X1F #4 "The Mind Of Jean Grey"

(A dream of Jeannie's.)

Comments

Let's take a break from Claremont's record-breaking UXM run, and finish off X-Men: First Class Finals.  When last we checked in, those team members furnished with Y chromosomes were headed into Marvel Girl's subconscious, in an effort to ascertain why she was manifesting previous foes all over the place.

Most of this issue, then, takes place within the mind of Jean Grey (as indeed the title helpfully reminds us).  Xavier's rather worried by Jean's recent habit of pulling people into her dreamscape, and given the books we've been looking at this month, he clearly has a point. 

Their first stop is to review their last conversation with Jean before she passed out (explaining the strange blue-dialogue X-Men shades we saw last issue).  The team try to piece together the puzzle - creating Juggernaut to floor Frederick makes some sense, but what about the Magneto junkpile, and why is she letting herself get punched around by her own illusions - but their brainstorming is interrupted by the Hulk.

Fortunately, Jean is there to step up to the plate, single-handedly juggling the Hulk ("HULK NOT LIKE!") until she gets bored and tosses him away.  It's clear at this point that Jean is somewhat selectively editing her memories (how like a woman, amirite?), casting herself as the team's biggest gun and last line of defence. One moment Cyttorak turns up from nowhere and gets clobbered by our redhead, the next the team are back on Monster Island whilst Jean defeats Mastermind in a psychic duel.  The team fly after her (being inside a dream is not devoid of advantages) and finds her defeating angry hippos in the middle of the Florida everglades, something you'd ironically have to be from Florida to not realise is ridiculous.

Xavier tries to lecture Jean into snapping out of her revenge-a-thon, but doesn't get very far.  Scott manages where his teacher failed, though, by just stepping forward and engaging smooching.  "The power of luvvv", as Warren notes.  Usually that kind of stuff irritates me, but I can see how kissy-time would have more of an effect than the Professor's droning.

The only problem is that Jean's subconscious ain't exactly playing ball right now.  It responds to Jean starting to recover her wits by pitting the team against every foe they've faced throughout the X1C run, with Magneto and Toad thrown in for good measure.  Jean manages to dispel the slavering hordes, but her hind-brain has one more punch left to throw: the car that killed Jean's friend when they were ten years old.

Jean concludes that this incident, which caused a flare in Jean's nascent powers that revealed her to the Professor, has been simmering in her subconscious ever since, creating a feedback loop somewhere in her synapses that she won't be able to save her friends when they're in danger.  It's a nice idea, and ties up the miniseries, but I can't help wondering why this has happened now, after 66 issues of UXM and 24 of X1C.  Obviously, the reason why it couldn't happen sooner is clear enough, but I'm not sure stories get a pass for happening too late merely because no-one thought of it when it would have made sense. 

Of course, X1C was never going to be an easy title to wrap up, by it's very nature - not just the "untold tales" format, but the book's unwillingness to introduce it's own rogue's gallery.  Again, though, I'd say that would more suggest that First Class Finals wasn't a great idea from the outset.  Still, whilst the lightweight nature of Parker's approach to the series might stretch a little thin over a four part story, it's still nice and breezy, and with Parker's trademark charmingly irreverent dialogue.  Indeed, though this seres as a whole has been slightly sub-par, it's really only the final page that causes any real problems; a dashed set-up for  Giant Size X-Men that makes no sense in context and tarnishes the book's previously excellent record in avoiding contradicting the events of its parent title.

Clues

Judging by the colour of the sky at various points in this issue, this story begins immediately after X1F #3, and concludes on the following day.

The issue ends with the team heading to Krakoa, an hour after they graduate.  Obviously, this is impossible, both because there's no sign of Havok and Polaris being with them, and, more importantly, Hank was still pink and comparatively hairless earlier in the day.

Date

Friday 4^th to Saturday 5^th of September, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+157 to X+2Y+158.

Contemporary Events

The world's longest highway tunnel is opened in Switzerland.

Standout Line

"I have a feeling my mind isn't this big." - Bobby.

X1F #3: "Higher Learning"

(Graduation blues.)

Comments

This is definitely getting interesting.  The initial fight with the "ghost of Magneto" is entertaining enough (especially Beast's increasingly ludicrous attempts to hypothesise on what might be going on), but when the X-Men start watching their own conversations whilst they're having them, I can safely be considered intrigued (it's a nice way to distract from a fairly long talky scene, as well).

Presumably the "post-game analysis" (as Cyclops would say) has something to do with Scott's conclusion that Jean is to blame for the current influx of the X-Men's greatest hits (she's certainly conspicuous by her absence).   That in turn would suggest her subconscious is acting up over the chance the X-Men will split up.  But then why does "Juggernaut" show up just after the gang decide they're going to stick together?

Then again, maybe she's just experience the same overwhelming sense of futility that so many of were hit by upon becoming graduands.  I certainly remember being distinctly disconsolate at the realisation that four of the most busy, exciting, confusion, heart-breaking and important years of my life had boiled down to a single number.  God only knows what I'd have smashed to bits had I access to telekinetic powers.  Or what would have crawled out of my subconscious.  I can think of at least one member of the maths department whose lectures could be unfavourably compared to having Juggernaut punch you in the gonads, and I'm sure there are readers of this blog who can back me up on that. 

Who are the real heroes, is what I'm saying.

Clues

This issue takes place over a single day, if we ignore the narration from the blue-bubbled future X-Men.  Also, Bobby mentions that it is not yet winter.

Date

Friday 4^th September, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+157.

Contemporary Events

Tropical storm Danielle forms in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Standout Line

"Perhaps his essence has become spread throughout space and he's attempting to... rebuild himself... now a purely electromagnetic being?"
"That explanation takes too long to say.  Don't like it." - Beast and Angel.

