Mutant X is one of those stories. You know what I mean – a classic.
When the time came to reinterpret the X-Men mythos twenty years later, one of the first story arcs in Ultimate X-Men was a retelling of Mutant X. In fact, it arguably got one of the most faithful reinterpretations in the new series. Aside from the fact that it's a damn good story, the general affection for it is probably due to two facts: the figure of Proteus (whom I'll discuss more at the end) and the concision of the arc. Despite the laborious, long-reaching setup, the story itself is contained neatly in just four issues. This distinguished it among Claremont's web of plots, and made it stand out more than, say, the Phoenix Saga, which was composed of a lot of separate elements and was told over a longer period of time.
#125 is a rather busy issue. Its charged with bringing together two plotlines (the X-Men and Jean on Muir Island), but also peppers the story with some interludes that set up fresh subplots.
The story opens with Moira running some tests on Jean in her research facility. She's plainly scared of just how powerful the Phoenix is, even though it's explained that saving the universe in X-Men #108 temporarily burned out much of her power. Alex, Lorna and Jaime Madrox are still all on Muir Island as well, but they don't get to do much more than play off of Jean with a line of dialogue or two.
Meanwhile, the corpse of Angus MacWhirter is skulking around, waiting to strike. As is later explained, MacWhirter was killed when Mutant X escaped from his enclosure and possessed him, destroying his mind. Since then, he's been in hiding and waiting for an opportunity to take Jean's body as well, since that would give him ultimate power. He soon makes his move on her, but not before Moira decides to check up on Mutant X's holding area and discovers that he's escaped.
Back in the States, the X-Men are once again training in the Danger Room. Cyclops is not at all pleased with the team's performance, which pisses off Wolverine. Later on, Beast pays a visit to the Mansion and the team finally finds out that he and Jean were not killed. If you think about it, the X-Men really should have heard about Hank hanging around with the Avengers. They are public figures, after all, and I don't believe that the X-Men could be so cut off from the rest of the world. But whatever, it's not a big deal. After Hank fillms them in on everything, the X-Men decide to head for Muir Island immediately. They call ahead, but while they're on the phone with Lorna, Mutant X attacks and the line goes dead. Cliiiiffhanger!
Other things going on this issue:
We get a single-page interlude of Magneto on Asteroid M. A glitch causes his computer to show an image of his deceased wife, which causes him to delete the picture and lament on how painful the memory is for him. Even though the scene ends with him promising the world would tremble before his power, this is the exact moment that Magneto's character started to shift in a more sympathetic direction. A historic moment, really.
We also get to see what Jason Wyngarde, the man Jean met in #122, is up to. Wyngrade's narration reveals that he's been shadowing Jean under different guises. He seems to be working for something called the Hellfire Club, and is also surreptitiously giving Jean strange visions.
On Imperial Center, Xavier is fairly bored and unhappy because Lilandra is busy with affairs of the state. When he looks up the exact details of what happened with the M'Kraan Crystal, he decides he has to return to Earth and find Jean.
The next issue starts with the X-Men, sans Beast, arriving on Muir Island. Hank was written out rather lazily. The conceit is that he wasn't there when Scott made the call and the X-Men had to leave in a hurry. He left to return his Avengers Quinjet to his teammates before flying to Muir Island with the X-Men – but how was he supposed to get from Avengers Mansion to the X-Mansion after taking back the plane? Was he just going to take a taxi? Were the X-Men supposed to pick him up with the Blackbird? I'm sure they could have done that even afterwards.
(Incidentally, Logan gives the time between leaving New York and arriving on the island as “barely an hour”. It's well over 5,000 kilometers from New York to northern Scotland. That means the Blackbird had to fly at, very roughly, a speed of 4,200 kilometers per hour. The real Lockheed SR-71's highest recorded speed is 3529.6 km/h, or 2193.2 mph – and the X-Men did it without any kind of protective suits. And while we're nitpicking about this... There's a brief scene of the Blackbird disturbing a fishing boat by flying past them at a low altitude. I'm not expert, but wouldn't they be faster by flying higher in the atmosphere? Not that this is a big deal. I wouldn't demand a perfectly realistic portrayal of the mechanics of flight.)
The X-Men separately infiltrate the research complex. Nightcrawler finds Lorna unconscious but alive, and the now genuinely dead corpse of MacWhirter near her. Then he and Colossus confront Havok and an obviously injured Multiple Man. Meanwhile, Cyclops and Storm find Moira stalking around with a gun. Cyclops rushes off and finds Jean just as she's waking from unconsciousness, mistaking him for Jason Wyngarde.
After determining that Mutant X is gone, everybody gathers up and pieces together what happened. It seems Mutant X found Jean too powerful a target, so he went after Lorna instead. Before he could possess her, one of Jaime's duplicates intervened, so Mutant X took him as his body and took off. (It's not ultimately harmful for Jaime, but enough of a shock that he has to stick behind for the rest of the search.) He isn't just stealing bodies because he likes it; his presence burns through them and he needs to switch to survive. Moira reveals to the others that Mutant X is her son. In a nearby town (Stornoway, to be exact), Mutant X comes across Jason Wyngarde, but finds the man has some kind of psychic shield that prevents him from taking his body, so he takes a random guy from the streets. I don't like the chance meeting with Wyngarde very much. It feels way too contrived and random.
