Uncanny X-Men #262-#263: I Heard You Like Tentacles

I posted my "help wanted" ad for "Ukko" on Tuesday, and by Sunday night I had sketches of the first panel in my inbox, from a artist I'm thrilled to be working with. I've posted them to the Ukko twitter account if you want to check them out. So, that's one New Year's resolution ticked off.

Uncanny X-Men #262-#263 will always be known primarily as the story in which Jean Grey's arms are replaced with tentacles by Masque and she kinda likes it.

Let's review how we got here (for I have been disregarding subplots). Banshee and Forge have left Muir Island searching for the X-Men, having heard a rumour. They've been trying to keep things on the QT from Moira, because she has been wearing clothes that are frankly quite inappropriate in a work environment. They saw a news report about Dazzler being alive, so decided to go to North America, and seem to have stopped off at the X-Mansion, possibly to check what's going on with Callisto who hasn't reported back after being sent to make sure the security systems on the basement are fine. There they meet up with Jean Grey and get involved in an adventure with Morlocks.

So. Masque is our villain here. Masque does things that are a bit twisted, even for Masque: apart from the tentacles on Jean and the I-Have-No-Mouth routine on Banshee, there's recognising the amnesiac and powerless Colossus and altering his skin to look metallic even though it isn't really. This sets up a great scene later on when he breaks through into his steel form and this comes as a great surprise to the smashees. But the more disturbing action is the one that goes against his usual M.O. - restoring Callisto's beauty.

We don't know a massive amount of Callisto's backstory yet, but it's plain here that she had to do a lot of mental work to accept her physical appearance. This is also tied in to her status as a Morlock - because of that convention of Masque altering them all. Suddenly changing her appearance back again, and playing mind-games is a savage attack on her identity, and a deliberate rejection of her from the group, by someone who sees her as a race-traitor. This book just got political again.

X-Factor #16: Masque

X-Factor #16 shines a spotlight on the Morlocks, something they are not accustomed to. Back in their early appearances they were villainous and untrustworthy: they shunned the surface world and abducted children; and their leadership was determined by a fight to the death. The best of them were neutral. Since then, the portrayal of them has softened a bit, and not just because of sympathy engendered by the Massacre: Callisto has become Storm's loyal second-in-command, and Caliban is becoming a hero. And the thoroughly reasonable Erg is the leader of a friendly faction, who stayed with X-Factor a bit before then going back to the tunnels.

The main remaining "evil Morlock" is Masque, who has the power of reshaping faces. Like the baby-stealing, this is a very primal horror. That a hard-line separatist like Masque has it - and is willing to use it so pettily - confirms our worst fears about such isolationism. We don't know Masque's story, of course. The Morlocks didn't just come from nowhere - they all had mothers and names, but keeping this obscure makes it hard to understand Masque as a victim of the system, and he becomes the most horrific X-Men villain so far.

But think about it a bit and we can infer a back-story. Masque's power is amazing. We see it used here to restore the woman that Rusty had accidentally burned the face off. He can use it at will, and well, to put it crudely, money > bigotry. Not always, not often enough. But enough that he'd have a fair chance setting up a practice on Harley Street (or whatever the New York equivalent of that is) and getting enormously rich. He's not an idiot, and he's bitterly against integrationism. So, he's tried that, and it backfired spectacularly. Maybe more than once.

In the end, no permanent changes are made, to faces at least. Emma (Rusty's victim from #1) refuses having hers back when she learns it comes at the cost of Rusty's, and she instead plans to teach the Morlocks about the Lord. I hope this fails: the addition of evangelism to the already fractious Morlock society could explode it. During all the action, Skids learns to drop her forcefield in a moment of need. And a rather abrupt last page to the issue indicates her and Rusty want adding to the Chart.