UXM #128: "The Action Of The Tiger!"

("A lot about bees, for some reason.")

Comments

I have absolutely no idea what that title means.  Not a clue.  Is it a reference to Edinburgh?  Doesn't seem likely.  Mind you, considering how shitty the Scottish geography was last time round, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that Claremont thinks Auld Reekie is plagued by big cats.

At least it looks a bit more like Edinburgh this time.  The panel featuring Princes Street Garden and the castle actually look pretty much perfect.  I hope the X-Men and Proteus weren't battling on the Royal Mile.  There's some good pubs there, and Camera Obscura.

Wherever the battle is taking place, though, it doesn't go well for the X-Men.  By this point Proteus is strong enough to do pretty much whatever the hell he feels like, and apparently that involves an awful lot of trapping X-Men inside things, and turning shop-fronts into bees. I was particularly impressed by him opening a chasm beneath Banshee, slamming it shut once he's fallen in, and then turning the ground transparent so everyone can watch him suffocate.  Rule number one about Proteus: even when you're about to burn out your host body, there's always time for dickishness.

Which isn't to say Proteus doesn't have a long-term plan. Item one on the agenda ("kill my father") is now complete, but item two ("enslave my mother forever") can't possibly be ticked off until those pesky X-Men are smothered in bees or encased in amber.  And whilst Proteus can take someone off the board just by looking at them, the X-Men have an irritating habit of saving each other whilst he isn't looking.

(Some free advice, Proteus.  Stop trying to kill X-Men by suffocating them and/or stinging them to death.  These are time-consuming methods of murder. Just blow them up or rip off their heads or turn them into lampreys, would you?  What is it about you and asphyxiation, anyway?  Not to go all amateur psychoanalyst, or anything, but watching you hug your mother to you whilst you try to smother your enemies rather makes it look like there's some issues to resolve.  Mind you, I guess you've killed your father; we all know what comes next...)

Eventually, Proteus' game of Whack-A-Mutant leaves him drained of power (particularly once Phoenix has a go at knitting his synapses into a sweater), and he flees to the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. Big mistake!  This has been Cyclops' plan all along!  It's a better one than usual, actually, if a tad Blackadder Goes Forth - keep throwing X-Men at Proteus until he runs out of power, then kill him dead (though Cyclops still gets pissy whenever anyone starts shooting guns; I guess he knows just what the CCA will and won't accept).  Colossus gets to do the deed, of course, being made entirely of the one substance (well, "metal" can mean any number of substances, but you get my meaning) Proteus can't handle.  The normally gentle and scrupulous Peter starts just by tearing Proteus from what's left of his host body, but Proteus responds by forcing Colossus to relive the death of his brother, and that proves to be his last ever mistake.

(More free advice to Proteus: do not deliberately enrage the one person who can easily kill you!)

After Peter has pulled his steel fists from the smoking psionic remnants of Moira's only child, he generously offers to embrace her until she feels better (maybe you should at least watch your hands first, eh, comrade?)  Banshee quickly shows up to take over hugging duties (and try to not look too pleased that Moira's husband is now not so much estranged as a decomposing ruin), and the X-Men can relax.  For now, they've won a hard-fought victory, and will be going home not only without casualties, but with more people alive than they originally thought.

Of course, none of them can guess the true horror that awaits them in the coming weeks.  Worse than Proteus, worse than the Sentinels, worse even than Magneto.  Next issue we face the greatest monstrosity known to man: teenage angst.

Clues

This issue follows on directly from the last one, and plays out in real time.

Date

Thursday 23^rd of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+177.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.62 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)

"I do not want to hurt these bees, either..."

Contemporary Events

Urgh.  I don't know.  I ran out after that porn star thing.

Standout Line

"M-Mike -- The wind, the bees are blowing away!"
"It -- it's a miracle!"

Look, I get you're relieved to be free of apoidean interference, but get a grip.  A wind blowing bees away is not a miracle.  Those bees being made out of brick and glass, that's a miracle.  Just, you know, a bleedin' terrible one.

(Best sketch ever: Jesus feeds the five thousand - WITH BEES!)

UXM #127: "The Quality Of Hatred!"

("You taek the high road, and I'll take the road at ninety degrees to my chosen destination")

Comments

So, last time around we left Storm trying to stop Proteus with a storm that's now described as "an elemental holocaust the likes of which these Scots highlands have never seen" but looks just like Sunday afternoon on Arran to me.  In any case, it isn't doing the job, and Storm is only saved when Moira arrives and tries to shoot her son dead. She almost manages it, too, but that pesky Cyclops pulls her rifle wide.

A brief deviation, here.  The refusal of comic heroes (well, most of them, and until the '90s) to kill their enemies has long been a topic of conversation amongst fans.  David Brothers over at 4thletter! is particularly outspoken here, maintaining that allowing a killer to survive is to take moral responsibility to every victim they rack up from then on.

I think that's taking things vastly too far - knowing that something would have been impossible had you acted differently does not make you responsible for that result.  That said, when dealing with someone like Proteus, who is almost impossible to stop, even harder to catch, and who isn't a killer due to upbringing, philosophy, opportunity or circumstance, but because it is his biological imperative, it's genuinely pretty hard to understand what Cyclops thinks he's doing.  Indeed, by the end of the issue, two more people at the very least are dead because Scott wants to take Proteus alive, with no reason to believe that's even possible.

Of course, by the final page Cyclops has concluded that Proteus must die after all, which makes his earlier queasiness all the more frustrating.

