X-MEN #87 & UXM #368, April 1999 – May 1999

X-Men #87

No Surrender!

Credits: Alan Davis (plot & pencils), Fabian Nicieza (script), Mark Farmer (inker), Comicraft (lettering), Javins/Vasquez (colors)

Summary: The X-Men arrive at Magneto’s fortress as he battles Joseph. They pull Magneto away, while Xavier and Storm attempt to help Joseph repair the damage Magneto’s done to the magnetosphere. Joseph’s body begins to burn itself out as he fixes the environment. He says goodbye and disappears in a flash of light. Astra berates the X-Men for ruining her plan and teleports away. UN representative Dr. Alda Huxley arrives, offering Magneto sovereignty over Genosha if he agrees to stop his attacks. Wolverine, angered, tries to kill Magneto, but Xavier puts him to sleep. Magneto accepts the offer, and is soon left alone with his robot Ferris. Magneto tries to grab his helmet with his powers, but realizes they are gone.

Continuity Notes: Astra tells Nightcrawler “you grew up as handsome as I expected you would,” which shocks him. He tries to get answers from her, but she teleports away. This was never followed up on, and I have no idea what the intention was (Wiki says that the original X-Men Forever mini revealed that she just caught a glimpse of him as a child).

Alda Huxley has made brief appearances throughout the storyline. In this issue, she destroys information that shows the damage Magneto caused was dissipating, because she’s determined to give him Genosha. I know there were two “Magneto in Genosha” miniseries after this, but I don’t know if her character was ever fleshed out.

Review: “Magneto War” is now over, accomplishing its three goals of giving Joseph an origin, killing him, and placing Magneto as ruler of Genosha. Allowing Magneto to rule Genosha actually isn’t a bad idea, and the titles got some mileage out of it over the next two years. The delivery of the overall crossover doesn’t exactly work, as too much time is spent on the Acolytes, leaving the final chapter feeling too rushed and anticlimactic. This installment does try to give Joseph an honorable death, but it’s obvious by this point that the editors just want to get rid of the guy. The basic idea of Joseph had a lot of potential, exploring whether or not Magneto is inherently a good person twisted by fate or someone destined for evil, but none of the storylines ever did much with the character. Davis makes an effort to work some character moments in, as Wolverine fights against Xavier and tries to kill Magneto. The X-editors specifically said in interviews at the time that they wanted to bring Wolverine’s “edge” back, and I assume this was a part of that plan. Davis works with the conflict in the next storyline, which does bring a nice issue-to-issue continuity to the series. This isn’t that great of a storyline, but I think it does set the stage for some entertaining stories in the future.

Uncanny X-Men #368

Mansions in Heaven

Credits: Alan Davis (plot), Joe Casey (script), Adam Kubert (penciler), Tim Townsend (inker), Liquid! (colors), Comicraft (letters)

Summary: Wolverine refuses to attend Joseph’s wake, and instead spends hours fighting Magneto simulations in the Danger Room. Professor Xavier delivers a eulogy, and touches everyone who knew him with a memory of Joseph. The X-Men return to the Danger Room to talk to Wolverine. Suddenly, an alien appears and teleports them to another world.

Review: This is an epilogue for the “Magneto War” crossover, with a brief setup for the next storyline. Wolverine is now acting as the group’s rebel again, plotting an assassination of Magneto while the rest of the team seems to believe that nothing can be done. The story manages to pull this off without making it seem like an arbitrary character reversion. Wolverine’s personal history with Magneto, after losing the adamantium, was addressed fairly well during the “Magneto War” crossover, but there’s also the idea that giving Magneto his own nation violates everything Xavier’s dream is supposed to represent. This ties in to the later issues of Claremont’s run, which had Wolverine as an unlikely, but sincere, protector of Xavier’s dream. Now, Wolverine is pitted against Xavier himself, with Wolverine demanding drastic action and Xavier unwilling to do anything about the situation. It’s a good conflict that enables the characters to interact in a way they haven’t in years. Adam Kubert debuts as regular artist, turning in a more sparse, angular look. The majority of the pages still look fine, but it seems as if the increased stylization is occasionally used to simplify drawings when multiple figures appear.

X-MEN #86 – UXM #367, March 1999 – April 1999

X-Men #86

Thanks for the Memories

Credits: Alan Davis (plot & pencils), Fabian Nicieza (script), Mark Farmer (inker), Liquid! Graphics (colors), Comicraft (lettering)

Summary: Astra, a former member of the original Brotherhood of Mutants, holds Joseph captive. She explains that she created Joseph as a clone of Magneto, designed to kill him. When a desperate Magneto hit Joseph in the head with heavy machinery, he fell to Earth and was later discovered in Central America. In the arctic, the Acolytes watch as the X-Men freeze outside. Xavier attempts to mentally contact them, but the Acolytes refuse to help. Nearby, the Russian navy launches a nuclear attack on Magneto. He tries to contain the blast, but miles away, the fallout reaches the X-Men.

