UNCANNY X-MEN #108: ARMAGEDDON NOW!

Armageddon ready for the X-Men to stop the M'kraan Crystal from destroying the Universe!

Originally Published December 1977

Our friends, the X-Men are in a pickle. They've been zapped halfway across the universe to the nameless, ancient planet where resides the all-powerful M'kraan Crystal (do not ask who named the crystal but forgot to name the planet) which evil Emperor D'Ken plans to use to gain real ultimate power. His rebellious sister Lilandra, and the interstellar pirates known as the Starjammers are on hand to help the X-Men stop it, but they're too late: the nine death stars have aligned, beaming their celestial mojo into the crystal, causing all of reality to blink temporarily out of existence, partly due to D'Ken's meddling.

Out of the crystal pops this funny little fellow named Japh, who declares that it's his job to keep anyone who wants to enter the crystal from doing so. He demonstrates his surprising strength by knocking that hothead Wolverine into orbit, and then battling the rest of the X-Men.

The X-Men are no match for this tiny imp, as he repels all of their attacks with ease, including surviving a meteor called down by Phoenix.

Japh mentions that keeping enemies out of the crystal is in his "programming," which indicates to Banshee that he's a robot, and if there's one thing the X-Men can do, it's fight robots. So he flies up to Japh and gives him an ultra high frequency sonic scream that scrambles his circuits.

That brings out guardian #2, the gigantic Modt, whose power is supposedly 1,000 times greater than Japh's.

He's a big'un. And he can sure take a good zorping.

But before we can spend too much time grappling with him, Starjammer Raza (the one who talks all Shakespearean) press-slams D'Ken into the Crystal, causing all assembled Starjammers and X-Men, (but not the Imperial Guard, who appear to have wandered off) to be zapped inside.

Modt, you had one job, and I think it was to keep people from touching that thing.

Inside the Crystal, some exceptionally trippy stuff happens. Everyone inside is zapped with a beam that causes them to live out their worst nightmare - only Jean is immune because she has already known death and now fears nothing (I'd argue that she still seems pretty afraid of the end of the universe but anyway.)

She finds that the heart of the M'Kraan Crystal is a Neutron Galaxy (oh right, one of those) being kept in check by a lattice of anti-energy (oh right, one of those,) and if the lattice breaks - which is happening - the entire universe will be destroyed in spectacular fashion, only to be reborn with the hopes of one day again supporting life.

Jean, now a being of pure energy, must be anchored to the physical world by Storm and Corsair in order to repair the lattice. She pulls it off amidst a fantastic montage of cosmic imagery and heady narration, and before you know it - just in time for the end of the issue - the X-Men are back on Earth, in New York, standing on the roof of Jean's apartment.

There, Firelord is waiting to tell them all has been forgiven, and apologizes for the misunderstanding, which is more than I can say for the pizza guy who thought I ordered three pizzas when I clearly said "two" and all he could say was "It's not my fault, not my fault."

Sorry, tangent there.

Lilandra comes through the Stargate next, to announce that given her brother's incurable insanity (which is blamed on the M'kraan Crystal but I suspect began much earlier) she has been named Empress of her people. Believe it or not, and I keep looking, this race that Lilandra is now part of still has not been named. So once the paperwork is finished up (exonerating Lilandra, still technically a traitor) she will return home. Until then, hey, free vacay on Earth.

Further Thoughts:

This issue is dedicated to Dave Cockrum, whose vision and imagination helped guide this book since its return. Dave is not in fact dead, as he notes, but was having issues with deadlines. The new guy drawing this comic is someone named John Byrne.

Byrne gets off to a great start; although eagle-eyed readers will know his work from Cockrum's immediately, it's hardly a style clash. Byrne also has some incredible opportunities and knocks them out of the park: he handles the conclusion of this space epic very well, designing a phenomenal psychotropic end sequence, providing dazzling imagery for something that on paper must have seemed very hard to depict.

Since neither the art nor text would make much sense without the other, it's a true comic book marriage, what a way to start a collaboration between Byrne and Claremont. I bet these two will have many successful years working happily alongside one another.

We also get a few more details on Corsair and what Jean learned inside his mind, when she outright says that she knows he's Cyclops' father, Christopher Summers. The soap opera of the X-Men begins to snowball.

I mentioned on Twitter that we are now running on a surplus of ideas. Last time it was the SOUL DRINKER, which seems like a big deal but is thrown away after only two pages, on top of the Imperial Guard and the Starjammers. This time it's Japh and Modt, who provide a welcome action sequence before we get into the heady cosmic stuff that dominates the climax of the issue. Wedging them in there is a far cry from having the X-Men duke it out with some random ranchers before they got to Lucifer's stronghold. They don't overstay their welcome but aren't really under-used either.