UNCANNY X-MEN #281: Fresh Upstart

The newly-constituted X-Men Gold Team teams up with the Hellions to determine who is killing the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle

Originally Published October 1991

We begin in the Outback, where I'm told there are no rules, just right.

Specifically these right wankers: Cole, Macon, Reese, Prettyboy and Bonebreaker, aka...

...the mechanical thugs created by Donald Pierce with a general hatred of mutants and a specific hatred of the X-Men. As you may recall, they have moved back into their dingy, decrepit frontier town base after having chased the X-Men through the Siege Perilous. As the cyborgs contemplate the fact that they're stuck in a cyber-sausage party, they realize they have some uninvited guests.

Now, if you're confused as to why mutant-hunting Sentinels would be interested in decidedly non-mutant cyborgs, who themselves also hate mutants, you're not alone.

Back in New York, the X-Men are on a mission at the Hellfire Club. As you'll no doubt recall, the X-Men's membership has swelled recently as the Original 5 have rejoined the main team, causing Charles to agree to split them into two distinct squads that will be having separate adventures that you can follow in their respective titles, paying twice as much per month as you were before. Our roster for today's proceedings: Storm, Iceman, Colossus, Archangel, and... hm, let's see, who's the best candidate for a mission into the Hellfire Club, let me just consult my files here...

Yes, that's right, they did bring Jean Grey along on this potentially trauma-inducing mission into the heart of darkness.

Now, as your guide through the lush and fabulous history of the X-Men, I am duty-bound to remind you that, in fact, it was not Jean Grey who was manipulated into being made Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, it was not Jean Grey who betrayed her friends and became Dark Phoenix, and it was not Jean Grey who murdered a planet of asparagus people and died on the moon. As we all know, that was a separate entity -- the Phoenix -- that had taken on Jean's appearance, and fooled itself into believing it was her, while it had encased her in a cocoon in Jamaica Bay. This Jean, our Jean, the proper Jean, has absolutely no prior association with the Hellfire Club -- except for the fact that the Phoenix's life force, memories and identity from the time it was masquerading as Jean have been re-absorbed into the original Jean so that she feels as though those things actually did happen to her.

But they didn't, and she didn't do any of that bad stuff and holds no responsibility for it, she just feels like she did it, and absolutely does remember it all in vivid detail.

Comics.

Also present are some of the Hellions, Emma Frost's dark equivalent of the New Mutants: Roulette, Empath, Tarot, Jetstream and... Beef. I did not, personally, know there was a character named Beef. I wish him well.

Beef and Colossus have something of a... tense moment with each other, but tempers are cooled by Empath's typically subtle, imperceptible manipulation of the situation. 

Wow the new scripter really has these voices down, it's uncanny.

Upstairs, Emma Frost welcomes her guest, showing hospitality by throwing a clumsy would-be assassin through the door to her chambers. She exposits to us that it's the second such attempt on her life in a few short weeks.

Elsewhere in New York, atop a fabulous high rise, some of our key players enjoy a soak:

These are Shinobi Shaw and Trevor Fitzroy, collectively known as the Upstarts. They're the ones throwing killer robots and assassins at the members of the Hellfire Club like Frost and Pierce, with Shinobi even claiming to have killed his father Sebastian. Though they have common goals, there is a distinct level of competition between them as they engage in the proverbial dick measuring contest.

Back at Hellfire, Frost uses subtle and patient techniques to extract info from her would-be assassin.

Psych -- she's actually torturing the woman so hard Jean can feel it, and she is not feeling good about it. One might even think it's not about gaining information at all, just the fun of causing suffering.

Disagreement over whether torturing is good and fun or bad and harmful causes the tensions between the X-Men and Hellions, who already distrust each other, to boil over.

Even Sweet Beef gets caught up in the hooplah

Jean, however, puts a stop to the bru-ha-ha, putting everyone in time out and reminding them that that're not here to fight each other. Frost is surprised -- she didn't expect Jean Grey to have such level-headedness... or such boldness. Or apparently any characteristics at all.

Emma explains that several members of the Hellfire Club have been attacked -- but declines to say which -- and posits that if the Club is under attack, could the X-Men be the next target?

Storm protests, this isn't about self-interest, they would help any mutant in need. But first they'll need information about which members of the Hellfire Club have been attacked, which Emma literally just said she wasn't going to tell anybody. It's like even the guy writing this comic isn't reading it.

Unfortunately, before Hellion Jetstream can continue the "interrogation" of the assassin, he's killed by an intruder -- Fitzroy!

With futuristic cool armour!

Fitzroy mocks the dying Jetstream for being so clumsy in taking on more than he could handle.

Back in Australia, Pierce is still running from the Sentinels. Deathstrike is confused -- the Sentinels are only supposed to only hunt mutants, and Pierce is all like "Well duh but tell them that!"

Worse, these Sentinels appear to have some kind of futuristic healing ability -- when damaged, they can just grab some nearby metal and fuse it to their bodies!

Pierce flees to Gateway and badgers the magic Aborigine to teleport him to the person who sent the Sentinels after him. Gateway, clearly under duress, complies.

The Sentinels, pointedly, do not bother to target Gateway, possibly because, as a magic Aborigine mutant, he I dunno you figure it out, I can't be bothered.

Back in New York, Fitzroy continues his rampage, killing Sweet Darling Beef.

The other assembled mutants watch on and wonder who is this guy, and does the armor come sold separately from his action figure? But never mind that. Emma Frost opens up her skull and pours out some rays of magenta Kool-Aid to kill Fitzroy, but they can't hurt him because he wears an aquarium on his head.

