UNCANNY X-MEN #177: Sanction

Mystique takes on the X-Men - and this time it's personal.

 

Originally Published January 1984

We begin at a strangely empty circus. where Mystique, leader of the villainous Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is out for a casual evening stroll, only to be rudely interrupted... by Wolverine!

This seems weirdly aggressive and rude even by his standards, but being the dangerous wild card of the bunch has always beem the key to his charm. Mystique, however, is able to get the upper hand in one-on-one combat with the Canadian mutant, slicing his throat with a knife hidden in her glove.

"Got you!" "Where?" "There, diagonally through the trachea!" "Pretty sneaky sis!"

Wow, R.I.P. Wolverine I guess. Can't believe they killed him just as he was getting so popular.

Mystique is attacked, in turn, by each of the X-Men, and manages to fend them all off using her shapeshifting poowers, her fighting prowess, her weapons, and her surroundings, with lethal results.

 

Wait a minute, isn't Cyclops supposed to be on his honeymoon? And retired?

And isn't Storm supposed to be rocking a Mohawk and biker punk look these days?

Yes, for us attentive readers, we know that this is obviously a simulation, as Mystique is testing her mettle against a series of very lifelike fake X-People.

Mystique is able to dispatch her adoptive daughter Rogue, but has more trouble exercising her killer instinct on Nightcrawler, for reasons not made clear.

When she awakes, Mystique is being attended to by her partner Destiny, and congratulated by Arcade on a really solid run through his X-Robots.

As it turns out, Arcade and Mystique have a working arrangement to use his Murderworld contraptions as her personal X-Men-Killing Training Ground, on the basis that, for Arcade's amusement, one of the robots will be programmed to kill rather than incapacitate. Mystique is pretty pleased with her customer service experience today and wants to use the evil amusement park as a regular exercise to train her Brotherhood. Ever since Rogue was "manipulated" into joining the X-Men, her dedication to the cause of destroying them has become intensified.

Destiny, always full of great advice nobody listens to, points out that Mystique couldn't bring herself to kill a fake Nightcrawler. What happens when she goes against the real deal?

"Shaddap, that's what happens."

Over at Dance School, Kitty has been distracted lately. It seems she is very shooketh by Storm's recent transformation into leather-clad badass, and it's really affecting her work. Stevie tries to put it in perspective, but before she can clarify, Storm arrives, ears a-burning.

Later, Kurt, Amanda, Piotr and Kitty are preparing for a double date at the ballet. While Kitty and Piotr go park the car, Kurt and his magical stepsister girlfriend Amanda have a chat about his origins - the circumstances around her mother Margali deciding to adopt him and raise him in the circus, and what really became of his birth parents.

Now, pretty much nothing good ever happens at a highbrow cultural event like the ballet in comics, and tonight is no different. As Kitty starts telling Piotr about a kid from dance class, Doug, who is also really into tech stuff, an explosion occurs nearby, rescuing Colossus from a probably stupendously boring conversation.

No seriously though, I want to hear about this later.

This lures the two of them into a fight with the Brotherhood - Blob, Pyro, and Avalanche.

Piotr is ensnared in a fiery creation of Pyro's, raising his body temperature hundreds, perhaps thousands of degrees. I'm not sure.

Always a pertinent question.

The Super Evil Mutant Bros have even worse in store for him as Avalanche ruptures a conveniently placed nearby truck containing Liquid Nitrogen...

And... presto!

Yiiiiiikes. See you next time, folks.

Further Thoughts:

Not a ton to this, no, but a good start to a story. I like establishing that, all things considered, Mystique is a credible threat. It's easy to think of her just as someone who schemes and wears different faces and leaves the fighting to her team of mid-grade bruisers, but here we see she is the complete femme fatale package unto herself. And the totality of her wrath is being brought down on the X-Men because of her hatred of them for turning Rogue against her.

In general, it's great to pick back up on the threads that had been laid down surrounding Mystique, whom we know is the adoptive mother of Rogue, and has been feeling a trifle dejected about her defection. She has also been strongly hinted to have some connection to Nightcrawler, with her blue skin, Teutonic-sounding surname, and knowledge of Kurt's adoptive mother Margali Szardos. Now we see that comes with some kind of sentimentality.

Who would have thought you can just pick up the phone and reach Margali of the Winding Road?

This issue also features a farewell scene - at long, long last - for Lilandra and the Starjammers, as they head off to take back the Shi'ar throne, and Xavier, Scott and Alex fret over when they will see their loved ones again - if ever.

Hm, I guess Cyclops actually is back from his honeymoon already.

Lastly, once again, we end with Piotr basically dead. It's a tough sell because you know an X-Man isn't going out like that - Chris Claremont wrought every ounce of drama he could from Thunderbird's death, to say nothing of what happened to Jean, so for this to be it for Piotr is lightly preposterous. This ties into what I've already explained as the Falling X-Man principle: you know they're not going to hit the ground and go splat, but it should be entertaining to see just how they get out of it.