The X-Men and the Adversary have their final showdown!
Originally Published March 1988
So...
To pick up where we left off: as Dallas has been plunged into a mishmash of time periods, the X-Men have ventured into Eagle Plaza, which has taken on the appearance of the Vietnam War, specifically the part where a bunch of demons obliterate the Viet Cong. Eagle Plaza, you will recall, was very specifically the place named by Destiny as "Where the X-Men die."
Joining the X-Men as they fight off the demons, is NPR reporter Neal Conan, (broadcasting successfully, as we see outside the building), who offers his commentary on the proceedings, expressing a combined awe and fear of the mutants.
Ducking out of the fight to safety, Madelyne stumbles upon the source of the demons -- a young Forge, using the souls of his fallen military comrades to power his demonic enchantment.
As it turns out, when you call a horde of demons to the party, things tend to get a little rowdy. Forge, realizing he has committed an atrocity against reality itself, calls in "Arclight" - an airstrike powerful enough to destroy the demons (as we all know, the standard B-52 bomber carries enough ordinance to eradicate a demonic horde.) The X-Men watch in helpless horror, bearing witness to the truth of what Forge has done.
Up, up, up in Roma's fabulous Sky Castle, now located immediately above Eagle Plaza, the Adversary taunts his captives, which now include a returned modern-day Forge and Storm. He gloats that they stupidly turned down their chance to be the parents of a new race of humanity on his other Earth like a bunch of stupid dummies, and now they have to watch while the Earth, and everyone they know on it, is destroyed.
Storm insists she'd rather be dead on this Earth than alive on the other one.
The Adversary shrugs, "Whatever, I'm a God" and wanders off, which leaves Roma to snicker to herself that she may have one or two tricks left up her sleeve.
Downstairs, Psylocke has sensed the presence of Forge, Storm, along with the two indescribably powerful cosmic presences. When Rogue goes up to scout, she gets violently smacked down by hurricane-force winds protecting the Citadel, which the Adversary has appropriated from Storm. Wolverine determines that the only way the X-Men can even make it to th eAdversary, let alone beat him, is with team work, so they come up with the craziest fucking idea I've ever heard by using Longshot (who has hollow bones -- he's an alien, you know) as a kite to tow them through the maelstrom.
And so, the X-Men ride up into the sky, with Conan in tow to record the proceedings for posterity.
Immediately upon arrival, Longshot peppers our villain with some of his throwing knives, which are able to do him damage since they're made of cold iron, which happens to be the weakness of all fantastical Demigods.
Which is all well and good, but where are we going to find enough metal to really do the Adversary any damage?
Oh that's right, we brought a guy like that!
You knew there had to be a reason Colossus was brought off the bench. He gets his Big Damn Hero moment, surprising the Adversary who didn't even know Pete had been drafted, and rending the Adversary's corporeal form and revealing his true appearance.
Using spells she had absorbed from the Adversary's stolen Naze psyche during a moment of physical contact (she kissed him) Rogue opens a portal to cast the Adversary out, but he stubbornly clings on.
Big ups to Rogue here for absorbing the psyche of a major league evil force and not getting overwhelmed by it, the way she has in the past against Spiral and others. Still, it looks like she's just not strong enough to finish the job, and even the combined powers of the X-Men can't quite nudge the Adversary through that door.
The only thing that will seal the deal is for Forge to bring some of his shamanistic mojo. The Adversary knows this, and taunts them with it, being that Forge is reticent to embrace his magical destiny, still haunted by the memory of what he did in Vietnam.
As it turns out, in order to reverse his original enchantment and banish the Adversary for good, Forge must use nine souls freely given (to counteract the nine souls he stole from his slain fellow soldiers.) That means the X-Men, plus Madelyne Pryor.
Storm kisses Forge a tearful farewell, "Until we meet again."
And Madelyne issues one last plea to her husband to find their son and keep him safe -- which I'm sure he's making a priority, wherever he is.
Back in Dallas, Forge brings Neal back down to the waiting crowd. Mystique demands to know why Forge got to be spared and her daughter Rogue had to be sacrificed. Forge's fairly reasonable answer fails to satisfy the grieving mother.
