Uncanny X-Men #274-#277: All Hail the Chiefs

Uncanny X-Men #274 is, I think, the first issue to be narrated by Magneto. Having rescued Rogue in #269, he's gone to the Savage Land with her for a team-up with Ka-Zar and a show-down with Zaladane, who is using her magnetic powers in a way that might threaten the Earth. He encounters the mess of a much earlier expedition of his to the area, in the form of the Savage Land Mutates. Zaladane has also come to the attention of Nick Fury and SHIELD. Unusually they team up, despite the reservation of Colonel Semyanov, whose son was killed when Magneto destroyed the Leningrad

Magneto is introspective and moody in a way we've never quite seen before. The flashback to the firing squad is particularly effective - and will form a centrepoint of Pak's Magneto: Testament miniseries 17 years from now. He disassociates himself from his earlier "insane" actions, comparing them to Zaladane's now, but also is unable to apologise or take responsibility for them - the Leningrad did nuke him, yes, but he was blackmailing the world with demands to be made dictator. Another new wrinkle is Rogue's claim that Magneto hates Russians for the death of his daughter Anya, which is compared to Semyanov's vendetta. It unfolds unsurprisingly, Semyanov sells Magneto out to Zaladane, and then Fury/Magneto/Rogue win anyway. What is Magneto like in victory, though? Not, it turns out, magnanimous. Indeed, he declares his period of reform over: he needs to protect mutants (but without being a cackler himself), and says that a "kindler, gentler Magneto" cannot save them. He vamooses, presumably to take up villainry once more.

This arc introduces the idea of Rogneto. In a fairly creepy way, it has to be said, Magneto is perving on a Rogue who is not her usual self and clearly lacking in judgement (why are they killing people she asks, aren't they supposed to be the good guys? Uh No.) Thankfully the matter is dropped and then never referenced again.
 
In our other plot, for some convoluted reason the X-Men (Storm, Wolverine, Banshee Jubilee, Forge and Gambit) were teleported away from Earth by Lila Cheney to the eternal Shi'ar civil war. Deathbird is empress right now, and the rebels the Starjammers (Corsair, who just happens to be Cyclops's dad) are fighting to reinstate her sister Lilandra to her rightful place on the throne. If I were them I'd be trying to undermine the entire system of Imperial rule, but perhaps they are expecting plum ministerial positions under the new regime... at least until she gets turfed out again.) The war is not going well for Deathbird, largely because Lilandra's consort is a highly powerful telepath: Charles Xavier, who also happens to be the founder of the X-Men! But Xavier is possibly secretly evil and doing a bit of genocide on the side. Except then it turns out he is a Skrull, and so are the rest of the Starjammers! And they've got the real Xavier kidnapped! And then they free the real Xavier! And then they defeat the Skrulls! And then Lilandra and Deathbird actually do the "our division caused us to be weak against our enemies, let's make up" dance.

At the end, Storm infodumps enough of the disasters to have happened to the X-Men since Xavier left, and he learns of the rise of the Shadow King. Xavier agrees to come back with them, setting the stage for our next arc, Claremont's penultimate hurrah.

I believe this is the first intrusion of the Skrulls into the X-verse; certainly it's the first time I've written about them on the blog (apart from a passing reference to John the Skrull). The Skrulls are a race of alien shape-shifters originally introduced as villains in Fantastic Four #2. In that very first story a small advance party are brainwashed into thinking themselves cows. They go on to be frequent antagonists in Marvel: a Super-Skrull, Kl'rt, who combines the powers of the Fantastic Four, is introduced in FF #18 (it's this job that Xavin out of Runaways is training for), and fight the Kree, another alien race, in the pages of Avengers; and their latest invasion of Earth was the topic of the Secret Invasion crossover.

