UNCANNY X-MEN #223: Omens & Portents

Storm wrestles with a big decision as the X-Men prepare for the next move

Originally Published November 1987

We begin with these jerks...

Yeah, it's Frank and Lou, the Crimson Commando and Stonewall, who are officially being inducted into the Freedom Force, America's own government-sponsored mutant strike team, formerly known as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, as recompense for their crimes.

The team isn't overly impressed - Mystique hopes these two will fare better than Val's previous recruit Spider-Woman (who deserted). Pyro thinks his ole Aussie gran is tougher than these cobbers, and Blob tries himself against Stonewall.

With hilarious results(?)

The assembled group bickers some, until they are interrupted by the arrival of none other than Martin Fletcher -- aka Super-Sabre, the fastest man on the senior circuit and third member of Commando's power trio. 

Somehow, Martin survived being crushed by rocks and has been laying low. He wants to join the Freedom Force outfit with his pals, but before everyone else can go "Ugh, not another one of these a-holes" they hear a cry. Destiny has awakened.

I'm not being poetic here - Irene Adler, the member of Freedom Force known as Destiny (and also Mystique's very good personal friend) - has woken up from a dream of ill portent, muttering words like "shattered broken tumbling dying" and "maw teeth tearing." Seems she has something to say to the group:

Say it ain't so!!

On that note we shift our focus to a cool, clear Rocky Mountain stream, where Storm is fetching dinner for herself and Nazé.

Living off the land this way is joyful to her, but she reflects, she knows this is not the way it can always be -- hers is a warrior's life, and peace for her is merely the moment between battles. Nazé, an old warrior himself, thinks that sounds pretty rad, but before he can finish speaking, he keels over.

Storm brings him to the shack they've been using for shelter, where he reveals he caught some venom from the Eye-Killers in the previous issue. No white man "medicine" can help, only a magical potion, but his magicks aren't enough to do the trick as they approach Forge's mountaintop aerie, where his influence radiates ever stronger.

Briefly, we check in at Jimmy's Bar in New York, a no frills kind of watering hole where we find a newspaper columnist named Mr. B who has apparently been writing some very sympathetic material about the mutants, and is getting a bit of a hassle for it from the "human an' proud" set.

Yes, our guy here is really pulling the "I have black friends" card as he declares mutants, unlike his good buddy with the melanin here, are not human and not worthy of life since they might be out to take jobs from honest, hard-working 'Murican folk. He goes so far as to say he would kill his own child if he knew it would be born a mutant.

On a lighter note, we see Rogue flying over San Francisco patrolling for any sign of the Marauders. The search turns up empty-handed but it also gives her a chance to revel in the freedom afforded to her just by being in the Bay Area where their reputation is a little better than in NYC.

The X-Men are using as their current base of operations the former prison Alcatraz Island, which sounds cute and all, but it had been under the auspices of the Department of the Interior for some time by 1987 and was even designated a National Historical Landmark, so I doubt they'd get much privacy there -- but this is a comic book, so let's pretend it's deserted.

In the Prison Yard, Dazzler and Longshot are having a makeshift Danger Room session.

When Rogue swoops in at the last moment to save Dazzler from Longshot's last throwing dagger, Wolverine chides that it shouldn't have been necessary. When Rogue points out that Dazzler would have been killed without her intervention, Wolverine shrugs - after all, how's she going to learn how to not die if someone is always there to swoop in and keep her from getting killed? I'm not sure that I personally agree, but that kind of sink-or-swim training philosophy is definitely consistent with Professor Xavier, who designed a room full of buzzsaws and flamethrower pits to teach his students the very same.

The point is, Wolverine is trying to teach them to be ready--

To prove his point, he attacks the other three. They react quickly, with Rogue managing to get him pinned down and primed to say Uncle, but she's a little too cocky...

There endeth the lesson.

Back in the Rockies, Storm prepares a restorative brew for Naze and offers a fairly lengthy review of its aroma.

I'd say this is awfully wordy, but who am I to talk?

After ladling herself a sip at Naze's insistence (it's like Chicken Soup -- for the soul!) Storm hears a commotion outside. Where the whether had been calm and balmy, suddenly a blizzard rages. And worse, they have a visitor...

A demon? That's also a bear? It's more likely than you'd think.

