Chronological X-Men - Proteus Part 1 Review

Proteus.

The Uncanny X-Men #125 There’s Something Awful on Muir Island

Classic X-Men #31 Spigot At The End of The Universe

I’ll start with the back up feature here. It’s one of those stories that could either fit within the pages of the main issue, or it could happen either before or after the current storyline. Charles isn’t fitting in too well on Lilandra’s homeworld and it’s making him restless. Lilandra suggests that he spends time with Chakra the Shi-ar’s plumber. It’s a little odd because Charles who always boasts about equality and treating people the same but now he’s acting like being a plumber is the worst thing that could ever happen to someone. It was kind of a middle ground story, not good, not bad yet it still holds potential to be read again. The main story is pretty good but clearly some time has passed. Beast visits the mansion and is surprised to run into all of the X-Men that he thought were dead, Sean is still suffering from the damage to his throat and decides to leave the team at least until his powers return. Lilandra is dealing with issues in the Shi-ar galaxy and Charles is suffering homesickness and is basically still moping around about not being treated fairly among Lilandra’s court. All that changes when he sees how Jean saved the universe, she’s so powerful now that it actually scares him enough into feeling like he needs to return to Earth. Mastermind reveals that he is officially working for the Hellfire Club and wants to turn Jean into his Black Queen – we also see through a series of flashbacks how Mastermind has been working his way into Jean’s life over the past few months, a lot of this is explained in recent back up stories of ‘Classic.’ Magneto still recovering from his battle with the X-Men on Asteroid M and is severely missing his wife Magda. The two major things that happen are Moira discovers that there is something wrong behind the door marked ‘Mutant X,’ which will lead us into our current story. The second thing is Jean appears to be spending time in another life where she was a noble woman – the first flash lasts just long enough for Jean to succumb to an ambush. Jamie and Alex go to investigate but Lorna decides to answer the phone in case it’s Charles, Hank or the Avengers calling because she thinks that they’ll need whoever it is help taking down whoever was strong enough to scare Phoenix like that. It turns out to be the X-Men and Lorna is ambushed while talking to Scott.

The Uncanny X-Men #126 How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth…!

Classic X-Men #32 Shreds of Humanity

The X-Men arrive on Muir Island to a brief confrontation because Alex doesn’t know the X-Men are really alive. Jean is still having flashbacks of another life, only they are getting progressively worse. This time she’s with her husband (Mastermind) and for sport they are hunting a human – thankfully she snaps out of it before she actually has to kill the man. Jamie creates a large amount of dupes in order to search the island faster only one of them becomes possessed by Mutant X who is jumping from body to body draining them of their lives leaving nothing more of them than a mummified corpse when he jumps to the next body. We learn that Mutant X is in fact Moira’s son, which I guess could explain why she abruptly cut things off with Charles in the past. Given that Mutant X essentially kills everyone he possesses and he has taken one of Jamie’s dupes this is the first time Jamie actually ‘dies.’ The back up feature for this issue takes place in the middle of the battle between Logan, Kurt and Mutant X (now possessing a cop) who has decided to take the name Proteus. It focuses on Proteus’ using his reality warping ability to basically torture Logan and take advantage of how Logan relies on his healing factor so much so that he has gotten to the point where he enjoys being hurt. I really wasn’t feeling the art here, but considering it is supposed to be sort of like a dreamscape I can ignore it. This is one of the few times the weird art style actually works for the story, but I've noticed recently the quality of the art in relation to the actual story being presented is starting to decline, and that's not something that I'm loving.

The Uncanny X-Men #127 The Quality of Hatred!