Mutant X is Cerebro-invisible, so the X-Men have to split up and scour the countryside. While they do this, Wyngarde gives Jean an illusion of herself murderously hunting down a human being while in historic attire. Also, she has a horse called “Satan”. The Hellfire Club is not exactly subtle.
It's Nightcrawler and Wolverine who eventually find Mutant X – now already in the body of a policeman. He attempts to take Wolverine's body, but is repelled by the adamantium in his bones. Metal is his weakness. But even so, Logan and Kurt are no match for him once he utilizes his real power: reality manipulation. Reality manipulation is one of the ultimate powers in superhero comics; you really know you're in serious shit when you're facing someone who can make things happen by thinking of it. Although he's still inexperienced with his powers, he plays around with Logan and Kurt by shattering their surroundings and ripping apart their bodies, then putting them back together to do something else. It's a traumatic experience for both of them, especially Wolverine, whose enhanced senses make it particularly vivid for him.
Mutant X takes the name Proteus, after a Greek god of the seas. How he knows the mythological connotations is hard to say, considering he grew up in a metal box. Presumably, he found it out from the brain of one of the people whose body he stole. Interestingly, Proteus's real name isn't mentioned in the story. I believe it's only revealed to be "Kevin" in the Classic X-Men reprint of the story (#36). In any case, Storm arrives to help Wolverine and Nightcrawler out, but is ultimately as helpless against him as her teammates.
At the beginning of the next issue, the group is saved unexpectedly by none other than Moira MacTaggert, wielding a sniper rifle. She misses Proteus due to the winds Storm is creating, but it's enough to scare him off. Moira is going all out here, she's trying to kill him, and almost pulls it off, if not for Cyclops's arrival and intervention. Moira is so focused that she even knocks Scott out to get her way. She is responsible for Mutant X, and this is how she plans to redeem herself.
Later on, the X-Men all gather up on the countryside to have some lunch and lick their wounds. What follows is a thing of magic.
Scott, noticing how shaken up Kurt and Logan are, and annoyed with himself for allowing an untrained civilian take his ass out, decides to test his team. He picks a fight with Logan, gets him literally so mad that he's willing to kill. While he's busy kicking around a berserker Wolverine, he involves both Nightcrawler and Storm in the fight – and schools all three. This is one of the top 5 scenes Cyclops fanboys like me always cite to gush about what a badass he is. And what's best about it that the moment isn't so over the top that it becomes unbelievable. Scott isn't a powerhouse and gives up while he's still on top. His tactical fighting makes the scenario seem plausible, and his opponents don't come across as failures either. (Scott's narration makes it very clear just how formidable an opponent Logan is.) Wolverine even finds a newfound respect for his boss for realizing the problem and taking a chance to set them right. And the kicker is that this isn't even the most famous case of Cyclops beating up his team.
Meanwhile, Moira has a pretty good idea where Proteus will be heading, and is driving there to cut him off. She goes to see her husband Joe in Edinburgh, and warns him of the danger. Her husband is an unpleasant figure to say the least – a Member of Parliament who married her for his political image and refuses her a divorce. Moira didn't even tell him about his son, and for good reason. It's implied that Proteus is a result of marital rape. I don't think anyone feels particularly bad when Proteus arrives and annihilates his ass.
The X-Men still can't find Proteus, but Jean can easily use her telepathy to find Moira. The whole gang heads after them to Edinburgh. By the time they arrive, Proteus – in Joe MacTaggart's body – has caught Moira and is terrorizing the city. The team is left facing their most dangerous enemy so far.
#128 consists solely of the conflict between the X-Men and Proteus.
The fun thing about reality warpers is that they usually make for interesting and visually engaging fight sequences. Proteus liquefies the city around him, shifts around gravity so his opponents fall sideways, transforms walls into swarms of bees to attack people and distract the superheroes. The X-Men have to get the innocent civilians out of the way in first order. It doesn't help that Proteus has Moira hostage. Really, I wish the narrative would have focused more on how vividly horrible this experience must have been for her. The whole thing is almost Oidepean, really. Proteus, having killed his father by becoming him, tortures his mother liberally with his powers while boasting about gaining his father's memories. Joe's face must already have been traumatic for Moira, but seeing it twisted by Proteus's presence must have presented a neat little package of horror, confused affection, and guilt.
The only way for the X-Men to beat Proteus is to keep harassing him until he burns through Joe MacTaggart's body and then neutralize him while he's between hosts, and Scott makes it clear that they must all give up their lives to do this if necessary. Nightcrawler and Banshee are both taken out of the game early on. Jean does some damage, but Proteus manages to give even the Phoenix a disabling blow. Among all this, Claremont also establishes that Scott's and Alex's powers energy powers don't work on the other, which is semi-important for the treatment of mutant powers in the future.
