Hard lessons are learned when the X-Men square off against Magus!
Originally Published April 1985
We begin with a little fun and games - as per the title - as the newly named Leader of the X-Men, Nightcrawler, is engaging his teammates in a round of Hide n Seek, as a change-up from training in the stuffy old Danger Room.
Actually, while we are told it's "Hide and Seek" it's really more like tag, as Rogue and Colossus chase the teleporting Nightcrawler all around, resulting in their getting dunked.
Colossus confesses his head isn't really in the game - Kitty and Wolverine are returning from Japan, and he's expecting things to be awkward between them since he had just broken up with Kitty right before she left.
When Rogue points out that the "Carol" side of her psyche might know better about relationships than the Rogue side, Nightcrawler points out that Carol also had a kind of precognitive "7th Sense" (what, did she see dead people too?) that Rogue has never displayed.
Now, this certainly would have been a valuable power to have a week ago when someone was pointing a de-power-izing gun at Rogue and her best friend took the hit, but better late than never.
Kurt elects to try to trigger it to the surface in the most inappropriate way.
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| Kurt, no! You're her supervisor for crying out loud! |
This escalates into Kurt teleporting all over to tickle her more, and she actually is able to sense where he is going to be, instinctively making good on her promise to "bash" him and sending him flying toward the cliff.
Rogue is able to fly around behind and catch him, begrudgingly keeping her team leader from splattering. Kurt, who never knows how to quit while he's behind, plays up his Romantic Swashbuckler shtick and asks the "Fair Maiden" for a kiss.
This gag, naturally, does not go over well with Rogue, whose skin absorbs the powers n' mem'ries of anyone who makes contact - thus, she's never had a real honest kiss that didn't make someone comatose, and she does not care to be reminded of that fact. She dumps Kurt in the water and flies off in justifiable huff toward a nearby abandoned mansion.
You know, maybe we shouldn't have let the horniest person on our team be the leader.
While Kurt and Piotr discuss making amends, they see a bright light flashing in the sky, always a good omen.
Meanwhile, at Kennedy Airport, Professor X, Storm, Illyana, and Rachel are waiting for the arrival of Wolverine and Kitty's flight. While they wait, Xavier transcribes various background thoughts he is hearing - mostly anti-mutant sentiments, which have recently grown in intensity ever since the announcement of the Dazzler movie. I actually kind of like that a mutant becoming a big celebrity and having some spotlight causes such a negative backlash - it's very true to life in the way that when people in the majority witness success of the "other" it tends to breed toxic resentment.
The Prof notes that he is giving a lecture at Columbia on the subject.
Storm jokes that Logan and Kitty's flight is being delayed by weather, and she would have helped if she could, and Xavier thinks "Yes, good one," not needing his psychic powers to know that it is not a joke and in fact she is dying inside.
Watching the planes take off and land, and also telepathically eavesdropping, Rachel reflects on the world she came from, where the anti-mutant hysteria has resulted in an uncaring population standing by as mutants are herded into concentration camps. There, Kate Pryde is not a 15-year-old girl, but a woman in her 30's or early 40's and a surrogate mother and best friend figure.
But just as she starts to reflect on all this, she is mentally whisked away into her own memories!
Reliving a conversation she doesn't even remember having, Rachel and Kate - the last two X-Men alive - prepare to infiltrate the government's Project Nimrod (hey I've heard that name before!)
Upon Kate's uttering of the post-hypnotic words "Dark Phoenix," Rachel is timeshifted back to the 1980s. Rachel realizes that coming to the past was never her own idea, she was just tricked into thinking it was - it as Kate's master plan for finally defeating Nimrod, should all else fail.
Kitty, in our time, with a new haircut to signify her transformative experience in Japan, actually recognizes Rachel, as she had protected her all those months ago when she had her little trip to the future, despite the fact that as far as Rachel knew, Kitty was unconscious the whole time.
Elsewhere, Kurt and Piotr investigate the landing site of the mysterious object. There, they find trees and animals converted into circuitry, which they recognize to be the calling card of Warlock -- the funnytalking alien robot of the New Mutants -- 's people. They transform organic matter into computer parts, then absorb their energy for fuel.
Inside the ruined mansion, Rogue encounters the one responsible - Warlock's Big Bad Space Daddy, Magus!
Magus catches Rogue in his tendrils, but oopsie, he needs to make skin-to-skin contact for his transmutation to work. Rogue uses her strength to snap one of his tendrils.
When Nightcrawler and Colossus arrive, they join the fray. Magus ensnares Peter, crushing his sternum to where he can barely breathe and almost loses consciousness. And if that happens, he'll revert to human form and be easy prey for Magus' powers. (Wait, I thought Colossus doesn't need to breathe when in his steel form?)
In the nick of time, Nightcrawler uses his powers quite viciously and teleports a chunk of Magus' body away, causing him immense pain.
