UXM #108: "Armageddon Now!"

("He's history's greatest monster!")

Comments

Ooh!  Ooh ooh ooh!  Today's guest president: Mr Malaise himself, Mr Jimmy Carter!

(I presume that's Joel W. Solomon on the right, but I can't be sure).

Under normal circumstances, this would just be one of those celebrity appearances that immediately dates a comic and makes my life miserable.  But not this time!  This time the implication is clear - it's 1982, Jimmy Carter is sitting in the Oval Office... the heroes of the Marvel Universe got the Peanut Farmer re-elected (probs by heading to Iran and getting all up in those hostage-takers grilles)!

Just think of the technocractic wonderland Carter must be presiding over in that most fortunate of alternate universes!  The cars would run on alternative fuels, the Contras would have to finance their own violations of human rights, and Operation: Urgent Fury might not have seemed so Urgent after all.

Fuck you, real-world history, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, let's review a comic while we're here.  First of all, if there's anything more likely to make me smile than Carter turning up [1], it would definitely be watching Wolverine getting punched into orbit by a tiny troll-thing. 

And I get that too!  What a day to be alive! 

First, though, we get a few scenes of Earth's heroes looking decidedly disconsolate, and not just because President JC doesn't wanna hear about it.  Is this the first time Beast actually says "Oh, my stars and garters!"? Chalk up another tally mark for Claremont if it is.

With that done, it's time for the X-Men to try and take down tiny Tina Turner Jalp. Most of the battle is the usual exchange of super-powers and super-powered punches, and as soon as Banshee liquefies tiny Bowie in Labyrinth Jalp's circuit boards, it's time for the Second Guardian of the crystal to show up and start smashing things. It's the most cynical use of stacked boss battles since Golden Axe, where you kill that one... guy, and another guy... comes along instead, only he has a bigger axe, I think?  Or something?

Am I thinking of the right game, actually?  Which is the one where the Amazon warrior calls down a dragon that sets fire to literally everything on screen, and yet her bearskin bikini remains unruffled?

Anyway, you get my point.  Fortunately, this Russian doll approach to boss battles stops when Raza Longknife (who ironically only ever wanted to make tuning forks and play the spoons) throws Mad Emperor D'Ken (previously Presumed Sane But Clearly A Dick Emperor D'Ken) at the crystal, with the effect of causing everyone nearby to get sucked inside it except the Guardian.

Nice defence system you got going there, crystal that can destroy reality.  I don't care if you hired the fucking T-1000 to guard your house, you're still going to get shafted if you build the walls from rice paper.

Maybe that's a bit harsh.  There's still one last obstacle - a field of energy that makes you live through your worst nightmares.  That would be a fairly sound barrier under normal circumstances, I guess.  Nightcrawler dreams he is being murdered by his friends, Corsair (who apparently looks almost exactly like Cyclops and no-one notices) remembers the murder of his wife, and Mad Emperor D'Ken becomes terrified that he's being chased by the Soul-Drinker.  You'd think that someone so terrified of that monster would think twice before summoning it right next to them to eat the people he's pointing at, actually.  But no-one cares what you think, because you are not Mad Emperor D'Ken. See that you remember that, mammal.

Jean, it turns out, has a healthy fear of death, but lucky ol' Phoenix has already conquered that good night, though arguably only in the same way that Michael Jackson conquered poor album sales, i.e. by going so bats-arse mental that it didn't really register any more.  This resolve, combined with her love for and faith in her friends, allows her to find a nearby PC, bring up the window asking "Are you sure you want to restore this universe to its factory settings?" and press "CANCEL". 

(OK, so she actually repairs a lattice of interlocking stasis fields holding a nascent neutron galaxy in check, so as to prevent it from absorbing the power of the nine death-stars and expanding to destroy creation.  I submit that my explanation makes no less sense.)

And then it's all over bar the shouting.  The X-Men and Lilandra return to Earth, secure in the knowledge that the M'Krann crystal is safe from the newly named Comatose Emporer D'Ken.

