UNCANNY X-MEN #186: LIFEDEATH

Storm and Forge get acquainted.

Originally Published October 1984

So, where to begin?

Ah, yes.

After being inadvertently zapped by the de-powering ray last issue, Storm has been brought to the Dallas condo owned by Forge where she lies in bed... depressed.

Frankly, I've had more melodramatic responses to much less adversity.

We learn fairly quickly that Forge has been caring for the traumatized Storm. Whether this is out of the goodness of his heart, or guilt because unbeknownst to Storm he is the one who designed the depowering gun, we are left to guess for ourselves. We don't really know Forge that well yet, but he does seem to be on the up-and-up.

Forge and Storm get to talking. Storm asks about Rogue, but Forge doesn't know what became of her - they didn't find her, perhaps she drowned.  Storm knows better of course, referring to her as a "resourceful young woman." (Who also has the powers of Ms. Marvel, yes.)

Forge wonders how Storm could be friends with a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and balks when Storm says she and Rogue have more in common than you'd expect - until she playfully demonstrates her pickpocket skills.

Storm muses on the loss of her powers, how she has been stripped of the communion she had had with all creation. Forge gives her the tough love by pointing out this makes her just like everyone else.

Privately, Forge castigates himself for his brusque manner - he wants to help Storm, not make her feel worse, and he would much rather comfort her than play psychiatrist anyway because, as we learn, Forge wouldn't mind smooshing with her a little bit.

Though he worries, while treating himself to a swim, that his words may lead her to do something drastic, she actually joins him, and they have a bit of a moment of bonding in the water.

  

When she emerges victorious, Storm realizes her faux pas as she finds Forge's self-designed prosthesis.

Thank God she didn't challenge him to an ass kicking contest

Forge opens up a little bit about his time in Vietnam, how he "Got too close to a bomb... or maybe not close enough." He reflects on his own suicidal phase and gives Storm a more honest pep talk about how with life, there are possibilities, ways out, without the finality of death.

Back in Mississippi, Dr. Valerie Cooper and her colleague Phil consider the implications for her career about letting Rogue slip through her fingers, to say nothing about zapping the wrong mutant (eh, nobody on the Government side seems to have much of a problem with that.) As Phil heads off to get into his car, he is accosted!

Yes, it's those Dire Wraiths everyone is talking about. In a scene that is, to be frank, quite on the gruesome side of anything we've encountered in this series, the Wraith drinks Phil's gooey insides out through his forehead, leaving him a melted-down puddle of gunk, in order to wear his skin as a suit.

WraithPhil goes to Val's motel and corners her, declaring his intentions to make her into one of them - or more accurately, make one of them into her.

Following the code of conduct for all horror movie monsters, the Wraiths take just a little too long taking care of the person who needs to stay alive, allowing just enough time for someone to come rescue her.

In this case, it's Rogue, who wants Val for herself!

Val takes advantage of the Dire Wraith Phil's human weakness - bullets - and Rogue slugs it out with the other one, punching her into oblivion and inadvertently absorbing some of its disgusting space-psyche through her touch in the process.

This psychic scream alerts Xavier, who has been using Cerebro to search for Rogue - and gives him some sense of what these Dire Wraiths are about.

In the hullaballoo, Val manages to get away, but Rogue regains composure and ducks into her backseat, using her powers to absorb her memories to the point where she gets clued in on what has happened and who Forge is. 

Back at Eagle Plaza, Storm dresses for dinner from clothes Forge has had delivered, leading to a brief She's All That moment.

Kiss me... Beneath the milky twilight...

This reaction prompts Storm to go change into some "more comfortable" overalls. When Forge mentions he was caught off-guard, Storm asks whether he feels the need to hide his thoughts and emotions out of shame, and he says yeah, sometimes. When he says he takes solace and safety in his solitude, Storm offers to leave, but he asks her not to, and she says yes, in fact, she would like to stay.

And if that isn't foreplay I don't know what is.

Forge cooks her a dinner Hyderabadi Baigan Subji over Chawali. As he prepares to Forgesplain that it's like curry but not, Storm indicates she knows the dish (asking "does not everyone?" in what could be a rare example of Storm's sense of humour, or skewed perspective on life, or both.)

They split some champagne - Storm's first drink ever, which she downs in one gulp - and discuss Forge's Cheyenne background, which he says he is not ashamed of, but has nothing to do with who he is or where he is going in life. Prompted by the growing bond, Storm lets her guard down more and tells him, apropos nothing, that her parents died buried in rubble, which is why is is afraid of enclosed spaces, something she has never told any living soul, but sure, share it with this guy she just met.

The conversation continues and circles back to the Storm outside. Forge uses his holographic projector thingy to put them inside the storm, which freaks Ororo right out.

Once things are settled, she reflects on how years ago, when her powers first developed, she learned she had to be in control of her emotions or they would overwhelm the environment - "The greater my feelings, the more extreme the atmospheric response." This necessitated the air of "absolute serenity" she had cultivated, to where she lost touch with herself as a woman. A few months ago, she cut her hair and changed her style as an act of rebellion against her self-imposed emotional celibacy, a rejection of her former world and self as complete as Forge's.

And now, with no powers, the only person at risk if she lets her emotions free... is her.

