X-MEN #3: Fallout!

This is it, folks!

Originally Published December 1991

In order to sneak-attack Magneto's asteroid base, the X-Men have done the only sensible thing: build a completely see-through space-glider with no mechanical or metal parts to take them up into orbit. Well, it's not like I hear any better ideas coming from you!

The X-Men's Gold team is on duty -- the Blue team (the ostensible stars of this X-Men comic) have all been induced into following Magneto, thanks to his pressuring Moira into rewiring their mental DNA or something. It's the kind of procedure you can get done in an afternoon, sure, yes. 

The Goldies are also against the clock: the USSR, in concert with various sympathetic world powers, have launched an Asteroid-destroying plasma cannon to end the Magneto problem once and for all, along with any other mutants who happen to be aboard Asteroid M at the time.

I'd call it overkill, but for a guy like Magneto it's probably more like therightamountofkill.

Magneto is pleased with his final victory over the X-Men, to win them over to his way of thinking (by physiological manipulation) but he has pointedly not used this technique on Charles, for the simplest and most elegant of reasons:

Are you even a supervillain if you don't pass up the opportunity to defeat your enemy in favor of toying with them and seeing them "broken"?

When Moira points out that Charles played no part in anything that happened to Magneto, the Master of Magnetism doesn't want to hear it

He lashes out so much it weakens him, necessitating a rejuvenating burst from Fabian Cortez. Moira observes that Magneto seems to be hooked on the Fab-juice, needing hits more and more frequently just to get back to normal.

An upstart named Fabian seeking to usurp the longtime leader? Where do they come up with this stuff?

Elsewhere on the Asteroid's recreation level, the X-Men are having a super fun time with their new best pals the Acolytes, splashing around the pool and whatnot. Gambit even begins a flirtation with Rogue in earnest.

Rogue teases him back by flying away, but seems momentarily confused by what seems to have come over her. Observing the proceedings, Wolverine notes, somewhat ominously, that soon all confusion will pass, then heads off on some unknown errand.

The Gold Team arrives and fans out to try to find their compatriots, which doesn't take long. Scott and Jean have a warm reunion...

Which turns out to be something of a psych-out.

Or should that be a Cyke-out?

Yes, the X-Men Blue Team are still baddies, and not in the fun 2020s Megan Thee Stallion way.

The fight is on as the Gold Team refuses to willingly join their compatriots at the side of their greatest enemy.

Not to be confused with the Other Delgado, if he even ever existed.

The fight is on but there is much confusion as it's not only X-Man vs. X-Man...

...but some of the turncoat X-Men have turned their coats back to the other side!

Surprisingly given that she's one of the X-People with the closest bond to Magneto, Rogue is the voice of reason -- isn't it weird that we're all cozied up with our deadliest enemy?

Cyclops agrees -- yeah, this is weird, let's stop for a second. Magneto arrives and assesses the situation: it looks like his bid to mind-control the X-Men has failed, but such is life. Before a battle between the four or five Acolytes and the twelve or thirteen X-Men can get underway, Xavier declares Magneto the loser on the battlefield of ideas -- his philosophy will always be compromised by the amount of blood that must be shed in pursuit of it.

Before Magnus and Charles can have it out, however, he is brought weak by his ongoing discorporation. The man is literally fading away before our eyes. Standing over the fallen Magneto, Moira sums it up: She never did succeed at creating a process to rewire anyone's DNA or their mind or whatever it was she was supposed to have been doing. The fact is, having mutant powers causes the mutant brain to automatically snap back to its default state.

Which, if you've been reading X-Men comics for the last 16 years, you would know is a bunch of malarkey, but sure, let's apply it to this specific scenario. It doesn't matter whether what Moira did, or was trying to do, was right or wrong, because she wasn't successful and was never going to be, so let's uh, forget about giving her any kind of reprimand, okay?

