The White Queen plays finders-keepers as Storm tries to GET OUT of her body!
Originally Published December 1981
We begin with kind of a crazy scene of Storm throwing lightning bolts at a car apparently being driven by Emma Frost - the evil Hellfire Club's White Queen - and also contains Storm's pryde and joy, Kitty, who would be panicked to be riding shotgun with someone who once drugged, kidnapped and strip-searched half the X-Men... were she conscious.
What Kitty doesn't know - but we do, because we all very enthusiastically read last week's Uncanny X-Cerpt - is that underneath that severe blonde lob is the mind of her dear friend, mentor and surrogate mother figure Storm, who was transplanted into the body of the powerful psychic villainess during a visit to the Massachusetts Academy where she is headmistress. In hindsight, we should have seen this coming.
Although Ms. Frost is gaining experience in using Storm's powers, she's still a little rough around the edges, and the chaos causes Storm to drive the car over a cliff to her fiery death.
Whoopsiedaisie!
Storm--er, Emma-- makes haste back to the X-Mansion where she has a minor meltdown about witnessing her body's own grisly demise. She laments to Hellfire colleague Sebastian Shaw that now that her natural body is dead, she is trapped as Storm for good.
Sebastian, ever the optimist, points out that she still has the thingy that let her switch bodies, so she's not really trapped anywhere, and for the time being, even if she's not a telepath, she's still young, hot, and an insanely powerful mutant. So that's pretty good, all things considered.
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| It's cool... if Catherine Keener in "Get Out" happens to be your role model |
I guess Emma had intended the brain-swapping caper to only be a temporary move, which wouldn't surprise me because as we discussed last time, this whole plan seems to have been put together at the last minute. But maybe it was supposed to be permanent, and this is like finding out your childhood home is being torn down. You don't need it anymore, but you liked knowing it was there.
As luck would have it, Emma's body did not die in that extremely painful-looking car wreck.
Kitty, despite still believing Storm to be Emma, pulls her enemy to safety. When she comes to, Storm hauls out that old "Ask me something only I would know" chestnut, but Kitty earns her teen genius reputation by pointing out that Frost is a telepath, so she could know anything.
Instead, FrostyStorm works to establish her bona fides by using her innate thieving skills to untie the fabric Kitty has bound her with (which, again, probably wouldn't have post too great a challenge for Frost either, but let's indulge.)
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| Got to give it to those X-Men... most people would be severely injured. |
Back at the mansion, the Hellfire Club's bodyhopping jape has enabled them to get the drop on the X-Men once more, and the heroes are cuffed and collared in the den. They've even remembered to bring along that ruby quartz balaclava that negates Cyclops' powers. I imagine that when you've paid thousands of dollars to have one of those commissioned, you don't forget you have it.
The Club introduces the X-Men to their new White Queen...
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| OK then, I have no follow-up questions |
The Hellfire Club's Inner Circle, here, consists of Sebastian Shaw and Harry Leland (the zaftig gentleman who "controls mass," which I still think is wrong.) You'll recall Jason Wyngarde/Mastermind was briefly associated with them, but never a charter member, and has been driven insane by being made one with the universe by a vengeful Phoenix on her way to becoming Dark. Also missing is Donald Pierce, the cyborg who is famously racist against mutants, who probably felt out of place being that the other members all are mutants.
Being promoted to featured players here are Cole and Reese, two of the Hellfire schmoes Wolverine sliced up to a family-friendly near-death during his famous rampage back in Uncanny X-Men #133, which left them with an understandably personal vendetta. They reveal that they have been reborn with special cyborg enhancements, which will enable them to return oddly frequently throughout the 1980's to menace Wolverine with their personal grudge, and they are oddly melancholy about that.
It's not shown here, but there are at least two female Hellfire Goons, which is all well and good, but they have their hair showing - or wear wigs - over their weirdo noseless masks, a very strange uniform choice, I guess so that nobody can be too confused while looking at them.
