X-MEN #113: Conclusion! (Eve of Destruction Part Four)

The Interim X-Men face off against Magneto once and for all!

Originally Published June 2001

This seems like the end.

All together now: "You bastard!"

The X-Men -- or a group purporting to be them -- have landed in Genosha, only to be rudely intercepted by its sovereign Magneto, who doesn't take kindly to this intrusion. He has previously mde his feelings known by atomizing the famous disco singing mutant so that all that's left of her is dust.

Bereft of one of their few experienced members, Magneto is just a tad underwhelmed -- if that's a word -- by the opposition.

Only just short? What would take you all the way there?

Invulnerable Mafia Guy Paulie Provenzano rushes headlong into the fray, only for Magneto to seize control of his body thanks to the magic "blood in the iron" trick. Lucky for Paulie, invulnerable in this case really super means invulnerable.

Magneto shrugs "ah whatever" and throws Paulie into the upper atmosphere, where Jean charges Northstar -- his best friend on the team -- to go to his aid.

Next up to bat is Johanna Cargill, aka Frenzy, aka the (probably now former) Genoshan Ambassador. Magneto suspects that some kind of mind-control is at play here, but Jean will neither confirm nor deny.

Next to fall is Leyu Yoshida, who Magneto encases in scrap metal. He then sets his sights on the true powerhouse, Hector Rendoza.

But Hector has a trick up his sleeve. Or he would, if he were wearing a sleeve. Or even had skin. The truth nature of his power: to cause mild, temporary  discomfort!

Speaking of temporary discomfort, Northstar has retrieved Paulie Provenzano from the atmosphere. He administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which means, ha ha, gay.

Magneto, having recovered from his bout of temporary disorientation, declares that the fight must end now, and I couldn't agree more. Neither could Cyclops and Wolverine, who arrive to find a group of utter jabronis wearing X-Men uniforms.

Having temporarily taken Magneto out, Wolverine sets about freeing Charles, but Jean stops him. Apparently part of her plan is to leave him up there.

Magneto rallies, only to be caught with another slick bank shot from Cyclops.

Surprisingly, getting tonked with his own helmet does not prove the finishing blow, and Magneto returns fire, concussing Cyclops with that very same helmet.

Wolverine decides he's had enough and charges into the fray. Cyclops tries to remind him he's literally full of metal -- not that that's any worse than anybody else now that "can control the iron in people's blood" is the upper limit of Magneto's powers -- and wolverine responds that he's feeling feisty.

It goes predictably poorly.

However, before Magneto can administer the killing blow, he finds his hand stayed. Somehow, Xavier is free?

And also Storm is here now? What?

It turns out that they replaced Charles in captivity with Dazzler, who was using her light powers to project an image of Charles over herself.

As to when this happened and how this happened and why it looked like Dazzler was obliterated and how come this is an instant lose condition for Magneto, Scott Lobdell is going to leave that strictly to your imagination. Leaves more room for gay panic jokes.

Jean explains that while all this was going on, Amelia Voght freed Charles -- I think that's a badly-miscolored version of her up there. Magneto surmises that from there, it was easy enough for Charles to mentally "turn off" Erik's powers, as he did so many years ago to the Vanisher.

Magneto -- or perhaps Gran'ma Ben from BONE -- is ready to laugh it off. "Well, got my ass this time, but I'll be back."

But Wolverine is sick of this never-ending cycle of violence and decides to enact some cycle-ending violence.

And that was just one of many occasions on which he met his death

That's right folks. After 35 years of back and forth, it's time to end this tango once and for all and straight up kill Magneto.

Those assembled are shocked. "You can't just f**king kill Magneto!" "I think I just f**king did." But... what if that's what he wanted? Did you ever think about that?

But if it is a victory for Magneto, he sure isn't around to savor it. the X-Men present his body to the folks of Genosha, basically saying "Your leader's dead, that means the war is over, let's all try to be better in the future, hm?"

And with that, the X-Men -- real and counterfeit -- take their leave.

In an epilogue, all of the new recruits, save for Northstar, depart, getting back to their quiet lives of whatever-the-hell-else they've got going on. This leaves the core of Charles, Scott, Jean and Logan to sit and contemplate what's next.

