Worst
Moments in Comics
X-Men:
Eve of Destruction
(issues #111-113 of X-Men, and #392-393 of Uncanny X-Men)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Leinil Francis Yu
Synopsis:
Magneto is threatening the world with annihilation (out of
character, folks, simply out of character!), and the Avengers at
least are unable to deal with this properly, due to the fact that
the UN sanctions Genosha, which he is the leader of, having taken it
over as a haven for mutants under his own rulership. So only the
X-Men can really get around the problem of diplomatic immunities
imposed upon the other members of the superhero community, and Jean
Grey gathers together not
a professional bunch of mutant troubleshooters, but a ragtag bunch
of amateurs, such as an undercover agent who’s invincible to bullets
named Paulie Provenzano, Cargill, Sunpyre, Northstar, the Alpha
Flight member who’s both a French-Canadian and a gay stereotype,
courtesy of John Byrne, and Dazzler, who gets no explanation as to
whatever happened to Longshot and the other characters she was with
in the Mojo World. Meanwhile, Cyclops and Wolverine attempt to
infiltrate Genosha via its sewer tunnels.
Not only had Magneto made his ultimatum unto the world, but he’s
also kidnapped Prof. Charles Xavier (so much for the ol’
telepathy!), and is holding him hostage on the island. Soon, the
whole band of incompetant recruits that Jean has gathered arrive in
Genosha’s skies, and are downed by Magneto, who then shows them,
much to their horror, how he’s tortured, and seemingly killed,
Xavier, crucifying him on a pole. Enraged, they engage in a fight
against him, and a very lame one too at that. Dazzler is seemingly
turned into ashes by Magneto, who even throws Paulie into orbit (I
am dead serious here), and this turns out to be an excuse to write
in a scene in which Northstar rescues him and then helps to
resuscitate him, to the homophobic Paulie’s annoyance. Eventually,
Magneto is felled, and then, to top it all off, Wolverine ends up
stabbing him right through the stomach. It then turns out that
Xavier and Dazzler, who was also thought to have been killed by
Magneto, are both alive and well, and, as Alison Blaire puts it, “it was all part of the plan.”
Whatever that means. Xavier gives a telepathic speech to the
population of Genosha, and then the X-Men return home to New York,
where the ragtag recruits all pack up and leave, and Jean says, “so I guess it’s just us then.”
Comment:
It is said that there have been plenty of bad X-Men stories since
possibly the mid-1980’s (but definitely since the mid-1990s), though
few to be sure can match the badness of this one. A story done prior
to when Grant Morrison took over on sans-adjective X-Men, and Joe
Casey and then Chuck Austen took over on Uncanny X-Men, it is one
very dumb-with-a-capital-D storyline, so with any luck, it won’t
have been published in trades, but who knows? In an era when Marvel
seems to be intent on putting just about anything in trades just to
turn a better buck when pamphlet sales are going sadly low.
The story is full of holes big enough for a herd of elephants to
walk through. We never know what happened to Dazzler’s possible
pregnancy that may have been mentioned in X-Men #47, or even Longshot, or why Jean Grey, who
looks like a zombie here, would turn to such a cobbled together
group for dealing with Magneto, and can only wonder where any of the
other, more effective members were, including even the long unseen
Sunfire, could be. And the characters here, well, it’s apparent by
now that they’re the kind of throwaways we’ll probably never see
again.
Lobdell even goes so far as to commit the same mistakes with
Northstar as those who were writing Alpha Flight back in 1992, by
hammering the readers over the head with his homosexuality, and
depicting him as a nasty jerk, and perpetuating Canadian
stereotypes. And the artwork, certainly in the last part, looks
pretty rushed, considering that Yu is a very talented artist.
And despite the title, there ain’t no eve of destruction here,
except for the bad writing being an insult to the readers. And it
was simply degrading to see that Magneto seemingly tortured Xavier
to death, even though he turned up alive and well at the end.
Maybe this is all why, in 2004, Marvel seems to have reconciled by
having revealed the Mags we saw in both that and in Morrison’s story
arcs to have been a clone, and as derivative as it may be, I’m all
for that revelation, as much as it takes in order to repair any
character damage done at any time to any such book.
Even so, it’s a shame whenever things like have to be published.