All these alien races were made up independently: the Skrulls in those very early days of the Marvel Silver Age; the Kree a bit later, in FF #65, and then the Shi'ar in the 1970s in these very pages. These, then are the Big Three Marvel Alien Species. Rather than anyone having sat down and worked this out, this is worldbuilding through crossover, things in a shared universe being patched together to form a galactic quilt. But that's just a larger-scale version of a continuity that allows Doctor Strange and Iron Man to co-exist; throw everything at a particularly sticky wall and watch it not going anywhere. Because... indeed, it's not going anywhere. It's rare for cosmic dynastic stories to have a point: it's just The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on repeat. If I wanted that, I'd just read Foundation again.

New Mutants #51: Starjam

New Mutants #51 is more about the mentors than about the teens themselves. Our kids are still in space (after the events of #48-#50), and Xavier is deciding whether or not to return with them. He hoovers up memories: the Mutant Massacre is shocking, but not enough. The real surprise is seeing an advert for X-Factor on the tellybox: he recognises his original X-Men on screen.

Oh.

So, the main team really were just not paying attention: they only started noticing the adverts for X-Factor around the time of the Battle of Sheep Meadow. Maybe the kids just watch more TV?

Xavier decides to let go. The Starjammers need him and he can rely on Magneto. I suppose he must have done research on how that had been working out. One problem though: Magik is on strike. This is quickly worked round by Xavier ordering Karma to possess her and do it directly, something that is ruthless even for Professor X. Dani protests, so good on her.

Can Magneto be trusted? That's the question that Magneto himself has been pondering. He's got an offer to join the Hellfire Club as White King, and consults with Storm, who strongly urges he take it up. He doesn't, though - not on their terms anyway. Instead, Storm and Magneto join together, and wearing their own costumes. This is supposed to be an alliance, after all, not a supplication.

New Mutants #48-#50: With Jetpacks

We've seen the future before in Uncanny X-Men, but it's New Mutants, with its themes of youth and forward-looking, that starts using it as a regular setting.

This initial post-Mutant Massacre arc sees two future dystopias. The first, in New Mutants #48, is your Days of Future Past timeline (apparently different enough that it's reckoned to be a different version, but I don't see that myself), and the origin of that is explained. But the grimness of that future as Uncanny had it cannot withstand the optimism and wish-fulfilment of New Mutants and we soon discover that in addition to the few surviving New Mutants (Dani and Sam), Lila Cheney is alive and has helped them set up a colony on her Dyson Sphere.

In #49's future dystopia, what was left of the X-Men, led by Magneto, have allied with the Hellfire Club to take over the world. New York has become a dystopia in part modelled on 2000AD's Judge Dredd: complete with Arbitrators (not Judges) with eye-obscuring visors. The more sinister part is their resemblance to the New Mutants uniforms, and the revelation of Bobby and Amara's leadership role in this regime. Our kids are helped by an elderly Kate Power, who clings to the ideals of the past.

Both groups are rescued by Magik, who brings ideal help for dealing with the future in the form of their mentor: Professor Xavier. He's been worried about what Magneto might be getting up to in his absence (having nightmares about the Holocaust and joining the Lords Cardinal of the Hellfire Club would seem to be the order of the day), and he's happy to, with Binary, join Illyana in a rescue mission.

Another father figure is part of the story, of course: Magus, who they had gone into Limbo to escape. Thanks to the power of teamwork (and Xavier and Binary, and willing self-sacrifice from Cypher and Warlock), the Magus is regressed to a state of infancy. Will he grow up better this time? Or will someone pretending to be Eric the Red age him back to distract them, as when the same trick was played on a character with one more 'n'. At the end it looks a lot like Xavier is going to return to Earth and stay... I'd wondered how long that would last: this is shorter than I was expecting.

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.

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 #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 #180: Kitten and Storm

So, Xavier's playing basketball.

