To Me, My X-Men Comics! - Uncanny X-Men Issue 112
In which the basic principles of magnetism are ignored and Wolverine is his own worst enemy
PREVIOUSLY IN THE UNCANNY X-MEN: Mesmeric crotches! Plummeting Graysons! Hapless searches!
If you don’t like this issue of The Uncanny X-Men, then it’s highly possible that superhero comic books are not for you. There is so much delicious madness packed into 20-odd pages that it’s impossible to know where to begin. Unless, of course, you’re a literary know-it-all who intuitively understands the whole front cover-to-back cover schema to which comic books have been desperately clinging since their very inception. Given that, we’ll begin at the beginning, with Magneto swearing to destroy all of the X-Men. His preferred method? Near-endless exposition.
Oh, sure, the X-Men do their best to flee from Magneto’s detailed plot explanations, but it’s too late. For when Nightcrawler teleports outside he discovers that Magneto has used his magnetic powers to fly the wagon in which they’d all gathered up into the troposphere. “Don’t attack him, you fools!” orders Scott. “He’s the only thing keeping us aloft. If we were to defeat him we would plummet to our deaths!” “Prrffrt, yeah,” snorts back Magneto. “‘If’.” “But how did he accelerate us into the outer reaches of the atmosphere without us feeling any acceleration whatsoever?” asks Colossus. “Never mind that,” responds Beast. “How in blazes is he using magnetic powers to move a wooden wagon??”
But there’s no time for lack of explanations about basic principles of Physics. Magneto’s got some serious backstory to impart. There’s all kinds of genius stuff like Magneto robots, the phrase ‘stalking horse’ and claims that infamous man-spreader Mesmero was ‘less than nothing’ to Magneto. And then, for kicks, he dumps the unconscious Mesmero into the Amazon like some kind of inflight toilet waste before piloting the (still-wooden) wagon through the innards of a volcano into his massive, underground lair. Needless to say, once everybody’s back on something resembling terra firma, a senseless imbroglio breaks out. Doesn’t last long, though, as Magneto wipes the floor with the X-Men. Oh, sure, Jean gives him a bit of grief for some time, but then her Phoenix Force blows a gasket and she too succumbs.
The issue ends with the X-Men all strapped into silver chairs with arm and leg restraints and power-dampening capabilities, with Magneto assuring them that they are about to go through the equivalent of Hell. Which is a tad overstated, I believe, because he’s supplied them with a robot nanny, and last time I checked, not a single one of the nine circles of Hell offered that.
MVP: Let’s say Cyclops. As soon as the X-Men land in Magneto’s lair, he attacks Magneto by himself, hoping that the rest of the team will join the battle. Then, less than half a dozen pages later, he’s got the irrits with them all for not using more teamwork. Scott Summers is very much one for the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ brand of leadership.
Next issue: The robot nanny turns out to be programmed by Fran Drescher, and maybe the X-Men are in Hell, after all.