UXM #133: "Wolverine: Alone!"

("The body cannot live without the mind.")

Comments

Ah, yes.  This issue is infamous for the way it ends (or, more accurately, for the way that ending is immediately swept under the carpet next time round).  Before we get to that, though, is that the glint of adamantium in the darkness?

This issue takes pains to remind us that the Hellfire Club's flunkies are actually the best mercenaries money can buy.  I'd like to humbly suggest that the best mercenaries money can buy would:

1. Check the ceiling during a hunt for someone with high levels of agility;
2. Have enough discipline to not suggest giving up after only an hour;
3. Definitely not do so because they assume their quarry can't swim too well;
4. Make sure the target is dead after shooting them, rather than simply gloat becaue they're not moving;
5. Acoid dropping their guns in terror when their target is suddenly mean to them.

Incredibly, these allegedly high-quality goons manage to cycle through all the above within the first four pages.  Wolverine kills almost all of them, and I can't possibly argue that they didn't deserve it. 

Above all that ruckus, however, it's time for a quick round of synchronised gloating, as the Hellfire Inner Circle survey their new acquisitions.  Jean is now totally convinced that she's centuries in the past (apparently making her more "vivacious and exciting" than Frost was), to the point where she starts slapping Ororo around for speaking back to her mistress.  Whilst Jean gets all het up about the uppity Negress, Shaw is only too happy to explain to his prisoners that they're about to become Guinea pigs in the Circle's latest round of genetic experiments, in the hopes of custom-building mutant powers (nobody tell them Magneto got there back in the '60s).

Whilst all of this is going on, Scott works his way into Jean's mind via the psionic rapport they've apparently shared for about a week, and which was first mentioned all of six pages earlier.  Unfortunately for him, Mastermind has found his way in as well, and forces Cyclops to duel with him as though this really was the 18th Century plantation Jean has been tricked into thinking she lives in.  Cyclops aquits himself as well as can be expected, but Wyngarde clearly knows his way around a blade, and the instant he grows tired of the match, he stabs Scott through the chest.

Out in the "real" world, the X-Men gasp in horrified confusion as Cyclops drops to the floor.  Unmoving, not breathing, there is only one conclusion: Cyclops is dead!

Until next time!

Clues

This issue begins about an hour after the last one ended, and takes place in approximately real time.

Date

Monday 11^th to Tuesday 12^th  of October, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+195 to X+4Y+196.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.67 standard years.

(Shadowcat is 22 years old).

A rare breed of fruit that nevertheless
seems to be everywhere you look.

Contemporary Events

Ronald Reagan announces "National Port Week" (the shipping facilities, not the drink, sadly).

Standout Line

"I'd better cool it with my claws against these bozos.  They might be "Inner Circle" mercenaries -- but they might also be legit club employess, or rent-a-cops, or even Secret Service."

Clearly Wolverine isn't quite so callous as we've been led to believe.

"Carvin' 'em up could create more hassles than it solves."

Oh.  Never mind.