FRS #3: "This Lady Kills!"

(Reheated meal)

Comments

There's not a great deal I can say about this one; it's the third issue of the series, and clearly an instalment which only exists to get us to the four parts Marvel minis of the era apparently all needed to have. The first 15 pages simply retread the material of the second issue, with the White Queen trying to train Angelica to be more aggressive with her powers, and Angelica herself dealing with the resentment of her fellows. This reiteration would be fairly irritating under most circumstances, but compounding the problem here is that Emma is still trying to persuade Firestar (through android training replicas and the "hallucinator" bracelet) that the X-Men desire the young woman's death even after she faced them in UXM #193 and found out there were pretty much OK. Not only does this make much of this issue seem pointless, the need to have Emma explain via flashback what happened during that confrontation means by far the most exciting event of the issue isn't even in the issue, once again raising the question of what this mini-series is actually supposed to be doing beyond filling in some rather uninspiring background on a character only briefly glimpsed before.

There's exactly one moment in the first two thirds of the issue that I like; when Roulette uses one of her bad luck discs to make Angelica trip during a dance class, Empath has to ramp up the teacher's frustration with his own powers to make her explode at Firestar for her "clumsiness". It's maybe not a particularly important thing in the grand scheme of the universe, but I always appreciate the suggestion that an education professional isn't going to start screaming at one of their pupils in the middle of a class because they screwed up. Given the almost endless number of scenes in teenage-aimed stories (and beyond, frankly) in which teachers are portrayed as sadistic tormentors always seventy minutes away from a coronary incident, it's nice when a story reminds us the intersection between those who want to educate children and those who want to terrify and humiliate them is actually pretty small. Of course, this is less an impressive piece of scripting from DeFalco than it is a moment of baseline competence that's somehow ridiculously rare.

In the final third, things get a little better, as Angelica takes a trip home to be reunited with the father who essentially disowned her as a mutant last time they met. It'd be easy to have him remain a one-note bigot and for Firestar to refuse to acknowledge him from the off (which, to be clear, would be a perfectly reasonable position for her to take). Instead Angelica is delighted to see her father, and keen to jump-start their relationship. As always, having never been disowned by my family for an irreducible part of my identity (I've probably come close with my politics, but that's another matter) I can't sensibly describe this as the more "realistic" approach, but I'd characterise it as a more interesting one.

It can't last, of course, Mr Jones, like Rusty in XFC #4, has spent too much of the last seven years hating mutants to be able to process them no longer being just images on the news. His confession to Angelica's "bodyguard" that he sometimes thinks his daughter would be better dead than red mutated has a horrible ring of verisimilitude to it. And he can try all he likes to insist his problem is not one of genetic bigotry but concern for how Angelica manifests her powers, but screaming "Are you crazy, girl?" at his only daughter for the crime of touching a cat makes that a pretty difficult sale. Over the long term, this might actually have been a story with some mileage in it, though one would have hoped it could be written by someone other than a cis-het white guy.

Whilst the final third is a step up, though, it's still not a total success. Frost has only allowed Firestar to come home so one of her agents - dressed as the Star Trek IV boombox punk, for some reason - to fake an attempt on Mr Jones' life. The hope is that this immediate threat to Angelica's last known living relative will finally trigger a willingness to kill. Which is exactly what happens, leaving Emma's pseudo-punk assassin in critical condition, and the White Queen herself in high spirits. At long last Firestar finally cannot claim to have never deliberately microwaved a human's innards. After all that sweat, Frost can finally make use of Angelica Jones as a deadly assassin against... Selene?

Selene. After two issues of Frost plotting to use Jones to murder Xavier - something we already know she didn't do - we suddenly switch to a character not even mentioned in the mini until this issue, when she annoys Shaw (also missing from the first half of this series) and he announces she must be killed.

This is simply terrible writing. It's terrible writing for (at least) three reasons. First there's the fact that failing to introduce Selene until this issue makes it even more clear that this miniseries is just an afterthought to an Uncanny X-Men storyline, rather than anything with its own internal weight. Second, it essentially sets up a final issue in which Emma's plot pretty much has to fail, since there's no way Selene will be taken off the board here rather than in one of Claremont's ongoing series [1]. And third, there's nothing even approaching an attempt here to explain why Angelica's instinctive reaction to save her father will work against Selene. Is the plan to have Selene threaten Mr Jones too? How does Frost intend to get the Black Queen to cooperate? I mean, we still don't even really know why anyone expects Firestar to get the job done in the first place.  Pretty much the only thing we know about Selene is that being thrown into a lake of boiling rock doesn't actually finish her off. Why assume microwaves would do the job, even if Angelica is minded to try? And if Frost and Shaw are using Angelica as their weapon in the hopes that should she fail, the attempt can't be traced back to them, surely having her spend well over a year as an enrolled student at the Massachusetts Academy was an entirely terrible idea.

It's an understandable mistake, sure; the Hellfire Club had never heard of Selene when Frost first took charge of Firestar's education. But that just further demonstrates the structural problems here. This is a story about how Emma failed to get Angelica to murder Xavier, and then undertakes more or less the exact same approach to get her to murder Selene, with what is likely to be the same result. After a rather interesting first issue, this mini has rapidly lost my interest.

[1] Yes, no reader is going to be headed into the final issue wondering whether or not Firestar is going to end up a murderer. But knowing Jones won't kill Selene is not the same thing as knowing she won't die.

Clues

This issue takes place over six days.

It's now been a year and half since Angelica joined the academy, which puts the action here as kicking off in June 1985. This implies it's been six month since UXM #193, which seems rather a long time given Shaw is apparently only just now reading Frost's report on what happened, but this can't be helped; UXM's own timeline makes it clear months pass between Firestar's first appearance and Selene becoming the Black Queen, so this title's implication that the two events more or less follow one after the other has to be ignored.

Date

Tuesday 4^th to Sunday 9^th June 1985

X-Date

X+7Y+93 to X+7Y+98.

Contemporary Events

Josef Mengele's body is exhumed in Brazil.

Standout Line

"I sometimes think I'd rather see her dead than have her suffer through life as a mutie..." - Bart Jones. Ouch.

FRS #2: "The Players And The Pawn!"

("We are all in this together.")

Comments

Firestar issue 2 is something of a wrenching leftwards skid in certain ways. Gone is the framing of a beautiful, intelligent teenage white girl finding reasons to sulk, and in its place we have... well, OK, really it's pretty much exactly the same thing. This, we learn, is a girl who can sulk about an "awful school" which has given her her own pony.

But everything surrounding Angelica's moping has become radically different. Whereas last issue set up a standard teenage narrative into which the idea of mutantism was then dropped, this installment has something of a political taste to it, concerning itself with the practice of cutting teenagers off from the wider world in order to render them vulnerable to indoctrination. In addition to Angelica's attitude, there's a common theme between the issues of her feelings of alienation, but this time the problem stems not from the banal cruelty of teenage girls, but a deliberate policy of Emma Frost. She and Sebastian Shaw have a plan: Angelica Jones (now called Firestar for the first time) is to be forged into an undetectable assassin. Someone the Hellfire Club could use to kill anyone, at any time, an unremarkable civilian who could incinerate her targets without warning. Frost isn't educating Jones, she's grooming her, as made clear by the hilariously unsubtle metaphor of Angelica getting her own horse to groom.

