X-MEN #74: Rituals

Angel confronts his past while Logan hunts for a killer!

Originally Published April 1998

We begin in the Morlock tunnels, where Marrow -- having stolen a med kit from Dr. Cecilia -- is tending to the dying Callisto. Sarah prays for help from her personal angel...

Speaking of whom, we find Warren in the skies above Manhattan, having a think -- specifically, that it's great to be flying around on his own wings again. 

This has inspired in him a trip back to where it all happened -- specifically where his wings were pinned to the wall and needed to be amputated during his traumatic experience of the Mutant Massacre. Well, nostalgia is a funny thing -- one day you find yourself about to turn 40 and you think, "Sure, I'll go to my high school reunion."

Meanwhile at Harry's Hideaway, the Salem Center diner favored by locals, Logan is having a chat with the proprietor about bloodthirsty mutants -- over a rare steak at 7 AM.

As we know, some mystery monster is going around eating up vagrants and the like. Unrelatedly, back at the mansion we see Eany and Meany decline to come when Maggott calls.

In the Morlock tunnels, Angel is facing his trauma when he has the misfortune of running into the Hulk villain, Abomination.

In town, Logan talks his way into the crime scene and has a chat with Dr. Not Gillian Anderson, M.E.

Jim Logan, you say?

Warren gets away from the Abomination, who makes endless Biblical cracks about his quarry's appearance.

But his Cherubic bacon is saved by Marrow, who has been watching, enthralled that her beloved Angel has returned. (She saw him get pinned up as a child and has been kinda fixated on him ever since.)

Abomination corners her as she realized that perhaps for once she's overmatched, but luckily Angel is ready to stand his ground.

Back in Callisto's tunnel, someone purporting to be her fave X-Man, Colossus, takes advantage of her delirium and sticks her with a syringe.

At the mansion, Maggott is learning what his slugs have been up to without his permission.

In the sewer, Warren and Abomination have a debate over whether beauty equals gooness.

Which naturally devolves to fisticuffs, in which Angel is somewhat out of his league.

But Sarah, moved by Warren's plight, has some tricks up her sleeve -- or in her waistband.

Back in Salem Center, Det. Jim Logan is on the case, thinking he's solved the mysterious attacks -- it's got to be Maggott. But as he reaches the scene of their latest feast, it seems someone else is there too...

Blinded, Abomination decides to just give up and let Sarah and Warren go back to the surface world, where she'll be rejected and come right back down to the sewer. 

Angel and Marrow bond when she tells him her real name and he offers to get her back into the X-Men, which she hasn't officially left but he is kind of on the outs with. 

When he realizes that the knives she used to stab Abomination were not her bone daggers but in fact his flechette feathers from when he had metal wings. 

When and how she procured those is anybody's guess, but she uses the brief distraction to hastily carve a vaguely inspirational quote on the wall and slip away into the darkness. Why? That's just the kind of thing Marrow does.

And topside, Wolverine is awakening after having been blindsided. But he's got company.

Wow, who could resist?

Further Thoughts:

The interesting thing about maintaining this blog and its associated social media is that every time I post one of these issues I get some kind person responding about how much these comics mean to them, about how they started reading when Marrow joined and how Maggott is actually one of the best X-Men ever. That's the beauty of the open forum that is the Internet, you are absolutely allowed to have those opinions. I could and would never try to take them away from you. Far from it -- I'd love to understand. So far, I don't.

However, if you squint and look at it sideways, this was a fine issue. It was focused and lucid and almost quite interesting, with Angel teaming up with Marrow to face down not just a literal monster but also their internal demons, as well as the mystery surrounding Maggott. It's far from the most compelling thing going on (I for one am really looking forward to finding out where that Sebastian Shaw story with the mystery men is going) but it's something. Are Maggott's slugs eating homeless people? And Wolverine? It sure looks that way. In fact we've literally seen as much. But is there more to the story? Probably. I'd love to find out, if for no other reason than it would burn off one of the many, many simmering subplots that have been introduced lately.