Uncanny X-Men 242 - Inferno

The X-Men and X-Factor meet each other for the first time.

Uncanny X-Men #242

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

In Central Park the X-Men have found X-Factor and Madelyne Pryor, who is now in her civilian clothes and playing the meek manner wife. The teams are suspicious of each other, with X-Factor assuming the X-Men are dead and finding them much changed and darker, whilst the X-Men still believe X-Factor to be mutant buster bounty hunters. Several of the X-Men have become more extreme with Dazzler even more of a vain flirt, Longshot incredibly boastful, Wolverine even more ruthless and Havok ever more angry. N'astirh appears and threatens Madelyne at precisely the point when Jean is under attack by the demons who were her parents, forcing Cyclops to choose which woman to save - and he saves Jean. N'astirh takes Madelyne and Nathan Christopher away on a demonic coach with Havok grabbing onto the rear. At the Empire State Building Havok re-declares his loyalty to Madelyne who, now in the Goblin Queen costume again, proclaims him the "Goblin Prince". As they enter they are seen by Colossus, returning from helping the New Mutants, who cannot get into the building so proceeds to climb it. N'astirh plans to use Madelyne's energies to create a permanent link between Earth and Limbo by sacrificing Nathan Christopher, which his mother agrees to. In the park the battle between the two teams continues to rage until Storm takes Jean aside and the two renew their friendship. N'astirh attacks and both teams united to fight him, with Iceman directing Colossus at the demon who is pained by contact with the Russian's steel form. Combining their knowledge and powers they subject the techno organic demon to extreme cold and heat that causes his circuits to malfunction then Storm destroys him with a lightning bolt. Cyclops is displease with X-Men killing but Storm asserts her right as leader. However Madelyne now grabs Jean...

This is another double-sized issue yet curiously neither this nor the double-sized X-Factor #38 are the final issues of their series's contribution to the crossovers. This would appear to be a later change of plan as neither issues #243/#39 was included on the main advert for the event. Perhaps somebody got confused about anniversaries. As we'll see issue #243 proclaims itself to be both "The 25th Anniversary Issue of the Uncanny X-Men and 150th Issue of the New X-Men". That latter is true providing Giant-Size X-Men #1 is not included in the count which perhaps may be the source of confusion but either issue is a little late for celebrating the 25th anniversary on time which would be either an issue published in June or cover dated September so anywhere between #235 & #238 is the best guess (precise dates of publication for Silver Age comics aren't always clear due to varying sources and practices but for what it's worth in 1993 both the X-Men and Avengers - which originally came out on the same day - made the peak of their 30th anniversary celebrations the September cover dated issues released in July). But also adding to the complications are the succession of villains and key moments to be dealt with.

There's no denying the landmark significance of the issue. The original five X-Men have not appeared altogether in the series since issue #66 some eighteen years earlier. Much has happened since then, including the transformations of both the Beast and Death/Angel, the seeming death and return of Marvel Girl, the marriage and separation of Cyclops and the formation of X-Factor. It is undeniable that they have all changed in that time but they still believe in the original vision of Professor X. But it would be wrong to see them as simply a set of Silver Age characters whose presence allows for a contrast with the-then modern Dark Age successors though the scene where Cyclops and Storm argue about who is living up to the legacy of Professor Xavier's vision is more than just a continuation of their conflict over the leadership of the X-Men or a sign that X-Factor is still believed to be working as mutant bounty hunters despite the cover having been publicly abandoned some time ago.

For the X-Men have become much darker and this is not just the influence of the magic of Limbo. Over time they've become steadily harder and more ruthless with their foes, reflecting a darker world. Not all have changed at the same pace with some having noticeably found themselves disgusted at they've done but this is a team that has come a long way from even the early days of the New X-Men from before Jean was replaced by Phoenix. This is shown most dramatically in the way that Psylocke forces her way into Jean's mind without the latter's consent or when Storm calmly asserts that N'astirh needed to be destroyed and she had every right to make that decision.

Killing off N'astirh is a shocking moment even though he was only created for this storyline. Of the two feuding demons in Limbo he is by far the stronger creation and it would have been better to take advantage of Inferno to replace the far too comical S'ym with a far more dangerous threat should the realm be returned to. But the more immediate needs of this strand of the crossover is to remove the villains in succession and show the darkness of the modern X-Men so the more immediate needs take priority over the long-term needs. And removing N'astirh allows for a much greater focus on Madelyne in issues to come.

A large chunk of the extended issue is taken up with the fight between the two teams which even in 1988 had become a cliche of the genre but here it feels more natural than the average superhero fight over the smallest misunderstanding or disagreement. Instead it's a clear sign of the two very different paths the different team members have been on which makes it easy for Madelyne to manipulate them into reacting this way. This meeting has been a very long time coming because of editorial mandates to keep the two teams apart and an immediate team-up was never going to be credible. Old attitudes are brought to the forefront with many little moments between characters such as Death/Angel renewing his hostility towards Wolverine after the latter kisses Jean showing how suspicions remain. Both teams have gone through some unusual developments that add to the suspicions with the X-Men's official death and X-Factor's bounty hunter period both referenced. All this combines to make the lengthy fight a more realistic outcome.

This meeting of the two teams was a long time coming, frankly far longer than it needed to be, and so it deserves to be the main focus for a key issue of the crossover. It's a strong piece that really gets into the different characters and how they've all changed in different directions since the old days, thus giving us not a piece of nostalgia but a strong step forward.

Excalibur 6 - Inferno

The British based team get drawn to New York.

Excalibur #6

Writer: Claremont
Penciler: Davis
Inker: Neary
Colorist: Oliver
Letterer: Orzechowski
Editor: Kavanaugh
Boss: DeFalco

Rachel Summers (Phoenix) has a telepathic vision of her brother being tormented by demons and her mother so speeds off to New York to save him. The other members set off to follow her. At Euston station in London Brigadier Alysande Stuart leads a squad of the Weird Happenings Organisation (Who) including her brother and Who scientific advisor Professor Alistaire Stuart in investigating a mysterious steam train from an alternate timeline where the Nazis rule. Rachel flies into New York and assumes the Goblin Queen is her mother, Jean Grey, but it's Madelyne who rejects her. Rachel crashes down to the ground and into a bridal shop where someone turns her into a mannequin. The other four fly across the Atlantic, stopping off on a ship for a loo break, where Meggan finds herself struggling to control her powers to become what others desire. Arriving in New York her powers respond to the demonic energy and she becomes the "Goblin Princess". Kurt (Nightcrawler) is thrown to the ground whilst Kitty (Shadowcat) and Brian (Captain Britain) get pulled into a cinema and find themselves in an action movie.

This issue is from the early days of Excalibur which was usually the most obscure title in the growing X-Men family of titles. Although sharing a writer with Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine (which had just launched), it had a different editor and for the first few years it managed to steer clear of most crossovers, even having one-shot specials that stood on their own instead of annuals that had to be part of wider crossovers. Things changed a bit from 1993 onwards but before then it avoided just almost every X-Men and wider Marvel crossover going. But this issue and the next one are the exception as it got drawn into Inferno.

