UXM #17: "... And None Shall Survive!"

("His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking")

Comments

This is not a proud day for Xavier's skills at deception. Marvel Girl starts the issue wondering how the Professor will hide his affiliation with the team.  I'd be prepared to bet she didn't imagine him asking if an X-Man would drive him home in his nearby car, which conveniently now has no driver.  On the other hand, he's apparently been controlling the soldiers since they arrived, so I suppose it doesn't matter too much.  Of course, this is another one of those times when Xavier's willingness to fuck around with innocent people's synapses raises the eyebrows, but these are still early days. [1]

Do we ever find out how Magneto found the X-Men's base?  Or did he just have enough time to work it out whilst he was a prisoner of the Stranger.  I suppose he can't have spent all his time being rectally probed.

I see from Cyclops' "perfect circle" defence in Xavier's study that the X-Men still aren't getting the hang of the third dimension.  This is reinforced by Marvel Girl "forgetting" that she can use her telekinesis to float down from windows.  I bet she never forgets she can sew with it, though.  Not if she doesn't want to feel the back of Cyclops' hand, anyway.

At least Cyclops has the excuse that he was nearly deafened by Cerebro, at least.  Actually, I meant to ask this after issue #12, but did it really never occur to Xavier that there was an obvious tactical disadvantage to creating a mutant detector capable of shattering the ear bones of the operator and anyone near him?  Maybe he was still to busy designing the precise spermicide formula for his mento-helmet.

Does "John Thomas" mean something different in the States?  Or did he become a doctor as a way of proving himself after years of cruel, vindictive bullying?

Clues

 This is a difficult one to figure out.  We know the story starts just after the Sentinel base explodes, so that's all right.  The implication is that all the hospital scenes follow on very quickly. Certainly, some of Xavier's mental dialogue (as in thought bubbles, not "Charlie is a mental", which I suspect was a B-side to an '80s B-Line Matchbox Disaster single) doesn't really work if he hasn't pretty much followed the ambulance carrying Scott, Hank and Bobby to the hospital.

 On the other hand, having Beast recover from a fractured foot within an hour is pushing it.  Or is it?  Maybe this just demonstrates how much damage Juggernaut did to his leg back in issue #13.  At the time, I thought it was ridiculous that Cain's blow didn't do far more damage, but if Beast has himself a healing factor (less powerful than Wolverine's, sure, but still there), then some hobbling around on crutches back then, and a 60 minute recovery now, would both make some sense.

Let's split the difference, and assume the ambulance arrived close to midnight on the Wednesday (the Sentinels attacked during an evening broadcast, after all) and that the hospital scenes take place the following day.

 This has the knock-on effect of allowing Magneto almost 24 hours to booby-trap the mansion, rather than less than a day.  It still makes bollocks-all sense that he's able to overcome Xavier's security and re-write it so quickly, but at least this way he's had some time to puzzle it all out. 

Date

Wednesday 6^th to Thursday 7^th September, 1978.

X-Date

X+159 to X+160.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel month = 6.08 standard months.

Contemporary Events

Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov is stabbed in London, with a poisoned umbrella.   Tragically, Mathew Horne survives the attack.  Or maybe he orchestrated it.  It's difficult to be sure.

Stand-Out Line

"He's delirious!  No way of knowing whether it's a good symptom -- or a dangerous one!"  No way of telling whether delirium is good?  Did Johnson go to the same school as Doctors Spaceman and Fisher?

[1] indeed, waaaaay in the future, in issue #331, Warren explicitly calls the Professor out on his previous history of re-writing minds left, right and centre.  So it does get addressed eventually.