X-MEN #77: Stormfront

The X-Men are at the mercy of a trickster god!

Originally Published July 1998

We begin with a horrifying vision of things to come -- Storm, buried amongst the dead X-Men!

But later for that, let's re-begin at the actual beginning. Storm has received a sand-o-gram from back home, specifically from Ainet, the one woman who saw through the exterior of Storm -- both the so-called goddess and the urchin with a chip on her shoulder -- to be perhaps the first (only?) person who really knew her.

Of course, this is a very personal mission and Storm is prepared to go it alone, but the X-Men feel like a team now, so they're all in -- Cannonball is in full aw shucks mode, thinking this is a great opportunity to learn about Storm's homeland. Cecilia is wary, having had a lot of mystical gaga lately after vising N'garaitown, and even Maggott is in, despite being otherwise none too keen to visit the homeland.

Ferrying the X-Men to Kenya is none other than their handy newfound teleporting telepath, Psylocke, who has reappeared after several weeks away, with the marks of the Crimson Dawn mysteriously missing from her face.

They almost leave Marrow behind, but before she can get up to Risky Business alone in the mansion, Betsy grabs her too.

The team is transported across the globe instantaneously, but have been strangely separated -- Wolverine and Psylocke are on their own to do battle with some putties that turn to sand when defeated.

The rest actually do make it to Storm's village. Cecilia, showing that geography is not her specialty, asks Maggott how far they are from his place of origin. Maggott answers, cryptically, "not far enough," thinking undoubtedly of the trauma he endured there. In reality, it's about 4000 km, or about the distance from New York City to Las Vegas.

While Cannonball wanders off on his own -- again -- to look for their missing compadres, the rest of the team discovers the people of the village gathered as if under some kind of spell.

They are, of course, under the thrall of the bar-spittin' West African trickster god (on vacation in Kenya) known as Ananasi (sp)!

Meanwhile, Sam is trapped in a nightmare vision of the Kentucky mines, with a ghastly specter of his father, ashamed at Sam's decisions

Back on this plane of existence, Storm does the "let her go" routine, while Ananasi demonstrates both genre savvy and a propensity for wisecracks.

Your first clue that this African god might not be entirely what he seems is when he says "bada bing, bada boom."

They tussle a bit, and the new X-Men -- "not yet tainted by the X-Men's lies" -- get to visit a fantasy dimension, where Maggott no longer needs his slugs, Marrow is hot, and Cecilia, I don't know... can chill out for a second I guess.

Here in "Truthworld" you see things as they are inside, including for Ananasi's captive pet...

On terra firma, Psylocke -- now with face scar thing properly depicted -- joins the fight against Ananasi.

She and Wolverine, the two most dangerous X-Men to Ananasi's plan, were indeed separated from the team at the god's behest, but Psylocke... got away. Somehow.

They take the fight to the psychic plane, against the trickster's wishes.

Ananasi seems to divert a lot of his attention to Psylocke, who dons a psychic version of her Lady Mandarin armor to do battle.

Ananasi goads her on with smack talk -- she's nothing, she's a B-lister, she's weak, she doesn't look like Linda Evangelista... Storm starts to realize exactly what the trickster's strategy is and tries to call out to Psylocke, to no avail, and gets stowed away in a dark dimension where she is buried with her dead friends (see the first page!) for her troubles.

Not that it would have done any good, as Betsy is absolutely thirsty to prove herself.

She strikes a killing blow --

Only for it to backfire in spectacular fashion.

Further Thoughts:

Although I have been pretty hard on recent issues of X-Men, I'm actually not that hard of a reader to please. All I require from a comic, pretty much, is that it gets out of its own way and provides some kind of interesting story -- usually concerning super-characters using powers on each other -- with a minimum of insult to my intelligence -- which, if I'm sufficiently enticed, I am willing to turn off to a certain degree. It's a seemingly simple mark that writers and artists, in their search for creative fulfillment, novelty, or navigating difficult relationships with editors, often miss.

This one hits. I was not, initially, expecting much from it. We literally just did a version of "Local god menaces the X-Men" with Steve Seagle in Uncanny, to rather underwhelming effect. It seems a bit quick to be literally running back the same story, but where that one falters into cringeworthy cliche, this one soars.

Under Joe Kelly's script, "Ananasi" has charisma to spare, and makes for a fascinating foe. German Garcia draws the hell out of him too, making his various forms look interesting, threatening and otherworldly, whether it's the giant eldritch version or the "just standing there" variant. I could take or leave the stuff with Marrow, Cecilia and Maggott but they're in this story and they need something to do, so singling them out as the new members who are clay for the "god's" manipulation is a viable angle. And while there were a few missing beats along the way with Wolverine and Psylocke, it all comes together nicely in the last pages.

This is the first comic where I've really enjoyed the focus on Psylocke since -- I don't know, the first one? When Claremont initially wrote her, she was externally a prim and proper lady desperate to prove her mettle, whether she had it or not -- and make no mistake, she had some but she was also prone to overestimating herself. The character, in all her haughtiness and unearned confidence, become irksome to me around the time she was made "leader" of the X-Men (what remained of them) in #148-149, with her signature move being that she ushered them through the Siege Perilous. At that point, as we all know, she was physically transformed into a sexy ninja babe, and her character kind of got lost -- she seemed to be what she was on the outside, a somewhat fierce fighter, an opportunity for cheesecake art, and yes, as Ananasi points out, a psychic you can call when Jean Grey isn't around. Occasionally her origins would be remembered and she would struggle with "I'm British -- but I look Asian??! And I also feel very Asian??!" and the less said about the snarl with Revanche the better. Even that business with the Crimson Dawn, serving to make her cold and spooky, hasn't done much for her character -- giving someone new powers and making them mean is sort of the all-purpose "this character is boring, let's try to fix them" tool, and it rarely takes.

All this to say, I like that this story not only invokes, but ultimately relies on something that is specific to Psylocke's character -- her inadequacy, self-consciousness and temper. It's fitting that the trickster god would be able to tease her into making what appears to be a huge mistake, and in fact the issue itself is something of a trick -- we're led to believe this would be a big Storm story, but it actually is all about Betsy.

All this leads to all the questions you want to be asking of the comic: what now, why, and who is Ananasi, anyway? Terrific stuff that is fixing to get this wayward series on track.