It's an awkward point in the series to do so. The team had formed in a special edition one-shot six months before the regular series launched and so this is de facto the seventh issue for the team. The title has been setting itself out as a cross between the Marvel UK Captain Britain stories and members of the X-Men who had been away from the team when it was seemingly killed of, with a strong dose of whimsy in contrast to the ever darker adventures in the other X-Men titles. The tone of the series is not a natural tie with a dark crossover like Inferno whilst this isn't the best way to introduce the series to readers passing through because of the crossover.

And yet it would be difficult to ignore it completely. With so much of Inferno revolving around the travails of the women and son of Scott Summers, could his daughter from an alternate future be ignored? But it would be complicated to work a third team into that part of the crossover and there's also the complication that the X-Men are generally presumed dead (along with Madelyne hence why Rachel automatically assumes the Goblin Queen is Jean) which was the reason Excalibur formed in the first place. And Rachel has not yet met her Jean or dealt with the implications retcon that Jean-Phoenix in this timeline was not the original Jean Grey but the Phoenix force impersonating her. That's an awful lot of baggage to handle in a crossover already working through so many other strands and thus it probably made sense to keep Excalibur out of the core rather than removing their raison d'être so soon or engaging in further complicated meetings that are best handled separately.

So instead we get this issue in which Rachel charges off to New York, gets swatted aside by the Goblin Queen before she can really do anything and then transformed into a mannequin, whilst the others make their way with a comedic stop off and then get into generic encounters with demons. For a book with the Inferno logo directly above the series logo, thus signifying a core part of the crossover (as opposed to the satellite issues with the logo in a triangle in the corner), this feels incredibly inessential and it's clear why it's been left out of most collections of the core of Inferno. (Its presence in the core rather than the crossover trade paperbacks seems to be more down to page lengths as they convert two hardcovers into three softcovers.)

There's one fun little subplot that shows a great adoration for Doctor Who. The Weird Happenings Organisation is clearly based on Unit with Brigadier Alysande Stuart's name clearly evoking Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and in a remarkable piece of prediction her brother Professor Alistaire Stuart looks and is dressed somewhat like David Tennant's Doctor but two decades before he came along.

Other than that side moment this is a really disappointing issue. As the next few years would demonstrate Excalibur did not need to be included in every crossover and this issue seems to know what it can't do and then just stumbles as it tries to unite the series's light-hearted tone with the dark sinister world of Inferno. It isn't a great introduction to the series for visiting readers either. Instead it's just an unnecessary issue.

Uncanny X-Men 241 - Inferno

The X-Men delve further into the darkness whilst Madelyne learns she's a gene substitute and a Jean substitute.

Uncanny X-Men #240

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Bob Harras
Taskmaster: Tom DeFalco

The X-Men find themselves battling the Marauders in the streets of New York as animated objects and demons ravage the city. Most of the X-Men are affected by the magic in the atmosphere becoming or more brutal or vainer. Only Colossus seems immune and he learns from the demons of his sister's overthrowal in Limbo so sets off to help her. In Nebraska Mr Sinister tells Madelyne how she is in fact a clone of Jean Grey created by him after he failed to reach the real one. However she didn't come to life until the Phoenix force came to her at the moment Phoenix died on the Moon. He then gave her fake memories and manipulated her into meeting and ultimately marrying Scott Summers (Cyclops) then later stole her child for his own ends. However Madelyne proves more powerful than either Mr Sinister or N'astirh expected. The demon returns her child to her.

This is one of the single most important issues of the whole series. So let's get the X-Men side of the story out of the way first. There's a clear sign that the magic is twisting them with the artwork drawing them in darker forms - Wolverine almost looks like a demon in some panels - as they become ever more brutal. Although it's not shown on panel the implication is that they killed all the Marauders bar Malice/Polaris though given some of that team have survived a previous death it would seem they're actually clones created by Mr Sinister. Havok no longer has any inhibitions about using his plasma blasts in a way that could kill whilst Dazzler is becoming ever more boastful and vain. Even Storm is seeming to relish in it all. Colossus finds he is protected because of his steel form and realises the only way to help is to try to fight the demons at the source. This is a very dark step for the team as a whole.

But it's the revelations that this issue is most remembered for. As with many of the far reaching retcons in the series how one reacts to them is often tempered by the order in which they found things out. Practically the first ever X-Men issue I read (Uncanny X-Men Annual #17) stated that Madelyne was a clone of Jean Grey and I first read Inferno before the earlier years so I've always read Madelyne with the full knowledge that she was a clone rather than wondering if it was all just one of life's coincidences.

Madelyne Pryor's entire existence has been a by-product of interference by higher powers. No not Mr Sinister but Marvel. Two different orders from on high interfered with long-term plans for the series and forced changes. Originally Jean Grey/Marvel Girl/Phoenix wasn't going to die in the Dark Phoenix Saga but be depowered completely. She and Scott would then be married and retired off, showing there was life after the X-Men. But first came an editorial order that Phoenix had to be properly punished because of the crime of genocide and so she was killed off. Some thirty issues later Scott encountered Madelyne Pryor, who looked just like Jean and suffered amnesia from a aeroplane crash at the same time as Phoenix's death but it seemed to be a coincidence. After a whirlwind romance the two married, Scott left the X-Men, they had a child and moved out west.

And then came the order to create X-Factor.

X-Factor saw the original X-Men reunited as a team and involved a lot of heavy lifting to get all five back together again. Controversially Phoenix was retconned into a separate entity who had impersonated Jean with the original found in suspended animation. And Scott rapidly abandoned Madelyne and their baby son to re-join his old team mates including his old girlfriend. His wife and child became surplus to requirements and a way had to be found to sweep them away. This was not helped by the different books taking different approaches.

(If some of this sounds a bit familiar it's because there are some obvious echoes of the Spider-Man Clone Saga including of some of the proposals for resolution. It took a long time to rebuild Scott Summers as a character after the way he rapidly abandoned his marriage and this may have been the precedent that prevented the Spider-Man writers from going down the route of divorce when they decided to end Peter Parker's marriage and try to restore something similar to the old relationship dynamic. Both characters had a happily ever after ending lined up for them to be living out west with their wife and child. Neither got very far down that route before editorial demands to restore the originals pulled them back. And some of the proposals for what to do to Mary Jane that made it into either Spider-Man 101 Ways to End the Clone Saga or the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon sound similar to the revelation here.)

