UNCANNY X-MEN #210: The Morning After

The X-Men have one hell of a hangover.

Originally Published October 1986

We begin in... hm, I'm not entirely sure where.

Oh, okay, Los Angeles then. That's weird, do we even know anybody in L.A.?

We do now, as we meet this young couple on the go - Richard, a Hellfire Goon by trade, and his girlfriend Tommy, a Morlock who can turn paper-thin. Though both of those factions are based in New York, this unlikely couple appears to have sought refuge from some kind of strife back home by hiding out on the west coast. Unfortunately, trouble seems to have followed them...

Richard's fate is sealed, but Tommy is able to escape and hop a train due east. Unfortunately, the shadowy figures indicate the trouble is just beginning, and that an associate of theirs is currently on assignment in San Francisco.

Okay, but who do we know who's still in San Francisco, now that the X-Men have moved back to Westchester?

You'll be forgiven for not recognizing her since she's gotten a new artist hairstyle since we last met, but this is none other than the Mutant Disco Diva Dazzler, secretly sitting in with fellow mutant rocker Lila Cheney's band (currently appearing in San Francisco, no doubt at the historic Cow Palace) and riding this whole New Wave thing. 

Dazzler - under her real name of Alison Blaire - has had quite a fall from the top, with the world at large having learned her mutant identity. Being used to the star treatment, she is a little standoffish with her bandmates, and laments the loss of her status. 

Well you know, what comes up, must go down.

With all that's been going on in her life, Alison has enough on her mind when the mirror in the bathroom begins to talk free.

What Madness is this?

The reflection of her bad side - self-identifying as "Malice" - leaps from the wall and attacks Dazz.

Ali comes to on the floor sometime later, deciding the whole thing was just a kooky hallucination. I, on the other hand, differ- I suspect things like that don't just happen in comics. Call it a hunch.

Choker? I hardly know her!

Back in Manhattan, we finally see a familiar face as Rogue zips around town during rush hour (as our narrator offers pithy, Evening At The Improv-ready remarks about how it's longer than an hour and nobody's rushing.)

Rogue is out in search of Rachel, now that the immediate threat of Nimrod has passed, and Wolverine may or may not have agreed to stop trying to kill her. In her search, Rogue flies by the X-Factor building, which is partly in ruins, and muses that she is unaware of what, exactly, is the nature and purpose of that group.

I'm surprised to hear that the X-Men aren't "up" on this new mutant-catching squad on the block because it would seem to be extremely relevant to their interests. I'm less confused that they haven't been smartened up to the fact that the members of X-Factor are, in fact, the original five X-Men, masquerading as mutant-hunting humans as a way of helping young mutants, due to a lack of trust that exists between the two groups.

I'm sure their paths will never cross.

Rogue breaks from her search to engage in a little bit of mid-morning heroics, as yet another window-washing scaffold collapses, sending two helpless workers to their certain death but for her intervention. In celebration, Rogue treats herself to a shopping montage at Bloomingdales:

And even a makeover!

It's very, um... Trixie Mattel.

It isn't long, however, before Rogue is recognized as one of the X-Men, and a mob forms, with at least one person threatening to call X-Factor on the fugitive. Luckily, the two window-washers from earlier have somehow also come to Bloomie's, and come to her assistance.

In the chaos, Rogue slips away with her shopping bags intact and we shift our scene to the X-Mansion, where, much to Conor's chagrin, Colossus is still pining a little bit for Kitty.

Kitty has been hard at work tuning up Cerebro so that non-psy-sensitive, regular-degular X-People can use it, hoping to locate either the missing Phoenix or Nightcrawler. 

Kitty has some pretty complicated feelings about what went down with Rachel recently.

Cerebro does indeed get a ping, so Colossus, Illyana and Kitty head off in search.

Elsewhere, Magneto has been summoned for a meeting with the Lords Cardinal of the Hellfire Club. Outside he spots a few familiar faces.

X-Factor? I hardly know her!