It's a happy ending at last, then.  I still maintain that it was a strangely paced story - it's first elements appeared two years earlier, but the story only fully got going about an issue and a half before this one.  Again, the power of Phoenix is probably the biggest reason why; she needed to be compus mentus enough to save reality from the N-galaxy, but out of action the rest of the time, and there's only so long you can do that (as it is, Claremont has admitted her stay in hospital from UXM #101 to #104 was because they had no idea what they were going to do with her). 

Still, it's not hard to see why it's viewed as a classic - a plethora of early clues that pretty much all pay off, a massive universe-spanning threat, an awful lot of explosions and punching, and soap-opera revelations such as finding out Scott's father is still alive.  Though in fairness I'm not sure any of the soaps would also reveal that he was fucking a cat.  When will this country finally cast aside it's Victorian prudishness?

Clues

The majority of this issue takes place in approximately real time, but some time passes between the X-Men defeating D'Ken and returning to Earth.  The darkness that they encounter upon arrival suggests we may have passed midnight into a new day.

Jean mentions that it's been "months" since she crashed the Starcore shuttle into Jamaica Bay.  At present, we have it as a fortnight.  The disparity is easily rectified, however, by simply extending the period of time the X-Men spend on holiday at Cassidy Keep.  It probably can't have been too long, since Erik the Red/Shakari had already made contact with Magneto on Muir Island by the time Juggernaut and Black Tom were defeated, but assuming it took them a little time to put their plan into fruition, we can certainly inject sufficient time to make it over a month since the crash, which would make Jean's comment more or less reasonable.

(This also allows me to clear up a mistake I made a few days ago: the encounter with Magneto (and hence the X-Men's journey to the stars) is mentioned as taking place on a Monday.  Apologies.)

Date

Monday 8^th to Tuesday 9^th February, 1982.

X-Date

X+3Y+280 to X+3Y+281.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.78 standard years.

(Storm is 34 years old.)

"It is my life to give, my friend."

Contemporary Events

Kate "Duchess of Cambridge, like anyone cares" Middleton is born.

Standout Line

"Uh... 'Jammer to Corsair, I mark a small, organic, humanoid form, approximately a meter-six long... 70 kilos mass..."
"He's one of ours, "Waldo".  How's he doin'?"
"Would you believe escape velocity?... How're things dirtside?"
"Don't ask."

[1] Did you know the US could only bring themselves to name a submarine after him?  Reagan and Bush Sr both got nuclear fucking super-fucking-carriers.  We're still waiting for Clinton to get a ship (maybe one the missiles get redesigned as giant flying dicks, amirite?), which led to a lot of shouting and anger a few years ago when the Navy started discussing naming ships after Republican Presidential candidates who lost the election. I mean, once you run out of Republican Presidents, it's the logical next step, right?

UXM #107: "Where No X-Man Has Gone Before!"

("To seek out new life and new civilisations... and then cockpunch the shit out of them!")

Comments

I'd forgotten that this story came to a head so quickly.  No sooner have the X-Men jumped through the stargate than they find themselves in front of the M'Kraan Crystal, along with D'Ken, Lilandra, Shakari and the Imperial Guard, led by Gladiator (my Claremont Originals meter has buried its needle in my ceiling).

Of course, on reflection, this was probably by far the most likely course to take.  Having endowed Phoenix with such power, the story has to wrap up (or at least get close to wrapping up and require her eleventh hour intervention) whilst she's still weak from operating the stargate.  This is always the problem with creating nigh-unstoppable characters (or letting previously more balanced characters to level up to the same state); you find that you stop thinking about how your heroes can overcome adversity, and instead devote your thinking to how your godlike creation can be inconvenienced enough to prevent them overcoming that adversity instantly.  That's why after two seasons of constantly ramping up the Tenth Doctor's smug near-omnipotence, RTD started writing or presiding over Doctor Who stories [1] in which the entirety of the dramatic tension in the Doctor's actions revolved around whether or not he could get to the place he needed to be to immediately solve everything by waving his screwdriver around.

