WOLVERINE #85- September 1994

Full Thread Thrash – Final Sanction Part One

Credits: Larry Hama (writer), Adam Kubert (pencils), Mark Farmer & Joe Rubinstein (inks), Pat Brosseau (letterer), Kindzierski & Andreani (colors)

Summary

Cyclops and Phoenix arrive at Muir Island, hoping to share with Xavier information they learned about the Legacy Virus while in the future. When they arrive, they’re attacked by the Phalanx. Soon, Wolverine is dropped off in his friend Harry Tabeshaw’s C-47. Wolverine explains to them that he was summoned to Muir Island by Xavier to help fight the Phalanx. Cable teleports in, and helps to temporarily defeat the Phalanx. He explains to Wolverine that he received the same message from Xavier. Cyclops theorizes that the Phalanx are on Muir Island to steal Moira MacTaggert’s genetic research. They need the main lab’s computer core to use Cerebro to locate the other X-Men, but Xavier shut it down before he evacuated the island. Cable and Phoenix combine their mental powers to distract the Phalanx while Cyclops and Wolverine sneak inside the facility to get the info they need. While telepathically fighting the Phalanx, Cable sees visions of Phoenix as Redd, the woman who raised him in the future. As Cyclops reaches Cerebro’s access switch, Cable is injured by the Phalanx on the Astral Plane. He recovers in the physical realm and starts opening fire on the lab as Cyclops and Wolverine escape. Cyclops tells them that Cerebro found the X-Men in Mt. Everest, but accessing that info opened a fail-safe program that started a self-destruct sequence. Phoenix uses her telekinetic powers to help Harry Tabeshaw carry them away in his plane, narrowly avoiding the explosion. They set a course for Tibet, as Stephen Lang and Cameron Hodge prepare for their attack.

Continuity Notes

Two members of the Phalanx learn that Stephen Lang is not fully techno-organic. He is a “partial absorbee” who remained mostly human to be the Phalanx’s interface with the “non-cyber world”.

Cable is surprised that Phoenix knows about his techno-organic virus, although he shouldn’t be. Cyclops and Phoenix learned that he was Nathan Summers in the “Fathers and Sons” storyline in Cable. Hama is probably trying to show that Cable doesn’t know that Cyclops and Phoenix were acting as his parents in the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix mini, but they already knew that he was the baby Nathan infected with the virus before they went into the future.

Phoenix doesn’t want Cable to know that she and Cyclops were Slym and Redd because “there are things a son should never know about his parents…especially if they imperil the entire future probability that created him!” I don’t understand how Cable learning the truth about his parents now would affect the childhood that’s already happened in his past.

Review

This is one of the more enjoyable chapters of the storyline, mainly because it doesn’t get into any pseudo-science and only has a few characters to focus on. Most of the issue consists of action scenes that Kubert pulls off rather well. For some reason, Wolverine is the title that has Cyclops and Phoenix’s reunion with the other X-characters, and their first meeting with Cable after raising him as a child. Hama does an acceptable job on their scenes together, but it’s really another example of how mixed up the titles could be during crossovers. There’s also a confusing sequence at the end, where it’s implied that all of Muir Island has blown up. This would be the second time that happened (the first was at the end of the “Muir Island Saga”), and I think the second time the idea was basically ignored. I guess it’s possible that only the lab was supposed to explode, but that doesn’t explain why all of the characters want to get off the entire island before it goes off. At any rate, it’s a decent read and it’s certainly not as dull as many of the other chapters of the crossover.