While Wolverine was already starting to drift into focus in the Savage Land story, he became much more prominent in the final chapters of the X-Men's tour around the world. We started finding out more and more about him – including, at long last, his real name. (Which wasn't actually his real name at all, of course, but let's not split hairs.) Buuuut this information was presented to us in tantalizing bits and pieces. In contrast, Storm's we learned of Storm's entire history in the span of a couple of pages. Wolverine is an enigma, a man whose past is shrouded in mystery... even to himself, as it turned out. This would become crucial to his character. Claremont had a plan for his backstory, but it ultimately didn't work out, so for the longest time, he literally didn't have a past.
However, the first of the issues at hand actually focuses of Xavier. Claremont realized something: Professor X was pretty old. Although Stan Lee had given him an origin story (in X-Men #12), established a bit of his childhood, his stepbrother Cain Marko, that he served in the Korean War and how he lost his legs, Xavier still had a lot of history left to explore.
In issue #117, Xavier tells Lilandra a little about his past. He confirms having had a romantic relationship with Moira MacTaggart, and being drafted into the army (to serve in Korea, where the Juggernaut was born). It turns out that before being crippled by Lucifer, he was something of an adventurer. He mentions helping the people of the Greek island Kirinos – the same island where he and Lilandra vacationed a few issues ago, in fact – with some kind of problem, but he doesn't explain further. It's a very irritating loose end, and I suspect Claremont to return to it at some point, but this particular adventure has never been elaborated on as far as I know.
He also visited Cairo, where a little girl with white hair called Ororo Munroe tried to pick his pocket. There, he also had his first encounter with a supervillain – Amahl Farouk, the psychic mutant known as the Shadow King. Actually, Farouk doesn't really come across as that horrible. He seemed to be in charge of a band of thieves, but Xavier describes him as evil incarnate mostly based on bad psychic vibes. A bit more time could have been spent establishing him as a monster that needed to be stopped. Anyway, Xavier defeated him on a telepathic duel in the astral plane. This incident inspired him to create a group to battle malevolent mutants, and was therefore the direct genesis point of the X-Men.(Xavier describes looking in on Farouk's mind at the moment of his death... so of course, it should come as no surprise to you that the Shadow King later returned to fight the X-Men.)
With his story told, Lilandra offers to take Xavier with her into space once she goes to take control of the Shi'ar Empire, and he accepts. Oddly enough, this isn't played nearly as dramatically as it could have. It could have added an interesting layer of tension to the storyline: will the X-Men get home before Xavier leaves forever? Instead, they're already gone by the next issue, even though the team doesn't know it.
Meanwhile, the X-Men are picked up from the stormy sea by a Japanese ship. Six weeks later, in #118, they arrive in Japan. There's some vague hand-waving about it being a government ship that doesn't allow them to get into contact with anyone by radio.
Trouble is brewing in Japan. The country is besieged by earthquakes (out of ordinary earthquakes, that is) and the X-Men arrive just in time to help out with a firestorm in the city of Agarashima. We also find out that Wolverine can read the Japanese language. Earlier at sea, he implied some vast geographic knowledge as well. Like I said, a mystery man.
Obviously, you can't have an issue of X-Men set in Japan without a guest appearance by Sunfire. To help them with their current predicament of being stuck in a foreign country without passports or hope, they decide to pay a visit to the Yashida mansion. There, they find a whole slew of government officials and agents gathered to deal with a crisis. Sunfire is a dick (I can't stress this enough) and insists that he alone will protect Japan. The word “gaijin” is, surprisingly, not used. However, the X-Men are involved in part thanks to the efforts of another pair of surprise guest starts: Jean's roommate Misty Knight and her partner Colleen Wing.
Misty and Collen have been brought in as special agents to help deal with the earthquake problem. As I mentioned before, they are actually “superheroes” by their own rights. They usually work with the Heroes for Hire, but they're also known as the Daughters of the Dragon on their own. To add some dramatic irony to the mix, Misty briefly saw Jean at the airport before setting off for Japan, where the latter failed to tell her that the X-Men are supposedly dead. By the way, Colleen Wing is actually part-Japanese; her great-uncle is one of the government officials present. (This actually presents a small plot hole.) This is Colleen's first appearance in X-Men, and it's interesting to note that her reaction upon meeting Cyclops is “What a hunk!” They would later be engaged in a brief romance.