A history of Xavier's legs: In X-Men #1, he claimed a "childhood accident" was responsible. Soon afterwards, it was instead revealed to be the doings of Lucifer. Xavier had then been recently killed (due to the Brood) and his mind was transferred into a new cloned body. By rights his legs ought to work in that. But they don't. Possibly for psychological reasons. In New Mutants #14 he was able to walk, and had the privilege of a dance with Illyana.

It's a delight to see him do a little bit of basketball - which is a callback to the mention of him being a sporty sort way back in the first Juggernaut arc of #12-#13. It's rather a setback when, on the third page, he collapses in pain, triggered by an alien scanning wave that has been troubling him for a few issues now.

Storm is by to rescue him, and he and her talk about her new look and 'tude. Xavier digs it - thinking to himself that "[finds himself] aware of how female, and attractive, she is", and makes the point that changing is OK. He is a mutant after all. But Storm has been scaring herself. I suppose a certain level of moping is expected of the field leader of the X-Men. Both her and Kitty are worried about their relationship. Kitty has been very strongly against Punk Storm, and has felt a change beyond mere clothes, something that Ororo doesn't deny. We at least find out that when Ororo got rid of the plants from the attic, she didn't just kill them - they've been transported to the New York Botanical Garden. She stops a mugging, gets some knives drawn on her, and deals with the situation much better than she had that crack house in #122.

Kitty is trying to figure out a way to deter Doug from going to the Massachusetts Academy (which we found out he'd been accepted to at the end of New Mutants #14). Meanwhile, joining in the self-pity party, Peter is moping about Kitty being friends with Doug, and lamenting that if this were Soviet Russia, they could be married already, which I'm not sure checks out legally.

Ororo and Kitty make a sort of truce. Kitty agrees to go with Doug - by plane! - to the Academy for a week, to check it out with him. Unfortunately, it turns out that Emma Frost is alive and headmistress! (The last time we'd been there, that was the twist too, somewhat undermining its power.)

While they're gone, Xavier and the rest of the regular team (Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler) survey the source of the scanning waves that Xavier has been sensing, and are teleported away somewhere, to appear in a crossover.

Uncanny X-Men #168: Professor Xavier is Quite Reasonable

Uncanny X-Men #168 is a slow, character-based issue, after the several months of Brood-filled action.

The first order of business is Xavier having demoted Kitty Pryde to the New Mutants team at the end of #167, which she naturally resents (having just spent however many months in space with the main team, proving her worth). Call Kitty annoying if you like, but I think she's earned her keep, and just arbitrarily demoting her as soon as you see her (especially after she'd helped save you from a Brood monster) is a bit much.

This issue fails to do with the premise. In particular, it doesn't feature the "X-Babies" at all, making her change of teams rather nominal. It might be fun to see her interact with Dani and gang and come to realise they're not so bad. But in their absence, the only way for this to end is for Kitty to defeat a problem or solve some monsters (in this case some left over Sidri from #155), during which she discovers an alien dragon-like creature (Lockheed) has survived the events of #166 and made its way to the X-Mansion. She's admitted back into the X-Men on a probationary basis, which is more than good enough for her.

Despite the rather immature stomping about, Kitty seems to grow up a lot this issue. She's being drawn very differently by Paul Smith than by Byrne or Cockrum, to begin with - the old costume helps, and she displays a real steely determination when facing the Sidri. The Kitty of Whedon and Cassaday is clearly an older version of this Kitty.

Meanwhile, Cyclops, Corsair and Havok go visit the grandparents, in Alaska. (Cyclops visits Lee Forrester first, who he it is strongly suggested gets off with). Their pilot for today is Madelyne Pryor, who has red hair and green eyes and takes Scott's breath away. And, Kurt visits Amanda with the surprise news that he's alive.

New Mutants #3-#4 / Uncanny X-Men #167

New Mutants has been leading in to #167 (cover date March 1983), but there's a problem, in that #3, which finishes the sequence, was released two months later, in May 1983, and #167 started with the New Mutants all watching television, all unaware of the Brood in Xavier's head.