Making Madelyne a clone with Mr Sinister manipulating things is a laudable attempt to try to recover Scott's character by reinforcing the idea that Jean was always the one for him and this carried over into both her duplicates. But it's not a perfect solution and still doesn't easily absolve him of desertion. Nor does it explain why Madelyne's similarity to Jean has not been explored properly. Steps have been taken by both Mr Sinister and the editors to avoid Jean and Madelyne actually meeting but there were other ways that the similarities could have been explored, especially before Jean's resurrection when many including Scott wondered if she was somehow Jean. Could neither Professor X nor Wolverine recognise a clone? Were there no detectives and/or scientists who could investigate fingerprints, blood types, DNA and so forth? The answer of course is that when those stories were written Madelyne was not intended to be a genetic duplicate of Jean but the retcon doesn't address this.

And whilst this revelation may be doing something to restore Scott the way it is delivered absolutely destroys Madelyne as a character. It's potentially possible to have both an original and a clone of the same person as characters although it does pose questions over who has prior rights. But here it reduces Madelyne to a mere tool of others, used for little more than breeding and now twisted by abandonment and demons into becoming a sinister force of her own. Notably both Mr Sinister and N'astirh soon discover that she is far more powerful than they suspected and potentially out of their control. Turning Madelyne into one of the main villains of the story offers strong potential for the crossover itself but it's difficult to see what can be done with her afterwards.

Issues with big retcons often have a lot of text and convoluted explanations as key developments have to be navigated around, sometimes including stories that aren't relevant to the current one. Here Mr Sinister's revelations all feel pretty relevant to the current situation as he first proves how Madelyne is a clone through having a key shared childhood memory before recounting her development, the encounter with the Phoenix and his manipulations to first get her together with Scott and then keep her from meeting Jean, helped by the use of the Marauders elsewhere in the issue. It serves to weave his role into events clearly and answers everything that can be reasonably addressed her.

The climax as Madelyne declares her determination to destroy is the capper for a highly memorable issue that has a lot of info dumping to impart but also moving the situation forward as almost every character is warped by the events around them into something much darker, building up strong tension for the next phase.

Uncanny X-Men 240 - Inferno

The X-Men seek revenge on the Marauders whilst Madelyne Pryor plans a longer revenge on Jean Grey.

Uncanny X-Men #240

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Madelyne and Alex go on a dinner date in New York seemingly oblivious to the odd things happening around them and endure a group of paranormal investigators who soon disappear. Back in the Outback the other X-Men relax when the computers locate the Marauders and they set off for revenge for the Mutant Massacre of the Morlocks. The battle is swift with the Marauders fleeing and the X-Men discovering something has happened to New York/ Meanwhile Madelyne visits the grave of Jean Grey and rants about her rival coming back from the dead before turning Jean's parents into goblins and meeting with N'astirh who takes her to the orphanage where they have a lead on her son. There she has memory flashes of being in a cocoon and finds her name on the side of one. She wants answers and the man who can give them appears - Mr Sinister who declares she can call him "Father".

The X-Men side of this issue is pretty straight forward and gives us a chance to see some of the characters at play. In particular Longshot has failed to understand how Dazzler sees him and starts fooling around with Rogue, oblivious to the anger this is causing. The pursuit of the Marauders has been coming for some time but when it does it's a pretty brutal showdown, reminding us how dark the X-Men are getting. However it feels more like it's marking time and providing an excuse to get the X-Men to New York than the main action.

The main focus of the issue is on Madelyne Pryor, the strange powers she's developing and her relations with various sinister figures. When on her date with Alex her dress changes shape in every single panel without comment whilst she clearly notices changes to the Empire State Building and something happening to the paranormal team (who look a bit like the Ghostbusters) but says nothing. Her anger is all too clear as she rants at what everyone thought was Jean Grey's gravestone, remembering her wedding day and Scott's vows. Her encounter with N'astirh is very different from her previous encounters with demons, now showing her power and making it clear who truly has the upper hand in the partnership. There's been a mystery about the character going back half a dozen years and it looks like answers are coming.

It's surprising that the main series is still building things up when Inferno is exploding elsewhere but this is something of a consequence of the X-Men's detachment from the rest of the Marvel universe and being based far from New York. But this issue shows a final step to the action whilst also offering resolution of one of the longest mysteries in the title's history to this time.

Uncanny X-Men 239 - Inferno

Mr Sinister reflects on the X-Men and what his plans might have come to.

Uncanny X-Men #239

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Bob Harras
Bouncer: Tom DeFalco

In New York the Empire State Building is growing in size and one of its lifts consumes a family of tourists. Meanwhile Mr Sinister reflects on the X-Men and how he expected to one day confront them but now they are (presumed) dead. After calming down Malice who is unhappy with being permanently in the body of Polaris (Lorna Dane) Mr Sinister reflects on several of the X-Men individuality as, unbeknownst to him, they enjoy some relaxation time in Australia. Dazzler goes singing in a pub. Havok is coming to terms with the violent streak he has adopted including killed some of the Brood. Storm discovers that Jean Grey is alive and confronts Wolverine about his not telling her. Psylocke, Colossus and Rogue are training exercising with the latter temporarily taken over by Carol Danvers's psyche. And Madelyne is intriguing. She shows the ability to read Havok's thoughts and seduces him. Elsewhere Mr Sinister comments on how he had great plans for her then turns his attention to her son, Nathan Christopher Charles Summers. Madelyne and N'astirh communicate further.

This is a classic character piece between events that also serves to really introduce Mr Sinister after only one previous appearance. The character has been given a modified colour scheme with the green removed and instead his armour is now bluey-purple with red trimmings that will remain his default look for many years give or take some variation in just how blue or purple. It is a great improvement. His goals of replacing humans with mutants are straightforward but his plans remain a mystery since many of them were based around the X-Men. Otherwise he shows his power in calmly dealing with an angry Malice before continuing to reflect, not realising N'astirh is also watching.

With the X-Men relaxing one of the two big moments involves Storm discovering that Jean Grey is alive. This brings up yet another problem from the initial X-Factor set-up. Despite that title now having been around for three years the two teams have never actually met. They missed each other in the tunnels in the Mutant Massacre and then had separate contributions to both the Fall of the Mutants and the Evolutionary War. But X-Factor have not been some hidden organisation and during their mutant busters cover days their alternative disguises as the X-Terminators did not evade coverage either. It is astonishing that the X-Men have not previously seen any footage and realised who she is.

The main focus in Australia is on Madelyne as she seduces her brother-in-law, demonstrates telepathy, briefly has a flaming bird effect around her and communicates with N'astirh to arrange revenge on the Marauders and find her son. Successive issues have built up Madelyne towards this moment and there's a real sense of tragedy to her descent that makes her actions more credible.

This issue is a classic prologue character re-establishing piece and it does it well along with reintroducing Mr Sinister and making him seem a credible threat. Now the pieces are all in place for the conflagration ahead.

Uncanny X-Men 238 - Inferno Prologue

Fire erupts inside Madelyne amidst a showdown with the Genoshan magistrates.