Another important event that takes place is the meeting of Wolverine and Shiro's sister Mariko Yashida. They seem to bond immediately, and he almost tells her his name before being interrupted. (Mariko claims Shiro has often spoken of the X-Men with respect. That doesn't sound very much like him, really. I can't quite tell if this is an inconsistency, or if it's supposed to imply that Sunfire isn't quite as arrogant a douche as he seems to be.)
The Yashida mansion suffers another freak earthquake, and then an attack by a squadron of Mandroids – power armor-wearing mercenaries who primarily serve as villains to the Avengers. The X-Men fight them off. Colossus is embarrassed by how easily he's taken out of the fight, while Wolverine first mentions that his claws are made of adamantium.
At this point, the mastermind behind the artificial earthquakes gets into contact to make his demands – it's Moses Magnum, master of the Magnum Force! Very 70s, isn't it? Magnum had previously faced off against Spider-Man/The Punisher and Power Man. Although he still has his powersuit giving him super-strength and invulnerability, he now also has actual superpowers – creating seismic disruptions, similar to the later X-Villain Avalanche – which he got by falling into the center of the Earth. Be on the lookout for a retcon on how exactly he got those powers, by the way.
Magnum demands to be made absolute ruler of Japan in 24 hours, lest he sink the entire country. I see a lot of potential in this plan. Blackmail on an epic scale seems like a pretty cool gimmick for a supervillain. The problem here is the nature of his demands. Wanting to become the absolute ruler of a nation is just a bit tacky. At least the classic goal of world domination has a certain scope to it; conquering a single nation is a a step down, but just as purposeless. Why doesn't he just ask for money or something?
In #119, after being briefed by Colleen's great-uncle Kenji Osama (although his name should actually be 'Osawa'), the X-Men and Sunfire set out to attack Magnum's island fortress. I quite like how the assault is handled. It feels very effectively tactical, what with Nightcrawler infiltrating the base ahead of the others, and Storm and Banshee creating a diversion from the air. The others, meanwhile, tunnel their way in from underground. Once inside, they get into a fight with Magnum personally, while Colossus takes on several Mandroids by himself.
Magnum escapes and tries to go through with destroying Japan, but Banshee is on hand to foil him by neutralizing his energy output with his own vibrations from his sonic powers. Japan is saved, but Sean almost dies from the effort. He spends ten days in a coma and loses his voice. Although it's not stated outright right away, he has indeed lost his powers, and this is the end of his first “term of service” with the X-Men.
Sean wakes up around Christmas, so the X-Men greet him with a private Christmas party at the Yashida mansion. It's really quite a touching scene – Peter even worries that the team is becoming more of a family to him than his real family.
Meanwhile, Jean has decided to take some time off and visit his friends at Muir Island. She gets together with Moira, Alex and Lorna, and Jamie Madrox in Edinburgh to see the sights. None of them aware that evil are afoot at the island. Remember that mysterious door labeled “Mutant X” from X-Men #104? Well, it seems to xenophobic old man who tried to cheat the team out of their money in that same issue (Angus MacWhirter) is breaking into the facility to wreck the place as revenge. But alas, payback is a bitch, so he falls victim to Mutant X. “A life ends. A nightmare is born.” And the actual Mutant X storyline is still several months away. Claremont really wanted to build up to that one.
Issue #120 marks the return of Weapon Alpha (from #109) and the introduction of Alpha Flight. Although they're the antagonists of the story, they're still “Canada's premiere superhero team” and not particularly villainous. In fact, they've had several series of their own over the years, the first of which started in 1983. We'll be looking at each of them as well, since Alpha Flight largely falls under the umbrella of the X-Books.
The members of Alpha Flight:
Weapon Alpha (James Hudson), who befriended Wolverine along with his wife Heather when they found him alone in the wilderness. He's given a superior physiology by a technological suit.
Northstar and Aurora (Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie Beaubier), a pair of twins, an Olympic ski champion and a teacher respectively, with super speed, flight and energy projection powers. Northstar later became quite, um, notable in superhero comics.
Shaman (Michael Twoyoungmen). A... shaman. Also a medical doctor. He does whatever shamans do.
Snowbird (Anne McKenzie), a semi-divine spirit who can transform into any arctic animal. Because it's cold up there, get it?
Sasquatch (Walter Langkowski), professor and biophysics capable of turning into a giant hairy monster. He's rather similar to Beast, isn't he?
