The X-Men and Acolytes prepare for war!
Originally Published March 1999
We begin with the Acolytes running amok-alyte!
That's right, it's the return all your favourite Magneto Followers, including... um... wait, let me consult the Wiki...
Oh, yeah, there's Cargill and Scanner and Carmella Unuscione and... Neophyte? Wasn't he famously kicked out of the club? And there appears to be a new pickup named... Vindaloo? Seriously...? The first Indian mutant of any significance and you name him after curry?
Now, we haven't seen much of the Acolytes lately, primarily because there hasn't really been anyone for them to Acolyte for. The X-Men conclude, therefore, that somehow, Magneto must have returned!
Well, they've also been known to run errands for Fabian Cortez, and Exodus, but yes, that's a fair assumption I suppose. We are informed by a woman claiming to be Trish Tilby that the Acolytes have been striking Genetic Research labs for whatever reason.
The X-Men aren't sure what to do about it. They bicker a bit about what course of action to take, with Marrow in particular advocating to just go "take care of" Magneto. Xavier determines that for now it's best to follow and watch the Acolytes, hoping to catch them in the act. And if "Joseph" is the one behind all this, they'll deal with that.
Little do they suspect that the Real Deal Master of Magnetism is at the Arctic Circle, chilling with his robot pal Ferris and having banter so pithy you could put it in a James Gunn film.
And down in what is currently known as Israel, the super-scientists have been testing Joseph and come to an intriguing conclusion -- that he's a counterfeit!
Meanwhile, in Northern Ontario on the shores of the Hudson Bay (a location so obscure I half-expected Jon Montgomery to be waiting for them) the X-Men catch up to the Acolytes and the two groups have it out.
Neither Colossus nor the Acolytes make any mention of the fact that Piotr used to roll with them. But you know what, sometimes I, too, block out entire lengthy periods of my life.
The Acolytes get the better of the interaction, leaving the X-Men trapped long enough to make a getaway.
Meanwhile Ferris, the evil magenta C-3P0, walks into the United Nations.
The X-Men are able to catch up to the Acolytes in the air. It appears the Magnus Fanclub is trying to get them to follow, either in order to lead them to something, or away from something... either way, the X-Men are game.
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| What choice do we have -- not blindly follow our enemies to parts unknown? |
Meanwhile, Magneto stands on a machine and gets all glowy, speaking grandiose proclamations out loud to nobody in particular.
The base hums with energy and zaps blue magnetism into the sky, ominuosly.
Meanwhile in Israel, Joseph is going for a walk and trying to clear his empty little head when he meets a strange woman who tells him he has a job he's been neglecting. Before he can say "I don't know anything about that, I have amnesia!" she zaps him into unconsciousness and identifies herself as... Mother!
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| Mother has arrived! |
And yeah, kidnapping is bad or whatever, but if it means we don't see any more of Sabra in this comic I'm not against it it.
At an atmospheric monitoring station, the staff is going bananas looking at some crazy readings, the likes of which they've seen only once before...
The electromagnetic mojo impairs the X-Men's Aurora Jet, though the Acolytes' vessel is prepared for such a thing.
The Acolytes watch as their foes plummet -- lamentable, but as Cargill says they'd gotten a little soft on the X-Men after Cyclops, you know, saved their lives that one time.
At the U.N., Ferris delivers Magneto's stump speech, the theme of which is -- we're back, bitches!
Magneto is here to disrupt all human civilization and re-organize it under himself. And who could possibly stop him?
Further Thoughts:
This comic actually follows a one-shot confusingly called X-Men: Magneto War, in which the X-Men clash with the Acolytes at the mansion. I glanced at it but quite frankly, we're not missing anything, unless you're curious how an Acolyte called "REM-Ram" and an additional faction of Acolytes led by Cortez fits into it. As it happens, the last time the Acolytes were a going concern was also one of the final issues of X-Men written by Fabian Nicieza, who is here to script over Alan Davis' plot and Leinil F. Yu's pencils.
There's one problem with any story that involves the Acolytes, which is that nobody knows who is actually in the Acolytes or what they can do. Say what you will about old comics but they used to be good at doing some kind of Roll Call so you knew who you were looking at and a handy summary of their powers, but I suspect that technique fell out of fashion in case the creators needed to pull a new Acolyte out of thin air or adjust their abilities on the fly.
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| Case in point, this is not Kamal |
Keeping with the throwback theme, Magneto is here to issue an ultimatum to the UN, again, and threaten the Earth's magnetosphere, again. There's a definite "back to basics" feel, as literally as can be stated, as we essentially re-run a huge chunk of the Early 90's conflict between the X-Men and Magneto. Obviously this is not my favourite thing -- doesn't do much to make the book feel like it's going forward, you know -- but if this is what we need to get back to first principles and put this book on solid ground after a year of uncertain terrain, I'm for it. There's not much point in complaining about a story called "Magneto War" being about a War fought by Magneto, after all. This is the big event for early 1999, time to get on board.
Beyond that, it's perfectly capably-executed comics by a team of old pros who at the very least know the bare minimum of what to do in an X-Men comic. There is no time for a misstep or an awkward moment, it's what I call Just Comics -- good guys, bad guys, explosions, grandiloquent speeches, all that stuff. Nobody is going to look at it as the most innovative and fresh X-Men story that's ever been told, but if you are a devotee of the X-Men you've lived through worse and might as well keep reading.
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