UNCANNY X-MEN #216: Crucible

Storm must survive being chased by three Golden Age heroes-turned-Mantrackers!

Originally Published April 1987

We begin with Wolverine in an unusual position:

Lately, Wolverine is not quite the best there is at what he does. He no longer feels like he can trust his senses. You see, every where he goes, it seems, his razor-keen nose is picking up traces of the long-dead Jean Grey. For someone who puts so much trust in his senses, for them to be telling him something that is so patently false is Earth-shattering and, combined with another flap caused by the body-possessing mutant accessory ghost Malice, Wolverine is having something of an identity crisis, which has reduced him to an animalistic state.

Which is where we find him getting slammed by a Winnebago.

You're a couple of normies introduced in the first pages of a Chris Claremont comic. I hope you don't feel safe.

Wolverine scampers off into the night, his healing factor sure to mend his bruises, while the nice young couple that struck him - Marcie and Phillip - are left to wonder what exactly is in these woods.

The truth is that Wolverine may be the least of their trouble. Not far away, we find Storm and her escort mission pal Priscilla, still targets of the manhunting vigilantes known as the Crimson Commando, Super Sabre, and Stonewall. Priscilla, a wealthy daughter of society who deals drugs for the fun of it, is not much for this kind of scenario, dressed in chunky heels and fashionably ripped fishnets, but Storm won't even abandon her, because as wrong as it is to do what she's done, it's also wrong to let her get killed by a bunch of self-appointed executioners.

Storm lays a trap for the super-fast Super Sabre, an almost invisible garotte that will decapitate him as he races by, but ultimately  has second thoughts when it comes time to do the deed. She wonders if truly there is another way.

Priscilla is perturbed -- she would have no qualms about killing their pursuers whatsoever and is annoyed that Storm, designer of the insta-lopper, has suddenly decided to sprout some morals. But the X-Man declares that as long as they are together, what she says goes -- and she's not letting Priscilla go off on her own, to an almost certain death. The X-Men may be in a tough spot, but they still have ideals to represent.

The next morning, Commando and Stonewall happen upon the trap and are impressed by Storm's capability. It surely would have worked, had it been sprung, and this foe has already pushed further, faster than any other prey they've met. Stoney begins to have his doubts -- after all, Storm professes not to have committed any crime and they kinda-sorta don't have any real evidence that she did other than she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Commando is in too deep -- she knows their secret and can't be allowed to leave the woods alive. According to the Commando, they do good work, which strikes fear into the hearts of the crooks that are left, "making it easier for the cops to do their jobs." I say the cops do the job they want to do just fine, if you know what I mean.

 

Super Sabre races ahead and Storm is able to get the drop on him, but while they tussle, Priscilla goes wildcard and drops a rockslide on both of them, aiming to kill both her hunter and her would-be protector who is handcuffing her with this whole "no killing" rule.

As she makes her escape, she happens upon Marcie and Phillip, just finishing the repairs on the RV. They just happen to have their handgun out in case of any dangerous woodland creatures (like say, a wolverine) and though Priscilla may look delicate, she's desperate and seems to know her way around a firearm.

She murders them, while Wolverine watches from afar. The wrongness of the act shakes him back to his senses, only a minute too late.

Priscilla doesn't get far however, as the truck breaks down and winds up halfway in a lake. Stonewall finds her knocked out nearby but just as he goes in for the kill, Storm appears and pushes him into the water.

As Stonewall seems to sink to his death, Storm has another inconvenient attack of conscience and hauls him to safety. While she tends to him, Priscilla awakens and goes to attack Storm with a rock, but...

And in case there's any doubt about Storm being able to take care of herself in this scenario, the last player enters the field to even the odds:

Storm is pretty glad to see her teammate, very graciously excusing him for cold-clocking her and running off leaving her to an uncertain fate.

Wolverine, of course, was primarily interested in Priscilla, murderer of Phil and Marcie, but since those scales are balanced now, he'll follow Storm's lead.

Commando and Storm square off.