In any event, the X-Men are here now, deep in enemy territory and surrounded on all sides by aliens hellbent on their destruction.  It's time for fisticuffs!  An entire issue of them!

Once again, there's really precious little to be said about the battle scenes.  It's all just an endlessly shifting mass of colour and smack-talking, a catalogue of one-one-one permutations as every combatant seemingly takes it in turns to try and knock out every combatant from the other side (though there's still time for a flashback, of course; also, reality briefly blinking out of existence).  In amongst all of this we learn that Nightcrawler has never before tried teleporting with another person (I'd been wondering about that), and the fact that Wolverine can be set aflame with no ill effects beyond the loss of his wardrobe is the first real clue we've had regarding his healing factor (I've actually never come across anyone stating at what point that was decided upon as being his mutant power).

It's interesting to see the original Imperial Guard in action once again, though.  I understand they were originally an homage to/obvious rip-off of DC's Legion of Superheroes: a team of interstellar heroes in the far future. I always liked the Imperial Guard, mainly because the high rate of attrition (the only job more dangerous than being a comic bit-part player is being a comic bit-part player from another world) meant there was always someone new and interesting in the ranks, and also that their battles against the X-Men became less and less about following orders and more and more about just being thoroughly goddamn sick of these upstart Terran apes throwing their weight around on the galactic stage.

As is traditional, the Guard spend most of this issue getting pummelled, but that's all part of the fun.  They're the interstellar Alpha Flight, basically.  They get the upper hand at one point, but that's when the Starjammers turn up (ding!).  Somewhere in Bethesda, an eleven year old Ed Brubaker was taking notes.

Clues

This issue takes place in approximately real time.

Date

Wednesday 13^th January, 1982.

X-Date

 X+3Y+254.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.81 standard years.

(Storm is 34 years old.)

"We'll have a better chance in the air!"

Contemporary Events

Gods of earth and air, will we never escape this wretched day?  This must be how Bill Murray must have felt in Groundhog Day, only he never had to see Wolverine all but naked (he did have to pretend to be interested in Andie MacDowell, though, so let's call it even).

Is there anything left that happened on this date?  It was exactly eleven months before my little sister was born, does that count?  Probably not.  Umm... Reagan nominates Anthony Cecil Eden Quainton to be the US Ambassador to Nicaragua.  That had to be a pretty sticky situation, huh?  "My boss is giving guns to the rebels to have you all killed; do I still get diplomatic immunity?"

Standout Line

"Man, ol' fuzz-face didn't wanna part with his threads, but I guess I convinced him." Wolverine gets a change of clothes.  I absolutely don't want to think about exactly how.

[1] See "Gridlock", "The Doctor's Daughter" and "Voyage of the Damned" for three examples.

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.

UXM #105: "Phoenix Unleashed!"

(This Island Earth.)

Comments

I'm definitely willing to give Erik the Red some sneakiness points here, using Havok and Polaris to set the X-Men up as villains and then letting Firestorm take them apart, but, really?  Firestorm just happened to be flying past Erik's secret base?  I know coincidence is something you have to just grin and bear when it comes to comics, but every now and again it just gets too ludicrous to process.   It's also not a particularly encouraging sign when it happens nine issues into a continuing story.  It rather suggests that not everything has been considered in as much detail as you might hope.

On the other hand, I'm loving the introduction of the Shi'ar.  Claremont has never been shy about making his influences obvious, so the Shi'ar captain is both dressed and posed like Captain Kirk.  Mr Sulu has been replaced by Mr S'Lar (who's a bit more red and scaly than his forebear).  Spock, inevitably, is now a hot chick.  Hell, Misty Knight even mentions that Lilandra's teleporter bears more than a passing resemblance to the Enterprise's transporter beam.

Having the Shi'ar run in terror from Earth because the planet has track record of slapping Galactus around is a great touch as well.  Our little blue-green marble gets quite the reputation on the galactic stage in later years, and I wonder if this is where it began.  Hell, all that nasty business with the Skrulls a few years back might have been avoided if only SWORD had had the foresight to install a massive sign on the moon reading "SOL 3: 4 GALACTUS ARSE-KICKINGS RECORDED TO DATE".

