The X-Men make friends with Dorothy
Originally Published July 1992
We begin with a certain wayward son who is only so much dust in the wind and may even have reached the point of know return.
Yeah, that's right folks, it's the Mojoverse tribute to the Wizard of Oz, with Longshot as Dorothy...
Rogue as the Tinman (as in "Oil Can't touch yuh without absorbing your powers an' mem'ries!"), Cyclops as the Scarecrow, and Wolverine as, ha ha, the Cowardly Lion.
And of course, Beast as Scooby-Doo Toto.
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| Ry roughts rexactly. |
This is of course the work of Mojo, who gloats about how he managed to kidnap the X-Men thanks to shenanigans in the recent X-Men annuals, which we did not read. Now look, I support the right of X-Men annuals to feature Mojo Content. That's fine with me, it doesn't hurt anybody. But when it starts to spill over into the main storyline? That's when we have a problem.
Somehow or other, the X-Men got zapped into Mojoworld. They do their derndest to fight of the forces of Mojo, including a game attempt by Cyclops to juice Dazzler's powers by up-pumping the jam.
Unfortunately, she is seen-to by "studio security," aka a brainwashed Longshot who gives the only titter-worthy line of the issue.
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| Wait, why would a security guard get his own dressing room? |
The issue culminates in the brainwashed-into-believing-they-are-in-Oz X-Men fighting against the brainwashed-into-serving-Mojo X-Men.
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| Reset the count! |
As Mojo cackles evilly, some other shmuck finds Dazzler's unconscious body in a trashheap and identifies her as the best chance to finally pull the plug on Mojo.
And since the only way out is through, let's keep going, but first a word from our sponsors.
The second part of this epic opens with the answer to the question on everybody's mind...
No, not that: who is Dazzler's benefactor? Why of course it's none other than Mojo II: The Sequel, who's like classic Mojo crossed with the physique, flowing hirsute mane of hair and mustache of Jake "The Snake" Roberts.
Mojo 2: Moj Harder wants to usurp the throne of his progenitor, and unlike the classic Mojo, believes in spines, which I guess makes him a good guy even though he looks like if Frank Zappa was The Mandarin.
Meanwhile, the two teams of X-Men are having it out while Mojo has a laugh.
But the Professor isn't quite as helpless as he seems, as he's been gradually working on freeing the X-Men.
The whole thing plays out about as you would expect with the X-Men managing to sufficiently overcome Mojo's mind control and break through the Mojonium™ exterior of the control room, while Dazzler and Mojo II: Electric Mojoloo simultaneously fight their way in.
Fittingly, Longshot strikes the killing blow against the Boob Tube Tyrant.
It's a mega happy ending for all, as 2 Mojo 2 Furious is installed as ruler of Mojoverse, and Dazzler and Longshot settle in to raise their as-yet-unborn child. The X-Men prepare to teleport home courtesy of Lila Chaney, but Jubilee is suspicious that things maybe didn't work out for the best and perhaps they just traded one maniac for another.
The other X-Men acknowledge that she may have a point, but to the larger point... who flicking cares? Let's get out of here.
And as if all of that weren't shaggy enough of a dog, these issues also feature brief backup stories (drawn by the stylish Mark Texiera) where Maverick goes up against, of all people... Warhawk, aka Mitchell Tanner, aka the guy from one of the least-liked issues of X-Men ever, as he goes up against some guy named Ryking for something call the Xavier Files, which I think has something to do with the X-Men's founder, who is named Professor Charles Xavier.
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| Say what you will about how dense Chris Claremont was with continuity, he wasn't hauling out 14-year-old references like this. |
There's not much to the story, and absolutely no context for why it might be important, but Maverick sure does have a big gun and shiny armor.
Further Thoughts:
As far as "The X-Men doing The Wizard of Oz" goes, I'm split between "This is an idea that was not done well" and "This was an idea that was going to suck no matter what." Think about it -- as outre as it is, if they had really seen the concept through, couldn't it have been as amusing of a diversion as the beloved and similarly offbeat Kitty's Fairy Tale? The problem is, the kind of whimsy and sense of fun necessary to make that kind of story work is in really short supply in 1992. They really want this to be a fun, quirky outing: Lee draws goofy stuff pretty well and Lobdell is clearly into the silliness of it, but it still can't help but feel like forced fun, which as I've made pretty clear is anathema to me.
A lot of people don't like Mojo. I have my own particular beliefs about how he is best deployed: he can be used sparingly for satire and social commentary, ideally in one-off appearances in Annuals that don't connect to the regularly-scheduled X-Men stories about protecting a world that hates and fears you. He's the proverbial "Something completely different." The paradox of Mojo is that you can't take him seriously but you need to hit a bullseye on the humor. One thing Claremont did was balance that relatively deftly in his rare appearances.
I always did have my misgivings about Longshot, Mojo and Spiral being imported to the X-Men cast from their original appearances in the Longshot miniseries where they worked as a refreshing and biting new take on Marvel heroism. I never really felt that Longshot -- the guileless, amnesiac alien babyman who everyone wants to f**k -- had much of a place on the X-Men when he was a member, and there were no real stories to tell with him in that context. The same goes for Mojo: a fun character that can be used to say something about the world, but a real misfire when reduced to your typical evil baddie commanding powerful generic armies as part of a fantastical civil war whose stakes the X-Men can literally teleport their way out of.
The story starts off with the novelty of the "Wizard of Oz" reference, but barely gets anywhere with it before it's just... mere material to fill comic pages. There's not much there there, and because what's on the page concerns an extradimensional TV producer who talks in movie jargon and some obscure business about spines, it's less comprehensible and enjoyable than your typical X-Men comic.
I don't think this story fails because it features Mojo, but it's certainly fighting an uphill battle.
Somewhat more significantly, this actually marks the end of Jim Lee's association with the X-Men, as the founding of Image Comics had been underway for sometime and he and Whilce Portacio were merely finishing up their obligations. While Lee did eventually return to Marvel for the Heroes Reborn relaunch a few years later, he and his WildStorm Productions imprint would move to DC Comics where he would ascend through the ranks of their corporate org chart; he thus never drew the X-Men again as far as I know.
In just short of 3 years, during which he drew only 27 issues as well as plotting a few issues of Uncanny, he managed to change the course of X-Men History, and then change the course of comics history by helping to found Image. Not a bad legacy.
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