Having said that, Cyclops does manage to at least partially redeem himself, by figuring out the only way to help Wolverine out of his shell-shocked state (a really nice touch - Nightcrawler is freaked by having his sight and sound rearranged by Proteus; Logan's super-senses means the same experience has terrified him beyond endurance) is to fling coffee in his face and call him a coward.  The resulting scrap convinces Cyclops that the team still has some fight in it, and also reminds us that whatever else Scott is, he's exceptionally well-trained and disciplined when the brawling starts.

Whilst Scott is delivering one of his more painful lessons, however, Proteus is on Culloden Moor, hoovering up a new body, and Moira (who's gave the team the slip after briefly knocking out Cyclops) is in hot pursuit.  She's pretty sure she knows where he's headed.  He's been heading south ever since he reached the mainland, after all.  So then she ends up in Edinburgh...

Hang on.

Heading south?  To Edinburgh?

Let's review Proteus' journey, shall we?  He started out on Muir Island, which doesn't really exist, but his first stop in the real world was Stornoway.  After that he fought the X-Men some fifty miles north-west of Culloden Moor, before heading there to steal another body, and setting his sights for Edinburgh (which really isn't 200km from Culloden, even if that was the unit of measurement used in the UK).  If he was heading south before that first scrap, that means his journey, as the crow flies, looks like this:

I realise the man is psychotic, but that route still makes bugger-all sense.  What the hell is wrong with Ullapool, huh?  There's a ferry and everything.

In any case, Moira figures her son is in Edinburgh so he can murder his own father (referred to rather melodramatically as "One-I-Hate" by Proteus himself).  Turns out ol' Pappa X is a Scottish politician, who refuses to divorce Moira (being married to a Nobel Prize winner is apparently a big bonus in political circles, but just try telling that to Tipper Gore), and who's been estranged from her for so long he doesn't even know he's 50% responsible for another human, let alone a murderous freak of nature.  I'll admit to feeling a little sympathy for the guy, slimeball though he is: "I had your son twenty years ago, didn't tell you, and now he's coming to eat your soul" is a hell of a way to start a reunion, especially since Moira pulls a gun on poor old Joe as soon as he starts shouting (she just can't wait to shoot up her relatives, can she?)

On the other hand, I have to respect Moira for driving hundreds of miles to tell someone she desperately wants dead that he's about to, you know, become dead.  Not that it works, of course.  Proteus attacks the instant she leaves, and absorbs his father.  Meanwhile, the X-Men have made it to Edinburgh, and are lounging around on Edinburgh Crag (depicted here as Generic Hill By Generic City).  They feel Joe MacTaggart's death, and head on over to face Proteus, only to find his powers have grown to the point where gravity has become his bitch, making pitched battle difficult.  Plus, he quickly gains Moira as a hostage, threatening to kill her if the X-Men don't back off.

Obviously, this is the point where Cyclops decides Proteus must be killed, whomever the cost.

The board is set...

Clues

This issue follows on directly from the last one, and runs from sometime in the morning to late afternoon.

Date

Thursday 23^rd of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+177.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.61 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)

"For once, Cyclops, my anger
matches Wolverine's."

Contemporary Events

Model, actress and "Flake Girl" Alyssa Sutherland is born.  So is uber-WAG Alex Curran, and porn actress Shyla Stylez.  Make of this what you will.

Standout Line

"Push me too hard and I'll possess Moira as I did her husband!" - Proteus
"H-husband?!?" - Banshee

Way to keep focused on what's important, "spalpeen"...

UXM #126: "How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth...!"

("Split up and search Scotland!")

Comments

Man, the X-Men really aren't messing around, are they?  And by "messing around", I mean "making the slightest concession to health and safety". How close did that fishing boat they buzzed come to capsizing in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic?  Why is Colossus the only one strapped in?  And why does he then leap from a plane to crash into a building they only assume is abandoned, and which might have God knows what inside it?  This is a level of recklessness that borders on the criminal.  And what about the cost of smashing through the roof of a multi-million pound research complex?  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get insurers to pay out for an "act of superheroism"?

I much prefer Nightcrawler's approach.  Quick, quiet (other than the trademark "BAMF!"); nothing objectionable there beyond the stench.  Plus, I really like the "split-screen" effect of his teleport:

Note the vertical BAMF effect creating the "gutter". Lovely.

Fortunate no-one was standing there at the time, of course. 

Instead, they're in the kitchen, or at least Polaris (unconscious) and MacWhirter (dead, mummified) are.  The X-Men split up to search the island, a task made slightly more difficult by the original search party not knowing any of them are still alive.  Nightcrawler almost gets microwaved by Havok, and Storm and Cyclops narrowly avoid being shot before everyone is brought up to speed.

Everyone who's firing on all cylinders, at least.  Jean's so out of it that she initially assumes Cyclops is Jason Wyngarde, which has to be pretty awkward.  Mind you, at least it happened whilst Jean was having visions of Jason and herself dressed up for elegant balls, rather than the one she has later this issue.  The seedy nature of Mastermind's illusions comes to the fore as he twists Jean's mind into believing that not only is she leading a hunting party to chop up a human being dressed as a stag, but she'll do it whilst astride a horse whilst wearing a skirt.  Even John Wilmot would have considered that a bit beyond the pale.

Anyway, back to the plot: "Mutant X" has stolen first a Madrox dupe (still being referred to as "clones" here) and then a boat, and made his way to Stornoway, presumably to hunt longpig herds with somewhat less access to fancy powers and illegal firearms.  Actually, the first person he runs into is Mastermind, so that plan doesn't work out too well.  Old Mutie X might even have been in some serious trouble, had Mastermind not been too busy working out a new illusion in which Jean addresses the servants without having covered her ankles.

