UNCANNY X-MEN #246: The Day of Other Lights

Carol's in the driver's seat again, but is she prepared to go up against the all new Mastermold?

Originally Published July 1989

As you may recall, a while back the X-Men helped the omniversal Goddess-type figure Roma out of a jam, and as such were rewarded with a return to life, the ability to be invisible to technological sensors, and most impressively, the fabulous Siege Perilous.

The Siege is a crystal that opens a gateway to a new life, giving those who travel through it new starts. However, there's more to it than just that, as Dazzler stares into it, overcome with vis\ions of all the possible Alisons she might have been -- and how they might meet their ends.

It's all a lot to bear, and it even seems as though the vision of death comes to life and attacks Dazzler...

Yes, it seems only to be an illusion. But if so, why is she left bleeding?

However, we must leave that aside and venture now to the Big Apple (New York City) where a cartel of Hispanic drug pushers is consolidating their wares, when in bursts the self-appointed champion of the innocent and destroyer of the scofflaw: Nimrod!

Nimrod gives Jorge, Luis, and all the other vatos until the count of ten to vamos or else there is going to be a serious problema. 

Uno... dos... ten!

Having vaporized the dealers, he goes about disintegrating their crack cocaine with his laser eyes. He considers vaporizing their ill-gotten money as well, but the realizes he can use it to help the less fortunate. He's a very community-minded robot, this Nimrod: as we know he moonlights as a math tutor.

He also leaves his mark so that the other crooks would know he had been there, in case, you know, all their friends being cremated wasn't enough of a signal. 

They designed a whole-ass killer robot and forgot to give him fingers. SMH.

Back in Australia, Wolverine and Storm wrap up what I can only assume is a night of vigorous casual, no-strings-attached sex, with a little playful back and forth about Logan's newfound love of hair product.

Wolverine has requested some time off -- seemingly he's got some bidness that needs attending, and you, too can be part of that adventure just by picking up the current issue of Wolverine, starring Wolverine, on stands now wherever comics are sold, in 1989.

Elsewhere, in Washington, DC, Carol, currently taking the lead in the dance between her and Rogue's psyches, pays a visit to her brother, who, like her, followed the call of duty and was sadly lost in action.

We shift our scene -- after an interlude that sees the X-Men having another one of their makeshift Danger Room section where Dazzler gets to show off (and put her existentially horrifying experience out of mind, one would think -- to the Big Apple (New York City, still) this time to Manhattan's swanky Hellfire Club. There, newly-married Sharon Kelly -- wife of Senator Robert Kelly -- visits some of her former co-workers, as a onetime serving wench for New York's hottest bondage club for rich weirdos.

Sen. Kelly has come to discuss business with a high ranking member of the club, eminent businessman Sebastian Shaw, whom we have recently learned is no longer counted among the club's Lords Cardinal, but nonethless remains as part of the club, contrary to what you may have heard.

And as we all know, whenever these two get together, there's only one possible topic of conversation:

That's right, Senator Kelly has come to discuss their mutual interest Mutant-Killing Robots and how, gosh darnit, they're just not getting the job done. It's really becoming quite the boondoggle. One almost wonders why they keep throwing money at this project.

Shaw has an elegant solution in mind: make better robots. Ones that come with a variety of capabilities and can, say, regenerate themselves from a single molecule and never be destroyed!

And maybe it could even teleport and... and assume human form! Maybe it could even teach math to underprivileged kids!

Kelly is intrigued, but can't help but see a few drawbacks to a fleet of fully unstoppable killer robots. That kooky nut seems to think they might somehow, I don't know, lose control and be impossible to stop or something. Go figure.

The conversation is cut short when Sharon pays the lads a visit in her old Hellfire Maid outfit, causing considerable shock to Robert, who is apparently not accustomed to seeing his wife in a sexual context.

Over in the West Village, Carol, as Rogue, has checked in on a few of her old acquaintances. As a memento, she has also acquired her old Ms. Marvel outfit, which she defends to Psylocke as formerly "the height of super-hero haute couture." And look, I know Ms. Marvel's classic design is a little exploitative, but you don't just chuck out a Dave Cockrum design. Besides, I've seen some of the outfits Betsy's gone around in.

