UNCANNY X-MEN #322: Dark Walk

Whomst I ask??!

Originally Published July 1995

We begin with a little bit of a Warren piece, as Archangel flutters his way to a crime scene at the behest of his old flame Charlotte Jones. Jones is a tad bitter about the way Warren dropped her like a sack of flour a few months back but she's not going to let it interfere with her policing.

What will interfere with her policing, of course, are her fellow police, who open fire on the X-Man on sight -- and get knockout juice for their trouble.

This isn't even really an exaggeration of reality.

Archie has been summoned because Charlotte is investigating a mutant-on-human hate crime at a dance club, with a message having been left that is apparently best viewed from above, but we don't get to see what it is.

Back at the mansion, Storm takes a walk in the rain -- which conveniently stays away from her -- and contemplates how her good buddy Gambit has been left comatose after getting his lifelong desire to be kissed by Rogue. If you happen to smell wet dog nearby, that would be Wolverine, who is sulking around in the woods outside the mansion after his recent encounter with Sabretooth in the pages of Wolverine.

Go find a Wolverine recap blog to see what that's about.

Down in Hoboken, New Jersey, Beast and Bishop take in a showing of Pulp Fiction, which has the time-travelling mutant somewhat confused, possibly due to the fact that there were criminals in the movie who did not have their brains splattered out.

Their banter is interrupted by the sight of a falling star that appears to be landing mere blocks away. You don't have to be a lifelong X-Man or a cop from the future to know some superhero shit is about to go down. They hurry to the crater and discover what else but...

That's right, the supposedly-unstoppable Juggernaut has been functionally stopped! Time to remove that skill from LinkedIn.

Up the river in Upstate New York, at the home of the Greys, Jean discusses her sister's recent death at the hands of the Phalanx with her father, confirming that status once and for all.

The visit is being monitored by an invisible, possibly holographic, man, who wonders if the X-Men are prepared to face... dun dun dun... the dark times ahead!

Buddy, let me know which days the X-Men have had that were not dark.

Beast checks Juggernaut's pulse and finds nothing. Unfortunately it looks like the Juggernaut is dead.

No, no, no, I said it looked like he was dead.

The very much alive and disoriented momentarily-stopped Juggernaut goes on a rampage. Only Psylocke, who has joined the party by now, is capable of momentarily getting him to chill out with her psychic knife (the focused totality of her etc etc). 

Ordinarily, Juggernaut is immune to all psychic attacks with his helmet on, but today is, I dunno, a special occasion. Anyway, Betsy is bucked off for her trouble, but that, along with a monkey flip from Beast and 1.21 gigawatts from Bishop, does succeed in getting Juggernaut calmed slightly down.

Beast explains that Juggernaut that he has landed in New Jersey -- miraculously at the feet of his old friends the X-Men -- which freaks the big guy's bean ever so much more. It turns out he was clear across the border in Canada, probably minding his own business and enjoying a Molson Canadian.

I don't know if this has occurred to anyone else, but I think you would have to be a major league heavy hitter to wallop the Juggernaut clear across the 49th parallel. This would clearly be someone to watch out for. What, perchance, is this new player's name?

Further Thoughts:

You might not think it because on paper not a lot happens in this issue, but I'll go ahead: this is a great comic. With the clean-ish slate following the Age of Apocalypse event, it has exactly one directive, to get us excited as possible about a new mystery baddie who is so powerful that he can punt the Juggernaut clear over the Peace Bridge. We get a token few pages of X-Men vs. Juggernaut action, but it's not really about fighting or defeating the Juggernaut so the conflict ends without any kind of resolution and is just there as a matter of obligation, to give us something cool to look at through the pages. And honestly, I'm for it: the book knows the fighting is not really the point, gives us a few images to look at, and takes a less-is-more approach to the action.

This is not at at all a novel approach: promoting a new character (in this case from the shadows) by "putting them over" an established heavy hitter. It's a grand tradition that goes back, in the pages of X-Men, to Phoenix Phoenix smacking down Galactus' former herald Firelord and was deployed somewhat less effectively with the Upstarts taking out whatever old villains were deemed to be expendable in the early 90's.

Elsewhere, we check in with a few of our favourite characters (and Archangel) and get a few more token teases of future directions. Uncanny X-Men in 1995 is very good at being Uncanny X-Men in 1995, which is not intended to reach the literary greatness of the X-Men in the 1980's, but to provide monthly excitement and teases that keep readers coming back and maybe even occasionally get paid off eventually, often with a huge world-shaking event. It doesn't always work out, but it's a good time to be along for the ride.