X-FORCE #91 - June 1999

Fallout

Credits: John Francis Moore (writer), Tommy Lee Edwards (penciler), Al Williamson (inker), Marie Javins (colors), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters)

Summary: Unable to speak, Siryn wanders San Francisco. After briefly considering suicide, she buys a liquor bottle and contemplates drinking again. Eventually, she visits an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting instead. Banshee arrives to check on Siryn and spends a futile night with X-Force searching the city. She returns hours later, says goodbye to Proudstar, and leaves behind a resignation letter.

Continuity Notes:

· Banshee knows Domino as “Beatrice.” They apparently met when she was very young in Madripoor.

· Fearful that their friendship is in jeopardy, Meltdown breaks up with Sunspot while they’re searching for Siryn.

· Sunspot is soon detained by INS agents who say he’s in the country illegally.

· Detective Napoleon Sanders, the police officer that’s been trailing Domino since issue #73 catches up with her in San Francisco. To their mutual shock, she begins to glow and disappears.

· Siryn claims she almost gave away two years of sobriety, which would place X-Force #31 two years ago in continuity. I’ll once again point out that these specific time references are peculiar when you consider how adamant Marvel is that some of their characters should not age at all.

I Love the '90s: A calendar shows Siryn’s birthday as some point in the late ‘70s. This issue also establishes her age as twenty-one, which means she would have to be born in the ‘90s today.

Review: Siryn is given an issue-long goodbye, which is appropriate considering her long history with the book. Because Marvel still had some faith in the “every issue is someone’s first” mantra, there’s a plethora of flashbacks in this issue establishing not only Siryn’s backstory, but Banshee’s as well. Moore works it into the story smoothly, using the old continuity to establish Siryn’s motivation for drinking and setting up the significance of her decision to leave the team. For anyone not engrossed with Siryn’s dilemma, Moore’s also thrown in a decent amount of subplots to keep the title’s momentum going. I’m sure the INS agents Sunspot encounters are frauds, but it’s amusing to see a writer finally address the legalities that the foreign X-members never seem to face while staying in America.

Periodically, you need one of these cast changes to keep things interesting, and while Siryn isn’t a character I would choose to dismiss, I can see where Moore’s coming from. With the addition of Domino and Jesse Aaronson, the book is packed with characters, so someone probably should be leaving. Cannonball is widely viewed by the audience and the characters as the true leader of the team, which makes Siryn’s role slightly superfluous. This also opens the door for Moonstar to make a play for team leadership, since she’s been groomed for the role going back to the early days of New Mutants. Proudstar’s response to her departure also opens up avenues for new stories.

Fill-in art for the issue comes from Tommy Lee Edwards, who’s about as far away from Jim Cheung as you can get. His style fits the brooding story, even if some of his faces are extremely off-model (his rendition of Meltdown resembles a blonde James Woods). My favorite panel is the flashback to Siryn meeting X-Force for the first time, since Edwards has chosen to draw them in the Mignola-style.

WOLVERINE ’96 - 1996

The Last Ronin

Credits: Jeph Loeb (plot), Ralph Macchio (script), Ed McGuiness (penciler), Nathan Massengill w/Norman Lee (inkers), Gloria Vasquez (colors), Comicraft (letters)

Summary: In Japan, Bastion encourages the government to use the Red Ronin robot as an anti-mutant mechanism. Meanwhile, Silver Samurai convinces Wolverine to help him break Sunfire out of a government facility, where he’s been kept ever since his powers went haywire months earlier. When Wolverine and Sunfire reach Red Ronin, they run into Yukio, who is trying to find a way to deliver the robot to the highest bidder. On the government’s command, Red Ronin is activated when the intruders are detected. Wolverine disables the robot, but Sunfire’s powers go out of control during the fight. After Wolverine calms him down, he takes Sunfire to Canada to train with Mac and Heather Hudson.

Continuity Notes: It’s revealed that Sunfire lost control of his powers due to Magneto’s electromagnetic pulse in X-Men #25.

Review: Is this the first Loeb/McGuiness collaboration? It does follow their future path of minimal plots that revolve around giant robots and gratuitous action scenes. There’s barely anything to this story, but it does take advantage of a few existing continuity points. I remember some fans were convinced that Sunfire was killed in X-Men #25, due to the brief scene that had him consumed in a flash of light as Magneto’s electromagnetic pulse swept the planet. Picking up on that scene and using it to justify his lack of appearances since then (I’m assuming he didn’t appear in-between these two stories) is a nice use of the past. Showing Bastion’s actions overseas also helps to develop him as a more credible villain, and pitting Wolverine against an obscure character like Red Ronin is fun. For whatever reason, Red Ronin is only operational for a few pages, and McGuiness doesn’t really get to do much with him, so it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity. Ralph Macchio, one of the routine fill-in scripters of this era, delivers another mid-70s style script. Everything is spelled out in great detail, so over half of the script consists of exposition or descriptions of events that are clearly depicted in the art.