Uncanny X-Men #238

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

The story concludes with this issue but we continue to see the dark side of the Genoshan miracle. Wolverine and Carol Danvers explore a camp where the mutates live and show Philip Moreau a side to his country that he just never thought about. Once again the parallels to real life leap out, in this case with the Bantustans where the South African state tried to put the black population away in little statelets, out of sight and out of the concern of the white population. It has been a fast journey into reality for Philip and it seems there is no chance to put it all right with his fiancée Jennifer having already started the transformation into an obedient slave mutate though at this point she still retains her memories and ability to reason. Philip also tries reason but faces officials who take the attitude that argument is pointless because it validates a question over whether what they do is right or not.

The X-Men attack and ultimately liberate their comrades, with Wipeout forced to restore Wolverine and Rogue's powers, but other than Philip there is no great enlightenment and no liberation. Wolverine wants to wipe out the state's leadership but Philip argues that in time the people can be made to see the wrong of their society and set it right. It's the classic revolution versus reform argument and it is highly depressing that there seem no prospect of the mutates themselves ever rising up and winning their freedom but instead their fate will be determined by the decisions of the current ruling race. It's a problem that the long term needs of the series to have Genosha as a place to return to clash with the needs of the story to bring liberation but ultimately it is the series that has to win out with the X-Men limited to threatening the Genoshan leadership with a destructive alternative future if they do not listen to Philip's mutant rights movement. This remains a bleak vision at a time when it could not have been foreseen that apartheid would fall in just the next few years.

Madelyne Pryor gets a lot of development in this issue as we see a telepath's experience of her mind. At first we see Madelyne as a little girl picking flowers when she's attacked by the Genengineer and the Magistrates who fire on her only for her to rise again in flames and bring destruction down upon the capital city. In the ruins the Genengineer is now wearing the costume of Mr Sinister and attacked by Madelyne in a costume vaguely reminiscent of the Black Queen's as she warns that lighting a match may ignite "an inferno". It's quite a striking piece in setting out the threat to come. It's also interesting for the way some of the imagery is lifted from the famous "Daisy" election advert from the 1964 US Presidential election which began with a shot of another girl with flowers before a nuclear explosion. Back in reality Madelyne claims ignorance of what happened even though the psionic explosion killed all those examining her and offers rational debate and support but there are hints this is a front. Later she confronts the Genengineer in person and implies she can bring destruction down upon him even as he prepares to shoot her. At the end it's almost sinister as she answers a question about a baby's whereabouts with "Not to worry. That's all been taken care of." This story has also seen Havok expressing ever more concern for his sister-in-law and the way they embrace at the end is highly suggestive. Although she's been on the side-lines for most of the previous chapters this story arc has shown strong signs of Madelyne's descent into something quite dark and truly sewn the seeds for what is to come.

Although the ending is stilted by the inability to bring down the whole regime, in spite of Wolverine's wishes, and the need to give a lot of focus on Madelyne's descent for future tales, all in all this has been a good story that hasn't run for more issues than it can sustain. Instead it's built up the situation steadily over each chapter and this conclusion resolves all the key strands satisfactorily.

Uncanny X-Men 237 - Inferno Prologue

The rest of the X-Men arrive in Genosha as Wolverine and Rogue seek to regain their powers and Madelyne proves harder to mind read than expected.

Uncanny X-Men #237

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Rick Leonardi
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Much of this issue is focused on the flight of Wolverine and Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel) in control of Rogue's body as they seek to evade the Genoshan magistrates for long enough until the rest of the X-Men arrive. In the process they come across Philip Moreau getting into a drunken fight with magistrates in a bar and coming off the worse for it. Seeking revenge upon his father the magistrates throw him on the "Mute train" that takes mutants away to a camp beyond the island's mountains out of sight and out of mind. Once again the parallels to the real world are all too clear and it's a strong contrast to the propaganda video Wolverine watches whilst waiting. The video instead tells the story of a success story that has conquered poverty and built a thriving industrial and agricultural economy that is the envy of the world. Wolverine comments on the omission as he turns to see a mutate collecting rubbish and treated like it by a pair of magistrates. Later as he admits that without his healing factor he'll soon be dead he determines to take down the whole country.

Elsewhere we get a very human encounter as Dr David Moreau, the Genengineer, meets with Jennifer Ransome who was going to marry his son before it was discovered she was a latent mutant and her test results had been switched. It's a chilling sign of how the oppressive society destroys even families as he sadly but calmly tells a woman who would have become his daughter-in-law that the whole country is based upon the use and conversion of mutants and that everyone has a duty to the state. Despite her please he calmly orders her to be sent for final processing. This issue is titled "Who's human?" The answer from this scene is not Dr David Moreau.

The other X-Men arrive on the island and face down a squad of magistrates when there is a massive psychic shock caused by a telepath's attempts to probe Madelyne. Throughout this story arc there have been further hints that there is more to Madelyne than it seems and the attempts to find out present great danger.

This chapter of the arc is more focused on the individuals as they seek to deal with the true nature of the supposed miracle of Genosha. Wolverine and Carol Danvers make for a highly resourceful team as they continue to outwit the magistrates and explore deeper whilst the presentation of the mutate process through how it affects and destroys one individual family really reinforces the horror of it all. This continues to be one of the strongest X-Men story arcs in quite some time.

Uncanny X-Men 236 - Inferno Prologue

Rogue and Wolverine find themselves imprisoned without their powers.

Uncanny X-Men #236

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Petra Scotese
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Magistrate: Tom DeFalco

This second part of the Genosha story builds on the first by giving us a good look at the island's society and the bigoted hypocrisy upon which it rests. This is shown most vividly with the Moreaus. The father is the "Genengineer" - the geneticist responsible for changing mutants to alter their powers and make them into docile slaves of the regime. The son Philip initially just accepts the way things are as shown by the way he casually orders around their gardener mutate as though he's a trained dog. But then Philip discovers that his fiancée Jennifer has been found to be a latent mutant and is horrified as his father calmly reminds him what the law is and how Jennifer is being changed to become a mere rock and metal worker. The scene as Philip jogs through his respectable middle class neighbourhood only to see a squad of magistrates arrest Jennifer's parents (for trying to conceal her mutation) is a vivid example of how his world comes crashing down upon contact with the truth of the matter. Elsewhere we see the capital city of Hammer Bay, one of the most advanced modern cities in the world - but as Dr Moreau flies through it discussing the situation with captured mutants the truth of the foundations is felt.

A darker image is presented when Psylocke scans the magistrates captured in Sydney and experiences directly how mutants are captured, tortured, genetically engineered and used as mere slaves. It is a chilling vision of a society where mutants are not merely feared and hated but are actively repressed and controlled. This is no potential future to be averted, this is a present day reality. In the space of just a couple of issues a truly terrifying concept has been introduced to the series, drawing on real life parallels from the time.

