Timeline: 1983 Jan - Jun (Take 5)

January

6^th      DAZ 6: The Hulk can be Hazardous to Your Health!
7^th      DAZ 6: The Hulk can be Hazardous to Your Health!
8^th      DAZ 6: The Hulk can be Hazardous to Your Health!
8^th      DAZ 7: Fort Apache, the Hulk!
9^th      DAZ 7: Fort Apache, the Hulk!
11^th    DAZ 8: Hell... Hell is for Harry!
12^th    DAZ 8: Hell... Hell is for Harry!
12^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
13^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
14^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
15^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
16^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
17^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
18^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
19^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
19^th    DAZ 10: In the Darkness... a Light!
19^th    DAZ 11: ...Lest ye be Judged!
20^th    DAZ 11: ...Lest ye be Judged!
24^th    DAZ 12: Endless Hate
25^th    DAZ 12: Endless Hate

February

4^th   UXM 144: Even in Death...
5^th   UXM 144: Even in Death...
8^th    DAZ 13: Trial... and Terror!
9^th    DAZ 13: Trial... and Terror!
21^st DAZ 14: ...Without Getting Killed or Caught!...
24^th DAZ 15: Private Eyes
25^th DAZ 15: Private Eyes
28^th UXM 145: Kidnapped!
28^th UXM 146: Murderworld!
28^th DAZ 16: Black Magic Woman!

March

1^st       UXM 145: Kidnapped!
1^st        UXM 146: Murderworld!
1^st        UXM 147: Rogue Storm!
1^st        DAZ 16: Black Magic Woman!
2^nd     UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
3^rd      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
4^th      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
5^th      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
6^th      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
8^th      UXM 149: And the Dead Shall Bury the Living!
8^th      UXM 150: I, Magneto!
9^th      WOL #1: Wolverine
10^th    WOL 1: Wolverine
11^th    WOL 1: Wolverine
12^th    WOL 1: Wolverine
13^th    WOL 2: Debts and Obligations
18^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
19^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
20^th    WOL 3: Loss
20^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
21^st    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
23^rd    WOL 4: Honor

April

1^st    DAZ 18: The Absorbing Man Wants you!
2^nd   DAZ 18: The Absorbing Man Wants you!
7^th   UXM Annual 5: Ou, La La -- Badoon!
8^th   UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
9^th   UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
10^th UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
11^th UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
11^th UXM 152: The Hellfire Gambit!
12^th UXM 152: The Hellfire Gambit!
13^th UXM 153: Kitty's Fairy Tale
26^th UXM 154: Reunion
27^th UXM 155: First Blood
27^th UXM 156: Pursuit!
28^th UXM 156: Pursuit!
28^th UXM 157: Hide-'N'-Seek!

May

3^rd   UXM 158: The Life That Late I Led...
7^th  UXM 159: Night Screams!
8^th   UXM 159: Night Screams!
9^th   UXM 159: Night Screams!
10^th UXM 159: Night Screams!
11^th UXM 160: Chutes and Ladders!
13^th UXM Annual 6: Blood Feud!
14^th UXM Annual 6: Blood Feud!
15^th UXM 161: Gold Rush!
16^th UXM 161: Gold Rush!

June

6^th   UXM 162: Beyond the Farthest Star
7^th   UXM 162: Beyond the Farthest Star
8^th   UXM 163: Rescue Mission!
8^th   UXM 164: Binary Star!
9^th   UXM 164: Binary Star!
9^th   UXM 165:Transfigurations!
10^th UXM 165: Transfigurations!
10^th UXM 166: Live Free or Die!
11^th UXM 166: Live Free or Die!
12^th MGN 4: Renewal
13^th MGN 4: Renewal
14^th MGN 4: Renewal
15^th MGN 4: Renewal
16^th MGN 4: Renewal
17^th MGN 4: Renewal
18^th MGN 4: Renewal
19^th MGN 4: Renewal
20^th MGN 4: Renewal
21^st MGN 4: Renewal
22^nd MGN 4: Renewal
23^rd MGN 4: Renewal
24^th MGN 4: Renewal
25^th MGN 4: Renewal
26^th MGN 4: Renewal
27^th MGN 4: Renewal
28^th MGN 4: Renewal
29^th MGN 4: Renewal
30^th MGN 4: Renewal

DAZ #18: "The Absorbing Man Wants You!"

(Ingratitude and incandescence.)

Comments

Today's comic answers one of the most persistent and fascinating questions in the Marvel Universe: do the Thing's rocky lips allow him to play woodwind?

The answer, True Believers, is yes.  He's absolutely no good at it, but he has just about enough skills, accompanied by the Human Torch on guitar, to provide backing for Alison as the three jam out in the Baxter Building.

Turns out, this isn't entirely a social call, though.  Mr Fantastic has a new invention for Dazzler, a device which gives off a massive amount of sound that she can process to create exceptionally brilliant light shows. 

Dazzler reacts like he's passed over a self-administered rohypnol kit.  Gods, Alison has been a pain these last couple of issues.  Maybe Reed shouldn't have called it a weapon (referring to it as a can of mace, as he does later on, is a much better idea), but watching Dazzler throw a strop about how she only wants to be a singer is infuriatingly ungrateful, and totally unmindful of her own history.  Since she started up her singing career, Dazzler has been possessed once, kidnapped at least four times, been attacked by witches, demons and aliens, and been forced to face off against Doctor Doom, the Hulk and She-Hulk, and motherfucking Galactus.  It's like being offered a better deal on car insurance and screaming that you don't intend to be a drag racer.

Eventually the FF talk Dazzler into accepting her present, mainly because Dazzler finally recalls just how many supervillains have tried to take chunks out of her recently, but rather than apologise, or even admit Reed has a point, she states she will only use it in order to improve her stage act.  Reed offers to show her how to work it, but she blows him off.  He's only a fucking super-genius with no communication skills, how important can a demonstration be.

(So does she practice with it before using it on-stage?  Does she hell.  She just grabs it, turns it on, and temporarily blinds her entire audience.  Because massively powerful weapons might need tinkering with before you use them as stage-props. Did she learn nothing from Techmaster?  And obviously, she immediately blames Reed entirely, for leaving the dial turned to "IMMEDIATE DANGER!!!" instead of "upcoming finale."  First she blames Angel for her cheating on Ken with him, and now it's Reed's fault she waves a loaded gun at her audience only to claim surprise when it goes off.  I liked this character an awful lot more when she understood the concept of personal responsibility.)

Speaking of Angel, what else is going on in our characters' lives?  Well, Angel himself has flown over to the house of Dazzler's father, and explains his cunning plan to Carter's mother. You'd assume this was an obvious dead end, to be honest, since it's hard to imagine Alison's grandmother knows anything about Katherine Blaire that she hasn't shared with Alison herself.  On the other hand, if anyone is going to be arrogant enough to assume Dazzler just wasn't up to the job of quizzing her grandmother, it's going to be Warren.

Meanwhile, Carter himself is in a frightful state.  Confronting Alison after she rifled through her mother's boxes has apparently brought an awful lot back, too much it seems for him to handle.  I feel more than a little sorry for anyone who's future is riding on his judgements today.

Lastly, we take a look in on the Absorbing Man, who's arrived in town to get his long-delayed revenge on the Avengers.  For reasons I don't entirely understand (presumably either an editor-mandated explanation, or blatant page filling), we're treated to an extended flashback letting us know what Creel has been up to lately.  Frankly, this is another one of those occasions where the flashbacks seem a much better story than what's going on right now (making this the exact opposite of Lost, of course) - Creel battles the Hulk somewhere in Polynesia, is knocked out mid-way through absorbing the properties of the island they're fighting on, and goes all Jasconius as he's awoken by a tribe he immediately takes over.

Of course, total control probably isn't all it's cracked up to be when your followers have nothing to offer but coconuts and grass skirts, so he's back in town to get him some payback.  And in order to do that, he needs our heroine.

Meanwhile, Alison has taken Ken to a baseball game (he doesn't like the sport, but he's happy to go along because of understanding the concept first described by Carl Jung as "not being a pissy bitch"). Not surprisingly, he wants to talk about the night Dazzler unceremoniously chucked him out of her apartment, and whether Warren was involved.  It's a little hard for him to hold Alison's attention, though ; he's just her boyfriend, and she has a game to watch and an angel to daydream about.

The next night, Dazzler is gearing up for a gig (the one where she sears the retinae of everyone in the building), and the Absorbing Man, having already threatened Harry and Lance, bursts into the venue.  He knows that the Avengers are fans, and wants to exchange her life for theirs.  So guess what Dazzler needs now?  Maybe some kind of weapon?  It's too late, though, she's left it in her dressing room following the rods-and-cones apocalypse a few minutes earlier.  Creed gets to the device before she does.