But who is the mysterious Mutant X anyway?  He is, it turns out, the answer to last issue's burning question - why doesn't Moira dare have a child?  It's because she already had one (to a man she hates), and he turned out to eschew breast-feeding in favour of devouring the life-force of the baby-sitter (or something).   A lifetime of searching for a cure yielded only the fact that he doesn't like metal ("Why won't he let me slice open his chest cavity with this blunt scalpel? He must despise steel!").

So Moira tells us, at least.  I don't if she can trust her, though, given she's forgotten Dundee exists and thinks her son is as likely to cross the entire country to haunt Edinburgh as he is to stop off in Inverness, less than half as distant.   It's easy for me to snark with access to Wikipedia, I suppose, but did they really not have atlases in 1979?

Jean interrupts her disturbing daydreams long enough to find another corpse, but it's Nightcrawler and Wolverine who find X himself, now inhabiting the body of a Scottish policeman.  Wolvie briefly ends up on the menu before Mutant X works out just how many calories there are in "three million bucks worth of adamantium", so he chooses instead to reveal his "true" name - Proteus - and his true mutant power - turning reality into a Dali painting.

That might have been all she wrote, except Storm arrives in the nick of time, and punishes Proteus by detonating his ride.  In response, Proteus chooses Ororo as his next vessel (possessing neither a metal skeleton nor a face like a slapped demonic arse), and no amount of hurricane winds seems able to stop his advance.

Oooooooh!

Clues

This issue begins an hour after the last one ended, and takes place over the course of roughly a day.

Cyclops mentions that it's been "months" since Banshee lost the use of his powers.  Our current timeline has it happening about seven weeks prior to that story.  I think we're safest assuming Cyclops is exaggerating a little; at this point our dates for the last twenty-odd issues are so convoluted and jury-rigged that I'm loathe to touch them again without a very good reason.

Date

Wednesday 22^nd to Thursday 23^rd of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+176 to X+4Y+177.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.59 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)

"While Storm lives, you'll harm no-one!"

Contemporary Events

Amin Geyamel, brother to Bachir - President-elect of Lebanon at the time of his assassination nine days earlier - is himself voted in as President of that country.

Standout Line

"Nightcrawler does his best to reassure his friend... unaware that -- thanks to Proteus -- Wolverine perceives his words as drops of orange rain."

UXM #125: "There's Something Awful On Muir Island!"

(Food, sex, power, headwear.)

Comments

It's the sixteenth anniversary of the X-Men comic, and Claremont's certainly come up with something suitably mysterious and dramatic.

Change is in the air from the very first page, as Moira attempts to gauge Phoenix's true power levels. Something's clearly bothering our Scottish biochemist, and not just because Jean is someone she's "come to love as the daughter she can never dare have" (nice set-up there, by the way).  Can Jean possibly control - or even survive - such power levels?  Jean shares the same concerns, but what they're blissfully unaware of is what they should really be worried about - the shadowy figure of the zombie boatman.

Actually, "boatman" really doesn't do anything to make that scarier, does it?  Zombie... cap-wearer?  Fuck it.  It's a zombie.  That can talk.  That should be enough.  Besides, more terrifying still is the sudden appearance of yet another patented expository flashback (this time, Claremont has to take all the blame).  Mind you, at least this one includes relevant details we weren't privy to, but more on that later.

While Jean receives a thorough probing, Cyclops is letting the Danger room do his poking for him.  Even after all this time, the new X-Men don't seem willing to treat his adventure playground seriously enough for his liking, and he's beginning to wonder if hoping for anything so advanced as teamwork is a waste of time.  One could point out that since the exercise went south once Wolverine disobeyed orders and tried to help Colossus out, the problem doesn't lie in teamwork so much as being led by a douchebag, but whatever.  We've got bigger problems.  Zombies in hats, people!  Hats!  What could be more horrifying?

I know, I know.  But better a fruit hat than a... zomberet?  Huh?

We also have to consider the threat posed by one "Jason Wyngarde", implicitly revealed as Mastermind last issue, who reveals to the audience that he's been stalking Jean Grey for months now, reappearing again and again in different forms to chat her up (that's him in Jean's flashback pretending to be a fat priest doing the robot), so that ultimately she'd start subconsciously trusting him in whatever form he took.  You'd rather think this was a plan doomed to failure when used against the most powerful ever telepath ever in the world ever, but I guess Jean must have a blind spot for greasy-haired men who've tried to kill her a couple of times. His ultimate plan is to dress her up as a fetish model, which makes sense (er, I mean, if one were evil, obviously...) and to enslave her to the Hellfire club, about which we shall learn more in subsequent issues.

So which storm will break first? Jean the psychic nuclear bomb, Jean the feisty latex model, or Jean the breakfast buffet for millinery-savvy monsters?  Well, Xavier is rushing back from Imperial Center now he's learned she kept reality in business all on her lonesome (you'd think he'd have checked the files earlier, wouldn't you; how long can zero-gravity flesh-pressing with a hot intergalactic space empress hold one's attention, anyway?), so we know where he's piling his chips, but Moira's already found the discarded golden tooth that spells trouble (also, her top-secret maximum-security cell is now empty, which is maybe the larger of the two clues).  Neither Moira nor Jean can stop the zombie (in fairness, Jean is momentarily distracted by a vision of herself in the middle of Pride and Prejudice, which only an utter tool would add zombies to), which leaves Alex, Jamie and Lorna searching the facility in shocked confusion. 

Back on the other side of the pond, Beast has come a knockin' at the mansion, having realised (eventually) that someone's turned off the burglar alarms Xavier put in before he left for his interstellar nookie tour.  I guess whatever the Avengers are up to have kept him pretty busy.  Regardless, his arrival allows him to discover that his former team mates are still breathing, and to let them know that Jean is similarly ambulatory (not that this is positive proof of life in this story). 