The rest of the issue focuses upon the other captives who perplex the Genoshan authorities by their invisibility to all electronic equipment making it very hard to examine them. Madelyne is being examined with the demon N'astirh appears on the screen trying to communicate with her - and somehow the whole complex suffers a power cut as the screen explodes. Rogue and Wolverine have been captured and a mutate appropriate named Wipeout cancels their powers. As a result Wolverine's body starts suffering heavily without his healing factor to keep it in check. Meanwhile Rogue finds she can now be touched - and is assaulted by the guards (though the script takes steps to make clear she is not raped). Retreating into herself she finds her psyche contains traces of everyone she's used her power on over the years - and the traces want revenge. Salvation comes in the surprising form of Ms. Marvel who exists as a full personality and offers help by taking control of Rogue's body as the only way to survive since she has FBI training and knows Wolverine of old. And so she and Wolverine set out to escape.

This issue has generated controversy because of misunderstanding over just what happens to Rogue at the hands of the guards and in part that's because the clarifying text is in a later scene so it's easy to see how the panels can be misunderstood out of context. But otherwise it's a strong issue that continues to build the world around it through the characters involved, showing the horrific nature of the regime and how anyone, no matter how important their family, can be taken if they turn out to be a mutant.

Uncanny X-Men 235 - Inferno Prologue

The Genoshan security services pursue their citizens abroad without mercy.

Uncanny X-Men #235

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Rick Leonardi
Inker: P. Craig Russell
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

We come to the introduction of one of the most significant fictional countries in the X-Men's universe, Genosha. A sign on the opening splash page tells us it is "A Green and Pleasant Land of Hope and Opportunity where the Watchword is Freedom!" But as we'll see over this story arc that freedom isn't for everyone. This issue is largely set outside the country with only an airport seen at the start when a man sneaks into it to smuggle his baby onto a plane before the authorities track him down and kill him. The repressive nature of the regime doesn't stay on the island with a squad sent to Australia to kidnap Jennifer Ransome, a Genoshan ex pat, even though she has now naturalised citizenship. Madelyne Pryor, volunteering for the Flying Doctor Service alongside Jennifer, is also captured and both are sent to Genosha. The Genoshan "Press Gang" squad then go after the baby now in Sydney with the X-Men following them there for a showdown at a hospital. However the Press Gang are able to bring in far more reinforcements than expected and Rogue and Wolverine are captured.

Much of the detail of Genosha will be sketched out in later issues set on the island itself but already there are clear signs of how it is based on South Africa which was still under apartheid when this issue was first printed. The parallels with the alleged activities of the South African security services in pursuing dissidents overseas and showing utter disregard for other countries' laws are all too obvious especially when they tell Jennifer that they do not recognise her as having any citizenship over than Genoshan for life. But also the glimpse of Genosha and its society parallels the way South Africa sought to present itself as a happy stable society that had harmonious racial relations - by which the South African state meant the Afrikaners and British and the Genoshan state mean white and black - without mentioning the other races who were repressed and hidden away. Another of the horrors comes in the way some of the repressed people work for the repressive state and actively enjoy it with the Press Gang made up of several mutants. Of particular note is Pipeline who is able to convert people to digital signals and transmit them over a modem. Luckily this particular modem is a lot faster than the ones that actually existed in 1988 otherwise we'd be waiting until issue #300 until anyone arrives. Hawkshaw has the ability to scan and detect mutants but the spells on the X-Men and Madelyne render them undetectable except by sight.

As a first issue of a multi-part story this does a good job in drawing the X-Men into the situation and establishing enough about Genosha to generate curiosity without too much info dumping at the expense of narrative. All the X-Men see some action and get good moments. The only slight curiosity is why Madelyne has joined the auxiliary service for the Flying Doctor in the first place when the X-Men are supposed to be hiding in secret in the Outback. This deviation from the current status quo feels a little too contrived to set up the initial kidnapping but otherwise this is a strong start to the story.

X-Men Annual 12 - Inferno Prologue/The Evolutionary War

The X-Men face Terminus in the ruins of the Savage Land but not all is as it seems.

X-Men Annual #12

1st story: Resurrection!
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Art Adams
Inker: Bob Wiacek
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Chief: Tom DeFalco

The X-Men are drawn to the ruins of the Savage Land where they encounter the High Evolutionary as he seeks to restore it and what appears to be the destructive alien robot Terminus. Teaming up with the Land's survivors they defeat the robot and discover its true nature. En route Colossus meets an old friend and her young son.

This is a rather odd entry in The Evolutionary War. The Evolutionary's aim to restore the Savage Land ultimately succeeds but it's never made clear just why he's seeking this. Nor do we get conventional conflict even though he is working with the Savage Land's Mutates who have some plans of their own. The encounter with the Fall People is also convoluted from a modern perspective as it draws heavily on events only seen in the pages of Classic X-Men.

Classic X-Men is now one of the most obscure sources of Marvel continuity of all (perhaps only rivalled by scenes and revelations set in the main reality that appeared in the pages of What If...?). This series reprinted most of the first 100+ issues of the series and in the early years it expanded out the page count with extra scenes and back-up stories. But in general these have been ignored with other reprints omitting the extra pages and guides generally not stopping to include details. However in 1988 things would have been very different and for many readers Classic X-Men would have been how most regular readers of the series would have known the early years of the New X-Men if at all. So drawing heavily on material that had only appeared in Classic X-Men made sense in 1988 but less so when reading issues in later reprint runs.

So characters like M'Rin, the chief of the surviving Fall People, and C'Jime, the giant flying fox with a ship on his back (no really) are introduced as familiar to Storm and readers but confuse later readers. It's also clear that Colossus and the Fall woman Nereel had a brief relationship on his previous visit with her son Peter being the product but she declines to tell him and he doesn't realise this despite so many clues including her son having the same name as him. Also treated poorly in this story is Dazzler who spends a lot of time first crying about Longshot's disappearance and then worrying when Rogue absorbs his power and realises this means she's also going to find out how Longshot feels about Dazzler. This trend of treating the character as a ditz is prominent in both X-Men stories in this annual and won't end here. This is a far cry from the confident young woman trying to pursue her career and handle her powers who held her own series for several years.

There's also a resort to undoing a lot in this story. The Savage Land had been destroyed for several years in real time, a change that lasted surprisingly long, but is now returned to its traditional form. The true foe is brought back from the dead along with convoluted revelations that neither the Terminus seen here nor the one who destroyed the Savage Land are the real one. And at the end of the story Psylocke mindwipes all the inhabitants to cover up the X-Men's involvement. The accusation that around this time Marvel wanted to "end innovation" has been made elsewhere and disputed in other places but it's hard to deny that this story is one massive reset switch.

All in all this is a rather disappointing tale with the plot stretched out more than it needs be and some of the characters treated as idiots. However Art Adams's art does a lot to rescue it but it can't hide the feeling that this crossover was regarded as an unwanted intruder on the series.


2nd story: I want my X-Men!
(No specific credits are printed. All the listings I've seen online credit exactly the same team as the first story.)