The idea of young people being kept separate from a wide experience of humanity in order to radicalise then to the point where they think nothing of condemning their fellow humans is a rather hot topic right now. It's just been in the last few days, for instance, that there has been a renewed call to force teachers to act as informants on their pupils, as though teachers get remotely sufficient training (or really any at all) on how to actually spot the signs of radicalisation, and as if this inevitably cack-handed extra scrutiny would stop teenagers becoming radicalised, rather than giving them one more enemy to hate. It's hard enough to persuade fifteen year-olds that your on their side to begin with; add in the idea that you're studying for signs of deviant behaviour takes the comprehensive school one step closer to the battleground everyone always says is the last thing they want it to be (so long as avoiding it doesn't require we spend any money or treat teachers with any respect, naturally).

And it's obvious that comprehensive schools are the targets here. More to the point, Muslim pupils at comprehensive schools. Which is why it's so delightful that in this issue, the people doing the radicalising are rich arseholes from the United States, at an academy for the richest of the rich. Because if we want to talk about enclaves carved out of general society, places of learning where students are exposed to no viewpoints except for those deemed acceptable by those with a deep-seated distrust of alternative political philosophies - those whose political axioms can only survive so long as they go essentially unchallenged - it's far from obvious that teenagers being groomed in our state schools, or for that matter in Middle Eastern madrasas, are the ones who are going to cause the most damage. How many people are immiserated to the point of suicide because David Cameron and George Osborne went to Clarendon schools where poverty was no more real for them than goblins? How many bombs have deviated in air currents and killed innocent people in foreign countries because military adventurism in Africa and Asia is to some people simply what Britain is supposed to do.

Angelica isn't intended to be used as a weapon against those with power [1]. She's intended to be used as a weapon by those with power. Frost and Shaw plan for Firestar to boil their enemies from the inside out; to kill without a trace of accountability. A weapon, in other words, of the elite.

It is these nods to the dangers of sealing young people away from the experiences of pluralism [2] that makes sense of Xavier's decision here to allow the New Mutants to attend a dance at Frost's Massachusetts Academy. From whatever angle you look at this, it's a ridiculously dangerous decision. There's some dialogue about how Frost is pretty unlikely to actually literally murder any of them in front of her students (because if there's one thing life in the X-Men teaches a person, it's that a telepath is powerless to deal with someone who remembers something they don't want them to), but there's any number of malicious plots Frost might (and does) have afoot that would be served by the New Mutants' attendance even if she doesn't have them all violently massacred.  And against this risk we have Sunspot, who argues it's important they go to the dance so he can sniff for tail in a different state.

So what could possibly justify this ludicrous risk? It's Xavier's fear that without this kind of experience, the New Mutants will become too insular, too cut off from the world. He needs to risk their safety because the alternative is them never learning anything from anyone other than himself. And for all that I like to give Xavier stick about his classic white male progressive tendency to insist that all types of people should get a say so long as he can be the ultimate arbitrator of who has a point, his decision here cuts against that ugly tendency.

Of course, that choice leads to disaster, with Frost nudging Cannonball and Firestar together so Angelica can have her first kiss. Frost then sets fire to the nearby stables and kills Firestar's favourite horse, blaming the young woman's lack of control over her powers for both. Combined with the amount of time the White Queen has spent conditioning her with training sessions and dreams to fear the X-Men, Frost hopes this will secure Angelica's loyalty forever, leaving her with literally no-one else to trust. One could argue that this is a major problem with the narrative - if you want to imply the pursuit of pluralism involves a refusal to avoid risks, having such a risk go wrong could be seen as a suggestion that such a risk shouldn't have been taken.  Ultimately I think this is some distance from convincing. Partially this is because of plot structure; at most the presence of the New Mutants only very slightly helps Frost's plan. She could just as easily snagged a random teenager from down the street and have him pose as someone from Xavier's. Yes, that would result in a tiny chance of  complications if Angelica ever faced the New Mutants in the field and somehow had time amid the punching to ask whatever happened to Random McFakeguy, but this is surely some distance from a deal-breaker.

More importantly, though, this kind of approach bothers me, since it plays too much into a depressingly ubiquitous mode of thinking that says that if a refusal to avoid risks in the name of progressivism fails even once, it's evidence that it should never have been tried. That if you hire a convict despite warnings from others and they rob you, you should take it as proof that hiring convicts is something only the naive and the foolish would do. That if we let in a refugee that ends up a suicide bomber (and Gods help this country if that happens) it's proof that Katie Hopkins was right and we should have let them all drown in the ocean. That insufferably smug Irving Kristol quip about how "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality" gets cast about endlessly, a line so disgustingly self-satisfied that the Fates punished him by having his son grow up to be Bill Kristol. Not only is it absurd on its face, now more than ever - how was George W Bush mugged by reality? How was David Cameron? Donald Trump? George "Let them eat sneers" Osborne - it sets an almost impossibly high bar for success; if it is not unalloyed, then it cannot exist. This is not only self-evidently too strong a condition for success, it is transparently hypocritical. To date the left has made no headway with arguing that the near- or total failure of every bombing campaign western civilisation has embarked upon this century to achieve its aims might we should stop reaching for it as a first response. It would seem some ideas cannot survive their first failure, and others can survive nothing but. If liberals are mugged by reality, conservatives mug reality themselves and then complain it only didn't work out because their victims had too little money in their wallets.

But I've strayed off the subject. To summarise, the fact that Xavier's risk-taking has benefitted Frost does not invalidate the need to take such risks. Indeed, given how easily Frost could have achieved her ends some other way, it's entirely possible that this whole might ultimately be counted as a net positive. Alternatively, perhaps next issue is stuffed full of dialogue about how terribly Xavier has erred and that the best way to live is in a state of constant paranoia, because when has that done any harm?  Obviously, that would suck, but my point is that we shouldn't go down the route of assuming this argument is being made until it's made. Otherwise, it's not the writing at fault, it's us.

[1] Or more accurately, against those who happen share a nationality with the powerful, or those who happen to be visiting the country of those who share a nationality with the powerful. 

[2] It's interesting that Frost tells Angelica that she's helping her gain practice in using her powers defensively - the kind of defence where you microwave a person to death, naturally - because of anti-mutant sentiment in society. An important step in at least some methods of radicalisation is to persuade the victim that there is no such thing as an innocent person, that the bigotry against them evidenced by society in general means that every member of that society is equally guilty. 

Clues

Randal states here that it's been four months since Angelica joined Ms. Frost's academy. This issue takes place over approximately four weeks, and features Xavier in the mansion with the use of his legs. It also features Storm, who left for Kenya six days before this story would be set if we used the dates from the last post. I've moved everything back by a week to keep things workable.

Date

Friday 4^th April to Friday 2^nd May 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+32 to X+6Y+60.

Contemporary Events

The discovery of the AIDs virus is announced by US researchers.

Standout Line

"I didn't ask to be born a mutant!"

OK, so maybe we haven't completely moved past the "standard teenager narrative plus mutantism" model just yet...

Firestar #1: "Mark Of The Mutant!"

(The All-Consuming Fire)

Comments

Reading this book is an odd experience for me, providing me as it does with the earliest link to my own X-Men history. The very first time I ever heard of the X-Men (to the best of my fading memory) was lying on the carpet in my parent's living room, watching Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends on some Saturday morning magazine show (Saturday Superstore? Going Live? I think it was BBC1, but I'm not even sure on that). Much of what happened in the episode where Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar teamed up with the X-Men I'd long forgotten [1], but the residual memory - remembering how desperately impatient I was between the two halves of the episode, split up with what always seemed like hours between in the standard cruel manner of such morning shows - is part of what prompted me to tune in to the X-Men animated show in the early '90s, where of course I became lost forever.