Any story actually dealing with the Brood (rather than having it as a background element of Weird Stuff) in New Mutants will therefore not only see our team fail to deal with the problem adequately, but end with them not even recognising one.

And so we get #3, where Dani becomes aware the a monster, nobody believes her, it manifests in all their presence and then... it is revealed to all be a dream (caused by Dani's fear powers, under an outside influence). They even get as far as hypothesising that Xavier is linked. And then they go and see some TV, the five of them.

So, that moment in #2 where Stevie realises the only person who could have run the advanced training problem in the Danger Room, is Xavier, is just plain wasted.

Couple of other bits in #3: Moira and Sean talking about having children again, with Moira moping about not having had a son by Xavier. And Illyana, who Sean catches doing some kind of ritual to do with Belasco. Whatever it is, that can't be good.

#167 itself starts quite hilariously. The X-Men, having concluded there is a Brood egg in the Professor in #166, go straight for the mansion (bypassing the Proto-Utopia island, I suppose, although maybe they went there first and that's why they're in such a hurry), and then attack the group of children in the common room. This is not your usual superhero misunderstanding - the X-Men know full well that the kids are new students of Xavier's. It's just that subduing them is going to take less time than explaining matters.

The New Mutants prove less of a pushover than Cyclops was expecting, but ultimately are defeated. Just in time for them to find Xavier in the final stages of Brood incubation and watch him turning into a Brood Queen. The Brood beats the boys (Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler) to a standstill, but then the artillery arrives in the form of Warbird and Storm, and the Brood Queen is taken down.

Just as they are about to kill it, they discover that Xavier's personality still exists within, and spare its life. By an amazing coincidence, the Starjammers have the technology to clone Xavier's body, and then "transplant" the mind. This works very well, and even gives him shiny new legs. Until he tries to stand on them, they buckle underneath him, and he discovers his mind needs time to adjust.

And what are we to make of this notion that Xavier has drawn together the New Mutants specifically to lay eggs in, mentioned in #4? Well, if you examine what happened more closely, it doesn't make much sense. Xavier was depressed after the apparent loss of the X-Men and Lilandra, and the idea to train Karma was practically forced on him by Moira, who also provided Rahne. Psyche he got a letter about, and then he only picked up Cannonball and Sunspot because they got entangled in Pierce's schemes. So, at what point did the Brood's influence manifest? If we can blame anything on it, perhaps it's the reason Xavier has decided not to form another team of X-Men to go on missions, but instead to keep the tasty tasty children safe and close.

#167 is also the issue in which the issue of Scott and Alex's grandparents are raised. Turns out, they have some, which is complete news to Scott, as if he's never thought about the issue before. He's not a John Doe, he knew the name of his parents - it's never occurred to him to check? Why, for that matter, wasn't he placed with them instead of being put in an orphanage?

And finally, Lilandra was stranded too, with the X-Men. Gladiator turns up, wanting an audience with her. He declares Deathbird unfit to rule, and suggests a space rebellion! And sets us up for a bizarre page in which Lilandra goes and gives Reed a piece of her mind for refraining from killing Galactus, apparently intended as a bit of cheeky revenge at John Byrne, after Byrne retconned the Doom in #145-#147 as a Doombot.

Finally, coming to New Mutants #4, it's one of those unusual X-Men stories where the only superhero element is the good mutants themselves. The "villain" of the piece, who has been making harassing phone calls to Stevie, is, shockingly, the new character introduced on page 2. Edgy stuff.

Marvel Graphic Novel #4: New Mutants, New Danger

Meanwhile, on Earth, we come to the original New Mutants graphic novel, and the odd pages in the Brood run of Uncanny that lead up to it.

