The X-Men's Friends Get Murderworlded!
Originally Published June 1981
Having just defeated the X-Men, Dr. Doom and his new friend Arcade are hanging out at Doom's makeshift castle, a disused amusement park somewhere in Upstate New York. Outside, a mysterious storm rages. Inside, Doom is at peace, having bested the X-Men with ease.
However, like any tenured comic book supervillain, Doom would not have been content to kill the X-Men when he had the chance. Instead, he has done the sensible thing and placed them in a series of life-threatening fair-play traps. They have a chance to prove their mettle and escape with their lives, or die trying. Either way.
Nightcrawler has been placed in a featureless Cube (not unlike the cube from the movie Cube). Colossus sits atop an eroding rock in a whirlpool, where the only way out is to swim down past a throng of laser-guns.
Wolverine is trapped in a kooky floaty zero-gravity funhouse room that messes with his enhance senses, a nd Angel is perched like a parakeet in a room full of lasers that fire if he tries to fly.
There's no nutty deathtrap for Storm, though. She was encased in chrome in the previous issue as a living statue - somehow these villains always think to give her the really horrifying claustrophobic tortures. It's like they're reading the comic or something.
For funsies, Doom created an incredibly lifelike robot version of Storm, for purposes surely not related to sex. He also saw fit to undress and change Storm into a Slave Leia outfit, which is impressive for numerous reasons:
1) Storm was encased in metal while wearing her X-Men costume, so I have absolutely no idea how that's supposed to work
2) Return of the Jedi will not be released for another two years.
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| I deem this a Weird Claremont Sex Thing |
Elsewhere, on a mysterious island (and if you know me, you know I love a good mysterious island) Lee Forrester is getting to know Scott - specifically the part where Scott shoots deadly beams of bright red force out of his eyes that can puncture a tank, when his blindfold falls off during a storm (yes, the same storm affecting upstate New York is also reaching the Caribbean.) The two have a lot to talk about, and seemingly nothing but time to do so.
Have you ever thought about how terrifying it would be to be around that? The pictures don't do it justice, those "force beams" are supposed to be emitting from Scott's face at the speed of light. And yet somehow they are kept in check by a pair of Oakleys. Huh, go figure.
Meanwhile, the Legion of Part-Time X-Men track the location of Arcade's Murderworld from where the X-Men were released on their last visit, thanks to that sweet kid Lorna's electromagnetic powers.
Of course Miss Locke is waiting for them and has the usual battery of hilarious amusement-park themed death traps waiting for them. I'd be lying if I said I even wanted to spend any time summing up what happens to them there: A deadly roller coaster, a killer robot replica of little Illyana Rasputin, etc etc.
They bumble through, and Havok zaps his way to the control booth, where he forces Locke to let the hostages go.
Which is terrific, except that the X-Men are still kidnapped... or are they??
Further Thoughts:
I actually like the idea that there is a half-dozen or so inactive X-Men and associates that the Professor can call on when the going gets rough, but as much as we like Havok and Polaris, it does feel like if they were interesting to read about they would just be on the X-Men. So the part of this story concerning the rescue mission in Murderworld feels like a flat replay of the previous Murderworld two-parter, while the X-Men we know and love are also tied up in elaborate deathtraps. Some stories, no matter how many extra elements you throw in, are not meant to stretch to three issues.
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