Uncanny X-Men #219: Havok and Polaris

Uncanny X-Men #219 (and #218) feature the return of Havok and Polaris after... Quite a while. How long has it been, exactly? Let's have a look at Havok's character chronology:

UX 177 [January 1984]
UX 232-FB [August 1988]
UX 218 [June 1987]
UX 219-FB [July 1987]

Three years between appearances! He and Polaris have been living the quiet life in New Mexico. We can assume Alex knows he's a nuncle, but apart from that they've not been in contact at all. Alex is not impressed with what's been happening in his absence: Magneto joining, the alliance with the Hellfire Club, the plan to "kill" the X-Men. But then, who would be. Once they explain Recent Events, he feels obliged to offer to sign up on the team again.

Meanwhile, Lorna has been left in New Mexico and is promptly attacked by the Marauders. She does well, but is massively outnumbered. They weren't seeking to kill her, though: she is possessed instead, by Malice. There's still a lot of Marauders payoff to come: this issue strongly teases the name of Mr. Sinister (mentioned in passing during the Massacre); and it appears they are responsible for the attack on Maddy Pryor, the disappearance of little Baby X; and the kidnapping/bombing of Sara Grey and Leong and Nga.

This issue is fairly weak, and suffers from just moving around people in preparation for something bigger. The main team are still mostly injured, and the lack of progress on this plot line is frustrating - instead they are introducing the new guys. We know X-Books don't tend to have more than about 8 characters at a time, so either some of these n00bs are not staying long, or some of those injuries are going to be permanent.

X-Men #97: I'm Erik the Red, and so is my wife

X-Men #97 is a funny one.

Xavier's been having these dreams about fighting spaceships, it seems, and he's a bit worried if he tells his team they'll laugh at him. (This is a man who, you will remember, has already foiled at least two alien invasions: Lucifer's people, whoever they were, and the Z'Nox). He's able to tell Moira though, and you get a sense they have a real closeness as friends. He decides he needs a holiday.

At JFK Airport (or rather, Kennedy Airport, as they keep calling it) - the X-Men - that is Scott, Ororo, Kurt, Peter and Jean - are seeing the Professor off. Wolverine, Sean and Moira are back at the mansion - Wolverine doing the whole loner thing, and Sean and Moira possibly having the "coffee" that Sean had suggested in #96. There's no mention of the others, but at this point Hank was with the Avengers and Bobby and Warren have co-founded the Champions.

Alex and Lorna also turn up, at the last moment, having been mind-controlled by someone calling himself Erik the Red. (Apparently they've become a couple some time since we've last seen them, which is a bit of a surprise because I'd assumed they hooked up in the hiatus.) This new power - who has adopted Scott's cover identity from #49-#52, possibly just to mess with him - although god knows how he knew - is clearly intent on destroying Professor Xavier's plane, but they manage to stop him in time, without, unfortunately, breaking Alex and Lorna's conditioning. During this incident, Lorna gets a power-up - the ability to fly, and is bestowed with the name "Polaris" - meaning they are two for two in codenames not actually picked by themselves. Mind, Xavier picks most of the other ones, so it's not exactly as if mutant name selection is some kind of rite of passage.

Actually, the most surprising thing in this issue for me was nothing to do with the X-Men at all - it's that it has a Boeing 747 in there. It's been 36 years since the issue was published, and the 747 is still the default large airliner in fiction, and will be for a couple of decades more. That's longevity for you.

Incredible Hulk #150

Incredible Hulk #150 (from April 1972) is the latest in that long-running storyline where the Hulk is on the run from General Ross, whose capture-and-release program is being investigated by Congress. While fleeing, he notices Lorna, and believes her to be the green-haired Jarella, who he has been obsessed by.

Lorna's there to look for Alex, who we learn has fled the X-Men immediately after issue #66, scared at himself for nearly killing Bobby. He's chilled out since, joined the counter-culture and started reading the Whole Earth Catalog (worth a read if you've not heard of it: it's odd now to think that people would accuse NASA of hoarding pretty pictures rather than milking them for all they were worth). And so we discover that although X-Men: The Hidden Years is pretty consistent with the X-Men comics, it simply doesn't fit with the other stuff from the interregnum. The Marvel Chronology Project puts this issue after the entire run of Hidden Years, which seems to be pushing it, frankly. Alex agrees to come back with Lorna, eventually.

