UNCANNY X-MEN #139: ...Something WICKED This Way Comes!

Wolverine goes back to Canada to visit an old flame

Originally Published November 1980

Following the death of Jean Grey, and the resignation of Cyclops, the X-Men are striving to return to normalcy, which of course means subjecting themselves to a murderous room full of deadly booby-traps.

Angel is temping with the team, but he's a little rusty, failing to catch Nightcrawler after a mid-air collision.

Actually, it's a fun little scene, where no matter where Nightcrawler teleports, he seems to be in harm's way, signifying that the X-Men are off by a step lately. We learn that Storm has been made team leader in Cyclops' absence, and that she's experimenting with humour.

This doesn't read as a joke, until you actually try to picture Storm saying it.

Now don't get me wrong, Storm is absolutely an all-time great comic book superhero character,but if I'm reading this in 1980 I'm probably a little confused as to why Wolverine wasn't made leader. Literally only one of the remaining X-Men is old enough to have fought in a war, lead special ops missions, and been genetically modified into the perfect killing machine... although when you put it like that, maybe it's a good thing he doesn't have direct reports.

Wolverine is also wearing a new costume, the brown-and-tan/orange look he will be rocking for the remainder of the 1980's. When asked what's with that, Wolverine replies, "John Byrne thought yellow and blue was a bad colour scheme for a supposed wild animal, bub."

Actually, he says "Why not," which... fair enough.

Observing all of this is new member Kitty Pryde, who is somewhat concerned about the workouts in the Room of Death she is meant to endure, but the Prof assures her she won't be subjected to any of that until she has the Fundamentals of Mutant Superheroing down pat.

Following this vigorous workout, the team enjoys a round of cold drinks. Xavier suggests the name Ariel for Kitty's superhero identity, after the font she most resembles. Kitty declines. Storm then suggests "Sprite," which Kitty likes, then makes a joke about "Pulling my TAB" which makes the Prof, and me, go "Ouch!"

At this point, Wolverine mentions that the Canadian Government still wants him back. It turns out that just saying "I resign" works about as well as Michael Scott saying "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!" Xavier gives Wolverine leave to go sort things out up there, sending Nightcrawler along to assist.

 

Also Kurt wants to have sex with Aurora.

Xavier announces he has one more surprise for Kitty - besides the unflattering costume, the regrettable codename, and the room full of weapons of violent death. As it turns out, the Prof has signed Kitty up for dance classes with renowned dance instructor Stevie Hunter - a former prima ballerina (or something) whose career was derailed by some kind of accident.

On the way to the studio, Kitty and Storm bond, with Kitty talking about how, as a certified genius, she's way ahead of her peers intellectually, but as a dancer her body isn't any more developed than anyone else's her age, so it's something where they have even footing - which is nice, albeit a little condescending. (Me personally, I hated doing things I wasn't better at than other people, which is why I didn't do very many things at that age.)

Meanwhile up in Canada, Wolverine pays a visit to one Heather Hudson, wife of the Canadian Superhero Weapon Alpha Vindicator, aka James Macdonald Hudson, aka Mac, aka Jimmie, aka Jamie, aka Hudsie, aka Donnie, aka Mitch for some reason. Okay, some of those were made up, but not as many as you might think.

Can you say "sexy" in a comic that's approved by the Comics Code Authority?

Despite Wolverine's contentious relationship with James, he and Heather seem to be on very good terms, which continues the thread that not only has Wolverine had a very busy life, he's also quite charming when he wants to be (usually with the ladies.)

To that point, Nightcrawler also learns for the first time that Wolverine's real name is Logan, which strains credulity for me. It seriously never came up? Wow. Some friend you are, Kurt.

Heather sends Wolverine and Nightcrawler to the Hudson Bay area (the body of water, not the department store) to find Vindicator (aka Heather Hudson's Bae.) He and two other members of Alpha Flight (Shaman and Snowbird) are in search of a man-eating monster roaming the woods. When Wolverine arrives, following a brief tense stand off, they fill him in on the grisly details - the family of a Mountie named Joe Parnall was attacked, with Joe ripped to shreds, his wife missing and their 6-year-old son found wandering the woods, in shock and half-dead from exposure. Logan identifies the beast as Wendigo, the mythical cannibalistic creature of Algonquin lore, as reinterpreted/co-opted to be a comic book monster.

You would think that Canada's national superhero team would be trained to identify the one major woodland monster roaming their territory, but they're still pretty new I guess.

It's pretty handy that Wolverine is there to set them straight, because it gives him cause to recall that in his "first mission for the Canadian Secret Service" (ie, his first-ever comic book appearance in Incredible Hulk #181) he encountered with Wendigo battling the Hulk. He relates the story of how the Wendigo is a mystical curse that can be transferred from person to person.

However, they might not have to look to hard. As Nightcrawler goes to grab some of the X-Men's gear from their jeep, he runs into someone fitting the description:

To be continued!

Further Thoughts:

This is definitely one of those cooldown issues, as we shift gears from the intensity of the Dark Phoenix Saga to something that might be considered a little more of a conventional episodic adventure. It gives us time to check in on the X-Men's personal lives, such as they are, which I always value - as the X-Men don't really have "secret identities," their lives essentially defined by being mutant superheroes, the creators work to get little things like Kitty's dance background or Wolverine's personal history with Heather Hudson, wherever they can. It works for me.

Storm is now the field leader of the X-Men in Cyclops' stead. As I mentioned before, Wolverine would seem to be the most experienced and therefore sensible option, but there are a lot of reason not to put him in that role. At this point in Wolverine's existence he's defined by his opposition to authority and lethal style of combat, as much as his code of honour (and weird irascible charm with the ladies.) That's a good character to have in your ensemble, as long as you can get him to reluctantly temper that attitude and scowl about how he's the only one with the guts to do what needs to be done, bub. As leader, if the character were to be true to himself, he would take the team down that path with him. Slotting Storm into the role of team-mom balances that out greatly, and - spoiler alert - will lead to a great deal of expansion to Storm's (already rather robustly-defined) character.