All is not necessarily lost, however.  Creel doesn't know that Dazzler is a mutant, and assumes the sound-generator is a light-generator, so it's pretty easy to get him to turn it on.  Then, whilst he's overcome by the cacophony, Dazzler has the opportunity to soak up the vibrations and blast the Absorbing Man to hell.

That was the plan, at least.  Instead, Creel absorbs everything Alison can throw at him, and in the process becomes a fifteen-foot being of angry, angry light.  This, as might be obvious, is Not Good...

Clues

This story takes place over two days.  It's also described as early April, which is a bit surprising, given Crusher Creel arrived in New York a few days after Alison got a letter dated early March.  There's also the fact that Angel seems to have only just begun his search for Katherine.

I suppose one could assume that Creel has changed motels at least once since he got to NYC - especially considering he starts smashing up this one as soon as he gets there.  It's also possible that Angel has just been too flighty (no pun intended, kind of) to get down to business until now.  On the other hand, it can't have been too long, as Ken has only just gotten around to asking about the Angel situation.

Let's assume that Spider-Woman's letter was delayed by an extra week, and that this story takes place about a week and a half after the fight with Doctor Octopus.  That puts it at the very start of April, just after the conclusion of the first Wolverine limited series, and just before UXM Annual #5.

Date

Friday 1^st to Saturday 2^nd of April, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+31 to X+5Y+32.

Contemporary Events

Matt Lanter is born, an American actor best known to geeks as the voice of Annakin Skywalker in The Clone Wars series (the mediocre CGI one, not the phenomenal earlier version).

Standout Line

"I was just gettin' into the "Tiger Rag"!"
"What?  But I was playin' "Purple Haze"!" - The Thing and the Torch.

NMU #2: "Sentinels"

(Aliens, robots, and Spielberg.  Not AI, thank fuck.)

Comments

Holodecks piss me off.  You can talk about replicators and tractor beams and hard-light projections all you want, I don't see how you can travel for hours, or get too far apart, and not bump into a wall.

The Danger Room works according to much more sensible parameters, which is good news for Dani, considering she's trapped inside with a flesh-hungry monster.  Escaping the initial charge, she clambers up an escarpment that she assumes disguises the wall, and works her way around, hoping to find the door. 

What she finds instead is a Brood Queen.  That's not even a near miss.  Alien Fiend #2 explains that since Dani has picked up on the creature's presence (presumably that's why she ran in terror from the Danger Room - "Xavier" had arranged a little "accident"), Psyche has to die. Broodie then pushes Dani from the ledge to the floor below which, since the Danger Room can't be more than thirty feet tall, doesn't really strike me as a sufficiently certain method of execution.

Elsewhere, Dani's team-mates and Stevie Hunter are leaving Foxy's cinema, which is showing E.T., rather than the soft-core porn implied by the name.  Rahne's managed to get herself over-stimulated all the same, and is in floods of tears over the "wee bairn's" return home.  If it were me, I'd be crying because my first exposure to cinema was that piece of anodyne sentimental crap, but that's hardly all that separates me from the young Ms Sinclair.

While our young heroes interact awkwardly with the local teenagers ("We're international terrorists!"), Stevie heads off to find a phone and check all is well in the mansion.  There's a crisis developing far closer to them, though - the group are under surveillance by Henry Gyrich, head of Project: WIDEAWAKE, alongside his political ally, Sebastian Shaw.

This is where things get interesting, and provide another example of how far the X-books have come since their original creation.  Gyrich isn't the from the unreasoning, hyperbolic bigot mould first exhibited by the Trask family.  Indeed, when Sebastian Shaw suggests the idea that mutants are eventually liable to replace humanity, Gyrich dismisses this as, at worst, a problem for the future.  Instead, his concern is much more sensible: what happens if an antagonistic foreign power happens to be where the next ludicrously powerful mutant is born?  With the benefit of hindsight, things didn't really work out that way - mutants ended up pretty much considering themselves their own nationality, eventually more-or-less literally, but it's an entirely sensible concern, entirely in keeping with the foreign policy approach of the  US government: how can we pre-emptively screw over everyone in the world?

That's why Gyrich has hired Shaw to put together a new generation of Sentinels.  Of course, Shaw has no real intention of defending the US, but his position within WIDEAWAKE is providing him with plenty of intel and, more importantly, the opportunity to make sure it all goes tits up, leading to an awful lot of pissed-off mutants he can recruit.  Sneaky.

Gyrich's plan is to "escort" the New Mutants to a WIDEAWAKE facility, and study their genetic make-up (as always, constitutional rights mysteriously vanishing whenever the most general and hypothetical national security threat can be drummed up).  Fortunately for the good guys, someone else has gotten wind of the plan, and grabs Stevie to lay things out.  This is Michael Rossi, a former partner (in more than one sense) of Carol Danvers, and he views WIDEAWAKE as "technically illegal", which is certainly true of their plan to snatch minors from the street.  A group of agents attempt this moments later, but the arrival of Rossi encourages the mutants to fight back, making short work of their would-be kidnappers.

That's when a trio of Sentinels arrive.  Rossi is quickly gassed into unconsciousness, but Roberto has the presence of mind to leave him with the women whilst he and Sam fight back.  Ah, Sunspot.  So confident, so arrogant, so disinterested in how anybody feels about his spectacular sexism.  In fairness, he and Sam do manage to take on a pair of Sentinels (of course, they have by far the most destructive powers, which says something in itself, actually, at least until Magma shows up), though perhaps with a little help, 'Berto might have been able to avoid obliterating half the mall in the process of decapitating his enemy.
   
Sam's opponent is made of sterner stuff, knocking him out and taking to the air.  In response, Karma possesses her team-mate, allowing him to fight back against his captor.  This then leaves Karma helpless, but by now Rossi has recovered, and he and Sunspot are able to run interference until Sam, now also awake, brings his erstwhile kidnapper back to earth at full speed, cannoning into the final Sentinel and destroying both robots.

With the crisis passed, the young mutants hang around just long enough for Karma to force the head agent into a confession.  She describes herself as deeply uncomfortable with the idea, which is further evidence that these people don't think at all like me - I think it's an act of vicious genius.  That done, they head home, only to find Dani unconscious in the Danger Room.  As it wearyingly predictable, Stevie refuses to believe Dani, suggesting it was a mix-up with the room's scenario files.

Except (and this is great), she doesn't really doubt Psyche at all, she's just pretending (presumably to keep the kids from freaking out).  She knows full well that only three people who could have de-activated the safety protocols.  One of them is in Britain, one of them is her.

The third one is Charles.

Clues

This story follows on immediately from the preceding one, and takes place over the course of a few hours.

Stevie describes the X-Men's kidnapping as having taken place "months ago".  By our time-line it's been a little over seven weeks, but that's not too far off.

Date

Wednesday 6^th of July, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+97.

Contemporary Events

The Polish Air Force encounter a UFO near Slupsk.  The story goes that an interceptor pilot described it a steel-grey, spinning object, which disappeared when the pilot received the order to fire.  Whether this sound less or more far-fetched than the comic summary above is entirely down to personal taste.

Standout Line

"I love your hair, girl... are you punk or new-wave?"
"I'm Scots."

Timeline: 1983 Jan - Jun (Take 4)

January

6^th      DAZ 6: The Hulk can be Hazardous to Your Health!
7^th      DAZ 6: The Hulk can be Hazardous to Your Health!
8^th      DAZ 6: The Hulk can be Hazardous to Your Health!
8^th      DAZ 7: Fort Apache, the Hulk!
9^th      DAZ 7: Fort Apache, the Hulk!
11^th    DAZ 8: Hell... Hell is for Harry!
12^th    DAZ 8: Hell... Hell is for Harry!
12^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
13^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
14^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
15^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
16^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
17^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
18^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
19^th    DAZ 9: The Sound and the Fury!
19^th    DAZ 10: In the Darkness... a Light!
19^th    DAZ 11: ...Lest ye be Judged!
20^th    DAZ 11: ...Lest ye be Judged!
24^th    DAZ 12: Endless Hate
25^th    DAZ 12: Endless Hate

February

4^th   UXM 144: Even in Death...
5^th   UXM 144: Even in Death...
8^th    DAZ 13: Trial... and Terror!
9^th    DAZ 13: Trial... and Terror!
21^st DAZ 14: ...Without Getting Killed or Caught!...
24^th DAZ 15: Private Eyes
25^th DAZ 15: Private Eyes

28^th UXM 145: Kidnapped!
28^th UXM 146: Murderworld!
28^th DAZ 16: Black Magic Woman!

