Chronological X-Men - Part 17 Review

It’s like squatting at an apartment, only not at an apartment but in other Marvel Comics while the X-Men look for a place to call their very own. A Mutant Road Trip if you will.

Amazing Adventures #11 The Beast

Amazing Adventures #12 Iron Man: D.O.A.

Amazing Adventures #13 Evil is All in Your Mind

Amazing Adventures #14 The Vampire Machine

Umm.. okay, where to start with this one… I was actually kind of let down by the over all story. It’s one of those fixed points in the X-Men history that is so relevant that it can’t ever be ignored but at the same time I don’t think that it really lived up to all the hype it had in my head. It doesn’t help either that some things just don’t track: we’re led to believe that the X-Men are in hiding due to anti-mutant hysteria and that Charles has forbidden everyone aside from Hank from leaving the Xavier Institute yet in the few scenes we do have with the X-Men in this story we never actually see Lorna or Alex- it’s almost as if they don’t exist at all. It’s also unclear as to exactly how much time has passed between this and the end of the X-Men title (as well as the future Hidden Years book, but that becomes an issue with larger reasons in future books that I’ll talk about shortly) but it appears that a rather significant portion of time has passed because Hank is no longer with Vera, instead he is in love with his assistant Linda Donaldson. Anyway for the actual plot Hank is trying to single out and cure genetic mutation but through a series of events he has to take his own ‘cure’ and it ends up jumpstarting his mutation and turn him into the furry Beast that’s been around for years. There are a lot of characters that we touch base with through the course of this story: the X-Men, Iron Man, Mastermind, The Blob, Unus, Quasimodo, a strange woman always in the shadows who is looking for Hank, Patsy Walker, Buzz Baxter, Linda, and the ranks of ‘the Secret Empire’ who play a rather large role in the over all X-Men plot for the next year-ish. IN the end though, it just didn’t live up to the hype I had built up in my brain- it’s kind of sad actually, I really wanted this to be a lot better than it actually was.

Amazing Adventures #15 Murder in Mid-Air!

Amazing Adventures #16 … And the Juggernaut will get you… if you don’t watch out!

Amazing Adventures #17 Birth of the Beast!

The Incredible Hulk #161 Beyond the Border Lurks Death!

The next chapter in this story is a little better but it’s more disjointed. We find out that the shadowed woman has been Vera, Hank’s ex-girlfriend so it appears that the two of them either parted on good terms or it has been an even larger period of time that has passed since the end of the X-Men book and the last few adventures. She’s been looking for Hank to take him to Canada to stop some massive threat that can end the world. It makes you wonder if she had figured out if Hank is a mutant, but it turns out she just wants his help for his brain, the threat that can end the world actually ends up being Calvin Rankin, the Mimic who is quickly loosing control of his powers and is afraid that he will cause the death of everyone he comes in contact with. The Hulk comes into play for two reasons here: Amazing Adventures was canceled before this story could finish so it had to wrap up somewhere, and they explained the Hulk’s weakening powers as a result of Mimic inadvertently draining them. In the end it appears that Calvin dies of radiation poisoning from prolonged draining of the Hulk’s gamma radiation. Back in Amazing Adventures we see a sort of Halloween tale where Hank fights Juggernaut- which I think they could have skipped that story entirely because it would have allowed them to wrap up this plot without having to outsource it’s conclusion to yet another book. The final issue of Amazing Adventures ends up being a reprint of the Origin of the Beast that ran as one of the many back up features in the X-Men books. It’s basically just a reprint of: A Beast is Born, This Boy- This Bombshell, The Lure of the Beast- Nappers!, The Crimes of the Conquistador! And Welcome to the Club, Beast! There really isn’t anything to say about this so we’re going to move on now.

Ka-Zar #2 From the Sky, Winged Wrath

Ka-Zar #3 In the Den of the Dazzler

Marvel Tales #30 Te Cage an Angel!

