To Me, My X-Men Comics! - Uncanny X-Men Issue 107
In which the Legion of Super-Heroes are ripped off and flashbacks are evil sibling-heavy
PREVIOUSLY IN THE UNCANNY X-MEN: Dream fights! Firelord disdain! Style cramping!
After last issue’s bizarre side-journey into Professor X’s addled dreamscape, we pick back up this issue with the X-Men popping across the galaxy, where they are confronted by The Legion of Super-Heroes! Or, since the Legion of Super-Heroes remain a DC property and hence violently opposed to the pure Marvel-ousness of the X-Men, some shameless rip-off of the Legion who call themselves The Imperial Guard instead. Needless to say, the two teams fail to hit it off. Cyclops is all “Hey, Legion, we’re here to take Lilandra (and Erik the Red) home.” And The Imperial Guard are all “We’re not the Legion, you one-eyed dick!” So it’s on like Son of Donkey Kong.
Phoenix is too tired to help in the fight - an annoying side-effect of having teleported the team across the universe - but luckily the X-Men don’t need much help. First Nightcrawler takes care of Chameleon Boy Hobgoblin. Chameleon Boy Hobgoblin has turned into a ghastly monster, but Nightcrawler uses his image inducer to change into an image of the same ghastly monster, which causes the implausibly mirror-naive Chameleon Boy Hobgoblin to faint dead away. In space, nobody can see you reflect. Apparently. Elsewhere, Sun Boy Starbolt tries to flame-blast Wolverine but only succeeds in burning his (Logan’s) uniform off. So Wolverine punches him out and, for good measure, slaps Dream Girl Oracle around too. The rest of the X-Men are doing similarly well, but we ignore them, so Cyclops can send Nightcrawler off to teleport Lilandra away from, uh, the Soul-Drinker (presumably a rip-off of the Sun-Eater). He does so and she regales us all with a flashback sequence.
Lilandra’s Flashback Sequence: She had a fight with her evil brother, D’ken, and started an intergalactic civil war. So she ran away and psychically bumped into Professor X, whose brain was off in space for no clear reason. Enraged, D’ken vowed to destroy the Professor (and, in turn, any schools of gifted students he might mentor) and therefore organised Erik The Red to provoke all the trouble in the previous issues. Oh, and D’ken is going to use nine Death-Stars to power a magic crystal and wield power absolute. So, yeah, there’s that too. End Lilandra’s Flashback Sequence.
MVP: D’ken. After Lilandra’s Flashback Sequence there’s some more fighting between the X-Men and the Legion. They’re joined by some clowns called The Starjammers, who have just popped in for some space-brawling, and everybody’s more or less sufficiently distracted that D’xen can fire up the crystal and gain that power absolute. Which certainly freaks the shit out of a cameo’d Reed Richards, let me tell you.
Next Issue: John Byrne. Plus, John Freakin’ Byrne.