Storm plummets from the mountaintop into an icy lake below as the demon now takes the form of a massive snake. She fends it off with her knife but that's not quite enough. As she tries to climb to higher ground, the serpent pursues until - seemingly out of nowhere - an explosion targets the demon, killing it.

For a moment Storm thinks she's lucky, but soon she realizes she's trapped in the ultimate Weird War Tale as she is surrounded by demons of all manner, slaughtering Viet Cong soldiers.

Nearby, Storm sees Forge standing above it all. He seems to be feeling his oats, reveling in his power to reshape creation, and inviting his onetime paramour to join his wicked ways.

She politely declines at first, but when he forces a kiss on her, she demonstrates her strength of conviction.

As Forge lies bleeding, Storm finds herself back in the cabin. This was all a vision -- not "merely" a dream, as Nazé says, but something with a substance all its own. She falls to her knees and weeps at the sight of what Forge seems to have become and the measures she must take to undo him, confirming that yes, when the time comes, she will kill him. And at the sound of this Nazé grins a grin that tells us, the reader, "Yes, good, this is what I, the actual bad guy here, want to happen, and I am very pleased about it."

Back at Alcatraz, Alex has been running to try to relieve the stress of nearly being killed by, and attempting to kill in self-defense, his longtime girlfriend. He comes across Madelyne standing alone on a rocky cliff at the island's shore. She has her own issues to worry about, considering she was abandoned by her husband, had her baby taken from her, had every trace of her existence obliterated and is now on the run for her life. 

Drawn into a war she has no possibility of surviving, Madelyne is considering whether to end it all. Alex sympathizes, having lost plenty himself and been forced to make hard choices, similarly wishing for a peaceful life. But Madelyne, at least, somewhere out there, has a child to live for, a reason to keep fighting.

As she laments that she will never permit herself to become vulnerable again, Alex says this does not mean she has to stand alone - the X-Men are a family, and Scott's actions or no, she is part of it and the team will always be by her side. They embrace, and head toward whatever is coming.

Further Thoughts:

Before I move forward, it's important to note an important, if not immediately perceptible change as of this issue -- as of now the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics is no longer Jim Shooter, but Tom DeFalco. While Shooter's editorial input to the Dark Phoenix Saga and in engineering X-Men crossover events like the Mutant Massacre, as well as his own work with the Secret Wars I & II had direct influences on the development of the X-Men in the 80's, DeFalco isn't historically known to have exerted much influence over the X-Men. More, since this snowball was already well underway, he used the template of success the X-Men had had in expanding their brand and brought that same philosophy to the whole of Marvel -- the X-Men were officially now the straw that stirred the drink at this company. It would be a different editorial shift, still in the offing at this time, that would really next affect the X-Men's world.

No Alex, you not fired, Jim fired.

Strictly speaking, this issue does not tell us much we don't already know, but does add shades of depth and colour to what has been going on. Storm experiences a patented Claremont Meaningful Vision to flesh out her decision to confront Forge when the time comes. Destiny's warning that the X-Men will soon die reminds us that only a few months ago Storm herself declared her intention to fake the X-Men's death -- but it adds some uncertainty as to whether it will be fake or the real thing. Not a lot of substance "happens" in this issue, only the final degrees of Storm's commitment to killing Forge, but by spending so much time drawing our attention to the gathering storm, the comic effectively communicates that something big is coming for the X-Men, whether it be through the Marauders or Freedom Force or the Adversary. A sense of creeping dread sets in. This isn't an issue that moves the ball much further down the field, but it's one where, if you're enjoying just experiencing the X-Men's ongoing adventures, it works well, helping to set the stage for bigger events to come.

I want to draw specific attention to the overt display of anti-mutant sentiment depicted here. I think at one point or another we would all have looked at those pages and said "Woah, that's a little heavy-handed" when the guy says he'd kill any mutant child he had. And I wish that were true but I think recent years have shown that there is a darkness and a hatred toward the other in some people that is inexplicable and violent that, strangely, doesn't take much to get riled up, to make them believe this kind of thinking is okay. Whether it's against another race or people from another nation "taking jobs" or disowning gay and trans family members, or even doing violence to them. Call me a bleeding heart, but this shit is real and its wrongness needs to be flagged constantly. The mutant metaphor may not be a perfect 1:1 for any particular race or struggle, but applied broadly it echoes almost any of them. There are people who really think and speak the way our guy at the bar does, and I only hope that people like that can be reached before it's too late.