March

1^st       UXM 145: Kidnapped!
1^st        UXM 146: Murderworld!
1^st        UXM 147: Rogue Storm!
1^st        DAZ 16: Black Magic Woman!
2^nd     UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
3^rd      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
4^th      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
5^th      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
6^th      UXM 148: Cry, Mutant!
8^th      UXM 149: And the Dead Shall Bury the Living!
8^th      UXM 150: I, Magneto!
9^th      WOL #1: Wolverine
10^th    WOL 1: Wolverine
11^th    WOL 1: Wolverine
11^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
12^th    WOL 1: Wolverine
12^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
13^th    WOL 2: Debts and Obligations
13^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
14^th    DAZ 17: The Angel and the Octopus!
20^th    WOL 3: Loss
23^rd    WOL 4: Honor

April

7^th   UXM Annual 5: Ou, La La -- Badoon!
8^th   UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
9^th   UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
10^th UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
11^th UXM 151: X-Men Minus One!
11^th UXM 152: The Hellfire Gambit!
12^th UXM 152: The Hellfire Gambit!
13^th UXM 153: Kitty's Fairy Tale
26^th UXM 154: Reunion
27^th UXM 155: First Blood
27^th UXM 156: Pursuit!
28^th UXM 156: Pursuit!
28^th UXM 157: Hide-'N'-Seek!

May

3^rd   UXM 158: The Life That Late I Led...
7^th  UXM 159: Night Screams!
8^th   UXM 159: Night Screams!
9^th   UXM 159: Night Screams!
10^th UXM 159: Night Screams!
11^th UXM 160: Chutes and Ladders!
13^th UXM Annual 6: Blood Feud!
14^th UXM Annual 6: Blood Feud!
15^th UXM 161: Gold Rush!
16^th UXM 161: Gold Rush!

June

6^th   UXM 162: Beyond the Farthest Star
7^th   UXM 162: Beyond the Farthest Star
8^th   UXM 163: Rescue Mission!
8^th   UXM 164: Binary Star!
9^th   UXM 164: Binary Star!
9^th   UXM 165:Transfigurations!
10^th UXM 165: Transfigurations!
10^th UXM 166: Live Free or Die!
11^th UXM 166: Live Free or Die!
12^th MGN 4: Renewal
13^th MGN 4: Renewal
14^th MGN 4: Renewal
15^th MGN 4: Renewal
16^th MGN 4: Renewal
17^th MGN 4: Renewal
18^th MGN 4: Renewal
19^th MGN 4: Renewal
20^th MGN 4: Renewal
21^st MGN 4: Renewal
22^nd MGN 4: Renewal
23^rd MGN 4: Renewal
24^th MGN 4: Renewal
25^th MGN 4: Renewal
26^th MGN 4: Renewal
27^th MGN 4: Renewal
28^th MGN 4: Renewal
29^th MGN 4: Renewal
30^th MGN 4: Renewal

DAZ #17: "The Angel And The Octopus!"

(Or: "Three Assholes Act Like Assholes")

Comments

Aw! Alison and Ken are getting all loved-up on the streets of New York.  That's so cute!  And dangerous! They're too busy making kissy-faces to take basic safety proportions, and as a result, their jumped by muggers.  Dazzler fights them off with her powers, but poor old Ken is far too shaken up to continue their date, and has to be bundled into a taxi.

Back home, Dazzler strips off - obviously - and once more does so whilst reminding us of what's been going on over the last few issues.  It's not exactly Game of Thrones style "sexposition", but it's most certainly at least a distant cousin.  She's also not sure about whether she's best off with a baseline human, who's so useless in a fight it forces her to break out her own super-powers.  On the other hand, as she notes, if she was with another super-human, she'd have to deal with all the baggage they'd bring with them.  It's interesting it doesn't occur to her to consider the other direction here: maybe Ken would rather have to be the one expected to face down street toughs if meant his girlfriend wouldn't end up disappearing from planes or being pulled in front of a judge on a murder rap.

Still, later that day (after being hired to lay down some backing vocals for what turns out to be a Bruce Harris record - that's going to be a shock for him when he checks out the sleeve notes), she's offered the chance to see how the other half lives.  Warren Worthington has tracked her down, and he's hoping for a date.

Clearly though he's left his brain and his charm in his other wing-harness.  Holding out glossy magazines with covers showing you hanging out with bikini-clad models is probably not a good way to commence your flirting.  Chasing a fleeing woman onto a bus and cornering her in the park is worse, even before you start taking your coat off  - "I have something to show you" (I suppose it makes sense that Warren would be so desperate that he not have to tell her his name that he'd risk being mistaken for a well-manicured flasher, but it's still not comfortable to watch).  Angel explains that he's having second thoughts about his current long-term relationship, and, having met Dazzler all of twice, he's decided she might be able to help "sort his life out."

To sum up, then, Warren has flown to New York carrying a magazine with himself on the cover, in order to show to a woman he barely knows, all so she'll let him ask her out on a date so he doesn't have to think about his current girlfriend for a while.

Wow.  I once watched met terrifyingly unpleasant mathematician at a conference at which, having been very publicly shot down in flames by his first choice of foreign girl, immediately tried it on with someone else, telling her "You are the most attractive woman remaining."  I think Warren's c has actually managed to make that guy's chat-up routine seem comparatively impressive.

Of course, Warren does have two major advantages: he's rich and pretty.  I once got into a long, involved and intense conversation with two of my friends (including the second recipient of the slimy Russian's attentions described above) about the validity of the statement "Their actions would have been really creepy if they hadn't been so gorgeous".  I mean, sure, one's response to an actual proposition depends on who's doing the asking, but stalking someone across half a country is fucked up no matter how good they look.

Alison gets this, I think, at least to some extent, though by telling Warren she's "flattered and touched" by his offer is somewhat too kind to the guy, I think.  Maybe if she'd been a little more forceful, he wouldn't have tailed her to her dinner date with Ken and bought the restaurant in an attempt to impress her.  This time she does pretty much tell him to go fuck himself, but she still can't stop thinking about him , and eventually throws Ken out of her apartment that night, both because she keeps almost calling him "Warren", and because she's pissed off that he's not acting jealous.  Which, by the way, screw you, lady.  The only possible problem with Ken's behaviour is that he might have been better calling the police on your lunatic stalker.  Let's all try to be adults here, shall we?

Once Ken has gone, Angel quite literally swoops in, knocking at Alison's window, because that's not creepy at all.  Alison finally relents, because women don't know their own minds, or something, and allows Angel to take her for a "spin".  She thinks he means by car, but instead he grabs her and takes flight.  The view's better, no doubt, but if she changes her mind, there's not much she can do.  If Angel had taken her out in his car, this would be like locking Dazzler inside.  Shit, as the kids say on the corners, be fucked up.

Rather disappointingly, Warren's routine works like a charm.  By the time he "Whole New World"s her to the top of the Empire State Building, Dazzler is enraptured, and it's kissy time.  Just one kiss, though, then Dazzler demands to be taken home, so she can try and figure out what the hell she's doing.

Ultimately, she comes up with the following plan: not tell Ken anything, and jump into Warren's car the next time he comes cruising by.  Nice.  Karma decides to take an interest in all this bullshit (possibly because Alison goes so far as to tell Warren she hopes their upcoming date will be exceptionally expensive, which drained what little sympathy for her I still had).  How do you punish someone for stepping out on their other half?  You throw an insane metal-tentacled super-villain at them!  That's how they roll in New York, my friends.  Oh yes.  Octavius has busted out from a prison truck - "the sweet air of freedom is once again mine to breathe!" - and only Angel and Dazzler can stop him!

Whatever else you want to say about Warren's behaviour this issue, he's still a hero.  He's tearing his clothes off to get to his costume the instant he's stopped the car.  Alison is rather less thrilled about the idea of chasing around a notorious murderer who can grope you to death at twenty paces, and says so.  Why, it's almost as though her fears over how a relationship with a superhero would pan out have come true!  Why, oh why, oh why didn't she just stick with her boyfriend and not tramp around with the rich sex pest?  Hindsight really is 20/20, isn't it?

In fairness, her foresight seems to have finally stepped up to the plate as well, actually, since moments later Doc Ock has come damn close to brutally killing them both (apparently he's a little less forgiving when being pursued, however pretty his shadows).  Working together, our heroes make a come-back and help the authorities re-capture him, but the damage is done.  Alison demands to be taken home, and then kicks Angel to the curb, citing her relationship with Ken, and almost being crushed to death.  She heads to the bathroom, instructing him to be gone by the time she returns.

Warren takes the hint, and slouches off, but not before he finds a letter lying around the flat.  It's from Jessica Drew, who's still searching for Alison's mother in San Francisco.  This gives Angel an idea: if he finds Dazzler's mother for her, he's bound to get a shag.  Quid pro freakin' quo, beetchez!

As Warren flies away, though, someone else is landing.  And if his choice of transport is considerably more orthodox, he himself is decidedly not.  The Absorbing Man is back in New York City, and he's looking for Dazzler...

