The X-Men make progress with a Pilgrimm!
Originally Published May 1998
We begin with Wolverine in a tizzy.
It's a fair question. The Ole Canucklehead has had a pretty rough week: he was stabbed in the throat by Marrow, then all but certainly attacked by Rogue, and now yet another teammate seems to have turned their powers on him. It brings to mind a saying about what it might mean if you run into assholes all day.
Ororo tries to stop him from going out on the hunt by insisting he needs to convalesce. Wolverine disagrees -- "B**** I got a healing factor" -- there's trouble afoot, and Maggott is at the center of it.
Speaking of whom, in town the young man we know as Maggott is having a freakout, believing his itinerant slugs are responsible for the deaths of multiple vagrants in the area, making him and them the subjects of a police manhunt/slughunt.
Back at the mansion, Cecilia has a breakthrough on the mystery attacker -- unless the slugs have learned how to perform autopsies, they can't be the ones attacking people.
Storm, Cannonball and Rogue search for Maggott. Rogue takes the opportunity to ask about Storm's feelings toward Marrow. Storm repeats her line about how Marrow is a dangerous terrorist. Rogue takes the opportunity to remind her that so was she, once.
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| The x-ception that proves the rule |
The X-Men, after all, are all about forgiveness, unless you worked with Sinister beforehand then you are DEAD TO US.
Wolverine stumbles around, his healing factor struggling to keep up with his injuries, until he discovers the last thing you want to see on the Xavier grounds, especially if you, like me, are getting really f***ing sick of the 70's tributes and just wish these comics could move on to something new.
That's right suckers! It's the cairn! The N'garai cairn! Remember the cairn? From X-Men Vol 1 #96 back in 1975? You might also remember the non-cairn-based N'garai sequel a few years later, but we're talking cairns now.
Yes, as every good X-historian knows, from time to time a mysterious otherworldly stone structure pops up on the mansion grounds just waiting to burst forth with demons hell bent on mindless destruction. That's the bad news. (There is no good news.)
Beast and Cecilia arrive, with the latter in one of Wasp's (more embarrassing) costumes borrowed from the Avengers (Hank why were you stealing Janet's clothes?). Cece wants to examine Logan but that is somewhat less pressing right now.
The other squad finds Maggott on a rooftop, where his guava is feeling stoepkakker about all the murder his slugs have seemingly done. Storm consoles him that it's okay if he can't control his powers and sometimes ends up being indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents because unlike some uncontrollable murderers in their midst -- hint hint -- he doesn't mean it.
Apropos of nothing, Eany and Meany jump off the roof. Maggott follows, and so do the trio of flight-capable mutants, and something poorly-explained happens where I think they all get sucked into the ground.
Back at the mansion, Beast and Wolverine are preparing to take on some demons, and Cecilia, confronted with their otherworldly horror, turns from a hard-headed Doctor into a somewhat stereotypical superstitious Latina.
She runs, they chase, and she is rescued at the last moment by an unlikely ally.
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| She's not always there when you call, but she's always on time to stab whatever needs stabbing |
Cecilia takes a moment to grapple with the strange contradiction that she is a tough-as-nails E.R. doc who held her dying brother father in her arms when she was 6 but now falls to pieces at the sight of a few puny demogorgons.
The moment is not to last as the baddies arrive, seemingly having killed Wolverine (who noted earlier that they had some kinda juice in their slobber that affected his healing factor).
Down in what appears to be the Stranger Things Soviet Lab, Storm, Rogue and Cannonball observe another cairn, deducing that the demons have expanded, possibly gone worldwide.
Elsewhere, in a place-between, Maggott skulks around N'garai territory. Helpless in the face of some demons and feeling kinda suicide-y anyway, Maggott welcomes the sweet embrace of death at their hands (and teeth.)
But it is not to be! He has an unlikely rescuer, someone who looks like he's Been Through It.
