Wolverine #4-#8: What Immortal Hand or Eye

Wolverine #4-#6 continues immediately from that first arc for Jessica Drew and Lindsay McCabe, but Wolverine's chronology at the MCP places Uncanny #232 though to #243 - including all of Inferno between the issues. Apparently they've just been hanging around there for weeks waiting for Patch to get back? There's a long rationale for it, which brings in non X-Men books, so I don't care, I'm doing it now.

The story opens with the by-now familiar trope of an old friend of Logan's, who we've never heard of before, and is generally either dead already or is killed in the first few pages. Teebore identifies it here as starting with Asano in the Claremont/Miller miniseries. There's a structural reason it has become so commonplace in the Claremont/Buscema run already, and that's the tension between the attractive idea of Wolverine's backstory being explored by meeting old friends, and the narrative's need to keep his identity quiet. If the X-Men hadn't have been in hiding and presumed dead when Wolverine's solo title launched, there'd be no need for all these people to die. And then he'd be able to actually use the name "Wolverine" in a series called that.

Our old friend this time is Chancellor Ranjamaryam, an advisor to the prince, who is killed because he is sympathetic to Tiger Tyger's burgeoning new crime empire. When this comes to Wolverine's attention he decides to look into the matter himself. He'd had dinner that night with a person with a smell he's sure he recognised: Karma.

Karma hasn't been seen since New Mutants #54; where she'd left to look for her brother and sister. Logan confronts her alone without letting on who he is. She misses the opportunity to explain what had motivated her to work for her crimelord uncle again. (Logan would surely have added it to his TODO list). Nyugen Ngoc Coy is planning on making a play to be Kingpin of Madripoor (after having been ejected from San Francisco), with the connivance of the prince now that Ranj has been removed and a couple of new entries for Wolverine's rogues gallery: Roughouse and and Bloodscream.

Logan is still not exactly an enthusiastic supporter of Tyger Tiger, but she's cracked right down on the slavery and the drugs, whereas Nyugen has no such compunctions. Logan takes a typically direct approach, by going to the appropriate section of the Golden Triangle (real), and destroying a very large amount of Nguyen's heroin, with the help of Archie Corrigan (a potential traitor), which will put him out of action for a bit.

Meanwhile, an injured Tyger Tiger (she survives an attack by Nyugen's minions thanks to sabotage from Karma) and the Drew/McCabe team seek refuge at Landau, Luckman & Lake, and the mysterious Mr. Chang. This bit is very curious: it appears Chang is acting as a supplier for the X-Men, as he is able to supply a metal battlesuit like the sort we've seen Psylocke wear, being held for Logan. And they notice a tintype (misspelled tinytype here) photograph of Logan with Mr. Chang, which they date to the 19th century, implying a Logan who is as old - if not older - as the one ultimately revealed by Origin. The inquisition is cut short, though, by some fighting, which kills Mr. Chang and leaves the building in rubble.

Issue #6 is a massive fight scene between the parties (the captured three, Patch, Karma, and Nyugen's henchman). This is stopped by the Prince, who had (a) wanted a quick coup, none of this messiness, and (b) turns out to be a Lindsay McCabe fanboy. A compromise is reached. This is very sudden and I detect an editorial hand behind the pages. We then progress, for #7-#8 into a fairly throwaway story with Mr. Fixit (aka the Hulk: at this point he is grey, intelligent, and only comes out at the night), who has been sent to assist? Nyugen but ends up being suckered by Patch into destroying his operation.

New Mutants #53-#54: Pleased To Meet You

New Mutants #53-#54 is a two-part story set in one night. The gang have been grounded for weeks, Sunspot and Warlock have run away, and Magneto thinks he has just the idea to cheer them up: a party at the Hellfire Club, which the Hellions have also been invited.

This is not one of Magneto's better plans. And some of his have been real doozies.

