The Phalanx have infiltrated the mansion and only one mutant stands against them!
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| Attack of Too Many Titles |
Originally Published September 1994
We begin in the capital of Monaco, whatever that is, where a wealthy young daughter of society named Monet and her overqualified babysitter/personal assistant/handler, Colonel Gayle Cord-Becker, former director of MI6, are going for a leisurely night drive in their limo. Miss Gayle is somewhat concerned about the fact that Monet hasn't spoken a word for three months since whatever it was happened to her twin siblings and brother.
Col. Nanny brings up potentially going to see this Xavier chap at the School for Gifted Youngsters, but before any more can be said about it, the car is attacked!
Unfortunately, the Phalanx do away with Miss Gayle (despite a spirited defensive) en route to capturing Monet, whom they note does not respond to threats of violence or death (or much of anything, tbh.)
Back at the mansion, Sean "The Banshee" Cassidy is watching Iceman and Storm fuss over the recently-returned-to-her-regular-body-between-issues Emma Frost, who insists that the restraints they've got her in are preventing her from "reading their minds" and "runing their plans," which just sounds like kooky talk to me. Banshee just thinks it's weird that Emma is being tended to by two people whose bodies she's stolen over the years.
Banshee shares some concerns for the wellbeing of the patient, but Storm, as always, is very "lol whatevs."
Left to his own devices, Sean wonders if he's just out of touch -- he came back to the mansion in search of Moira, but she's already gone back to Muir Island. And is he really an X-Man anymore? Was he ever?
Interrupting these thoughts is an incoming call from Scott and Jean, who want to provide Charles with some hot new info about the Legacy Virus (it's from the future! They've been there!) Sean advises them to head to Muir Island, and no sooner does the call end than Archangel arrives to slap Sean on the wrists for answering the phone without telling a real X-Man.
Banshee thinks he'll clear his head with a session in the Danger Room, but it's occupied by Jubilee. When he notices Psylocke emerge from Charles' Ready Room, the one place in the mansion that is totally off-limits, he starts to suspect something is amiss, although I'm not sure what it could possibly be.
He looks in on Bishop and Gambit, who are "fixing" Cerebro, the same way the Grinch fixed Cindy Lou Who's tree. Gambit assures Sean that they're just doing a little tune-up, and Sean concedes that Xavier has been a little hard to keep track of since he started walking again. Bishop brushes him off saying he doesn't ask questions (which is true,) and Sean goes on his way.
Now he knows something's up, as he threw in that little bit about Xavier walking and it didn't even raise an eyebrow. Spot the thread...
Banshee goes to the intercom and asks the computer to locate Storm, but the computer can't do it -- Storm's not home.
Nobody's home.
Actually, that's not true: Jubilee, Sabretooth and Emma are all present and accounted for. But that still leaves him at a severe disadvantage.
Sean returns to the video call room, preparing to notify the Prof, but finds it... in less than mint condition.
Before he can leave, he is interrupted by Beast, who claims to just be "making adjustments." Sean plays it off like he was just trying to wish Moira a good night ("Hm," asks 'Beast', "Can that wait until morning?" Nervous laughter ensues.)
Sean's next move: go see one of the only people he knows for a fact is still a real-deal flesh-and-blood personage: Sabretooth. At the moment he's being watched by "Rogue," who claims Banshee has no reason to open his cell because he's already had his walkies for the night.
It gets a little tense between them.
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| When Banshee says "You listen to me..." shit is about to go down |
Waking from his sedation, Sabretooth says it's about time someone figured all of this out. He expresses skepticism that it ended up being Banshee, which is a little rude since he's talking to a former Interpol agent.
They fight their way through some PhalanX-Men.
Banshee dispatches Bishop and Gambit (the latter of whom chides the former for using too much robo-speak) with a gun since they can adapt to mutant powers after one use. "Gambit" also lets slip that the real X-Men are currently still alive until the Phalanx can figure out how to assimilate mutants. That's a relief. I was worried the real X-Men had actually been killed en masse off panel, for a moment.
Sabretooth also liberates both Jubilee and Emma Frost, who uses her mental powers on Phalanx-Iceman and -Storm.
Sean soon determines that the Phalanx have been gathering information on the "Next Generation" of mutants that Charles was looking into recruiting.
Before the Phalanx can nab him, he hits the self-destruct code and escapes into the tunnels to rendezvous with his makeshift team.
He was able to fire off one last communique to Muir Island, tasking Charles, Moira, Jean and Scott to team up with Excalibur to find and recover the X-Men while this motley crue tries to head off the Phalanx before they can kill and eat the Next Generation of mutants.
Further Thoughts:
You could nitpick the story a little bit, with the Phalanx's means, motives and methods varying depending on what fictional sci-fi baddie they're aping, wondering when the X-Men got taken out and all that, but I don't think any of this gets in the way of the fact that this is a pretty good story. Superficially, it resembles a plot from a previous generation: the X-Men are taken out between issues and forced to face down against an implacable alien foe that wants to assimilate them somehow, which also leads to the creation of a new team of younger mutants. I'm not even mad about the similarities!
I liked the format of this issue, focusing on Banshee as the outlier X-person realizing something is amiss and investigating it with his Columbo shit. Sean is a character who is long overdue for some spotlight, and I'm not even saying that he should be a star, only that the X-Men is an ensemble and every character is worth highlighting every now and again, but some seem doomed to be mere background players. Banshee was last a major concern late in the Claremont Run when he was running buddies with Forge trying to figure out whether the X-Men were still alive and what to do about that. He's not someone who has a lot of center stage moments over the years. There's always cooler, more exciting mutants around, but when you think about it, there should be a way in: he's a grizzled veteran, a former cop and Interpol agent, and a gentleman art thief, all before he started his tenure as a mutant adventurer. There's something there, and this was the perfect way to foreground him, by making him part of an investigation. Now he's being nudged toward a mentorship role for the next team of young mutants, which I think is a good role for him. I'm interested in seeing how this plays out, and I think Lobdell and Madureira did a really good job starting this crossover event off.
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