He then turns invisible for good measure. Storm is baffled. With his invisibility and strength, could they be facing the Super-Skrull?

And to be fair, we don't know for sure that they're not, it's just... I mean, probably not. But not definitely.

Fitzroy re-appears, boasting that he won't be leaving this party until he's finished his task. Storm chides him for being so clumsy, getting to a fight with the X-Men and whatnot.

She vows to show him why they call her Mistress of the Storm, or as normal people say, simply "Storm."

Jeezes, Storm, doesn't it hurt your spine to twist like that?

Soon, Colossus gets Trevor wrapped up in a bearhug. Nevertheless, Trev still has choice words for Emma, saying she can't fight grown adults and has to spend all her time menacing children. Emma responds by going "Yeah, well... we'll see about that," proving the value of her Private School education in improving her debate skills, but the fight is interrupted by the arrival of Pierce.

Unfortunately, some of the Sentinels have followed Pierce through the portal. They kill him immediately. Storm directs the X-Men and Hellions to use their powers on the Sentinels, which is good advice since they were probably just planning on jabbing them with pointed sticks. In the mishegas, Emma Frost is killed.

Trevor, who for all we know may still be the Super-Skrull, cackles that soon everyone else will join her, and commands the Sentinels to attack the Hellions and the X-Men, which for the record, they were already doing because they wanted to, and didn't need Fitzroy to tell them to do it.

Colossus saves Tarot, but she drops most of her cards, which severely limits her ability to join the battle. All she can do is throw characters from Atmosfear: The Harbingers at the Sentinels, but the giant robots are unimpressed by holographic witches, and kill her too.

Jean continues battling the Sentinels, but it's clear that they have her at a disadvantage. She only has one option... activate her self-destruct sequence.

You didn't know Jean had one of those, but of course she does

And Trevor Fitzroy, satisfied with his day's work, having killed Donald Pierce, Emma Frost, possibly all the Hellions, and Jean Grey, takes his leave and the fight simply ends.

Down below, Senator Kelly -- a fixture at the Hellfire Club as we all know -- is ranting and raving, upset that his shindig was interrupted by a mutant fight. He demands to know what is the meaning of this... at which point someone has to tell him "Bro, chill out... a person is dead."

Further Thoughts:

There it is, folks. Another iconic X-Men moment. Who could ever forget the feelings of shock and hurt when Jean Grey died... at the hands of Trevor Fitzroy and his Sentinels? Truly this one will go down as a classic.

I know, I know what you're thinking: how could they seriously expect us to believe it? They went through so much trouble to bring her back. They just reunited the original 5 X-Men with the new team. They even gave her a perennially-fashionable beige outfit with shoulderpads. They really had us believing that Jean Grey would be a huge part of the story going forward. Let's not forget the X-Men's tendency to kill off characters shortly into their run -- this is clearly for real.

If the new creative forces driving the X-Men wanted to make a splash, maybe they could have done so with one or two tactfully-placed and well-build deaths. Instead it's a bloodbath: Donald Pierce, Emma Frost, most if not all of the Hellions and Jean Grey get killded in this comic, almost all unceremoniously. The way things are laid out, it's like Whilce Portacio's pencil can't move fast enough.

And for what? For a new bad guy named Trevor. He has green hair. He has armor that can do anything. He commands fancy Sentinels. He enjoys a flirt with Shinobi Shaw. I know I was personally very exhausted by Donald Pierce, but nobody deserves what happens to them in this issue, beginning with actually being in this issue.

Part of the appeal of writing about the X-Men is that for so much of its history it's a well-nuanced book that doesn't go for the cheap thrills, but never fails to deliver in the end. But this is 1991. We're learning that well-written books aren't what moves units: cheap thrills and cover gimmicks are. So who cares what's inside? Do the X-Men look cool? Will we be able to sell this art later? Then who cares if the story makes any damn sense at all, or if the scripting is wretched?

John Byrne, man. He was present for -- and personally contributed -- many trailblazing and iconic moments earlier in the X-Men's history. Proteus, Dark Phoenix, Days of Future Past, Demon... that time Colossus pulled a stump (er, let's not go there.) In the time since he's been away, he revitalized the Fantastic Four, and Superman. You would think he would take a bit more pride in his work here, even though his job is merely to put words in the mouths of characters so that readers get some sense of what is supposed to be happening. Instead it's distractingly bad -- at the best of moments it's flat, and at the worst it reaches absurd. It's messy, poorly-thought-out, awkward, stilted, unengaging, artless and sloppy -- to use Byrne's word, it's clumsy. 

It hurts, because not that long ago we were all having a good time with the X-Men, but the party has ended in a hurry. It's not even the fact that it dared to be written by someone other than Claremont -- I've liked X-Men comics before Chris Claremont and I will like X-Men comics in the future without him -- but this is such an abrupt change of pace for the worse it hurts. Hey, I recognize that as Chris Claremont's X-Men run started to meander at the end, a change was needed, but this is not the way.

Between flat characters who seem to have no idea what they're doing, and a plot that seems to be missing two or three elements, this comics gives the feeling of having been plotted and scripted by Tommy Wiseau. 

As we all know, all things, especially this comic, should be created to appeal to me, a 36-year-old grown adult man who spends entire days talking about the X-Men online three decades after its production. This comic is a huge miss on that very crucial rubric. But this was Marvel's idea to make money.

Well, look. In the long run, who am I to criticize? The book still sold more than just about anything else. It doesn't seem to have scared readers off, and the thing may eventually stabilize into something that works and takes the X-Men franchise to new heights, in time. And if it does that without any noticeable improvement in quality, that says something more damning about the time and place where it was made, than about who was making it or what they did.

Beef RIP