UNCANNY X-MEN #392: From the Ashes of the Past... Still Another Genesis! (Eve of Destruction Part One)

Jean Grey recruits an all new team of mutants to go after Magneto!

A chilling vision of things to come

Originally Published May 2001

We begin at a magical place called the Pentagon, where silly made-up rules like "International Law" don't apply, and Government agents appear to have abducted duly-appointed Genoshan Ambassador Johanna Cargill on unspecified grounds in what might be considered a fairly significant diplomatic oopsie.

Who do they think they are, the Trump Administration?

They threaten the Ambassador with torture (??!) before being abruptly halted upon the arrival of scary-powerful telepath Jean Grey, who has frozen the government agents in order to have her own private chat with the Ambassador.

In Philadelphia, PA, fans of Canadian Olympic skier and sometime federally-sponsored Superhero Jean-Paul Baubier, who is gay, are lining up to get copies of his new memoir about being a gay Canadian Olympian superhero, signed. Unfortunately, it seems not everyone is a fan of Jean-Paul's... type of person.

Meaning Canadians, I think

The man also known as Northstar quickly uses his superspeed to diffuse the situation and return to his adoring public. Jean appears and chides Jean-Paul for using his mutant gifts on such superficial things, but he's pretty comme çi comme ça about it.

Race war? C'est la vie.

In Boston, Mass, a lynch mob swarms 16-year-old Hector Rendoza. His crime? Indecent exposure. Very indecent exposure.

Again, Jean is on hand to extricate this hapless young mutant.

In Brooklyn, a young hood named Paulie Provenzano interrupts a discussion about the verisimilitude recent episodes of the Sopranos to engage in some light goombafication, perhaps over a plate of gabagool and some zeppoli.

Paulie makes his intentions clear: he's taking over the bidness.

The Goodfellas, apparently disbelieving his claims of invulnerability, open fire, but.... madon!

After Paulie singlehandedly beats the gangsters into pastafazool, Jean arrives with a potentially more inviting offer than running a New York crime syndicate: put your life on the line as part of a devastating genetic war!

Back at the Mansion, Jean awaits the arrival of Sunfire, but it turns out you really shouldn't order your mutant soldiers from Temu, because instead she got this gal:

That would be Shiro's previously-unrevealed sister Leyu, aka Sunpyre. She's got the same powers as Shiro, and the same bad attitude, but with estrogen!

No time for that, though, because the boys are already fighting. Believe it or not, mobster Paulie is not the most tolerant, open-minded guy in the room.

Will the Canadian hate never cease??

That's right, the invincible made man meets the fast Francophone hands of Northstar, in a battle nobody wants to see.

Jean breaks the fight up and brings everyone inside to explain that Professor Xavier has been abducted by Magneto and is being used as a hood ornament to motivate the surging Genoshan army.

"Don't you literally have a team already assembled to handle stuff like that?" Asks Hector the Visible Man. And normally they would, but a huge contingent of X-Men literally just packed up and left without saying where they were going. Whatever it is they're up to, it must surely be more important than averting the imminent genocide of humanity.

We've still got Wolverine and Cyclops, who are infiltrating Genosha as we speak, but two squabbling bros with more than a little bit of sexual tension do not an X-Men team make.

As for Angel, Beast, Cable, Cannonball, Dr. Reyes, Forge, Gambit, Iceman, Jubilee, Maggott, Marrow, Nightcrawler, Polaris and Strong Guy, they're all... busy. 

When the neophytes express reticence at the fact that literally none of them are trained for this, Northstar informa them that the X-Men have this thing called the Danger Room, and after a couple of sessions you'll be ready to smack Magneto right in the face.

But of course, Jean reveals, we're actually going right now. When Northstar points out that that's suicide, Jean touts her secret weapon...

That's right, former ambassador Johann Cargill has turned on Genosha and is ready to help the X-Men stop Magneto from destroying mankind!

While we're all gagging over this, the doorbell rings...

And with a cliffhanger like that, how could you not run out and buy the next issue?

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Further Thoughts:

You know what was a great comic? Giant-Size X-Men #1. I don't know if you've read that one, but in it, Professor Xavier travels the globe to recruit a new team of X-Men, meeting a diverse array of mutants who would ultimately make up the cast of the revived X-Men series. Some of the new characters were a tad stereotypical or superficial (an African woman who is a "weather goddess"?) But generally ended up as well-rounded characters the readers could get attached to.

This issue plays like a spoof of that, recruiting a crew of nobodies, losers, and jabronis for what should be one of the X-Men's most epic showdowns. Most of my ire, of course, is for Paulie, who is several bad character ideas poured into a single three-piece suit. But it's not like poor Hector -- who has the misfortune of being only my second-favorite skeleton by that name -- comes off like a heavy hitter. And when the original Sunfire -- who is nobody's favorite anything -- can't be bothered to show up, you know you're in trouble.

As for Northstar, there's nothing wrong with the character in and of himself. Being arrogant, hot-tempered and self-absorbed are potentially interesting character traits, even if in this context it just makes him an a-hole in a sea of a-holes. Being gay should just be a fact about him that can drive side-stories. In the hands of a writer who just isn't prepared to tackle that identity with sensitivity, it becomes his defining trait, and moreso worse because the creators imagine that gay existence is 90% combatting homophobes, 10% general swishiness. It's a clumsy take on the character. (And boy, it does not get better for this guy in the next few years.) This is compounded by the fact that we see him declining to join the team, and the book forgets to include a scene where he relents and agrees.

(Oddly enough, it was Scott Lobdell who wrote the Alpha Flight comic in which Northstar was confirmed as gay. I've never read it, and I can't say whether it's good or not, only that this is not a good comic and does not broach the topic with sensitivity.)

I am, at the very least, somewhat intrigued by the Cargill turn. Here's a character that has been on the periphery of the X-Men for a long time, since being introduced in an early issue of X-Factor. She then threw in her lot with the Acolytes and, through her association with Magneto, became his Ambassador. What exactly did Jean do to sway her, the apparent ultimate true believer? Will that be a story, or will it just be something that happened? It doesn't speak well to this particular comic that I'm not expecting much resolution.

The Dazzler cliffhanger, I can take or leave. I know she'll always be a cult fave, and I enjoyed her arc under Claremont, but with or without all the Mojo gunk that's been attached to her in recent years, I don't trust Lobdell to do anything interesting with "The mutant who is also a disco singer."

Just what is the goal here? It feels like a joke without a punchline: here are a bunch of schmucks and we are going to let them pretend to be the X-Men. What's bothersome is that so much work went into the previous issue's mood-setting, hyping up the severity of this conflict, and now with the super-gangster and Mr. Skinless, I don't feel like I can take it seriously at all. What are we doing? Why am I even reading comics?