Welcome to the party, Wolverine.
Originally Published May 1980
Wolverine has clawed his way - pun most certainly intended - back into the sub-basement of the Hellfire Club after getting dunked in the New York sewer system like it was the lazy river. He gently nudges some Hellfire putties into giving up some information about the Hellfire Club.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the Hellfire Rumpus Room, Shaw, Wyngarde, Leland, Pierce and newly-minted Black Queen Jean Grey gloat over their total victory over the X-Men, placing their captured foes in power-negating shackles, including hooding Cyclops in one of those trendy ruby quartz balaclavas, leaving him unable to speak and tell his teammates what he knows about their captors - namely that Jason Wyngarde is Mastermind, a mutant with the ability to cast illusions, and has somehow brought Jean Grey into his thrall.
Jean demonstrates her new evil nature by smacking Storm around with her sex whip, ranting about how she owns the Kenyan mutant and is personally hurt that she would be betrayed by a slave she has never mistreated. Severe mixed messages there.
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| Bad optics. |
Cyclops, trapped in his ruby quartz luchador mask, thinks back to his moment with Jean back in New Mexico atop the butte - which is for sure a butte even though it looks a lot like a mesa. There, as a gesture of their renewing relationship, Scott consented to establish a permanent psychic rapport with Jean, which is like the mutant psychic equivalent of getting married.
Sebastian Shaw informs his captives that they are being kept alive so that the Hellfire club can experiment with them, isolating their X-genes and developing their own race of supermutants. Ah yes, that old gambit. How could they resist? From where the Hellfire Club is standing, the cost-benefit analysis must be highly favorable.
Meanwhile, Wolverine has made his way back upstairs via the dumbwaiter. Unfortunately, it doesn't go all the way to the top floor where the evil cabal is meeting, so he needs to cut across the big Hellfire Club costume party dance floor. Stealthily. Dressed in a bright yellow speedskating outfit and smelling of New York City stormdrain. Let's check in on that:
Elsewhere, both Moira and the Prof have Jean on the brain. Moira has been kept up nights pondering the results of the tests she had run on Jean. She reveals to Banshee that after momentarily possessing the Real Ultimate Power of an Actual God, the frail human flesh known as Jean, established a series of psychic circuit breakers to ensure she could keep her potential in check. Unfortunately, Moira somehow knows, somehow, "someone" has been lifting those breakers -- and God only knows what will happen then.
In New Mexico, Xavier is moping about not being there with the X-Men, micromanaging them in person. He admits to resenting the job Cyclops has been doing without him, and wonders whether that resentment hassled to him making errors in judgment that will doom us all.
I quite like regretful, salty Xavier, rather than the saintly, hypercompetent one. Claremont taps into a level of psychology with this character that is definitely rooted in the version we saw in the 60's, but with several shades more depth.
Back in New York, Cyclops uses his rapport to try to reach out to Jean, even given his limited experience with telepathic powers. He finds himself in a mysterious void of the mind, dressed in his colonial fantasy cosplay. Naturally, he encounters Wyngarde, standing guard over the place.
Cyclops kindly asks Jason to explain how he has been able to psychically manipulate Jean at such a high level, an ability he had never previously demonstrated. Wyngarde rudely declines to explain, and if you were him you probably wouldn't either.
Scott and Jason duel in the psychic plane. Unfortunately, Jason is an experienced swordsman and Cyclops wouldn't know a rapier from a bodkin. Honestly, a lack of familiarity with hand-to-hand combat weapons seems like a huge oversight in the X-Men's supposedly robust training regimen, given how frequently they find their mutant powers negated.
As impressive as Cyclops' efforts are, there can only be one outcome:
And as we know from Professor X's backstory, what happens in the psychic plane absolutely does not stay in the psychic plane:
Further Thoughts:
Somewhere a young (well, early-30's, the same age I am,) George R.R. Martin read this issue and thought "Oh, so that's how you write."
And what of Wolverine, who has been making his way up through the Hellfire Club's headquarters all through the issue, and was given numerous badass Dirty Harry-style lone wolf moments to emphasize his fearsomeness?
Despite constantly outfighting the supposed best-of-the-best footsoldiers in the Hellfire Club's employ, he falls to a bunch of Hamilton ensemble players armed with rolling pins:
What a revolting development.
This is what you call a "hope spot" - a moment of glory for the good guys to show they've got a chance, but get cut off at the last moment because the story isn't over yet. The story isn't designed for Wolverine to burst in on the Inner Circle and start busting heads and save the day. That as much as Wolverine is a one-man army he still isn't enough to overcome the Hellfire club's resources. Which is fine, I just wish that moment of defeat didn't make him look like such a chump.
This is a very rich and well-developed superhero story - threads relating to Shaw and Wyngarde's strained relationship, as well as Jean embracing her dark side, intermingle with Cyclops' efforts to win her back in the duel, speculation of whether Jean, or anyone, could truly control the power that resides within her, Xavier's doubts, and Wolverine's one-man campaign.
I could have done without the "whipping the slave" panel, which probably didn't seem overboard back then but definitely hasn't aged well. There's a school of thought that suggests villains don't have to be politically correct, but my preferred school of thought is that if you wouldn't do it today, it isn't okay "back then." And speaking of not okay, there's the implication that Jean is hypnotized into "flirting" - and possibly implied to be more - with each of the members of the Inner Circle. Generic Yucky Badguy Stuff then, DeeplyUncomfortable now.
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