So seeing Firestar in comic form - the only female character there was in the show that exposed me to the X-Men, and along with Daphne from Scooby-Doo likely almost entirely responsible for my redhead preference - is wonderfully circular for me.  And it's circular in general, of course; the Spider-Man comics were successful enough to generate a cartoon series, which in turn was successful enough to generate first a cameo for its only original main character, and then her own miniseries. These days such circularity is everywhere, with Marvel's movie sideline now having grown so massive at its parent format dwindles that is now quite clearly wagging the dog. Scuttlebutt has it in fact that sweeping changes are coming in the wake of "Secret Wars III" (it's important to be able to count, folks) which are designed to bring the Marvel Universe more in line with the world the films portray, with the X-Men therefore marginalised so the Inhumans can take their place. How true this is remains to be seen (or at least it does for me; I've still not reached SWIII in my reading).

But enough of the circumstances: what of the plot? I've been talking recently about the value of taken well-worn stories and dropping a mutant into them to see what happens. "Mark of the Mutant" is very much an example in point. The basic structure here - teenage girl starts new school, falls foul of the established dominant clique, but turns the head of the local hunk, while a father who just doesn't get it looks on helplessly - was a fully-established staple long before Tina Fey got around to skewering it in Mean Girls.

Fact. BTW, the "M" Angelica is referring to is a shape in her palm
her grandmother insists is proof of her specialness.

Throw in a beloved grandmother who dies near the end to generate extra tears, and you're all set to go.

Now, the broad strokes of this kind of narrative are problematic. The basic idea that you should be yourself and ignore bullies and people will like you is fine, I suppose (though I tend to think the idea that bullies are best ignored is generally one spouted by those not inclined to bother getting involved), but in practice it always revolves around the heroine being conventionally attractive and them being rewarded for their perseverance with a conventionally attractive boyfriend.  This boils the blood for two reasons: firstly it treats physical attractiveness in your partner as something you earn by being a good person - God forbid we suggest that being being nice you might end up with someone who is also nice - and secondly because it taps into the idea that "the bullies are only jealous" which again works as a bromide rather than a solution, and in addition directly implies certain people are better than other people, generally for reasons beyond anyone's control. I understand the impulse of my teachers to tell me I was being bullied (not in the worst way, really, when I compare it to the experience of others, but still) because they were jealous of how smart I was, but the idea that this doesn't mean being smarter than someone doesn't mean being better than them is not something my teenage brain was equipped to handle, and I don't think I've ever been able to shake this concept from my subconscious. Not fully, at least.

Firestar #1 suffers from all these problems, but since they're inherited from the narrative which mutantism is invaded, that's to be expected. What's important is how much adding the X gene to proceedings does to critique the standard set-up. Whilst exploring that, it's useful to compare the story of Angelica Jones with that of Katherine Pryde, who also features here. Kitty Pryde, I know, gets a lot of love from people, in no small part because Claremont - conditional on his addiction to garrulous melodrama - managed to write her as a fairly believable teenage girl. Which is a fair point (though as I've noted before believably irritating teenagers are still irritating teenagers), but if we're pinning any part of Kitty's popularity on her being a realistic teenager who happens to also be a mutant, we have the non-trivial problem of her also being a computer science genius. Shadowcat's story is not and never was about taking an average teenage girl and making her a mutant, it was about taking a standard genius-level superhero - Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Hanks Pym and McCoy, on and on and on - and seeing how they work as a teenager. It's not a standard narrative with added mutants, in other words, it's a standard mutant narrative with added youth and inexperience.

That's not what we have here. Angelica Jones is described by her father as very intelligent, but it doesn't seem to have translated into her grades; she's certainly a far more average kid than Kitty is, even if the rules of her narrative means she has to be pretty. But the comparison with Shadowcat raises an important point; what exactly is the difference between a teenager who's unique amongst her peers for her amazing ability at programming computers, and a teenager who's unique amongst her peers for her amazing mutant powers? Sure, the latter is impossible, but while I'm hardly an expert, it seems to me that Kitty's skills with computers are no more plausible than her ability to walk through brick walls. There's an obvious and at least slightly welcome difference in how well Angelica's power fits into the story, at least: her emerging heat powers means she's quite literally going to... well, take your pick. Get hot under the collar. Feel her blood boil. Demonstrate a fiery temper (making her a redhead always was a little on the nose, but there you go). Heat is something we associate with anger, with impatience, with frustration, which is to say with being a teenager. That horrible burning sensation all over your body at just how perverse and unfair and badly cobbled-together human life is and how nobody more than five years older than you has the slightest fucking interest in doing something about it. The all-consuming fire we had when we were young, spilling out in all directions as we raged at the world that might actually be OK if it would just listen.

To be a teenager is to be on fire forever. There's a reason it was Johnny Storm who got to be the second Human Torch, after all.

But nodding at Sue Richard's little brother just demonstrates how obvious the metaphor here is. Whatever Stan Lee's many strengths, generally speaking if he works a metaphor into one of his characters you shouldn't feel too smug about being able to spot it. In other words, comicdom's most talented hack writer ever dreamed this up in the '60s, seeing it rejigged here isn't particularly impressive. Especially when you consider that we're supposed to have another metaphor to call on here: mutantism. Long gone are the days where being a mutant was just a way of bypassing questions about how someone acquired their powers (not that that wasn't a smart idea in itself). Being a mutant is different to being super-human. This is what I mean about the value of placing mutants in standard narrative templates; it's analogous to putting minorities into narratives they've previously been excluded from. There is always much to debate on which minority groups are being and have been included in this way, how well that inclusion has been handled, and whether this seemingly endless parade of cis-het white male writers are the best people to be doing it in any case, but the attempt is still supposed to be made.

So how much use does FRS #1 make use of its built-in metaphor? Alas, almost none.  There's a point towards the end in the wake of her grandmother's death where Angelica showcases her powers to her father, who freaks out, fretting to himself that his daughter is a "freak" and a "mutie" - odds that Angelica will tell him she wishes he'd died rather than Nana by this mini's end can't be worse than one in two - but otherwise her status as a mutant is only relevant insomuch as it provides the justification for the X-Men to try and recruit her only to find Emma Frost has arrived there first. It's a MacGuffin in other words, at least in this first issue, which given we already know Firestar will sign up for the Massachusetts Academy one way or another means it doesn't convince even on the unengaging terms it sets for itself.

All of which rather underlines the central question of why we needed a Firestar miniseries. Rogue hadn't had one yet. Cyclops hadn't had one. Any of the New Mutants, beyond the one Illyana shared with Storm. Literally the only mutants to have solo miniseries at this point were Wolverine and Iceman (with Longshot being retrospectively added to the list much later). There is something delightful about giving a female mutant her own series so soon, and I don't want to ignore that. From a certain perspective the idea of saying "Iceman was on that show and got a miniseries, why can't Firestar" and willfully refusing to consider any additional context is a wonderfully maximalist position, and it should be applauded.

So maybe we can argue this series' mere existence is enough. That doesn't mean it couldn't have started better.

[1] I remembered only that Nightcrawler smelled of brimstone when he jaunted, and that there was a girl with a rubbish costume who could walk through walls. I didn't even remember the TV Thunderhawk could turn into a bear, which I guess was probably for the best, John Proudstar's run was cruel and pointless enough without being upset that there was no longer an opportunity for Logan to ride into battle on a grizzly.

Clues

This story takes place over several months, beginning on the first day of the new school year, and continuing through to mid-December. I more or less at random found a county in New Jersey and made use of the term dates to give an idea of when this story starts.

