X-MEN #53: False Fronts

Say his name

Originally Published June 1996

We begin on something of a shopping spree as Jean Grey is out having a browse at the local dress shop in Salem Center. 

Being the friendly neighborhood telepath, she can't help but pick up the secret thoughts of everyone around her, and she indicates that although she isn't trying to hear everyone's thoughts, doing so is just sort of part of the background of everyday life for her. 

But no sooner can she go into the change room to try on her new Aramandi dress when she has an unexpected visitor... and that's not a euphemism for a certain biological process, I mean literally.

He is red though.

That's right, though he declines to identify himself by name, but because we unlike Jean have already seen the cover, we know we have here the first full visual appearance of the much-ballyhooed Onslaught, looking for all the world like a Super-Shredderized version of Magneto.

'Slaught positions himself as a kindred spirit offering a helping hand, looking to prepare Jean for the upcoming mutant-human flashpoint. Jean is skeptical that things are getting that bad but Onslaught really seems to have a bug up is butt about the normies and their falseness.

Meanwhile at the abandoned genetics factory in New Jersey, Not-So-Dark Beast remains locked away.

Though he despairs that he may have just lost his entire source of water, he realizes that it's draining out, which means a possible escape route.

In Manhattan, Onslaught begins his tour of hypocrisy by bringing Jean to the headquarters of Creed for President. Jean balks -- there's no hypocrisy here, these people are genuine about their hatred of mutants.

Oh, are they, Onslaught smirks (presumably -- it's hard to tell under his spiky helmet.) It turns out Creed's campaign manager doesn't care about mutants one way or another, and is simply riding the hysteria to a huge payoff.

Self-serving behavior? In politics??!

Onslaught crows that corrupt thinkers like this will always exist and fail to be won over by Xavier's utopian thinking. Jean is still unimpressed: Yes, assholes exist, but she chooses to surround herself with straight-shooters.

That seems to be the cue for Onslaught's next stop, but before we see it, we check in with Archangel and Psylocke, who witness the mysterious figure they had trapped in shadow with Psylocke's new crimson dawn powers. It's...

Before anyone can explain how exactly Juggy got to Colorado, he mentions he's got a huge bombshell of a secret to share, that will rock everyone's worlds. I would presume it has something to do with Onslaught, since the last time we saw Cain he had just been knocked clear across the 49th parallel by said being.

Instead of just coming out with it, though, he bails.

In Westchester, Onslaught takes Jean on a tour of Professor Xavier's psyche. Jean ha sye tanother pshaw for him -- she and Charles go way back, they're bonded, there's nobody more trustworthy. Case in point: remember when he faked his death, in the extremely relevant to 1996's readers X-Men Vol 1 #42 from 1968? Well, Charles was good enough to let Jean in on the secret, and that proves their connection -- that he clued her in to the shadiest thing he has ever done in a long career of shadiness.

Oh ho ho, Onslaught chuckles, we're diving even deeper though. How's this for a throwback?

It was my understanding we would never speak of this again

That's right, Onslaught had to go drudging up the one flicking time in Universe Charles Xavier indicated he had a romantic interest in young Jean Grey, aka the skeeviest and most regrettable panel in X-Men history (to this point.)

Onslaught assures Jean and us that it's not a torch Charles has been carrying -- he locked it away years ago, just like all the other emotions he has repressed. Charles is no saint -- he has hatreds and desires and the occasional weird fetish just like the rest of us. And because he obscures them from his public-facing persona, that makes him bad.

Meanwhile, the long-haired hot version of Magneto stops by a church BBQ in South Carolina.

Onslaught proclaims himself a truth-teller -- someone not beholden to woke society, and people can't deal with that. He invites Jean to embrace her full power just like she did when she was Phoenix. She politely declines.

Jean demands to know who her mystery tour guide is, but he says only that he is a being of immense power, something of a God, and to those who do not worship him he will be an angry one.

He drops her back at the fitting room, and she is carried out by the store staff in a daze, waking to notie he's left his calling card emblazoned on her forehead.

"Thgualsno?"

Further Thoughts:

Though I am always the first to say that Mark Waid can spin a yarn, this was an issue I did not care for. I maintain that the statute of limitations has passed on being able to reference moments from the X-Men's deep 1960's lore: almost nobody reading this comic would be around for it and the entire vibe of the comic has long since moved on. So not only do we get a reference to Charles' fake death with the Z'Nox affair but the ignoble moment of Charles mulling over his love for Jean -- a story thread that the writers at the time must have known was not a winner as it was not continuously pushed the way plots like Cyclops and Angel's competing affections for Jean were. I hate that it happened and I hate that anyone remembered it, but yes, it is there in "canon."

Let's give the benefit of the doubt, though. Waid is a writer who is very eager and capable of synthesizing all of the deep minutiae and lore he possesses about classic comics into a story set here and now. Onslaught is the big scary new apocalyptic villain. He needs a motivation and using him to plumb the deep dark reaches of Xavier's psyche -- which we know exist -- is viable. I don't, however, think the idea arrives on the page fully formed. Onslaught's entire spiel amounts to, people are hypocrites and deceivers, from the campaign flack to Saint Xavier. Jean is right when she responds by going, "So?" Is he supposed to be making an argument to join him? Is he supposed to be enraging her? Is this supposed to explain what makes him tick? Part of the problem is that Onslaught is still meant to be shrouded in secrecy, so his motives remain obscure even as he finally appears on panel to talk, at length, about his supposed motives. Why is he so concerned with Xavier's past, and the nature of his dream? Why does he look the way he does? What is this guy really? I think we're supposed to understand on a gut level who and what Onslaught is but the comic still wants to have that secret up its sleeve.

Because it's all one big magical mystery tour, the issue itself doesn't have much forward thrust: it's a talk-heavy preamble to the coming conflict, which as I've discussed before does work to build anticipation toward the upcoming story, but doesn't help this issue feel like I've read something substantial.

Outwardly, Onslaught is a bad guy assembled from parts labeled "Big apocalyptic villain," with all of his aesthetic, tactics, and patter, designed more to be provocative and look cool than to amount to a coherent character. That's okay, lots of baddies in X-History, like Apocalypse, Sinister and Stryfe, were too. But we managed to thread the needle of giving them motivations and means that felt authentically their own. Onslaught might as well just come out and say "Look, nothing I say maybe makes much sense but I am the star of this huge summer crossover and we're all just going to have to ride it out." Waid, bless him, does what he can to try to infuse some sort of thematic weight into this thing but falls short here of really making us feel like Onslaught has something of substance going on, some unique rizz that will make us interested in the battles to come. 

Hey guys, Scotto's inner child here checking in. Wow, the internet has become really messy since 1996! In my time it's all hamster gifs. Anyway I just want to say that as smart as the old guy version of me seems, this whole Onslaught setup seems cool enough to me, his points about hypocrisy make him seem really smart and deep, and all that flashback stuff just reminds me that the X-Men have a long and complicated history that I know nothing about but am stoked to one day learn. Maybe he's forgotten what it's like to just be excited about something.

Thanks, 1996!Scotto. If I want to know how to throw a slammer, I'll ask your opinion.