Clues

This story takes place over four days.

Jessica's letter commits the cardinal sin of including an actual date: March 4^th.  This means we'll have to rearrange the timings for DAZ #14 onwards.  That won't be difficult, actually, just vaguely annoying.  I'll assume that Spider-Woman's letter was written a week after she and Dazzler met, and that it took another week to arrive (she doesn't really strike me as the type to spring for first class mail), and I'll post the revised dates later today.

Alison notes that she's been wearing her mother's brooch for weeks.  She took said item from her father's house in DAZ #13, which we've placed in early February, so that works out.

Date

Friday 11^th to Monday 14^th of March, 1983.

X-Date

X+4Y+344 to X+4Y+347.

Contemporary Events

The brilliantly named First Hawke Ministry is sworn in in Australia, though of course it was only called such after the swearing in of the Second Hawke Ministry a little under two years later.

Standout Line

"You've made a shambles of my relationship with a perfectly nice guy."  Oh, lovely, Daz.  Cheat on your boyfriend and then blame the other guy.  To think that Dr Lovelyknees dumped you because you were so distant and unavailable, when he could have done it because you're a total bitch.

Ultimately Unsettling

Thanks to the Official Marvel Novel Collection series that kicked off again a few months ago after stuttering out last year, I'm finally getting the chance to read some important books from Marvel history that I'd missed the first time around.  Both "Coming Home" (Amazing Spiderman) and "Extremis" (Iron Man) were interesting (though the latter wasn't really up to Ellis' usual standards, I thought), but it's Mark Millar's "Superhuman" (The Ultimates) that left the largest mark. 

A large mark, and a sour taste in the mouth.

Superhuman is strangely-paced, taking too long to get going.  I understand that the book is setting up a new version of one of the most important superhero teams in comic book history, but five issues before anyone really starts throwing punches is taking things too far.  It's also heavy with Millar's usual obvious contempt for everyone and everything, particularly anyone who doesn't just want to fuck girls in between blowing shit up.

That said, neither structure or style is the real  problem here, not in comparison to the real elephant in the room: Mark Millar simply cannot write women characters.

This is hardly an original insight, of course, but it's only now that I have first-hand experience of the phenomenon (Kick-Ass' treatment of women was mainly to leave them out altogether).   Given so much has been said on the matter (indeed, Chris B and I -mainly I - slapped Millar around on similar grounds during one of our Panel Talk podcasts (still available on iTunes!)), and the fact the comic itself is now a decade old, maybe this post is redundant.  On the other hand, it's just been re-released, and who knows how many other people are, like me, coming to this for the first time.

New Mutants #1: "Initiation!"

(Meanwhile, back at the ranch...)

Comments

Before we get down to this issue, it's worth noting how strange the publication schedule for the opening issues of New Mutants seems to be.  This debut issue was published the same month as UXM #167, in which the X-Men finally return home to deal with Professor Xavier's infection by the Brood.  Despite that latter issue wrapping up that storyline, and showing that the New Mutants are all unhurt and unchanged, the Xavier/Brood shenanigans continue for three months here.  I presume there was some kind of delay in getting NMU up and running.

Onto the book itself, and we open on our neophyte heroes watching Shan as Stevie Hunter attempts to re-style her hair.  So an African-American human woman has declared a Vietnamese mutant girl's hair stands out against the cultural grain and needs to be changed, and has let a veritable cornucopia of mutant children watch and make fun.  Which is now being commented on by a white guy.  What a minefield of cultural insensitivity, huh?  And doubtless very confusing for Shan.  No wonder she turned into a lesbian.

(Also, issues of individuality and social pressure aside, if a teacher can't stop her charges from following them into the bathroom, they need to find themselves a new job j. quick.)

Stevie is so intent on playing salon mistress that she fails to take Roberto to task when he starts flirting with Rahne, even though she's well aware that coming on to a exceptionally repressed puritanically-raised girl is like feeding heroin to a rhino - it can't possibly recognise what it is, and it'll be dangerous once it inevitably goes crazy.  I'd suggest Ms Hunter was the worst teacher at the mansion, if Xavier didn't keep getting his students nearly killed, and wasn't about to turn into a giant killer bug.

Anyway, either because Shan is unusually fixated on her past right now (another reason why demanding she change her look might not be the best idea), or because Dani's busy laughing at 'Berto's generally cheesiness, the young Cheyenne accidentally manifests Shan's greatest fear; that she'll relive the horror that killed her parents and cost her her innocence at the hands of pirates, following her family's flight from South Vietnam (interesting that Claremont calls it that, despite Vietnam having been unified almost eight years earlier ).  Shan is incensed, and tries to first murder Dani and then possess Stevie.  Only Roberto physically striking her snaps her out of it.  It is not, as the young Brazilian notes, the most auspicious of beginnings.

Dani wanders through the mansion in something of a daze after the attack, finding first Kitty's room, and then Storm's attic garden.  She spends some time watering the plants (who must be pretty grateful for the attention after all this time), until she and her team-mates are summoned by Xavier.  Their first session in the Danger Room awaits.

Across the pond, Moira MacTaggert, with Illyana in tow, have come to London to visit the Israeli ambassador, Gabrielle Haller.  Clearly, Gaby's made a name for herself after Xavier broke through her post-Holocaust catatonia in UXM #161.  It's not all sunshine and matzoh balls, though - Gaby's son is both autistic and a mutant.  The ambassador thinks the two are linked, and would like Moira to give him the once over.  Moira points out that Xavier would be a more logical choice, but Gaby shoots that idea down in flames: Charles is the boy's father.

Back in Westchester, Shan models her new hair (which I do not like, for what it's worth) and the Professor demonstrates the workings of the Danger Room.  Whilst he's exceptionally clear on the point that the New Mutants will neither replace the X-Men or become superheroes, there's still a need for the team to be able to handle themselves should the worst come to the worst.

The mutant's task is a simple one: make it from one end of the Danger Room to the other.  None of them succeed, but Psyche refuses even to try.  She's gripped by the utter conviction that entering the training simulator will result in her death (Karma's attempt to strangle her mere hours earlier probably hasn't helped her nerves any, either), and she flees the mansion rather than chance her arm.

Wolfsbane finds her first, lazing by the lake and trying very hard not to think about anything in particular.  Rahne is very smart here, actually, responding to Dani's desire to lose her powers entirely by doubling down on her own love of being a wolf, reminding Dani of the bond only the two of them share, and which is only possible because of the Native American's abilities.  That covered, Rahne listens as her friend tells the sad story of her parents' deaths, and Black Eagle's after that. 

Lastly, the younger girl reassures her classmate that Shan is not the sort of person to hold a grudge, or at least not a murderous one.  It's not enough to bring Psyche back yet, but the danger of her fleeing entirely seems to have passed, and Rahne rejoins the others.  Stevie's taking them out for an evening on the town.

Even that isn't liable to go smoothly, though. Stevie's car is being tailed by two shadowy agents, answering to the equally shadowy Agent Gyrich.

While her friends head off for an evening which will surely be eventful in one way or another, Dani returns to the mansion, and to the Danger Room.  This time she screws up her courage, and completes the course, doing what none of her peers could.  Her elation is short-lived, though, as someone knocks her unconscious, and drags her back inside.  When at last she comes to, the program running is most definitely above her pay-grade, and there's something nasty coming out of the jungle that's looking far hungrier than one would want...

Clues

This story takes place over a single day.  We'll assume it beings the day after Sam's arrival - the group's first glimpse of the Danger Room certainly suggests they haven't been around too long.

Date

Wednesday 6^th of July, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+97.

Contemporary Events

Catholic zealot and all-around worthless shit Pat Buchanan calls AIDS "God's revenge on homosexuals."  Twenty-nine years later, MSNBC fire him for after (accurately) concluding he's a racist, and the American right goes crazy over his "victimisation."

So, to Pat Buchanan and every one of his defenders: fuck you guys.  Fuck you 'til you bleed out the maggots that have replaced your blood.

Standout Line

"If he reads my mind, I hope my thoughts make hin blush."

I'm a big fan of 13 year old Roberto and his constant horniness.  Who says comics are unrealistic?

DAZ #16: "Black Magic Woman!"

(A Song For Asgard.)

Comments

Disaster strikes!  Dazzler's West Coast support tour has just been cut cruelly short.  Bruce Harris doesn't want the competition, apparently.  Or to have to tell her himself.  Or to have the guy he gets to tell her to wait until after the Seattle gig Lance has driven the band to.  Or have him not wait until she's just about to go on stage?  Why fire your competition when you can try to sabotage them at the same time?  The little shit doesn't even want to fess up at first, trying to blame his management.

Fuck that guy.

