UNCANNY X-MEN #98: Merry Christmas, X-Men...

It's Christmas in April in July! Dress accordingly.

Originally Published April 1976

So, it's Christmas and our X-Men are out and about, including Jean Grey, who has pulled a George Costanza and decided to pretend like she didn't quit in a huff along with the others. Nightcrawler is using his image inducer to scam on babes with Piotr in tow, and Banshee and Moira are off "showing each other the sights of New York." We also get this iconic Wolverine moment...

Which is to say, this is the first time he's been shown without his mask, revealing him to be, in fact, super-old. And while we all know by now that Wolverine's headgear is based on his real hair, but did you know he was such a big Misfits fan?

Just as Scott and Jean are left alone to get lovey-dovey, (in the sight of Stan and Jack no less!) their moment is interrupted by the original buzzkills:

I tell you, for 50-foot-tall purple robots, the Sentinels sure know how to sneak around. Meanwhile, I know exactly when any car goes more than 40 KM/h beneath my apartment window. These things would be loud AF in real life is what I'm saying.

The Sentinels get to work neutralizing these X-Men, while Jean Grey reveals her telekinetic abilities have vastly improved in the off-season (as she's been training a the Claremont School for Incredibly Powerful Women.) However, despite her might, the remaining Sentinel abducts her to its secret base, leaving Cyclops for dead.

Storm comes to his aid, and somewhere between panels the Sentinels grab Banshee and Wolverine too. When the giant robot comes back for Storm, it finds that despite being programmed to counteract all the powers of the X-Men, nobody clued them in that there was a whole new team with heretofore undocumented crazy-ass powers.

Storm unleashes the full force of a hurricane on the Sentinel, which does it in. As the remaining X-Men regroup, they realize they should probably alert the Professor... who is unfortunately still on his fishing trip.

Also with him on his excursion is Superscientist Peter Corbeau, Director of UN's Project Starcore and owner of a rad schooner, who advises him that the star system he's been dreaming of is probably just a dream and not anything important in real life. Personally, I hope that the greatest mutant psychic mind on Earth knows the difference between a random dream and a significant telepathic communication, so I'm siding against Corbeau here.

Unfortunately, this discussion is interrupted when Xavier, too, is abducted by a Sentinel.

Four days later, Wolverine, Banshee, Jean and Professor X are all still in captivity, being surveyed by Stephen Lang, who clucks about how he's ripping out the soul of the Mutant Movement by destroying the X-Men, while Jean points out that Lang is a literal Nazi.

"I hate how comics these days are always pushing a social justice agenda!"

Wolverine claws his way out of his shackles (You mean you cold have gotten out of those at any time?) and cuts loose on the Sentinel guarding them, tearing it open like a sixteen-year-old fashioning a bong out of a pop can. He frees his friends and they begin to fight their way out, but... hold on.

Back at the X-Mansion, Cyclops has been Cerebro-scanning the globe for days trying to find the X-Men to no avail. Corbeau arrives and deduces, based on one Sentinel's offhand remark about solar radiation, that the reason Cyke can't find them on Earth is because (dramatic soap opera music)... they're not on Earth at all...

Never a good sign when Claremont's captions offer you a bet.

They're in freakin' space!

Further Thoughts:

In addition to learning Wolverine's thoughts on Christmas (hates it!) and what he looks like under that peculiar mask (weird and old!) we learn a bit more about the ole Canucklehead in this issue: namely, that his claws are part of his body, and that he may not be a true mutant. This is in fact a hint that Wolvie was supposed to be a super-genetically-engineered Actual Wolverine that had taken human form, and while that may explain his animalistic demeanor and loneristic tendencies, it leaves a lot more questions unanswered, like Why?, Huh? And Who thought this was a good idea?

While it's commonly held that Wolverine didn't come into his own until a few years later, I have to disagree - even if Claremont didn't like writing him and Cockrum didn't like drawing him, they did such a good job that he becomes instantly the most interesting character whenever he's in a scene - as mysterious, violent yet strangely noble loner characters tend to be. Can you imagine a world in which Wolverine was killed off, and Wizard Magazine tittered for years afterward about the yellow-suited goof who was an X-Man for two issues and got himself blown up, and Hugh Jackman is famous for playing Iron Fist or something?