X-MEN #59: Touched

This technically happens... sort of

Originally Published December 1996

We begin with movie sign...!

Cyclops has stolen away from his duties as leader of the X-Men to indulge in a little escapism as he watches a Jimmy Stewart-Frank Capra classic. I guess we're just... putting still from movies into comics now?

Jean arrives and asks whether he wants to talk about his brother's recent decision to break bad. Scott responds that he absolutely does not want to talk about that or anything else, he just wants to watch a movie for once.

Meanwhile, they clearly won't have been making X-Men like they will used to have in the future as Bishop is roughed up by a visitor for the second week in a row...

With the Avengers mostly vanished, Hercules is bored and wants to round up as many leftover heroes as he can to, I dunno, throw a toga party or something.

Speaking of, Quicksilver is on the grounds, reflecting about how he is supposed to explain to his daughter that Mommy jumped into the psychic portal created by an evil purple monster and won't be coming back. If he really hasn't had that talk yet, he'd better figure it out, because it's been like three weeks and surely the little girl is wondering.

Wolverine arrives to dispense some of his patented wisdom: get busy living or get busy dying.

With this in mind, Quicksilver goes to seek out... Joseph, his de-aged and amnesiac father, who has been up all night thinking about Rogue. Which, to be fair, a lot of teenaged X-Men readers probably stayed up all night thinking about Rogue.

As alluded previously, he's had a breakthrough in understanding why she can't touch anybody without absorbing etc etc. Quicksilver changes the subject to remind Joseph that he's personally responsible for ruining numberous lives. Joseph is about to go all villainous with a "how dare you" but then takes a step back and changes his tone to a slightly more contrite one.

Back at the movies, Scott reflects on his childhood as a sickly orphan with no friends with the movie theatre as his only escape. It's actually the same origin as former AV Club Head Writer Nathan Rabin but to be fair, this went to print first.

Jean, as a telepath, is used to assuming she already knows everything about everybody, but this is news to her and she loves that Scott, her husband, has shared this deeply personal moment with her.

If you can't make out in a mostly-empty movie theatre where can you?

Back at Creed '96 HQ, "Drake Roberts" considers how he can help his father who has been detained following his outburst. "Samson Guthry" meanwhile, has either grown to ten feet tall or is standing far in the foreground as he talks to Graydon Creed, who claims to have been communicating with his mysterious parents.

Drake asks head Aide Carly Alvarez whether she thinks Graydon can pull it off, and she gives an ambivalent "It is what it is" answer.

Back at the X-Mansion, Herc and Quirk are getting ready to say a fond "toodles" to the X-Men. Joseph offers Pietro a feeble apology for all the stuff he can't remember doing, and the man who will someday be portrayed by half the cast of Kick-Ass simply shrugs it off.

Clark Duke and Christopher Mintz-Plasse still waiting for the call.

As they fly off, Herc offers his comrade another piece of unwanted advice, comparing holding grudges to not doing your laundry.

As the movie ends, Scott pontificates about how he has taken on the role of shepherding Xavier's dream. He's not sure he's up to the task (even though this isn't the first or even third time Charles has left the team) but there's one notable difference that is heartening: unlike Charles, Scott has someone who loves him (and lives on this planet.)

The issue ends with some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Storm is going to be in a comic. The bad news is that it's also going to involve the stupid f%^&ing Thieves Guild.

Further Thoughts:

Now, if I'm reading new X-Men comics twice a month in 1996 -- or, God forbid, 28 years later and pretending it's all new to me -- we're probably at, or even past, the point where I'm impatiently drumming my fingers on the table waiting for something to happen. 

I was actually quite charmed by Lobdell and Macchio's focus on Cyclops here, and all of the other individual moments of this issue are perfectly cromulent, but the cover, which promises some kind of brawl between the X-Men and Hercules, stops just short of false advertising (Bishop is indeed "roughed up" by Hercules, inadvertently, off-panel, which we only see the results of for humorous effect before everything gets settled.) Meanwhile, Creed '96 is on a low simmer like risotto, and we can't even get Bastion in here to do some Bastioning for a few panels. I was hoping for, at the very least, some kind of hilarious payoff to the person who was yelling at Scott and Jean.