Cyclops runs for the phone, hoping for a cross-continental booty call, but instead receives the bad news from Lorna - his formerly missing, presumed dead girlfriend has, er, gone missing.  Polaris can't even finish her story before she's snaffled too.  That's just greedy, quite frankly, and Cyclops announces that he's not prepared to let it lie. The X-Men are once more bound for Scotland...

Clues

This story takes place over two days.

At one point the narration tells us that only weeks passed between Jean Grey becoming Phoenix and her saving the universe from Emperor D'Ken's madness.  This directly contradicts UXM #130, in which we're told the day they returned from the Shi'ar galaxy was in summer (Grey, as has been mentioned multiple times, became Phoenix a few days after Christmas).  Further proof that Claremont, whilst keen to put together a much more serialised comic book than had been seen before, had little interest in ensuring that the overall arc fit together in a particularly coherent way.

Date

Monday 21^st to Tuesday 22^nd of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+175 to X+4Y+176.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.57 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old)


"His manner is occasionally... irritating."

Contemporary Events

Ngwenyama Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland (formerly Paramount Chief, which frankly seems even more impressive) died aged 83.  His reign lasted almost 83 years, having been less than five months old when he succeeded his father Ngwane V.  Sobhuza holds the record for the longest pricely dated reign in history.

The first troops of the international force announced by Reagan two days earlier land in Lebanon.

Standout Line

"Das Bestie -- the Beast!" - Nightcrawler.

What?  German makes me giggle...

UXM Annual #3: "A Fire In The Sky"

("It burns, burns, burns...")

Comments

Why does no-one ever just politely ask for assistance? A  few issues ago Sauron tried to eat Storm on his way to begging for the X-Men's help, and this time round Arkon the Magnificent (too magnificent, it would appear, to have any use for our puny culture's "shirts") decides to engage in a spot of kidnapping.  He chooses Storm as well, actually, but in all fairness I can see his logic.

Fortunately, even tired as she is after having accidentally caused a "Danger Room goes wrong!" scenario to play out (and, helpfully eat up eight pages of the book's "king-size" length), she can still hit someone with a pocket hurricane at a moment's notice, and Arkon the Magnificent (who's also too magnificent for trousers) falls through the floor and into a ruckus with the entire team.  Despite their foe's prodigious strength and arsenal of lightning bolts, the X-Men are eventually able to best Arkon the Magnificent (whose magnificence precludes a decent haircut), but not before he teleports Storm back to his home dimension,

Most of the X-Men assume Storm is dead, but Cyclops remembers the last time Arkon the Magnificent (and what's with those furry briefs, huh?) was on Earth, he used similar weapons to kidnap atomic scientists.  With commendable bravery, but perhaps limited forward thinking, Scott uses more of the lightning bolts to transport himself, Logan, Kurt and Peter to wherever Ororo has been taken, bringing their Magnificent prisoner with them.

They arrive in a large hall that's almost as full of battle-hungry warriors as it is needlessly ostentatious sculptures, and a truly impressive fracas breaks out.  Nightcrawler sneaks away to find Storm, but discovers she doesn't need rescuing - she's perfectly happy to do what her kidnappers want, i.e. save their entire planet from disaster.  Not even a ride out on the dragon Colossus has somehow learned to fly in the middle of a pitched battle will change her mind.

Jump-starting a generator built to light an entire planet is no easy matter, however, and Storm was only chosen by Arkon the Magnificent (shit helmet) because he couldn't find Thor.  Cyclops hits on the obvious solution of using Storm to jump-start him so he can power the generator, thus ensuring a) energy is needlessly wasted in the transferal, b) he risks coming down with a bad case of having exploded, and c) Nightcrawler and Wolverine have only a few minutes to re-wire a machine even Tony Stark failed to build entirely to spec.

Unfortunately, this tremendously stupid plan works like a charm, saving Scott from an important moral lesson. Still, it also prevents the subjects of Arkon the Magnificent (formerly "Arkon the Counter-Productively Rude") from a slow death by cold and starvation, so there's that at least.  After swearing endless gratitude to the team (though saying nothing about having learned the importance of calling ahead), the Imperion returns the X-Men to our dimension, where they can safely pretend none of this ever happened.

Clues

This annual takes place over several hours.

The opening narration places this story in summer.  That seems pretty stupid from the perspective of Claremont's previous time keeping - was Arcade really the only supervillain the team faced during spring? - but it rather happily brings our count back alongside the continuity of the comic.  We're also told that this is a Sunday, so we'll set this on the first weekend after the X-Men escape Murderworld.

Date

Sunday 20^th of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+174.

Contemporary Events

Ronald Reagan announces the formation of an international peacekeeping force, to be sent to Lebanon in order to strengthen its government and oversee the withdrawal of PLO forces.

Standout Line

"Damage is extensive... but casualties are remarkably light." I say the X-Men should just adopt that as their official motto/business card tagline.

UXM #124: "He Only Laughs When I Hurt!"

(Unconventional is unprofessional.)

Comments

Hang on a second.  Black Tom and Juggy paid Arcade six million dollars to do in the X-Men?  Where did those two bozos score that kind of scratch?  More to the point, why aren't they keeping it?  Revenge has always been the default villainous motivation in superhero comics (seriously, you would not believe the shit people are prepared to swear blood oaths over in these things), but I simply refuse to believe that those two wouldn't want to do the job themselves, after blowing the six thousand grand on booze and hookers.

Of course, none of this is particularly surprising given the ridiculous nature of this story.  Arcade's origin - lose stipend from wealthy father, kill wealthy father, become international assassin - manages to both be horribly cliche and totally idiotic, and his traps have devolved into silly pop-culture references (Battlestarwars: 1999 ?).  By the time Cyclops and Storm break Colossus' mental conditioning by the power of love, I would have found it easier to believe that someone would scrape together $6,000,000 to kill Chris Claremont.