Now that Phoenix is on the scene, of course, they could probably just head over to Galactus' pad and smash up the joint every other weekend.  Claremont has mentioned in interviews that the initial plan with Phoenix was to have her essentially become addicted to her own power levels, and it very much shows here.  Jean can power a stargate and blast Galactus' herald out of the sky, but the price she pays is a level of bloodlust that would have terrified her only weeks before.  Maybe throwing herself and the team through a portal to another star system will help her get it out her system...

Clues

This story takes place over the course of a few hours.

Colossus mentions that Erik the Red has been stirring shit up for months, but that works out just fine with our dating the battle at JFK Airport as being in September.

Date

Wednesday 13^th January, 1982.

X-Date

 X+3Y+254.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.72 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)

"Then, my friends, we know
all we need to know!"

Contemporary Events

A coal strike begins in Britain, but quickly ends when Scargill's wishes are ignored and the union accepts an offer of a 9.3% pay rise by Margeret Thatcher (at the time the rate of inflation was 12%).

Standout Line

"Oh, no, not again!" Nightcrawler moans as the X-Men lose another aircraft.

UXM #104: "The Gentleman's Name Is Magneto"

(The Isle of Man's Inhumanity to Man)

Comments

Do people on Stornoway really say "nowt"?  It seems a bit incongruous, but who knows where the word originated from?

Well, these people do, and unless our Hebridian bystander (a "Mister Stu'rt, apparently) is pretending the X-Men are cows, I call foul on Claremont's attempts at evoking the local ergot.

Anyway, the team are in the Outer Hebrides to go check up on Muir Island (ding! Score another point for Claremont in the "Major Contributions to X-Lore" tallying), since Jamie Madrox (ding!) has been left looking after it and Moira hasn't heard from him in a while.  They hire a hovercraft from a bad-tempered local, and manage to ride in it for all of the top half of a double-page spread before someone blows it up.

That "someone", of course is Magneto.  As is so often the case with comic companies, the sudden appearance of one of the X-Men's deadliest enemies (as well as the first mutant they ever faced in combat) is rather undercut by him being mentioned by name in the "Next time on X-Men" banner in the previous issue.  Also, by this book's cover, but I'm inclined to cut them some slack on that front, if only because I love the callback to UXM #1:

(Is there any better way of demonstrating the difference between comics in 1963 and 1977 than by replacing a hail of snowballs with razor-sharp metal claws?  If this issue had been released in the '90s, I presume Magneto would be weathering a storm of pouches and mullets).

I confess to having forgotten Magneto was ever reduced to a baby.  In my defence, it hasn't been mentioned at all in the X-books (it happened in The Defenders).  There's a reason given for that, though - Moira and Xavier were keeping the Muir Island facility a secret so no-one knew they were dumping massively powerful and irredeemably unpleasant mutants there.  Gosh, I sure hope that doesn't backfire... [1]

This issue is perhaps notable in that it contains the first instance of Colossus being unable to help the team because of his power.  This time round it's because he's made of metal (and thus, like Wolverine, irrelevant at best when fighting Magneto, and potentially a threat to the team), but as I remember Claremont took this idea and ran with it, resulting in more than a few stories in which Peter's fear of doing too much damage as Colossus led to him benching himself and bitching interminably.  In fairness, it's by no means a bad idea - it contains hints of Wagner, even - but whatever else Claremont is, he's not a writer afraid to recycle.

Having said on more than one occasion that there's very little to be said about action scenes, that's a lot less true here.  The difficulties the X-Men have fighting someone who can control metal (and sense the magnetic shifts involved in teleportation, and redirect lightening bolts... somehow) are well realised, and Magneto pulling iron particles from the air to create a skintight - and airtight - tomb for Banshee is horribly and impressively vicious. 

The issue ends with our first brief introductions to the Starjammers (ding!) and Princess Lilandra Nermani (ding!) of the Shi'ar (ding!).  We're almost at the top of the roller coaster, people...

Clues

This story takes place over the course of a few hours.