This is a satire on trends in the comics and more general media industry as Mojo reacts to the apparent death of the X-Men with fury... because their adventures are his top rated show. So he sets out to find some new stars and auditions numerous variant X-Men until along come the X-Babies who evade execution and rapidly prove a ratings hit.

As a protracted satirical piece there's more emphasis on humour than plot with some fun scenes such as Mojo's discussion with his "Brains Trust" who are drawn as the creative team (though the one who should be Glynis Oliver looks more like former editor Ann Nocenti to the point online guides are divided over who she is; confusingly Nocenti is also the basis for the returning character Ricochet Rita) with Chris Claremont taking a stand for quality over quantity and getting firmly told just who owns the property or the auditions of just about every conceivable alternative form of the X-Men imaginable - ones we see include a sex swapped team, a version as Transformers (now there's some ideas for Hasbro), a "naughty" team in more sexually revealing outfits (predicting one particular 1990s comics trend), a version of the team as animals, numerous more only mentioned and finally a version as young children. This parodied the trend to do versions of cartoons reimagining the characters as children that started with Muppet Babies and had already spawned The Flintstone Kids and The New Archies with A Pup Named Scooby-Doo about to debut that autumn.

Being more comedy than story this is a nice fun tale though it does continue the trend of making Dazzler ever more ditzy - here her child self spends several pages obsessing over Longshot when he gets turned into a picture by an angry Mojo. Otherwise the younger versions are generally in character albeit with some magnified traits such as Wolverine's naughtiness. The digs at the way the industry works in finding spin-off material are surprisingly prescient given the way the comics industry and especially the X-Men titles were already starting to go. This is a good fun piece.


3rd story: The High Evolutionary: Demon Night
Story: Mark Gruenwald
Pencils: Ron Lim
Inks: Tony DeZuniga
Letters: Ken Lopez
Colors: Gregory Wright
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

We come to one of the most retconned pieces of Marvel history - the birth of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. I have lost count of just how many times this has been revisited over the years and just how many different parents they've been given. But back in 1988 there were *only* three couples who at one point or another had been assumed to be their parents and this retelling will take multiple chapters to work through them. This chapter tells how a heavily pregnant woman called Magda came to Mount Wundagore and gave birth to twins the night the demon Cthon arose but was driven off by a combination of the High Evolutionary's New Men and the sorcerer Magnus. But as the end of the chapter tells us Cthon had formed a link with the Scarlet Witch that would come to fruition decades later.

Some time has clearly passed since the previous chapter but exactly how much is never specified beyond a period of "over a decade" in which Herbert Edgar Wyndham has continued the genetic transformation of animals into humanoids and Magnus has trained them as knights. This would mean that Magnus has been occupying the body of Jonathan Drew for a long time but it's not clarified if Drew is dead or has been suppressed all this time. As Wyndham refuses to accept the claim that his friend's body is possessed by a sixth century sorcerer the point is not elaborated on. There is also no mention at all of the Second World War even though the length of time given indicates we should be at least midway through it by now. Perhaps Mark Gruenwald saw wisdom in not using the Evolutionary to explain anything either from the Golden Age itself or how particular characters had lived all the way up to the present day which was getting ever further from the war.

It's difficult to tell the story of a monumental battle in a mere two pages but given how much history there still is to wade through it's not clear what could have been dropped for a foe who hadn't actually appeared in that many stories at this point. Nor is the father of Magda's children explicitly identified at this stage, replicating the way it was originally left to fans to guess and marry up information from different series but given his significance in the Marvel Universe it's a surprising omission and it must be remembered that this chapter was going to read by more than just regular Uncanny X-Men readers. The chapter stops before reaching the other two pairs of parents but otherwise shows the backstory to one of the more memorable Avengers stories.


There are no pin-ups or other features in the annual. All in all it's a mixed affair with the lead story serving more as an excuse to restore one of the traditional settings of the Marvel Universe than a tale to develop either the lead characters or the crossover event. The saga chapter also shows the strain of having to retell and co-ordinate so much history in one go. However the X-Babies story is a wonderful piece of comedy and worth the price of admission alone.

Uncanny X-Men 234 - Inferno Prologue

Wolverine and Madelyne both face inner struggles.

Uncanny X-Men #234

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editor: Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The cover for this issue is easily the best yet seen in this run, really selling the idea of Wolverine struggling with a Brood egg hatching inside him. It portends to the showdown in this issue. The bulk of it wraps up the Brood storyline as the X-Men continue their battle through the streets of Denver including a battle in a diner where the patrons discuss who to help (whilst two keep kissing, oblivious to everything going on around them). But in the process it's becoming ever clearer how dark the X-Men are getting with several willing to kill the humans hosting the Brood. Colossus calmly breaks the neck of one whilst Storm incinerates another with lightning. Even Havok finds it is becoming easier to casually blast away his opponents but privately doesn't like how things are developing. Curiously it's Wolverine who shows the most hesitation at the end as he confronts Harry Palmer in human form and things how Palmer is operating a facade even to himself but ultimately reasons that the real Palmer is long dead.

The climax of the battle comes at the amphitheatre where the Revd William Conover is giving a sermon to a huge audience but it feels like its been built up too much. Wolverine stumbles in fighting the effects of the Brood egg planted within him and Conover shows him compassion, believing him to have taken drugs, then realises the true horror. He believes his prayers help cure Wolverine and the narrative leaves it unclear as to whether it was just the healing factor alone which expelled the egg or if Wolverine was helped by the therapeutic effect of Conover's words. Conover subsequently gives an pro mutant interview to the media and appears to be the first prominent religious or political leader to take such a stance, suggesting potential development in later issues. There's also a strong hint that his wife has been impregnated with a Brood egg.

The Madelyne Pryor subplot continues as her dream sees her wandering out into the desert where heat melts her features back before she falls in water and comes to a paradise island where S'ym offers her the chance to exorcise her torments and she accepts as it is only a dream - or so she thinks. This plot has been building things carefully and is highly intriguing but it must be said that a lot of the visual impact is let down by the very odd appearance of S'ym. He looks almost comical and is let down by the strange waistcoat he wears. The character's appearance is a parody of Cerebus the Aardvark (and his name taken from Cerebus's creator David Sim) but as someone who has never encountered Cerebus outside of looking up S'ym's origins the effect is lost on me. And a straight character parodying what was original a comedic strip is a rather risky approach. It is a pity that the opportunity was not taken to use the techno-organic virus to give the character a more serious look. What's also a little unsatisfactory about this whole sequence is the presence of Gateway seemingly inside Madelyne's dreams. It's not clear if this is the real Gateway or a projection of her mind or indeed what the aboriginal mutant's true aims are.

Overall this has been an okay story but it feels like it's one issue too long and has been dragged out purely because of the temporary switch to fortnightly publication. It's had some great moments and an especially intriguing subplot but it's also had some extremely protracted chase and action sequences that could have been better condensed. Sometimes less is more.

