UNCANNY X-MEN #144: Even in Death...

Scott's Pilgrimage and the Infinite Sadness!

Originally Published April 1981

We begin with... inoperable cancer!

The distinguished older gentleman in the foreground is Jock Forrester, who has returned to the comfort and familiarity of a swamp near his boyhood home in Citrusville, Florida upon receiving his fateful diagnosis. The mossy, trendrily thing approaching him in the distance is the Marvel monster known as Man-Thing. Although he resides in the everglades, he is not to be confused with the similar DC Comics character of Swamp Thing, or my own as-yet-unsold original creation, Man-Swamp.

Man-Thing's "thing", we are told is that he is empathic, meaning he is sensitive to the pain of others, so much so that when negative emotions are around he is like to lash out violently. Given that Mr. Forester is currently deep in a depression brought on by a prognosis that cancer will claim his life inside of a year, there is a pretty negative buzz in that swamp.

Just as Man-Thing is about to end Forrester's suffering for him, a strange swirling black smoke appears, and...

Yikes, is this still a comic for all ages or what?

We learn that Forresters actions are being influenced by a demon called D'Spayre, the "embodiment of ultimate evil," who thrives on misery (get it?)

Now personally, I didn't expect the "embodiment of ultimate evil" to sport a blue-black catsuit and matching high-collared cape, but I didn't not expect it either.

D'Spayre takes Jock Forrester's form and reaches out to his daughter...

That would be Aleytys "Lee" Forrester, the fishing boat captain whose crew Scott Summers (aka the X-Man known as Cyclops) has recently joined as a way of keeping himself occupied while he mourns the death of his longtime sweetheart Jean Grey/Phoenix.

When Lee finds out "something is wrong" back home, she asks Scott to accompany her, even though they're relatively new acquaintances; as she puts it in her internal monologue, she's a sucker for a bird with a broken wing. One fanboat ride later (love a fanboat) Scott and Lee are in Citrusville. Unfortunately, when Lee sees her father she fails to sense that something is off...

Yes, D'Spayre sure abandons that disguise quickly. I guess it served its purpose.

In service for his hunger for human suffering, D'Spayre takes Cyclops on a tour of all his greatest fears,anxieties, and hangups: from the time he was abandoned as a child, to the possibility that he might be a danger to his fellow X-Men, to the fear that Professor X will give him more demerits.

It's great to revisit Scott's last memory of his parents as he and his brother fall from the sky. This would of course be the first of many occasions that Cyclops falls from a destroyed aircraft in his life, but you can never beat the original. I wonder if this is priming us for any kind of planned revisitation to Cyclops' backstory.

There is a fantasy sequence in which Cyclops uses his powers to wipe out a troupe of Sentinels that resemble Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm, only to find, in a twist, that the actual consciousnesses of his teammates were transplanted into the Sentinels, thus killing them. The arty askew unrealness of this sequence - a Claremont special no matter who is drawing - is appealingly surreal and off-putting, which helps offset how convoluted the "Twilight Zone" twist is.

The last stop on the tour of Cyclops' psyche is a fantasy where he actually gets to marry Jean. Again, it maybe doesn't go so well...

In his despair (oh, now I get it) Cyclops decides to end it all by running straight out a window "halfway up D'Spayre's miile-high tower."

Wow, I guess that's the end of Cyclops, then. Strange way to kill off such an important character, but certainly definitive.

Well, no, actually what happens is that moments later, Cyclops stands up without a bruise, like nothing happed at all, certainly not something that should have paralyzed him for life at best.

As Cyclops shakes things off, Man-Thing arrives and they double-team the demon. Unfortunately, physical force alone is not sufficient to defeat him. Cyclops draws on the still-raw memory of Phoenix's death to fuel Man-Thing's empathic abilities and overwhelm D'Spayre - somehow.

When Man-Thing joins the fray, the house begins to burn down and all Cyclops can do is rescue Lee from it, who is too disoriented to know what is going on anymore (same.) As they leave, Cyclops reflects on how Jean's death isn't a source of despair or fear for him, but one of courage and love.

Further Thoughts:

This story also briefly checks in with the aftermath of Kitty's escapade with the alien demon. When the grownup X-Men like Wolverine and  Nightcrawler tease her for how much damage she's caused, she runs off crying, genuinely self-conscious and unsure of her place in the group. What they can't explain is that their kidding is their way of showing they are proud of her and that she is one of them - that's a really great short little scene that plays nor just on Kitty's newness, but her youth, inocence and vulnerability.

As for the bulk of the story, well, I think it's emblematic of where we're going pretty much from here on out. While the Dark Phoenix Saga was definitely he apex of the superhero comic book storytelling form - elegantly plotted and paying off with supreme emotional resonance - it has left our characters with baggage that isn't neatly wiped away in the next issue. For months now, all the X-Men, in their own way, have been stuck contemplating the sacrifice that Jean had to make to save the universe from herself. On the one hand, when you find yourself in such a situation, as a creator, you absolutely do use that momentum to fullt unpack the impact of the story you've told. On the other, to dwell on it too long and too hard risks burning out your audience on that material. And centering an entire story around the abstract concept of sadness is a bit of dwelling, I think.

This story was not my fave. It's a bit vague exactly what Man-Thing even does, no matter how much they try to explain, and what D'Spayre's deal is - what he wants and how to defeat him. In a story ostensibly centred on Cyclops' grief, oir hero comes off as secondary since he's against a foe he can't be the one to defeat. Claremont makes a herculean effort to stitch all his ideas together into a cohesive package, with a monologue at the end trying to sum it all up in lofty terms of fear and courage, despair and hope, but I don't think it quite holds together and the connection between fear and sadness isn't strong enough to carry this story's premise. This one was a little shoddy. It wasn't there for me, dawg.