The X-Men fight for the future, while Illyana fights for her life!
Originally Published July 1993
We begin in Dallas, where Storm and Bishop have arrived just in time to see Forge's penthouse home/workshop known as the Aerie explode thanks to an attack from future-terrorist Trevor Fitzroy. Storm uses her powers to whip up powerful gusts of wind to try to control the debris currently raining down on the good people of Texas...
...and not-so-good people as naturally there are those in the crowd who see Storm's mutant powers at work and are quick to ascribe blame to her and her kind.
Up top, Bishop parachutes into the devastation to get a look, thinking of the paradox: it's unlikely Forge has survived, and yet if he dies, that means he won't be around to change his name to Genesis and form the XSE that Bishop is a part of. And since Bishop isn't fading out of existence or anything...
Down below, Storm is overwhelmed by her task and runs afoul of an angry mob. Luckily, a friendly police officer (who compares his struggle to hers, yuck) helps keep the crowd at bay until backup can arrive -- and I don't mean Car 54.
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| Not Iceman calling out this redneck for being "Poorly dressed" along with everything else |
Up top, Fitzroy rematerializes to menace Bishop, Forge, and an ailing Mystique some more. Jean, who arrives with Archangel and Colossus, shatters Fitzy's supposedly impermeable armor, but Forge stops Bishop from landing a killing, or even subduing, blow, out of respect for... sigh... due process.
This of course allows Fitzroy to get the upper hand... quite literally.
Colossus has had it, though. Things have been pretty bleak for the Russkie lately, after reuniting with, and then losing, his brother Mikhail, and then his parents at the hands of his own Government, and now possibly his sister, who is lying near death back in Westchester. He needs someone to take his aggression out on, and Fitzroy more than qualifies.
The team gets Colossus restrained and Jean offers him a lecture about setting a good example for Illyana, and how violence only begets violence. Colossus appeals to Bishop, the X-Person most likely to carry out an extrajudicial killing for the hell of it, but Bish actually comes down on the side of reason for once.
Back at the Mansion, Illyana's situation has turned from bad to worse. Xavier, puzzling over her situation, offers her some comfort by using his mental powers to pretend as her big brother...
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| Finally, some manipulation from this guy for a good cause |
While Jubilee, trying to study in the next room, is interrupted by...
Yes, a 30-year-old woman claiming to be Kitty Pryde!
We'll have more on this story as it develops.
Further Thoughts:
While these X-Men comics just appear to be chugging along as, well, perfectly adequate comics, don't mistake consistency for shortfall. While the Upstarts, and Trevor Fitzroy in particular, continue to be underwhelming in practice, I remain oddly charmed by them as a premise, as long as they lay off the hackneyed brutal displays of supremacy aimed at senior villains like Selene.
What we have here is the product of some really interesting groundwork that has been laid over the past year: Bishop's arrival has shifted the X-Men back into brutal mode as he and they try to find the sweet spot between protecting innocents and straight up murdering villains. Forge continues to orbit the X-Men along with Mystique. The X-Men have ongoing public relations issues wherever they go as anti-mutant sentiment ramps up. And Colossus, previously "Petey Pureheart," has been pushed to the brink by some pretty extreme circumstances, so any shift in the character's position is pretty well warranted, if only as a hopefully temporary phase -- and we can tell things are going to get worse before they get better. There's something quietly enjoyable about this period of X-Men in that it certainly doesn't aim high, but if you just want to see some mutant adventures, it fulfills the promise and then some.
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