Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Various
Written by: Chris Claremont and Louis Simonson
Penciled by: Alan Davis
Inked by: Various
Colored by: Various
Lettered by: Various
Editor: Various
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Marvel continues to haphazardly exploit their archive of X-Men stories with a new trade paperback collecting an assortment of work by Alan Davis. Davis’s history with the X-Men franchise is storied and controversial, as he did an assortment of fill-in work on the X-Books in 1986 and 1987 before moving onto Excalibur. He later returned for a VERY controversial run on the X-Books in the late 1990s for which the less said about, the better.
Since that disastrous run, Davis has returned and is now doing artwork for Uncanny X-Men alongside Chris Claremont. And while Davis’s new run on the X-Books has been haphazard to say the least, with the countless fill-in artists filling in for him, it has at least bore fruit in the form of a trade paperback collecting Davis’s output on the X-Men during 1986-87:
The Vivisection
New Mutants Annual #2: A notable (and previously unreprinted) issue, in that this issue features longtime fan-favorite X-Men Psylocke’s first appearance in an American published Marvel Comic. It’s also got an early appearance by Mojo, which doesn’t feature his creator Art Adams doing the artwork. The plot of the issue involves Mojo kidnapping Psylocke and using her in a scheme to kidnap children and turn them into evil adult slaves. The plot draws in the New Mutants when Sunspot and Wolfsbane are snatched up by Mojo, but the young mutants quickly fall to Mojo and Spiral’s evil magics, forcing Warlock and Cypher to take on the all-powerful Mojo in order to save the day. A decent story and one with a powerful ending, as Mojo leaves Psylocke a parting gift of functioning mechanical eyes as a means to remind her of what Mojo can give those slaves who serve him beyond the call of duty. A sequel to this story can be found in the recently released Art Adams Visionaries TPB, BTW, which has Mojo coming back for revenge against the New Mutants by kidnapping the X-Men and turning them into his own murder squad.
Uncanny X-Men #213: We skip ahead to Uncanny X-Men as Psylocke finds herself home alone at the X-Mansion as Sabretooth pays the X-Men a visit on behalf of his boss Mr. Sinister. The bulk of the issue revolves around Psylocke versus Sabretooth before Wolverine steps in and resumes fighting Sabretooth. In the end Sabretooth is dropped into the river and Psylocke is officially inducted into the X-Men.
Uncanny X-Men #215: This is the story that originates the title for this collection, though with it’s ultra generic cover it makes sense that they would substitute the Davis drawn Sabretooth/Wolverine cover from Uncanny X-Men #213 instead for the TPB’s cover. It’s also the most troubling of the issues collected mainly because:
1. It’s part-one of a two-part story of which Davis only drew part one of and most importantly
2. The issue is smack dab in the middle of a large number of X-Men subplots of the time, which makes it quite confusing for the casual reader. But, for the apparent sake of completism, it’s collected in this volume:
The plot has Storm and Wolverine going to pay Jean Grey’s sister a visit as a means of bonding after Logan nearly killed Storm under the belief that Storm was possessed by psychic Marauder Malice. Seems Storm is still pissed off at Logan for nearly gutting her, so Logan opts for a road trip for Casa de Jean Grey’s Sister to get over the anger. While they do this, Rogue and new X-Men Dazzler, Psylocke, and Longshot (making his first appearance as an X-Men member after joining in Uncanny X-Men Annual #10) take a convoy of planes to Muir Island with wounded/dying Morlocks and injured X-Men. Oh and Maddie Pryor wakes up in the hospital with a Phoenix Themed flashback of the Marauders shooting her in the head that raises questions for readers at the time towards Maddie’s connection to the Phoenix Force and Jean Grey.
Storm and Logan get to Sara Grey’s place only to find it has been firebombed to ash. Oh, and the recently resurrected Jean Grey has visited the place and her scent causes Logan to go crazy yet again. He knocks Storm unconscious and runs away, leaving Storm to be picked up by Sarah Grey’s neighbors. The bad side of this is that Sarah’s neighbors are bunch of retired Golden Age super-heroes who have taken to the grim and gritty 80s comics, by coming out of retirement and kidnapping people they consider criminals, hunting them in the woods before they kill them. They think Storm murdered Sarah and her family, but when they realize who Storm is and her innocence, it’s too late to let her go since they’ve already told her their little secret. But since they are sporting men, they tell Storm that they’ll let her live if she survives being hunted on their property and escapes. Bad news? She’s stuck having to do so with a drug dealing girl who makes a point to tell Storm that she’s on her own in the woods when they get released.
New Mutants Annual #3: After several dark and depressing tales we get this light-hearted global romp of a tale which involves the Impossible Man and the New Mutant Warlock. Impossible Man shows up to get the X-Men to have some “fun” with him, but finds only the New Mutants present and under strict orders to stay at the mansion. Soon enough, Impossible Man and the alien New Mutant, Warlock, get into an argument about which one of them is the better shape-shifter. This war of the shape-shifters takes the contestants and the New Mutants around the globe, as Impossible Man and Warlock take the form of various famous Marvel heroes and villains as they try and one-up each other. The ending though is priceless, as Warlock, at the urging of his teammates, shows his superiority by doing the one thing Impossible Man can’t do: turn colors other than Green and Purple.
Uncanny X-Men Annual #11: The trade paperback ends with yet another downer of a story as the X-Men and visitors Captain Britain and Meggen (in her first full US Appearance, after a one-panel cameo in New Mutants Annual #2) are kidnapped by an alien entity calling itself Horde. Horde demands that the X-Men and their pair of visitors steal a deus de machina magic gem capable of giving whoever possesses it the power of God. Oh and Logan is drunk to the point of incoherent singing and depressed as hell, since Horde decided to pick the anniversary of Logan getting jilted at the alter to kidnap the X-Men.
The X-Men are quickly sent by Horde to an alternate dimension and ordered to break into a castle holding the deus de machina magic gem. The castle in question though isn’t taking invasion too kindly, as one by one the X-Men are absorbed by the castle with promises of the heart’s desires of the X-Men in exchange for their surrender. This annual has gained some controversy over the years do to it’s revelations towards Storm’s openness to homosexual love and Logan regenerating an entire new body from a single drop of blood. But still it’s a pretty decent stand-alone tale even with its contrived, tacked on upbeat ending….
Cover Gallary
To pad out the TPB, we get some artwork of Alan Davis that mainly consists of various TPB covers of stories not collected here. We get the cover and back cover to the long out of print “X-Men Danger Room” trade paperback, the cover of the “Fall of the Mutants” trade paperback (which also served as the promo art for the crossover), and the cover of Uncanny X-Men #445.
