UNCANNY X-MEN #356: Reunion

The O5 are together again to face the past -- and the future!

Originally Published June 1998

We begin in a 49th state of mind as Beast, Angel and Iceman are Alaska-bound to drop in on their long-departed (for almost four issues!) fellow O5'ers Cyclops and Phoenix. Things get off to a rocky start as the trip is plagued by poor conditions, bad omens like falling birds, and the fact that they are taking a trip with Iceman.

Warren, what in the hell are you talking about? It was always Beast and Iceman double-dating and stuff. Also you have worse taste in hats than George Costanza.

Things go from bad to worse when the cab smacks into an errant moose just outside of town.

Ugh. Look, I'm sorry, I can abide all kinds of inconsistencies and fabrications and fantasies and fictions -- psychic powers, time travel, retcons, whatever. But I draw the line here on suspension of disbelief: if that car hit that moose, it's the car that's fucked.

While they await assistance, Bobby regales us with "how we got here." Seems he "just happened" to be visiting the mansion (I thought he was a full member again? After Operation Zero Tolerance was basically about him?) when he heard a phone message from Scott that was "out of character" (uptight and overprotective? Seems like our Cyclops.) So they decided to make it a reunion of sorts.

Beast chides his old buddy for his clownish ways, insinuating that Bobby has not yet finished going through puberty, which Iceman takes as a cue to mention he's fully smooth -- and not just because he's made of ice.

Why. Why was this actually put in a comic. For people to read.

Local police officer Chris Miller happens by, shotgun in tow and summarizes the situation. "Oh yeah, the moose. We built a bunch of subdivisions on their breeding grounds and they haven't taken the hint. Pretty annoying. Anyway, better euthanize this big boy."

Officer Miller happens to have just met Scott and Jean on their recent flight back from New York, so he agrees to take our trio over in his cruiser, after calling "one of the local tribes" to pick up the moose meat so that it doesn't go to waste.

Iceman thinks he catches something mysterious out of the corner of his eye but it disappears when he tries to look; Beast contemplates whether the trip is cursed. I contemplate whether it's this comic that's cursed.

Back at the mansion, Karl Lykos has reverted back to human form and is no longer the evil Sauron.

Sauron, you may recall, is a vampiric were-pterodactyl type of thing, complete with green leathery skin and wings and not, as the editors of this book have angrily insisted for three whole months, some kind of bird.

He's a dinosaur, Mark. The clue is in the name. Saur-on.

Rogue comes out to talk to Logan, who reports that he called SHIELD to come pick him up (the all-purpose answer for anything when you just need to get out of a story quickly.) Wolverine is confused that Rogue has donned her clothes from when she first joined the X-Men: doesn't that getup invoke darker times for you, personally?

Quite the opposite in fact, Rogue says -- they remind me of when writer Steve Seagle was young and innocent and safe and the world was a good place and everyone was happy, and things weren't as complicated and hard as they would be for a grown-up.

Okay, she doesn't say that literally in words, but it's all there in subtext. In reality, we are perhaps meant to connect it with the idea that Rogue is up to some shade, villainesque business.

The Gang arrives at Scott and Jean's where they meet Chris' wife Staci, who proceeds to pimp out her sister Melissa to the eligible bachelors present (and Iceman.)

Inside, Jean is like "Well, it's great to see you three and all, but um, why are you here?" There's an awkward moment where Beast is like "Wait, Scott didn't tell you?" And Scott, unfortunately, is unable to silently convey to Hank "No Hank, I did not tell my wife that I called our three oldest friends over because I am concerned she is going to lose control of her powers and become a planet-devouring cosmic deity, could you not read that in the tone of voice from my message??"

Scott improvises adequately.

Maybe I should have come up with some kind of cover story beforehand

Jean, despite having psychic powers and knowing Scott since they were teens, buys this.

Jean, Bobby and Warren settle in with snacks and girl talk, dishing about Psylockes recent goth phase (well she seemed okay at New Years...) Hank accompanies Scott upstairs, where Scott expresses his concerns that Jean might become Dark Phoenix again. Hank helpfully points out that that's stupid, as we all know, Jean was never Dark Phoenix to begin with -- she would have to become Dark Phoenix for the first time.

How hard is that to keep track of?

Scott, however, isn't having it -- it sure felt like she was Phoenix, right? He then reflects on his failures the last time, how he noticed the warning signs but never sought help for her... which is a huge reinterpretation of the events because not only did Phoenix undergo a lot of testing on Muir Island that gave Moira and others plenty of time to become concerned about her, Scott was not even there for most of it, believing Jean to be dead.

Scott pivots to Onslaught, which in some ways is the exact same story, but with Xavier, and spiky shoulderpads. What is it about being telepathic that causes people to lose their shitake mushrooms? Should we be watching out for that?

Scott closes by noting with resignation that (please don't say it, please don't say it) "so much has changed since those early days" (damnit!) and maybe the X-Men need to change too.

Speaking of the early days, they briefly reflect on the events of X-Men #1 (the 1963 version) and how weird it is that Magneto is now kinda-sorta an X-Man (again.) Warren points out that they have a decent track record with rehabilitating homicidal maniacs, terrorists and criminals like his own post-Apocalypse self, Wolverine, Rogue and Gambit -- but uh, maybe ixnay on the Ambit-gay there buddy.