And what happens to all that money now Arcade has let the X-Men go out of some twisted concept of logic?  Do Tom and Marko just get it back?  Are we supposed to believe he's really so much better than any other assassin out there that people pay him to murder their foes so long as he feels like it?  How the fuck is that supposed to work as a business model?

Clues

This issue follows on directly from the last one, and continues into dawn of the following day.

Date

Monday 14^th to Tuesday 15^th of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+168 to X+4Y+169.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.57 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)


"Must remember my training --
stay in control, stay alive!"

Contemporary Events

The President-elect of Lebanon, Bachir Gemayel, is assassinated by a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who claimed Gemayel had "sold the country to Israel".

Standout Line

"He aims and fires with barely a conscious thought... trusting to a unique, inborn talent for spatial geometry -- honed by months of practice in the Danger Room -- that makes him aware of every car in the room... and tells him exactly what firing angle will enable him to destroy them all with a single optic blast."

Fuck.  Off.

UXM #123: "Listen -- Stop Me If You've Heard It -- But This One Will Kill You!"

(Literally no-one thinks you're funny.)

Comments

It must be hard to be Spider-Man (beyond spending your life being hammered by super-villains and still not make enough money to move your dinner dates out of the fast food range).  Everyone focuses on your web-slinging powers and your... "acquired taste" one-liners.  No-one stops twice to think about the kick-ass detective powers.  Identifying Arcade's garbage-truck-cum-kidnap-hoover from the sound it makes sucking up superheroes?  That's some Hercule Poirot shit, and no mistake.  Shame your skills don't stretch to prompt phone calls, huh? 

For today, Arcade makes his move.  With Scott dealt with, his minions steal first Nightcrawler and Colossus (proof, were it needed, that going to ballet is a plan of horribly limited quality), and then move on to Wolverine (who's now dating Mariko - awww!  I hope that never goes wrong!).  Arcade himself turns up to snaffle Banshee and a nearly naked Storm (I'm sure that's just a coincidence....). and the games begin.

And what games they are!  Such panache!  Such thrills!  Such... Stukas?

Yeah, I can't keep this up anymore.  Arcade sucks.  I assume he's supposed to run along similar lines to the Joker, but the comparison really doesn't work.  The Joker is imaginative, not merely zany.  More importantly, it's almost impossible to imagine anyone in charge of their cognitive faculties wanting to pay the Joker to kill anybody.  You might as well spend the cash tattoing an intricate Celtic knot archery target on your arse.  The Joker works according to twisted rules only he can comprehend.  Arcade is just shitty at his job.

Still, at least he's hypnotised Colossus into thinking he's a working man's superhero known as "the Proletarian":

So I guess the next issue won't be a total loss.

Clues

The events of this issue take place over several hours.

The opening narration places this story in springtime.  We've discussed at great length why that's impossible in an absolute sense, but that doesn't prevent us from using it to consider the time between this issue and the last. Were the dates of the last five issues were workable, there would be 85 days between them.  Were we to assume the same thing, putting this issue in the first week of November.

Banshee, however, mentions that the restoration of the mansion's facilities has taken weeks, not months.  We could deal with this disparity by increasing time periods elsewhere, either between UXM #119 and #120 or UXM #121 and #122. The latter would make sense, since it gives more time for Cyclops' battle with the Living Monolith, and because one can't imagine Sunfire making for much of a host, his country's debt to the X-Men notwithstanding.

We'll therefore add one week between #121 and #122 (any longer and Nightcrawler would have to be slacking on the job to spend so long figuring out the X-Jet was screwed), and three more between last issue and this.  Ir's not a perfect solution, admittedly, but I'm beginning to forget what those look like in any case.

Date

Monday 14^th of September, 1982.

X-Date

X+4Y+168.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.55 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)


"AARRRGH!!"

Contemporary Events

Grace Kelly passes away, aged 52.

Standout Line

""Sflanng"?!  Where have I heard that bef -- Arcade!!" - Spiderman.  The man's a phenomenon.

UXM #122: "Cry For The Children!"

(Russell Brand: The Early Years, or, My Skaggy-Wag)

Comments

This, at last, is the very first X-Men issue to provide what Claremont eems to have been wanting since the very earliest stages of his run: an X-Men story entirely devoid of superhero conflict.  The closest we come is Colossus' efforts in the industrial vice which appears on the cover (short version: he keeps whining that he can't do it until Wolverine jumps in with him, forcing him to actually do something rather than forever complaining about not being able to do it), and Storm's rather minor use of her powers to put the wind up (no pun intended) some teenage skag-heads.

Indeed, since that latter encounter is the closest this issue comes to an A plot (it's really more of a series of vignettes than anything else, not that there's anything wrong with that), it seems odd that it's Colossus on the cover. I guess it looks more exciting than having Storm looming over barely post-pubescent heroin addicts.  I also dimly remember reading somewhere that having a female be the only superhero on a cover was a definite no-no until more recently than you'd think.  A quick scan of the covers to this point demonstrate that it has indeed not happened, though in fairness well over 90% of the covers feature multiple team members, so there's not much data to go on.

Anyway, Storm's confrontation is definitely the most interesting aspect to the issue, as she finally has to consider the possibility that there are some problems that no superhero can possibly solve, however powerful, and that beneath skies burning with the pyrotechnics of her and her kind, humanity is doing a fine job of eating itself without help from the Skrulls, or the Brotherhood, or HYDRA.  It's not exactly a happy thought, but it's an important one to bear in mind.