Which leads to...

Studio Audience: Wooooooooooooo!

Somewhat inconveniently - or conveniently for our purposes - this moment is interrupted by a Very Important Phone Call, which Forge must take in the other room. At this time, it occurs to Storm that Professor X might be worried, and maybe she should give him a call. So she picks up the phone, completely forgetting that Forge is already on the line. 

I hope my readers - who I assume to be 100% Gen Z's under 13 who have never seen a landline before - won't be too confused by the fact that back in those days, if you picked up the phone on one side of the house, it put you into the conversation that was being had on that same phone system elsewhere in the house. I know it's complicated but it used to happen all the time in TV and movies.

So Storm happens to overhear this very heated conversation between Forge and Gyrich, during which Forge reiterates exactly what happened, and the role he played in it, as the inventor of the mutant-zapping-depowering gun.

Imagine having a holographic house with anti-gravity floors and only one, non-secure phoneline. Sloppy.

Storm, realizing she is in the Viper's nest here so to speak, flees, knowing that without her powers she has no way to fight anyone off who tries to take her.

Using the control pad she still has in her possession, she accidentally calls up a holographic simulation of Forge's time in Vietnam - complete with strange creatures that appear to be part of the battle.

At last, Forge corners Storm on the terrace of the building. He pledges her safety, but she cannot believe him, that no matter what she says or does Gyrich will have his way and nothing he can do can atone for the loss of her powers or the contribution he has made to the efforts to subjugate mutants.

He tries to appeal, but Storm gives him what-for.

She verbally dismantles him, saying he has sacrificed all his decency to protect himself and live in a cold, sterile illusory world where he is in control. He pleads for her trust, but she says to be trustworthy a person must believe in something, and Forge has nothing inside. She walks away, saying she sees in Forge the person Ororo might have been, had she remained so concerned with protecting herself from the world.

Further Thoughts:

I'd like to start off by highlighting the problematic aspects of Forge's character - like many Indigenous figures he embodies a false dichotomy between the "Old Ways" and modern life/technology. As well-meaning as this may be in positioning Forge, who happens to be a member of the specific ethnic group, as a master of technology, it is harmful, colonialist and reductive. It's something that comics can't seem to get away from as they crave validation for their use of Indigenous characters while still being written by white people who don't know much about what it means to be of that group. Here in 2020, Indigenous writers are just now getting the chance to write characters like Moonstar, but only as one-off special attractions so far. Without increasing that kind of effort, it's a problem that will remain, burdening all Indigenous characters, even if in aspects their character are well-drawn and valid.

This issue has a lot to accomplish. Consider, we've only just met Forge and seen a little bit of how he lives, and this is the first time he has ever spent any length of time with one of our main characters. Using nothing but loaded dialogue and elegant, airy pacing, the book has to form a complete bond between Forge and Storm and then rip it apart with a cutting analysis of Forge's character, all in the span of one double-sized issue.

The book ultimately doesn't make a ruling on Forge. Is he the prototypical "nice guy" whose concern for Storm is more pathological and only extends to his needs and wants? Or is he truly opening up to let her in to the shell he has built around himself? Despite what Storm says, he does let his guard down a little bit when he talks about feeling suicidal after the war. I feel he means what he says when he wants to protect her but she is not wrong to distrust him and hate him for what he has done, even inadvertently. This is interpersonal conflict done right. 

This story is a complete success, and a work of brilliance at that in the way it fully explores its themes so that its climax can ring true. It can't be this every week - we do need to get back to superhero monster-punching sometimes - but for a singular issue it stands as a peak of form.

A huge, huge, huge amount of credit goes to artist Barry Windsor-Smith, whose eloquent sense of pacing lends real weight to the moments between Forge and Storm, whether she is discussing her emotional isolation, or they are simply talking about what is for dinner. Smith has grown immeasurably in power since the last time we saw him drawing the X-Men much earlier in his career, as he has not only assuredly honed his craft, but also has free rein to do something other than be a copy of a copy of Kirby as he was then.

Here, he is not merely a good artist, but a strikingly distinct one, whose style simply being so different from the usual X-Men fare (and yet not too different) underlines the significance of the issue. John Romita Jr. probably could have drawn it very well, but it would mean less if he had.

Of course, the bones of the issue are down to Chris Claremont not only imbuing his characters with the depth of humanity he does, which always adds welcome flavour to the ongoing superheroics, but his ability to make it a real going concern as he finds angles through which to explore it. Jean Grey's death was not merely a superhero climax, but a real human event that affected characters immensely. Likewise, the depowering of Storm - tied up in this misbegotten flirtation - is cause for some real reflection and character study, the likes of which are seldom seen in mainstream superhero action comics.

In this environment, the subplot about the Dire Wraiths - bug-eyed, brain-drinking aliens who aren't so different from the Brood we already spent a year fighting - seems weirdly out of place. While you would think, "Who could possibly care about all this human drama when there are body-snatching space-beasts roaming around??" the truth is more like "Who could possibly care about fighting some dumb aliens when Storm has been so badly wronged??!"

The Wraiths don't do much for me, imported monsters from another franchise with no history against the X-Men and ill-defined purpose. But, you know, here they are, and they really are a nasty piece of work, so it should be fun.