Dazzler manages to hold it together enough to deliver one last killer performance, but Bruce has still won (though three encores from his support act probably hasn't cheered him up any).  At least there's some good news, though - Ken the lawyer has flown in from New York to hang out.  Alison takes a moment to freshen up - in the standard manner,stripping to the waist (hello, Hollywood Elbows!) and splashing water on her face, like all women do - and then they head off to dinner.

Ken's attempts to cheer up the shit-canned band don't go tremendously well, but they do provide some comfort (better an out-of-work bass player than a lawyer who can't even juggle, I guess), and it certainly works on Alison.  The two spend the following day sight-seeing and face-sucking along the Pacific Coast, and the next morning, they prepare to board a plane together back to the Big Apple.

Someone else is catching the same flight, though - a woman so beautiful she manages to distract Ken from his insanely hot girlfriend of less than twenty-four hours, and who Dazzler finds strangely familiar.  I'm not sure if this would be much of a mystery even if the cover hadn't blown the gaffe, but I guess we'll never know.

In fairness, we're not kept in suspense long in any case.  Alison's first clue that the Enchantress might have returned for revenge comes when she leaves the plane's bathroom to find she's been transported to some kind of magic castle.  The second is that the Enchantress shows up to tell her she's returned for revenge.  The Asgardian sorceress introduces Dazzler to the witch's former suitors, now transformed into monkeys (Alison might well sympathise with that idea, actually), before casting a spell of silence to render our heroine helpless.  That done, it's payback time.  First on the menu: turning her hapless victim... into weather.

Maybe that was scarier fate in the Dark Ages.

Still, whether or not Dazzler's ordeals are sufficient to violate the Geneva Convention, Odin is not pleased at the sudden arrival of a cone of silence in his domain, and he dispatches the Warriors Three with a cease and desist order.  Her haughty demeanour, they warn her, will avail her naught.  You know, in case she was wondering.  They escort her back to Odin's court, which is currently being presided over by the Vizier, since the All-Father himself has better things to do.  It's kind of like Game of Thrones when Sean Bean was in charge whilst Full Monty was out stabbing pigs, only this guy has concentric plant-pots on his head, or possibly an archaic coffee machine.

Much like Ned Stark, the Vizier manages to come up with an ostensibly fair ruling that's actually the worse plan possible: he demands the Enchantress gains her revenge in a trial by combat against Alison.  The Enchantress is well satisfied - as a goddess she already has a major advantage over Dazzler even if her spell of silence wasn't still clinging to young Ms Blaire like farts after egg foo yung.  The Vizier is smarter than he looks, though, and as the entirety of Asgard assembles to watch two women beat the crap out of each other, he surreptitiously undoes the enchantment.

Then, battle is joined.  Line-of-sight spells against radiant brilliance bound by the laws of physics.  Maybe a fairer contest than one might think, especially since Dazzler isn't above socking her opponent when the opportunity presents itself. 

Fisticuffs aren't enough to get the job done, though, nor can the duel's accompanying rhythm section (who to a man hate the Enchantress) send sufficient sound her way to provide the power needed to end the confrontation.  Just as Dazzler seems finished, however, Odin returns, and demands to know what's going on.  The Enchantress explains that Alison owes her for cheating during their original auditions and Odin, who whatever else one wants to say about him rarely misses a trick, demands the two try out for him, so he can judge whose talents are superior.

(I am not going to make a "talents" joke here, I assure you.  I'm simply going to note that if Odin replaced Simon Cowell, it would make the world a better place.  Not just on TV, either.  I mean across the board.  If Cowell just became Odin whenever he took a shit, that would still be something.)

The Enchantress's song is perfect.  Not a note out of place.  Every intonation and inflection exactly what the most intelligent computer imaginable would choose if its processors concluded it would be best to break your heart.

Dazzler responds by singing like a human.  Perfectly imperfect.  Nothing reinforces beauty like the tiny flaws that bring the rest into focus.  Hell, she does so well she reduces Volstagg to tears, a response you have to assume is exceptionally unusual, save for days when his roast boar arrives at the table with the fat trimmed off.

(Full disclosure: that would reduce me to tears as well.  Possibly tears of cider, though that would depend on whether or not I'd ordered the boar for breakfast.)

The victor is clear.  Odin hands Alison an Asgardian lyre as her prize, and returns her to Midgard.  There, she meets a very worried Ken, and, after warning him that there are some aspects of her life she doesn't intend to share (a slightly odd position, I'd have thought, since he already knows she's a mutant), the two of them take a cab from the airport, back into New York City.

Clues

We'll assume that, once again, Mr Harris spent two nights in one town, and then took a night off.  This issue itself takes place over two days, taking us into the middle of the initial Wolverine mini-series.  I guess romance has gone global in the Marvel Universe at that point.

Date

Friday 16^th to Sunday 18^th of March, 1983.

X-Date

X+4Y+340 to X+4Y+342.

Contemporary Events

Ivan Matveyevich Vinogrado, a Russian mathematician who specialised in analytic number theory (yeah, like that's any great shakes) passes away.

Standout Line

"If he tries that, I'll habeas his corpus so fast, he won't know what hit 'im!"

Our latest lesson in lawyer banter.

UXM #166: "Live Free Or Die!"

(Beneath, within, and beyond.)

Comments

Out at the very edge of the Brood's home system, an otherwise irrelevant rock has been colonised to serve as a whaling station, Madrizar, from which hunting parties are launched in their search for more Acanti to enslave and hollow out.  There's no way to know how long this monument to blood-thirsty solipsism has stood, orbiting a star too distant to shed light on the horrors that go on there, but it hardly matters.  Binary, fresh from declaring herself so outraged at the X-Men's fate that she accidentally almost killed them all, has arrived.

The base itself is reduced to debris within moments.  Dealing with its legacy will be harder.  Indeed, the only Acanti there at the time, already riddled with the Brood "slaver virus" that gorges itself on higher brain functions, begs to be put out of its misery.  Binary agrees immediately.  What's one more death on her conscience, after all?

Her grizzly work complete, Binary flies back into the gulf between worlds, only to run into another projection of Storm.  This one, though, is a bit more free with the details than the last one, and guides Binary to another, much younger Acanti, explaining that she and it have somehow become the same being.

Note to self: space is so weird.

The Z'Ree Shar is within the bowels of the prepubescent space-whale, and its passengers prove very forgiving of Binary's explosive exit.  Of course, they may simply have other things on their mind, like what they plan to do with their last hours in the universe.  Wolverine, unsurprisingly, hasn't moved from his previous position: best to mount a suicidal attack on the Brood Queen, and at least make sure that they are her last victims.

Storm suggests an alternative: rather than hoping they can destroy the Brood, why not guarantee that they save the Acanti?  The previous last hope of that race is dead, and the Brood have raised their capital within its corpse.  But now, there is a new saviour: a new "Prophet-Singer", the very Acanti that Storm is now bonded to.  With the previous Prophet-Singer both dead and unable to reincarnate - the Brood having denied it the necessary self-immolation ritual - this immature specimen is all that stands between the Acanti and extinction.  That, indeed, is how Storm came to her present state; she was bound to the Prophet-Singer by her school, in order to ensure it could be guided by a more seasoned mind.  In return, the vacuum-blasted body of Ororo herself lies cradled within the Acanti's mouth, slowly being healed.

All that's needed to ensure the future of the Acanti is to destroy the previous Prophet-Singer's brain, and allow its soul to pass on to their current conveyance.  Acceptance of the goal is unanimous, but there's a further wrinkle: Logan doesn't trust anyone but Binary and Storm, since only the three of them are free of Brood implants, and thus their influence.  Cyclops challenges him to kill them all now, if he has so little trust left, and I'm damn glad that I don't have to decide who's in the right here.  Eventually, Sprite breaks them up for the sake of team spirit, and because as far as she's concerned, the most important thing about the word "inevitable" is that it doesn't mean the same thing as "now".  I guess that will have to do for the moment.  What other choice is there?

It's worth noting that there's some fairly major ethical considerations that are being skipped over here.  I don't blame Claremont for not lingering on them, since this is the (kind of) finale to a long-running plot-line, and he has a lot of explosions and punches to get through, but one of the advantages (well, arguable advantages) of this blog is that we can pause the action to wax philosophical should we feel the need.  The important question here is what would do the most good: saving the Acanti, or exterminating the Brood?

Actually, that's only partly right, since a fairer framing would be whether it's better to do something that will save the Acanti, or might exterminate (though certainly profoundly damage and delay) the Brood?   We can put that to one side, though - either the Acanti are definitely the better choice, or they only become the preferred option for some level of uncertainty regarding the effect of slaying the Brood queen.