Uncanny X-Men 233 - Inferno Prologue

The X-Men battle the Brood whilst Madelyne Pryor gets deconstructed...

Uncanny X-Men #233

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editors: Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

With this issue the series underwent a temporary increase in the schedule, now having two issues a month for three months. (Just to be confusing it's called "twice a month" and "bi-weekly" in different places even though those terms aren't strictly synonymous. And "bi-weekly" is a term that often confuses - why has the term "fortnight" never taken off in the US?)

This is a middle chapter of an ongoing saga and mainly focused on the battle between the X-Men and the Brood possessed mutants. The battle is fierce and fast with Rogue soon taken over when she absorbs the psyche of Temptress and in turn possesses Psylocke then the two subdue Wolverine who is soon infected with a Brood egg. Meanwhile Havok spends the issue worrying about using his powers at full force on human beings, having no prior experience of the Brood and thus little understanding of what their possession does to their hosts. When he sees the consequences he is horrified.

Being a mainly battle issue there aren't too many developments here and there's only a couple of subplots advanced in this issue. One sees preparations for a giant sermon by an evangelist in the mountains with the reverend privately reflecting positively about mutants and wishing he had the power to heal. The other is a strange dream sequence as Madelyne Pryor fantasises about being able to fly and her life with Cyclops (Scott Summers) as though they were made for each other only to face first the destruction of their home and then the appearance of a strange featureless form who Scott leaves her for. Things get more surreal as Scott takes everything from Madelyne including her hair and features and puts them on the featureless form making her into Jean Grey before departing, leaving Madelyne as an abandoned nothing in some nowhere. It's quite a strange depiction of her feelings about Scott, Jean and herself.

When Marvel increased the frequency of a series to fortnightly in this era it often resulted in multi-part sagas that sometimes ran on for more issues than they were fully warranted. This issue feels somewhat slightly as though it's one of the earliest examples of having too many issues being put out. It's not bad per se but the battle feels extended more than it needs to be and so not much else happens in the main plot. Still the surreal sequence with Madelyne Pryor does a lot to maintain the interest momentum.

Uncanny X-Men 232 - Inferno Prologue

"You didn't come here to talk to me about button mushrooms and birds."

Uncanny X-Men #232

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Editors: Ann Nocenti & Bob Harras
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

After several issues of character developments we finally get to see the X-Men go into action as they track down a man with a Brood implanted in him in Denver. But the issue isn't told from the X-Men's point of view but rather from the host's.

And so we see Harry Palmer (I've never seen The Ipcress File so can't comment on any similarities, deliberate or otherwise) first encounter the Brood when a giant shark lands near his campsite and creatures from it consume his companions as he flees in terror. Now he works as an urban paramedic without consciously realising that he is secretly implanting things into mutant patients as he responds. This includes one called "Robert Delgado", a sign of a Doctor Who fan on the creative team. Then Palmer finds himself pursued through the city by the X-Men until Wolverine makes a shocking discovery.

Also making a shocking discovery is Madelyne Pryor back in the Australian outback. Watching news from around the globe she sees coverage of Cyclops and Marvel Girl. She reacts as though it's the first time she's ever seen images of the latter, which is a little hard to believe, and then comes to the realisation that Jean was the only woman for Scott and he was only ever a Jean substitute. The realisation causes her to smash the screen in anger.

This issue also sees the debut of a new costume for Psylocke as she adopts an armoured suit to better protect her in combat. It rapidly proves handy when Palmer throws Colossus at her. The chase is strong and tense with all members of the team given their own strong moments in a stunning climax leading to an excellent cliffhanger.

The Brood are a race that's often difficult to handle but this issue finds the right balance by focusing on the hidden horror nature of them, making for a strong and tense situation. This is the launch back into action that the X-Men have been waiting a good while for and it doesn't fail to impress.

Uncanny X-Men 231 - Inferno Prologue

Colossus poses as his own ghost to help his sister

Uncanny X-Men #231

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Rick Leonardi
Inker: Dan Green
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The decision by the X-Men to pretend to be dead is not without its costs - and not all members have to pay the same amount. Colossus has always been the most family minded of the team, devoted to his sister Illyana, but is now forced to hide from her at a time when she most needs help. To add to his woes he's been almost stuck in his armoured form for a long time now, finding it nearly impossible to change to his human form, and so he's become trapped in a hulking metal form that overheats in the Australian desert and is too crude and clumsy around the home. And he's haunted by nightmares about Illyana being prepared for a gruesome fate. Eventually Storm and the other X-Men agree to let him go and see her and Gateway teleports him to Limbo.

The cover is maintained through the coincidence of Colossus arriving partway through his sister casting a necromancy spell to bring help and so throughout the issue Colossus pretends to be his own spirit summoned up by his sister, helped by his now being invulnerable to magic which appears to her to be a further sign that this is his ghost. She needs help as demons posing as characters from a novel (which I have never heard of let alone read) have invaded the mansion and captured the rest of the New Mutants. Colossus finds himself back in his happy teenage home only it's much changed by the demons and he has to overcome them to free the New Mutants.

Despite the contortions to maintain the illusion of being dead, this is otherwise a straightforward issue of sibling duty as Colossus nobly rushes to his sister's side, also helping to fight off the growing rebellion by S'ym. The end of the issue sees the two have a heart to heart and Colossus tells her that as long as a person exists in the hearts of memories of those dear to them they can never truly be dead. In the process, as Illyana notes, he has helped to save her from herself. However after she's gone S'ym re-emerges and swears to win the war.

This is an important and necessary character piece as the narrative moves ever closer to Inferno. Though it's pencilled by Rick Leonardi who is becoming the regular fill-in artist on the book it feels substantial rather than filler grabbed in a hurry. However once again the issue's placing is awkward. We have still to see the X-Men operating in action under their new status quo and instead have been through multiple character pieces. This story might have been better off held back a few issues to allow the X-Men to go into action first.

New Mutants 65 - Inferno Prologue

Illyana begins her descent into the darkness as she seeks revenge for the death of the X-Men.

New Mutants #65

Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciler: Bret Blevins
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

After the X-Men seemingly gave their lives to save the world it's inevitable there would be a fallout amongst the New Mutants especially given the presence of Colossus's sister on the team. The last few issues have shown Illyana (Magik) dwelling on the events and concluding that Forge is responsible; now she sets out to get revenge upon him and lashes out at anyone who doesn't share her desire - which turns out to be just about everyone she turns to from her fellow New Mutants to Magneto to Kitty Pryde.

As this issue reminds us Illyana did not have a normal upbringing even by the standards of her fellow New Mutants. Instead she spent many years growing up in a dark dimension and eventually coming to command to magic and rule the realm despite being only in her early teens. So it's not so surprising that her reaction is one of fury and she refuses to listen to the others who point out that the X-Men gave their lives voluntarily or that Forge doesn't appear to be as evil as she assumes. But this has far reaching consequences when she enters Limbo and it reflects her angry state as her "Darkchilde" persona increasingly takes over. Worse still she takes the Soul Sword out of Limbo with her, leaving it vulnerable to mutinous demons such as S'ym who prepares to open a portal to extend Limbo's power and thus set the seeds for Inferno.

