To Me, My X-Men Comics! - Uncanny X-Men Issue 116
In which a villain is unfortunately handled, and contractual obligations are fulfilled
PREVIOUSLY IN THE UNCANNY X-MEN: Mesmerodactyls! Tedious flashbacks! Up-sunning!
Disappointingly, we’re still trapped in a tiresome Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land comic instead of the Uncanny X-Men issue for which we’ve paid 35 of our hard-earned American cents (or, as the cover excitedly tells us, ’STILL ONLY 35c’). Ka-Zar reminds the X-Men (and through them, us, the disappointed readership) of the problem at hand. Namely a villain with the improbably unthreatening handle of ‘The Petrified Man’. This nominally omni-terrified villain’s crime? Excessive urban planning! Because somehow he’s surreptitiously built an entire freakin’ city on top of the thermal shaft that powers the entire Savage Land.
Look, I dunno what to tell you. Everything about the premise is bizarre - from the council building approval processes that the Petrified Man seems to have effortlessly circumvented through to the entire idea that Ka-Zar and his folk are furious that their home in the middle of Antarctica might have to deal with a bit of snow. Nevertheless, as the X-Men try to help, they’re suddenly attacked by Pterodactyl-Riding Petrified Henchmen™, who kidnap a handful of the team and fly away.
Undeterred, Wolverine takes advice from Ka-Zar’s pet sabre-toothed tiger (this is not a joke!), and he, Storm and Nightcrawler simply wander into the city to rescue their teammates from being burned at the stake for some reason. Then there’s a big eye beam battle on top of the city that ends, Death Star-style, with Cyclops overloading the thermal exhaust port that runs straight down to the reactor core. The city explodes, Storm fails to rescue the Petrified Man from certain death, and, contractual obligations to support the Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land comic fulfilled, the X-Men set sail on a raft into the South Atlantic Ocean.
MVP: Look, it’s not Scott, who very amusingly tells his team to ’stay close’ during the Pterodactyl-Riding Petrified Henchmen™ attack and ‘cover the back of whoever’s next to you!’ before immediately being clipped from behind. Nitwit. No, instead I’m giving the MVP award to that blowhard Karl Lycos, who shakes Scott’s hand at the end of the issue and says ‘the world thinks Karl Lycos is dead. Let’s leave it at that’. And Scott doesn’t have the heart to tell him that ‘the world’ doesn’t think about Karl Lycos at all.
Next issue: The next issue box promises ‘the least expected X-Men origin of them all’. It had better not be those bloody leprechauns from a few issues back.