The first page tells us this story takes place before UXM #193.  Since that story takes place (according to our timeline at least) in early December, I'll put this story some way further back, during the previous winter. That puts this somewhere around the first appearance of the Hellions in New Mutants #16, which seems about right.

Date

Monday 5^th September to Monday 12^th December, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+186 to X+5Y+284.

Contemporary Events

St Kitts and Nevis becomes an independent state. New Caledonia however has the offer of independence withdrawn by France after violence erupts between French ex-pats and the indigenous Kanak population.

Standout Line

This one is really the kind of "What were they thinking?" that you have to see for yourself:

DAZ #7: "Fort Apache, The Hulk!"

(The calming powers of canines and cowardice.)

Comments

Outside the gig, all is understandably chaos.  The band and the audience both have fled the building with all possible speed.  Lance is made of sterner stuff, though, and vows to rescue Alison, a plan that lasts exactly as long as it takes for a piece of debris to almost crush him, after which he retreats.  He's done all he can do.

Meanwhile, Dazzler herself is following the Hulk's trail of devastation, still hoping she can reason with him somehow.  She finds him flinging pool tables around a student rec room, and starts preparing her lightshow.

Meanwhile, in a spacious Twin Towers office, a shadowy figure has recruited three supervillains, not by paying them, but by breaking them out of Ryker's Island.  Presumably he didn't have the resources to get into any particularly high security areas, however, because all he managed to liberate were "the Enforcers": Montana, who is quite handy with a lasso; Ox, a standard super-strong type who I doubt could beat the Hulk at a game of "point at your own face"; and the fantastically-named Fancy Dan, who looks like a '40s spiv, and can't even get down from a handstand without spilling Ox's drink.  Not, I would think, a trio to be particularly concerned about.

Still, I guess they'll have the element of surprise on their side.  I was surprised when I learned of their mission, anyway.  Shadowy McNoName has hired them to assassinate Harry S. Osgood, Dazzler's manager and... a multiple murderer?

Back at the college, Dazzler doesn't seem to able to do more than, ahem, dazzle the Hulk - he can't see well enough to beat her to death, but if anything he's causing more damage than ever now he's repeatedly being blinded. Alison catches a break when the military arrive; they don't do any better than her (even with their rather strange "grappler" tank, which reminds me of the gloriously mental array of specially-designed armoured vehicles the Americans deployed on the beaches of Europe on D-Day), but at least she gets her breath back, and Hulk has time to calm down a little and head for the science building "to think".

(The military bozos start off not believing in the Hulk as well, by the way.  Which frankly seems like a step beyond ludicrous obtuseness and into full-blown dickiness.  They're calling Thunderbird Ross and all their comrades out west liars?)

Alison sneaks into the building behind the Hulk, still determined to stop him from hurting anyone, but now that he's on his own, the Hulk seems calmer.  He even frees the dogs that are being kept in cages for experimentation, which of course makes him immediately completely awesome.  Dazzler makes the link between how she dealt with the Hulk and how the mob treated her after she stopped that mugging a few days earlier.  It's not a perfect fit, of course - I don't remember Alison threatening to take apart anyone who got in her way - but it isn't a bad idea, and explains why that scene was in there in the first place (originally I'd just assumed DeFalco didn't have enough material for two full issues, and was offering his own take on the grand old tradition of mid-arc filler).  And I suppose it's pretty hard to feel too good about sneaking up on something whilst it has its back turned, and is stroking a doggy.

The arrival of another squad of soldiers threatens to ruin everything; Dazzler gets rid of them with a burst of light, but the Hulk assumes she's back to cause more trouble.  Perhaps taking inspiration from the canine spectators, Alison rolls over, admitting that she can't possibly beat the Hulk, and that he scares the crap out of her besides.  Satisfied by her surrender, Hulk allows her to stay, and even lets her put on a soothing light show for him, which works so well that he reverts back to Bruce Banner.  Feeling sorry for him, Dazzler smuggles him off campus with her band's gear, and gives him $200 as he hits the highway once more.

That was the only money Alison had, of course, though that doesn't occur to her until she returns home to an empty fridge.  She phones Dr Paul, hoping perhaps he'll finally get around to buying him breakfast, but the prissy nurse Ms. Collins answers.  Apparently her hatred of Dazzler stems from her own romantic interest in the good doctor, and she's running interference, telling Alison that Dr Paul is never free, and Dr Paul that Alison never calls.

There are bigger concerns at present, however.  Whomever it was stalking around the building during rehearsals last issue, he shows up again during the fight with the Hulk, and now he's standing directly outside Alison's apartment, preparing to make contact, so that she can "be of use"...

Clues

Looking back at the last two issues, there's a glaring fault in the timeline as is: it's clearly term time for Gordon University.   We therefore need to add in four weeks somewhere, in order to ensure this is taking place in early January, rather than early December (indeed, Dazzler's gig could well be part of a term-starting shindig).  Looking back over the last six issues, I suspect the easiest option is to add ten days or so to each of the periods between DAZ #2 and DAZ #3, and DAZ #5 and DAZ #6.  I'll post the updated - and now hopefully finalised - 1982 timeline later today.  This also means that we're finally past UXM #143, chronologically speaking.

The issue itself starts immediately after the last one ended, and continues into the following morning.

Date

Sunday 8^th to Monday 9^th of January, 1983.

X-Date

X+4Y+274 to X+4Y+275.

Contemporary Events

American professional wrestler Chris Masters is born, who from my various brief discussions on the subject with those who know about such things, I believe is sort of a big deal.

Standout Line

"Hulk will let girl live!  If girl doesn't call Hulk "gentle" again.  Girl is stupid!"

Note to self, ladies; the only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy masturbating is catching him cuddling puppies and cooing lovingly.

DAZ #6: "The Hulk Can Be Hazardous To Your Health!"

("The music of pain.")

Comments

You know, having mocked this title for the last five issues, I think I'm starting to warm to it.  I mentioned before that Dazzler has certain similarities to Spider Man, principally the difficulty in holding down a job whilst also having to contend with super powers.  But it's becoming increasingly clear that this book twists that idea in two main ways.

First: Dazzler's quest to become a singing sensation is a horrible grind (despite both her talent and her looks) quite independently of her superpowers.  Alison's two lives are separate rather than intertwined.  More importantly, though, Dazzler is absolutely desperate to not have anything to do with superheroics.  "With mediocre power comes great desire to be left alone", as it were.  Indeed, we're two thirds of the way through this issue before Dazzler comes across anything out of the ordinary (muggers notwithstanding).  In place of mission briefings and portentous build-up, DeFalco is building up his cast of characters, all of which all belong to Dazzler's "normal life".  The portly and imperious Osgood, the dismissive Cassandra, and the preening narcissist Lance are now joined by a new backing band for Alison; guitar player Marx, bassist Hunch, and drummer Beefer.  None of them have much of in the way of character yet (barring Beefer, who's shtick seems to be he's a big man with a borderline eating disorder), but I'm glad to see them introduced for the names alone.

So, let's talk plot.  The band have only just gotten together, and are hammering out their sound, but Osgood already has a gig lined up for them.  And this one will even pay, which makes a change.  There's always a catch, of course, and in this case, it's that they've been booked as a country band, despite not one of them looking like they've so much as heard of Hank Williams.  Worse is to come, when Dazzler observes an attempted subway mugging as she makes her way home, and feels compelled to intervene.  She manages to beat the muggers (just barely, by channelling the noise made by an approaching subway train) but her fellow commuters repay her with an attempted lynching, fearing her to be a mutant.  Showbiz travails and the mutant metaphor.  And we've not even gotten to the jade juggernaut yet.

