UNCANNY X-MEN #332: The Road to Casablanca

The X-Men meet a traveler from an antique land

Originally Published May 1996

We begin with HOLY F$%K WHAT IS GOING ON HERE

Sorry, it's rude to stare. In an attempt to re-infuse Wolverine with adamantium that absolutely defines the word "Botched," the ol' Canucklehead has been devolved into a noseless goblin dog thing. We see him, erm, processing that, I suppose, while Professor Xavier voices his concerns to none other than... that's right... Zoe!

Don't tell me you don't know Zoe. Aren't you reading Wolverine? Aren't you invested in the goings-on at the intergalactic holding firm of Landau, Luckman and Lake? Don't you like her severe haircut and skintight outfit?

Anyway, Xavier has come to Morocco to grill her about just what in the sam hell actually happened to him and what does LL&L know about his condition. They've got some mysterious and highly classified long-term interest in Wolverine so they're not keen to share, but we'll see about that.

Outside, Cyclops, Iceman, Jean and Cannonball wait in the Rolls Royce. Sam mopes about how ever since being called up to the X-Men he's been floundering. Iceman advises his to take in in stride -- we all have our personal slow periods. Bobby was in the Champions, after all.

Charles sends them off to find Wolverine urgently, then continues his chat with Zoe. Zoe warns him to stop prying, and to show how serious she is, she shoots him in the head, cold-blooded murdering him.

Hell of a way to end our Professor's run, highly shocking and abrupt. Except...

Yes, obviously that wasn't the truth, Ellen. Charles merely let Zoe think she was doing it with his fabulous mind powers. Zoe complains that Charles is not fighting fair by using his peerless telepathic powers, and he reminds her that she literally murdered him a second ago. 

His point: He lost Sabretooth, now he doesn't want to lose Wolverine.

And speaking of that guy, he has arrived at a nearby Berber castle, where one mile underground he meets...

That's right, it's the Ozymandias. The guy from the poem, and not some chumpstain wannabe! Apparently the reason his empire collapsed was not because of the fleeting nature of power and all human endeavor but because he challenged Apocalypse, and then was cursed to live forever, blind, and carving out random moments from X-Men comics in stone.

In other words, this guy is the world's first recapper.

He's surprised to see Wolverine because, well, for starters he never sees anybody and for another thing, last time he checked, people had noses.

Maybe you've read Shelley's Ozymandias, but have you ever had Ozymandias read you?

Now you may be asking why, if we're in Morocco, are we meeting an Ancient King from Egypt (which is not Morocco) and why is he wearing a turban (which is not Ancient Egyptian) and the answer is, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, 

Ozymandias pontificates at length about how crazy it is that there's all these superheroes with crazy powers running around, because back in his day they didn't have such things, except for you know, Apocalypse. Also I'm pretty sure Selene was rolling around back then. He wants to know why Wolverine has come to see him.

And seriously where is your nose?

Wolverine, for his part, probably just wants some kibble, and maybe some head scritchies.

At this time, the X-Men arrive, guns a'blazin'.

Cyclops has discerned that Ozymandias is serving Apocalypse out of fear, but there's no need to do so anymore, because he died on the moon and you don't just come back from that (Jean Grey, standing beside him, chooses to say nothing.)

Ozymandias figures, okay, we're doing a super fight, and he sics them with stone replicas of various X-Men characters.

Harsh way to talk about your son, Jean

There's a scuffle and of course the X-Men appear to have it all well in hand until Scott tumbles into the big pit in the center of the room.

Luckily, Cannonball is there to blast down ahead of him and--

Er, well, at least Jean can telekinetically--

No, didn't you hear, they're all too busy. Cyclops is f$%ked.

The story picks up in Wolverine #101.

Larry Hama explains for us why Jean can't do anything and Wolverine must jump heedlessly into the pit to save Cyclops.

Wolverine, somewhat improbably, manages to catch up to Cyclops.

And he wakes Cyclops up the only way he can think to.

