X-MEN #55: Invasion

Onslaught Takes Manhattan!

Originally Published August 1996 

We begin at 6:00 AM with Stu Pfaffenberger, who has a few complaints about his overpriced, undersized Manhattan apartment, but at least gets to appreciate a gorgeous view...

...except when the city is under attack, as it so often is. Today, the borough has been overrun by Sentinels, which have, as usual, gone against their primary programming to protect humans from mutants and are instead just straight-up invading, in a scene that does play a smidge differently to those of us who lived through 2001.

I have to admit, however, that this shit is cool.

Atop Four Freedoms Plaza, a coterie of heroes have converged to face down the threat of Onslaught and his robot army. This includes the X-Men, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four, who have been drawn into the fray after Onslaught's successful abduction (and possible induction?) of young Franklin Richards, which you can read about on Ko-Fi.

Reed makes a bit of a whoopsie when he expresses surprise that Xavier could do this, and Iceman is quick to correct him that it's Onslaught now. Language matters.

Amongst the heroes are a returning Rogue and, of all people, the sexy young amnesiac Magneto, here to help.

Yes, people are a little surprised, but let's face it -- somehow the universe just keeps throwing them together, as Uncanny #274-275 was just so cool and memorable that writers always want to run it back. These two met up in an issue of X-Men Unlimited that unfortunately is not available to me, but if you want to hear about how they linked up with the X-Men and Avengers, you know where to go.

As Magneto -- make that Joseph -- ponders what kind of person could commit such horrible acts, Rogue gives him a hopeful speech about the power of redemption that could apply to Xavier, or himself, or a certain third party with an interest in Rogue.

While the heroes scramble into action, Onslaught and his kidsona Li'l Charlie smooth-talks impressionable young Franklin into cutting loose with his reality-warping powers that his mean ole daddy took away from him.

En route back from Muir Island, Cyclops and the others look over the data they have received from Moira: The Xavier Protocols, the heretofore never mentioned secret strategies that Xavier kept in case any one of his X-Men happened to go (small-r) rogue and needed to be taken down. 

That's a novel idea, Mark -- maybe you should have saved it for later!

While the big brains like Reed and Pym work on some kind of defensive measures against the ultimate psionic foe, the Avengers' heavy hitters duke it out with the Sentinels in the streets. It's kind of cool, but I'm not sure anybody really cares to see Cap, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor lining up to fend off an invasion of Manhattan.

They put up a good showing, even as Gambit, Rogue and Joseph continue to play out their love triangle amidst the brawl, but it might all be for naught -- Onslaught manages to erect one of those kooky conch-shaped big boss citadels you always see that don't actually look like they provide useful strategic architecture.

He goes out on his Juliet balcony to do a big villain monologue pronouncing himself the big bad of the world, all will tremble etc.

He unleashes some kind of crazy psychic-electromagnetic shockwave that disables the entire city and causes untold chaos.

It sets all the plotting and defense-development of the heroes way back, and causes Cyclops' jet to crash

In one fell swoop, the heroes are down for the count.

And down in Morocco, the world's most important ancient sculptor sees the future of Onslaught, and it's not pretty.

Yeah, he's gonna get all scary lookin' and weird!

Further Thoughts:

In wrestling terms -- because I know those are all the rage when it comes to comic analysis -- this is the heat segment, where the heroes battle valiantly but can't gain ground against the foe's offense. They just keep getting beaten down and down to show us how serious this business is, and to give them something to come back from.

The story is a mess that goes all over the map, with a villain that could not be depicted more generically, but at least he lives up the hype with the scale of his actions, managing to really get one over on the heroes. As I've said before and will keep saying, if you need comics to seem well-crafted, plausible, grounded and sophisticated, not only is Onslaught not for you but you can pretty much skip the entire decade of the 1990's at Marvel Comics. But if you like crazy action and iconic heroes overcoming crazy insurmountable odds, you could do worse.

The face of a man who is about to spice up your life

So the big plan was to use his phenomenal psychic powers to seize control of the Sentinels and wreck New York while he has a small child build him a base that looks like a snowmobile. It has a certain rugged grandiosity to it: if you want to get all hoity-toity about it there's a certain poetic justice to co-opting the Sentinels for his cause. But really it's just whatever seems biggest and splashiest, with the most sound and fury. It's a superhero Michael Bay picture: action first, logic later or never.

Onslaught, which is about a bald, wheelchair-using pacifist getting so frustrated he builds a giant buff body that looks like his ex and goes HAM with a bunch of killer robots, is so far over the top it winds up somewhere halfway to Jupiter. This is a comic book's comic book and at this point you're either in or you're out because it's pointless to resist. It is on some deeply suppressed level, powered by the enlightened and challenging themes that motivate every X-Men comic but that's well, well below the super-scaled superhero punch-em-ups.

Mark Waid is one of my favourite comic writers. I'm not sure that Mark Waid was the guy to write X-Men in the fullest bloom of its "all sizzle less steak" 90's existence -- in fact, the X-Men should always be more in-the-moment and forward-looking than Waid's typical writing -- but he is the guy to write all the Marvel heroes ganging up on one big baddie. He understands enough about everyone from Cap to Thor to Vision to Reed Richards (hey, maybe he should write Fantastic Four!) to give them something to say and do, and doesn't shortchange the title characters he has ostensibly been hired to write, the X-Men, by managing to address their current plotlines, especially the Gambit-Rogue-Joseph stuff. 

Hm, maybe Waid could also write Archie...