X-MEN #109: Ceremonies

The X-Men must find their way forward after recent struggles -- and also it's Christmas!

Originally Published February 2001

We begin with a snow job.

Specifically, everyone underestimating Neal Sharra's abilities in a snowball fight, given he's from India. They never asked where in India of course -- it turns out he grew up at the foot of the Himalayas and is as comfortable in the snow as anybody. That, my friends, is some good old fashioned racism.

The teams in this little battle: Thund3rbird, Nightcrawler, and Iceman, against Psylocke, Colossus, and Archangel. While Betsy can use her telekinesis to hurl these frosty projectiles with deadly speed and accuracy, and Colossus, as a native of Siberia, is no stranger to snowy weather, I'd probably still want the guy literally made of ice on my team.

He's come a long way from hating the shit out of this guy

Betsy and Neal take the opportunity to make this long-range battle a close-quarters one as they go tumbling down the hill together... the source of much awkwardness since as far as anyone knows, Warren is Psylocke's current #1.

Well, foreplay is a kind of play...

Betsy brushes it off, feeling like she has nothing to be ashamed of for feeling her oats. Rogue arrives in the world's tightest sweater to warn Neal to treat lightly with his affections, and then immediately pivot the conversation to her own recent difficulties.

Yes, Rogue is still riding the merry-go-round of mutants she's absorbed. As they adjourn for cocoa, she wonders who is the real her? Psylocke is amused that they've had this conversation before, forgetting that at the time, she was talking to Carol Danvers.

Neal butts in to in to rebut Psylocke's fatalism with a lesson about escaping samsara.

Thanks Neal, but as X-Men we're well-acquainted with the concept of death and rebirth

Speaking of Destiny, at that moment, Storm, Gambit and Beast talk about what to do regarding Destiny's Diaries, which Mystique has tasked them with obtaining.

Seems fair to acknowledge that the pursuit of these books and the desire to thwart and/or bring about their contents has a tendency to drive people crazy (as we've seen with Mystique -- but maybe that was just being written by Scott Lobdell) and nobody wants to see Charles in that position, so they've decided to undertake this mission in secret.

Where do these women by their tops? The GLAD factory?

Meanwhile, the a few of the X-Men perform at a circus, somewhat inexplicably (they're not even brainwashed this time.) Naturally, seasoned acrobat and not-so-lapsed Catholic (relapsed Catholic? Prolapsed??) Nightcrawler hams it up for the crowd before reminding us that he'd rather devote himself to God than snog his horned-up alien girlfriend.

Has Xavier taught this man nothing??

Colossus is also there performing as some kind of combo clown-strongman, when he catches what he thinks is Illyana in the crowd, causing a flare-up of emotions.

At the ruins of his Penthouse, Warren is ready to call it quits with Betts over her obvious attraction to ThunderbIIIrd.

Betsy protests -- you knew I was an emotionally erratic adrenaline junkie when you met me -- and Warren's like yeah, but I'm kinda over it.

Elsewhere, Bishop delivers some toys to some fireman because I guess we were a page short this issue, and Wolverine visits Mariko's gravesite in Agarashima, Japan. He encounters his old enemy and apparently now reluctant wife -- with no helpful editor's footnote to explain when that happened -- who presents her a gift.

That's right, it's proof of life from Kitty Pryde, who has been missing for what feels like several months. It's extremely heartening, and maybe the X-Men will take this opportunity to go looking for her and we'll get a story out of it.

Or she'll just show up alive and well in a random issue, who knows.

Back in the good old U.S. of A., some more of that old fashioned American racism is on display as we find that some ruffians have destroyed a mutant-themed manger scene that had been erected in a gesture of tolerance. (We're told the same people also trashed a menorah just so we know that anti-mutant prejudice is on the same level of anti-semitism.)

At this inopportune time, Rogue's powers go haywire again, manifesting Cyclops' optic blasts, which even in their absorbed state require a ruby quartz lens to hold back, in a fact with interesting implications for the nature of Cyclops' and Rogue's powers.

The encounter shocks and scares the normies, who scatter, proving that mutant acceptance is great when it's theoretical, but a lot harder when confronted with the reality.

Later at the mansion, the X-Men exchange gifts, and then a select crew of them adjourn to a secret meeting, to discuss their clandestine mission to recover Destiny's Diaries. Storm lays it out -- it's not going to be easy, or fun, and it's probably going to feel weird being the one to keep a secret from Xavier for a change.

A show of hands shows that all of the assembled are in...

...only for Rogue to throw Gambit back out. Reason being? This mission is too dangerous, and she loves him too much, and if anything were to happen to him in the course of this particular assignment -- as opposed to all the other times they've defined death together -- Rogue just couldn't live with it. As a result, Remy LeBeau will go un-drafted in the upcoming X-Men soft relaunch.

Meanwhile Wolverine, who apparently teleported back from Japan, is to act as the new splinter group's liaison with head office here in Westchester. He does, however, object to their new recruit...

That's right it's Sage! Remember Sage? You probably remember her as Tessa. Or maybe you don't remember her because she was very pointedly little more than a background character in the 80's who was abruptly revealed to have been working for Charles Xavier the entire time, and then extremely fleetingly seen hanging out at the mansion. But don't wait for her to explain herself or demonstrate why she's worth adding to the lineup: Storm is here to cut that corner by vouching for her and assuring us, the audience, that she is great. She has a computer for a brain and brought her own leather catsuit! What more could you want? Cool sunglasses? Because she's got that too.

Later, outside, Storm is gifted a stylish new outfit from her long distance girlfriend Yukio.

Charles spots her and is prompted to reflect on all the regrets he's accumulated, but Storm brushes it off, implicitly referencing a Swahili saying that is no doubt obscure to American readers: hakuna matata. 

We close with a reminder that no matter what happens, Charles will always have the X-Men as his legacy, and that's quite a feather in his cap, don't you think?

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Further Thoughts:

Although the cover promises a "100 Page Monster," the only monster at the end of this book is lovable old Grover the N'Garai Demon, as depicted in Uncanny X-Men #143, which is one of three Christmas-themed issues that was reprinted with it, making it sort of a Christmas collection. This story itself was regular-sized, and for those keeping track (I know I am) it caps off yet another year in the life of the X-Men.

Speaking of capping things off, this brings an end to the second Chris Claremont epoch that began 10 months earlier with X-Men #100. We thereafter spent many many issues in a Sisyphean battle with the Neo and their weird and varied offshoots -- the only isolationists I can think of who also have their fingers in human trafficking and believe themselves to be completely blameless. Once we were able to move past that, the series were starting to feel like their old selves, but before they could find any sort of groove, it all came to an abrupt, but reasonably exciting climax.

There's good and bad in all this, but I've read worse X-Men comics than this entire stretch. If nothing else, they were well made, with characters that felt multi-dimensional and quality art more often than not. But it's been decided that what the X-Men need are a big swing, and to do that they're going to need some runway.

As the previous issue of Uncanny did a perfectly good job putting a punctuation point on what we had seen with the deaths of Moira and Senator Kelly, this particular issue has no further comment on it besides watching the X-Men meander around in their feelings at the holidays. That's fine, I'm always an advocate for cooldown issues that give us time with our characters' interior lives, but this is also pretty transparently a lame duck issue meant to set the table for the upcoming X-Treme X-Men launch. That's right, instead of being removed completely from the situation, Chris Claremont is getting his own personal sandbox to play in. For the first time, he will be a writer of the X-Men, and not the writer of the X-Men, having to navigate other, arguably higher-priority comics while he plays his own song. It... might be interesting.