Getting his bearings, Cyclops' first thought is to be alarmed at a carving he sees on the stone column of...

And it's like... I don't know, man. He did a stone carving of Frenzy. Who's to say what rates to this kooky Ozymandias guy?

Cyke then passes out again from the pain of having his head bashed on a rock during the fall.

In the chaos of the fight, Jean notices a shadowy figure watching them from above.

It turns out to be Elektra, who has been skulking around since the previous part of this story. She helps clobber some stone guys but then skedaddles.

Realizing he is defeated, Ozymandias hits the panic button and destroys his Spiral Record -- the big stone column with all the prophecies carved into it. But he is sure to tell us that he hasn't lost anything, he has backup (I suppose, unlike Sinister, he uses the cloud.)

Like me when my social battery runs out after 2 hours of human interaction, he crumbles into dust so that he doesn't have to deal with these people anymore.

Cyclops wakes up in time to pontificate about how, if he has his guess right, the things he saw on the spiral may mean that some bad stuff is headed the X-Men's way.

That may be overselling it a bit

I mean, he literally only saw a picture of Charles, but um... sure.

Anyway, they GTFO and the issue ends.

Further Thoughts:

Is there any possible way to feel invested in all of this ancient hoo-hah surrounding Apocalypse? On the one hand, I can't roll my eyes too strongly. I knew the breadth and scope of the X-Men's crazy adventures through time and alternate realities when I signed up for this mission, and I intend to embrace it. On the other, it feels very halfhearted and poorly-sketched and not all that germane to the numerous other ongoing stories. What is Ozymandias doing, why does it matter, what effect is it supposed to have on the actual story that is being told?

Okay, but, let's check in with little Scott at this time, as he would have been about to turn 9 when these issues hit stands and was starting to grow into a prolific young reader. And his imagination would have been absolutely fired up by the ancient nonsense at work here: prophecies, stone soldiers, a humbled former king, very mythological, very expansive. Part of the reason why I love comics in general and X-Men comics in particular is that you can take the guard off and tell literally any wild story you like. When I was about that age I use to meet up with my best friend at the park every day after school and we would run around playing make-believe like we were cowboys, and then when we were tired of being cowboys our characters became pirates. Then we found a portal through time, or died and got reincarnated as gorillas, or something equally insane. My childhood greatly resembled the book The Egypt Game and I'm sure young me was/would be very into this particular slice of X-Men cosmology, so how can I hate? If you had the right imagery, I wouldn't notice a story made no sense or was wafer thin.

I think my main issue is that whatever are the merits of the story, it's not tied in or executed in a compelling way -- the same problem I had with the Crimson Dawn two-parter which had promise on paper but ended up just wooshing by.

To say nothing of the imposition of the Landau, Luckman and Lake thing. Another mysterious group with mysterious schemes. (They'll actually be put to good use in the Deadpool series that debuts in a year or so but that is not the case here and now.) Does it need to be crammed in there with all the other ga-ga the X-Men are putting up with on a monthly basis?

Then there's what-all is going on with Wolverine. Because we mostly only cover Uncanny and unmodified X-Men we haven't seen a lot of Wolvie since his adamantium was ripped out two years ago, but he's been grappling with that in his solo series. This culminated in the landmark Wolverine #100 with a fancy hologram cover where it was hinted that maybe he would get the adamantium back, but instead the process went awry and, in a plot development that I'm sure was very satisfying to people who just wanted the old Wolverine back, caused him to degenerate into a literal dog man.

With no nose. 

(How does he smell? Probably awful.)

I'm not even necessarily against it, as far as a short term transformation and a meaningful consequence of a big story moment. We'll see things stabilize for Wolverine soon even if it takes considerably longer for him to get back to status quo. As frustrating as it probably is at the time, I think it's nice to see some kind of chance being taken with one of Marvel's most popular characters, and a crazy wild swing at that.

Mental regression and physical deformity? Chris Claremont would be proud