The X-Men encounter the ghosts of the past!
Originally Published June 1999
We begin with Kurt scampering around what appears to be New York City, but as we've already established is not that. In fact, the further he gets from Manhattan, the more sketchily-drawn the whole place is (which I think is true of America in general) until he seems to see a Shi'ar settlement in the distance, which is definitely not a feature of the Tri-State area. More alarmingly, he encounters a figure from the past...
Kurt meets back up with Kitty, and expresses his concern that they have landed on the planet of ghosts.
Elsewhere, Storm and Wolverine go to raid a hospital for some medical supplies for the ailing Marrow. They get an offer of assistance from "fellow outlaw" Spider-Man, who is off to do crime but happy to lend a hand with theirs. The X-Men politely, and confusedly, decline.
Back at the dilapidated building the X-Men are using as a home base, Gambit and Xavier quarrel over best care for Marrow, who continues to suffer the ill effects of a rogue blast from Gambit's cards in Wackyland. There's not much that can be do for her, but that's not good enough for Gambit, who feels guilty about his part in that, and maybe also recruiting the Marauders to exterminate Marrow's people.
Kitty and Kurt witness some more cosplay heroes playfighting, including ones known to be alive, thus allaying Kurt's fears that the planet is haunted. Instead it appears to be a training ground for imposters heroes, all of whose looks appear to be a bit out of date.
Kitty, taking exception to Fake Sprite (or is it Ariel?) criticizing her preteen hair, takes her duplicate's place.
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| Just be thankful you don't have to wear the skates. |
Posing as her younger self, Kitty follows the other X-Fakes to HQ, where a plethora of Early-80s Marvel characters monitor dated news broadcasts.
"Cyclops" laments how hard it is to get info on the X-Men, given they're secretive and the media is, quite frankly, a little slanted against them.
She slips away, only to encounter Thunderbird, the original Captain Marvel, and Adam Warlock, all of whom speak some strange alien language at her.
En route back from the hospital, Storm and Wolverine encounter imitation-brand Human Torch and Thing, damaging the former's mechanism to replicate Johnny Storm's powers.
Kitty learns her captors are Skrulls, who assume her to be one of them. Xavier learns the same through a mind-probe, which troubles Nightcrawler, who knows from doing his homework that the Skrull homeworld was consumed by Galactus some years ago.
Things go from bad to worse, as Gambit has wandered off with Marrow in search of some kind of assistance (which seems like the dumbest move you could possibly make, even in Gambit's emotional state.) But then we see things go from worse to worser when we realize what day it is on the Skrull Homeworld...
Further Thoughts:
Taking my typical critiques of this Alan Davis run as read -- that he's too content just to do wacky low-stakes throwback superhero adventures -- this has the makings of a fun little story. A lot of humor is mined from the Skrulls' efforts to replicate the Marvel superheroes from media presence alone (including fake Nightcrawler being Russian rather than German) although I was sad that the out-of-dateness turned out to be due to time travel rather than Earth broadcasts taking years to reach Skrull space. This would have been a good story for the Exiles (and in fact it bears some passing resemblance to a few of their early adventures.) Come to think of it, Alan Davis would have been a good fit to write (and maybe draw) that series when Judd Winick and Mike McKone left.
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