Classic X-Men #33 So Good It Hurts

The back up story here takes place shortly after the X-Men split up last issue (so before the battle between Logan, Kurt, Ororo and Proteus.) Alex and Lorna are looking for Moira’s son but Alex keeps getting pulled into these visions of a darker world where both he and Lorna are getting hurt. He claims that this is because of how afraid he is of the fact that if he and Lorna ever go back to the X-Men that they will die, and then he switches to this idea that he can’t separate the feelings of how if their relationship ends it’s like death for him. Personally I think that Alex is just too close to Proteus and has succumbed to his reality altering powers than Alex having panic attacks and creating this whole dark world all on his own. It’s easier for me to just over look the fact that Alex and Proteus haven’t had any contact yet than it is to accept that Alex is doing this all on his own. This is the first time we see Joe Mactaggert – Moira’s husband and father of their son Kevin (Proteus.) I’m not sure I’ve got the time line right but it seems that Joe and Moira were together (it turns out he’s a real abusive little man,) she goes to the states and meets and falls in love with Charles. Charles gets drafted and Moira tries to get a divorce from her husband only he doesn’t go along with it and soon after Charles has left she discovers that she is pregnant. Knowing that it can’t be Charles she decides to end their engagement in the Dear John letter she wrote him and then went back to Muir Island to raise Joe’s baby. Anyway, enough exposition… Moira goes to warn Joe, it doesn’t go well and Proteus ends up possessing his father and threatens to kill Moira if the X-Men choose to follow them.

The Uncanny X-Men #128 The Action of the Tiger!

Classic X-Men #34 Double Negative

This issue ends the main storyline here. Joe is dead because Kevin possessed him. The X-Men struggle through a heated battle, which isn’t going well considering every time Proteus uses his powers he grows stronger. It doesn’t make it any easier considering that all of the X-Men that aren’t metal based (metal is the only thing that can hurt or even kill Kevin.) The X-Men work to force Kevin to use up Joe’s body faster than he normally would, one by one the X-Men use their abilities on him until the only one left is Piotr. By this point Kevin is without a body, desperate and near death he tries to take possession of Piotr only to be surprised when he transforms into Colossus. By this point Kevin is so badly damaged that one punch actually managed to kill him. This is a big thing because for the first time a villain doesn’t die as a result of his own actions but instead is essentially killed by the X-Men. Granted with a villain that can kill anyone he comes within physical contact with there are very few ways that he can be dealt with but it’s still a shock because it’s something totally different than Logan using his claws to kill some random henchman. The backup story shows a typical night at the Hellfire Club and the members of its Inner Circle. Emma and Jason engage in a game of chess on the astral plane, the two of them are so evenly matched that the only way to end the game is with both of their ‘deaths.’ I don’t really care for the server girl and Emma’s talk with her about sexism.. it wasn’t really needed – I would much rather have had them spend those pages showing us more of Emma and Jason’s duel.

Marvel Team-Up #89 Shoot Out Over Center Ring

This time Kurt and Spider-Man team up. Nothing real spectacular here, Kurt meets Amanda at the airport and the encounter Miss Locke near one of Arcade’s private jets. They stow away in the trunk of the man that was meeting Miss Locke and find out that he has hired someone to murder Spider-Man. It turns out that all of this leads back to the circus and Kurt pretends to be Spider-Man to draw out the shooter. Umm okay the issue was good, but there were too many weird things that started to add up. Kurt was taken in by the circus and was sort of raised as Amanda’s foster sister, yet none of this is revealed yet – this could just be a case of me knowing too much too soon so I can over look that. But then it gets worse when Kurt runs into the man who was running the circus he was a part of, the guy remembers Kurt but makes no mention of knowing Amanda. So it seems to me that eventually Kurt and Amanda knowing each other as children and being raised together will be a retcon the writers will deal with later on. This was a good issue, but it would have been a lot better if I didn’t know about Amanda’s future events.

The Uncanny X-Men #125 There’s Something Awful on Muir Island: A

Classic X-Men #31Spigot At The End of The Universe: C

The Uncanny X-Men #126 How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth…!: A

Classic X-Men #32 Shreds of Humanity: B

The Uncanny X-Men #127 The Quality of Hatred!: A

Classic X-Men #33 So Good It Hurts: F

The Uncanny X-Men #128 The Action of the Tiger!: A

Classic X-Men #34 Double Negative: B

Marvel Team-Up #89 Shoot Out Over Center Ring: C

Chronological X-Men - Phoenix Rising Part 2 Review

Phoenix Rising part 2!

(The Uncanny)X-Men #101 Like A Phoenix, From the Ashes!

