X-Men have their final showdown with Proteus, the ultimate mutant with total (ish) control over reality!
Originally Published December 1979
The stakes are pretty high for our pals, the X-Men. The reality-warping body-possessing psychomutant Proteus is rampaging through Edinburgh, his mother in tow - and he aims to either bed her or become her or kill her or all three.
He throws the area into general chaos, turning gravity upside down, changing buildings into bees, which then attack people. The heroes do their best to fend these attacks off, but he has several uniqe and horrifying fates in mind for them.
The X-Men survive by the skin of their teeth - Wolveirne cutting Storm out of her imprisonment, Nightcrawler teleporting Banshee before he is buried alive - but Proteus escapes with his hostage, his body rapidly deteriorating. Cyclops demonstrates serious commitment to stopping this menace:
Ah yes, the tried and true "keep throwing mutant bodies at it until it goes away" tactic. He learned that well from the Prof.
Phoenix tracks him down, eager for another round, and begins to bombard him with her own nebulous psychic superpowers. When Proteus turns the tables, Wolverine jumps out and slices the metal-averse mutant with his adamantium claws.
While Wolverine secures Phoenix and Moira, Cyclops and Havok join the fray, but Proteus gives them the slip, causing them to do the old zap-wich.
Cyclops helpfully reminds us that he and Havok can "metabolize" each others' powers, but it still stings to get the full force blast, so there you go.
Proteus punks Wolverine out and grabs Moira, hauling her to the top of a mountain. Colossus is sent in pursuit and the two evenly-matched combatants have an epic physical confrontation...
Or, Colossus knocks him aside with one blow, vaporizing his rapidly-decomposing host body and revealing his true form.
Colossus does what must be done, and the result is spectacular.
In the end, Moira makes peace with the fact that her son was a horrible monster who had to be stopped at all costs (although seems like she already made peace with that when she fired her sniper rifle at him.)
Further Thoughts:
The whole affair is capped off with some classic Claremontian narration that is just heavy handed enough to put a point on the moment.
This one was all action so there wasn't much to dig into, but the action was all very well executed. The key with a story like this, as I've said before, is that you'll never believe Proteus would really beat the X-Men, no matter how well-established his bona fides, so it's important to make it interesting along the way, and with a villain who can seemingly do anything there are lots of opportunities for that.
So it all ends with Colossus, one of the team's moral centers, taking a villain's life. Although the concept of heroes taking lives is often debated, I generally don't disapprove when the foe in question is an unstoppable reality-warping maniac with serious parental issues. It was clear this was how it was gonna go down when it was revealed that metal was one of Proteus' main weaknesses, and that confronting him doesn't agree with Wolverine's tummy.
Thematically, it could have been tighter - Colossus had been grappling with being uncertain about his place on the team for a while, but it had been downplayed heading into this particular adventure. Nevertheless, thanks to the excellent, suspenseful build, the epic nature of the threat and the deft execution of the action, this one is rightly considered a classic of the form.
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