UNCANNY X-MEN #229: Down Under

Australia! If the X-Men lived here, they'd be home by now!

Originally Published May 1988

We begin in Singapore, the city that's an island that's a country. 

Specifically, our attention is drawn to the Hoan International Bank building, a gleaming new skyscraper in the heart of the city's flourishing financial district. There, Miss Hoan - who undoubtedly-not-coincidentally shares her name with the lavish building in which she works - prepares to show some guests around, including some adorable small children. It's the kind of scene where nothing bad could ever possibly hap--

--pen. That is, until a portal opens and out burst a throng of heavily armed and ultraviolent cyborgs, identifying themselves as The Reavers, who make their intentions clear: to loot the joint, with minimal regard for the safety of any innocent bystanders.

Unfortunately, they are displeased to learn that the bank's vault is on a 24-hour autolock that cannot be overridden, apparently activated anytime three or more hyperviolent robot men teleport into the building announcing their intentions to rob the place. You pay extra for that kind of security, but it's well worth it.

Skullbuster is momentarily dismayed by this, but not totally thwarted. The Reavers, as it turns out, have packed a laser cannon that can blast through the reinforced steel vault. Like I always say, a failure to plan is a plan for failure. 

Soon they make out like a bunch of bandits (since that's literally what they are) and head back through their portal, bringing the young Miss Hoan along, declaring her to be the latest Reaver recruit, renaming her, quite racistly, "Tiger." 

The Reavers emerge in the Australian Outback, where a Mysterious Aborigine named Gateway is awaiting their arrival, being the one who opens and closes the portal with his mutant(?) power. It becomes pretty clear immediately that while Gateway serves the Reavers, he is not one of them. More, he occupies the land of his ancestors and is coerced into doing these criminals' bidding through intimidation and threats of violence.

The Reavers reside in a kind of ghost town where they drink and gamble and fight the night away, while the one called Pretty Boy brings Miss Hoan, the financial wiz, down to their own vault to show off their treasure trove. However, he also intends to use his brainwashing powers to delete her morals and scruples and press her into service as the Reavers' very own in-house financial planner to help them spend their ill-gotten goods.

Outside, a sudden sand storm kicks up. This is not an uncommon occurrence and the Reavers have protocol to shelter themselves from the sand's deadly effects, but it was not on the radar for tonight. That's because this is not just a storm, but a Capital-S Storm!

That's right: either by request or by luck of the draw, the X-Men have arrived here in the Australian Outback, and they've got the Reavers in their sights.

The X-Men hit the Reavers hard, with Longshot in particular taking exception to the brainwash job Pretty Boy is doing on Miss Hoan. Dazzler notes it's like he takes personal offence to the removal of someone's agency. Like he has a past as a slave or something. Well, who knows what's going on in that kooky alien guy's brain.

While Longshot and Dazzler work on Pretty Boy, Rogue and Colossus add their contributions to the team effort:

Elsewhere, Wolverine goes a little extra on some more unnamed Reavers in a sequence that allows Marc Silvestri to polish his Frank Miller impression.

With the Reavers' job squad all laid to waste, the named bad guys -- Skullbuster, Pretty Boy, and Bonebreaker (the one whose legs are a tank) - beat a retreat, promising to release Gateway from his service to them if he opens them a portal to safety.

Wolverine, pursuing his prey, nearly takes it out on Gateway, but Storm stays his hand, sensing that he's not really with the Reavers, just doing what he had to.

Back at Reaver HQ, the X-Men wonder what exactly they're going to do with all these nameless jabroni crooks they've rounded up. How can they just haul them off to jail? After all, they've seen the X-Men, there's nothing to stop them from blabbing and revealing to the world that our mutant heroes here are not dead, as presumed.

Havok sarcastically suggests killing them en masse, and the idea starts to gain a little bit of traction with Wolverine, when who should arrive but our favourite Cosmic It-Girl, Roma:

Roma enlightens the X-Men that there is another way, in the form of a magical mystery door called the Siege Perilous. When a person passes through the Siege, their good and bad of their lives is weighed and they get to start anew, given a chance to redeem themselves.