Carol vents to Psylocke some of her frustrations about sharing a body with Rogue and expresses her fondest fantasy to spend a year as the dominant personality, join the Red Sox, and win the pennant and the World Series -- which would be one of the more outlandish accomplishments in Carol Danvers' career.

I mean, winning the AL East against Cito Gaston's Toronto Blue Jays? I think not.

Not far away, at the construction site of "yet another yuppy-puppy high rise kennel," Nimrod works his day job as foreman under his civilian identity of Nicholas Hunter. As so often seems to happen, his eye is caught by a mysterious, gleaming piece of technology that seems to call to him, but when he grabs it, it seems to engage with his circuitry in an inextricable way...

More than meets the eye!

And so this giant Mastermold begins to crash and bash through downtown on a total anti-mutant rampage, with a serious hate on for a group he calls "The Twelve." Which by a striking coincidence, if you tally them up, is the combined numbers of X-Men and X-Factor, minus one. (I for one, vote out Longshot.)

Carol is still admiring the beautiful winter's day (contrast with Rogue, the hothouse southern child) and inviting Psylocke on a ski trip when they hear the commotion. It's amazing how often these heroes happen to be in the right place at the right time -- they don't even live on this continent! 

Carol dons her Ms. Marvel gear and springs into action.

Strangely, even though the X-Men are supposed to be invisible to all form of technological scanners, this giant robot seems capable of sensing Carol's presence! It sends her careening into the passing towncar of one Senator Robert Kelly, who is busy lecturing his wife about her inappropriate behavior at the bondage-themed club of which they are both members.

The impact knocks Carol out and puts Rogue back in the lead. Sharon pulls her husband to safety and tries to revive the still-loopy hero. She's barely able to make it clear before...

As Kelly tends to his incapacitated wife, Mastermold zeroes in on his target...

To be continued!

Further Thoughts:

While it may appear to us, readers of Uncanny X-Men, that this new Mastermold has come completely out of nowhere, this is actually following up on Mastermold's rebirth in the pages of X-Factor -- where he also had a big up his robo-butt about the Twelve. And that story was picking up on a thread from years before in a Hulk annual where jade-jowls, Iceman and Angel teamed up to fight this new Mastermold that had the brain of Steven Lang, formerly of Project Armageddon. Good comics never let an idea fall by the wayside.

That said, there's no reasonable expectation that you would have read a Hulk Annual from a decade earlier, or even an X-Factor comic from two years ago. A lot of the time I actually prefer to experience comics this way: sometimes weird shit happens that you just have no context for, much like life.

This issue provides a nice set-up for a two-parter, keeping at the forefront, the dual consciousness of Rogue/Carol. This has been increasingly of concern since the Genosha story, and one thing I absolutely must comment on his how good Marc Silvestri is at drawing one or the other and making it clear who is in control: when Rogue is Carol, she carries herself a certain way, with a rigid maturity, confidence and reservedness that the young mutant lacks in her brash playfulness.

We also see Wolverine taking his personal days, which is interesting. It's been mentioned before that he seems to be heading off on his own more and more (for adventures that are recounted in the Wolverine ongoing series) and years earlier, Wolverine was specifically written out of the series to provide windows for both the original Wolverine mini-series and the Kitty Pryde and Wolverine follow-up. Today (in 20-whatever-it-is) it's hard to imagine the Marvel Universe being kept in such strict order that it matters where an individual character is from month to month, as every story imaginable is depicted at more or less that same time, leaving us, the readers, to accept that there must have been some time where each of these events can have occurred. How times change.

The X-Men are in an interesting place, having gone through Inferno, they've been looped back to some of the conflicts that pre-date not only that event, but the Fall of the Mutants and the Massacre too, as we catch up with the ongoing loose end that was Nimrod -- last seen disappearing from a near-defeat at the hands of the X-Men and Hellfire Club's combined powers -- and Sebastian Shaw, who, along with his cohort Senator Kelly, seem paradoxically enough to be edging toward the creation of Nimrod. There's no telling what comes next.