X-MEN #43: Falling From Grace

The X-Men must escape a doomed space station -- yes, again!

Originally Published August 1995

We begin by taking it to the limit as Charles maxes out the long distance minutes on his telepathy, breaking a sweat trying to reach Scott and Jean. 

The happy couple have found themselves, through a hilarious mishap, whisked away to the Acolytes' orbital stronghold of Avalon (by far not the weirdest couples getaway they've taken this year.) The asteroid base is currently, inconveniently, in the process of collapsing due to it being uniquely ill-suited for hosting a big blasty battle between Exodus and reality-tossed refugee Holocaust.

Cyke and Jean's first order of business is to locate the Acolytes they actually like: Colossus, Rusty and Skids. Peter is safe, but it's too late for Rusty and Skids is... kind of in an iffy position.

While Scott takes out some of his frustrations on Acolytes like Frenzy, there are more important matters at hand, like the freaky skull-headed fiery guy tearing shit up with Exodus.

Being new to this timestream, Holocaust is confused. He hates just about everyone because, for the most part, where he comes from they're all either X-Men, or otherwise working to undermine his father Apocalypse. Also his name is Holocaust, so as a general rule he probably doesn't keep a big social circle. His response to any sort of stress seems to be to lash out at anything nearby and accuse them of being in league with the hated X-Men.

Down in the central core, Colossus faces a dilemma: he has now way of knowing how severe the damage to Avalon is. He can get to an escape pod with Magneto's comatose body, but that would mean leaving without Scott and Jean.

Is this the trolley problem in space?

While Charles continues to struggle against Exodus' psi-shield preventing him from making contact, the Acolytes bear down on the trespassing X-Men, rebuffing the reasonable logic that they should probably all work together to get off this collapsing asteroid base and work out this "sworn enemies" thing later.

"Magneto held very nuanced and sometimes contradictory beliefs!"

The remaining Acolytes (RIP Javitz) give in and agree to get on an escape pod with Scott, but Jean stays behind: she's the only one who can rescue Skids.

Jean, this is all sounding strangely familiar

Xavier finally breaks through the psychic static. He gets a status update from Jean, then manages to relay the info to Peter that his friends are safe and to only worry about himself (Phew! Philosophical crisis averted.)

Peter gets away, but it's no such luck for Cyclops & Co, as all the pods are now gone. While Exodus and Holocaust continue to battle it out, Cyclops has Unuscione extend her forcefield around the remains of Avalon to get them to Earth in, hopefully, one piece.

All the while, Jean is doing a similar deal with Skids, combining he telekinetic field with Skids' own force field power.

Very familiar...

To be concluded!

Further Thoughts: 

Although his figure work looks out of place in a mid-90s comic and the coloring and inking don't feel like a match, Paul Smith's art is a huge highlight of this issue as it is through the pacing that the action on Avalon unfolds tensely. We've seen plenty of "trapped on a destroying base" type of stories and this is top notch work, with multiple planes of action being depicted with stakes that make you almost feel that some of the X-Men might not make it home.

The whole thing is, of course, a huge tribute to X-Men #100, complete with the TACTACTACTACTAC sound effect as Jean re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (itself a reference to Fantastic Four #1). What could this mean? Will Skids become the new Phoenix? I'm excited to find out!