Uncanny X-Men Annual #12 Retro Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: “Resurrection”/”I Want My X-Men!”/”The High Evolutionary Part Seven: Demon Knight”

Written by: Chris Claremont (Resurrection), N/A (I Want My X-Men!), Mark Gruenwald (High Evolutionary Part Seven)
Penciled by: Art Adams (“Resurrection” and “I Want My X-Men!”) and Ron Lim
Inked by: Various
Colored by: Various
Lettered by: Various
Editor: Various
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Let’s set the time machine back to 1988 as Marvel decides to link all of their Annuals for the year under an umbrella storyline called “The Evolutionary War”. All Annuals featured obscure Thor villain “The High Evolutionary”, who seeks to explore the problems of human evolution. Sadly the end result was a disjointed mess as none of the writers bothered to create any sort of coherent storyline. Towards the end the writers realized this and created a haphazard plot about The High Evolution wanting to forcibly evolve humanity to the next level of human evolution with a “Gene Bomb” that was squashed by the Avengers.

So we have Uncanny X-men Annual #12, which features the return of Marvel artist and then wonderkid Art Adams. Adams was a HUGE star back in the 1980s but his art style was not suitable for monthly comics, as it took a LONG time for Art to draw a book. So Art became a special artist who did covers for Classic X-Men and various one-off stories such as this book for Marvel.

“Resurrection”
The lead story of the annual features Claremont doing some needless meddling while indulging in his habit of forcing needless retcons down everyone’s throats. In this case, we get Claremont using the Annual to resurrect the Savage Land and to shoehorn the various back-up stories from Classic X-Men into cannon.

The story starts with Storm, for no good reason that is ever explained during the story, flying off to the Savage Land. Or what’s left of the Savage Land as the place was nuked out of existence by the alien bully Terminus in Avengers #257-258. X-Men follow Storm and find the High Evolutionary running around taking soil samples in order to try and find out if the land can be restored to its original state. They meet up and before they can share stories of why they are visiting the Savage Land they are attacked by Terminus. While the X-Men battle Terminus, Longshot discovers a group of survivors from the Savage Land including a young girl named Nereel who’s got a surprise to show Colossus in the form of a five year old son mysteriously named “Peter”.

Overall a completely disposable story with no real purpose but to have Claremont masturbate over his retcon back-up stories in Classic X-Men. In this case we get Storm having a friend in the form of a Goddess figure M’Rin and her giant dog C’Jime and Colossus learning that the young Savage Land girl he boinked got knocked up and boe him a bastard son. The storyline of Colossus having a son was never exploited due to Marvel editorial not wanting a major Marvel character to have a bastard lovechild so young Peter was quietly killed off-panel two years later in Uncanny X-Men #274-275. The only redeeming aspect of this issue is Art Adams as artist, as his artwork is top-notch as usual.

“I Want My X-Men!”
A Mojo back-up story that introduces a new set of X-Babies characters, this time in the form of genetic creations of Mojo created to replace the X-Men after their “deaths” during the “Fall of the Mutants” storyline. A decent humor story with some cool visuals in the form of Mojo auditioning new X-Men and getting robot X-Men, all-women X-Men, cuddly animal X-Men, and S&M-themed X-Men before settling on the X-Babies. Sadly the story pretty much follows a bad pattern for Marvel in that Mojo is recast as a blabbering idiot who acts like a prima-donna instead of an evil-incarnate figure of death. And with Marvel’s idiotic refusal to put back into print the original Longshot mini-series (which features Mojo at his most demonic) most people will never get the chance to see Mojo back when he was a truly EVIL threat instead of the one-dimensional cartoon he is portrayed as nowadays…

“The High Evolutionary Part Seven: Demon Knight”
Knowing that probably the bulk of their readers had no clue as to who the High Evolutionary was, Marvel decided to put a multi-part serial in all “Evolutionary War” Annuals that told the life story of the High Evolutionary. In this installment we learn that Magda, the estranged wife of Magneto gave birth to Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch at the High Evolutionary’s mountain headquarters. Complicating things for High Evolutionary is the fact that the evil demon Chthon has launched an attack on his home as part of a complex feud between Chthon, the ghost of an ancient wizard called the Magnus, and High Evolutionary’s assistant Jonathon Drew. In the end Chthon is driven back but not before placing inside a portion of his power into the newborn Scarlet Witch.