The Golden Temple

Credits: Joseph Kelly (writer), Tommy Lee Edwards (penciler), Rich Case (inker), Paul Becton (colors), John Workman (letters)

Summary: Amiko runs away to find the Golden Temple, where she hopes to find the samurai who once saved her life. She’s joined by a grizzled homeless man who helps her on the journey. When they reach the temple, Amiko is disappointed to see it’s been abandoned. The homeless man reveals himself as Wolverine, the “samurai” she’s been searching for the entire time.

Review: This has Tommy Lee Edwards art, and John Workman even hand-lettered it, so it’s a little “arty” for a mid-90s annual backup. I assume Joseph Kelly is Joe Kelly, making what might be his debut on an X-title. It’s an adequately told story about a child’s imagination, believing in yourself, and accepting change. Wolverine’s Japanese supporting cast never really received the attention they deserved, so I’m glad someone decided to do a character-driven piece with Wolverine’s adopted daughter. This might also be the only Wolverine story set in Japan that doesn’t feature the Hand, so it probably deserves an award just for that.

X-MEN #72 & UXM #352 – February 1998

X-Men #72

Life Lessons

Credits: Joe Kelly (writer), Carlos Pacheco (penciler), Art Thibert (inker), Comicraft (lettering), Liquid! (colors)

Summary: Wolverine spars with Marrow, testing her to see if she’s truly willing to become an X-Man. When he thinks that she’s willing to submit, Marrow sucker punches him and stabs him in the throat. Wolverine goes into a rage, and is subdued by Cannonball. Marrow runs away, back to the secret place where Callisto is recovering. Meanwhile, Sabra informs Gabrielle Haller that Erik Lensherr was a false identity created for Magneto. They track down Georg Odekirk, the man who created the counterfeit identity, shortly after he's killed by Magneto.

Continuity Notes: Gabrielle Haller is trying to use her influence as an ambassador to free Xavier from federal custody. It’s amusing that she’s more concerned about this than the X-Men seem to be (although Phoenix does briefly search for him mentally in this month's UXM).

Storm tells Cannonball that Marrow “attempt(ed) to kill hundreds to further her goals”, which seems to be a quiet retconning of any actual murders on her part.

According to Magneto, he changed his name to Erik Lensherr after he went into hiding, following his lethal attack on his daughter’s killers. He kills Georg Odekirk because the identity he created doesn’t stand up to scrutiny in the modern age.

Review: This issue is almost entirely dedicated to justifying Marrow’s place on the team, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off. There is at least a little retconning going on, but Kelly really doesn’t go for any cheap outs. Marrow doesn’t break down and cry, Storm doesn’t decide to forgive and move on, and Wolverine doesn’t get to intimidate Marrow into falling in line. Marrow remains nasty and mean, with the only indication that she’s willing to change coming from Wolverine’s speculation that “somewhere in that mess you call a brain, part of you wants something better”. Having Marrow stab Wolverine just when he seems to be getting through to her is a nice twist. It might come across as Kelly selling Marrow a little too hard, but I think it works within the context of the story. Cannonball also has a strong portrayal, as he tries to convince the others to follow Xavier's example and give Marrow a second chance, even when there’s no compelling reason for the team to do so. I still think adding Marrow to the team was a dumb move, but Kelly gets a lot of material out of the idea in this issue.

The Magneto subplot, on the other hand, is just ridiculous. I assume it was motivated by Marvel retroactively deciding that too much of Magneto’s past had been revealed, which might be a legitimate concern. Casually revealing that Erik Lensherr was a fake name, and having Magneto callously kill the man who created it, doesn’t work at all. It brings Magneto back into cartoonish supervillainy, which undermines most of the interesting things you can do with the character.

Uncanny X-Men #352

In Sin Air

Credits: Steve Seagle (writer), Hamner/Edwards/Banks/Dodson/Williams/Cassaday (pencilers), Martin/Edwards/Holdredge/Dodson/Gray/Cassaday (inkers), Comicraft (lettering), Steve Oliff (colors)

Summary: While flying to their new home in Alaska, Cyclops and Phoenix encounter an otherworldly entity that AIM is attempting to steal from another group of scientists. At first, the entity lashes out at the passengers, forcing them to relive their darkest moments. When the plane goes out of control, Phoenix convinces the entity to find the good in humanity and calm the passengers, allowing the pilot to land the plane. Meanwhile, Archangel returns to the X-Men’s mansion, but receives a cold reception from teammates who feel that he isn’t taking his responsibilities seriously.

Review: This is another issue that reads like filler, although it’s enjoyable enough. It’s probably most notable for containing six pencilers and six inkers, which makes me wonder just how far off-schedule this title was at the time. I think this is John Cassady’s first time drawing the X-Men, although his style is so different than his Astonishing X-Men work, it might as well be a different artist. None of the pencilers in this issue are incompetent, but their styles are all over the place, and pages seem to have been assigned at random. A three-page scene that has Archangel getting told off by the X-Men somehow ends up with two different artists with totally incompatible styles, making the issue seem like even more of a rush job. I don’t care for the Archangel subplot, which goes out of its way to make him a self-centered goof, but the main story has its moments. I like the psychological angle Seagle adds to the story, and introducing normal, human neighbors for the Summers is a good idea (which, unfortunately, was quickly dismissed).