In other news, Angus McWhirter's disappearance (he was attacked by forces unknown on Muir Island at the end of UXM #119) has now been noted, Colleen Wing has clearly fallen hard for Cyclops (apparently the way to deal with emotionally depressed men is to give them keys to your apartment and hope for the best), Jean has been targetted by "Jason Wyngarde" (who we already know is Mastermind from his shadow", Wolverine discovers Mariko has arrived in New York, Banshee and Nightcrawler try to fix the mothballed Blackbird, Charles watches on Imperial Center as Lilandra is crowned Empress, and Black Tom and Juggernaut have hired the assasssin Arcade for a very special assignment: kill the X-Men.  Whew!

Clues

This story takes place over approximately a day.

Cyclops mentions battling the Living Monolith with Colleen Wing after they returned to the States.  The issue in which that confrontation took place is missing from the online archive, so there's no way to tell how long that story was, but let's set aside a full day for it.

Date

Monday 17^th of August, 1982.


X-Date

X+4Y+140.


Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.59 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old).


"No not threaten me, child."

Contemporary Events
The German public become the first to gain commercial access to the newly-created CD.

Mark Salling is born, best known for becoming one of those responsible for the insane hyperglycemic auto-tuned audio-visual nightmare known in terrified whispers as Glee.

Standout Line

"They live in a society more concerned about cagin' 13-year-olds for life than tryin' to give 'em a decent chance." - Luke Cage.  Not the most poetic phrasing possible, but it remains so miserably true that it's worth picking out in any case.

UXM #121: "Shoot-Out At The Stampede!"

(The Shortstuff Redemption.)

Comments

Heh.  You can tell John Bryne is "co-plotter" on this outing - within two pages we're treated to an entirely pointless run through the story so far as Cyclops "thinks back" over how the X-Men got to where they are now.  It's as clunky as ever (though mercifully shorter than usual), and made all the worse by Scott's fond recollecting taking place in the middle of breaking into Alpha Flight's supposed field HQ.  I rather doubt that's how they do it in the SAS.

Mind you, Alpha Flight aren't exactly models of professionalism either.  Vindicator's negotiation style rivals Sunfire's for petulant combativeness, Snowbird attempts to defeat a woman capable of shattering her bones with lightning or tearing her apart with a hurricane by turning into an owl (which is the size of an Alsatian, admittedly, but even so...) and Michael Twoyoungmen uses the mystical forces bequeathed by his grandfather to create a snowstorm so fierce it threatens to destroy the entire country. Even if Wolvie hadn't quit out of a desire for freedom, this sextet of worthless chumps would have driven him out of Canada faster than a Celine Dion homecoming concert.

The freak storm becomes such a problem that Storm has to almost entirely drain herself in order to sort everything out.  Northstar demonstrates his gratitude by suckerpunching her, because Northstar was and is a classless dickhead.  For a moment the fight halted by Storm's actions looks like it's going to start up again, but Wolverine chooses the most surprising moment possible (i.e. just as Cyclops is going to punch Northstar's teeth out for his indescribable cuntishness) to announce he'll go quietly in exchange for safe conduct for his teammates.  Vindicator agrees, and the Canadian government send their finest Wolverine-proof paddy wagon to pick up everyone's favourite killer midget.

The X-Men board their battered plane with a sense of dejection, but Cyclops isn't done yet.  He announces his plan to immediately return to break Logan out, only to find there's no need - Wolverine's aboard! He cut his wait out of his cage almost instantly, and snuck back to the jet before anyone else knew what had happened.

That's pretty damn cool right there.  Not just the effortless nature of his escape (Claremont still doesn't seem entirely sure whether to write the team as spirited rookies or supremely competent super-heroes, but we certainly know which way the wind is blowing regarding Wolverine), but his total disinterest in keeping his word.  It's a very unheroic thing to do, which of course is exactly why it's so right that Logan would do it.

Clues

This story takes place over the course of about an hour, and starts a few hours after the last issue ended.

We're once gain told that it's winter (see my previous post as to why that's ridiculous) and that it's been months since Vindicator last tried to abduct Wolverine, which is at least something that we can agree on.

Date

Sunday 15^th of August, 1982.


X-Date

X+4Y+138.


Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.58 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old).

"Strain was pure... murder."

Contemporary Events

Turkish-Armenian Artin Penik sets himself on fire and dies as a protest against terrorist actions by Armenian separatists.

Standout Line

"You may be a match for my human form, woman.  But can even you stand against --  giant Arctic owl!" Yes, Snowbird.  Yes she can.

UXM #120: "Wanted: Wolverine! Dead Or Alive!"

(Our friends in the North.)

Comments

Has it come at last?  After these many years of comics, have we finally arrived at Alpha Flight's first ever humiliating beatdown?

Well, not yet.  It would hardly be a two-parter if the X-Men won the first round, would it (let's forget about those Mandroids from last time, huh?).  This issue is very clearly the set-up for what is liable to be an extended fracas.

We begin back in Japan, where Wolverine is trying to say goodbye to Mariko without scaring her, and Shiro is trying to say goodbye to the X-Men without being a big old dick about it.  Both of them just about manage it, and the team board a jet back to the States.  Scott gets a chance to snuggle up to Colleen Wing (nothing like a kung-fu kicking grand-niece to the Japanese Premier to help you get over your dead crazy girlfriend/cosmic nuclear warhead), but their pass over Calgary becomes rather hazardous when an artificial blizzard strikes.

The Canadians have apparently decided they want Wolverine back again (presumably it took them this long to scrape the Canuck dollars together to give it another try), and as their opening bid in re-signing him is to have Sasquatch throw his plane into a building.  I'd think that slightly too hard of a hard-ball, but maybe he's met Logan before.