Classic X-Men #9 The Gift

The X-Men return to Earth crashing in the water and Jean suddenly rises from the water in a brand new costume and screams that she is ‘Phoenix’ (so we get the first appearance of Phoenix II here) before passing out and falling back into the water. The additional pages show the X-Men leaving as Ororo masks their getaway through fog and Peter Corbeau covers for them telling everyone that only he survived the crash and the crew he left with (the X-Men in disguise) all perished. The one thing that I really don’t like and honestly it’s some hate that I’ve got left over from the old X-Men Animated Series where even before Jean transformed into Phoenix she would just randomly pass out and faint. I couldn’t stand that, and I know that it happens a lot while ‘Jean’ is Phoenix but I’m not looking forward to that at all. The back up story actually takes place in the middle of the main story while Jean is critical condition in a coma. Kurt spies a boy out walking around in the late hours of the night/early hours of the morning. They bond and Kurt teaches him how to juggle in an attempt to get Daniel to open up about what is going on. They each have a profound effect on each other, so much so that Kurt shows Daniel who he really is without the image inducer. It’s a little odd because in the end the boy dies and it gets iffy because Kurt was speaking with the boy when he was really dead. So was Daniel a mutant himself, or was he a ghost who was seeking out Kurt who was going through a crisis of faith? You could argue either because Daniel tells Kurt that Jean will indeed be fine (and ultimately she was.) With Jean now awake, Charles insists that the X-Men go on vacation while Scott, Moira and Charles himself stay behind. The newer members of the team go off to Sean’s newly inherited castle only to find an ambush waiting thanks to Sean’s cousin Black Tom Cassidy and The Juggernaut.

(The Uncanny)X-Men #102 Who Will Stop The Juggernaut?

Classic X-Men #10 Tag, Sucker!

We learn a few new things in the battle over Cassidy Keep; we see Kurt first use his ability to blend into shadows, we officially learn of Ororo’s claustrophobia, we learn that Sean was once an Interpol agent and a series of flashbacks show us David and N’Dare Munroe, Ororo’s parents. We learn that her father was a journalist while her mother was a real African Princess, so while over the years we learn that Ororo isn’t indeed a Goddess she is at the very least nobility. We also see her young days as a thief where she worked for Achmed El-Gibar. The additional pages show us Charles being driven even more insane than he already thinks he is when he keeps seeing the armored alien and he confides in Moira that he feels his powers are driving him insane. The editing of the story clears up a few things to make the characters not so ‘dated’ because in the original story it established that Ororo was born in 1951 which would make her 59 now- so obviously they needed to cut that part out. The back up story shows Logan wandering around New York unwillingly playing a game of tag with Sabertooth, the story was alright but I could have done without ever reading it. It doesn’t help that I’m not entirely sure where this story is supposed to take place. Does it happen roughly the same time Kurt is wandering the city with Daniel, or does it happen shortly after Logan joins the team but before Jean becomes Phoenix, or does it happen after  the X-Men return from Cassidy Keep? 

(The Uncanny)X-Men #103 The Fall of The Tower

Classic X-Men #11 Hope

Oh.. okay.. Cassidy Keep is full of Leprechauns, one of which works for Sean. Yeah, okay… moving right along then. We learn that Black Tom and Juggernaut were sought out by Eric the Red in an attempt to take the X-Men down to keep the ‘Princess’ from reaching them. We get our first look at Emperor D’Ken who has sort of contracted Eric the Red to make sure Princess Neramani doesn’t arrive on Earth. D’Ken is none too pleased that BlackTom and Juggernaut fail, but Eric tells him that he has already made arrangements with the X-Men’s oldest foe (so obviously Magneto) to take a crack at them next. The additional pages show the armored alien continuing to reach out to Charles which drives him deeper into madness. It doesn’t help that Charles can feel Ororo’s pain and gets into a huge fight with Scott trying to get him to take down Juggernaut only to have Scott refuse to leave Jean’s side. I’ve got to admit, I’m not a big fan of the back up story. We see Ororo in England, which means that the story could take place before the X-Men return to the states, or it could have been set in an entirely different timeframe. Storm meets Phil Halloran, a writer who is contemplating taking his own life because he just doesn’t have passion when it comes to writing anymore. There’s a killer at large who has been targeting women, and goes after Ororo who is in turn saved by Phil. It’s a story that tries to be too powerful and relevant for my tastes, plus it doesn’t fit in with the current storyline and for it to have happened so soon after the Kurt and Daniel story makes it redundant. It just is and honestly I really didn’t like it in context, out of context it might be better, but it doesn’t belong set around this timeline.