And when they say "End," they mean it.

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Further Thoughts:

For the last five issues, X-Men has been building up to what promised to be an epic showdown between our heroes and their longtime villain, Magneto. This stretch finds us at a strange moment in X-Men history, because it was known to the people creating these comics, as well as to the readers of industry magazines like Wizard, that at the end of it, there was going to be an overhaul of the X-Men line the likes of which hadn't been seen since 1991's ouster of Chris Claremont and launch of this second flagship title. The intention is for the new creative teams not to simply feel like the latest people continuing the story of the X-Men, but as revolutionaries redefining what X-Men comics are, do, and feel like.

That means that X-Men #113 is effectively the finale of a certain expanse of the X-Men, in the same way that Uncanny #279 was sort of a finale of the Claremont years (although Claremont himself did not write that one.) This is your last visit with the X-Men franchise as depicted throughout the 90's, most notably by Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Andy Kubert, John Romita Jr., Joe Madureira, but also a host of other contributors, most recently Leinil Francis Yu and Salvador Larroca. Inasmuch as comics ever end, this is the end of that decade-long story.

And there are certainly worse ideas to see the story off than by delivering one last brutal conflict with the most famous antagonist the series has had, the man who was on the cover of the first issue of X-Men, who felt like a presence even when he spent a massive chunk of the decade literally incapacitated and off the board, Magneto.

The brief, to sign off ten years of the X-Men's adventures while also teeing up the next, is inherently a difficult one to fulfill. You don't have access to all the characters you'd like, and it's hard to know what big swings to take -- but you also need to make it momentous in some way, to avoid feeling like a complete lame duck.

Obviously, this story arc isn't totally set up for success from the beginning. We'd already established that several marquee X-Men are being hoarded by Chris Claremont have departed on a separate mission. but even so, there actually were enough X-Men left over -- meaningfully, all of the original five, plus Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Gambit -- to do a story, but the idea of recruiting a one-time team of X-Men from disparate sources had the potential to be an interesting hook. But I've already spent ample time complaining about what the makeup of that team ended up being. If they're intended as a joke, then the joke is mostly successful (except for actual jokes about Paulie Provenzano being a horndog homophobe) but I think we can agree this was not a place for jokes.

The plan itself that the X-Men had would have worked with just about any half-dozen bodies involved, assuming one of them was Dazzler or some other character who could pull of that switcheroo. And the idea of the almighty Magneto being faked out like that is a little herd to swallow, but damn, we had to get out of this comic somehow, right?

And then there's that last big swing, where Wolverine runs Magneto through with his claws, thus ending that dance once and for all. I mean, we all agree that this is surely Magneto's final death, the end of his story once and for all, right? Well, some people might not be convinced that it's happening here, in this awful issue, one month before the X-Men franchise is getting a soft reboot, but I say it looks pretty definitive.

So, does this big iconic moment save the issue and make it the stuff of legend? Well, what do you think? 25 years later, most of us probably forgot it even happened.

This was not good. This stretch of comics was occasionally interesting despite itself. Lobdell excelled at narrowing his focus in and doing special issues about particular X-Men at particular crossroads of their lives, but when it came time to do the superhero action, there's a slapdash quality to it. The Kitty-in-mourning issue and the prelude-to-destruction feel like outliers, and this is what a Scott Lobdell comic really feels like. It reminds me a lot of Operation: Zero Tolerance, which similarly meandered for most of its length before scrambling to a nonsensical finish.

Oh well. This is the end of a certain conception of the X-Men, the square-jawed buff action heroes of the 90s. The franchise never quite found its way into the late 90s, struggling to understand what it, itself, was about after the cacophonous Onslaught storyline and through numerous creative teams whose designs felt scuttled, or halfhearted, or designed to please a finicky editor.

Despite all that, the slate is clean, and the X-Men -- a legion of social misfits and outcasts sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them -- are uniquely suited to embody the spirit of the new millennium and the world that is cropping up around them.

And surely this will be the last time I've ever underwhelmed by any of their stories. Right?