UNCANNY X-MEN #320: The Son Rises in the East

Desert, Storm.

No, no, no, I asked for Mark Waid on plot, Scott Lobdell on dialogue!

Originally Published January 1995

We begin in medias res as the X-Men are getting the coll-x-tive asses kicked by Legion.

Rolling back the clock a few hours, we see the X-Men arriving in Israel, where they are responding to some mysterious threat that has already defeated X-Factor in an issue of their series. They are greeted by Ambassador Gabrielle Haller -- Legion's mom -- and the following information is imparted:

• Legion is awake
• He's super powerful
• Like, so powerful you guys
• Also his personalities have been integrated
• He's set up shop in the desert
• He's brushed off everything we've thrown at him

Anyway, do the X-Men maybe feel like taking a swing?

The X-Men line up to do some hero sh#t, but as we can see, Legion wipes the desert floor with them. Storm manages to reach out, and he responds by taking her on a little trip.

The place: Cairo. The time: 19-something-something, don't worry about it. It's the Suez Crisis, which is the event that killed Storm's parents and left her trapped under rubble and suffering claustrophobia for most of the rest of her life. Legion offers Storm a chance to thwart history and grow up with a loving family and much less trauma.

JKJK, but that time travel was for real. Legion boasts that he is now the first non-Brazilian mutant to have the power to travel through time. He plans to make the most of it, but doesn't elect to explain exactly what that entails.

Bishop attacks, which Legion easily swats away, then does a little riff: what does the M on his face stand for? Moron, Madman?

Iceman can't resist a set-up like that even though it completely ruins the element of surprise.

Flashing back to the moment of their arrival -- you can tell because the panels suddenly become rounded -- Legion informs the X-Men that he's not crazy anymore. Jean counters, "Well, you're still a little crazy, right?" This, for some reason does not endear the X-Men to him.

In the present day -- twelve or so minutes later -- Storm realizes what Legion is babbling about when he says he's going to "fortify the foundations of Xavier's dream." She quickly whips up a scheme to link the X-Men to Legion's time travel powers, so that when he pops off...

They get to come along for the ride.

Except for Jean, who has frankly had enough time travel for one year, and anchors herself to this time. She checks in with Xavier to let him know the other X-Men won't be back for supper.

Meanwhile, deep in space, Lilandra gets an unexpected visitor -- Jahf, the funny little man who lives inside of the M'kraan Crystal!

Now, never mind the fact that Jahf is a robot who was destroyed -- robots can be rebuilt -- but why is he bringing this to Lilandra's attention? He's not employed by Lilandra, he's not affiliated with the Shi'ar Empire, he's not concerned with galactic politics at all. He has one job, and that job is protecting the M'kraan Crystal, which the last time I checked contained a neutron galaxy, not a nexus of all realities (that's at the corner of 1st and 1st in Manhattan.) This isn't obscure lore, this is just the facts as depicted in Jahf's only previous appearance.

Anyway, there's so bad space mojo going down. What, how and why? How can you resist reading on to find out??

Further Thoughts:

This issue had an interesting approach. It could have easily been simply a straightforward "The X-Men go attack Legion, lose, and get swept up in some time traveling shenanigans." Instead, it is told in a fragmented, non-linear way. I'm not saying that's a good thing, merely an objective fact about how this story was constructed. Personally I found it a little bit messy, but it at least had a purpose in Storm reflecting on some of Legion's unhinged comments and piecing together the broad strokes of his plan just in time to take action.

It's a fine comic for what it is: all hectic action and crazy comic book logic. It gets the X-Men to where they need to be, puts Legion's powers on display and even delves into him as a character: an individual warped by mental illness (not a positive representation by any means, but we have to take it with 1994's dosage of a grain of salt) and doing something completely reckless out of a twisted desire to please his father.

It's not a concept that has aged well, but it works in its way.

The issue features a plot by Scott Lobdell and dialogue by Mark Waid. That's not really notable -- Waid is a great writer who has indeed written some strong and snappy dialogue in his career, but this issue it's more heavy lifting, exposition and technobabble/mutantbabble, so I wouldn't really brag about being the one who wrote the dialogue. Having a separate dialogue writer is usually an indication that the regular writer is otherwise occupied after providing the plot -- almost as if Scott Lobdell will be writing a lot of comics in the near future that he wanted to spend time on.

A lot of the time I cringe when the comic reaches too far back to its past, but in this case I'll allow it across the board: Storm's vision of her own past is meaningful, Legion's association with his father, and thus with Xavier's time in Israel, is the entire purpose of the story, and the invokation of the M'kraan Crystal -- one of the most memorable artefacts from the early days of the All New, All Different X-Men -- is a way to say that something big is happening; the X-Men equivalent of dropping Uatu into a Fantastic Four story. The X-Men have a long and storied history and this is a good way to pay homage to that rather than dwell on it in a way that doesn't feel relevant to current readers.