While Storm fights, she wonders about the course of action that brought her here. Was it right to try to save Priscilla, now that it has led to the death of two innocents, plus Super Sabre? And Priscilla herself is dead anyway? And there's probably no way out of this without at least two more deaths -- either Storm and Wolverine or (let's face it, more likely) Commando and Stonewall.

Storm ultimately decides to go with her instincts, grabbing one of Commando's knives and...

Storm lets Commando live, provided he and Stonewall turn themselves in and confess.

Commando initially declines to cut the deal -- he's not afraid to die. Storm counters then that he might very well be afraid to live -- to face the consequences for what he has done and try to account for his deeds.

Stonewall pleads with his friend that if they believe what they've done is right, they should try their luck with a jury rather than duking it out with the X-Men. Commando reluctantly agrees, seeing a commonality between himself and Storm, but Storm defers -- because she wouldn't kill him, she was better.

As they watch Crimson Commando and Stonewall turn themselves in, Storm and Wolverine have a wrap-up about Wolverine's newfound misgivings about his ability to contribute meaningfully to the team (due to his ongoing existential crisis.) Storm, who is nothing if not a great manager of people, supports him in trying to work through it. 

Unpacking everything they have just been through, Storm ties the Hunters' deeds to the choices they themselves must make in their current conflict. They must be wary of becoming the aggressors, and yet it would not be wrong to take the fight to the Marauders' doorstep now that blood has been shed. 

Further Thoughts:

This is obviously a huge issue for Storm, as she is able to competently contend with the threat of the Old Soldiers, while making up for her doubts and guilt over what has happened to the X-Men, of late, all while ruminating thoughtfully on the implications of it all. Of course it's never any surprise when Storm shines in a comic written by Chris Claremont. More surprising, and just as gratifying, is seeing Wolverine be vulnerable.

When I first encountered this story, I was a little stymied. Who could possibly have time for this kind of distraction when our heroes would seem to have more pressing concerns with the murderous pack of mercenaries who are targeting this very minute? It seemed so out of context and a little corny, compared to what we were used to. Even seeing that it was a kind of deconstruction of superhero tropes at work, with the irony of these retired old soldiers favoring new-school lethal methods to enforce their old-school morality, I brushed it off, eagee to get back to the matter and hand of the Marauders. Today, with a better sense of what the X-Men metaphor is and what is going on in the world (which is both very different and very much the same as what was going on in 1987) I value this strange two-parter much much more as germane - hell, downright vital - to the message at work in the X-Men comics.

The favourite question of superhero writers is, "What does it mean to be a hero?" Who determines what's right and what's wrong, and the right and wrong way to address it? Depending on the strength of the writer this can make for either compelling stories, or cheap ploys. The Old Soldiers - informally called "The Hunters" here, but not given an official name on any wiki (I like "Old Soldiers" because it's snappy) are garbed as heroes and present themselves as such. But we the readers clock them right away as villains -- primarily because they kidnap one of our protagonists for specious reasons, but a look into their methods and motives reveals they truly are the bad guys. They do what they do because America just isn't oppressive enough, and the criminals -- you know, the drug-dealing 18-year-old rich girls -- are just so slick that the heroes in blue can't keep up with them. They do what they do lethally and with extreme prejudice, and will go to extreme lengths to avoid accountability because they know it's fuckin' wrong. 

It's a commentary that has incredible relevance to those who tout themselves as being for "law & order." Because those are lovely words but unless you are the target of them, you never think about what they really mean in a human toll.

The Old Soldiers provide a dark mirror to the X-Men, it's true -- just as Storm is wondering what it would mean to try to take the X-Men in a more "proactive" direction, there should appear a trio of very much proactive heroes, who go out looking for baddies to off casually, and even cruelly. But Storm need not trouble herself with fears that she is going to become like the Old Soldiers. That is not, to me, the meaning of the story. The thing is, the X-Men could never be that and will always be to some degree reactive. For all their fabulous superpowers, the X-Men are an oppressed minority and there will always be a system against them as long as we keep the Marvel Universe looking somewhat like our regular world. (Now, if they were to go live on an island that had fantastical fictional exports they could use as a bargaining chip... but that's too cockamaimie a status quo to contemplate.)