Continuity Notes: This is the first full appearance of Astra. She’s retconned as one of the founding members of the original Brotherhood of Mutants, who left the group before their first appearance. In order to repay Magneto for his “emotional” abuse, she created Joseph as a younger, more powerful weapon to kill him. It’s also revealed that she repaired Magneto’s mental damage before cloning Joseph, because she wanted to be certain Joseph wasn’t a vegetable. Obviously, none of this was planned out when Joseph was created. It’s possible to reconcile most of the retcons with the original story; however, Davis has forgotten that Joseph was originally wearing the clothes Magneto was wearing on Avalon before it crashed. In this issue’s flashback, Joseph’s wearing body armor when he is discovered in Central America.

Review: And now we have the infamous origin of Joseph. After over three years of mystery, the audience finally learns Joseph’s secret, and it turns out he was just a clone after all. By this point, Joseph was really just an afterthought in the books anyway, so it’s not as if a cherished character was somehow being desecrated. A decision had been made over a year earlier to bring the original Magneto back, so Joseph was already redundant by this point. However, revealing that he was created by a new character, who can not only clone Magneto but restore the mental damage inflicted by Xavier, just feels like a copout. The fact that Astra only appeared in this specific storyline and then disappeared after fulfilling her anointed purpose just makes her seem like even more of a plot device. I can understand why the creators felt the need to give Joseph a relatively straightforward origin, and “clone” is a pretty easy way out of the mystery, but more of an effort should’ve been put into making Astra a legitimate character in her own right (and the teenage girl speech pattern Nicieza gives her doesn’t exactly make her more endearing).

Uncanny X-Men #367

Disturbing Behavior

Credits: Aland Davis (plot), Fabian Nicieza (script), Lenil Francis Yu (penciler), Livesay & Vines (inkers), Liquid! (colors), Comicraft (letters)

Summary: Professor Xavier uses his powers to provoke the Acolytes into attacking the X-Men, hoping to lure them out of their ship. During the fight, the Acolytes realize that Xavier mentally coerced them into extending their ship’s shields to protect the X-Men during the nuclear wash. Soon, the last Acolyte is defeated and the X-Men commandeer their ship. Meanwhile, Astra takes Joseph to kill Magneto. After she destroys the machines Magneto is using to augment his powers, he is forced to absorb Earth’s electromagnetic field. Joseph vows to stop Magneto from causing more damage.

Continuity Notes: Magneto tells Astra that he never killed Joseph because he wanted the world to think he was Joseph while he worked on his current plan.

Approved By The Comics Code Authority: The new Acolyte Vindaloo reveals his powers for the first time. He emits a brown “gel-like liquid” that ignites into napalm. Vindaloo is actually a type of spicy curry, and it's widely believed that the character’s name was a diarrhea joke.

“Huh?” Moment: Colossus somehow picked up a leather jacket (for one panel) while stranded in the North Pole.

Review: It’s another “X-Men vs. Acolytes” issue, which is just so thrilling. The majority of the issue is spent on getting the X-Men onboard the Acolytes’ ship, which takes much longer than it needs to. And if Xavier is using his mental powers on the Acolytes in the first place, why doesn’t he just force them to give up? I can understand his reluctance to use his powers on normal people, but I can’t believe he would hesitate to freeze the Acolytes in place for a few minutes while the X-Men confiscated their ship. The X-Men just leave them to survive in the Arctic at the end, so it’s not as if they’re portrayed as overly concerned for their wellbeing anyway. This is really just time-killer before the final chapter, although Yu’s art is much improved over the previous issue.

X-MEN: THE MAGNETO WAR #1 & UXM #366- March 1999

X-Men: The Magneto War #1

Savior Complex

Credits: Alan Davis (plot), Fabian Nicieza (script), Lee Weeks (penciler), Dan Green (inker), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering), Marie Javins & Monica Kubina (colors)

Summary: Fabian Cortez and his group of Acolytes sneak on to the mansion’s grounds. New member REM-RAM searches the X-Men’s dreams, looking for information on Magneto. Xavier senses his presence and orders the X-Men to attack. When Cortez harms REM-RAM while attempting to amplify his powers, the Acolytes turn against him. Cortez escapes, and the Acolytes ask Xavier for sanctuary. Xavier refuses, secretly hoping that following the Acolytes will confirm Magneto’s return. Meanwhile, in Israel, Quicksilver reconciles with Joseph. In the Netherlands, Magneto asks Amelia Voght to look over Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.

Continuity Notes: According to the narrative captions, the Acolytes are divided into different camps. Cortez’s followers include the Kleinstock brothers, Senyaka, Spoor, Projector, and the new members REM-RAM (who can enter, and apparently manipulate, people’s dreams), Static (who can disrupt mutant powers), and Barnacle (who turns body moisture into a “carapace shell”). Another group of Acolytes is following Magneto himself. I believe the Quicksilver series used the Acolytes for a few issues, and inadvertently resurrected a few of the dead members.

When Wolverine is shown sleeping in bed, he’s drawn with metal claw housings on his hand. They’re actually supposed to be on his gloves, not his actual hands (a mistake the ‘90s cartoon often made in the early episodes).

