This is so messed up, but it’s not even the worst of it. Scott’s got the key to Colleen Wing’s apartment and Jean has met young hot guys on her slow travels to Scotland after she was abandoned by a grieving Charles Xavier. They’ve each seen other people since, which seems tragic to the faithful romantic in me. Beast and Cyclops have a joyous reunion (below), but the Scott-Jean one is stilted and awkward.
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And Scott, emotionally stunted from his orphaning and his early amnesia from his accident, didn’t know how to handle the drastic change in his lover before she apparently died. Jean sacrificed herself and died to save Scott, only to have the Phoenix come between them, right before she thought Scott was killed. Ororo and Peter, the innocent lawful goods of the party, are challenged by their first encounter with true, murderous evil.Īnd then there’s Jean and Scott. Moira tries to be a good mother, but discovers early that her son is basically a mutant vampire. Moira is similar painfully tested, because Proteus is her son, born out of a violent early marriage to a cruel man. Wolverine is tested and for a time broken by Proteus.įor a character whose sanity is so fragile, and whose sense of being is so tied to the accuracy of his senses, he’s particularly vulnerable and it takes Scott to pull him out of it (strange bedfellows). Claremont and Byrne are masters at tormenting their characters. Having #128 be my first issue of Uncanny X-Men was like being dropped into the deep end, but totally worth the reading investment.īut this 4-issue arc is significant and emotionally powerful for other reasons. The superheroics in these 4 issues is absolutely top-notch, an examplar of the form and of the Byrne and Claremont at the top of their partnership. They have no way to even know what he looks like.ĭuring the four issues, the X-Men have brushes with Proteus and have their butts handed to them and barely survive and it all comes to an amazingly exciting and satisfying conclusion in issue #128. There’s little time for reunions, because Proteus is now out there, leaving no trail except for bodies. The X-Men from New York are reunited with Jean and Polaris and Havok, who all though that Scott and the gang were dead. The story starts are Muir Island, where Proteus has escaped from his cell and tries to possess Phoenix (big mistake) and then flees to the Scottish mainland proper. If superheroes are elevated by the villains they fight, the X-Men are very much elevated in this story. His only weaknesses are metal, which interfere with the energy form that is his essence, and his need for more and more bodies. Worse still than this demonic-flavoured power is that Proteus can warp reality around him, changing the rules of physics and chemistry, gravity, transmuting one substance to another, making him incredibly powerful and almost unstoppable. Human beings to him are literally food and have no value beyond sustenance for him. But he leaves behind a trail of husks, a new one every few days. And for a time he can live off of that body. But, he can move his consciousness to another body, basically possessing it. His mutation takes a lot of energy – without a kind of energy cell within which he spent all of his childhood in, his body decays very quickly. Proteus, the mutant whom the storyline is named after, is truly evil and truly deadly. We talk sometimes about evil villainy, but the megalomaniacs wanting to rule the world or gain fabulous wealth are not really an impressive scale of evil. The evil mutant side of the story is simple, but inspired. So my inexperience with the form as well as the non-linear way in which I absorbed the story are indelible parts of my view of what later became known as the Proteus saga.
_from_Astonishing_X-Men_Vol_4_8_002.jpg "x-men proteus")
I very shortly ended up trading parts of my fledgeling collection to a friend in return first for issue #125, and then finally issues #126 and #127 (and #137!). Third, issue #128 was one of the first four comics my mom gave me after she came back from a trip, and I remember reading it with a sense of wonder and confusion as I learned by myself how to read comics.
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Second, in these 4 issues, some really messed up stuff starts to be revealed about the psychological manipulation of Phoenix that puts the whole series and Marvel history on a collision course with the Dark Phoenix Saga. This is a really memorable run for me for a few of reasons.įirst of all, it’s an amazing 4-issue story with huge stakes and high drama, and an example of the Claremont-Byrne team entering their creative peak. We’re now in 1979 and this post will cover issues #125-#128. Welcome to the 25th installment of my reread of The Uncanny X-Men from 1963’s issue #1.
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