So let's imagine that taking out Broody Queenie will definitely take her race with her.  Wouldn't that save the Acanti anyway?  Couldn't they just wait for the Brood to die out and then rescue the last Prophet-Singer's soul themselves?  Or would that take too long?  How many more Acanti would be enslaved by that point?  On the other hand, every single Brood in the universe only exists because it tore its way through another living creature, and if sentience isn't necessary for the process, it's clearly the overwhelming preference.   Choosing to let the Brood live might be good news for the Acanti, but it's a total disaster for an awful lot of other species.  And that's before you consider that the Brood might just follow the Acanti when the latter migrate.  For all of Storm's fretting over killing, the Brood as a race are pretty much just talking smallpox that's gotten hold of starships.

Like I said, there's a lot to consider here.  I'm glad I don't have to make the decision.

Anyway.  A day later, and the juvenile Prophet-Singer appears above "Sleaze-World".  Its incursion causes the Broods' interceptors to respond en masse, and whilst they're busy chasing their prey, the X-Men have a comparatively clear run at what might be the most important skeleton in the galaxy.  Most of the gang are happy about their plan working, but Cyclops responds by becoming even more of an intolerable hard-ass, in a way that positively screams "Already a Brood!" to anyone with ears to listen.  Unless it's a double bluff, which would be cool.

If it is, though, it raises the question of exactly which of the X-Men has fallen prey to their lethal cargo.  Clearly, one of them has, because it's using its psychic powers to alert the queen as to the plan of its "friends".

There's only so much one traitor can affect though.  The ground team have beamed down whilst entirely unaware that they've been compromised, but the fight in space seems to be going unquestionably well, with Storm knocking out those few Brood ships Binary lacks the time to incinerate.  That said, our heroes are horribly outnumbered, and the sheer size of the Brood fleet starts to take its toll.  Binary finds herself snared, and Storm/Acanti finds themselves wounded, with no end to the oncoming swarm of enemies in sight.

It's at that moment that the Starjammers arrive.

INTERMISSION

The ground war seems to be spiralling downwards into a meat-grinder.  Nightcrawler and Shadowcat can't do much more than evade incoming fire, and Cyclops seems to have become almost entirely untethered from reality, blasting away with berserk rage rather than applying his trademark sang-froid to the proceedings.  Indeed, he's so mad, he's missing all his targets, which is what finally allows Logan to pick up on what's been obvious for a little while.  Grabbing Cyclops' visor and tearing it off, Wolverine confirms his suspicion - Scott has begun the transformation.  Between Cyclops' forced heel-turn, and the elite Brood hunter cadre, our heroes are swiftly defeated.  Only Kitty escapes, by the unusual method of accidentally phasing into another tunnel system altogether.

It would be too much to hope for that these side tunnels be clear of Brood, of course.  Mind you, it would also be too much to hope for that Kitty would be rescued by a fire-breathing dragon with a murderous hatred of invertebrates, but that's what happens.  And it would definitely certainly be too much to hope for that both Kitty and her new pal be saved from the last hunter by the accidental opening of a hole into a glowing hypnotic chamber that kills Brood but, uh, yeah.  That too.  If there's one thing superhero comics have taught me, it's that just because you're winning, it doesn't mean you have the slightest idea what the Hell is going on.

Take Scotty Broodface, for example.  On the verge of total victory over the X-Men, he suddenly finds there's a part of him that isn't too keen on the "subtract spine, add evil" plan and, now that his eyelids have been chucked away as he transforms, he doesn't have too much control on his eyebeams any more.  His first mistake: shooting his own queen in the face.  His second: letting Wolverine jump into his field of fire, smashing apart Logan's restraints.  Moments later, Wolvie has Scott in one hand and the stunned queen in the other, his claws ready to pop, and it's all over.

All that's left is to find Sprite.  Of course, it would be too much to hope for that an entrance to the glowing chamber suddenly open up in front of them and Kitty come out and... well, you get the picture.  Our heroes - and the queen, unwilling to abandon her still-growing young - follow Kitty back into the glowing chamber, to find it carved from elegant crystal (as is the Brood who followed Kitty in there).  The cavern radiates love and tolerance, like a mirror-filled Hacienda at two a.m., but the queen and her influence on the X-Men has a corrupting effect on the surrounding formations, like a fly in milk.  Momentarily distracted, Logan gets himself stabbed by the queen's stinger, and he collapses.  The other X-Men aren't doing any better - the transformations have reached their final phases.  Indeed, everything's turned out perfectly for the queen - not only is she about to gain five new queenlets (four of them super-powered), but the resulting damage to the surrounding structure - which she recognises as housing the very soul the team came to release - will corrupt the Prophet-Singer, and force its fellow Acanti to sign up willingly for lobotomy ops and infestation prep.

If ever it was time for the cavalry to show up, it's now.  Which is handy, because with the 'Jammers arrival the war in space has been won, and Binary has shown up down below, having already taken advantage in a telepathic crash course in Acanti soul-retrieval, courtesy of Storm.  It takes but a moment to transfer the soul to Storm's charge; a process which has the rather unlikely but convenient side-effects of eliminating both the Brood embryos (thank God the Prophet-Singer wasn't from Kansas) and the queen herself, as well as releasing Storm from the bowels of her beast.

Oh, also: the planet blows up.

With the X-Men safely teleported to the Starjammer (though Kitty fears for the fate of the friendly dragon), it seems that all the loose ends have been neatly tied together.  All, that is, save one.  During the traditional final villainous tirade, the Brood Queen let slip to Wolverine that she had six irons in the fire, offspring wise, and that the last one was back on Earth.  And there's only one person who's a plausible suspect for implantation: Charles Xavier himself.

Clues

This story takes place over two days.

Date

Friday 10^th to Saturday 11^th of June, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+85 to X+5Y+86.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.71 standard years.

(Colossus is 26 years old.)


"If I am to die, I prefer to do it
fighting for something..."

 Contemporary Events

A total solar eclipse is visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

Standout Line

"Energize, Scotty!  Beam us down!"
"Huh?" - Sprite and Cyclops.

DAZ #15: "Private Eyes"

(Oh mother, where art thou?)

Comments

Hmm.  Could Dazzler have been suffering a dip in ratings at this point?  There are certainly some signs to corroborate the theory.  Like Dazzler wandering around in her skimpy nightie.  Or Spider Woman wandering around in her underwear.  Or Dazzler taking a shower whilst adopting the tried and tested Hollywood Women's Shower pose, in which the arms are placed just so so as to allow the maximum amount of side boob to be revealed without showing anything that would give the FCC (or in this case, the CCA) fits.

(That cover is hardly helping, either?  If there are two things guaranteed to do you no good in the middle of a battle for your life, it's squeezing your tits together and opening your legs as wide as possible.  Unless you're fighting Herman Cain, I guess, in which case it's at least helpful as a distraction, like when birds end up facing this:

I am so very proud that I pasted this in without vomiting blood in terror.

But, once again, I digress.)

Dazzler and the gang are in San Francisco, having driven up from LA, for the next stage of Bruce Harris' tour.  This time round, they're playing the Cow Palace, an indoor arena seating around 17,000 people.  One can forgive Alison her resultant stage-fright, though in the event she plays another blinder (no pun intended), a state of affairs which Harris has neither failed to notice nor failed to fail to appreciate.

The next day, Alison awakes in her hotel room to a phone call from Ken the lawyer.  She's beginning to fall for him, which causes her to think about the various men in her life, and how they've disappointed her, whether it be Paul breaking up with her in a crowded restaurant, or her father refusing reconciliation once he noticed her dead mother's brooch which she had appropriated.

And, in another twist of Cosmic Comic Coincidence, there's a truck just outside Dazzler's hotel room proudly displaying the same shape as that brooch.  Seeing this, Alison begins to wonder if her missing mother is here in the city, and searches for her name in the phone book.  There's only one matching entry, and Dazzler excitedly rings the number.  Disappointment strikes, however, when "Katherine Blaire" turns out to be a school kid, deep in her maths homework.  Exasperated, Alison admits to herself that she doesn't know where to turn.

Let's just pause a moment to consider the stupidity on display here.  Alison has abandoned the search because the only household in the city with her mother's name contains at least one person with her mother's name that isn't her mother.  Someone too young to have their own directory entry.  So what's more likely?  That San Francisco has become so hippy-dippy liberal that minors deserve their own place in the phonebooks? Or that the young girl who answered the phone was actually Katherine fucking Jr?

God.  To think Carter Blaire thought his daughter could be a lawyer.

Discouraged by this ineffable riddle (just try and eff it!), Alison decides to strip off her skimpy nightie, and go have a shower (apparently she's a subscriber to the Hollywood Shower method, which requires any woman hold her arms at the exact angle necessary to reveal the maximum amount of side-boob whilst keeping the really racy stuff covered).  After that, she decides to phone her friend Jessica Drew, PI, and get her on the case.

