Somebody help Kitty with that suitcase!
Originally Published November 1981
We begin with bad news, everyone..
The Professor has been notified by Carmen and Terri Pryde that they are withdrawing their daughter from the Xavier school effective immediately. The stated reason for this is that although her grades are good and she is enjoying the experience, they feel she would be more at home at a school with more students her own age. They don't even mention the fact that there's only one teacher, no set curriculum, a building full of deathtraps, a highly unconventional dresscode and that Kitty has been pressed into service in a sort of paramilitary militia charged with protecting a world that both hates and fears her. Plus, I think they have co-ed dorms, and the Prydes are old-fashioned.
In reality, Kitty's parents are still pretty well unaware of the whole X-Men thing. So while it would be hard to disagree overall that the Xavier School is a bad, dangerous place you would not want to send your kids to, it's harder to sympathize with the decision based on what they do know; that this is a highly prestigious private academy with a very small student body, a brilliant instructor, and seemingly bottomless resources.
Wolverine points out that Charles has not been shy in the past about using his psychic powers to "change peoples' minds" about things, if you catch my drift, but Charles notes that he's not doing that this week, and if the Prydes want this, there's no arguing.
For Kitty, the worst part is where her parents want to send her: the Massachusetts Academy. Say, who do we know who works there again?
Oh right, her.
You'll recall that Emma Frost, the villainous, lingerie-clad White Queen of the Hellfire Club. She was believed dead after tangling with the cosmic-level psychic power of a then-feeling-her-oats-nearly-totally-unleashed Phoenix. Since then, she got all better, and presumably returned to her role as a school administrator. We don't know for a fact that she's actually back and behind all this, but we can feel pretty certain that's the case - psychic manipulation is possibly a two-way street.
The Prof performs a mindscan on the Prydes and determines their brains are not currently being horsed with. No, they're just making this bad decision on their own.
Kitty says her goodbyes...
Especially to Piotr...
 |
| Studio Audience: (Uproarious sexualized cheering) |
Storm, who I hear is particularly close to Kitty, escorts her to Massachusetts. Kitty is a little skeptical of her new classmates...
And while she goes off to tour the campus, Storm is left to wander on her own. And what do you know, she winds up running into someone she knows!
The scene skips ahead a beat and Kitty and Storm say their final goodbyes, but once Storm has driven away, she starts acting a little bit off-model.
Storm revels in her powers as though she's never actually used them before...
She even uses the car's Mobile Telephone System to contact none other than... Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club! And talk to him like they're friends??
 |
| Plus she smokes now?? |
Meanwhile, Kurt and his stepsister-girlfriend Amanda are enjoying a romantic moonlit stroll...
Which is sadly disrupted by an attack from some Killer Sentinels.
Oooh, I hate when that happens.
The X-Men band together to battle them, while Cyclops wonders who has sicced the Sentinels on them, since they dismantled Stephen Lang's "Project Armageddon" long ago. I guess nobody filled him in that Future-Kitty came back to warn them the Sentinels were on the comeback trail.
Storm!Frost arrives on the scene and laments that Shaw has jumped the gun by setting his new Sentinels on the X-Men already. I'd call that organizational miscommunication, but Emma literally just talked to Shaw on the phone about her plan. Anyway, the X-Men have the situation in hand with Nightcrawler using his teleportation powers to plant plastic explosives on each of them in rapid succession.
Emma does some sloppy work helping to finish them off, and when the X-Men go "What was that about?" she ditches her cover completely and zaps them all with lightning.
Meanwhile back at the Massachusetts Academy, Storm has awakened to find that she is a white lady now, and she is not thrilled. She uses her lockpicks to escape her cell, but finds herself overwhelmed by Emma's psychic powers.
Luckily, she remembers something Jean once told her, about how to restrain her psychic power from overwhelming her - a little pro tip, should Storm ever find herself in need.
 |
| It has been _0_ days since someone has thought about Jean Grey |
Having mastered Emma's psychic powers (or at least reached intermediate level), Storm goes back to find Kitty in her dorm room - alone and scared as any 13 1/2-year-old would be on the first day at a new school. Storm reaches out to explain but unfortunately, Storm hasn't mastered Emma's powers quite as well as she'd hoped...
 |
| It has been _0_ days since Kitty died right before our eyes. |
To be continued!
Further Thoughts:
You know me, I love body-swapping stories. They're a mainstay of Saturday morning cartoons but don't crop up in comics as often as you'd think (leaving aside the high-concept, and controversial, Superior Spider-Man.) Characters dealing with each others' powers, pretending to be each other and creating chaos - it's cheesy, but sometimes you've got to go with a classic.
Unfortunately, this story just kind of hurries through the whole thing - Shaw doesn't have the patience for Emma's plan, so he sends Sentinels just because. Then Emma drops the charade and attacks the X-Men at the first sign of, well, X-Men. So the whole body-swap is basically nothing - if anything more of a hindrance to the plan than a help. The whole premise seems to be falling apart before it even gets going. The last time we saw the Hellfire Club they were involved in a lengthy, intricate campaign to break down and corrupt a single X-Man while ensnaring the rest. This is... somewhat more slapdash.
Likewise, Kitty's experiences at the Frost School could have been fodder for some interesting drama, but the book skims it completely. What are the people there actually like? Suspicious? Strangely pleasant? Snobby but otherwise normal? We never know, they're mostly rendered as indistinct background characters.
It's also something of a shame to waste the return of the Sentinels here are just a middle-of-the-story action beat. The last time we saw them they had conquered future!North America and were poised to be seen as a big threat after teasing their return in the main timeline.
As indicated above, I have a lot of affection for corny Saturday Morning Superheroics, if it's done in earnest, but for a long while, the X-Men as a franchise was developing away from that and broadening its horizons. The departure of John Byrne snapped them back, and it doesn't feel like a good fit.
No comments:
Post a Comment