Rachel looks to go One Step Beyond!
Originally Published February 1986
So here's the sitch:
Rachel has left a holographic note on the fridge saying she has decided to go kill -- The BEYONDER!
Well then. hope she remembers to grab some milk while she's out.
(Incidentally, I've missed opportunities to discuss this in previous issues but I quite enjoy the art shift when John Romita Jr. depicts her Phoenix Powers in full bloom - really makes it feel like a 'special effect.')
Yes, Rachel has become very obsessed in recent days with matching her cosmic-level telepathic/telekinetic powers against that of the Beyonder. I don't like her odds, being that the Beyonder is from Beyond. But she claims to have given it a lot of thought.
Rogue discovers this message and alerts the rest of the team, and they spend some time discussing whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing. Can Phoenix hurt the Beyonder? Probably not. Will the Beyonder be goaded into doing something dangerous to Phoenix? Possibly. I would say there is definitely a non-zero chance that this godlike being who exists on a spectrum beyond human comprehension of good and evil may take some capricious action that would harm our friend Rachel.
The X-Men get to work using Cerebro to locate Rachel - a task that is made all the more difficult because sometime ago Magneto mucked with the Earth's magnetic fields to make telepathically locating a person that much harder, so Magneto now has nobody to blame but himself.
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| Magneto reaping: |
They do eventually locate Rachel - brimming with phenomenal cosmic power and zeroing in on the Beyonder, who right this very moment is sitting on Alcatraz having a think about his own lack of mortality. Rachel aims to fix that for him.
Her foe shrugs off this assault.
With Rachel not really getting the hint that being the Beyonder means he is beyond, Big B takes her on a tour of her past (in the future) forcing her to relive the deaths of Franklin Richards ("I cared for him!") Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, and even Kate Pryde. Then, as a lark, he supercharges Phoenix's powers but also summons some Sentinels to the San Francisco area and says "Look, I'll let you kill me, or you can stop these killer robots oh and by the way all your friends are here and they're in danger. Your call."
To prove his point, he reveals Storm, alone on the Blackbird with the X-Men having been transported elsewhere. Storm does some quick maneuvering to lead the Sentinel into the upper atmosphere to disable it.
Elsewhere in town, Magneto is tangled up with another Sentinel - quite literally.
He, Rogue and Wolverine have a tough time until Rachel arrives to assist, using her new abilities to supercharge Wolverine's healing factor so that he bounces back quicker from an injury he has sustained in the battle. So on the future, if Wolverine ever completely resurrects himself from, like, a single toenail, it's because of what Phoenix did here.
They cut Magneto loose and strategize, with Magneto actually doing the good guy thing by pointing out that they need to get the onlookers to safety before they can address the threat posed by this Sentinel, and the one elsewhere in town that is threatening Colossus and Shadowcat.
There, Colossus and Kitty use a very interesting combo attack to disable the threat:
With the trick accomplished, Colossus and 'Cat show us how it's done:
Um... icky? But okay.
Having ended the threat of the Sentinels, Rachel returns to the Beyonder. He's proud of her for saving her teammates, but she's not exactly putting a ton of stock in the victory, since he's the one who initiated the threat in the first place. He explains that he was trying to help her work through her guilt, but she complains that he made things too easy by creating an artificial scenario.
She flies off, complaining that if growth is ever to be attained, it has to be earned, and all the Beyonder does is bring harm, I guess by bumbling around indiscriminately trying to hand put life lessons like an omnipotent toddler.
Further Thoughts:
The crux of this issue is the philosophical contemplation of the Beyonder's ultimate power and humanity's capacity for growth. And bless their hearts they really, really try to make something good out of the mandate to include the Beyonder in this big event but it's just not coming together.
As a character or story figure, the Beyonder is a little erratic - is he childlike, is he wise and all-knowing? Is he trying to learn about people or show them the way? What does he know about his power? What do the writers know about philosophy? How does any of it tie into the X-Men?
Attempts are made but it is not fully in line with the series' usual output.
Maybe I, who only took one measly philosophy class in University (and slept through much of it), am the dumb one, or maybe the creative team, and Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, have overreached. It's all well and good to Go Big for this company-spanning event series, with huge powers and massive themes, but the Beyonder isn't all that dynamic here. He sits back as chaos happens which he may have started, and the heroes just kind of... deal with it. It's just a bunch of stuff that happens, and we're struggling to attach some real meaning and value to.
The lesson here is that existentialism is all well and good, but I don't think it sells comics.
But nevertheless, as far as exploring Rachel's character and the X-Men facing some Sentinels in a long action scene, it was a pretty viable story. Really not a bad outing - I just can't wait until we're through with this guy.
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