And so the world, and we, must come to terms with the actual, really for real deaths of the X-Men, in service to the cause of rescuing humanity from an incomprehensible godlike villain. While that is surely great for mutant public relations, as their legacy is cemented, it remains a tragic loss. Thank you, X-Men.
Further Thoughts:
Personally, I'm going to miss writing about their adventures every week.
You know, it's been a really great journey. I've learned a lot and met some incredible people during this project. I didn't necessarily expect it to end like this, but ultimately, giving their lives to stop a major foe is probably the best way to end a series. Considering how many years it took to build to this, it feels like a really great finale. I just wish they had been able to resolve some of those lingering plotlines -- like what were the Marauders and Sinister really after? What about X-Factor and the New Mutants? Will Charles Xavier ever return from space? We'll never know.
Edit: Oops, looks like I missed a few pages at the end here. Let me just re-open my document...
That's right, Roma is having none of this "Selfless Sacrifice" thing and immediately resurrects the X-Men. Her explanation: It's all well and good that the Adversary was defeated this time, but the world needs a little chaos in it. He just got maybe a little too greedy this time out. Addie has been locked away for "an age" (read: we won't be seeing him again for a long, long time.)
As for the X-Men, they were darn good sports about the whole "Volunteering their life essences to banish an evil God" project, so Roma has decided to offer them a special prize. She'll put them back on Earth, anywhere and anywhen they want.
Conveniently, the team had just been talking about faking their deaths en masse not that long ago, so as to protect their loved ones and better strike at their enemies. Seems like this is the perfect opportunity to enact that scheme. That's right, the X-Men are going full Tupac, to let the world think they're dead while they continue their good work in secret, and maybe occasionally appearing as holograms.
And so it goes, the X-Men are off to their next adventure. The... beginning!
Further Thoughts for real this time:
A while back on Twitter, I posited a scheme that broke Chris Claremont's years stewarding the X-Men into three eras or acts. The first, from Giant Sized X-Men #1 in 1975 until Uncanny X-Men #176 in 1983, concerns Jean Grey's transformation into the Phoenix and the aftermath of those events. Even long after her death in Uncanny #137, Jean's shadow looms as characters mourn her, and the aftermath of her story continues to send ripples right up to Scott's romance with Madelyne and her place in the revenge scheme orchestrated by Dark Phoenix prelim villain Mastermind. #176, which sees Scott and Maddie off on their honeymoon and an ostensible happily-ever-after, does its best to seal up that story and move the X-Men's narrative past it.
It doesn't take, of course, as we know Scott returns to action with X-Factor when Jean is resurrected, having been confirmed as never having been Dark Phoenix in the first place, I promise you, opening a whole new can of worms throughout the X-world. But in the meantime, the X-Men themselves are embroiled in new sets of challenges beginning after that issue. They are increasingly the target of both government-sanctioned forces as well as human-bred suspicion and hatred. This era has been marked by great concern for the opinions of the world at large about mutants and a strong underlining of the Mutant Metaphor for prejudice, through events like the Trial of Magneto, villains like Nimrod, and events like Storm's depowering. The latter was a story that really drove a lot of the last few years and its conclusion, along with the closure that comes with the redemption of Forge, to say nothing of the obvious jumping-off point provided by the X-Men's public deaths (and maybe a smidge of redemption in the public eye?) marks the end of act two.
The book will retain some of these themes for the last stretch of Chris Claremont's historic run on the series, but outside forces -- editorial and the marketplace -- begin to gather and nudge it to its final form and the ignominious departure of a revered longtime writer. So we've got that to look forward to.
As for this issue, I couldn't have asked for a more delightful climax to a long-term story. Although Forge's demonic turn in 'Nam was never implied to have anything to do with the Adversary's arrival, it is something that was first saw back in the original "LifeDeath" story and cast a shadow over all of his appearances since. It wasn't, then, something that came out of nowhere but it was not emphasized to where its part in the resolution to this story was easy to see coming a mile away (unlike Colossus' return signifying the Adversary's allergy to metal.) All the threads come together, along with a strong throughline of Neal Conan's media presence, to give a satisfying payoff to the last few years of X-Men storytelling and clear the table for what comes next.
Unfortunately, the X-Men's holograms cannot be captured on camera.
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