Storm finally confronts Forge, but -- and you're gonna want to brace yourself for this -- not everything is as she had been led to believe!
Originally Published December 1987
We begin with appropriation of sorts...
Well, look, it's not as though Storm is going out for Halloween dressed in the Spirit "Indian Princess" costume. Her clothes were all tattered from various misadventures of her spirit quest with Nazé, and the Shaman knew of caches of Cheyenne garments hidden around the wilderness that would fit her, and naturally they consist of buckskins. We're more or less all in on this quest at this point, so let's get rolling.
Nazé explains what he knows of the Adversary -- that he means to expend all the energy that flows through living things, to destroy the world so that he can remake it, like a weaver who doesn't like how the pattern is going, so he tears out all the threads, something he, as an immortal cosmic being, does over and over.
Storm, naturally, has some questions, like what the fuck, and why?
They arrive at Forge's mountain base of operations. Nazé will go no further - Forge's defenses are tuned in to detect him, but they won't be so sensitive to Storm's presence. From there, Forge's love of Storm will make him vulnerable.
Sounds like a plan. With that all said, Nazé gives Storm a farewell kiss and she heads off on her mission, and he is left behind to contemplate how everything is working out grandly for him, the secretly evil villain of this entire piece who has been manipulating Storm the whole time.
Elsewhere, in what could generously be termed the "real world," Government operative Val Cooper is having a press conference to promote her in-house mutant narcs, the Freedom Force, in the aftermath of the destructive scuffle between the X-Men and Marauders that wrecked a good portion of San Francisco.
Coops wants everyone to know that thanks to the Freedom Force, there won't be a "next time," although they sure didn't do anything to prevent there from being a "this time." Still, Dr. Cooper spins with the best of them and uses the moment as a launchpad to promote the Mutant Powers Registration Act, the federal legislation that has officially passed to make it illegal for mutants to just be, you know, chill.
The press rightly scrutinizes this policy, as well as the "Let's hire a private army of convicted felons to push mutants around" plot, as being a little crazy -- to which Val agrees, it's crazy like a fox.
Elsewhere, we look in at at Murphy's Gym, where anything that can go wrong will make you swoll. The gym's proprietor has acquired one of the Fantastic Four's old Thing-sized workout machines as a gimmick (the FF were recently hard up for cash, you know) but is putting it to use for the X-Men's southern miss thing, Rogue.
In the middle of her private workout, Rogue gets an unexpected - but very welcome - visitor.
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| You know, I almost didn't recognize my mom after a few months of lockdown, too. |
Mystique has come to warn Rogue about Destiny's vision, that sometime in the near future, in the general vicinity of the city of Dallas, the X-Men will die. So steer clear of Dallas at any cost. You hear me? No Dallas, no how. I know you were hoping to hit the State Fair of Texas but it's just not in the cards. Maybe next year.
Mystique offers Rogue a chance to escape that fate and rejoin the family, but Rogue won't walk out on her teammates -- she knows her place is with them.
That night, at a club in SF, a very special guest is doing a secret show. And just in case you happen to be reading about it in a soundless medium, this Chris Claremont is here to tell you all in quite vivid terms just how good she is...
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| I know that voice -- someone get Ken Jeong on this! |
Some stumbling drunk falls on the switch to cut the lights, which of course provides an opportunity for Dazzler to use her Dazzling Powers to Dazzle the audience.
Backstage, she runs into Wolverine, who notes that publicly displaying her powers may not be the smartest move as anti-mutant sentiment begins to boil over and the X-Men are trying to keep a low profile. Alison is apologetic but Logan is surprisingly sanguine, saying only that she should be smarter next time.
At which point Rogue arrives to inform them there may not be a next time.
