An Angel gets his wings
Originally Published November 1996
We begin with Warren Worthington looking torn, all out of faith, bound and broken on the floor.
Something screwy is going on with Warren's metal wings, other than the fact that they are metal wings given to him by an evil megalomaniac bent on world domination and that they may or may not have a mind of their own. Whatever is happening, it looks painful. He's having a bad day, made worse because now we get a visit from this guy...
Yes, our least favourite blind ancient king turned to stone with the power of foresight, Ozymandias, shows up to offer some cryptic words about Apocalypse, who I guess is undoing what he had done to Archangel in the first place, resulting in a painful and spectacular rebirth.
Meanwhile, in the Danger Room, Joseph is getting a history lesson about... his story.
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| But he's so... old! |
After the lesson, Joseph expresses his confusion over the fact that he is so welcome in the X-Men's home after many years apparently spent trying to kill them. Gambit arrives to note that these X-Chumps will let anyone in -- including Gambit.
Quicksilver arrives to underscore the point that the X-Men seem to think that nobody is beyond redemption, including his father, with whom he has a frosty relationship (having manipulated his children into fighting reluctantly in a war against humankind.)
Before that convo can go any further, Psylocke jumps out of the shadows -- literally, using her new shadow teleportation powers bequeathed by the Crimson Dawn -- to let everyone know that something is up with Warren.
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| Talk about a shady lady |
At that moment, Warren happens to be flying to Brooklyn, finding himself drawn to an old church where an ominous, sickly figure is offering the priest a dire warning.
Elsewhere, at a Graydon Creed campaign stop, Principled Journalist J. Jonah Jameson stops by to offer a lecture on the glory of a free press.
He doesn't know it, but he's talking to X-Man Bobby Drake, undercover as Drake Roberts as a volunteer for the campaign, which is trying to purge itself of the radical hangers-on and thus has a lot of open positions. (Ah, for the days when it was seen as a bad thing for politicians to get cozy with violent, hateful radicals.)
Anyway, Drake is introduced to another volunteer, who also looks like he might be hiding something.
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| Is this where you've been all this time? I thought you went back to X-Force |
In the skies above Brooklyn, where Wolverine and Joseph have a tense moment (Joe doesn't know he is responsible for ripping out Logan's skeleton a while back), the team has located Warren, only to find the church is on fire.
The X-Men are surprised to see Warren rocking the big feather-dusters again, despite the fact that Psylocke literally told them she found feathers at his place. Everyone is pretty confused, but they might as well just chalk it up to being one of those things that happens when you are an X-Person.
As to the fire, well, we know a guy who does that.
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| Next you're going to tell me it was always burning since the world's been turning |
Yes, it's Pyro, the fire-controlling (but not creating, as this comic may or may not remember) mutant who was recently diagnosed with the Legacy Virus.
As tends to happen in Scott Lobdell-written comics, he's lashing out because he's gone kookypants, creating an out-of-control blaze. If only we'd remembered to bring the X-Man whose power is to create rain.
Instead we've got Joseph, who threatens to crush Pyro to death if he doesn't stop the fire. Wolverine interrupts: killing may have been an acceptable way to handle things at the orphanage or whatever, but not when you're an X-Man.
Before they can decide to bring Pyro to Muir Island for treatment or something, he interrupts with vagaries about what he's been up to and who's after him.
It seems he went to somebody for help and they tried to use him for their own agenda. But he's coming around.
Unfortunately, despite being a published author, Pyro forgets about antecedents and can't seem to speak in anything except pronouns about "they" and "him" and... "her."
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| Scarlett Johansson? |
But before Pyro can overcome his terminal vagueness, he is scooped away by some living Earth -- the work of his sometime-colleague Avalanche.
The X-Men are left to contemplate what all of this means, with the priest assuring them that Pyro got whatever he needed to off his chest, and Warren left to reflect on whether he is truly free of Apocalypse's influence.
Further Thoughts:
This isn't topping any lists for the greatest issues of X-Men ever, but after months and months of Onslaught hullabaloo, the story has to creep forward somehow in some direction and it's absolutely doing that. X-Men lives on the continuous jolt of events like Angel getting his organic wings back, ominous tidings from Apocalypse, and more cryptic messages from another old foe.
It's certainly a momentous event, but I do question it: having metal, possibly evil wings was the most interesting thing about Warren. But I do suppose they rode that horse as far as they could this past decade.
The ongoing soap opera that is the X-Men still has a lot of cards to play. Take Joseph, somewhat filling the role of their latest rehabilitation project after Sabretooth and Emma Frost. He's naturally got tension with the X-Men in general, but particularly with Wolverine, for his misdeeds in his past life, and with Gambit, for his part in the new love triangle with Rogue, not to mention his own internal struggle about his usage of violent means.
Then there's the Creed Campaign and its ties to Bastion and Operation Zero Tolerance, which is simmering in the background and poised to re-center the X-Men as fighters for freedom and not just the punchers of big scary psychic monsters. I do think the "cryptic warnings" setting was cranked a little too high because we can't make heads or tails out of what Pyro is saying, but it at least works to stoke interest. Add that with personal drama and wonkiness surrounding characters like Archangel and Psylocke, and you've got a pretty good baseline for X-Fans to follow for the next, hm, year or so, provided they fight some interest8ng bad guys now and again
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| You mean other than the usual reasons people stare at you? |
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