UNCANNY X-MEN #132: And Hellfire Is Their Name!

New York's hottest club is Hellfire. This place has it all: mutants, robots, bored millionaires with designs on world domination, and hypnotized women wearing nothing but vintage 1700's fetish gear!

Originally Published April 1980

Following their run-in with the White Queen Emma Frost, the X-Men have detoured to New Mexico, where they avail themselves of the hospitality of one Warren Worthington III, aka their friend and former teammate Angel. After retiring from superheroics, Angel is now in charge of the family business and according to a recent "People" Magazine, an "item" with longtime love interest (ie she appeared once back in the 1960's) Candy Sothern. Candy arrives wearing an outfit that the folks at "People" might describe as "Boobtastic."

Cyclops requests a private chat with Angel, and he obliges by whisking his former leader off to the top of a butte - or a mesa, I swear one day I'll figure out the difference and it will stick.

Privately, the Professor is irritated that Scott flew the team to New Mexico instead of back to Westchester to the Headquarters. Oh, you mean the Headquarters that is 100% for sure definitely bugged by the mysterious Hellfire Club, enabling them to lesrn the X-Men's vulnerabilities and defeat them? Get in the game, Prof.

In private, Cyclops brings Angel up to speed on everything that happened in the last few issues. Angel is alarmed to hear that the Hellfire Club may be involved somehow - as scions of some of America's leading industrial families, both Warren and Candy are members. Warren describes the club's vibe as "Old and stuffy - yet very risqué." That would be the part about how they have women gadding about in bustiers and panties all the time, I suppose. Surely a cabal of the wealthiest and most ambitious Americans, who shroud themselves in secrecy and indulge their most scandalous urges would never have any ill-intent toward our heroes. Pish-posh.

They debate this a while before Scott tries to turn the subject to Jean and all the strangeness in her behaviour lately. But suddenly - as if she were a mind-reader or something - Jean interrypts, appearing with a picnic lunch for herself and Scott.

In one of the best "human" moments of the comic, Jean uses her telekinesis to change into a swimsuit hold back all the power of Scott's optic blasts, looking upon his unadorned face for the first time ever and kissing him passionately.

A week later, The X-Men are investigating the Hellfire Club, with Scott, Jean, Ororo and Piotr infiltrating a fancy 'do under assumed names while Wolverine and Nightcrawler break in from the sewer system. En route, Wolverine strips the power cables beneath the buildings, reasoning that if things go badly, a surprise blackout might come in handy. That seems like the kind of thing as likely to backfire as not, but hey, he's the government-engineered superkiller, not me.

While all this is going on, Professor X remains in New Mexico with Angel, frustrated that he can't re-establish his psychic contact with the team (for reasons that are never made clear.) The team had been performing ably without him, so is the Prof just being a micromanaging jerk? Or does he sense that they may be in over their heads here?

The X-Men arrive at the Club and are immediately recognized on Security Camera by the Hellfire's cravat-wearing Inner Circle members: Shaw and Wyngarde, as well as the Falstaffian Harry Leland and the comparatively svelte Donald Pierce.

Shaw tells Wyngarde it's time for him to put his money where his mouth is, when it comes to the supposed influence he holds over Jean Grey - perhaps tonight she can lead the attack on the X-Men!

In the ballroom, Jean is whisked away into her Harlequin fantasy by Wyngarde - mesmerizing her with a romantic period setting, where Jason ushers her to a private chamber. Cyclops, not wanting to be made a cuck (in the literal sense, not the dumb internet slang sense) follows. For a moment, Wyngarde lets his false appearance drop, to taunt Cyclops...

Yes! It turns out Jason Wyngarde has actually been Mastermind, formerly of Magneto's original Brotherhood of Mutants! Scott rushes after them, and gets this for all his trouble:

Talk about "You vs .the Man She Told You Not To Worry About..."

Yes, Jean is now a fully-inducted, card-carrying member of the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle pajama party - and seemingly loving it.

