UNCANNY X-MEN #386: For Those In Peril

The X-Men battle a hurricane to rescue an old friend!

Originally Published November 2000

We begin in N'awlins, where the X-Men are getting a little downtime, swinging and a'swaying to the sounds of a zydeco band in one of Gambit's favourite secret spots.

Except, of course, Cable, who famously does not dance, and is more concerned with being a hated and feared mutant in the world of panicky and prejudiced humans. 

Rogue tries to get him to live a little -- even reminding him she once held him as a baby (when he was his most carefree)-- but it doesn't take. He takes his leave and Rogue goes to Gambit to talk about how Cable's been a little lost in the sauce ever since Moscow.

Out on the pier, Nathan and Jean talk about how Cyclops' body was never found, nor was any trace of Apocalypse, but she's made her peace with it, when she gets a psychic DM and goes to find Storm and Beast. There's trouble afoot!

There's a hurricane brewing off the coast. Storm casually mentions that she can't simply wave her hand and make it go away: she has to work within the boundaries of the world, which is indeed something that's been explored before. Unfortunately, an old acquaintance is trapped amidst it...

Yes, it's Aleytys "Lee" Forrester, Captain of the trawler Arcadia! Jean only sort of knows how this woman is connected to the X-Men -- she and Scott were, as you recall, briefly a thing while Jean was "dead" -- but she's still willing to do everything she can to help her.

While Gambit, Beast and Jean stay behind, Rogue, Storm and Cable take off to find the trapped sailors. Gambit and Rogue have a tense, emotionally loaded farewell.

While rescue pilots circle overhead in a C-130 Hercules transport, Cable makes contact with Lee and, just as importantly of course, of course, Paolo.

Lightning strikes the Hercules, sending some debris flying and knocking Storm out. 

Rogue dives to rescue her, absorbing some of her powers but knowing she doesn't have the will to wield it as confidently as Storm does. The troop lands on the Arcadia, and Cable and Lee have a quick catch-up, having met way back in an early issue of Cable without ever discussing their mutual connection to Cyclops.

As they try to tend to the fallen Storm, things go from bad to worse when a wave breaks through the supposedly impervious glass and threatens to drown the engines and turn this tub into a submarine. They also nearly lose the mast, but Rogue and a crewmates make a speedy repair.

In the air above, the Hercules is ready to come down. The X-Men are prepared to help rescue the crew, but first Rogue has to have a big think about her complicated relationship with Gambit.

Cable uses his telekinesis to create a funnel for the plane crew to jump down safely to the ship...

Which is great, except that now everyone is on a doomed boat instead of a doomed plane.

Rogue, Cable and Storm hatch a plan to combine their powers to steer the ship into the eye of the hurricane, where there is quiet, for just a moment, a yellow sky.

It's a true team effort and we see the heroes all doing their thing under crazy-adverse circumstances.

In the process, Rogue is pulled by the undertow, which is bad news -- she may be unbreakable, sugah, but much like Bruce Willis in the as-yet-unreleased 2000 film by that name she can still drown.

She gets help from an unlikely source.

She emerges to find herself -- and the trawler and all aboard -- safely in the eye of the hurricane. Next step is to do the impossible and fly the entire ship up over the hurricane and back to land. Piece of cake!

Further Thoughts:

A few months before this issue hit stands -- maybe just long enough to sneak into the brain of Chris Claremont -- the Wolfgang Peterson film The Perfect Storm hit theatres. Chris has never been shy about cribbing from outside sources for his stories, so I think it's fair to surmise that this is a little nod to that.

It would be easy to dismiss or overlook this issue. With all the fantastical things the X-Men do and see in their lives, to spend an entire outing performing a rescue at sea seems frightfully mundane. But it worked on my ass. Unlike a lot of their recent outings, there was a clarity of purpose, and steps taken to accomplish something, with setbacks along the way. There was also ample room to explore the characters themselves -- what's going on with Cable, and with Rogue and Gambit. No, there are no concrete answers about that, but the important thing is that there is some of it fleshing out this adventure, elevating it from this very Earthbound threat to an opportunity to work with the X-Men and who they are, not just what they do.

Is it a great comic? It could be one of the best since Chris Claremont returned, and in pure form and structure one of the better ones in years, but that still might not be enough to make it great. It's still the X-Men vs. weather, and the best possible version of that probably -- barring some incredibly imaginative interpretation -- isn't going to make for a blockbuster issue. It's the kind of thing that would be a very welcome and intriguing change of pace if the series was really cooking -- consider the classic Uncanny X-Men #176, where the villain is a squid -- but while the story does create a reprieve from the endless churn of "Random Badguys Attack X-Men," it's not offering something more fresh than that to spark interest in a bored readership. "We're fighting a hurricane now?" It's a catch-22 of sorts.

So, I liked it just fine, but I don't think anyone else is going to see what I see in it, and I don't blame them. Making a comic that is perfectly fine means so little if the audience isn't predisposed to enjoy it.

The Claremometer:

1 named aircraft

1 plot cribbed from a recent movie