Jessica, though, is dealing with her own problems (including but not limited to keeping her own clothes on).  She has a lot of other irons in the fire (not that a single phone call would take her too long) but she reluctantly agrees to take the case in exchange for a hundred dollars (and how much would a single phone call cost, huh?).  Rather miffed at Jessica's laissez faire attitude to investigating, but far more enthusiastic approach to taking money from her friends, Alison decides to keep digging herself, and eventually both women are pointed in the same direction: the Transamerican building.

Dazzler gets there first, but all she finds is a sealed entrance, and an open trapdoor.  The first is impregnable, the latter swallows her up.  Jessica is hard on her heels and, hearing the scream as Alison falls, quickly changes into her Spider-Woman garb and follows her into the pit.  Dazzler proves to be unhurt, just pissy, and after claiming to be merely an associate of Jessica's, Spider-Woman is ready to provide an extensive lecture on the importance of letting professionals deal with these cases (when they're finished complaining that they're not sure they can do it, but demanding money anyway).  Tragically, she's interrupted by an attack by vicious dogs, who may be trained guardians, or might just be household pets sick driven to violence by her talking smack.

Jessica deals with the hounds without too much trouble, but that's only the beginning of their woes.  Next up, high-pressure hoses start up, threatening to flood the room and drown our heroines.  With that conquered, it's a troop of robots coming out of a knock-out gas fog.  Apparently something really weird is going on beneath Transamerica.  Even with that dealt with, there's still the small matter of moving walls to survive.  Spider-Woman's venom blasts aren't powerful enough to do the job, and Dazzler's radio was submerged in water and then crushed by a robot, so there's only one option.  Jessica will have to sing until Alison has enough charge to laser their way to safety (apparently Dazzler can't charge herself with any sound she produces herself, which I suppose makes sense in terms of Newtonian physics, or at least it would if Newton weren't already left crying into his apple pie by all the bullshit science these books pedal).

Once Jessica and Alison have escaped this final trap, they find themselves facing an extensive filing system, and locate what they need - a roll of film - inside a box bearing the sigil from the brooch of Dazzler's mother.  High-tailing it through the ventilation system, the duo are soon back in the open air, and head back to Jessica's place to watch the film...

And it was all a waste of time!  Cosmic Comic Coincidence really was coincidence; Alison and Jessica had stumbled upon a SHIELD operation entitled "winged heart", which had nothing to do with Dazzler's family at all.  Jessica is understandably annoyed, but Alison doesn't particularly care.  All this escapade has done is remind her of the importance of finally tracking down her mother.

Clues

Regarding the drive to SF, if we assume Harris played for two nights in LA and took Sunday off, that puts us three days on from the last adventure.  This story then unfolds from afternoon to night on the following day.

Dazzler mentions "recently" meeting Jessica in UXM #148.  By our timeline, she's talking about something that happened about a week earlier, between DAZ #13 and #14.

Date

Monday 12^th to Tuesday 13^th of March, 1983.

X-Date

X+4Y+336 to X+4Y+337.

Contemporary Events

Motown celebrates its 25th anniversary with the TV special Motown 25.



First Jackson moonwalk on film, by the way.

At the Cow Palace in our own reality, Bruce Harris' slot was instead taken up by Jimmy Page.

Standout Line

"#Don't you know, you fool, there's no chance to win# -- Oh! You... you did it."

Jessica finds a cappella kareoke is more moreish than one might think.

XHY #12: "And Death Alone Shall Know My Name"

(Hypnotic dinos vs. magnetic magma.)

Comments

Ooh, double length, is it?  Good-oh.

(Actually, it is only 1.72 times the length, which means a slight infraction of trading standards, but also a slight relief regarding how much of this I have to suffer through).

Once again, the X-Men are spread across the globe.  This is causing all kinds of continuity problems.  We already knew that Iceman's travails in the Savage Land, and Alex and Lorna's search for him, isn't strictly contemporaneous with the rest of the team's adventures, but now Beast and the Professor are separated from Cyclops and Marvel Girl, and their stories seem to have widely diverging timelines as well.

Sigh.

We'll do this thread by thread again.  Up in Dumfree, Illinois, the wretched remains of the last Sentinel (for now at least) hasn't even finished sparking, and already things are going pear-shaped again.  Ashley - apparently a psychokinetic, capable of animating inorganic matter - has decided everything would have been fine if Big Bot hadn't been driven mad by Xavier's arrival, and that mans things would be better if he left.  At a hundred miles an hour, into a tree.  Hank grabs him before he end up with even fewer movable body parts, but it's clear that they're in deep trouble.

Somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, Krueger's vessel slips into port under a red sky.  Things are going according to plan for the hand-off, except that Candy has turned out to be resistant to Krueger's knock-out powers (under the excuse that nothing's impossible where the X-Men are concerned, which is supremely idiotic).  Surprising Krueger just as he's welcoming Unus and Mastermind aboard (they've just enough time to apologise for Blob being too fat to join them, and point out how easily identifiable Marvel Girl is), Candy knocks him out with a cargo crane.  That's the extent of her success, however, it's just moments later that she falls headlong into a Mastermind illusion (endless staircase: a classic). 

Unus and Mastermind get down to a little pro-forma supervillain squabbling before handing over Krueger's money, and heading back to shore. Clever readers (by which I mean those that don't immediately forget everything they've read every time they turn the page) might be wondering what steps Krueger has taken to insure he's not being paid with illusory money.

The answer is: no steps.  Mastermind has handed Krueger an empty suitcase, and Mr Supreme Know-It-All "I'm too good for words like 'mutant'" just can't be bothered to check.  He hasn't even worked out the last payment was equally non-existent.  Blob puts this down to the iron-clad self-confidence of the relentlessly narcissistic, but terrible writing seems like a much more likely explanation.  I suppose this method explains why Dukes can afford so many hooker to give him a sponge bath, though.  That, or they all think it's taking surprisingly long to get through all Ryan Reynold's surface area.

The bulk of this issue, though, takes place in the Savage Land.  I thought we'd missed something important last issue, and this fills in the blanks.  The amnesiac Bobby is becoming increasingly suspicious regarding his host's behaviour, especially when he gives his name as "Joe Smith", which Bobby points out isn't just obviously fake, but lazy as hell into the bargain. 

(I've always wondered about this, actually - does it really make sense to say a name sounds so common that it's likely to be fake?  If he'd claimed to be Cornelius Fatwasp, then that might be worthy of suspicion.)

INTERMISSION

Things are coming to a head in other ways as well.  Alex and Lorna have finally reached the island, having been following Bobby's signal via Cerebro.  And Magneto is preparing to attack Bobby and "Joe", because - well, that's not entirely clear.  Amphibius' desire to see his master get a step up on the property ladder (cave < abandoned Nazi outpost, as Kirstie Allsopp will tell you) doesn't really seem like a good enough reason to murder two people, nor does Mags own decision to claim the island's resources, even accounting for Bryne's insistence on writing Magneto as the one-note villain not seen since the early '80s.

It's especially dumb since Mag's plan involves him heading deeper into the cave and reach a kick-ass underground complex diverting thermal power to the Savage Land.  Why not keep exploring that, rather than trying to start a volcanic eruption to toast his enemies?  And what was the point of putting together a new costume so his victims will know "who it is who destroys them," if you're going to cook them to death from below?

Some way above, "Joe" has gone hunting, and a distrustful Bobby is following at a distance.  It turns out that he's after dinosaur game (in this case, a particularly unlucky hadrosaurid), which seems more overambitious than sinister.  Of course, then he sucks the life-force out of the thing's fucking face, and that's proves more of an issue (though, really, they're already supposed to be extinct, so this is just tying up loose ends).  Bobby figures this rather disturbing display is worth a longer conversation, but this is interrupted by Magneto's attack.  Apparently he's decided to lava his opponents to death and zap them with magnetic energy.  You can't accuse the man of not being thorough.

Bobby and "Joe" escape the initial conflagration, but the danger causes Kyle's survival instincts to kick in, and he chugs down Bobby's energy for himself, becoming Sauron in the process.  Magento has never seen him before, which means he wastes precious time stepping to instead of bringing on the smack.  Suaron punishes the error by hypnotising Magneto, taking him out of the fight.

Meanwhile, the energy release from the transformation, or Magneto's powers, or something from the volcanic eruptions (or some or all of the above) causes Alex to lose control of the craft carrying himself and Lorna (no idea where Ka-Zar went; presumably he saw something shiny and/or bikini-clad), and they crash into the island.  Bobby pulls them from the crash, regaining his memory in the memory in the process (apparently a combination of wanting to fuck Lorna, and having been fucked over by Lykos).

When the crash-landers wake up, Alex is all for letting Sauron and Magneto beat the crap out of each other, but Bobby points out that a talking green pterosaur with the power of the X-Men's greatest foe would probably constitute a bad thing.  Of course, Mags isn't too happy about them interrupting his fun, and so he immediately puts them right at the top of his "to kill" list.