Unfortunately for Alpha Flight, Cyclops is one step ahead of them.  Storm saves the day for the thirty-seventh time by turning Shaman's blizzard against them, and the X-Men disappear into Calgary with instructions to meet beneath a tower Scott sees in the distance.

Colossus and Cyclops make it, along with the various other non-mutants from the jet.  Nightcrawler and Wolverine are less lucky, and find themselves captured.  Banshee and Storm, in defiance of all possible logic, decide to go shopping.

I am not even slightly kidding.  On the run shadowy government forces (even if that government is Canadian), and with specific instructions to rendezvous with the team so that they can get their hunted friend out of the country, Storm decides to go shopping for clothes despite having a costume that can change into anything. It might not be so bad if Colleen's "disguise" excuse held water, but beyond Storm's instant costume change ability, the girls are simply far too interested in ensuring Storm is happy with her outfit for that to be remotely convincing.  All that saves them from arrest at the hands of Vindicator is Hudson's amazingly ham-fisted attack.  Smashing through the ceiling of a shopping centre and then looking for the source of the signal does not a stealthy approach make, and Storm punishes him accordingly, with a hurricane to the chops.

Meanwhile, at the tower rendezvous, Cyclops and Colossus are getting completely antsy, what with not knowing Ororo and Sean have taken time off for retail therapy.  Scott promises that Alpha Flight will never take his teammates except over his dead body, and has Misty call in her greatest allies: the lawyers!

To be continued...

Clues

This story takes place over the course of several hours. 

Scott refers to the previous attack by "Major Maple Leaf" as taking place "last summer".  Since that happened in UXM #109, that puts the gap between UXM #103 and UXM #104 at around six months.  Further proof, were it needed, that Claremont is re-writing the laws of temporal physics as he goes.  Well, that or the X-Men took half a year off in Ireland, and Magneto was on extended sabbatical whilst, y'know, locked in Moira's box.

The Canadian Prime Minister featured in this issue is either meant to be Pierre Trudeau (the actual holder of the office at that time), or a clear homage.

Date

Sunday 15^th of August, 1982.


X-Date

X+4Y+138.


Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.56 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old).

"You spoke once of power.  Little man, you do not know the meaning of the word!"

Contemporary Events

Alex Teorell, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1955 for the discovery of the oxidation enzyme and its effects, passes away, aged 79.

Standout Line

"Mariko-chan, watashi wa Logan desu." - Wolverine.

UXM #119: "'Twas The Night Before Christmas..."

(No it fucking 'twasn't.)

Comments

The majority of this issue us an extended action scene, which as usual means there's strict limits on what can really be said.  The two primary takeaways from the team's assault on Magnum's base in the Kuril Islands are that a) the team is finally operating as a well-honed unit, and b) Moses Magnum is a goddamned idiot.

Using Nightcrawler as a teleporting homing device for an underground attack - using Cyclops and Sunfire as tunnellers - whilst Storm and Banshee run interference is a pretty good plan, especially given their usual tactics of either charging forward one at a time or just waiting around to get beaten around the head.

On the other hand, Magnum seems determined to ruin his own plan.  Halfway through effortlessly beating the mutated tar out of the X-Men, he decides he doesn't want to "waste his power", and sends the Mandroids in again. Because clearly the one element missing in them defeating the X-Men last time was the lack of lack of surprise.  Once that fails, rather than killing the X-Men immediately, he decides to sink Japan instead, because apparently getting the ransom he's put months of work into acquiring doesn't interest him anymore. I guess the "arcane" combination of earthquake, laser and suit tech that first gave him super-powers rather did a number on his brain-pan.

Just because he's clearly an idiot doesn't mean he isn't dangerous, of course, and Banshee steps up to plate to stop him.  The resulting sonic-virbation-off destroys Magnum's base and hurls him out to sea (where presumably the X-Men believe he presumably dies) , but Banshee lapses into a coma.  Everyone else escapes (due to Storm's new-found and entirely unexplained ability to carry three people at once), but Sean is laid up in hospital for more than a week and a half.  He returns to the X-Men almost entirely unable to speak, and they rather cruelly exacerbate the situation by pretenfding that it's Christmas.  For shame!

At least it's not all bad.  Storm's realisation that the team has become more like a family, and her subsequent admission to Nightcrawler about how much she loves him, is genuinely rather sweet ang quite affecting.  As the X-Men finally come to an end (at least potentially) of the string of complications and encounters that began with their abduction by Magneto, there's a real sense of peace in the air.

Except on Muir Island - where Jean is headed after her long vacation - upon which the embittered owner of a hovercraft the X-Men totalled (back in UXM# 104) comes looking for revenge, but finds only... death!

Clues

This story starts several hours after the end of the last issue, and takes place over eleven days.

According to this issue, Banshee recovers from his ordeal (at least enough to leave the hospital) on Christmas Day. This places the X-Men's initial rescue in Drake's Passage at the start of November, and their abduction by Magneto in mid-October.  This is an extension of the same problem we've come across before, of course: it relies on UXM #110 to be the only recorded adventure in eight months.

Given this, then, I don't think I have any choice but to activate my first Christmas veto.  I shall keep a separate count of X-Xmases, so as to log what has been ignored, but this particular festive season must be the first to feel my wrath.  In this context, at least.

Date

Tuesday 3^rd to Saturday 14^th of August, 1982.


X-Date

X+4Y+126 to X+4Y+137.


Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.54 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old).

"We began as... loners.  And have grown into a family."

X-Xmases

2

Contemporary Events

The UNSC votes to censure Israel over its failure to remove its troops from Lebanon.