Beast doesn't weigh in -- he's got a nose for plot-relevant headlines so he's buried in the local paper's reporting about Inuit tribes protesting the Ptarmigan Creek subdivision (which is where Scott and Jean are living.) They also talk about maybe trying to find Charles, but Jean notes that she's been unable to locate him telepathically. 

The whole convo grinds to a halt when a weird dead bird clogs the chimney.

Staci and Melissa happen to be passing by, and Melissa demonstrates her mutant telescopic vision powers.

Down in Manhattan, Rogue catches the mysterious Dr. Agee coming out of a shady office labeled "Mutopia" which just sounds like bad news. She confronts him, and he's like "Yeah, they wanted me, I said no, end of story."

I would love it if he turns out to be... just a guy. 

Back in Anchorage, the O5 observe the protests, and Officer Chris dismisses the Inuit's claim to the land, saying they're threatening to burn down the city to build totem poles or whatever (even though totem poles are not an Inuit thing) but We Amuricans got this land fair and square.

Bobby has another encounter with the mysterious figure who seems to be behind all of this, boldly proclaiming that he has summoned Chulyen the Crow God to wreak vengeance on the white man. His rantings go unnoticed by the others and he disappears into the night, which hardly seems like the ideal way to spread your message.

Being unbothered, the group proceeds to the restaurant, where they have a chatty waitress with a patchy-at-best understanding of the filmography of Lacey Chabert. Bobby in turn makes a topical reference to Twin Peaks, which had last been on the air seven years earlier, instead of a more recent quirky primetime series that was actually set in Alaska.

They begin to discuss how to refresh the Mutant Dream, all the while being unaware of the dread surrounding them!

Further Thoughts:

Well, it wasn't good, but it was fun to make fun of, which is almost as good for my purposes.

Obviously, I hate it when the O5 get together and talk Old Times. I hated it in X-Factor, and I hated it in the early run of X-Men vol 2, and I hate it now. I dislike Seagle and Kelly's tendency to keep drudging up the past instead of coming up with anything new, as if the point of being writer of X-Men is to curate the Museum of Great X-Men Stories. This is relevant to today, when the big ongoing event is a literal tour through the Best of X-Men; I recently grappled with whether it was a good, bad, or neutral thing.

So all of that is no good, and even if it were there are certain flaws in the execution, and now the big baddie of the day is a nefarious magic Indian. Yay.

Believe it or not there is something to like here, and it's not just my affection of Chris Bachalo's art style. I do think it's cool that Seagle is focusing, for the moment, on the Original 5, even if you can't get this group in a room together without it suddenly transforming to 1965. I think it's good because that means the book is focused on something of its own. It's not really the case, but it would be cool if this book were about these five characters and the other book were about the newer characters. Or at the very least, if they could be about something different.

Back in the 80's, you had X-Men, New Mutants, and X-Factor, and never the twain would meet, aside from the occasional crossover. Then they launched X-Men Vol 2, and there were the ostensible Blue and Gold Teams -- two different teams going on their own missions. It wasn't long (like, at all) before those barriers started breaking down and characters were shifting from side to side as needed, but at least there was a huge cast that could mostly be kept segregated until it was time for a crossover event.

That was mostly still the case at the end of the Lobdell run when he was handling both books -- after Onslaught (during which time the two series were pretty much intertwined by necessity) the X-Men had a habit of splitting into ad hoc teams for their various adventures, culminating in one squad going to space and the others getting caught up in Operation Zero Tolerance.

Since that time it's just been a blob. We've lost Bishop, Gambit and now Joseph. Scott, Jean, Warren, Betsy, and apparently Bobby, are all "on leave," shuffled to the sidelines albeit not out of the series completely. The active X-Men seem to consist of Storm, Rogue, Wolverine, Cannonball, Maggott, Marrow, and Dr. Reyes. Both series have been primarily concerned with those seven characters, leading to a situation we haven't really seen before, where the same team is undertaking wildly different simultaneous unrelated missions. That's how you get continuity messes like Joseph saying goodbye to Rogue but also being gone when she gets back from her trip to the city. You also get probably-unintentional repetition like Wolverine being attacked by Rogue and also being "attacked" by Maggott (after sparring with Marrow to much the same effect!) There's not a strong differentiation between X-Men and Uncanny in the first half of 1998, everything is just all happening at once. And that's probably not the source of the quality control woes but it doesn't help. To me, it doesn't matter if there are two concrete teams or just a bunch of bleedover, but there needs to be at least 10-15 X-Men playing out two discrete stories.

So we have the O5 reuniting and probably facing some shamanic hoodoo here in Alaska and maybe doing yet another redux about What It All Means. Okay, that's something! That's good, go with it. Leaving aside my distaste for the stereotypical Magic Native stuff, and all the "gee whiz times have changed" navel-gazing, I kind of like how it's going. Let's move forward.

And for crying out loud, stop having characters go "on leave" if you're just going to bring them back three months later.