Production Note: This is a thirty-two page one-shot with no ads and slick paper. The cover price is $2.99, which is reasonable.

Review: This kicks off the “Magneto War” crossover, a storyline that was so obviously generated by editorial, it was actually solicited without a writer. Alan Davis, who was originally supposed to pencil X-Men for six issues, ended up plotting it, and if I recall the Newsarama interviews correctly, Fabian Nicieza volunteered to script it. I have no idea what was happening behind-the-scenes at the time, but if the rumors are to be believed, Alan Davis agreed to plot the titles for an indefinite amount of time, working off a list of “objectives” the editors wanted to accomplish. I remember a friend of Davis’ posted online that his storylines weren’t being dictated to him, so what I suspect happened is the editors gave Davis a vague list like “Give Joseph an origin. Reveal The Twelve. Do something with Apocalypse.” and he went from there. I recall online reviews of this era being extremely harsh, which always seemed unfair to me. The perception at the time was that Seagle and Kelly were forced off the books by overbearing editors, and that Alan Davis threw his weight around to get a high-profile gig. I don’t doubt that Seagle and Kelly were being heavily rewritten and left in frustration, but I think Alan Davis received a bad reputation as some sort of “other woman” in the scenario. Regardless of the backstage circumstances, once you’ve reached the point where storylines are being solicited without writers, it is hard to believe that the finished product is the work of a strong creative vision. Even the most hardcore of X-fans began to feel that the titles had just become a bland, blatantly commercially conceived, product.

Judging this one-shot on its own merits, it’s a perfectly okay superhero comic with nice art. I’m not sure why some of the Acolytes are spying on the X-Men, hoping to find Magneto, while another group has already joined up with him, but that’s the only quibble I have with the plot. The dream sequences take up a lot of space, but they’re used to make statements about the characters’ internal conflicts, and their connections to Magneto. Xavier of course views Magneto as a threat to his dream, Rogue still views him as a potential suitor (even if she doesn’t consciously admit it), and Wolverine sees him as a tormentor. The fight is a traditional superhero brawl, and the ending sets the stage for the rest of the storyline. The story does what it’s supposed to do, it doesn’t drag, the characterizations feel right, and it has Lee Weeks art. It might not have been produced under the best of circumstances, but this is far from a bad comic.

Uncanny X-Men #366

The Shot Heard Round the World

Credits: Alan Davis (plot), Fabian Nicieza (script), Lenil Francis Yu (penciler), Livesay/Townsend/Tadeo (inkers), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (lettering), Liquid! Graphics (colors)

Summary: Magneto’s group of Acolytes continues to attack genetic research laboratories. After the X-Men confront them in Canada, the Acolytes intentionally lead them on a chase north. Meanwhile, Magneto sends his robot Ferris to the UN to announce that he’s created another electromagnetic pulse, and that it will not stop until Magneto’s given a mutant sanctuary on Earth. The X-Men are caught in the pulse and crash in the arctic. In Israel, Mossad’s tests confirm that Joseph is a copy of Magneto. As Joseph ponders the revelation, he’s kidnapped by a mysterious woman.

Continuity Note: Joseph is revealed as a clone in this issue, although Nicieza tries to dance around the word “clone” throughout the storyline (the Spider-clone fiasco was still relatively fresh at the time).

Creative Differences: A teaser image of this storyline appeared in X-Men #80. It featured Storm in a different costume (the regal purple one she wore briefly during Claremont’s 2000 run), and various world landmarks in the arctic snow. This never happens in the actual storyline. As confirmed by a Comic Book Legends column, Storm was also supposed to die during this story, back when Seagle and Kelly were still scheduled to write it.

Production Note: Starting this month, the recap gatefold covers are gone. Apparently, they cost Marvel too much money.

Review: This doesn’t work as well as the one-shot special, probably because so much of the story is wasted on having the X-Men chase after the Acolytes. The Acolytes are suffering from their typical lack of a personality, so seeing half of the issue dedicated to them isn’t very exciting (and these aren't even the same Acolytes the X-Men were supposed to be following at the end of the previous chapter). Nicieza throws in a brief reference to one of his later X-Men stories, the one that had a few of the Acolytes following Cyclops while stranded in the desert, but it’s not nearly enough to make you care about the villains. It actually serves, unintentionally, of a reminder of a story that actually gave the Acolytes some depth. Nicieza’s script has a few clever lines, such as Ferris’ “inexhaustible supply of patter” and his rather polite interactions with the UN guards, but the script isn’t able to sell the significance of Magneto’s release of the EM pulse. It might not feel like the appropriate big deal because Magneto already did this in another crossover five years earlier, which is one of the larger problems with the storyline. Lenil Francis Yu shows up for another issue as guest artist. It’s an inconsistent job, as he seems to excel at drawing goofy scientists studying Joseph, but delivers some flat action scenes. Some of the pages look extremely rushed, and his odd tendency not to draw pupils is on full display.