X1F #2: "Beginning Of The End"

(Ghosts of X-Men's past.)

Comments

Yay! It's Froderick! (Sorry, force of habit).  It's good to have him back, for two reasons. First, because one of the definite weaknesses of the previous First Class volumes was a lack of original characters - Frederick is pretty much the only one I can remember, really - and second, because it removes the idea that Cyclops killed someone as a teenager and never mentioned it again.

Speaking of Frederick, and his eighteen months spent tunnelling out of the collapsed mine-shaft, Jean is charmingly concerned with the fate of all the Moloids Frederick chowed down on, given that in the two times they've met, the Moloids tried to either a) steal their food, or b) kill them all.  I guess that's what makes her a superhero.  I say fuck 'em.

But Frederick turns out to be just a bit part in this particular scenario, as he finds himself on the crappy end of a patented Juggernaut knuckle sandwich.  Which is pleasingly baffling, especially since he seems to have faded out of Warren's memory almost instantly.

Indeed, there are several strange factors at work here.  How likely is it that they'd find a new mutant in exactly the same quarry as the one where Jean and the Invisible Woman fought the Mad Thinker's rock creatures ("Going into caves almost never works out well for us")?  And how does the giant junk Magneto fit in to all of this?

Clearly we're focusing on the threats of the past. Last issue we had that rundown of a whole bunch of previous villains, and now we've got Frederick, Juggernaut and (kind of) Magneto.  But what's the connection?  I have to say, I'm enjoying this immensely - it's got the same level of fun lines and general tomfoolery of the previous two First Class volumes, but now they're tied in to a much more cohesive and weighty storyline.  Shame there's only two issues left, really.

Just as a continuity note: there's a nice nod here to Hank signing on to work for the Brand Corporation, which is of course where he manages to turn himself into the bouncin' blue Beast in Amazing Tales #11.  I'll probably take a look at that sequence of issues (there are seven or so, as I recall), once we've gotten through First Class Finals and maybe a few more Hidden Years.

Clues

Frederick claims he was trapped underground for a year and a half, and then spent some time studying the X-Men upon his return to the surface.  Since our current time line puts the time gap as actually being fourteen months, we might need to do a little re-jigging.  "A year and a half!" isn't the most accurate of descriptors, and one can certainly see why the time spent being trapped underground is something you'd be willing to exaggerate, but we should probably move this issue (and the one before it) a little further into the future, especially since it will give us more time to play with for the (currently serialised) XHY.

We'll therefore add on a further two months to the timeline.

Date

Friday 4^th September, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+157.

Contemporary Events

Shooting begins on The Great Muppet Caper.

Standout Line

"See, most people think super heroes live exciting lives every minute.  They never see those times when we just walk into an empty cave."

X1F #1: "Senioritis"

(Cramming sessions.)

Comments

We've clearly leaped through time by some considerable amount for this miniseries - this issue deals with the X-Men following Xavier's return from the dead.  It's hard to know exactly what to make of this issue, since it's split fairly evenly between set-up and nostalgia.

As far as the former is concerned, it's clear Xavier is training them up for something big, and that Jean's already expanding psychic powers are now increasing still faster in response.  Presumably, this is all leading up to the X-Men's "graduation" (hence the title of the series, and the issue).  Of course, as I've mentioned, the X-Men graduated in UXM #7, but that never made a lick of sense (Bobby was at most seventeen at the time, and almost certainly sixteen).  This is a far more sensible time for their graduation, but anyone particularly dedicated to canon like me, for instance) can easily just assume the X-Men are about to finish the "postgraduate work" the original series mentioned from time to time.

The nostalgia quotient is filled by an impressively/unbearably long (depending on your perspective) parade of the villains of yesteryear.  Grotesk and Diamond Jack make appearances as danger room droids, along with the more commonly seen Sentinels ("Now why don't you go off and attack the Sun, because that's what causes mutations sometimes"), and a whole host of misanthropes show up in Jean's dreamscape.  Even Kukulcan and the Locust aren't left out, despite being two of Roy Thomas' very worst ideas, which in condemnation terms is not dissimilar to listing Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi as two of the very worst nuclear disasters. 

Still, it made me grin. Whether there's more here than a quick giggle, though, is something I'll have to wait and see about.

Clues

Hmm.  This is potentially tricky.  The dialogue in this issue makes it clear that this is set after UXM #66, which means we're in the same "no-man's land" currently being inhabited by XHY.  Moreover, at least from the six issues I've read so far of that latter comic, it's difficult in the extreme to see how these stories are going to be reconciled.  It's briefly mentioned that Alex has left, which is helpful, but even so, with Iceman and Angel in the Antarctic Circle and the rest of the team in Kenya (according to XHY), it's not easy to see how all five of the original X-Men could be chillin' in Westchester whilst Xavier is visiting Moira.

In the absence of a better strategy, then, we'll assume that the X-Men regrouped at the mansion exactly one week after the events of XHY #1-6.  Time will tell (it always does) if this is a reasonable approximation.

Beast mentions that it's been "a couple of years" since the events of X1C #3, in which the team was dragged into a Cerebro feedback loop, but that holds with us placing that story in September 1978.

Date

Friday 4^th July, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+95.

Contemporary Events

Over half a million people gather at the Washington Monument to watch the Beach Boys in concert.

Standout Line

"It's also about uniformity -- that's why they're called uniforms!" Yeah, I've always wondered about that. The dress code around Xavier's is so lax it always makes those few people willing to toe the line just look like chumps.  Still, at least they've stopped letting Jean design their costumes.