Things pick up when Alison gets home to find Dr Paul waiting for her.  Well, she thinks things have picked up, at least.  I'm less convinced of the value of discovering a man who treated you for head trauma has used your medical records to follow you home.  I guess nothing seems creepy if it's being done by someone sexy enough?  Either way, Doctor Paul doesn't have long to drug her and tie her up in the sewers enjoy a bottle of wine before his pager goes off, and he has to return to the hospital.  So now you have the difficulties inherent in a struggling singer attempting to date a characteristically busy doctor, set against the backdrop of the disco-soundtracked '80s and its attendant bigotry.  With a ludicrous backing band and pussy-hungry bodyman for comic relief.  Frankly, I'm not sure you need the superheroics on top of that, though I admit that I probably wouldn't read it.

Of course, I wouldn't be reading this, if I didn't suffer from the hideous condition known as OCDX. 

What?  Look it up, it's real.

The next day, Dazzler, Lance and the boys arrive at Gordon College for their gig.  Also on campus is a certain Doctor Bruce Banner, looking to get a cleaning job that will give him an excuse to check out the science labs and their promising genetic research.  Alas, HR is too savvy to hire a guy without a social security number, but Lance offers him ten dollars to play roadie, and Banner accepts.

Later, during Dazzler's surprisingly well-received set (apparently a cowboy hat and the odd "Yee-haw!" has carried the day), Banner breaks into the labs, only to be immediately rumbled.  The resulting chase causes Brucie to hulk out, and the perennially confused green titan gets still madder when he falls down a lift shaft, swearing vengeance against those who brought him to this (which I think is gravity, pretty much, but whatever).  His first port of call on his poorly-defined rampage of revenge proves to be the stage, where Dazzler and band are about to wrap up.

Dazzler is somewhat surprised by this particular stage invader, especially since she didn't really believe the Hulk was real in the first place (seriously, does no-one in the Marvel Universe pay any attention?).  For his part, the Hulk is somewhat unimpressed to find four people wearing the exact same kind of stupid hats sported by those who tried to kill him in Texas.  So is it the Hulk who's hazardous to your health, or just country music?  Battle, inevitably, ensues.  Dazzler gets the chance to try out generating holograms, but she hasn't gotten it down yet.  On the other hand, Hulk's battle-plan in its entirety is to "small all light", which doesn't go very well, ultimately causing an unfortunate collision with some high-voltage equipment and a hasty retreat.

Despite realising that she's outmatched, even by the standards of her recent battles, Alison chases after the Hulk to try and stop him causing any more damage.  Meanwhile, in the darkness of the auditorium, someone is watching her every move.

Clues

This story begins on a Friday, and continues until Saturday evening.  The surrounding foliage seems a bit lush for the first third of December, but whatever else this title is, it's pretty specific on the various stages of Dazzler's career, and I don't see how there could possibly have been time to get to other side of winter.

Date

Friday 10^th to Sunday 11^th of December, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+255 to X+4Y+256.

Contemporary Events

The UN's provisions for the law of the sea are agreed.

Standout Line

"Here, Cassandra, let me move this incredibly heavy speaker over here so you can have a seat." - Lance

DAZ #5: "Tell Joey I Love Him!"

(Favours for a stranger.)

Comments

Dazzler is now in the hospital, and deep in delirium.  Doom and the Enchantress assail her in her dreams, along with Nightmare, which is nothing if not appropriate.  But there's another figure there as well, someone Alison doesn't recognise, but who apparently scares her more than anyone else present.  Imagine the implications of that: a man in a nightmare so terrifying he outstrips the entity responsible for nightmares themselves whilst it stands right before you.  Whether Nightmare considers this an encroachment upon his territory, or at least a breach of professional ethics, this story does not record.

Eventually, Dazzler awakes.  This is, perhaps, not a standard hospital stay.  The nurse is a sneering Puritan: "That silver jumpsuit!  A blatant invitation to trouble" she announces huffily, because we all know a girl only has herself to blame when her sexy attire gets her jumped by megalomaniacs wanting to hurl them into another dimension.  The doctor seems more interested in knocking roller skates with Alison than keeping an eye on any head trauma (not that Dazzler minds the attention, actually).  And the woman in the next bed keeps talking in her sleep, moaning about someone called Joey, and how much she loves him.

Up north a few blocks, there's a meeting being held by various elements of the local criminal, er, element.  The flunkies of local crime boss Bo Barrigan are dividing up the loot.  Payday is interrupted, though, by the Blue Shield, a super-strong bullet-proof man who takes the hoodlum's money.  But is he returning it to it's rightful owners?  Or is he keeping it for himself?  Either way, he clearly has it in for Barrigan, and Blue Shield isn't going to stop the attacks just because Barrigan has found himself some kind of mysterious super-weapon.

By the next morning, Dazzler is feeling well enough for her doctor to try hitting on her.  His technique is nicely original, I suppose: he kicks off by regaling Alison with the story of her room-mate Anita's life (which you'd think would be a violation of something, wouldn't you?).   Joey, we learn, was her son, who narrowly escaped death during a gangland shoot-out that claimed his father's life.  Bo Barrigan, who was the target of the attack, felt guilty enough to offer Anita money to support her.  She turned him down flat, but Joey accepted instead once he came of age, and now works in Barrigan's "organisation".

Doctor Paul finishes off his tale with an offer of brunch, but Dazzler turns him down in favour of heading to her manager's and hoping she hasn't been cut adrift.  In fact, though, it's just the opposite - Osgood is so delighted by Dazzler's publicity following the UN heist, he even gives her an advance.  With her immediate financial crises alleviated, Alison is feeling charitable, and since she knows how it feels to lose family members - or be discarded by them, she recruits Beast over at Avengers Mansion to track down Anita's son.

The trace doesn't take long, but when Dazzler goes to see him, Joey is out, attending a meeting with Barrigan, who is unveiling the one-man "terror tank" he's stolen from the military, and intends to use to crush the Blue Shield. 

Except - and it this is even close to a surprise, I'd suggest you read around a bit more - Joey is the Blue Shield, determined to bring down the man indirectly responsible for getting his father killed.  Interesting that his quest to avenge his father has led to him abandoning his mother, isn't it?  And even with Dazzler stood outside his office, waiting to talk to him, he brushes her off contemptuously, thinking she's a hopeful model looking for a job.

Angry, Dazzler follows him when he leaves, but lacking transport she has to hire a taxi, which leaves her deep in a rather unpleasant area of the docks.  Alison heads off to a warehouse she saw labelled  "Barrigan", and she has just enough time to discover the terror-tank hidden within before Bo himself shows up, flanked by goons, and grabs our heroine.  She gives a good account of herself (it's radio and magnetic roller-wheel time once again), but she's clearly in trouble, so Joey, watching in the shadows, puts on his Blue Shield costume and leaps in to help out.

Frankly, Dazzler is less than impressed by the attempted rescue ("Do you always make such grand entrances?  You must be a mass of insecurities!"), especially given his suffocating patriarchal attitude (it's almost cute to hear Dazzler complain about "a male chauvinist super hero!", as though she hasn't listened to a word any male hero has ever said in her presence since she first met the X-Men).  Still, they make for an effective combination, until Bo scrambles inside his stolen weapon, and prepares to gain his revenge.

