UNCANNY X-MEN #166: Live Free or Die!

The X-Men have a whale of a time as they mount their last stand against the Brood!

Originally Published February 1983

We begin on the planet Madrizar, where the Brood have trapped another Acanti - one of those kooky space whales they ride around in. They commence infecting it with the slaver virus that will complete their control over it, when suddenly out of nowhere...

Binary comes roaring out of the heavens to exact her revenge on Broodkind. She completely wrecks the place, then turns her attention to the captured Acanti, who is sending her a telepathic message.

She has no choice but to euthanize the poor creature. Afterward, flying off into space contemplating all the horror and misery the Brood wreak wherever they go, as well as how being Binary hasn't really freed her soul the way she would like, she runs into an unexpected familiar face...

Storm brings Carol to a nearby Acanti, explaining, as we somewhat learned last issue, that she and the creature have become one and the same.

Inside, they find Lilandra's Yacht, where the X-Men are waiting. Carol apologizes for blowing a hole in the side of the ship, and the X-Men are like, "Eh, no big d." From there, they take a moment to collect themselves, knowing they are doomed by carrying Brood eggs within, and there is nothing they can do to escape this awful fate. There have been a lot of murmurings of revenge-killing the Brood Queen, but Storm offers a more big-picture solution.

She explains the whole history of the Acanti - that they are an ancient, peaceful presence, a species that flies through the stars singing and doing no harm. Then the Brood arrived and enslaved them for their ability to fly faster than light.

Early on, the Brood were able to capture the Prophet-Singer of the Acanti, their spiritual leader, who carries the very soul of the Acanti Race within his person. After his death, the only way it can be released, and passed to the next Prophet-Singer is by the body being destroyed, traditionally by hurtling into a sun. Until that happens, the Acanti have no hope.

Unfortunately, it is this very Prophet-Singer whose carcass is used as the architecture of the Brood Homeworld's Capital City, as seen in previous issues.

Which brings us to today, as a new Prophet-Singer has been born, albeit prematurely and without access to the Acanti Racial Soul. As it happens, this was the Acanti Storm encountered and "became," entering into a symbiosis with it - as it restores her body (we see her gestating in a pod attached to the walls) her mind powers and drives its decisions while it completes its development.

Crazy, right?

So, Storm proposes - head to Broodworld, release the soul (which is conveniently located in the base of the skull, in case you didn't know) and allow the young Prophet-Singer to lead the remaining Acanti to safety.

Wolverine warns that nasty creatures that scare even the Brood live in the Acanti skull area. He proposes that he, Carol and Storm do the dirty work, since they are the only ones without a Brood implant that could cause any of the X-Men to turn traitor at any time. Cyclops notes the input, but passes...

Wolverine considers his options...

In the end, he backs down, and they go with Cyclops' plan for Storm and Carol to create a diversion while the other X-Men operate planetside.

The team beams down, but unfortunately there is a traitor in their midst! The Brood Queen gets a psychic message from one of the soon-to-be-transformed X-Men, whose brain has become Brood but whose body masquerades as human, warning the Queen of the shenanigans afoot!

While Binary and Storm - whose abilities are hampered by the fragile state of her human body, and if she taxes them too hard will leave her trapped in the Acanti's form forever - wreck the Brood's space attack force, the X-Men, using Wolverine's senses, track down the soul and grapple with the monstrous bestiary that resides in the remains of the Prophet-Singer/Brood Stronghold.

While all this is going on, Wolverine and Cyclops trade barbs like the old days, and not in a good way...

Kitty is separated from the group when she phases through a wall, and finds herself in the nest of something that seemingly feeds on the Brood. That's not good, so she uses her phasing power to try to get away unnoticed...

Up top, Wolverine has finally had enough of Cyclops jibber-jabber, as he also notices that the team's leader (Storm has momentarily ceded the role due to being in the form of a giant space fish) is getting far sloppier with his optic blasts, throwing more wild pitches than Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughan.

Yes, your suspicions were correct, Cyclops was in fact the traitor all along!

Unfortunately, this is learned too late, and the Brood is able to rally and take the X-Men out, with the Queen presiding over the attack force.

Elsehwere, Kitty too is on the run from a pack of Brood hunters, only to be rescued at the last moment by... by...

...by what exactly?

Heck yeah, an adorable little dragon!

As it happens, Kitty, the Dragon, and one remaining Brood have bumbled into the Soul, which they enter, transfixed. To the Brood, the light and energy within burns, but Kitty only hears beautiful music...

