Outer! ... Space!
Originally Published October 1977
Sorry, where were we?
Oh, right. Space!
The X-Men followed Shakari/Eric the Red through his stargate to a nameless, ancient planet at the center of the galaxy. There they find their foe, with the rebel princess Lilandra in tow, and his Emperor D'Ken, as well as a massive entourage known as the Imperial Guard. I mean, everybody's there: Gladiator, Oracle, Starbolt, Titan, Wolfman Jack, Riffraff, Magenta, Kevin "Al" Archer, McCabe, Mrs. Miller, Mr. Met, Santana, Rob Thomas, Crazy Carl, Tim... everybody.
And in the background, on a Platform of Importance with the Emperor and his sister, is a massive pink jewel. The M'Kraan Crystal.
The X-Men declare their intentions - they've come to rescue the Princess. The Imperial Guard say no, so it's fisticuffs.
The X-Men hold their own despite being grossly outnumbered by the Guard, who all have crazyass powers of their own. There's a shapeshifting guy who Nightcrawler outfoxes by using his image inducer to project the image of an even larger beast, which definitely seems like it should not possibly work. Wolverine gets his clothes burned off by Starbolt, so he throws Oracle at him, then murders the guardsman known as Fang and steals his clothes.
Meanwhile, D'Ken is planning on feeding his sister to the Soul Drinker, which sounds bad and looks worse. Nightcrawler teleports up to save her, but she's paralyzed with fear. In the nick of time, he teleports with the Princess as his passenger - something he's never done before - successfully, but not without exhausting himself. This Nightcrawler kid's got heart.
Lilandra is finally given a chance to explain her story, which we've already gotten in bits and bites: She served her brother, but when she found out he sought the "greatest weapon in history." Lilandra opposed this plan and a Civil War broke out, which she lost. She escaped execution and learned of the existence of Charles Xavier's mind, thanks to the ripple effect of the psychic whammy he used to defeat the Z'Nox (wow, nice callback.) She also fell in love with him in sort of a love-at-first-sight scenario. D'Ken's spies found out about this and alerted Shakari, their man on Earth, and this whole caper began, as we've seen it play out (for some reason, Shakari decided the best way to do this was to cosplay as Cyclops' fantasy character.)
Lilandra reveals that D'Ken's scheme is to go into the Crystal - through a gateway that opens once every million years - and seize the Real Ultimate Power of the Universe, which definitely sounds like something an Insane Space Emperor would do.
The battle continues, as Lilandra tries to convince Gladiator, the apparent leader of the Guard, that D'Ken's plan is dangerous by pointing out that the name the power is known by is "The End of All that Is." And come on, that could mean anything.
Before Gladiator can own this lib, he's interrupted by a zap from a new faction joining the fray: The Starjammers, a small group of Interstellar Pirates led by the Burt Reynolds-looking Earthling Corsair, his amphibious friend Ch'od, his feline girlfriend Hepzibah, and that other guy.
The Starjammers and the X-Men fight side by side, which is all well and good considering there's still a hundred and fifty members of the Imperial Guard to beat up. But it's all for naught, as D'Ken points out the distant stars are aligned and feeding their cosmic mojo into the M'Kraan Crystal, which has a peculiar effect of causing all of reality to blink out of existence for a second.
He hasn't even had a chancr to do anything yet!
At Earth, superscientists Peter Corbeau and Reed Richards notice the effect and surmise that they may soon be facing the end of existence.
To be continued!
Further Thoughts:
I like the Imperial Guard as foes for the X-Men for the main reason that they are actually the superheroes of their world. From their viewpoint, the X-Men are alien invaders aiding the traitorous Lilandra in betraying the rightful ruler. There's also 11,000 of them and they all have wacked-out superpowers. If it's overly busy, and we never truly know who we're looking at or what they do and why, I decided to enjoy it for the sense that these are all secretly well-developed unique characters with identities and backstories we just don't have time for. A surprisingly effective alternative to lining them allup and having them announce their powers.
This makes the fight interesting, if rather chaotic and credulity-straining... after all, how can seven X-Men not fall to the sheer numbers of the Guard? Also, where is Storm? Cockrum mostly manages to juggle all the action, but it's surprising that the oftentimes-MVP of the team is nowhere to be found so much as whipping up a gust of wind. As much as I tried to enjoy the chaos, you can see too many ideas being jammed in here, with Exhibit A being the Soul-Drinker, which looks like an insane, fearsome demon creature, but is brought onstage for like two pages before our heroes escape it and move on to the next thing.
As to the Starjammers, I've always enjoyed them as allies of the X-Men, although I know Cockrum was hoping this would lead to an ongoing starring role for them. They hint that Corsair, their leader, is someone of importance given he apparently comes from Earth. I'm sure we'll find out more about this later, provided the universe doesn't end.
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