It's storytime again!
Originally Published September 1984
It's campout time for the X-Men, but the mood is anything but festive. Wolverine and Kitty have just returned from their adventure in Japan, Colossus is still sulking over having lost the woman he loved in the Secret Wars, (and Kitty still processing her own breakup with Piotr) and Storm is reeling from the loss of her powers.
To brighten the mood, specifically returning the kindness Kitty once paid her when she was a child (last year) and to recreate one of our collective fondest memories as readers of X-Men comics, Illyana decides to submit for the approval of the Midnight Society...
The tale begins in space, aboard the starship Chicago, far from home where nobody really knows what time it is. Aboard the ship are a kindergarten-aged Kitty and her parents, but they are soon boarded by the space-villainess version of the White Queen, who kills Kitty's parents (great story, will definitely cheer Kitty up).
The Queen declares her desire to use Kitty's strange secret abilities for her own, permanently marking her with a diamond-like brand on her arm, before Kitty escapes using her phasing powers and is rescued by a crew consisting of Nightcrawler, Wolverine, and their leader... Lockheed.
She is whisked aboard Lockheed's Starcruiser - which has the personality of Illyana - and they escape. Kitty grows up (to regular Kitty age, if not older) amongst the trio of pirates, vowing to hunt down the White Queen and have her revenge.
One day, the crew gets an invite from Charles Xavier - who in this story is a big space governor type - for a fancy jubilee. There, she is introduced to a fantasy version of Piotr and the two share a flirt and a dance.
But while all that is going on, Lockheed wanders off, is accosted by a group of other dragons, and zapped away. Wolverine, searching after him, is kidnapped by the White Queen and her goons. She appears at the party in a hologram to tell Kitty to surrender herself, or she will destroy both.
Kitty, 'Crawler and Colossus head off following an energy trail left by the dragons, with the White Queen following behind. The heroes soon learn that the trail leads into a black hole, and to reach it they're going to need to pull the best pilot in the galaxy out of retirement.
Yes, in this analogue, Ororo is washed up, despondent and hanging out at Mos Eisley a seedy space bar. Kitty convinces Storm to fly again - joined by her bodyguard Rogue - but as they near the moment of truth, Storm suffers crippling doubt, which Kitty rebuffs with some tough love and a speech about what it means to be a survivor.
Upon reaching the planet of the space dragons, the crew beams down and are shocked to learn the nature of Lockheed's abduction...
As it turns out, this planet is entirely populated by female dragons who all needed a breeding partner.
Yes, this story is about Dragons Who Fuck.
And yes, this story about Dragons Who Fuck is being told by a 13-year-old girl.
In this midst of this, the White Queen attacks. Lockheed is killed in the fray, but Kitty proves the equal of her nemesis and finishes the Queen off, with help from the female dragons.
Peter tries to console Kitty, as she realizes that what she realizes that what she felt for him was merely friendship, that her grief at the loss of Lockheed is the grief of losing true love.
Magically, Kitty's tears revive Lockheed and all seems to be well, except he needs to stay behind and help revive his species.
Psych! Lockheed already knocked up all the Dragon Ladies so his job is done, they can take it from there. And they went on to have many more adventures.
Back at the campfire, the story hasn't quite had the desired effect of completely evaporating the lingering tension and uncertain feelings between Piotr and Kitty, but¹ it does that the ice a little. The crew all calls it a night and heads off to bed while Kitty and Lockheed both imagine the other as their ideal mate. The extremely uncomfortable end.
Further Thoughts:
Yes, we are consciously and specifically calling up your memory of one of Uncanny X-Men's signature issues, Kitty's Fairy Tale for its spiritual sequel, Illyana's Space Story. Where that story loaded our characters with wishful thinking for a happy ending to the Dark Phoenix Saga (a tasty narrative pretzel) the conceit of this comic's story is to recontextualize what went down between Kitty, Piotr, and Zsaji, his space girlfriend from Secret Wars. The story's teller - Kitty's best friend and sister of Piotr - reverses Kitty and Piotr's roles, with Lockheed as the true love, so that Kitty can put herself in Piotr's shoes. Whether it works to at some heft to this storyline, I cannot say, but it certainly helped fill 40 pages here.
I put off writing up this one because, reader, I am tired. I do this out of love and thinking about this inconsequential story, which is not as good as the one it copies, did not inspire me to want to comment on it. I'm tired of 40-page annuals, not because they don't further the story we are covering very much but because even when they trudge out some wacky conceit or gimmick they don't even pan out as overly interesting distractions.
I am also tired at the end of a long year, the end of a long few months, and the beginning of a long rest of my life. In short I'm feeling a little like most of the X-Men do at the beginning of this story. Thinking of writing it up didn't fill me with delight the way doing X-Cerpts usually does, which is why this post is coming well after this story would have appeared in publication and reading order (It would have occurred in the timeskip at the end of Uncanny #192, "Fun N' Games", after Kitty and Wolverine returned from Japan but before Storm left for her walkabout, but would have hit the stands several months earlier!) I got around to it anyway since I do have a completist streak in me - it would be weird to skip this one Annual altogether.
But revisiting it for this entry, I was at least a little charmed. It did have some of that fun space saga fairy tale mojo. It tried. It wanted to be fun and carefree at a time when Chris Claremont and the team were seemingly actively making the X-Men less carefree, and even plays homage to that. Compared to some Annuals we have covered - often but not always slogs - it was quite breezy.
A more motivated writer could probably wring something out of this one, because it's not like it's texually devoid. It has references to Kitty's clashes with Emma Frost, her breakup with Colossus, her bond with Lockheed, the power of her closest friendships, and all that. Perhaps there is more to the notion of offering Kitty and Colossus closure here than I am getting. But dedicated as I am, when you are writing about every single issue, week after week (ish) sometimes you have to have some misses, so I hope you'll grant me that and have a happy new year.
When I was reading through Uncanny years ago, I always groaned when I got to the annuals. Longer stories that matter less (if at all).
ReplyDeleteThat changes a bit next year, I suppose, with the Asgard story, but that's more of a New Mutants (featuring the X-Men) tale. And then after that is the fun romp with Mojo which brings both Psylocke and Longshot into the cast.
But that's ahead. As of the ones you've covered thus far (I can't remember if you touched on 1 and 2 since they were reprints), you had two pretty good ones (George Perez's Arkon and the Inferno one), two that were iffy (the second Arkon story and the vampire one), and one pretty lousy one that was just nuts.
Doing a sequel of a beloved story is rarely a good idea, and this one failed to me. Imagine if they had gotten Dave Cockrum back to do a space adventure follow-up to his original work. At least this is better than God Loves Man Kills II in X-Treme X-Men.
Oh yeah - I know it's not in this run (it's a Marvel Graphic Novel) but are you going to cover God Loves Man Kills? I guess it doesn't fit, but it's an iconic story.
Yeah, the best usage of the annuals are yet to come. That's probably why I went through with this one, since it wpild be weird to skip one and do future ones.
ReplyDeleteGLMK is definitely iconic. I ended up skipping it for whatever reason since it was not quite "in continuity" despite being accepted as being in continuity later, and the moment passed.