The terror tank turns out to be fairly formidable, considering it's essentially just an R2 unit with tracks and cannons. Blue Shield gets nowhere before he's unceremoniously blasted.  Dazzler tries another of the maximum intensity bursts that got her out of trouble when fighting that demon three issues earlier, but the terror tank is made of sterner stuff - the visual scanners are overloaded, but Barrigan still has heat sensors to fall back on, and now Alison is out of charge.

It's time for a desperate plan, and to trust to luck.  Dazzler lures the tank onto a jetty, gambling whatever sensors Barrigan has left won't be able to detect the surrounding water, and also that Bo will have completely forgotten that he was fighting on the waterfront.  Annoyingly, the plan works, and Barrigan drives his vehicle straight into the water.  The now-recovered Blue Shield dives in after him; crushing Bo's empire was one thing, but he can't let the man himself die.  Barrigan has become like a second father to him, he realises, which as ironies go has to be particularly painful.  Sick of fighting, Blue Shield lays the unconscious Barrigan on the jetty for the cops, and asks Dazzler why she's here in any case.

Alison tells him of Cartelli, and his dying mother, and that she came all the way out here because a woman she met once wanted a man she now can't find to hear a message: "Tell Joey I love him."

A day later, the hospital has two visitors.  A man in a trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, and a certain blue aura, arrives at Anita's bedside to talk to her about the family he once lost.  And a fiery young blond us here as well, to let a certain dashing doctor take her to dinner.  It's a happy ending for everyone.  Everyone, that is, apart from the mad nurse woman, who's none to happy at the sight of sexy Doctor Paul stepping out with Dazzler, and resolves to take matters into her own hands.

Clues

This story begins soon after DAZ #4, and continues over the next three days.

Date

Tuesday 30^th of November to Friday 3^rd of December, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+245 to X+4Y+248.

Contemporary Events

The first permanent artificial heart is implanted in a 61 year old in Utah.  He lives for sixteen weeks.

Marty Feldman passes away, aged 48.

Standout Line

"'I'll make some impression on Cartelli if I find him! 'Joey, your mother loves you, and I'm not a chippie.  Now could you lend me cabfare home?'"

DAZ #4: "Here Nightmares Reside!"

("Even Doom may err... in his choice of pawns!")

Comments

Things are looking bad for poor Ms Blaire, held hostage by a pair of Doom's robots whilst the man himself prepares to launch her into an alternate dimension to steal the second Merlin stone (I'm still manfully resisting using the obvious "Doom's Jewels" joke - I hope you're proud of me).  Doom taunts Dazzler for her silence, but she's too scared to talk.  That's quite nice, I think, an interesting change from the usual defiant snappy patter, though she quickly recovers.  Being able to speak and being able to resist are not the same thing, of course, and Alison finds herself summarily dispatched to a new universe in order to acquire Doom's desired trinket.

Over at the UN, Dazzler's management, the chief of security, and the Human Torch are all trying to piece together exactly what's happened.  No-one seems to have much of an idea, but the realisation that only one comparatively worthless jewel sets off alarm bells in Johnny Storm's head, which increase in ferocity once the dazed Dr Frazen begins ranting about Doom ruining his plans.

By this point, Dazzler has arrived at her destination, which she claims is mad enough to risk her entering "Cracker City", but to me looks like pretty much every other freaky alternate dimension Marvel have ever come up with, some kind of wibbly cosmic backdrop surrounding a single pointlessly tortuous road.  Also appearing: the obligatory demon-cloud monsters, hungry for human flesh, even though it might taste bad, or be poisonous to them, or something.  Like eggs and gnomes in Return to Oz.

Anyway, whether or not digesting her will kill these beasts isn't really a question Dazzler's interested in - she just wants to stay off the menu.  She grabs her portable radio so as to quickly soak up some sound-waves, but realises too late that she's unlikely to get particularly good reception now she's in a different universe, and realises not at all that she could just turn the volume to full and use the static for much the same effect.  The demons envelop her, much to the watching Doom's chagrin.

Not that Doom is upset she's failed to grab the stone, of course.  He was pretty sure she'd never manage that.  He is though somewhat bothered that she didn't even get so far as revealing any useful info about her enforced vacation spot before she was gobbled up by gaseous monsters.  How, he laments, is he possibly going to save the world (by taking it over, natch), when this is the quality of playing pieces he gets handed in the universal game.

(This, by the way, is one of the reasons Doom ranks amongst the greatest of Marvel villains - his utter certainty that he is humanity's only hope for survival.  He's not the only antagonist to be convinced that their schemes are actually for the benefit of the world, but I think Doom can be considered unique in that it's not the twisted nature of his endgame that's the problem (compared to turning everyone into mutants, slaughtering humanity, removing the physical realm to force us all to exist as a gestalt psychic presence, etc.) it's just the fact, obvious to all but him, that he'd be a shitty ruler.  I'll take that over any number of ludicrously warped visions of utopia.)

Doom changes the channel in disgust, and so misses Alison's last second escape, having used the demons own howls of victory to re-power herself and start dazzling.  I suppose that makes up for the radio SNAFU.  She's only just recovered from that attack when something tries to turn her own nightmares against her (specifically by manipulating her daddy issues), but she's getting her bearings now, and she shrugs off the attack and continues on.  Next up his her own negative image, who fires globes of darkness at our heroine.  But does she create them using sound, like Dazzler.  Or does she need silence?  The superhero opposites game is hard work, as Seinfeld has made abundantly clear:



In any case, Nega-Daz doesn't last long, as Alison goads her into screaming in rage, providing fuel for Dazzler's light-storm.  Sick of the failures of his constructs, the lord of the realm himself appears to do battle: Nightmare, lord of dreams and rider of flying black unicorns.  He talks a good game (albeit with ridiculous inflections), but it's no use.  By now Dazzler has become sufficiently tuned to the constant background noise of this universe (the music of these particular spheres, perhaps, of the song of Lord Nightmare's balls - I didn't promise to avoid all testicle jokes), and he eventually exchanges the Merlin stone in exchange for Alison leaving his domain.

A moment later, Doom returns Dazzler to his hidden New York base, but fighting off nightmares and Nightmare has made Alison a good deal braver than when she left.  Using one lightshow to deal with Doom's robots - they open fire on the bursts and end up totalling each other, killbot-style - Dazzler focusses another to laser intensity and obliterates both Merlin stones, pointing out she doesn't even know what the stones were for, she's just pissed off at being press-ganged by an ironclad prick.  Doom's response is a blast that leaves her close to death, but the arrival of Johnny Storm (whose been working through Doom's haunts after listening to Frazen's ranting) causes him to retreat, rather than defeat him in insufficiently humiliating circumstances.

And so Dazzler escapes, technically, though considering how horribly she is injured, will she live long enough to enjoy, or even recognise, her freedom?

Clues

This issue begins soon after the last one ended.  It's not clear how much time passes, but it's plausible this whole adventure takes place on the same night as the UNICEF concert.

Date

Tuesday 30^th of November, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+245.

Contemporary Events

The USS Thomas Edison collides with the USS Wadleigh in the South China Sea.

Standout Line

"Magnanimous Doom will answer your pathetic queries!"

They should definitely have Doom in charge of the letters pages of every Marvel comic.  Remember when Grimlock headed up the letters column in the UK Transformers comic back in the '80s?  Those were frequently more fun than the storylines themselves.

DAZ #3: "The Jewels Of Doom!"

(UNemployable.)

Comments

Dazzler's grand tour of the Marvel Universe continues this issue as she heads off to visit the Fantastic Four.  In short order, this leads to Johnny flirting, Ben complaining, and Reed trying her out against one of his inventions: the "deluminizer", which seems to be an intensely complicated machine which can almost perfectly replicate the effect of some heavy curtains. Alison gets so bored in the process that she has to put out the Torch with a fire extinguisher just for something to do.