Regardless, it's incumbent on Storm to navigate the concept of reactivity vs. proactivity. She declines the opportunity to kill Super Sabre in cold blood (consistent with the X-Men's usual heroic behavior and likely as much an editorial mandate as a choice the character would make) but warns she has limited second chances for the Crimson Commando. Heroes shouldn't kill, and yet, how could it be wrong for her to follow through on this threat?

It's one thing to take the fight to the Marauders' doorstep -- they drew first blood and knocked our heroes on their heels. It would be another to contemplate going out and finding the next Marauders to fight and killing them before they can attack first. That agould be, and is,where Storm draws the line.

Even so, defending oneself is a dangerous game because to many, an extreme reaction of self defense or assertion of rights can be taken as a provocation for more violence and suppression. The message often sent to minority populations in our world is: "Be a good citizen, take what we give you, and be thankful we let you live in our country."

What separates the X-Men as a superhero franchise -- and this is not always pushed as the case but it is always baked in there -- is that it is not their remit to "fight crime." They don't need to be busting gang banger heads or foiling robberies, although they are occasionally depicted as doing so. Where most superheroes are reactive (although platitudes are often made to making the world a better place, their job is primarily the prevention and foiling of crimes and world-domination schemes that help maintain the status quo -- you know, so the fictional world does not veer too far afield from the world we know) the X-Men do have that potential to be proactive in that, if they don't have to tussle with Magneto over the right way to exist, or fight for their survival against Nimrod, they have a goal they can strive for in fighting for a world that is better for them and by extension all people. The problem is, as in the real world, they get stuck in the morass of justifying their own existence to make any concrete steps forward.

This comic doesn't need to have all the answers, but bringing them up -- presenting this challenge to the hero-villain dynamic now, as the X-Men are sliding ever more away from conventional superheroics (which they always skirted anyway) - is a dynamite move. Look no further than the person at the center of it all -- Priscilla the teenage drug queen, who is a bad person and who does need to be brought to justice, but not on the Old Soldiers' terms. She is a flashpoint for the complex contrast between the letter and spirit of the law, and the concept of justice itself. The Old Soldiers see a crook to be taken down. I see a symptom of some severe systemic corruption, who is ultimately, herself, irrelevant and powerless.

Meanwhile, it's not insignificant that Wolverine is doubting his own ability to tell friend from foe - a situation where, if he makes a wrong move, it could be disastrous, a complication that makes the story all the more compelling, especially since he was the strongest opponent of Rachel killing Selene in a manner similar to what Storm is contemplating here and going forward.

In a really great recent essay centered on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Leslie Lee pins down some of the ways media fails to truly grasp the scope of what they are saying when they cast extremists as the villain without properly acknowledging and validating what they are reacting to. Overall it feels like superhero media has become too concerned with the idea that there is a wrong way to do right (which, fair point, is true) and that that is as great a concern as actively causing harm and promoting oppression and suppression.* The essay nails down a lot of points that occurred to me when watching that show, other MCU adaptations, and a lot of comics including this one, which I think succeeds on a metaphorical level. 

*And if you think there's some contradiction there with my questioning if it's worth getting concerned about doing doing right wrong, when that can be said to be the whole deal behind the Old Soldiers, bear in mind to the degree they are doing right, they are still doing right for the wrong reasons against the wrong people and with the wrong attitude... in my considered opinion.

Beyond that there is little I could add to the discourse that Leslie and other great commentators don't say better. 

Point is, there truly is a difference between doing right the wrong way, and flat-out doing wrong, and it's all relative to one's station in life and society. Perhaps it is not the final word on superhero justice (after all there were some pretty notable works on that theme in 1986-87...) but I truly believe there is more to be found in this story than first appears.

As for this comic, something that seemed so lightweight and disposable on a surface reading, this is an incredibly dense and meaningful two issues that has a lot to say both about the world the X-Men inhabit and the world we do. Ultimately there is no ruling to be made and no easy answer, which is a massive part of the appeal. I never tire of seeing the 1980s incarnation of the Uncanny X-Men at the height of its powers as it engages with these difficult questions.