I kind of like this two-ships-in-the-night moment between Magneto, who runs the Xavier School but is still considered suspicious to X-Factor, and the Original Five, whom Magneto is recognizing as the mutant-hunting X-Factor, making them turncoats as far as he knows. It's an overly common trope that heroes will think each other on opposite sides, but rarely with such a good reason.

Inside, Shaw has a decent proposal for Magneto - a more permanent alliance between the Hellfire Club and the X-Men, perhaps with Magneto even occupying a chair at the vaunted table of Lords Cardinal.

Seeing the lay of the land, Shaw has come to realize that perhaps he's not quite so immune to the effecfs of anti-mutant hysteria and would like to quit the feud between the Club and the X-Men and focus on bigger things. It's purely a pragmatic offer, not one that necessarily signifies and ideological alignment between the two factions. Shaw still wants all the money and power he can grab.

In short, for those of us who remain devoted to the epochal ABC action-drama LOST, if they don't learn how to live together, they're going to die alone.

Magneto does give it his consideration, although to my mind he's rarely been one to compromise.

Using Illyana's teleportation circle, she, Kitty and Piotr arrive at a dive bar on the edge of town where Kurt is currently the target of an angry mob - much as he was in his first appearance - for daring to be out in public looking like a blue demon (and not that one.) 

Piotr arrives to intervene and the mob's spokesperson cites a recent battle between X-Factor and "radioactive mutants" the Bulk and Glowworm (two iconic names if I ever heard them) that could have done some real damage if not for those heroes, the 100% pure humans in X-Factor. Kitty steps up with one of her patented "Maybe we're all mutants" speeches.

And yes, she does manage to invoke the holocaust, but to be honest, unlike someone getting fired from their cushy Star Wars job for being a massive public relations garbage fire, this actually does bear some resemblance.

In the end, the mob is dispersed and Kitty wins the day with the power of rhetoric.

Once it's safe to discuss, Kurt reveals he was unable to teleport away from the mob, having seemingly lost his power.

And speaking of having lost their power, the scene shifts to Storm and Wolverine, who have followed Rachel's scent to the theater, where it abruptly ends. He determines that she's gone where the X-Men can't follow. (Spooky!)

Ororo and Logan spend some time discussing whether what Wolverine did was right, and Storm gives the overly-fair assessment that he probably should have been a team player and not gone out on his own and made the decision to kill his teammate.

Finally we return to the train tracks, where Tommy has disembarked from the world's fastest train from LA to New York. She heads for home in the Morlock tunnels, relieved to be safe...

Only, she has a little company...

Marauder? I--

And thus begins the next phase of the X-Men's story.

Further Thoughts:

Every so often we come to an issue that is mostly designed to fill the gap between one big thing and the next, as the X-Men and assorted characters deal with some relevant themes and scenes but none of them carry much of a strong throughline. If the issue isn't fun to read, it certainly does a lot of heavy lifting, with a main focus being on finally, at last, setting the X-Men and X-Factor alongside each other. We have highlighted for us numerous ways that their worlds would collide: from their fleeting appearance, to the influence of their recent adventures, to the ripple effect they cause in the anti-mutant movement just by existing. They've been up and running for a while now so it's only fair that the X-Men come up against that.

The issue also seems to seal up the long-running conflict between the X-Men and the Hellfire Club, such as it now exists (comprised of Shaw, Selene, and Emma Frost, who mainly seems to menace the New Mutants lately). They've reached a détente of sorts and are realizing it may be better to work together somehow. The interesting thing about the X-Men is that you would not likely see the Avengers shake hands with their enemies and walk away, but the problems besetting the X-Men are so much more ephemeral and societal that they're more likely to look at who is the enemy of their enemy and make a decision based on that.

With Nimrod also on the shelf for an undetermined amount of time, that leaves room for a new antagonist, in the form of the shadowy Marauders. Their introduction here paints them as serious of a threat as any the X-Men have faced, helped by their shadowy framing and seemingly inhuman tracking and killing abilities. They're looking like the Anton Chigurh of the X-Men rogues, deadly and implacable.