Sauron plays into this by hypnotising Alex for use as an impromptu artillery position.  Bobby wants to help out, but his hoarfrosty hands are full with Lorna, who keeps threatening to faint, because that's what women do.  In fairness, she has a better excuse than most, she's responding to alterations in the local magnetosphere caused by Amphibius, who's using one of Lykos' gizmos to feed thermal power to Magneto.   Frankly, that's all on Sauron.  It's one thing to build a dustbin lid capable of harnessing the energy of Mother Earth herself, but it's quite another to label it so clearly that a talking frog can operate it in an attempt on your life.

Iceman gives Sauron a break by smashing the device (completely going against his argument four pages earlier to make sure Lykos loses, but then Bobby's never been the spiciest Nik-Nak in the bag).  The now powerless Magneto attempts to bribe Sauron with a slice of his future empire, but Karl treats this with the contempt it deserves, and flies away, leaving Magneto to an ugly death as the crust beneath him breaks apart.  Sauron returns just long enough to hypnotise the X-Men into forgetting he is still alive, and then leaves for good.  Their business apparently concluded, our heroes repair their craft, and head for home.

EPILOGUE(S)

Magneto digs himself clear of the chaos of what remains of the ground around the battlesite.  What remained of the healing energies of the Savage Land city has kept him alive, but he has no energy left to go further.  Fortunately, he doesn't have to - an Atlantean expedition has followed the seismic activity to this location, with Namor himself aboard.  In one of the few truly altruistic moments in the prince's life, he rescues Magneto, taking him back to Atlantis, and hoping all the while that this time, the man won't cause any trouble...

Clues

It's either sunset or sunrise above Kruger's ship when Unus and Mastermind arrive, which either way presumably means that Blob's delivery of two X-Men (and complimentary flatscan) takes place the day after Scott, Jean and Candy were first captured.  As usual, there's no way to work out exactly when the events in the Savage Land are taking place.

There's also two epilogues, taking place three and five days later, respectively, but since they don't involve the X-Men, we don't particularly need to worry about them.

Date

Thursday 26^th June and Wednesday 9^th to Thursday 10^th July, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+87 and X+2Y+97 to X+2Y+98.

Contemporary Events

Jessica Simpson is born, to the future delight of a hundred thousand journalists who don't really feel like searching out real news.

Standout Line

"'Sauron', is it?  A name pirated from a foolish fairy tale!"

Never before has Magneto seemed so irredeemably evil.  I mean, sinking that submarine was one thing, but this?

DAZ #14: "...Without Getting Killed Or Caught!..."

(Identities mistaken and missing.)

Comments

In a seedy motel somewhere in Los Angeles, a man cleans his rifle.  A newspaper clipping lies on his bed amongst guns, photos and camera equipment.  Dazzler's face is circled in red.

Osgood is sending Dazzler on a trip somewhere, or at least he is if Alison can ever finish packing (is that a sexist stereotype?  I've seen a significant amount of corroborative evidence).  Somehow she makes it to the plane, and six hours later, they're in Los Angeles, meeting up with the band (not Lance, though - I can well believe he has more beauty products to pack than Dazzler does, stage make-up notwithstanding).  Harry, we learn, has finally found Alison another gig - a replacement for Bruce Harris' backup band, who've quit on him, presumably because he's a dick.

There's just enough time for Dazzler to smell the roses (apparently a cross-continental gift from Ken, her lawyer in last issue's trial) and to gauge Harris' exact level of gittitude (spoiler: extreme), before she's in her dressing room, once again drawing stars around her eyes, and trying not to think about how badly the odds are stacked against first-choice back-up bands, never mind fill-ins.

There's bigger problems ahead than a hostile audience, though.  Or, to be more accurate, this particular audience is liable to a lot more hostile than most.  The hired killer is out in the auditorium, as well as three disreputable looking hoods who've already "cased the place".

Not far into a gig which, in fairness, seems to be going quite well for our heroine, Dazzler notices her light-show reflecting off something in the stalls, which on closer inspection proves to be a sniper scope.  Alison throws a strobe blast at whomever is holding the gun, making him clip his target rather than killing him.

And who is the intended victim?  It's Joe Cartelli, otherwise known as the Blue Shield.  Taking time out from his busy Mafia-busting schedule to take in his friend's stage show, and he ends up almost getting himself JFK'd.  I like the idea that Dazzler is about to dragged into to trouble again because of the people she knows, it works a bit better than always happening to have shit go down at her gigs at random.

Joe realises he's been winged by a bullet, and makes a quick exit.  Outside, he changes into his costume, heads up to the box from where he figures the shot came, and beats down his assailant.  Thanks to some useful expository thinking from Mr Cartelli, we learn he's ostensibly in town in order to take control of some local turf on behalf of his New York boss, but is presumably actually planning to punch out as many hoods along the way as he can.  The unsavoury characters we met earlier watch the Blue Shield in action, and panic.  How can they keep Cartelli from muscling in on their territory and keep their jaws from breaking under the Blue Shield's, er, blue shield?

But their leader, the crime boss known only as "Ed", isn't just a lack of a pretty face!  It can't be a coincidence that a New York superhero beat the crap out of a hitman looking to scrag a New York gangster.  There's only one explanation: the New York band!

(That sound you hear is William of Occam spinning in his grave.  Well, actually, it's more likely to be a washing machine or the heating system.)

Yes, the jury has returned, and the verdict unanimous: the Blue Shield can only be pretty boy Lance.  Whether they're right on that score or not, though, they're clearly going to need some heavy artillery to stand any chance against the notorious crime-buster.  Fortunately for them, Ed has acquired a secret weapon from a crashed compact he passed a few days ago: a mind-controlled She-Hulk! 

She's just back-up, though.  Plan A involves two flunkies bursting in on Dazzler's post-gig poker game, and grabbing both her and Lance, who apparently has arrived in LA just in time to get a gun shoved in his face.  They want him to fess up to being the Blue Shield; she's just an insurance policy against him getting his glow on.  At least she doesn't need to worry about that at least, but when their escorts bring them to meet Ed at a truck depot, and he attacks Lance with his zombified super-being (powers include greenness, super-strength, and inflatable thighs that grow to widths thicker than her head), Dazzler feels the need to intervene.

A quick burst of light deals with the surrounding criminals, but She-Hulk isn't so much as fazed, and her standing orders are to smash up anything that attackers her "masters."  Applying some commendable lateral thinking, Daz hoofs it until she finds a truck with the keys in the ignition, and starts is up, using the engine noise and the horn to charge herself to the point where even She-Hulk feels the resulting blast.  Alison's previous victims choose this moment to come round and, seeing their emerald enforcer stunned on the ground, decide cowardice is the better part of criminal activity.  Alas, their headlong flight from danger is rudely interrupted by the Blue Shield's knuckles - the would-be assassin back at the gig has spilt the beans.

While Cartelli honours his father's memory with indiscriminate violence, the She-Hulk recovers both her senses, and her mind.  She thanks Dazzler for shaking her out of her enforced trance, and repays her with a terrifying joyride in a stolen truck.  I guess she didn't recover all of her mind. 

In addition to GTA and risk to life and limb, though, She-Hulk has some advice to offer, from one super-powered daughter-of-an-insufferable-prick to another: do what you need to do, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.  It's slightly ill-fitting advice, considering Jennifer Walter s is still a lawyer, no matter how many rogues she cock-punches of an evening, but it's appreciated by Dazzler nonetheless.

And after She-Hulk drops Alison back at the auditorium, the singer finds something else she can appreciate; the management want her back next year as a headline act.  Hurrah!

Clues

There's nothing here that ties us down.  I guess one could ask how long it can have been if Ken is sending her flowers, but it might have taken him time to build up the nerve (he certainly didn't come across as a lady's man - I guess the whole "lawyer" thing doesn't really work for public defence attorneys).  There's also no direct suggestion that Alison hasn't been living off of singing telegram gigs for a while.

We'll thus place this story a month further down the line, as part of the effort to get back in synch with UXM.  Doing so puts this issue between UXM #150 and Annual #5, published six months earlier.

Date

Friday 9^th of March, 1983.

X-Date

X+4Y+333.

Contemporary Events

Joshua "Slippery Rock" Nkomo flees Zimbabwe after Mugabe unleashes his forces against Nkomo's Matabele homeland.   Thousands of civilians are killed in Mugabe's attempt to crush Nkomo's party, the Zimbabwe African People's Union.

Standout Line

"THERE IS NO DEFENSE against your charms."   D'aww!  Lawyer chat-up lines are so adorable.  The best statistics equivalent I can think of is "The data leads me to reject the hypothesis that you are not totally sexylicious!".  This stuff is harder than it looks.