Here we see the start of the story that gave us the plot of X-Men: The Hidden Years #13-15. We see how Dazzler (Angel’s uncle Burt, not the Dazzler we come to know and love later) had Warren Worthington JR killed, we see him capture Angel and learn that he is Warren Worthington III- there really isn’t anything much to say about that. We see the FBI agent who has been working with the X-Men for some time now try to talk Angel fof of a ledge and keep him from killing Dazzler’s men and we see more of Warren’s relationship with Candy. The story is pretty good, if not rushed, which is sort of to be expected considering it ran as a back up feature over the course of three books, so it’s barely large enough for one full comic book to begin with. I think my problem with this story is the fact that I read the retcon first, so I already knew that Burt didn’t die when Warren dropped him to save Candy from falling to her death, but at the same time we don’t actually see Warren tell Candy that he’s Angel, let alone take the time out to explain everything X-Men and Charles Xavier related to her. It’s a safe bet to assume that it happens off panel, but still with how bold Candy acts in the Hidden Years, you would at the very least think that Warren ‘outing’ himself as a mutant would have been shown.

Avengers #110 … And Now Magneto!

Avengers #111 With Two Beside Them!

This next story also sort of suffers from the retcon of The Hidden Years because this particular story then becomes very much displaced. We still haven’t seen Lorna or Alex, so this must take place around the same time they appeared in The Hulk, but that’s iffy too because in Amazing Adventures it is stated that Charles has forbidden the X-Men except for Hank from leaving the Institute. Now this story obviously takes place after The Hidden Years because Hank is now the blue furred Beast, but that doesn’t make sense because the X-Men are shocked that Magneto is alive but by that point they all should know he survived what happened to him in the Savage Land because they have dealt with him several times since then. We do learn one important thing here and that is that someone has systematically been targeting and abducting mutants for a while now and in the midst of the confusion between Magneto fighting the X-Men and then posing as Angel someone has made off with the real Angel. Another thing I found a little strange is during the whole Savage Land story in the X-Men Ka-Zar snapped the Piper’s neck in order to get him to stop, so it leads us to believe that he’s dead only now he’s up and around working for Magneto yet again. It’s just a little too weird. It would have been a good read but I’ve read maybe a total of 5 Avenger comic books in my entire life so I’m not familiar with that universe at all so I honestly didn’t care about Black Panther’s people wanting him to return home, Pietro and Wanda’s falling out over her falling in love with a robot (the Vision) or Hawkeye leaving the team to be with Black Widow only to find out she’s been shacking up with Daredevil and her eventually joining the Avengers to help replenish their ranks while giving her some time and space to pick between Hawkeye and Daredevil.

Amazing Adventures #11 The Beast: C

Amazing Adventures #12 Iron Man: D.O.A.: B

Amazing Adventures #13 Evil is All in Your Mind: B

Amazing Adventures #14 The Vampire Machine: B

Amazing Adventures #15 Murder in Mid-Air!: B

Amazing Adventures #16 … And the Juggernaut will get you… if you don’t watch out!: D

Amazing Adventures #17 Birth of the Beast!: C

The Incredible Hulk #161 Beyond the Border Lurks Death!: B

Ka-Zar #2 From the Sky, Winged Wrath: A

Ka-Zar #3 In the Den of the Dazzler: A

Marvel Tales #30 Te Cage an Angel!: A

Avengers #110 … And Now Magneto!: C

Avengers #111 With Two Beside Them!: C

Chronological X-Men - Part 16 Review

Today we bid a not so fond farewell to X-Men The Hidden Years, as well as look at a few of the adventures that too place in other Marvel books while the X-Men were without a book to call their own.

Fantastic Four #102 The Strength of the Sub-Mariner

X-Men: The Hidden Years #20 Worlds Within Worlds

X-Men: The Hidden Years #21 Let Loose the Dogs of War!

Fantastic Four #103 At War with Atlantis!

Fantastic Four #104 Our World – Enslaved!

