UNCANNY X-MEN #390: The Cure

The cure for the Legacy Virus has been found -- but it may come with a dire price!

Originally Published March 2001

We begin with Beast, working in the lab late one night when his eyes behold an awesome sight.

Beast has been working night and day to develop a cure for the Legacy Virus based on the notes of the late Moira MacTaggert. Seems he's made something of a breakthrough.

Various X-People are awakened by Hank's Roger Daltrey scream, rushing to the lab to see what could be so special it warrants such a racket after quiet hours.

Now, the truth is, for all Hank's scientific knowledge and the fact that he made the thing, even he isn't entirely sure how it works. And also it hasn't been tested. But what he does know is that like the the original Legacy Virus it will be airborne from the time the first test subject uses their mutant powers.

Personally, I think throwing the cure into the air and hoping it reaches its intended targets is maybe a little less rigorous than we'd like, but this is a comic book after all.

Unfortunately, Beast realizes just a smidge too late after everyone's already excited, this means the first host will die when they use their mutant powers and release the cure. 

In a fit of ethics, Beast vows not to release the cure until after he's solved this little logistical hiccup.

Charles consoles Beast -- don't beat yourself up, we've made a huge step forward today. As everyone disperses, Colossus stays behind.

Just, you know... having a look

Out on the basketball court, Gambit, Wolverine and Beast have a little game to clear their heads.

Personally, I wouldn't draft the 5'2 guy with metal bones, but...

Even the Prof, who we know to have been a baller in a previous era, gets in on the game.

As the four men share their hoop dreams, back in the lab, Colossus reflects on the life and death of his sister Illyana.

Cecilia pleads with Colossus not to throw his life away, that there will be a time when this can be done non-lethally and that sacrificing himself won't bring Illyana back, but the big guy has made up his mind, hitting her with some knockout gas that he just happens to have on hand.

As he tells the unconscious Cecilia, he doesn't have time for somedays, the death has to stop now.

The activation of his mutant powers causes an explosion of his mutant energy signature that can be seen from the basketball court. 

Cecilia awakens and tries to revive the Russkie.

But she, and the others, are too late.

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Further Thoughts:

If you haven't recently, I strongly urge to you actually read this whole issue. It's a case where the events that happen during it aren't completely done justice by a simple write-up.

The Legacy Virus was another story -- like the Cable-Apocalypse war -- that the X-Men franchise needed to clear off the decks in time for its big refresh in mid-2001. It had been introduced nearly a decade earlier in late 1992's X-Cutioner's Song crossover, and we've had a lot of laffs with it since, like the time Beast basically sold Sinister a slave so that he could try to cure it, but it had fallen by the wayside of the proper X-Men comics for some time. Now the search for the cure has been the impetus for a lot of what's happened in the last few issues, including the noteworthy death of Moira.

The Legacy Virus is one of those stories that is very intriguing and had a lot of potential, but it was a bit hard to capitalize on, hard to dramatize. There are scientists in the X-Men, like Beast, and among their friends and enemies, like Moira and Sinister (and for some reason Mystique, who managed to mutate the virus herself.) But seeing the X-Men fight a pandemic is not as exciting, on the page, as watching them fight alien robots and whatever else they've done over the last decade.

So wrapping it up probably proved to be a creative challenge for the teams that have ferried the X-Men over the course of the 90's. But at least, unlike the aforementioned Apocalypse story, the writers didn't fumble it as their neared the endzone.

It's fitting that the conclusion of this story centers Colossus, the X-Man most directly affected by the Legacy Virus; and I don't just mean because his sister happens to have died of the disease. For a really, really long time now, it feels like Colossus just hasn't had a place with the team besides being its designated punching bag.

A million, billion years ago, one of the best Colossus issues centered on his relationship with Illyana. At that time she was at risk of becoming the Demonic Queen of Limbo, at a time when she thought he was dead and seemed to have lost her north star.

Not long afterward, she was de-aged and given a second chance at life, but the traumas just kept piling up for Colossus, as he regained and lost his brother Mikhail, then his parents, then Illyana. He became a wanderer of sorts, joining up with the Acolytes and then his old friends in Excalibur before returning to the X-Men (and re-regaining and re-losing Mikhail.) At a certain point the guy has endured way too much. It's easy to see why he would make this decision.

Though for whatever reason omitted from the credits of the issue, Scott Lobdell returns as writer, once again following Chris Claremont, and he does right by the assignment. Lobdell, I think, has one of the most complicated legacies as an X-Men writer. The stories he told often got dragged out far too long and weren't always terribly nuanced or well-plotted. He's synonymous with the X-Men's style-over-substance 90s, but arguably he was a bulwark against that decade's tendencies being worse than they were: one area where he didn't lack was in understanding and appreciating the characters he was working with (with the exception of Storm, who he famously didn't get) infusing them with life, dimensionality, and heart. 

When it came time to do something that felt real, Lobdell was as capable as anyone, a fact that's probably vexing for critics who want everything to be clear-cut good or bad. He's supported by exact pacing provided by Salvador Larroca that provides ample examination of Colossus' final moments and room for rumination. 

It's very Lobdellian to have half the team playing pickup outside and expounding on life while inside one of their teammates is making a life-or-death decision that will alter the course of their worlds. The contrast is great, the execution is very human and grounded. It makes this issue a simple pleasure to read.

Ultimately I have no notes: absent any kind of subplot, this singly focused outing does exactly what it needs to do with aplomb, gravitas, charm and heart, a dignified and meaningful exit for a longtime character who deserved one, and a tidy resolution to a quite-distended story. I love to read it, and just maybe a like it little less when it comes time to use it as fodder for this site. Hard to get cutesy and snarky about an issue like this, you know?