UNCANNY X-MEN #220: Unfinished Business

Storm has a flashback episode

Originally Published August 1987

We begin with mating season:

In one of the less subtle visual metaphors a comic has ever introduced, a white-crested eagle (which gives the impression of having, say, a mohawk) engages in a mating dance with another while the narration ruminates on how tight their bond, yet how they are unable to truly fly when they are together.

In case you weren't getting it, the un-mohawked Eagle is revealed to be false - a technological drone, which attacks its mate and injures its wing. You could say it robbed it of its ability to fly. Perhaps even its power.

Of course, this is all stated just to be happening in the realm of imagination. In "reality" (defined as an unkillable man with knives in his hands) Wolverine sits on a mountain ledge contemplating life. He's been a little "iffy" lately, seemingly haunted everywhere he goes by the unmistakable scent of the long-dead Jean Grey. Knowing that Jean is 100% for sure dead on the moon and yet unable to stop sensing her presence has really been a headtrip for the normally grounded X-Man.

Storm approaches, which displeases Logan, who prefers not to be found as he does his sulking.

Not even flinchingvat his posturing, Storm has some tough talk for Wolverine -- she feels the time has come for her to go to Forge, swallowing her pride and all the hatred she feels for the man who robbed her of her powers, and to see if anything can be done to restore them. And while she embarks on this mission, she needs to appoint Wolverine as the leader of the X-Men.

Wolverine is fiercely reticent -- he has never considered himself management material. After all, he favored Kitty for the job before himself. But there simply are no better candidates. Who else are you going to pick, Rogue, who could completely lose control of her psyche in any given moment? Psylocke, who just got here? Longshot, who doesn't even know what planet he's on?

None of them would seem to have the credentials of an unkillable supersoldier with knifes in his hands and untold years of military experience. Eventually, Storm succeeds in haranguing her colleague into accepting the promotion.

Wait till you see the benefits package

Soon thereafter, Storm arrives at Forge's swanky Eagle Plaza home in Dallas, beset by pathetic fallacy as the sky angrily cries all around her, recalling her previous visit.

She enters, only to find that the place is dusty, vacant, and due for condemnation. Even the elevators aren't in working order, but she presses on, somehow finding the strength to go up 100 flights of stairs in those heels.

Upstairs, we see Nazé, Forge's magical mystery mentor, seeming a tad less benevolent than the first time we met him. He senses Storm's arrival and we get the impression that he does not have good things in store for her. 

Storm makes it to the Penthouse, once a fabulous triumph of technology, based around holograms and shifting platforms that defied gravity, only now just as much in ruin as the rest of the place. She hears a voice on the veranda and goes to check it out, only to find... herself!

Forge seems to have left his holograms on autoplay, and worse, they're tuned to the repeats of Storm's last stay here!

Storm's presence activates the building's self-defense, so as she dodges lasers and retraces her steps by memory as the floor seems to disappear, she continues to be confronted with images of herself, wondering what, exactly, is Forge's twisted obsession with her.

Finally, she finds the off-switch, only to be startled by a despondent Forge who demands the images be reactivated -- the man wants his stories!

Classic "nice guy" behavior.

The flesh and blood Ororo is alarmed to find Forge in this unkempt and regressed state. As he pleads for the intruder to bring back Ororo, she protests that the real thing is standing before him. He lunges, only for her to find that he is the fakey faker here.

That's right, the holograms at Eagle Plaza are so sophisticated that they even depict creepers watching other holograms.

It's at this point that Nazé arrives, revealing that he had activated the holograms and the defense system to see how well Storm would handle herself (deftly, as always, it turns out.) He's been kicking around looking for Forge for weeks. He pleads with an unsympathetic Ororo to see the other side of it - the guilt of losing Storm destroyed Forge, which is a problem because he's supposed to be the next great Shaman of the Cheyenne and combat the Adversary, a mysterious magical being so powerful and horrible its name must never be spoken.

And if you @ him about his transphobic beliefs on Twitter, you'll face his equally horrible lawyers

Nazé is concerned that Forge has been claimed by the Adversary. Storm's attitude is "Not my circus, not my monkeys." Nazé insists, but Storm is defiant even as the weather itself seems to push her toward Forge 

As dawn breaks, she realizes the truth of what Nazé has said -- though she is not to blame for what became of Forge, it somehow nevertheless falls to her to repair. And so, she agrees to join him on his quest, even though she has quite the full stack on her plate, thanks.

And yet, even as they come to this agreement, Nazé still can't help but give that evil little side-eye that seems to say "Hey, you readers know I'm actually the bad guy here, right?"

But he's so sweet and old!

Further Thoughts:

Anyone who has been following my thoughts on X-Men for a while knows that I am wary, to say the least, when they pull in "Indian Magic" as either the basis of someone's powers or the new threat. It's all well and good to increase representation and diversity in a book but when the trade-off is providing a Saturday Morning Cartoon version of a real-world culture, I'm not in favor of it. I much prefer when comics create their own crazy new cosmologies. "The Adversary" is, I believe, a Claremont-Original concept slotted into the Cheyenne culture which is as problematic as Forge's role as the "ultimate Shaman." Balancing between acknowledging a culture and misusing it is a tricky line to walk, so I caution future writers to do so conscientiously. 

As it is, this is the story path the X-Men are going down back in 1987 and there's no stopping it,  so I hope that it will suffice to note my objections here, at the beginning, before the ball really gets rolling.

  

In real-world time, it will have been just shy of three damn years since the original "LifeDeath" story and we're still living in the world it created. That's not an unusual expectation of attention span from our Uncanny X-Men comics, either, if we remember how long the shockwaves from Jean's death lasted. This series begs, nay demands you house its entire history in your mind at all times. It would sure help, I guess, if someone were reading and providing a written record and ongoing commentary on the contents of all of these comics, but what kind of maniac would have enough time and energy to commit to such a project?

Although this issue is light on content, give Claremont credit for recognizing, or at any rate deciding, that "LifeDeath" was significant enough that it merits revisiting -- given that it was the epicentre of Storm's lost powers, a storyline that has defined her character for about two years, that's a fair guess. This issue does not merely remind us what happened in that issue, it brings us back there tonally, emotionally, and philosophically, as Storm reconsiders the implications of that night and her feelings for Forge. It's something that you get to do when you are a comic writer at the top of your game, 12 years into a legendary run.

Regarding the X-Men as a team, Storm walks her own path for now. As the story continues to splinter - one part concerning the Marauders, the other picking back up on Storm's connection to Forge, it remains a pleasure to see how the threads weave back in on each other whenever it is time to do so.

This issue itself may be light on content - it literally is mostly comprised of flashbacks to an earlier huge story as Storm explores the creepy, abandoned Eagle Plaza - but this moody recapitulation of "LifeDeath" serves as a fine table setting, a chapter one or perhaps more of a prologue, of things to come, as the momentum begins to gather to push the story in this direction.