Topside, Beast and Marrow are tied up with some other innocent victims. They watch Cecilia prepare to be dissected (actually vivisected, as the Doctor should know) but fending it off with her forcefield and her Nuyorican upbringing.
She screams in rebuke to the N'garai, which gives her tormenter pause. "Um... what did you call me?"
Elsewhere, Wolverine explains to Maggott that he's been down here a while -- "time works differently" here, making it a tribute not just to X-Men #96 but Uncanny #160 as well, even though that was a different limbo with different demons.
Ha-hem. The unlikely duo goes in search of the original Hellboy, Kierrok the Damned, the guy who runs this whole show, whilst giving Maggott a pep talk.
Back on the operating table, Pilgrimm explains that no he is not N'garai, just because he's a demon who came out of a cairn, and it's frankly racist of you to think so.
In fact, he is one of the Ru'tai, the slave caste the N'garai used to build their empire. Eventually, they were freed by Mai'keth the Undying One, deposing Kierokk (sp) and sending Pilgrimm (who, like Jim Croce, has got a name) out to learn about the human world the best way he knows how, by slicing up a bunch of people and examining them.
What has he learned about humans in that time? That they suck (I could have told you that.) Cecilia points out that all those lives he ended in the name of exploration were unique and meant something, and Pilgrimm counters that no.
Storm, Rogue and Cannonball arrive, but are zapped by the eye Pilgrimm wears around his neck.
But Wolverine and Maggott also show up, which gives Pilgrimm pause -- hey, he looks familiar...
That's right! During Wolverine's undetermined span of time in the underworld, he became Mai'keth, the brutal liberator of the Ru'tai! How about that shit?
Wolverine is a little put off to learn that his bezerker rampage inspired a devoted cult of demon monsters.
Anyway, since it doesn't seem like this will end peacefully -- Pilgrimm's deference to "Mai'keth" only extends so far -- the X-Men get in a big brawl, determining that the Eye of Kierrok/Kierokk that Pilgrimm wears around his neck is key to defeating them.
Watching from the sidelines, Cecilia wonders how "they" (the X-Men) are going to defeat these monsters. Maggott notes, meaningfully, that there may not be a "they" anymore, just an "us." Cecilia takes a moment to absorb this, and leaps into the fray, flinging herself at the eye.
And I guess... shattering it...? With her ass...?
Anyway, with that all done, the whole dark dimension starts crumbling so the X-Men take the nearest cairn outta here, with Maggott being reunited with Eany and Meany in the meantime.
One big KSKROOW later, the X-Men have landed in Vegas of all places.
After all the cleanup is done, the cops look to take care of all the displaced persons freed from the Ru'tai. But there's some indication that the threat may not totally be over.
No, please... don't do me any favors... we can end it here. Really. No need to tease a sequel. I insist.
Further Thoughts:
It got off to a rough start, but it actually turned into a bit of a wild ride by the end. This giant-sized "anniversary" issue (a number divisible by 25!) had the energy of a classic annual, in that it was a huge, complicated threat that is wrapped up neatly by the end and feels weirdly cordoned off from anything going on elsewhere in the series.
Okay, so we've had a lot of "The new X-Men are suspicious, or dangerous, or desperately don't want to be here," so far. There's been chaos. There have been stories that feel like they're only half-baked, and way too many callbacks to 20-plus years earlier. And this issue has a lot of those problems. But taken in a vacuum, it's one of the better stories I've read lately, with the X-Men coming together despite their static to fight off a major threat.
It was messy and kind of hurried by, but readable, and attempts to have strong character moments for the new characters, paying off the "Maggott's slugs may be dangerous" storyline (although I'm pretty sure we totally did see them eat a homeless guy once) satisfactorily. Perhaps now, this mötley groüp will come together as one and stop bickering all the time, having at long last thwarted their first big foe with teamwork instead of just randomly bickering and fighting amongst themselves. It's time to move forward and start doing X-Men S**t.
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