So Thunderbird is dead and Cyclops is sulking. Cyke is so mad he he shoots his eye beam out in the forest. RAR! But Cyclop's emotional blast also knocked the cap off some alien-demon-tomb-obelisk thing that's sitting in the middle of the forrest just hanging out. Opps! This unleashing a fucking demon which decides to attack the X-Men! (why wouldn't it?). We also learn in a breif cut scene that some dude named Dr. Lang is planning something called Project Armageddon, which is most likely bad news for our good guys. The demon smacks the X-Men around for a while until Storm then saves the day by going to the woods and blowing up the entire demon-oblisk-from-hell thing.
Items of noteworthitutde
- Claremont clearly wants to get things rolling and jams several plot threads into the book, which reads very quickly. Besides the main MONSTER OF THE WEEK type story you also have:
- The intorduction of Moira MacTaggert, quite randomly and without much info.
- Two teaser pages of Dr. Lang and his evil PROJECT ARMAGEDDON (AAAHHH SCREAMING FACE!)
- Two unexplained panels of what we are to assume are parts of Storm's origin of growing up and being buried alive somewhere in the Middle East (uh, isn't she supposed to be an East African princess?)
- and they still find time to squeeze in a splash page and a whole page recapping last week.
- Claremont, the narrator, is quite harsh on Cyclops. He basically taunts Cyclops, goading him into lashing out. He says "Can't justify losing a team member to save the world, can you, Cyclops? Can you? CAN YOU!?!?!"
Fuckin calm down dude.
- Cyclops is also dissapointed in himself and says this terrible line out loud "I got to hand it to you Summers
- When they were giving out brains and common sense... you must not have even bothered to stand on line." Oh Cyclops, at least you're keeping your sense of you humor.
- Wolverine sounds like Robert Evans: "Naw - You only made me mad -- And, baby, The Wolverine just LOVES to get mad." Naw hot stuff, you've just given me a boner, and, baby, Evans loves getting erect!
- Also Wolvie refers to himself as THE Wolverine, multiple times, so as not to confuse anyone with the all the OTHER Wolverines out there.
- So you think Dr. Lang is exaggerating the threat of mutants? Why? Because the ONLY mutants anyone knows of FOR SURE are the X-MEN? Now who's playing the FOOL? Indeed. (ps, that was a real line in the book too).
- Little did Dr. Lang know that over the next 20 years, the Marvel editors would demand Chris Claremont actually invent hundreds of mutants to poulate literally dozens of shitty shitty comic books.
- The demon the X-Men fight for most of the book is not particularly scary. Its got horns, one eye and a huge, distracting, and far too human looking nose. Plus wings, claws, FUR and scales. Kind of like some weird hybrid of whatever penciller Dave Cockrum thought a proper demon should have. Not very good.
- The Demon's name is Kierrok the Shatterer of Souls, and like an idiot he decides to pick on the one group of people for miles around that have super powers and can fight back. There are plenty of merely human populated towns around the X-Masion, like Salem Center, for example, that would provide far easier souls to shatter.
- Moira MacTaggert's character isn't explained at all, except that she has an extemely annoying Scottish accent and has no problem picking up a spare M-16 laying about the amory (which the X-Mansion aparently has) and opening fire on a blood thirsty rampaging demon. Really bizarre scene.
- Here's an example of that fucking stupid Scottish accent: "Well, if sonic blasts'll do NAE GUID, let's see how yon KELPIE FARES - against close-range MACHINE-GUN FIRE!" Also Banshee is going to totally bang her.
- Best scene of the book by far is when Xavier tries to take over the mind of Kierrok and gets sucked into some Lovecraftian Hell. It's half a page of actually creepy imagery, unlike Kierrok who looks like a retarded Muppet.
- Once Storm does her thing and the evil is vanquished its pretty much forgotten about until like 50 issues later. It's never explained whats going on with a gateway to hell randomly being in some forrest in Westchester County, New York, although Professor Xavier does say this, "Whatever Kierrok and his kind were - they once RULED MANKIND. And they want VERY MUCH to rule mankind AGAIN." Its not clear how Xavier knows this but if it's true, you think they'd want to investigate the portal thing Storm blew up, would't you? But no, they ignore it and
let us know that next issue is "My Brother, My Enemy!"
Good issue though, by far the best yet, and there are hints as to how much better it will get. There's still plenty of terrible dialog but there'll always be terrible dialog in Claremont books, thats part of the fun. What's really exciting is seeing stuff that you won't get anywhere else, you know, actual new ideas and shit. Like a battle between mutant and mankind, the questions mutantkind itself presents to humanity, and some fuckin gnarly ass evil demons (though in this case the main demon looked like a total dickhead). Ok, lets see if Claremont can keep improving and get into some seriously fucked up shit next!
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