X-Men: The Hidden Years #22 Friends and Enemies

Wow, this is a big one, and I honestly don’t really think that it’s a good thing. In X-Men: The Hidden Years we see a brief recap and retelling of the events from the Fantastic Four series back in the 70s. It was nice to see an updated version of it and how things such as writing styles have changed over the years but it was something that honestly didn’t need to be done in the X-Men title, especially with only three issues left of the series. It makes for a quick wrap up of the current plots. We see Warren and Lucy try to reconnect with her family only to have that end badly and then they return back to ‘the Promise.’ Now the whole time Lucy had told Warren that she can’t wake Alex and Lorna up without killing them, and then suddenly Charles shows up and pretty much says ‘uhh.. no, she’s wrong.’ Alex wakes up first and then Charles sends him off to try to stop Magneto, only he never gets there. The rest of the X-Men finish their fight with Mole Man; Avia (who has been around since like the third issue) is returned to the Savage Land off panel so there’s no real pay off with that and Charles just up and decides to leave Ashley and Teri again for no real reason other than all the X-Men need to be back at the Xavier Institute by the end of the series, this also explains how the remaining X-Men suddenly get off of Monster Island- they’re just magically back at the mansion. They decided to shoe horn in the whole plot of Magneto tricking Namor into going to war with the US to try to wrap up that particular plot it wasn’t required. We see Charles connecting to Magneto via astral projection and that’s pretty much it; like I said Alex never makes it to the battle, and the X-Men don’t appear at all within the story in the Fantastic Four series so it wasn’t really needed at all. In fact if they had cut out those few events then it might have given them more time and more pages to have everything else make much more sense. All that being said I actually enjoyed the Fantastic Four part of the stories, it was a nice interesting read and honestly I’d probably read it again (without reading the Hidden Years #20-22, which is sad to say since it’s the final issues of that series.)

 Marvel Team-Up #4 And Then, the X-Men

This is one of the X-Men’s many pit stops while remaining bookless and honestly it really isn’t that important to the mythology other than it sets up that something is going on with Hank to explain his absence from this particular adventure… and not to spoil it because it won’t be covered in this review but at this point in Hank’s life he’s feeling a little… blue-. Anyway the X-Men enter a brief battle with Spider-Man when they are led to believe that he kidnapped Hans Jorgenson only to learn that Hans had really been taken by Morbius. Everything here is pretty much a mash up and you don’t expect much of a plot but Spider-Man is suffering side effects of a drug he had to take to stop his mutation (he ended up getting 6 arms for a while) and now the side effects are killing him so he goes to Hans for help. The X-Men fight Morbius and take him back to the Xavier Institute along with Spider-Man and Hans where Spider-Man receives the cure and is no longer in danger of dying. All in all, it was a pretty fun read- and I’m not just saying that because I lean more towards monster/vampire stuff and Morbius is basically a vampire. The one thing I didn’t really like about this though was that all of the X-Men use their real names in front of Spider-Man and that’s a big superhero no-no.

The Amazing Spider-Man #92 When Iceman Attacks!

Alright, this one I don’t really consider too important or honestly even worth reading. I mean okay it’s good by itself so I’m not faulting that but there was no real need for Bobby to meet up with Spider-Man at all. Like I said though it’s a good issue- it’s kind of interesting to see the corrupt Sam Bullit who is running for district attorney try to portray Spider-Man as a villain and then manipulate the situation to make it seem like Iceman had been working for Bullit in an attempt to take down Spider-Man. I’m not really sure how that was a good idea considering how the X-Men and mutants in general aren’t well liked, certainly Spider-Man has to have a better public standing than mutants. Another thing that kind of stuck out was how Sam kept referring to Robbie Robertson as a black man, it’s hard to explain but the way it came off was him being racist, which considering the time period that this story was written in I guess it makes sense, but it’s odd because of how Sam appears to at the very least hate mutants less than he hates Spider-Man and Robbie.

The Incredible Hulk #150 Cry Hulk, Cry Havok!

Okay, lets just get this out of the way… next to Iron-Man The Hulk is quite possibly my least favorite Marvel universe character to ever have existed. That being said… the issue didn’t totally 100% suck, it’s far from the worst X-Men related issue I’ve reviewed so far, but it’s far from the best either. There isn’t much I can talk about here because I’m not too familiar with anything related to the Hulk (my ignorance is by choice though because in general the character just isn’t my cup of tea) so I don’t know if there are any major things going on here or any big mistakes. I know this was meant to fill in the gap with what the X-Men were doing while they were bookless but I would like to have seen Havok leave the X-Men and try to start this new life instead of him taking less than one full page to explain to Lorna why he did it. Lorna on the other hand, she had been dying her hair to hide the fact that it’s naturally green, yet she’s just riding around with her green hair in civilian clothes now, so that kind of didn’t make much sense.