As Moira works to convince Magneto that Fabian was using him, gassing him up just to take him down, Magneto refuses to hear it -- until Wolverine points out that Cortez has snuck away to take off in an escape pod posthaste.

Awkward.

On cue, the plasma cannon fires, destroying the asteroid. It does not explode, though -- Magneto has the wherewithal to hold it together long enough  for the X-Men to make a getaway while he -- and his Acolytes (Chrome, Delgado, Anna-Maria, and maybe one other one?) -- go down with the ship.

Magneto bids a fond farewell to his oldest friend and biggest opponent, wishing him all the best in the terrible fucking future that awaits them.

As the X-Men fly away in their plastic cellophane bubble glider, Magneto transmits his last thoughts to Xavier telepathically: genetics linked us, but our ideas made us enemies. The world was simply not wide enough for Magneto and Xavier. Someday you'll see, the world will never let you have your dream.

Pretty eloquent for a guy who is exploding

As the heroes fly back to Earth, Xavier further eulogizes his foe: maybe he had a point, but we need to keep doing good and leave the world better than we found it. Maybe we can never make it, but we have to try.

And with that, it's over.

Further Thoughts:

But it's not over, because there will be an X-Men comic next month. But we all knew this was coming: the last of 16 consecutive years worth of Chris Claremont-written X-Men comics. There will be more in the future but it will never mean as much as it did from 1975-1991.

I can think of worse ways to go out. I could critique the story itself -- if there was ever a storyarc that begged to be stretched out to six parts, I think it's this one, which feels like a modern "X-Men Vol 1" Trade paperback squished down into a mere three issues that doesn't have time to explore the Acolytes and Asteroid M, Magneto's brainwashing of the X-Men and the effects of Moira's treatment on him, and the geopolitical bickering about how to solve the Magneto problem. At the time, though there was always a rush to keep moving and not lose readers' attention -- a virtue that I somewhat miss even if it results in a mess -- at the expense of making stories as "good" as they could possibly be. It's exciting, if jumbled, a breezy way to spend 22 pages, with as good of a summation of the everlasting clash between Xavier and Magneto in its closing pages as you are going to find. This was, in its way, the best possible comic for 1991.

How could the Claremont Run end with anything other than the X-Men brainwashed and fighting each other, and then calling attention to the fact that they seem to spend their lives in the process of being brainwashed and fighting each other? How could it not have a final statement on Magneto, the character possibly the most uplifted by Chris Claremont, then stuffed back into the villain box for this big grand finale -- and somehow amidst all those contradictions and reversions, it actually kind of makes sense as a weird tragic downfall. It's kind of beautiful, if also gloriously silly.

We have been saying goodbye to Mr. Claremont for several weeks now, and are as prepared as we are going to get for the world beyond, for the X-Men without him. There's shockingly little pomp and circumstance, just a modest little caption at the bottom of the final page, just above "NEXT: OMEGA RED!" The X-Men will return and life will go on. It's a scary prospect to be sure, and we already know there are some pitfalls, perils and missteps. But it gives us freedom, in the long run, to explore new corners of the X-universe, even as we keep coming back to those same moments, ideas and themes.

Comics move forward. As my friend Brandon Schatz is fond of saying, the machine needs blood. It felt not only like Chris Claremont was going to write the X-Men forever (and he did write X-Men Forever eventually) but that he could -- he had cracked the code to keep the story moving, keep it fresh and engaging. The problem is that times changed, the financial demands of the comics biz changed, tastes changed a little, and Claremont's interests fell out of sync with what the fans (and more importantly editors) wanted -- which had more to do with Jim Lee's and Whilce Portacio's drawings than Claremont's plots and ideas.

It's not easy to make great comics. If it were, everyone would do it; everyone would do what Claremont did for 16 years. Claremont himself couldn't repeat the feat in later returns, as an older and less hungry writer, working in a business that may no longer have been the best outlet for his gifts anymore.

But for a moment -- an epically long, record-breaking, senses-shattering moment, we had it all. And it was fuckin' Uncanny.