(The Uncanny)X-Men #104 The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto

Classic X-Men #12 A Fire in the Night

This is the first time Magneto battles the new X-Men which leads to some interesting revelations. We see the Muir Island Mutant Research Facility for the first time and learn just how much Moira gave up to become the Xavier Institute’s ‘housekeeper.’ We learn that this place has held several mutants prisoner, presumably because a regular prison cannot contain them and their powers. We see Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man) who has been in charge since Moira left. Magneto who had been turned into a baby has been re-aged –I guess this could take care of the fact that he should be well over 100 within the current time line, but it’s hard to retcon him too much because of his origin story. We finally get the reveal of the armored alien as being none other than (Princess) Lilandra Neramani; we see the return of John and Elaine Grey who have come to welcome Jean back to her apartment she shares with Misty Knight (it’s hard to keep track of all the retcons, flashbacks, hidden years, shoehorned in events, and additional pages but I think this is the first appearances of Misty within the X-Men title) only for the issue to end with Erik the Red, Havok and Polaris who are still under Erik’s mind control watching Jean through her apartment window. We see The Starjammers for the first time, although not all of them… however we do get Ch’Od, ‘Christopher’ (long story, many twists, turns, and retcons for him too so I won’t get into that now but he is ultimately the character known as Corsair,) and Cr+eee. Magneto fails in his battle with the X-Men but there’s something awakening behind a door labeled ‘Mutant X;’ and the X-men realize that someone is trying to divide them all in order to make Charles vulnerable enough to succumb to an attack. Having figured this out the X-Men now understand that they need to get back to Charles as quickly as possible. The back up story takes place directly after Magneto has been defeated. He has fled to Paris and in a dream we learn exactly how Magneto and his wife Magda’s child Anya died in a fire and how Magda left her husband after the death of their daughter and seeing him murder everyone around their burning home becomes too much for her to deal with. Naturally this means that he wakes up only to find another apartment burning and another mother and child trapped within it. He decides to save them which lays the foundation for him slowly moving away from the ‘evil villain’ to the ‘tragic figure pushed too far’ type of character. We do get to see a photograph or Eric, ‘Gabby’ and Charles back in ‘happier’ times. I don’t like this idea that Eric knew all along that Charles was trying to manipulate him with his mutant powers, I don’t see it actually happening, but I do see how from Magneto’s perspective that would be how he would look at it.

Iron Fist #14 Snowfire

Okay I’ll be the first to admit I know less than next to nothing about Iron Fist (I’m weird, I love the Marvel Universe, but I hate anything not tied to the X-Men at all) so I have no idea what the heck is going on with 90% of this issue. I only know that Iron Fist and Colleen (whoever she is) are tied to Misty Knight who is currently roommates with Jean and that this battle is the first time we ever see Sabertooth – you can’t count the backup feature in the recent Classics book because while it takes place before this issue it hasn’t actually been written yet. Like I said I only read this because it’s the first appearance of Sabertooth and I figured because he’s such a huge figure in the X-Men mythos that I had to read it, plus if I sat through Logan’s introduction in The Incredible Hulk I could sit through this. It was kind of blah for a story, it might be better if I was invested in it at all, but I don’t think I’ll ever reread it, and I’m not looking forward to the next time this character pops up in the X-Men’s time line (unfortunately it’s going to be the very next issue.)

(The Uncanny)X-Men #101 Like A Phoenix, From the Ashes!: B

Classic X-Men #9 The Gift: A

(The Uncanny)X-Men #102 Who Will Stop The Juggernaut?: B

Classic X-Men #10 Tag, Sucker!: D

(The Uncanny)X-Men #104 The Fall of The Tower: B

Classic X-Men #11 Hope: D

(The Uncanny)X-Men #104 The Gentleman’s Name is Magneto: B

Classic X-Men #12 A Fire in the Night: B

Iron Fist #14 Snowfire: F