Xavier had come out of his coma in #161 (despite the alien consciousness, which we can assume from Uncanny is the Brood egg), but wasn't up for the trip to space, so was left on Earth, along with Moira, Alex, Lorna, Corsair and Illyana. He finds time to rebuild the mansion with the help of robots courtesy of Lilandra (we see its frame being put up in #163), and by #164 it's finished. He's given up on his dream, which although implicit all along now becomes a Big Deal, a thing you can talk about as "Xavier's dream". They only ever seem to talk about it when they give up in on it. Moira trolls him into accepting a new student, one Xi'an Coy Manh, who we have met before.

And so we come to the original New Mutants graphic novel, the 4th in the series. Xavier has lost a team of X-Men again, and he's rattling around the school, so he decides to assemble a new team. But only for training this time. Certainly not for missions.

Moira brings him Rahne Sinclair, a 14-year-old religious Scottish shapeshifter. In her introduction the link between powers and puberty now being made explicit for the first time. She's from the Highlands, too, and was not just delivered by Moira to Xavier, but was actually delivered by her. Again we have Claremont's romanticised view of these Isles - if you're from them then you probably own an entire island or at least a castle, and if not, then you are at least from a super-rural area. Nobody with powers comes from somewhere like London or Glasgow, at least until we get the Ellises and Cornells and Gillens writing. She's yet another orphan and is a "ward of the church", with a Reverend Craig bringing her up. Unfortunately, he's the chap who was leading the mob chasing her at the start. Happily, Moira is there at exactly the right time and place to rescue her from that. What she can't - or won't - rescue her from is her internalised hatred, instilled by Craig.

Xi'an (who gets called Shan) is one of the "Vietnamese boat people", who with her family fled from Vietnam after the communist takeover. Her backstory is written as if it were soon after the fall of Saigon, rather then several years later - although refugees continued for a while, she's directly tied in to the South Vietnamese military establishment which makes a sudden fleeing several years later seem a bit awkward. The floating timeline causes further problems - Xi'an simply can't have this background any more, unless you suppose that Marvel geopolitics aren't the same as our ones (which actually solves a lot of other problems!) She's intelligent, polite, well-spoken. I'd call her a stereotype but she's a bit more than that already. She has clearly given the ethics of her powers thought - more than Xavier. What happened with Tran troubles her, but even before then, she was using Spider-Man because she'd thought she'd not be doing damage to a good reputation.

While Rahne and Xi'an are training, Xavier gets a message from an old friend of his - Black Eagle - regarding his granddaughter, Danielle Moonstar (again, a 14-year-old orphan!), who has begun to manifest powers - mainly a general showing-people-their-fears power, but also an unrelated secondary mutation of being really close to nature and shit, possibly on account of her being a Cheyenne. He, along with Moira and the students, visits her, only to find assassins sent by Donald Pierce have killed her grandfather already, and trying to take out her. She agrees to join up to get revenge against Pierce. Xavier is able to extract information from Pierce's agents - in a shocking display of lack of compartmentalisation they've been briefed with the next two targets. These are Robert da Costa, from Brazil (a hot-headed Latino!), who is decidedly not an orphan, but has a girlfriend in the fridge; and Sam Guthrie, from a Kentucky mining family, who works for a Pierce-owned company, whose father has just died, and signs up on the wrong side, but comes around soon enough.

Oddly, Moira's team are able to get to Brazil, extract Bobby, and get back to Kentucky quickly enough to help Rahne rescue Xavier (who had been captured) and defeat Pierce. I suppose they must have overclocked the Blackbird? There's some woman called Tessa who works for Shaw also being held captive by Pierce, who has broken with the rest of the Hellfire Club, and who I think we might have seen before in the Dark Phoenix saga. Xavier eventually agrees to hand Pierce over to - mutual enemies and all - Xavier's narration makes it clear he isn't sure about he can trust her, but he sees no other way.

And so, we get another batch of X-Men (well, more or less), a cohort of teenagers, the first since 1963. Perhaps they should have done this right away and skipped the stage with Kitty alone. This time majority female, and majority non-white, which may be the first time either of these things have happened in a mainstream superhero title (or at least one that doesn't have it as its gimmick). And the characterisation and powers are a mite less informed by stereotypes than in Giant-Size #1.