The X-Men are shackled by the Brood, as the Queen crows about how soon the heroes will all be transformed into alien warriors in her service.

Unfortunately, as Cyclops' body begins to undergo its transformation, his optic blasts go haywire. Wolverine uses this to his advantage and escapes his shackles, then downs Cyclops with one punch and threatens to skewer the Queen's brains unless the Brood stand down.

The group, with the Queen and Cyclops in tow, make their way to the Soul. Kitty emerges and explains some of what she saw there, that the Brood warrior who followed her in was turned to crystal, but she was spared due to not being a creature of pure evil I guess.

Unfortunately, in the fuss, she lost track of her little dragon friend.

Inside the crystal, the Brood Queen's presence starts to taint the purity of the surroundings. The X-Men begin to transform, and she boasts that soon the very soul of the Acanti will be corrupted to her will and there will be no stopping her! Mwa ha ha ha!

Wolverine swears he will kill every single last one of them if he has to...

At that moment, Binary arrives to scoop Wolverine out of the way.

Now, you may recall that something was said earlier about the Prophet-Singer's body needing to be thrown into a sun to release the soul. You may also recall that Binary's powers are to access the infinite energy of a star. So let's put two and two together...

As you can imagine, this has a side-effect of purifying all of the X-Men from having the Brood seed within them.

The X-Men beam up - to the Starjammer, which arrived midway through the battle, just as "Sleazeworld" is destroyed thanks to all the cosmic-level mojo Carol had been working.

Aboard the ship, the X-Men are given the appropriate bandages, arm-slings, etc, and are re-united with a one-more human Ororo, who has left the Acanti in the care of their new baby Prophet-Singer.

Of course she got the requisite request to stay with them forever, but as always she had to turn that down and go back to the X-Men.

For a moment it looks like all's well that ends well, but Wolverine has to be Debbie Downer and remind us there's one last loose end to tie up. After all, we know there's one last Brood egg on Earth, and we feel pretty sure we know who is hosting it...

To be concluded! (I really hope.)

Further Thoughts:

If you had asked me, at the beginning of this story, whether I thought they were building toward Storm becoming one with a giant space whale, and the X-Men on a mission to free the soul of an entire race, and Kitty would make friends with a dragon the size of a housecat, I would have said... "Yeah, now that you mention it." That's the beauty of the X-Men, you really never know where thee stories are going to end up.

Although I had found myself growing restless with the middle parts of this Brood Saga, I thought this was a very appealing conclusion - it was packed with drama, suspense, intrigue, and all the wacky Space-Opera stuff. We first saw the Acanti long ago being used as vessels for the Brood, but at that time they just seemed like an imaginative bit of imagery, not something that would both have a rich backstory, and play a vital, even dominant role in the destruction of the Brood.

The Saga of the Acanti is a lot to digest in only a few pages, but the story manages to be epic in scope and easy to process - the Brood captured and corrupted them, and only freeing them can end this conflict. Meanwhile, they are themselves capable of all sorts of wondrous things, which stands to reason as they are gigantic fish creatures that fly through space faster than the speed of light. Healing powers? Telepathic songs? A racial soul at purifies Brood infectees? Sure, sure, sure.

Now, just because I'm all in doesn't mean you have to be. I am on record throughout this blog as being willing to ingest any bizarre flicking thing the creators of the comics want to throw at me as long as it is exciting, interesting, or well-executed. What we have here is a bona-fide space opera that also resonates with the X-Men's core themes of fighting against oppression and corruption, and anything that suppresses self-definition. But if this is all a step too far for you, that's fine.

I just really enjoy how the comic had spent so much time building up the Brood transformation as this irrevocable, horrible fate awaiting our heroes, to where something major was going to have to be pulled off to stop it - and here is something major. I didn't even mind that the big final blow was courtesy of Carol, because it all felt properly set up and earned. So while I often tease the book for letting her have more than her fair share of the spotlight, this was a moment that was right.

Compared to the last regular issue of this size - which featured the revelation of Magneto's backstory - this one feels less padded, with enough story to go around, switching between a few different planes of action, and the twists that accompany the revelation that one of the X-Men is already a Brood traitor. That was risking coming off as rushed, but I think it was done well.

This could be down to the input of penciller Paul Smith - since the artist is usually the one determining the pace at which the story unfolds. As I've said before, I hold Smith in high esteem and while I still don't think high space adventure is the best use of his skills, he does extremely well here. In any case, it takes a whole team to put together a book this good, and if the whole Acanti angle was the work of Chris Claremont or (perhaps most likely) a leftover plot concept from Dave Cockrum, the entire package was good.