UXM #106: "Dark Shroud Of The Past!"

(Deja vu to the power of two...)

Comments

I don't really have a lot of positive things to say about this installment.  For starters, I don't care how many times writers do it, sticking a completely unrelated story or issue-long flashback in the middle of a long-running story is intensely irritating, and I imagine that it must have been orders of magnitude more exasperating back when fans picked this up and realised they have to wait another two months to find out what kind of trouble the X-Men had encountered on the other side of the stargate.

Secondly, if you are going to pull such a rotten trick, and centre the issue around an untold tale, for the love of Quesada, don't rehash an idea you used just a year ago.  Watching the new X-Men fight their predecessors was perfectly fine back in UXM #100 - a sort of rite of passage for the new team - but doing it again just feels tired (to say nothing of making the team look even more stupid for not figuring out the X-Sentinels were fakes straight away).  We're also already quite well aware, if not thoroughly sick of, Cyclops fears about the new team not measuring up to the old, or that he'll fail to lead the newcomers quite so effectively.  We don't need another story about that, just after we thought we'd escaped them for good.

The one good part of all of this is the idea that a sufficiently exhausted and paranoid Xavier might end up killing his own students by unleashing his dark side.  Accidental it may be, but that's still some pretty impressive foreshadowing for Onslaught, all those years down the line.

Clues

The "present day" story can't take more than a few seconds.  The flashback to the Danger Room covers a period of only a few minutes.

The flashback itself must take a few days after Moira arrived, and so presumably before Charles takes his vacation.  There are several dates in early September that can be used.

Date

Friday 4^th September, 1981 and Wednesday 13^th January, 1982.

X-Date

X+3Y+122 and X+3Y+254.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.76 standard years

(Storm is 35 years old)

"Some of us are weary of hearing your
gravelly little voice hour after endless hour."

Contemporary Events (Flashback)

 Beyonce Knowles is born.

An explosion at a mine in Zaluzi, Czechoslovakia kills 65 people.

Standout Line

"In my madness, will I slay those I love most?" Xavier spots the psionic elephant in the room, years before anyone else.