It actually turns out surprisingly OK. Everyone gets little character moments. Wolfsbane and Catseye bond; Cannonball and Jetstream develop their rivalry; Magma discovers that Selene might be her ancestor (a distant very-great-grandmother - so I think we're supposed to believe that Selene actually is the Roman moon goddess at this point); Karma goes snooping for intel about her brother and sister; and Moonstar and Thunderbird face off about their respective teams. They end up in a challenge to find out who had sold a dodgy copy of a statue of Selene to a Hellfire club member; the Hellions win, by pointing the New Mutants at the early levels while the Hellions go straight to the boss fight. Sneaky.

Cypher and Roulette end up in bed together (after Cypher got lucky), where they are caught by the other New Mutants. This might possibly warrant adding them to the chart, except that the dialogue seems more pre-coital, so it will remain unadjusted.

And, while they were having all that fun, they've been basically driving off Karma, who has now left the team (again), on a quest to find Leong and Nga. According to the letters page in New Mutants #65, this was to have been a plot in Fallen Angels 2, which never did happen for various reasons...

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.

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?

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.

Marvel Team-Up #100: Arrest This Woman

Today's second post is Marvel Team-Up #100, which the Chronology Project dates to between Uncanny #144 and #145. So hello, future! I'm writing this only very slightly in the past! Much less far in the past than I wrote the surrounding articles, so forgive me for any discontinuity.

Two stories this issue, and we're covering both. First up, this issue introduces a new supervillain, Karma, who has the power of mind control. She uses it to discredit Spider-Man by abducting two young orphans... No, wait. That's not what's happening at all.

This is more cleverly structured than I'd expect an issue of Marvel Team-Up in 1980 to be, and unusually avoids giving away the twist on the cover. Xi'an is a young Vietnamese girl, a refugee from South Vietnam, who has the power of mind control. She has an evil uncle who wants her to work as a minion, an evil brother (Tran) who is happy to, and two younger siblings who are dependent on her, and have been taken away by the said evil relatives.

Fortunately, the misunderstanding is cleared up (thanks to Xavier for providing access to Cerebro technology - so Reed knows exactly who Charles is at this point - when did that happen?) Xi'an has seen a Daily Bugle headline and assumed that Spider-Man was a criminal (understandable), and that she wouldn't be causing any harm by using him. This is not true, as events prove (you might take issue with it even if she'd been right), but she's under pressure and she's still thinking about the wider consequences of her actions. Plenty of so-called heroes wouldn't bother with that at all.

They team up. This is called Marvel Team-Up for a reason. In the battle, Tran is able to take control of the entire Fantastic Four at once, which is a bit overpowered. It eventually reaches the point where Xi'an has to take Tran out, which she does, regretfully. She feels responsible for what he's done, and decides to atone, taking the name Karma.

The art in this is early Frank Miller, before most of his run on Daredevil. Generally nothing to write home about, but I like the flashback bits, and the motif used behind Shan and Tran when they possess people. This will be adopted by most artists for Shan's mind control, and a variant, with a more socialist feel, appears on the cover of last week's Astonishing X-Men #54.

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The second part is a Storm story, and shows the by now infamous early meeting of our Ororo Monroe (her name given like that for I think the first time?), and T'Challa (the Black Panther, the King of Wakanda (a kind of African Switzerland), and an Avenger). The framing event features an Afrikaner sent by Andreas de Ruyter, to kill Storm. She flashbacks to a previous incident: Ororo, then twelve, on her trek to East Africa, comes across a kid - T'Challa obv - about her age being attacked by South Africans, and saves him. During which, she flies for the first time! Back in the present, she visits T'Challa, who is being a superhero in New York because apparently that's what people do when they get superpowers in the Marvel Universe, even if they're kings of compact but rich African nations. I dunno.

Anyway, they team-up in the present, natch, find that the bad guy has transferred his consciousness into a robot, take him down, etc. And then they part. A third person omniscient caption both raises the possibility but then specifically denies that anything further will ever happen between them - like, say, them getting married.

That had been a special, unique moment in both their lives...

...a moment which -- once denied -- can never be truly recaptured.

Both know this. Perhaps that is what makes their parting all the more painful.

Yet... Part they do.

As friends. They may wish for more. But that is what they are, what they will remain. Forever.

This is not going on the chart, because we know we'll be able to make that link anyway later.