Mexico triggers a debt crisis throughout Latin America by announcing it cannot pay its debts.

Henry Fonda passes away, aged 77.

Standout Line

"Kurt? I just wanted to tell you... that I love you very, very much." - Ororo.

UXM #117: "Psi War!"

(Exploding head syndrome.)

Comments

When last we tuned in the X-Men went to see in a beautiful pea-green boat shitty raft that would probably get them all killed, especially when they manage to fling themselves straight into a rather lethal-looking squall.  Fortunately, Storm is able to blunt the, er, storm for long enough for the team to be spotted and rescued by the Jinguchi Maru, a Japanese vessel operating under strict (and from a plotting perspective, distinctly convenient) radio silence.

Most of this issue belongs to Professor X, though.  Understandably, he's having trouble coping with the apparent death of six of his X-Men, and all the bagels and coffee in the world don't seem to be helping.  Apparently, though, an almost entirely irrelevant extended flashback clumsily shoehorned into the ongoing narrative might just do the trick!

Xavier discusses the collapse of his relationship with Moira with admirable brevity: he was drafted, she promised to wait, then left him by letter - as he lay wounded in a hospital, no less - and asked he never try to speak to her again.

Man, that's some cold shit right there.

Charlie doesn't take too well to this development (and who can blame him), and decides to bum around first Europe and then Africa for a while.  Whilst in Cairo, a young girl who he later learns is Storm steals his wallet, and whilst chasing her (and ultimately recovering his wallet), he's punched in the brain-pan by an immensely strong and deeply malevolent psychic emanation from a nearby saloon.

The wielder of this vast telepathic power is none of than Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King, long-time tormentor of the X-Men and their allies, and who gets his first showing here.  Clad in a white suit, a magenta fez, and at least one spare tyre for one of the larger species of off-road vehicles, Farouk presents his villainous bona fides to Xavier in such an offhand, callous manner that Charlie swears on the spot that this mind-blasting manatee is going down.

Indeed, Xavier seems to go pretty quickly from "you will be brought to justice" to "I will explode your skull with mind-bullets!"  Maybe that's Farouk's influence, though.  He's certainly immensely powerful.  Whether he's more powerful than Xavier is an open question, but it's certainly a close call, and he clearly has the edge in experience.  Charles uses gladitorial combat as some kind of psychic metaphor for their true battle, but that limits him in how he can fight.  Like Neo's first sparring match with Morpheus, Xavier is crippled by not understanding the difference between the laws of reality and the laws of imagination. 

Fortunately, he works this out in time, mainly because the Shadow King is overconfident enough to blurt it out whilst they clash.  Xavier responds by marshalling his strength, offering no resistance as Farouk continues to threaten, and bluster, and create new and hideous images for Charles to look upon.  After a few seconds the disparity in expenditure has reached the necessary levels, and Xavier simply burns a hole through Farouk's mind, like a sniper ignoring incoming fire as they line up and take their shot.

One evil mutant down, then.  But how many to go?  With no way to answer that question, Xavier decides to found the X-Men (stopping off briefly along the way to get his legs crushed by an alien spy, as one does).  The rest, as they say, is history...

Clues

Urgh, this is where it all starts getting complicated.

Claremont has changed his mind since last issue.  The storm tossing the X-Men around as this story begins isn't "the worst winter storm in a century", it's actually a summer storm, for which Wolverine tells the team they should be grateful.  I suspect this is less likely an attempt to change at what point the story is supposed to be taking place, and more someone pointing out to Claremont that the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere.

Confusing things still more, however, is the foliage at Xavier's mansion, which clearly shows that it's somewhere in mid-autumn right now.  But when Beast visited to check up on the suddenly silent X-Men, the foliage was still green, and that was only four weeks ago.

In other words, as far as the northern hemisphere is concerned, it's simultaneously winter and early and mid autumn.  Even if we consider early autumn as being correct, that still suggests ten months have passed since Jean became Phoenix in UXM # 101.

But how, exactly?  We know that Jean's transformation took place just after Christmas, and the X-Men fought the Juggernaut and Black Tom a week later (UXM #102-103).  They then visit Muir Island and clash with Magneto, which leads to a run of consecutive adventures that ends only after their visit to the Shi'ar galaxy (UXM #104-109).  Add in the similar run of adventures from UXM #111 and now, and the only possible explanation is that six months have gone unreported between UXM #103 and #104, and on either side of UXM #110.

We've talked about this before, but generally speaking, I tend to view any timeline that requires that a comic be moving more slowly through continuity than it is through its publication schedule, without specifically referencing it, has screwed up somewhere.  I've also mentioned the difficulty in increasing the distance between #103 and #104 any further, because a) it makes the X-Men's holiday at Cassidy Keep into a full-on sabbatical and b) it breaks the rhythm of the building Emperor D'Ken storyline too much.

There are alternatives, though.  The most obvious one is to note that we already had to assume Storm was keeping the mansion green through her powers, which makes it entirely plausible that the trees are turning brown now that she's gone.   Combine this with last issues description of the storm in the Drake Passage as being a winter one (another of our general rules: narration trumps dialogue as regards accuracy), and we can add just enough to the timeline to place this issue at the beginning of summer.  It's not ideal (and it's going to get a lot worse; we're headed for another Claremont Xmas), but it'll have to do.

(The issue itself takes place over the course of a few hours).

Date


Monday 21^st of June, 1982.


X-Date

X+4Y+83.


Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.63 standard years.

(Storm is 35 years old.)

"Even my powers have their limits."

Contemporary Events

HRH Prince William is born.

Standout Line

"On a deserted side-street, I stopped her with a gentle force bolt." Pfft.  Whatever, Charlie.  "Force bolt."  Tell that shit to the judges.