Further time-wasting is mercifully avoided when the group learn there are plans afoot to put on display some of Doctor Doom's former jewels, that have been loaned to the UN by Prince Zorba, current ruler of Latveria after deposing Doom.

Johnny is concerned that showing off all his shiny rocks will bring Doom out of hiding, but over at the UN, it's Latveria's ambassador Doctor Frazen who's planning to half-inch the treasures, before Zorba can sell them to boost the country's flagging economy. 

As luck would have it, Dazzler's headed for the UN as well, as an opener for a UNICEF benefit gig.  Alison is rather unimpressed that the only gig Osgood has lined up for her won't actually gather her any scratch, but apparently Osgood has blown all his time hiring a cocky pretty-boy fashion reject to order Dazzler around, so there's nothing to be done.

With nothing else to do for the next three weeks but fail to pay her rent or fill her pantry, Alison decides it's high time she patches up her relationship with her father, and heads for his house.  Fortunately, he's delighted to see her.  Unfortunately, that's because he immediately assumes she's come back to start taking orders.  Things rather go downhill once that misunderstanding is rectified.

There are worse things in the world than having a authoritarian gitchimp for a father.  You could be one of Doctor Doom's lackeys, a job which has apparently become no easier now that he's been deposed (I guess he's still smarting over the loss of his diplomatic immunity).  If you're supremely lucky, interrupting him with a message will result in you being allowed to live ("Rewarded beyond your worth!", as the man puts it). It's probably just as well the economy of Latveria is as crappy as it is, otherwise you'd have to imagine Doom would have significant HR problems.  As it is, though, one of his grovelling toadies lets him know about the UN exhibition, which will include something known in hushed whispers as "the Merlin Stone".  This, suffice to say, is something Doom wants back very, very badly.

Fast forward to the day of the UNICEF concert.  Frazen is planning to use the event as cover whilst he swipes the jewels, using a bunch of heavies disguised as glam rockers to do the dirty work.  Given that his hired goons think a shiny skintight outfits and a face plastered in stars makes someone "punk", I don't hold out much hope for the success of Frazen's caper, even before you factor in Dazzler and Doom (best... buddy cop show... ever!)  The first stage of the plan is to sneak backstage, but already things go south when Alison's new minder Lance catches them in the act.  Outnumbered, he calls for help (well, he screams like a girl, but the end result is the same) and Dazzler leaves her dressing room to investigate.  The hoodlums have just enough time to register her approach ("Holy sucking spit!") and then battle is joined.

It's a pretty postmodern fracas, as well.  "Why do all my singing engagements turn into free-for-alls?" "Today's woman demands total equality -- and that includes fight scenes!"  Hardly Deadpool level, admittedly, but not bad for 1981.  Whilst Dazzler cracks wise and bang heads, however, Frazen and his remaining lickspittles have broken through to the jewels, only to find Doom got there first, and is in no mood for sharing.  With the flunkies dispatched and the pretty boy saved, Alison heads for the exhibit herself, interrupting Doom's recovery operation.

"Do not fear!" the soulless former dictator assures her, "Doom does mot make war on helpless civilians!"  Unless they're his citizens, of course, particularly if they work for him directly.  Still, he admits the only thing that stopped him from killing her was the fact he recognised her as being on the concert bill.  Maybe Doom is secretly a fan?

Yikes.  But clearly he's taken with her "noble, courageous spirit", so much so that he fills her in on what's going on: the Merlin Stone is the first in a set that will make the owner invincible, and Doom's finally worked out how to use this one to get ahold of the rest. Credit where it's due, Alison does her best to stop him, despite knowing full well she's horrifically out of her league, but it's not long before she's unconscious at Doom's feet.  Rather than killing her, though, Doom kidnaps her.  The next Merlin stone is a little difficult to reach, after all, so it really makes more sense for him to send someone else into peril after it...

Clues

This story takes place over three weeks, and can once again be placed between UXM #142 and #143.

Date

Tuesday 9^th to Tuesday 30^th of November, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+224 to X+4Y+245.

Contemporary Events

Yuri Andropov succeeds Leonid Breznhev as general secretary of the Soviet Union, following the latter's death

Thriller is released, becoming th best selling album of all time.

Anne Hathaway is born.

Standout Line

"In a building dedicated to international peace and cooperation -- yet more often used for inflammatory propaganda and calculated deceit..."  Tom DeFalco describes the UN.  Thank God inflammatory propaganda's been taken off the table, huh?

DAZ #2: "Where Demons Fear To Dwell!"

(The second most troll-filled disco I've ever seen.)

Comments

"Far out!" Dazzler tells us, this time talking to her dressing room mirror to "disguise" another round of exposition.  She's both excited and nervous to be the headline act at Numero Uno, having beaten the Enchantress - "one weird mama", or so it says here - at the audition last issue.  She's also worried that her ludicrous face-paint might be a mistake too (and yakking away about things she's already entirely aware of probably isn't helping her apply it), but I'm sure that's just stage-fright talking.  How could the liberal application of blue paint to the face possibly go wrong?

(In fairness, she does have much better hair. By which I mean - hair.)

Probably a fair amount of her panic is down to her audience - tonight will see appearances from the X-Men, most of the Avengers, and the two most pussy-centric members of the Fantastic Four. There's someone else watching, of course: the Enchantress, determined to gain her revenge and bend the upcoming dimensional rift to her own purposes. The sorceress must tread carefully, however, as unleashing too much magic will destablise the "cosmic matrix" holding open the rift.  Why, it's almost as though this is a really stupid time to mount an attack!  If only there'd been any other time to strike.

Still, better late than never, I suppose.  The Enchantress steps out on the stage and works some Asgardian mojo, causing Dazzler to begin to age at a terrifying rate.  Fortunately, Allison is able to stun her opponent by focussing her light-show through the dance hall's giant disco-ball - disco-balls being renowned for how they concentrate light, as we all learned in physics - reversing the spell and giving the dozen or so heroes in the club time to change into costume.

The Enchantress responds by summoning a horde of trolls and jotunn (wouldn't you start with that?) to murder everyone in spandex within a fifty-foot radius, and your typical Marvel throw-down kicks off.  In truth, as cynical as this gathering of Marvel heavy-hitters feels (especially two issues into the series), there's something undeniably exciting about seeing them work together as a team.  It beats the crap out of Secret Invasion, certainly.

Whilst our heroes fight against a seemingly endless mob of special guest stars from Midgard Crimestoppers ("Thou couldst receive a Community Action Trust Reward, indeed!"), Dazzler confronts the Enchantress.  "I want you, mama!".  It's too late, however; the rift is open, and something truly gargantuan is forcing its way through.  This results in what is easily the best moment in the comic (or the one before), as Dazzler sucks away every sound in the entire disco, and turns it into an unbearably bright and utterly silent explosion of light.  If this were film instead of strip, there'd be plenty of slow-motion and white-out going on, and the thought of acts of such power happening in total silence is a really cool one.

The Enchantress slinks off defeated, but Dazzler's victory seems pretty phyrric considering the state of the venue.  Fortunately, however, there was one talent scout who failed to escape before the battle heated up, and his first act following his ludicrously unlikely survival is to offer Dazzler a meeting with a potential agent, Harry Osgood.  Come Monday morning, her extensive fanbase of superheroes give her a lift to her appointment.  Not that she's made an appointment, obviously, because she's an idiot, but hanging out with the Avengers apparently works almost as well. Especially when they smash their way through Osgood's window and demand he listen to her sing (Iron Man even provides the music, which I suppose is an ability that can come in handy during strip-club power-cuts).