Leading Magus on a chase through the house, Rogue successfully evades him using her newfound 7th sense, then turns the tables by planting him with a big power-stealing kiss. This despite new leader Nightcrawler specifically asking her not to, and not just because he wants to be the recipient of all kisses. Rogue, however, figures its her best shot and puckers up.
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| Tastes like motherboard |
As often happens when Rogue aims too high, her new power overwhelms her as she becomes, briefly, techno-organic. Unusually, she seems to dig the mind-expanding worldview-shift that comes with being part Wacky Robot.
As expanded as Rogue's consciousness may be, Nightcrawler is irked that she did the thing that he specifically told her not to do, as leader of the X-Men.
Magus, for his part, is just tired of this scene. Yes, he says, he could rip the sun in half with his own two hands, but he's going to leave now, not because he's beaten, he's just tired of this particular fight.
Later, after Magus has peaced out, Storm, Wolverine and Charles arrive to find Nightcrawler pouting over some of the decisions he made in his first excursion as leader. Wolverine reassures him that he had no other option, proving he generally has a keen eye for this sort of thing, but when Kurt suggests the job should be Logan's, Wolverine scoffs that he doesn't consider himself management material.
The X-Men head back to the mansion - avoiding suspicion from a passing police officer when Charles, as per his usual modus operandi, uses telepathy on him. Still lurking nearby is Magus, who has slipped into human form to better sneak up on that accursed son of his, Warlock.
Months later, Professor Xavier is leaving the lecture hall at Columbia University, where he has been teaching that course he was talking about. He's feeling his oats, glad to be out in the world educating using chalkboards instead of killer robots. He even got a Christmas card from some of his students (which, nerds.) Unfortunately, when walking alone at night, he is accosted by some anti-mutant goons - some of whom are students from his own seminar - who don't take kindly his to generally mutant-friendly classes.
He tries to delay their attack by putting a "psi-lock" on them, but miscalculates and ends up with a concussion for his trouble.
Left lying in a bloody mess face down in the street, the Prof's limp body is carried off by a person or persons unknown, as the snow falls on an ironic Christmas Card...
Further Thoughts:
In substance, this issue wouldn't seem to contain much. If we could believe that the Magus would return to menace the X-Men in the near future this fight might serve as setup to that but we know that his real quarrel is with the New Mutants, where Warlock regularly appears. The books happen to be closely entwined at this point, with New Mutants members featuring prominently in recent stories here, but the separation that remains means that we likely won't see much more of Magus here in this recap blog.
But that doesn't mean there was no value to the fight. We learn here that Nightcrawler has taken the mantle of leader of the X-Men now that Storm has lost her powers and has intended to begin a pilgrimage of self-discovery (although in practice, she was left behind when Barabrian-world got unzapped and her ship may or may not have left without her.) While Storm was definitely prone to second-guessing early in her leadership tenure, Nightcrawler takes that note hard, indicating he just doesn't have the Right Stuff to gut it out in the tough scenarios X-Leaders constantly face.
This fight also gives us a change to try to add a further shade to Rogue's powers as we are reminded of a power of Carol's that I didn't even know she had, which Rogue has never yet displayed, but happens to come in handy.
Nightcrawler is leader at a particularly hectic time for the X-Men - it is fortunate that Wolverine and Kitty have returned to the fold, and Rachel may be named an X-Man any day now, so the group that had been splintering for months is starting to reconstitute. But there are serious external forces at work, some that are known - the repeated threats of Selene, the Government, and the growing anti-mutant hysteria - and others which are not, like Nimrod. We get some new intel on ole Pink n' White here, as it is confirmed that he does indeed originate in Rachel's time and it is seemingly her mandate to prevent him from... doing general anti-mutant stuff, I guess.
But the most pertinent part of this issue is that epilogue, with the attack on Xavier. With the rising emphasis on the concept of anti-mutant sentiment in the general public, it couldn't have been long before we saw one of our heroes become the victim of something mirroring a real-world hate crime. I am always a little wary when the X-Men books literalize the metaphor underlying the story, as it always risks trivializing the real-world injustice they are trying to call out, but this scene works because it could be any attack from any bigoted mob on anyone.
It was a great storytelling move to include this event, and it is captured masterfully by John Romita Jr. The Mob remains faceless, which helps convey the extent of this bigotry - by not hanging it on a specific group of faces, we do not say "Oh, bad people look like this," we the reader are forced to acknowledge that the bad people are among the general population, embodied by people we see and encounter every day.
And as heavy-handed as the blood-spattered Christmas card imagery is, it's the kind of striving relevance, overbearing meaningfulness that works best in comic books, which, although capable of subtlety as a medium, are also home to the superheroes, which are subtlety's antithesis. These last panels make obviousness into an artform.
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