This is a bit less substantive than I had imagined for something billed as a "graphic novel". It doesn't really stand alone, and instead acts more like a double-size #1 for the New Mutants ongoing which is about to launch. No surprise, since this is precisely what was intended originally - Claremont says that it was repurposed to be a graphic novel after it started production. The only standout difference is the colouring, which is using a different, more sophisticated but more expensive at this point, process, and therefore has shading.

Uncanny X-Man #161: Waiting for Gabrielle

This breaking news just in. Professor Charles Xavier is still in a coma. I'm a bit unfair, as Uncanny X-Men #161 actually advances this plot. We are told that "an alien consciousness has become part of him", and he's getting worse.

Moira says they've used another telepath to try and reach him - but he tried to use her as a means of suicide, which we've missed. Cyclops and Corsair are back from their visit to Havok and Polaris in New Mexico. Cyclops points at the complete botch that Storm made of the mission to infiltrate the Pentagon in #158, and suggests maybe he ought to be back in charge. Which seems reasonable enough, but he then backs down, ascribing it to the distress of Xavier being ill.

Xavier is remembering his visit to Haifa, in Israel, 20 years ago (so, 1962 at the time). He'd been there after his trip to Cairo (where he encountered his first evil mutant, we will remember, and a young Storm too). He's gone to meet his friend Daniel Sharon, who is working at a hospital with survivors of the holocaust. He meets a chap called Magnus there, who he can't mindread, and a young woman named Gabrielle Heller, who was at Dachau, who is not in a good way. He's able to telepathically deal with her block and get her conscious again. Soon enough she's doing all the tourist stuff with Magnus and Charles, and starting a thoroughly problematic relationship with Charles. Charles and Magnus start having hypothetical debates about mutants and what humanity's reaction to them would be. They do not, sadly, have comedy routines about keeping trousers up, even though Xavier should probably have kept his on.

Suddenly wild NazisHydra attack, and events force Magnus to reveal that he the power of manipulation of metallic objects and magnetic forces! Yes, he's Magneto! This all means that Xavier secretly knew Magneto before Uncanny X-Men #1! They rescue Gaby, who is being held in Kenya by Baron Strucker, and Magneto decides to "liberate" their stock of gold, proclaiming that mutants will fight for survival.

This will be our first major problem with the sliding timeline. You can fix Magneto's age a bit by the fact that he's been de-aged and re-aged, and Xavier gets a new body soon enough - so they can be biologically any age you please - but Xavier and Magneto meet as more-or-less contemporaries in a period where Holocaust survivors can be young women. And we can't age Heller too much, 'cos Xavier has a kid by her. Not that we know that yet, of course.

With that flashback out of the way, Xavier wakes up, and everyone is relieved. Lilandra, who has been sticking around, makes ready to leave, and invites them to space for a space banquet - Moira and Charles stay on the surface, as does Illyana. But then drama! Deathbird appears and assassinates Lilandra, and notes that the X-Men will be hosts for the brood-spawn!

X-Men #129-#131: Hello, Goodbye

There are farewells at the start of X-Men #129, as we leave Alex, Lorna, Jamie, Moira and now Sean on Muir Island, and the X-Men return to Westchester.

I'd written that last bit on the post about the Arcade arc, having forgotten that we get some helloes so soon, too. Xavier has arrived back from the Shi'ar Empire, having been completely spooked when he looked into a record of Jean and the crystal. He is training the X-Men hard, and bizarrely thinks that giving Wolverine "demerits" is a good way to win him over. That's all stopped by the appearance of two new mutants on Cerebro: one in New York and one in Chicago.