Banshee mentions that Moira called from New York, meaning the X-Men themselves weren't there.  Presumably they were still in Ireland, finishing off their holiday and/or attempting to deal with the massive PTSD problem the local leprechaun population is presumably dealing with following their ill treatment at the hands of Juggernaut and Black Tom.

Indeed, Colossus mentions that it will be good to get back into action following their vacation at Cassidy Keep.  Assuming he isn't being sarcastic (which would be unlike him), that certainly suggests the X-Men had time to unwind following their near-death experiences.

We'll therefore place this story a week after the defeat of Thomas Cassidy and Cain Marko.

Date

Wednesday 13^th January, 1982.

X-Date

 X+3Y+254.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.67 standard years.

(Storm is 34 years old.)

"He's toying with us!"

Contemporary Events

The Air Florida Flight 90 crash, in which a Boeing 737 collides with the 14^th Street Bridge in Washington D.C..

Standout Line

"Why is it that every time we ride in something mechanical, it crashes?" - Nightcrawler.

[1] Actually, we already know it has.  Some kind of terrible force has been let loose from behind a door marked "Mutant X".  Oh, and that bug-faced woman from the Ani-Men has gotten out as well, but it's tough to get too worked up about someone so stupid she can't remember her bosses' voice from one moment to the next.

UXM #103 "The Fall Of The Tower"

(Lepre-chaunoly)

Comments

Wait, what?  Nightcrawler himself didn't know he turned invisible in shadows?  Are not fucking shadows in fucking Germany?  I've been there twice, and on both occasions sunlight was stopped by opaque objects.  Or did the DDR install powerful street-lights everywhere to ensure total suffusion?  No wonder they never had any money...

It's kind of difficult to be positive about a comic so horribly suffused with stereotypically "Oirish" leprechauns.  It doesn't really matter how impressive the action is, or how sharp the dialogue; there's always going to be a prancing pointy-eared idiot in the next panel getting his Blarney over all and sundry.  You can't try to unnerve the reader with the possibility the X-Men will be horribly tortured whilst the Little People are all over the place. They're just incompatible.

Indeed, the whole issue is suffering from an identity crisis.  Cassidy Keep looked truly impressive last issue, a centuries-old bastion practically bleeding history.  This time, it's stuffed with hi-tech labs and energy cannons hidden in turrets (controlled by battle computers, apparently). Black Tom and the Juggernaut are hoodwinked by the fairie folk and a man with a Starktech Image Inducer, which allows them to save Banshee from a sonic gag - to stop him uing his powers - and Wolverine from a pair of metal boots - which do... something.  Presumably.

It's not all bad, though.  Storm's effortless freeing of Wolverine using her lock-picking skills works far better as a nod to her past than last issue's over-long flashback,.  Watching Colossus try to act tough to protect Storm from Wolverine's barbs is pretty funny ("[D]o not ever call her a 'broad' again... shorty!"), as is the idea that he's started using the "fastball special" as a way of ridding himself of Wolverine when the little man is being aggravating.

Lastly, Juggernaut's final act in the comic, throwing himself into the gale-wracked Atlantic to try and somehow save Black Tom (who should have known better than to try a duel on a narrow, crumbling walkway against a man who can fly) gives him more characterisation in one panel than the entirety of his appearances to this point.  Even at the time I doubt anyone though that was the last we'd see of him, but as Claremont points out, if this had been the end of Cain Marko, it wouldn't have been a bad end.

Clues

This issue takes place in approximately real time.

Date

Wednesday 6^th January, 1982.

X-Date

 X+3Y+247.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year =  3.65 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old)

"Gods of the earth and air be praised!
I am FREE!"

Contemporary Events

Fred tries to forget about Eunice, Wilf gives Mike the order, and Emily buys a trampoline.

This is Coronation Street, by the way; I'm running out of ideas...

Standout Line

"The Wolverine don't believe in leprechauns."
"Suit yerself.  Maybe leprechauns don't believe in talkin' wolverines, either."

Another clue to the original plan for Wolverine's origin, fact fans.