To Me, My X-Men Comics! - Uncanny X-Men Issue 98
In which Scott beats George Lucas to the punch and Wolverine’s calendar is full
PREVIOUSLY IN THE UNCANNY X-MEN: Exploding jets! Identity fraud! Holidaying professors!
It’s Christmas time in the X-Universe and Jean is filled with the magic of the season. Unfortunately, everybody else is all grinchtastic. Storm, for example, is bitching about how the New York snow isn’t as white as the snow of Kilimanjaro. Wolverine has ‘no time for Christmas’ (what with his busy schedule of cigar-smokin’ and berserker rages). And, of course, Cyclop’s still moping about his brother and his fiancée being kidnapped last issue. “Oh, stop your whining about your stupid brother, Scott,” says Jean. “You’re so self-absorbed. What about me? Do you love me?”
Scott has no idea how to deal with this sudden rampant neediness, so sputters out a half-hearted ‘yes’. And then escapes the awkward situation by having giant Sentinel robots attack him. Phew!
So then there’s a bit of a shitfight. Cyclops spends most of the fight hanging off some kind of weathervane (an idea he got from the closing scenes of The Empire Strikes Back, somehow still four years in the future). Banshee and Wolverine are captured by the Sentinels off-panel to save time, while Jean insists on an on-panel capture (as per her contract!). Colossus and the still-disguised-as-a-porn-star Nightcrawler are far too busy hitting on chicks to join in the fight, so, really, it’s left to Storm to do all the hard work. And she does, whipping up a convenient hurricane, much to Scott’s disapproval. (“You could have destroyed the city with your hurricane!” he reprimands. “Pshaw,” says Storm. “Destroy a city with a hurricane? As if.”)
Elsewhile, The Professor, still on holiday, decides he doesn’t want to miss out on this kickass Sentinel fight. So he somehow contrives to catch one with his fishing rod. It’s a whopper, easily big enough to destroy the boat, but, even as Chuck begins to drown off-panel, he still starts mentally transmitting lies about the size of the Sentinel that got away. In the end, the captured X-Men (Jean, Wolverine and Banshee) make a brazen escape attempt, which, while successful on one level (ie, they get away), is less so on another (they escape into the cold vacuum of space). Scott, as always, chooses to look at this from a glass half-empty perspective.
MVP: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. They make a bizarre cameo in the opening scene, whining about how the X-Men didn’t behave all soap operatically when they were writing them and then, presumably, snoot off to get some popcorn and watch the Sentinel fight.
Next issue: Anybody got a spare space shuttle? Plus, lies about Jim Lovell!