Jean, by the way, keeps getting these "time-slips", where she sees herself in the past, with Jason Wyngarde. He's manipulating this for the sinister purpsoes of the Hellfire Club, also consisting of Sebastian Shaw and a White Queen. He plans to unlock Jean's dark side, and so is messing with her head. Jean should probably have mentioned this to Scott, or Xavier, or someone, especially when she finds out that there's a Jason Wyngarde who is a member of the Hellfire Club who just tried to capture them. But this era of the comic is full of people who really should have told other characters things. They know about the blips because they had a spy (Warhawk) plant bugs, so we finally find out what that was about. What Xavier really needs is someone who could have prevented this or at least warned him - maybe his own spy inside the Hellfire Club?

We meet young Katherine Pryde (13 going on 14), who manages to save the X-Men from Emma Frost the day she found out she was a mutant with "phasing" power. To put it in her words (from Astonishing #2)

The first time I ever met the X-Men, the first day...they were ambushed. And captured. And caged. By you. I learned more about good and evil in that one day than I ever have before or since. I was thirteen.

So, yes, that went well. Dazzler helps too, too. Yes, it's her debut as well. Phoenix finishes her off, natch.

Finally we return to Kitty's parents. They're a bit upset at what's happen so it gets fixed by a mindwipe. But Phoenix beats Xavier to the punch here. Oh dear. Where are you going to stop?

Now, let's talk a bit about Claremont's source material for this. The well-documented influence is of course a 1966 episode of the ITV television programme The Avengers (starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg), named "A Touch of Brimstone", which caused quite a storm. That too, featured a Hellfire Club, and a Wyngarde (Peter) trying to make a Queen of a female protagonist (Emma Peel, who we can assume Ms. Frost is named after). That Hellfire Club is less in it for global domination, though, and more for the chaotic neutral mischief. What's less obvious is the possible influence of a slightly later episode of the show, called "Escape in Time", which features people made to believe they have travelled in time, for nefarious purposes. I wonder if they had to pay Thames Television off when they did X-Men: First Class?

X-Men #65: The First Retcon

X-Men #65 starts with the gang finally arriving back at the mansion and reuniting with Alex and Lorna, who'd been left there since issue #61. Something urgent has come up. There's an alien invasion planned, by the Z'Nox! Alex knows about this because he has been told by Professor X! Who has been hiding in the basement the entire time! And is not dead.

We're told that the Changeling approached Xavier. He had a terminal illness and wanted to make a difference for good in his final six months. Xavier told him to take his place, telling only Jean, and giving both Changeling and Jean some of his mental powers (explaining why the fake Xavier was able to mindread).

This seems a fairly horrible thing to have done, but well in character for Xavier. Nobody calls him on it, but I guess they're used to him by now. It makes a particular nonsense of X-Men #46, which has the Juggernaut accidentally released due to lack of maintenance of some science kit. Why has he done this? He found out about the Z'Nox coming, and has been plotting all this time. His plan involves the X-Men being present, which also means the business of them being forced to split up by the FBI in #46 was an unexpected risk factor.

He decides not alert to the Fantastic Four or Avengers. Or SHIELD. His plan is disrupted slightly when Nick Fury and the helicarrier are there to meet the aliens at the south magnetic pole. They - including Alex on his first official mission (rather than just being caught up in events) - proceed immediately back to Antarctica in a rocket. When they are in place, Xavier uses his immense mental powers, in combination with Jean and Alex and Scott, to project feelings of sympathy and mercy (Bobby is tapped to provide cooling for this arrangement). This works out quite well, and the Z'Nox withdraw. Xavier has been severely strained by the encounter, and we are left with the question as to whether he'll survive. (!)

X-Men #12-#13: Don't You Know Who I Am?

X-Men #12 carries on immediately from the end of #11, with Cerebro detecting a massively powerful mutant. Xavier thinks he knows what it is, so explains his life-story, and how his elder step-brother, Cain Marko, became the Juggernaut. Flashback scenes are interspersed with the Juggernaut conducting the first attack on the school, and gradually penetrating its defences.