So it's a happy ending at last, as Osgood agrees to sign Allison up.  Given her last manager turned out to be a mobster, though, no-one should be breaking out the champagne just yet.

Clues

Much of story takes place on a Friday night, with a Monday morning coda. That places it between UXM #142 and #143.

Date

Friday 5^th to Monday 8^th of November, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+220 to X+4Y+223.

Contemporary Events

Ahmadou Ahidjo resigns as President of Camerun, citing health reasons.

A group of bishops call for a freeze of nuclear armaments in Catholic Herald Magazine.

Standout Line

"Though I strain with Herculean effort... 'tis hopeless!"  - Enchantress.  I doubt DeFalco was thinking this at the time, but I love the idea that the Enchantress would make references to entirely different pantheons to the one she's a part of, presumably because she thinks their all dicks.

Dazzler #1: "So Bright This Star"

("Disco is not dead!")

Comments

I wasn't too enthused about going through the third UXM annual just after finishing the double-length UXM #150, even though the various players involved mean that the two stories have to be considered directly sequential.

How fortunate, then, that I'm able to take a quick look at the first ever X-Men spin-off (if you don't count The Defenders, that is): Dazzler.

Of course, have I been lucky?  Or have I swapped forty pages of proven competence for twenty-four of rank embarrassment?  Let's prize open that hideous '80s nightmare of a cover and find out what lies within.

Our story opens in an alley in New York, where several dodgy-looking chunkmeisters have spilled out of a car and started chasing our heroine.  You know society has reached a new low when muggers can't even be bothered to walk to their hunting grounds.

These thugs are in for a big surprise, though: their target isn't just some average woman in a skin-tight silver jumpsuit.  No indeed.  She has magnetic wheels to turn her boots into rollerskates as well. Far out!  Which she puts on in order to fight her assailants.  Tactically questionable!  More helpfully, she has a charmingly retro transistor radio with her, that she uses to generate the sound her mutant power can change into light.  The resulting illuminations dazzle (natch) her foes, leaving them confused and disorientated.  Then she brains them with a pair of dustbin lids, which seems a bit prosaic, all things considered.  Still, she has to beat these thugs fast, or as she puts it, "Got to boogie these suckers out -- quickly". 

I find it tough to believe that anyone at any point in history would ever say that, but if they ever did, you've gotta admit, it will have been in the '80s.

Anyway, Dazzler has trouble fending off her attackers, until Spider Man swoops in to save the day.  Make a note, Marvelites.  Four pages into her own book, and the heroine needs to be rescued by a knight in spidery armour.  Far out!

Allison explains to Spidey (and thus us; which is one of the better ways of providing exposition) that the hoodlums had been hired by her managed to "persuade" her to accept a royalty percentage of zero point zero.  Dejected, she heads back to her walk-up, and proceeds to explain to no-one fucking at all what a mess she's in.  She might as well start with "As you know, empty apartment...".  At least that would lampshade the clunkiness.

So what's the deal?  She's broke, and can't go running to her father because he wants her to have some kind of, like, career, or whatever.  Oops, sorry: that's slang from the wrong decade.  Um.   Life is totally bogus and she has no green, and that's... heinous?  A lot of this is Bill and Ted.  I really can't do this.  Mind you, neither can DeFalco.  BURN!

Alison decides to call the X-Men (presumably so they can be at least tangentially linked to the book), but that doesn't make her feel any better (though it does allow time for DeFalco to make Colossus look like a total idiot, so thanks for that).  Instead, she "gentles down" with some Billy Joel, proving once again that in the '80s, no-one had any taste.

Her mind wanders back to the night her powers first manifest (exposition to the furniture is over, now begins the age of the flashback!) as she sings in a talent show halfway through a high school dance.  But tragedy strikes!  There is crashing of the gate, by a bunch of young ne'er-do-wells calling themselves the "Blazing Lords."  Man, are they unhappy they weren't allowed entrance!  Nothing baseball bat wearing leather-clad proto-hoodies want more than to watch teenage talent contests, you mark my words.  "Cripple anyone who moves!" their leader demands.  Dude.  Spike had more class when he invaded Buffy's high school festivities, and he was a goddamned punk vampire.

Far out!

This is the kind of crisis that calls for blinding every person in the room, which is just as well, because that's exactly what Alison does (fortunately, it's only temporary).  After that, she practises her singing in public and her powers in secret, until eventually she loses her father, gains a fraudster for an agent, and ends up telling her kitchen table about how miserable she is.  Man, the '80s sucked.

Or at least, it did on Midgard.  Maybe things are better in Asgard.  Let's go take a look, shall we?

Well, it's certainly not a good day to be a troll: two of them get their teeth kicked in trying to keep a wandering warrior out of the Enchantress' stronghold.  Poor bastards.  They should talk to their union.  The Enchantress herself admits to being somewhat amused by her uninvited guest, which in Asgard basically translates into "I will not casually disembowel you this very second."  Alas, he turns out to be nothing more interesting than a desperate groupie, so the Enchantress turns him into a tree.  Never meet your idols, huh?

The Enchantress has more on her mind than creating an indoor arboretum, however.  Apparently, the fabric of the universe is about to tear itself apart, offering infinite power to those who can anticipate ground zero.  Which, according to her scrying pool, is somewhere in a glitzy dance hall. 

Meanwhile, in Avengers Mansion, Beast gets sick of listening to the Wasp, and tries to swat her with his newspaper. Because, well, wouldn't you?  Beast's found something that he thinks will interest Dazzler, and it's the perfect excuse to start hanging around her window (which you might do as well, but I'd suggest not telling anyone about that).  Turns out a nearby shindig just lost their singer, and Hank figures Alison is a natural understudy.  But the Enchantress has other plans!  Having cast the spell that eliminated the original headliner, she's interested in filling the vacant spot, since this is the place where reality's gonna get all wobbly.

Tragically for her, Dazzler shows up, and beats her to the number one spot (following a brief nod to Parris' choosing of the most beautiful goddess, which is the wrong myth set, but whatever).  For reasons passing understanding, rather than turning Dazzler and the judge into fruit bats, the Enchantress stalks off into the night.

But as the curtain falls on this issu, we are left in no doubt that she will have her revenge!  Revenge! The very revenge she could have right now!  She will have it!  Later!

Far out!

Clues

This story takes place over two days.

The make-up of the team at the mansion when Dazzler calls means this story has to take place between UXM #138 and UXM #148 (Angel hasn't yet left the team), though a helpful plug for UXM #143 means we can limit the range still further.  Since Kitty didn't see the Danger Room until UXM #139, we'll have to place this issue after that one, and given Wolverine and Nightcrawler headed up to Canada early in that issue and hadn't returned by UXM #140, that doesn't give us much time to work with.

Indeed, we were forced to assume that issues #140 and #141 took place on consecutive days, so the only real option is to place this story on the morning of Halloween, just before Kitty's future self takes over her body.

Date

Sunday 31^st of October to Monday 1^st of November, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+215 to X+4Y+216.

Contemporary Events

"Come On Eileen" reaches the top of the Australian charts.

Standout Line
"Lo, within the turgid depths of its swirling waters, an image forms -- 'tis of Midgard!  I behold a glittering palace of raucous sound and dazzling color -- an establishment referred to by its patrons as... a disco!"

Or, as a bonus:

"Unpack your underoos and take a rush at this!" - Beast.

Best... chat-up line... ever.