  

Fantastic Four #102 The Strength of the Sub-Mariner: B

X-Men: The Hidden Years #20 Worlds Within Worlds: C

X-Men: The Hidden Years #21 Let Loose the Dogs of War!: C

Fantastic Four #103 At War with Atlantis!: B

Fantastic Four #104 Our World – Enslaved!: B

X-Men: The Hidden Years #22 Friends and Enemies: D

Marvel Team-Up #4 And Then, the X-Men: A

The Amazing Spider-Man #92 When Iceman Attacks!: C

The Incredible Hulk #150 Cry Hulk, Cry Havok!: D

Chronological X-Men - Part 14 Review

A series of tales so damn well hidden even the X-Men don’t remember having them.

X-Men: The Hidden Years #1 Once More the Savage Land

X-Men: The Hidden Years #2 The Ghost and the Darkness

X-Men: The Hidden Years #3 On Wings of Angels

X-Men: The Hidden Years #4 Escape to Oblivion

This particular series covers some of the gaps in the time line that happened when the original X-Men series was cancelled and became a reprint book. This is going to be a hard one to gage because while it does take place within the mythos that it was written after all of these things happened so while some characters show up for the first time it isn’t technically their first appearances but due to the existence of this book it has been retconned into their first appearances.  A few major things happen here- Bobby takes Charles’ ‘lies’ very seriously and ends up quitting the X-Men; Lorna has her first try at a codename ‘Magnetrix,’ but that doesn’t go over too well. In an attempt to recap the events that happened in the X-Men series we get multiple returns: Magneto (who turns out to not have died at all and is trying to use the people of the Savage Land as a way to make him achieve immortality,) The Changeling, Ka-Zar (but this is within the main story,) Sunfire, Grotesk, Mesmero, Living Pharaoh/Living Monolith, Sentinels, Larry Trask, Sauron, Lorelei, The Z’Nox, The Hulk, Amphibius, Zelda, Vera, Candy (who has learned of Warren being a mutant as well as the identities of Charles Xavier and the X-Men,) and Ka-Zar’s pet Zabu. We get a few new characters, such as a sub race of the Savage Land natives calling themselves the Nuh’Ghari; who have been mutated through prolonged exposure to a volcano; out of that race we get to know a few of them better than others and they are Nhu’abdar and Avia, we get a few former slaves as well: Linak and Sakaa. I didn’t really care for the idea of Magneto being able to use astral projection but given how primitive the Savage Land and it’s people are it would make sense that Magneto would use anything he could to gain an advantage over the people.

X-Men: The Hidden Years #5 Riders on the Storm

X-Men: The Hidden Years #6 Behold A Goddess Rising..!

X-Men: The Hidden Years #7 Power Play

See this is what is a little weird about when they shoehorn things in, for example in this story we meet Ororo Munroe and learn that she met a portion of the X-Men before she actually joined the team. Now the thing that doesn’t really work with this is the fact that there are future events that happen that because they were written before The Hidden Years means that there are no mentions of these events (because even though the Hidden Years takes place before things like The Phoenix Saga and Giant Sized X-Men, they were written well after the fact.) We see a few more plot lines continue such as Warren and Avia getting separated from The X-Men and Magneto and getting captured by a fishing crew, Bobby suffers a bout of amnesia but still manages to wash up on the shores of the Savage Land and is taken in by Karl Lykos. Lorna drops the Magnetrix codename she was trying out and Candy goes to the Xavier Institute and informs Charles that she knows Warren is a mutant and that she knows all about Charles, his abilities and the X-Men. This issue introduces us to Deluge, a mutant who has taken control of a storm Ororo conjured up recently (which explains the massive storm that prevented Bobby from originally reaching The Savage Land) and Ororo, Jean, Hank and an unconscious Scott manage to stop him and destroy him. Ororo leaves, returning once again to her village where she is treated like a Goddess and Jean informs Hank and Scott (who has woken up due to the recent telepathic and telekinetic prodding of Jean) that Charles knew about Ororo’s existence previously.

