UNCANNY X-MEN #325: Generation of Evil

Storm faces off against the leader of Gene Nation!

Originally Published October 1995

We begin with something of a curveball...or maybe a slider.

That's right sportsfans, the boys, girls, and nonbinary mutants of summer are back: the X-Men are playing baseball again. In this case it's a mixed game between the X-Men and Generation X. Despite the no-power rule, it's the usual shenanigans, especially since Skin can't exactly "power down" his excess epidermis.

The whole thing ends in a crazy mutant dogpile (and not the sexy kind) with M on top, which is also a violation of the no-power rule since Monet's mutant power is to be the best at everything.

Hank, you haven't been an Avenger in like 10 years... which is 18 months in Marvel Time

In the midst of all this fun and frivolity, that always sensitive and sentimental Wolverine wonders, gosh darnit, when did life get so serious that we never laugh anymore?

I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do is wistful nostalgia

As if his ears were burning, Colossus -- last seen rescuing the lifeless husk of Magneto from Avalon -- arrives via teleportation with an unexpected passenger.

Hey, that doesn't look like Magneto

Callisto -- upon regaining consciousness -- has a dire warning. The time of Gene Nation is at hand.

Now sure, the X-Men have already met and defeated Gene Nation once, but they're getting ready to make their big play. As Callisto explains, Mikhail (RIP) transported a handful of Morlocks to an alternate dimension, where time passed differently from here, thus allowing little Sarah to grow up into the budding terrorist Marrow. Now they're back from outer space and ready to kill some flatscans.

Why today? What, don't you remember? Today is the anniversary of the Mutant Massacre! That's right it's been *coughahemhuruhcough* years to the day since that fateful attack that slaughtered untold numbers of Morlocks!

Speaking of things that are definitely not related to that event, Gambit answers  mysterious phone call that turns out to be none other than... Rogue! The two star-crossed lovers have a brief, tense reunion, their first contact since the fateful kiss that left Remy comatose and screwed Rogue's head six ways from Sundy. She offers some awkward pleasantries and just happens to let him know that she's headed for Seattle. Gambit is alarmed -- she would only be going to Seattle if... she knows his big dark secret!!

His father, a retired cop, and his brother, an effete psychiatrist, live there

The X-Men pull a Taylor Swift and fly their Blackbird from Westchester to Manhattan, which gives Warren a moment to reflect on the fact that the Mutant Massacre is when his original wings had to be amputated. Meanwhile, Gambit heads out for the Pacific Northwest, which catches the attention of Sinister, via his boobtastic assistant Threnody.

Storm, Colossus and Wolverine go into the tunnels with Callisto, and debate whether Storm's status as an absentee leader of the Morlocks puts her to blame for the Massacre and everything that's happened since, or if it's just one of those things.

By and by, they're attacked by Hemingway, whose power is 90% under the surface.

That's a really funny joke for English majors

Vessel also joins the fray, and Storm must fend off a Sack Attack when the body-possessing mutant with the ignominious nom de guerre takes on an unassuming human form to hit the X-Men's leader with his deadliest power: shooting her with a gun.

Storm does away with him and turns her attention to Marrow, the ringleader with the Weird Barbie hair.

There's more litigating of the past, as the mutant freedom fighter formerly known as Sarah the Morlock till has a chip on her shoulder about Storm's questionable stewardship of the Morlocks a lifetime ago. Marrow reveals her masterplan: bombs strapped to the kidnapped passengers of a commandeered subway car, whose detonator is connected to Marrow's heart. Stop the heart, stop the detonation.

I think you can see where this is going, as Marrow has all but explicitly set up a tribute to the iconic showdown between Storm and Callisto in Uncanny X-Men #170 from twelve years earlier (our time and, it would seem, Sarah's.)

Storm unveils her ruthlessness by drawing first blood, but Sarah, thanks to her mutant power of creating bone daggers (bone daggers, dogs in the moonlight) she has an unlimited supply of weapons. Watching on, Colossus cries foul, but Wolverine counters that it's all part of life's rich pageant.

However, when Psionic Gene National Reverb intervenes on Marrow's behalf, Wolverine can't stand it and is prepared level the playing field with a fastball special. Instead, Storm takes care of Reverb herself, almost losing the battle, but she catches the former Sarah monologuing once again about how bad Storm is and goes for the kill.

As the remaining Gene Naters are put in big mutant handcuffs, Callisto offers Colossus a chance to come back with her, supposing he doesn't mind that she's aged into an old crone -- an old crone who, through the magic of Joe Madureira's artwork, looks hotter than she ever has, including during the years she was an supernaturally hot person.

He bids her dos vidanya, which is Spanish for "two vidanyas."

Piotr also elects not to return to the X-Men: having just parted ways with the Acolytes after that whole Magneto cult thing went kind of pear-shaped, he's going to take it easy for a minute and focus on Piotr.

Wolverine and Storm free the remaining hostages, and Logan puts a punctuation on the whole story by noting that for the X-Men, it's not just about saving the day, it's about trying to keep people from being turned into monsters by the world.

Further Thoughts:

With nearly 50 years now behind us since Giant-Size X-Men #1 inducted Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Banshee, Sunfire and Wolverine to the X-Men's ranks, it's fair to say that the franchise has never really moved beyond the Claremont tenure of 1975-1991. Sure there are moments in the franchise where new ideas, concepts and directions are introduced and some fresh blood is infused into what is still a rich and worthwhile premise, but we're never more than a hop, skip and jump away from some creator wanting to play with all their favourite characters and moments from the past.

It's only as convoluted as you make it, Scott

For all the hemming and hawing Scott Lobdell does about how it used to be with the X-Men, he and his fellow current writers have largely done their part to move our heroes beyond the state they were in when they found them, reconfiguring the team and setting them up against new foes and threats, or foes based in the past sufficiently developed beyond their origins: the Friends of Humanity, the Phalanx, the Legacy Virus.

Which is why it's kind of a letdown to get to this allegedly big moment and be given what is essentially a cover of a comic I've already read. I like Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira on X-Men but there's nothing they can do that comes close to the masterful nature of Claremont and Paul Smith's work on the original incarnation of Uncanny #170 (my actual favourite issue.) And while I understand it remaining an open wound for Marrow and the like, that business with Storm leading the Morlocks was forever ago. Why indulge?

But that's sort of the thing. You reach maturity and you end up writing your favourite characters and you kind of want to take them to new and interesting places but you can't resist the urge to play with them in the exact same way as they were when you loved them growing up.

I get an "anniversary" wanting to have callbacks and references and nestle snugly into X-Men continuity. That all is what makes this feel like a special issue and not some run-of-the-mill offering. It does come off sufficiently momentous, but I still feel like it's empty calories. I should note that part of the appeal of the original Morlock story was not that it had any advance fanfare: "This is it, the moment you've been waiting for!" Callisto had literally just debuted the month before. It was just that month's comic, and much the better for it. It's more effective, but less splashy, to pay tribute to that by just putting out good comics month after month that people will remember. This is advice that goes way into the future of our present day, too.

But I can't hate. Even if I think this pales in comparison to the piece it emulates, I'm still having a lot of fun reading the comics that Lobdell and Madureira (and Nicieza & Co) are doing in 1995. That's the thing. Even if their run is standing on the shoulders of giants, and well aware of it, it's still a lot of fun by this point and it's a blast to be along for the ride every month. If you had not spent the last dozen years mainlining X-Men -- which a lot of people wouldn't have -- this would be a pretty fun and interesting comic, with a sense of history, meaning, and weight compared to a lot of what else was on the racks. So you've got to give it up.