This is our first significant origin story for any mutant (excluding the panel or two for Wanda in #4), and we see how Xavier was able to read thoughts as a boy, but apparently just assumed it was normal, and only realised it was a special power when he was older, after the death of his step-father. This is very similar to some queer puberty narratives. By his late teens he is self-identifying as a "mutant".

We then get the story of Xavier and Marko serving in the Korean War, and them finding the Temple of Cyttorak, and Marko holding the gem and being transformed into a human Juggernaut. The issue concludes just as Juggernaut confronts the X-Men - making this the first proper two-part story. Issue #13 gives his side of the story, with him claiming that he'd taken all that time to dig himself out from the stone. He gets dumped in a big hole by the X-Men, but is soon able to escape (as he rhetorically asks - "Haven't they realized yet that nothing can hold back the Juggernaut?"). After distracting him for a while and nearly losing, the X-Men remove his protective helmet, allowing him to be stopped by Xavier's mutant brain, amplified by his new "mento-helmet".

X-Men #12 makes the chronology rather complicated. Xavier fought in the Korean War, and we know he'd at least started college before then, and that he's been keeping his head down, so probably won't be attending college too early. So he is at the very youngest 18 in 1953. Which makes his birth year 1935. In our very first issue Xavier says that he was "born of parents who had worked on the first A-bomb project". I joked that this meant the British Tube Alloys project rather than the Manhattan project, but even if we take that seriously, it still doesn't work. Xavier can't have been born to parents who worked on any A-bomb project, and serve in the Korean war, and this is not a problem that the sliding timeline has presented, but a problem that could have been apparent in 1965. We'll see if the material ever gets around to fixing it (perhaps in the early issues of X-Men: Legacy). It could change the war around (which it might do anyway, to avoid Xavier being too old), or it might posit a secret pre-war atomic bomb project.

Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four has a small guest appearance in the fight, but his memory of the event is wiped by Xavier and he is sent packing. It was a pretty bad fight, so all the X-Men apart from Jean are injured and in bed. She gets to play nurse (on top of getting to cook for the X-Men on the cook's day off in #6). Woo.

Continuity notes

Xavier gets a backstory, and a first name (Charles). Introduction of Brian Xavier, Sharon Xavier, Kurt Marko, Cain Marko (Juggernaut). Random cameos in #14 of the Teen Brigade and Johnny Storm.

X-Men #9: Avengers vs X-Men: First Round

Three issues ago X-Men got its first crossover with the rest of the Marvel universe. X-Men #9 takes this up a notch, featuring a guest appearance of the Avengers, whose ongoing series launched in the same month and year as X-Men. It features the classical line-up of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man and the Wasp.

The comic starts with the X-Men travelling to Europe on a ship. This anachronism isn't remarked on, but appears to exist solely in order to give Cyclops a chance to blast a wild iceberg out from the path of the ship. They've been summoned to act as backup for Professor X, who has tracked down his previously unmentioned nemesis Lucifer. The Avengers also have arrived, having detected Lucifer. Possibly the funniest moment in the series so far happens when a passer-by gets spooked out by the Avengers' strange dress, and drives away quickly to stop at the next group of apparently normal people he sees: the X-Men.

Being a superhero comic, there are certain narrative conventions to obey. So the Avengers and X-Men end up in a fight - in this case ostensibly because the Avengers would interfere with dealing Lucifer without all the facts. Thankfully, after a few pages, Professor X is able to calmly describe the situation telepathically to Thor, and they part as friends.

The comic makes a really big deal about how young the X-Men - all still teens - are compared to the Avengers, something that will become less apparent as the decades wear on and the X-Men are allowed to grow up, while the Avengers stay broadly static. Oh, and one other thing.

Continuity notes

First appearance of Lucifer; first Avengers/X-Men crossover; Professor X's paraplegia attributed to Lucifer.