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.

X-Men #125-#128: Proteus

X-Men #125 finally has Scott discover that Jean is alive, after very nearly a publishing year! This happens because, get this, Beast sneaks in to the mansion to check up on things, and is caught. So, apparently neither Beast's continued membership of the Avengers nor the X-Men reforming again made their mutual notice. Cyclops then decides to call Moira, and take a trip to Scotland in the newly-fixed Blackbird.

The proto-Muir Island X-Men are dealing with the escaped "Mutant X" (first hinted at in #104) - or "Proteus" as he calls himself - who it is dramatically revealed is Moira's son. He's killed, and will kill again - he burns up host bodies pretty quickly. The X-Men track him, worried he's going to go to a major city for noms. Moira takes aim and starts shooting, but is stopped by Cyclops before she can get the kill shot. Instead, he escapes and kills more people. Moira visits her husband Joe MacTaggert (er, I wonder if she's told Sean that she's not really a widow after all. Or about that Nobel Prize she's been keeping quiet. For that matter, how did Xavier manage to keep Moira a secret from the O5 all that time? I mean, I like the idea of Xavier having peers (the closest he got in the original run was I suppose Lykos!), but could this not have been done in a way that didn't imply such skullduggery). Joe is Proteus's father but doesn't know about it, and Moira retains just enough concern about her ex-husband - despite clear hints at it having been an abusive relationship - that she's prepared to warn him. Too late though, Proteus possesses Joe, and takes Moira hostage. Colossus takes him down in the end.

The reunion of Scott and Jean is slightly messed up by this Jason Wyngarde guy popping up again and inserting himself into her waking dreams. Carefully watching Wolverine's powers, I see that Scott uses his optic blasts to decelerate a falling Wolverine. These days he'd just let him hit the ground and heal.

Issue #125 is notable also for its little cutway to Magneto, wherein he reveals he had a wife called Magda once. This is a crossover with Avengers #186, which shows what happened to Magda - she fled to Wundagore and gave birth to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Watch, then vanished again. Her disappearance is probably the biggest unexploded bomb in comics. The image of her running away from Max, aghast at his powers (in this version he wants to rule the world from day 1 - there's nothing about a mob or a kid or the secret police) only to be perfectly OK with the High Evolutionary's talking animals is kinda hilarious.