X-Men: The Hidden Years #8 Shadow On The Stars

X-Men: The Hidden Years #9 Dark Destiny

The Fantastic Four: Crystal (who is pinch hitting for Sue because she has taken time off from the team due to having just given birth to her son,) Human Torch, Mr. Fantastic and the Thing all arrive at the Xavier Institute looking for the X-Men’s help in an attempt to stop the Z’Nox for good. Of course that means we get a bunch of flashbacks to catch everything up, but that’s almost beside the point. We learn that Reed Richards has sent his wife Sue and their newborn son Franklin off to visit Agatha Harkness in an attempt to keep them safe while the FF and the X-Men are off planet. The fate of Avia and Warren grows even dimmer when the captain of the fishing boat sells them to a mysterious man known only as Kreuger. Candy and Charles are still looking for Warren (although Candy is more desperate in the search than Charles is) and Charles begins to show strange side effects of the ray the X-Men used on him to revive him from his coma. Now for possibly the most important thing of all: outside of the Fantastic Four’s ship there is a strange Phoenix shaped being watching the progress only moments before Jean becomes engulfed in flames and attacks everyone on board (including killing Hank!) Of course this turns out to be Jean blacking out and never have happened, but this sets up the coming Phoenix Saga, but it implies that The Phoenix Force had not only previously met Jean (in this issue) but continues to search her out the next time Jean is in space. The issue ends with the FF and Jean, Scott and Hank returning to Earth just as a Sentinel hovers over a young girl named Ashley Martin.

X-Men: The Hidden Years #10 Home Is Where The Hurt Is….

X-Men: The Hidden Years #11 Destroy All Mutants!

Charles takes Jean to Muir Island to be examined by Moira MacTaggert because of the strange events that happened to Jean in space. This actually beings to deepen a growing rift between the peculiarly acting Charles and Jean because Charles insists on once again lying to the rest of the X-Men by telling them that they went somewhere other than Muir Island. Candy, Magneto, Amphibius, Karl Lykos, Aviva, Ashley Martin (and her mother) are all back along with Hank’s mother Edna. This issue sort of implies that Jean and Moira know each other, which I guess makes sense because during the run of Professor Xavier and the X-Men Moira was shoe-horned in to continuity- this is even more supported by the fact that Moira and Charles did not agree on if they should seek out Ororo Munroe and recruit her for the X-Men and in this series we learn that Jean knows that Charles is well aware of Ororo. Kreuger and his band of mutants (one of which gets a name this time because it’s his first actual appearance: Remiped) have sold Avia and Warren to the remaining members of the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Blob, Unus and mastermind) and contacts Blob once again when he captures Cyclops, Candy (whom he believes to actually be Marvel Girl) and Marvel Girl (who is using her original X-Men blue and yellow uniform) after they track Kreuger down attempting to locate Angel and Avia. Charles and Hank go to meet Ashley only to be ambushed by the lone remaining Sentinel and they are almost destroyed by the robot but Ashley saves them by making the Sentinel destroy itself- which kind of implies that Ashley either has magnetic powers or the generic ability to control machines. Bobby continues his time in the Savage Land and as his memory starts to return Karl can no longer keep his urges at bay and ends up feeding off of Bobby’s mutant powers and once again transforms into Sauron meanwhile Havok, Lorna and Ka-Zar begin searching the Savage Land for Bobby.

X-Men: The Hidden Years #1 Once More the Savage Land: B

X-Men: The Hidden Years #2 The Ghost and the Darkness: B

X-Men: The Hidden Years #3 On Wings of Angels: A

X-Men: The Hidden Years #4 Escape to Oblivion: A

X-Men: The Hidden Years #5 Riders on the Storm: A-

X-Men: The Hidden Years #6 Behold A Goddess Rising..!: A-

X-Men: The Hidden Years #7 Power Play: A

X-Men: The Hidden Years #8 Shadow On The Stars: A

X-Men: The Hidden Years #9 Dark Destiny: A

X-Men: The Hidden Years #10 Home Is Where The Hurt Is….: B

X-Men: The Hidden Years #11 Destroy All Mutants!: B