Kitty and Storm are smuggled into the mansion by none other than Stevie, which provides an opportunity for Storm to really prove her identity...
Namely by fixating on her irrational jealousy toward Stevie for her relationship with Kitty.
Storm combines her new powers with Kitty's to show her the way to pick a lock. Like Emma, Storm is no instant expert in her new powers, and nearly fries her young companion's brains like Rachel Leigh Cook, but she's able to correct herself by - and this may surprise you - thinking about how Jean Grey would have done it.
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| 0 Days Since... |
Having tricked the Hellfires into thinking they had killed him (by use of Amanda's magic powers, which, ok,) Wolverine meets up with Kitty to free the X-Men, which enables the next round of fighting.
In all this chaos, Emma uses her new powers to whip up a Storm that she is unable to control, throwing a lightning bolt that nearly kills Shaw dead despite his "I'm rubber you're glue" powers. Storm is all like "Well then give me my body back," and Emma goes "No way binch" and Storm is like "You ho, give it here" and Emma is like "Make me" and so they fight in the sky, with the Body-Switching Gun between them, until they fall and the X-Men really don't know what to make of any of this.
When the two women plummet back to Earth, the X-Men find that all has been put right when Ororo does the Good Guy Thing and saves Emma's life.
Unsportingly, Emma continues the fight and tries to hit Ororo with a psychic whammy. Storm then lashes out again, justifiably feeling violated by Frost's hijacking of her body. She's ready to make the White Queen pay for that ("In blood!") until Wolverine, of all people, talks her down and reminds her that she is a good person and not a killer, and it would be a shame to spoil her record over something as trivial as... having the very core of your being ripped out and violated.
You know, I'm not in favour of killing but I can definitely see Storm's perspective.
In the end, the X-Men and their current deadliest enemies part ways. The X-Men reason that they can't call the police on Emma without exposing themselves, and Emma says that until Shaw recovers from his lightning-induced coma, the Hellfire Club is powerless anyway.
Basically all this to say "You know this is comics and there are not really any penalties for villainy because we need to bring back to crooks later." Although, I really don't know what the police could charge Emma with. Grand Theft Body? Psychic Tresspassing?
The X-Men also get to keep Kitty, as Emma has once again lost interest in the kid. Which is all well and good, but supposedly her parents wanted her away from the Xavier School of their own free will in the first place, so...?
Further Thoughts:
Although I have my issues with the previous part of this story, I did enjoy the way it played out, in terms of it being a straightforward action bust-em-up. Kitty not trusting Ororo as Emma is the correct way for this to play out, but the other side of that coin doesn't hold true and the X-Men, while shocked, seem utterly uncurious as to why the formerly saintly Storm is suddenly turned Wicked Witch of the Winds. They don't even find out until the final pages of the book that Storm has been body-swapped.
That said, I enjoyed seeing the X-Men square off against the Hellfire Club Inner Circle (or HAMCRO) again, and the weird subplot about Cole and Reese the cyborg henchmen with a personal vendetta against Wolverine is an intriguing addition, especially when they basically say they don't care about living anymore, only about making Wolverine suffer and maybe goading him into finishing the job. Dark stuff.
Storm being overcome by a raging bloodlust for revenge feels like a last-minute attempt to load some weight into this throwaway outing, but it's too little too late, and it's basically the exact same outcome as we saw when Storm was turned into a statue at the hands of Dr. Doom. She's full of righteous fury for one minute, then shaking hands and walking away from her enemy the next.
If the book had tried this at some other point in its history, when long-term subplots were playing out beneath superheroic outings, perhaps this would have been very different - Emma could have spent a lot of time as Storm and undermined the X-Men with specific goals in mind. As a two-parter you have to kind of rush through it, but as I've mentioned the exact intention behind Emma replacing Storm is not well explored. What advantage is it to have this deception if you're not going to, you know, use it deceptively?
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