (flashbacked from New Mutants #18). They watch in the distance the boat that Storm is about to leave for Africa on.

Rachel takes them to the MoMA where the architecture reminds Amara of home. As they bond, they detect Selene (who Rachel notes they both faced as an enemy. Amara reacts almost violently against this intrusion into her thoughts (something that she was also very firm on with Xavier), and Rachel apologises.

They agree to follow Selene and take revenge, and track her to the Hellfire Club, where (as shown in New Mutants recently), she's being put forward as the new Black Queen - or rather, more or less blackmailing them. Rachel and Amara infiltrate the place with fishnets and maid outfits, get captured, and have expository flashbacks.

Never fear, Nightcrawler is here to save the day, along with Colossus. Shaw suggests a truce - Rachel and Amara had started it, after all - and they accept. Rachel uses Phoenix's old trick of molecularly manipulating their clothes back into street clothes, and they're away. From Selene's point of view the events here appear to take place between New Mutants #22 and #23, but the ending doesn't quite match up. The internet would be very upset.

Kitty Pryde & Wolverine #1-#6: Phase Change

Kitty Pryde & Wolverine is an excellent little series, and it's a mild outrage that it is not more easily available (there was one hardback collected edition in 2008, which is now out of print, so I had to get hold of actual issues of it to read). Sadly, due to the long lead times, no letters pages.

It is by Chris Claremont (who else), with Al Milgrom on art.

I particularly like the first cover.

It not only represents Kitty's phasing power (she can walk through walls, don't you know), but also her adventure from suburban Chicago (well, Deerfield), to Tokyo. And check out that curvature of the road/path. Clever. It continues to use the element of a vertical line in the covers throughout the series, although to less good effect after #2 or #3.

So anyway, this is but our third visit to the "Wolverine's adventures in Japan" story-well, after the miniseries and the follow-up in Uncanny from #172 (well, excluding the brief trips in #119 and #181), and the best yet. It presents a somewhat less Orientialist view of Japan than those. This is the Japan of salarymen and shinkansen.

Kitty Pryde provides our in. She's in Chicago, having left the X-Men in #183 after Colossus dumped her. For her the saying that you can't go home again is literal - her parents have divorced in the interim (Is she the first superhero with divorced parents?)

Having run away to Chicago, she then runs away to Tokyo, on the trail of Yakuza bosses who are threatening her dad, Carmen. She finds herself well out of her depth, and is handed over by Shigematsu-san, to Ogun, a demonic ninja type, who uses his mind-control powers to brainwash her. But, before she'd been captured, she'd managed a phone call to Westchester, so Wolverine is on the way.

Wolverine (or "Mr. Logan" as he is called by the person at immigration who had seen his passport) catches up with Yukio (and very definitely adds a link to the Shag Chart - on a roof, even! We probably should have added this earlier, but who is keeping score?), and outlines the problem. He makes arrangements to pick Kitty up, but instead meets an ambush by Ogun-as-Kitty herself, who he eventually recognises the smell of. After some fighting Yukio rescues Logan, Kitty and Carmen, and they recuperate at a house owned by Mariko.

Kitty is sent home to New York, but doesn't make her flight, and instead returns to Tokyo to take revenge. She's grown up now, and discards the names Ariel and Sprite and Kitten, declaring that she's a Cat now, and rather prefers the shadows anyway.

She works her way up the foodchain, and eventually confronts Ogun, who she realises will be taking all this out on Mariko, Wolverine's former fiancee (and now foster-mother of Wolverine's foster-daughter Amiko from #181). But - thankfully - she can't make that killing blow. Wolverine takes it upon himself to the deed, to protect her. He is the best at what he does, after all.

The series manages a massive maturity upgrade for Kitty - from Ariel to Shadowcat, but the real loss-of-innocence moment is not that - or the mind control by Ogun. Instead, it's the realisation that her father was no innocent victim, but an exemplar of the principle that you cannot con an honest man.
Carmen is up to his neck in it. He eventually hands himself over to the authorities at the end, mind.

Wolverine, too, grows. He has responsibilities as a father figure for Kitty - this is arguably the start of him being paired with young women (if you don't include the previous team-up with Rogue) - and more directly as a foster father for Amiko, and we see here his unwillingness to let other other people - children in particular - but also to some extent Yukio - get their hands dirty for him. We also find out more about his past - he had met Ogun, and was trained by him - on his first visit to those islands, many years ago; before he had been taken in by the Hudsons and given a home in Department H. Since Ogun was unware of it, we can conclude that something happened in between: the adamantium, the becoming an animal. The seed, in other words, of Weapon X.