This is a much better attempt at doing a "look! the hulk and the X-men share much of the same tragedy!" thing than #66 or even #40. But still, it's mostly full of smash.

X-Men #49-#52: The Devil had a Daughter

X-Men lasted until 1970. We're now crossing into 1969, and so we're seeing the last gasps of an underperforming title. The last few issues before this arc saw a change to the covers and to the issues to highlight individual characters rather than the X-Men brand itself. That experiment has failed, and the original plan for issue #49 (which, we will remember, would have featured Beast and Iceman fighting Metoxo) has been abandoned. Instead, the X-Men reunite - at a new temporary base in San Francisco (!) - for their latest, epic, adventure.

The X-Men of the 1980s and beyond will be known for its strong female characters (in both the Beatonesque and non-Beatonesque senses of the term). X-Men is not at that stage yet. Our regular female characters are Jean, who is still a cipher, and the even more loosely defined Zelda, Candy and Vera. None of the random mutants they have fought or tried to recruit have been women, apart from Wanda, and she's rather subservient to Pietro (and has even been depowered). Jean has had to juggle the roles of love interest, nursemaid, temporary cook, and uniform designer along with her position in the team. It is, to coin a phrase, a bit of a sausage-fest.

That starts to change now. This story introduces Lorna Dane, later to be known as Polaris. Lorna is a "latent mutant" (as we can see from her poorly dyed green hair ¹), and is the target of Mesmero's plan. Her mutation is forcibly activated, and she takes her place as "M-II", Magneto's daughter. While she is not exactly free from being a love interest (Bobby has a crush on her), it is her moral choice to stand aside from Magneto, and break free of Mesmero's control that provides the resolution to the plot. Jean also gets to use her telepathy well (this is the first use of it as an intercom, I believe), and has a good moment when she tells the boys to stop arguing. Hardly radical, but we're looking for crumbs here. It still doesn't pass the Bechdel test ², but it's conceivable that it could.

I am told that the Magneto here isn't really Magneto, but instead Xorna robot pretending to be Magneto, but there doesn't seem to be any indication of that in the text. If we assume that he's a robot created by Mesmero, or at least deployed with Mesmero's knowledge, then the scenes where Scott (as Erik the Red) installs himself as Magneto's lieutenant, has a deeper meaning, as Mesmero is hoist with his own petard.

As to Lorna's paternity - Mesmero claims she is the "daughter of Magneto". She accepts this immediately - possibly because of Mesmero's powers. Bobby arrives on the the antepenultimate page bearing information: Lorna was adopted after her biological parents died in a plane crash.³ Her father's sister and her husband raised her instead. This apparently explains why she felt alienated from her father - who is not a blood relative of hers at all. Magneto found out about her powers somehow (despite the fact she only developed them due to being put in the machine in #50), and concocted the story based on that. I'm not sure this makes any sense, but it doesn't need to be true, it only needs a certain plausibility...

I don't talk about art much. This is partly because I don't feel I'm qualified to talk about it, and partly because I'm using the black and white Essential Marvel collections, but also because there's not been much to say. Werner Roth and Don Heck have been competent in following in Kirby's footsteps. Flicking back through the volume, I see a creeping sophistication in layouts and in panels. The middle two issues of this arc, pencilled by Jim Steranko, are something else entirely. Steranko designs a new, 3D, logo for issue #50, which will remain in use until #394, and places it atop a scene that prefigures the rise of Phoenix in #101. Compare the covers of #48 and #50.

You'd scarcely credit that they were released only two months apart. But it's not just the cover. The opening page of #50 is a series of point-of-view panels unprecedented so far. The art exhibits the first signs of decompression. The dialogue, on the other hand, is still classic silver age verbosity.

The X-Men may be flagging commercially, but creatively it's doing very well, and is anticipating many of the features of the classic 1970s run.

1. You'd think you'd use something more permanent if you were trying to hide your inhuman naturally green hair.

2. I see the Bechdel test as best applied to bodies of works rather than to individual items. It seems likely that no issue of X-Men I've covered yet has passed that.

3. Lots of orphans in Marvel. Curious number of them from plane crashes (Cyclops & Havok, Spider-Man, and now Polaris).