The X-Men want Mutant X... and they get Mutant X.
Originally Published October 1979
The X-Men are racing faster than the speed of sound toward Muir Island. They were already planning to get there soon enough, but the disturbing call from Polaris indicated there was urgent danger that necessitated haste - as a result, poor Hank McCoy didn't get to come along for the trip as promised, and the Blackbird jet flies so fast it nearly capsizes some poor fishing boat named, for some reason, after a man-eating plant.
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| Margaret Thatcher's UK was famously sympathetic to the plight of the working man, of course. |
The plus side is, they've arrived only an hour or so after hanging up the phone, so that's a pretty good jet. The X-Men drop into the Muir Island research facility from above and immediately begin searching the place. Cyclops and Nightcrawler find the mummified corpse of Angus MacWhirter draped over an unconscious (but otherwise fine) Lorna Dane, but little else. It's actually pretty shocking to see MacWhirter's crispified condition depicted in a comic for general consumption, even with the knowledge that Marvel and DC were actively chipping away at the Comics Code's restrictions around this time.
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| "Ew... I touched it." |
Nerds will note that Havok's power is depicted as emitting from his chest, when in fact the rings on his chest are supposed to be a sort of power meter that increases when he reaches the red zone. But I'm sure none of us is very fussy about continuity or anything.
Cyclops and Storm find Moira, clad in her action-scientist gear and wielding a massive weapon. From there, Cyclops goes off on his own to find Jean, somehow managing to locate her in good time in the complex that Moira herself was lost in, despite living and working there. As he approaches, Cyclops is apprehensive - they've been apart for months, and Jean was on the brink of some pretty major personality changes, and all this other emotional mishegoss that goes along with being an X-person.
The reunion does not go as smoothly as Scott may have hoped.
Yes, this Jason guy seems to have worked his way deep into Jean's heart and/or mind. Pretty strange.
After regrouping, Madrox relates what he knows - that he had used his power to create a duplicate of himself to fend off the mysterious Mutant X as he attacked Lorna, but Mutant X leapt from Macwhirter into the Madrox Duplicate and fled. There's now no trace of him anywhere on the island.
Wolverine is keen to go looking for this super-powerful unpredictable killer mutant, but Cyclops advises him to hold his horses for several perfectly good reasons. And you know it must be serious when I'm supportive of Cyclops' wet blanketness.
Cyclops turns to Moira and asks for information on the mysterious Mutant X - why isn't there any info on file about him at Muir Island, the Mutant Research Facility where presumably having documented files on known dangerous mutants that live there would be a top priority? Moira gives a startling answer:
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Yikes, that is roof stoof.
In Stornoway - on an island off the coast of Scotland, Mutant X is rapidly wearing out his Madrox Skin and hungers for a fresh suit. He first encounters none other than Jason Wyngarde, but finds some outside force is telepathically blocking him from possessing the Hirsute villain - an indication that there is some serious mojo at work with this guy, too. But that's for later.
Instead, Mutant X take on the body of one Ferdie Duncan, a young man strolling home from a night at the pub. It not being a mutant-power-generated duplicate person or an old man, he feels like it will be a while before he burns this body out.
The X-Men and Moira advance to the mainland on the notion that Mutant X would probably like to be in a large city with plenty of bodies to wear. While they search, Moira explains to Cyclops that while her son was a lovely baby, he changed when his powers manifested, and Moira has devoted years to trying to cure them. She explains he has two known weaknesses:
Sure, but where are the X-Men going to find an ample supply of metal?
On the hunt for Mutant X, Jean thinks to herself about how she probably should have mentioned to Scott that Mutant X is invisible to her psychic scans as he is to Cerebro and other mutant detectors. She also takes a second to think about how things are different now between her and Cyclops, but before too much of that her mind goes wonky again and she's back in the 18th Century hunting with Jason Wyngarde.
What's worse, it seems that in this scenario Jean and Jason are hunting the most dangerous game
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| So she's a murderer and part of the gentry? Awful! |
Back in reality, Jean has in fact happened upon the burnt-out corpse of Ferdie Duncan, so you know, so much for young healthy bodies lasting Mutant X very long. Elsewhere, Wolverine and Nightcrawler are following Wolvie's nose to their quarry. Unlike every machine and psychic on the island, Wolverine can track Mutant X, because
Of course this doesn't necessarily help them strategize for what to do when they find him.
Luckily, Wolverine is saved by the very metal allergy he didn't know Mutant X possessed. Logan pops his claws, ready to finish this fight in the second round, when "Mutant X" reveals the true extent of his powers - and his preferred nomenclature.
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That's right! You thought that this guy was just running around burning up bodies, it turns out he has the powers of a god.
Proteus takes Nightcrawler and Wolverine on a magical mystery tour of the upside-down world as he practices the powers that were denied to him during his cruel years in solitary confinement. It's particularly bad for Wolverine, who relies on his senses and their grounding in the physical world, and once the rules of reality have been upended he really cannot adjust.
This page is probably one of the best things we've seen, as John Byrne uses a showy, jagged page layout (the kind of thing that is maybe a little too commonplace in later years) to convey the disruption to reality. There's also an unfortunate bit of disconnect between words and pictures here as the narration describes Wolverine "perceiving Nightcrawler's words as drops of orange rain," which sounds like a really cool way to suggest Proteus' powers, taking synesthesia to the next level, but sadly the art doesn't depict this.
Somehow, Storm flies in for the rescue, interrupting Proteus in the act. This begs the question of what exactly is the extent of his power - is it to affect the actual concrete reality in a local zone, or just inside of his foes' heads? Is Storm immune because Proteus didn't see her coming, or because she was outside of the bubble, or what?
Oh well. It's still cool as hell.
Proteus uses his power to throw the ground at Storm, but she gets her (snicker) second wind.
But will it do any good? To be continued!
Further Thoughts:
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" - King Lear, Act 1 Scene 4. Which would be a tremendous allusion if we could believe poor Proteus should be thankful for his treatment over the years. But we'll get to that.
Holy smokes there is a lot going on in this issue, pretty much all of it excellent. The X-Men's arrival at Muir Island and search for Mutant X/Proteus is tense and exciting. The simmer plot between Jean Grey and Jason Wyngarde gets more than its fair share of advancement - the neat aspect is Jason tasting the waters of Jean's dark side by convincing her that she had the idea of hunting a man dressed as a stag, and that she wants to deliver the killing blow. The revelations about Proteus are shocking, exciting, and inventive to see - the focus on how it specifically affects the otherwise-untouchable Wolverine is phenomenal. This is pretty much a master class in how to use 20-odd pages of a comic book to build excitement for the next issue.
That all said, one thing that falls by the wayside is Cyclops and Jean's relationship, which gets touched on too lightly, and the two never have a scene together to properly address - not resolve, but at least demonstrate on the page - the supposed dynamic shift between them, to show how they deal with coming face to face for the first time in months. That's a pretty important aspect underlying the entire dynamic of the group, and it's relegated to a few offhand thought bubbles. Admittedly there isn't much time between all the action, but historically Claremont and Byrne have been good at making time.
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