There's further foreshadowing as Illyana arrives in Dallas and finds Forge protected by Freedom Force. Destiny immediately foresees catastrophe for the world that hinges on these events. As battle commences she further sees demons invading our world and Illyana at the centre of destruction. But despite her warnings Illyana refuses to listen, believing this to merely be an attempt to protect Forge with words after a battle with Freedom Force has not ended overwhelmingly.

The rest of the New Mutants reluctantly decide to help Illyana if only to protect her from both Freedom Force and herself but it has little impact. however the battle itself brings some strong action and a great moment of humour as Destiny calmly explains how she foresaw Sunspot bringing a wall down on Avalanche, the Blob and Spiral and did nothing to warn her teammates as the first two are invulnerable whilst she finds Spiral insufferable and deserving a humiliation. Mystique impersonates Forge and nearly gets killed for her troubles but then the real Forge appears and an even darker Illyana turns to confront him.

This is quite a strong issue showing how rage and anger are consuming Illyana with devastating effects not merely for her but for all around as we get one of the earliest hints of the destruction to come. There is far more at stake than one girl's desire to avenge her brother and the apocalypse that is coming out of this is clear for all to see.

New Mutants 64 - Inferno Prologue

The New Mutants face their grief over recent deaths in their own way.

New Mutants #64

Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciler: Bret Blevins
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The deaths of Doug Ramsay (Cypher) and of the whole X-Men recently have cast a shadow over the New Mutants but unfortunately the reaction has been delayed by not one but two awkward fill-in issues. Now we get a strong issue looking at how people react to grief when they have both powers and technology to hand that cannot bring their close ones back. All they can do is try and hope.

How many people go over a tragedy in their mind again and again, thinking over what they could have done differently and wishing they could have prevented the events? Rahne's reaction follows this pattern but it's made worse by the existence of the Danger Room and thus she is not merely thinking the situation through but running endless simulations in which she took a different action and Doug survived. She goes on to spend much of the rest of the issue not quite accepting that Doug has died even when she first sees his body lying in his coffin. Such a reaction feels all too human and understandable but magnified by everything around here.

Illyana's reaction to the apparent death of her brother and the other X-Men also has obvious parallels to how many react to tragedies in the news. She sits for ages watching the footage of their final moments, having taped a lot of the coverage to capture the whole sequence. All she can do is express her anger that she wasn't able to get to Dallas and can only watch until she comes to her conclusion about who is responsible for the deaths, setting up a strong cliffhanger as she declares she is going to seek vengeance.

Magneto finds himself in the difficult position of having to preserve the true nature of both the school and Doug whilst also telling his parents how their son died. His decision to lie and pretend that it was an accident when on a camping trip Doug stumbled across hunters clearly weighs heavily on him but all he can do is hold in his anger and grief whilst wondering about the eventual fate of mutantkind.

But it's Warlock's reaction that is remembered the most and which takes the cover scene. The child-like alien just does not understand human death and his confusion is enhanced first after seeing a zombie movie on television and then as he learns of the Christian belief in the afterlife and the eventual resurrection of the dead. So he becomes convinced that all Doug needs to come back from Heaven is to have life energy restored to him. When Doug does not do this Warlock decides to show him those who miss him in the hope this will bring him back to life. At first it seems macabre to have a corpse carried around and paraded in front of first his mother and then the one who might have become his girlfriend. But as an unusually sensitive Bobby (Sunspot) explains this is just Warlock wanting what all of them want and trying to bring Doug back to life just as Rahne was trying in the Danger Room. It's quite a moving scene as Rahne and Warlock come to accept that Doug is truly gone.

It's incredible how such a weird situation and such a comic looking character as Warlock can generate such a moving issue. But this one works surprisingly well as all the reactions are entirely in character and understandable given the extraordinary situation everyone is in. This issue is the best so far in this look and its only fault is coming two months later when it should have been issue #62 giving a strong immediate aftermath to the Fall of the Mutants rather than coming later.

New Mutants 63 - Inferno Prologue

Yet another flashback fill-in issue as we discover how Illyana obtained a space suit and a gun several years ago...

New Mutants #63

Plot: Chris Claremont
Script: Louise Simonson
Artists: Bo Hampton & Josef Rubinstein
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Nel Yomtov
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

It's curious just how many of these early issues are so blatantly fill-ins, often pressed into awkward service by coming at a difficult point in the ongoing narrative and having to be twisted into service. This one stands out even more than most because it has a framing narrative that doesn't fit the current continuity and takes a bizarre step to fix that. It also sets out to answer a question that didn't need answering many years later.

Back in New Mutants #21 Illyana (Magik) was briefly infected with the Transmode virus when Warlock first arrived on Earth. She grabbed Lockheed the dragon and teleported away into Limbo and later returned cured wearing a strange spacesuit and carrying a gun. Where these came from was not explained at the time and so could just have been left as one of the little mysteries that life is full of. But now we get an explanation - or do we? This issue starts off with Illyana and Kitty Pryde fooling around in their bedroom before accidentally phasing through the floor into Colossus's room. That gives away that the story had been prepared some time back and its use has to get around the fact that Kitty is no longer at the mansion and Colossus is now believed dead. And so Illyana's thought captions on the first page establish this as a dream sequence even before Illyana starts to recount what happened to her. Then the last panel reaffirms the whole thing as a dream rather than genuinely being the untold tale of what happened to her between pages of that issue.

As a result the whole thing feels even more inconsequential than a usual fill-in issue. It tells how Illyana first faced off a demon in Limbo and cured herself of the techno virus then found herself in what appeared to be an alternate reality some time earlier before she arrived at the mansion. Curiously Colossus, her own brother, barely reacts to her claims. It turns out this isn't the past or an alternate reality but instead a spaceship where the Brood have cloned the X-Men and are using them to breed Brood eggs. Illyana finds the dead original crew of the ship and takes both a gun and a spacesuit for protection then faces down the Brood Queen with the help of the rebellious clones before leaving on the ship to protect its cargo.

This flashback sequence is a bit odd and in part feels like an excuse to allow an artist to draw the X-Men in their earlier costumes but otherwise there's little to it that suggests it couldn't have happened in continuity and just never been mentioned again. But the framing narrative is the confused mess with a second frame added at the end that just pushes the whole thing back into the realms of fiction-within-fiction. So ultimately it contributes little. And as the second fill-in issue in a row when the New Mutants are suffering the double fallout of both the death of one of their own and the death of the whole X-Men (including Illyana's brother), this feels a very odd time to be flashing back to explain obscure points from three and a half years earlier. Only the final panel hints at things to come as Illyana reflects on current events but overall this issue should have been left in inventory and only deployed into service at a less intense time and with a more current framing narrative.