Alpha Flight makes another attempt to capture Wolverine, by diverting the plane the X-Men's flight from Japan to the US. Before they get on the plane in Japan, Wolverine sneaks off to privately say goodbye to Mariko, and finally reveals what the readers had been waiting for for years – his name, “Logan”. Misty and Colleen go along with the X-Men, and the latter bonds with Scott a bit during the flight. Alpha Flight has a weather manipulator on their own – Shaman – and Storm has to let him reroute the plane to Calgary or risk destroying it.
As soon as the X-Men touch down, Sasquatch pretty much destroys the plane, risking the lives of dozens of passengers, and comes across as a huge douche for not particularly caring about it. The thing is, I'm not sure whether that was the intention. However, by this point, the X-Men have slipped away from the airstrip and smuggled out the civilians as well. They split up to get to the city separately; Weapon Alpha gets into a confrontation with Storm in a department store, and more importantly, Nightcrawler and Wolverine are both captured.
In #121, the X-Men (leaving behind Misty, Colleen and Sean as well) track down Alpha Flight to the Calgary Stampede for a final showdown. Negotiations break down due to a classic (King Arthur snake) scenario: Colossus gets the impression that Northstar is going to attack, and strikes first.
For once, Alpha Flight comes off as fairly respectable in the battle – perhaps even too respectable. It's a bit embarrassing how they manage to trounce the X-Men. Worst of all, Shaman makes the inane claim that they're superior because they have team work – as if learning to fight as a team hadn't been a plot point just a short while ago, in X-Men #113. True, there they had Jean to keep them telepathically connected, but I refuse to believe that they still haven't managed to become an effective fighting unit.
Storm successfully defeats Snowbird in a dogfight above the stadium, and is then called upon to save everyone's asses. It seems Shaman's magical meddling has messed up the weather significantly, so Storm needs to defuse a gigantic storm above the city. Northstar thanks her with a punch to the head, but before the situation can escalate further, Wolverine gives himself up. He says he doesn't want his friends to suffer because of him. That little ellipse before the word “friends” really makes all the difference here. With this scene, Wolverine shows himself to have grown immeasurably since his introduction.
And his teammates, who could at first barely stand him, can't stand the idea of letting him be used by the Canadian government. They're escorted out of the country, but the second their plane gets across the boarder, they unanimously decide that they have to go back and rescue him. What follows is pure awesome: Wolverine doesn't need them to rescue him, since he just broke out on his own. He was chilling in the cockpit all along.
Perhaps this slightly cheapens Logan's earlier sacrifice, and perhaps it doesn't quite make sense how the Canadians expected that supposedly unbreakable cage to hold him, but the scene is just too cool to care about those things, not just because of Wolverine's accomplishment, but also his irreverent attitude about the whole thing after the fact.
Now, after eleven issues and several in-story months, the X-Men can finally return home.
Overall, I'm not too thrilled with Alpha Flight's first appearance. Conceptually, they're not too bad. Even if they have some slightly stereotypical members, they all seem interesting enough that the reader naturally wants to know more about them. There's some actual characterization crammed in for some of them during the fight scenes, highlighting that they're not just blank slates and that Claremont and Byrne had created them with personalities in mind.
However, they're really not very sympathetic as of yet. The team comes off looking as both a bit incompetent and slightly malicious. Of course, one or both of the parties coming across as combative jerks is very common when superheroes clash, but it's still a crappy first impression to leave. The reader is left feeling sore that these guys manage to do so well against the protagonists we know and love. At least Weapon Alpha's individual incompetence seems to have been intentional, since it's implied that he was the scientist who put the team together, and only ended up in a leadership position because Wolverine took off. Considering one of their creators was Canadian, I'm surprised Alpha Flight wasn't cast in a more positive light. Then again, this is appropriate in its own twisted way: John Byrne has a reputation of being one of the biggest douches in the comic book business.
Index of Happenings:
Deaths: 6. Minor: Shadow King bites it in a flashback and Moses Magnum gets an implicit death.
Resurrections: 4.
Depowered: 1. Banshee.
Revamps: 1.
Team: eight.
Overall: sixteen.
Final word: Did you know? Ororo is immune to the cold.
Next time: Arcade and the Murderworld! Also, a surprise guest appearance by the PROLETARIAN, Workers' Hero of the Soviet Union!
No comments:
Post a Comment