Else-elsewhere, Havok and Longshot have spent their evening partakening of a motion picture which Longshot, that hilarious nut from space, doesn't even realize he himself acted in as a stuntman (for more details, dig out your copy of Ann Nocenti's Longshot Miniseries from 1985.) Alex walks along, the fun and frivolity wasted on his morose ass, when the two just happen to encounter one of those classic gangs of 1950s greasers that always seem to run around these comics, speeding away in a convertible, making trouble and kidnapping dames.
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| No, Greased Lightning! |
Longshot engages in some daring, ostentatious heroism, while Alex mopes along besids. He's a little bit in his feelings over the fact that his girlfriend is being possessed by an evil piece of jewelry and even though he could just barely bring himself to use his deadly mutant power on her it wasn't enough. He's not having a great week. So naturally, he takes it out on the Bay City Badland Boppers a little.
As the Boppers lament the wreckage of their whip, our friend Lt. Bree Morrell arrives. Thanking Alex for the assist, she warns him that the Feds are in town looking for the X-Men.
Back at the Alcatraz base, Rogue debriefs the team on what she knows of Destiny's vision -- that time is running out for the X-Men. Wolverine notes what we're all thinking - that Destiny's been wrong before (in fact, when hasn't she been wrong?) - but that it's not worth risking the chance. Storm seems to be the key to all of this, so the play is to track her down. And even though certain death seems to await them in Dallas, well, if the road to Storm brings them through Dallas, Dallas it is.
But Wolverine isn't running a Sniktatorship, he's running a Democlawcy. He gives each member of the team a chance to bow out, but they all stand by their reluctant leader. Dying is sort of a rite of passage for X-Men.
This includes the X-Men's pet normie, Madelyne Pryor. Logan objects -- she has no powers and the X-Men can't always spare someone to look after her when the going gets rough. But what's the alternative? Sit around waiting for the Marauders to call again? She's dead no matter what, so she might as well go down with the team. Havok volunteers as chaparone, much to Wolverine's impotent consternation. He's been clawverruled.
As the team loads into their custom-modified SR-17 "Blackbird" jet, Psylocke reaches out to see if she can raise Storm on the old telepathy-gram. But Storm -- climbing a vertical rock face toward Forge with the fullest intent on killing him and stopping the Adversary's destruction of the human world - only gets the faintest whisper of a thought that Psylocke is reaching out to her.
She finds him, under one of those classic "Hole in the Sky" gimmicks, seemingly having summoned a horde of demons who are very keen to rip the onetime wind-rider to shreds.
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| So much for Forge's defenses not noticing Storm would be there... |
Yes, it looks bleak and hopeless, but have you met Storm? Armed only with a hunting knife and the strength of the Chris Claremont omnibus she slices her way through the hordes of hell...
On her way to her quarry, Forge.
It's a tense reunion...
And before too much small talk can be made, Storm completes her grim duty.
But as Forge lies dying, Storm learns not all is as she was told...
In an instant, Storm knows he is speaking the truth. Forge forgives his love for being tricked -- Adversary runs a good game -- and as they fall from the mountaintop, they are converted into their very fiery essences and skyrocket into the heavens.
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| Woah, Greased Lightning! |
You know, like y'do.
Back below, Nazé -- whom I'm starting to suspect actually has been the Adversary all along, destroys what remains of Forge's aerie, the centre of his power, and prepares to assume the mantle of power over this world as he tears the fabric of reality asunder for his own inscrutable purposes.
Further Thoughts:
We end on one of the most riveting cliffhangers in a while as - just as has been teased for months - Nazé proved false and Forge was not working with the Adversary to destroy the world, but working against him to save it. It can barely be called any kind of twist, but therein lies the beauty. When you have a chance to look forward to a specific outcome for any length of time, sometimes you actually enjoy seeing it play out, especially because the real question is, what happens next? If the Forge-Nazé twist was predictable, the way out of it certainly is not, and that's storytelling, my friends. So as much as I may quibble with the premise - I'm on record as being less partial to X-Men vs. Magic stories and very much against the indigenous theme of this particular one - I can't argue with the execution.
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