Arcade the super villain is like a pledge training, hazing his pledges and luaghing his ass off when they throw-up/get murdered. And in this issue, Arcade readies his FAH-Q paddle to start wacking away on some X-Ass Cheeks.
Before I continue trashing this divinely ridiculous issue of The Uncanny X-Men, I should first point out that as a youth of tender years, I absolutely fucking LOVED the stupid kind of stories like the one found in #124. The "isolate each member of the team and let them use their powers in new and crazy ways to escape" is right up there with the "introduce a random set of good/bad guys each with unique powers and a code name that is somehow tied into that power and watch them fight" as the most cockle-warming types of stories that a comic reading tween can stumble upon. So it is with no small amount of nostalgia that I review and mercilessly lambaste the awesomely bad tale spun by Claremont and Byrne.
All right, enough of that gayness. To start with we see Arcade, cracking up over the CCTV feeds of the X-men getting pounded by his deadly contraption. Next to him are three broads, nominally they are dates of Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Colossus, but in reality they are minor bit characters who never amount to much who are here to play the token damsels in distress. Arcade has them tied up in person-sized gift boxes with their heads sticking out because he's a fucking retard. He then starts talking to him because he's a fucking retarded super villain and it's the easiest way to recap events and explain his origin.
The story goes that Arcade was a spoiled rich prick and got pissed at his dad so he blew him up and inherited his fortune. This fortune must be about equal to that of the GDP of Asia, as Arcade builds a Deathstar sized hidden Disneyland for killing. Arcade is also clearly a second rate Joker knock off who's going for the criminally insane, unhinged psychopath vibe. But because he is literally dressed like a clown and hasn't yet had any real character development, he comes across looking more like a, well, busted, trifling, mark-ass Joker poseur.
So anyway, the X-Men are stuck in Murderworld and are trying to fight their way out out. Colossus has been brainwashed into a Soviet Socialist Super Soldier bad guy renamed the Proletarian and he's just about to strangle Storm and Cyclops for hoarding their excess potato yields that are due to the collective which is to then turn their crops into cheap vodka for corrupt apparatchiks and red army generals to get shit faced with and hasten their sorry, frigid miserable lives into oblivion. But then Stormy and Cyke remind Piotr Rasputin that they are all friends, and thus the spell is broken.
Pretty silly but what the fuck else was going to do it?
Anyway, long fuckin recap short, the X-Dorks all overcome their obstacles and Nightcrawler ports into Arcade's control room and fucks all his shit up. So Arcade hits the eject button or whatever and all the X-Men are flushed out of Murderworld and their ladyfriends are parachuted back to them.
A couple other noteworthy occurrences:
1) Wolverine slashes his way into Banshee's death trap room where's he's fighting Tie-Fighters from "The latest episode of BATTLESTARWARS: 1999!" Holy crap would it have been cool to witness such legendary sci-fi pop culture when it was first released. Of course that would also mean I'd have to be ten years or so older than I am now so on second thought, fuck that noise.
2) Cyclops blasts into Nightcrawlers kill zone area and takes out a whole host of buzzsaw equipped evil bumper cars with one carefully placed ricochet shot. I love that one of Cyclops' power is his "unique inborn talent for spatial geometry." Which means he mutant ability accounts for the supernatural accuracy of his optic laser blasts. I also love the sound affects those blasts makes: "ZARP ZAP ZOOP ZORP ZRAP ZACK ZRAM ZKOW!" Haha! It sounds like a space alien farting!
Anyways, Arcade gets away and of course Wolverine is pissed that they don't go after him and cut apart his intestines, but that's just fucking Wolverine for ya! Now maybe FINALLY the X-Men that Jean Grey, Xavier et al think are dead will be reunited! Or maybe they'll just all have a big hazing party and puke all over each other. Who fucking knows?
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