The battle also involves a somewhat unnecessary narration that fills in some gaps in the story. It explains that the X-Men's battle with Magneto in X-Men #104 damaged Mutant X holding cell and allowed him to get free, and how he used Angus MacWhirter's electronic skills to prevent Moira's computers from notifying her of the damage. It's all pretty implicit, really. Claremont was just covering his bases against possible complaints by fans, but recounting Proteus's journey since his escape is clearly unnecessary.
Eventually Proteus does find his body falling apart from all his effort defending himself, so he decides to take Moira's. In the end, it's Colossus who steps in, destroys his body and then dissipates his energy form with his metal body.
This is where things get problematic.
Did Proteus die or not? Well, no. The narration describes how Colossus 'disrupted the energy matrices that he's made of', scattering his consciousness over the entire Earth. His psyche's essentially still floating around at the end. In fact, Proteus was actually reconstituted in a sequel storyline many years later. This conclusion has the stench of a cop-out hastily thrown in so the X-Men wouldn't have to become killers, and because Mutant X was too powerful to be defeated by any other means. But the end result is so close to death that it still doesn't mesh with Scott's previous conflict with Moira over killing him.
What exactly did the X-Men think would happen once they destroyed Proteus's energy form? They couldn't have foreseen this exact scenario. Colossus actually did kill a villain a few years later, and it was a very big deal of him. Here it's shrugged off with a single line about him mourning his enemy. But if this is an an acceptable outcome, why couldn't Cyclops have just let Moira take her shot earlier? Was it just a fiddling over the moral blemish of murder falling on her? I'm sorry, but that's not good enough.
On the final page, Moira and Sean reunite and hug it out. There's actually something a bit jarring about the final moments: the narration is very bittersweet, but the X-Men's happy smiles are much less ambiguous. I think there was a slight miscommunication between writer and artist here. (Also a bit irritating is the way Lorna and Alex are squeezed in at the corner of the group shot. I'd say they weren't treated very well back then, but the truth is, Alex and Lorna have been treated well only rarely. We'll get to that.)
Now, as I made said earlier, it's a damn good story, some problems notwithstanding. A lot of the quality comes down to the villain. Proteus's powers make him both interesting and dangerous. Several scenes of him applying his abilities have a real “holy shit!” factor to them – and keep in mind, he killed several people over the course of the story. He did it by destroying their minds, so the censors didn't have anything to complain about, but these deaths made him someone to be taken seriously as an opponent.
Furthermore – and I think this is quite important – Proteus was the first evil mutant the X-Men fought in quite a while. Dealing with rogue mutants was the team's original mission statement, and this aspect was sorely neglected in Claremont's early years. Aside from Magneto, the only mutants they encountered were mutants only incidentally, like Northstar and Aurora from Alpha Flight and Black Tom Cassidy. Proteus on the other hand concretely wanted dominance over humanity and demonstrated what a massive threat they could be to innocent people, paving the way for a more in-depth look at the mutant problem.
Therein lies the problem with Proteus, actually... He's a bit too evil. Don't get me wrong, I think the monstrous, homicidal insanity is very important to his character, but the presentation could have been better. He's a young man who's been locked up his whole life, whose powers are so unstable that he's lost his body and can't function normally. If that had driven him crazy, it would have added an element of tragedy to him – and expounded the tragedy of Moira as well. And it would have made his death genuinely something to be mourned instead of, well, an obvious solution. Instead, it just happens that he's been power mad since birth and always wanted to take over the world; his childhood had nothing to do with it. That's a little hard to buy. I'm convinced that if Claremont had written this story a few years later, he would have made Proteus a bit more sympathetic.
And another thing? I feel that Moira should have been the one to finish him off. This whole arc could have done a bit more with her character, though I'm glad with what we got. From her first issue on, it's been clear that although Moira is a mousy-looking scientist (and a woman in superhero comics in the 70s), she's kind of hardcore. This arc only reinforced that notion, what with her taking along lots of guns and going after Mutant X to do what the others wouldn't have dared. And I wish she had succeeded. It would have made for some really interesting conflict between her and the X-Men if she had succeeded in defeating him by breaking their moral code. (Though this could easily also have made the X-Men look like idiots for not doing all they could to take down a menace like Proteus.)
Bottom line, the fight against Proteus was personal for Moira, especially after he killed Joe and tortured her. Despite Peter's feelings of inadequacy over the course of earlier issues, I feel that Moira had earned the chance to deal the final blow far more. That said, Peter's chance to shine was somewhat cool.
Overall, Proteus seems to have an importance disproportional to his actual relevance. He came back after his death at the end of the story, of course, but it took a long while and it didn't lead to anything; he never became a real recurring bad guy; he's not one of the “rogues”. (And he was perhaps a bit too powerful to work as a regular opponent anyway.) You might call him a bit of a trailblazer, however, since he predates two other powerful British reality warpers in Marvel Comics, Mad Jim Jaspers and Jamie Braddock. Each of them has their own connection to the X-Men. Maybe we'll get to them some day.
Index of Happenings:
Deaths: 6.
Resurrections: 4.
Depowered: 1.
Revamps: 1.
Team: seven.
Overall: sixteen.
Final word: I am SO gay for Cyclops.
Next time: The first half of most important X-Men story of all time... the Dark Phoenix Saga.
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