A donnybrook breaks out as the X-Men spring into action, only for Colossus to be stopped cold by Sebastian Shaw - a mutant with the formidable ability to take a punch and add its power to his own physical strength.

Yikes. Didn't see that coming.

In the sub-basement, Wolverine and Nightcrawler encounter Pierce and Leland. After slicing through Pierce's arm, the X-Men find out their foe is a cyborg, which makes you realize Wolverine just hacked the limb off a man he thought to just be a plain regular guy.

Enter the zaftig Leland, who manages to refer to Wolverine as "Dear boy" three times in a ten second conversation. His power is to increase Wolverine's mass (actually just his weight, I think, but it's all just a mutant power thing so what does his matter) until he crashes through the floor and is washed away by the very sewer he had arrived in.

With Shaw physically overpowering Storm (and ruthlessly at that,) the Inner Circle is free to celebrate their unqualified - really surprisingly easy - victory over their foes. There is a bit of tension between Shaw and Wyngarde as far as who deserves credit, but they agree to a peaceful co-existence for now, with Shaw declaring it a "team effort." The four men drink a toast to the real star of the night, the Black Queen, Jean Grey.

Still, from looking at the pile of vanquished X-Men on the floor - Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler - I can't help but think there's something missing. Something they've forgotten...

Oh yeah... oh hell yeah!

Further Thoughts:

Everything about this issue works, to where you could probably say it is the very best X-Men comic published to date (and there are better ones to come!) I really like that it starts with the X-Men investigating the Hellfire Club, instead of just bumbling into a confrontation as they often do. Both Claremont and Byrne are doing their parts better than they even have before, as the plot construction, the character moments, the action and suspense are all perfectly on point.

While there had been hints - downright statements in fact - that Wyngarde was only a disguise, I feel like Mastermind hadn't been seen in so long (most recently, he was babified along with Magneto, Lorelai and the Blob by Alpha the Ultimate Mutant) it seems unlikely the readers would have gotten there before the story revealed it. When the reveal comes, it makes perfect sense and really works to level up this previously also-ran enemy of the X-Men. Pairing an established villain with the new threat of the Hellfire Club is dynamite, and I absolutely love the X-Men's new top villains as being a bunch of bored, power-hungry one-percenters instead of cartoon megalomaniacs or alien menaces.

I don't think it's outright stated but surely Emma Frost was augmenting Mastermind's powers to enable him to mind-control Jean so effectively, and for obscure story reasons he was able to keep this up with Emma apparently dead. A minor story pothole, the kind you just brush off after years of comic-reading. Actually, looking back, I wonder whether Wyngarde was ever supposed to be Mesmero, who has similar powers, unfinished business with the X-Men as recently as a few years ago, and definitely wanted to put the smooches on Jean at that time.

My appraisal of the individual characters: Shaw gets a thumbs up, being a perfect dastardly villain with the physical power to back it up. Pierce is a good underling, a mechanical man who is very self-conscious and insecure about that fact. Harry Leland I'm not so much on, but you've got to round out the group some how (pun not intended, but not edited out either.) Shaw is the real star though, and the tension between himself and Wyngarde is great stuff.

The brief throwdowns between the Hellfires and the X-Men are tense and exciting - we are used to seeing the X-Men getting the worse end of a beating (this is known in pro wrestling as "the heat") this one somehow seems especially bad and, with Jean as an apparent turncoat, hopeless to come back from.

For a while now we've been heading toward Wolverine as a one-man army, who is smart, tough and capable enough to basically be a host unto himself. But for the most part, he still seems to be a mere mortal beholden to the laws of physics. When he is dunked into the drink by Leland that really seems like it might take him out of the game, but the revelation at the end of the issue that Wolverine is coming back for more is rightly heralded as one of the greatest moments in comics - both because it was rendered in the coolest possible way, but also because there is real storytelling weight putting it in context.