UNCANNY X-MEN #369: Collision Course

The X-Men help the Trion defeat the Juggernaut -- or is it the other way around??

Originally Published June 1999

We begin in Mother Africa, where Storm is being given the nickel-tour by her younger self. 

However, not everything is exactly as it seems -- as if it possibly could be.

Back in the Upside-Down, Gambit, Colossus and Black Tom stand guard over the fallen body of Ororo, the similarly waylaid Marrow, and the vacant form of Professor Xavier. They watch as the other X-Men do battle with the Juggernaut, getting the upper hand on Giant Juggs when Nightcrawler is able to use his monster-summoning glitch to good effect.

It is my duty to inform you this is cool as hell

In the alternate-alternate dimension, Ororo encounters three mysterious figures symbolizing Earth, Air and Water.

 

The Wolverine-Xavier Combo Platter leaps into the Juggernaut's Jack-O-Lantern Mouth to see what's going on, mentally speaking. Inside, they find him not-altogether willing to play ball.

However, they discern that while he's equally as jerky as the real Cain, he's also somewhat more sinister -- this is the manifestation of the evil force possessing Charles' stepbrother. They find find the real one cowering under some stairs (symbolically speaking.)

Meanwhile, Storm surmises she has come face to face with the mysterious Trion! And quite honestly they do not seem thrilled to see her.

Back in Juggermind, Charles and Logan give a pep talk to the real Cain, who is feeling low and weak and having his fears and insecurities exploited so that the evil other Cyttorak power can take the wheel.

Cain gets the reassurance he needs to evict the evil force from his Juggerbod, in spectacular fashion.

This enables Charles and Logan to escape the mindscape but also rips a hole in the local reality, oops. Just when the heroes seem doomed, Storm performs a dramatic Undertaker-style sit-up and uses the sidewaysverse version of her powers to tap into the Trion's energy and heal the rift.

Having done that, she calls out the Trion and lays it out for us, the readers -- that the Trion purged themselves of the potential for evil, this causing this dimension to become sterile. The evil, thus trapped in a black orb but also sentient (just go with it) reached out to recruit the Juggernaut, causing the Trion to enlist the X-Men to do their dirty work because they think they have moral superiority.

Basically, the Trion aren't all that, nor a bag of chips. However, they're unwilling to hear more criticism against themselves, and zap away. Ejulp is like, "Well, I guess we're all done here," and with a wave of his hand, sends the X-Men home.

Or, he tries to, as while Cain and tom wind up elsewhere, the X-Men miss their mark by what seems to be a few miles...

But turns out to be light-years.

Further Thoughts:

You can't say it's dull or unimaginative or without purpose, as Davis & Co threw every kooky bit of business they could conceive into this one. The expositing and philosophizing at the end was a little clunky, as I suppose is likely to happen when you're dealing with non-verbal esoteric concepts for villains.

It's an ultimate shaggy-dog story that serves its purpose to get the X-Men onto their next wacky adventure. In a way, it's a throwback to late-70's Claremont-Byrne issues we now call the "World Tour" that featured several distinct stories in different settings linked together as the X-Men fumbled their way home from battling Magneto. It may not be the most zeitgeist-capturing story possible, but if the mandate is simply to create A Fine Comic adventure, Davis, Kubert and Kavanagh did it well. 

After a few waterlogged multiparters like The Hunt for Xavier and Magneto War, I appreciate the lean and mean two-parter here -- go to Lalaland, Fight a Fake Juggernaut, confront the Trion, and move on. More comics should swish through material with such wild abandon. It's not economical, but it sure is reader-friendly.

Heavy-handed though the philosophy and moralism may have been, all that stuff was no worse than what you get at the end of a standard episode of Doctor Who, and served to impart some measure of substance to the proceedings. If the comic had been on a roll at the time instead of struggling to get out of its post-Zero Tolerance funk, we'd be a lot happier with it, I suspect. It's all about context and timing sometimes. Alas, simply doing Good Comics doesn't always cut it.

At the very least, it renewed my faith in the Juggernaut Principle, that it's always a good time when Cain shows up (except once.)