Wolverine still has something of a hankering to just straight-up murder these clods, but Storm notes that that's not what the X-Men are about.

And so, after offering the Reavers a choice, the X-Men line the baddies up and send them through the magic doorway to their new lives. Miss Hoan resists -- she's not a Reaver (Pretty Boy's mindwipe didn't end up sticking) -- so why should she share that fate? The X-Men agree, and decide they can trust her, so they ask Roma to drop her back off in Singapore (you know, with her dead family and co-workers.) 

Roma also clarifies, for Storm's benefit and ours, that she is not God, Goddess or the Bright Lady -- she's basically a cosmic newbie still learning the ropes of her job. She's not here to protect the X-Men on an ongoing basis, only to make sure they're square after the X-Men's efforts in stopping the Adversary from unravelling reality. This should even the ledger, I'd say.

She notes also that the Siege is there for the X-Men to use if they ever so desire -- if they decide they are done with the outlaw hero life and want a fresh start, they can simply walk right through. But, the X-Men agree, that is for another time.

As she leaves, Roma favors us with one last burst of exposition, basically explaining that while the X-Men can be seen by the naked eye (and by the devices of their new home here in the Outback) they can't be caught on camera or by anything technological, or sensed by any enchantment or any other power. What this means for Psylocke, whose eyes are cameras, it's still uncertain, since it would seem that that means she can still see the X-Men, but are they then being broadcast back to Mojoworld? Are they just getting empty scenery there now? Or are we just going to forget about that?

(Listens to earpiece) 

I'm being told we're just going to forget about that.

And so Roma departs, leaving the future in the X-Men's hands!

The...beginning!

Further Thoughts:

Not a ton to this issue on paper in terms of story -- the X-Men meet some nasties, beat them up and steal their house -- but it does a lot of heavy lifting in positioning the X-Men in their latest status quo. I have to believe this fixation on Aussie culture was inspired by the huge wave of cultural exports the land down under was providing to Americans at the time. It's not hard, for instance, to see the Reavers as being inspired by the outsized baddies of the Mad Max films. 

While I'm not super-duper into the X-Men as petty crimestoppers, it's hard to deny that the Reavers are ruthless killers, maniacs, and brainwashers. I paid a lot of attention to what was done to Miss Hoan in this issue, as Claremont takes her right to the edge of one of his favourite tropes, being seduced by darkness, but stops short, somehow managing to resist the urge to make Hoan the new sexy evil villainess of the Reavers, letting her retain her true self in the end. Letting the remaining Reavers go through the Siege Perilous instead of stuffing them into the penal system or killing them outright is a nice, fantastical symbolic form of the alternative justice I like to see in this book, a shot at redemption for these mooks, as doled out by an itinerant universe that wants them to try to be good.

If you've studied this blog for any length of time, you might be able to anticipate my objection to Gateway -- yet another magical Indigenous person here to selflessly assist our (mostly white) heroes on their way, wanting and needing nothing for himself and not even speaking so as to voice his feelings. We literally just had Forge's spirit quest, and he at least had fully-realized motives and intentions and flaws galore. Gateway, although he'll be humanized with moments of whimsy hinting there is a lot beneath the surface, isn't poised to be much of a real character but a tool for the X-Men to go on their own adventures. I don't prefer this.

For their own part, I do find the premise of the X-Men as globe-trotting heroes, operating out of one of the most secretive corners of the planet and not limiting themselves with borders (as if they ever did) to be agreeable. They represent a race, a people and an idea, so there's no reason they need to be American Heroes, and this takes that concept to its fullest literal manifestation by removing them from that context and making it easier for them to explore different places in the world. 

If I had a nickel for every time the X-Men found themselves operating out of some island or exotic isolated locale in 60 years, I'd wonder why so many people had nickels to give me.

I also want to praise the work of Marc Silvestri. Since arriving on this book he's proven he's adept at not only action and violence but is also an underrated hand at physical/visual comedy, always infusing the action with laffs and goofiness to keep the proceedings light. In storytelling, his panels feel even choppier and more fast-paced than John Romita Jr.'s did, offering a bridge between what comic book art was in the 70's and early 80's, and into the 90s.