BHOC: UNCANNY X-MEN #124

By the time of UNCANNY X-MEN #124, I had been buying the book for about a year and a half, and I enjoyed it every month. It wasn’t my favorite title, didn’t differentiate itself from the rest of the pack in that manner at the time. But it was a book that could be relied upon to deliver the goods. In wider fan circles at the time, the appeal of UNCANNY X-MEN was growing, and this sent the prices of back issues skyrocketing, at least in relation to everything else of that period. It was unthinkable in 1979 that a comic book published just four years earlier would command $25.00 on the back issue market, but that’s exactly what was happening with GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 and especially UNCANNY X-MEN #94. Because the book had been a reprint series for so long, the print run on #94 was a lot smaller than the typical Marvel super hero book of that period, which meant that copies were a bit more scarce in the wild. As fans wanted to catch up on these strange new characters that had caught their fancy, dealers found that they could charge greater and greater sums for the earlier issues and there’d be people who would pay them.

The consistency of delivery on UNCANNY X-MEN comes down in large part to the consistency of creative team. While they were far from a simpatico partnership, the trio of Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin produced issue after issue with one another, with only an occasional absence by Austin. Additionally, letterer Tom Orzechowski and colorist Glynis Wein also remained on the series in seeming perpetuity. And editor Roger Stern provided a necessary fulcrum to balance the needs and desires of both Chris and John, keeping them in balance through much of this run. Of the material that Marvel was producing in 1979, UNCANNY X-MEN was pretty much the pinnacle, with only the work being done on DAREDEVIL by newcomer Frank Miller beginning to catch the same sort of fire.

The story in this issue is about as close to plotless as the series would come. In short: the killer-for-hire Arcade has been retained to assassinate the X-Men by their old foes Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy. Arcade’s minions abduct the X-Men as well as supporting cast members Colleen Wing, Amanda Sefton and Betsy Wilford and spirited them away to Murderworld, his killer amusement park, where he intends to put the team through its paces and eliminate them in style. I hadn’t seen the earlier story that Claremont and Byrne did in MARVEL TEAM-UP where Arcade did the same thing to Spider-Man and Captain Britain yet, so I didn’t realize that they’d had that heroic pair face pretty much all of the same gags and deathtraps that endanger the X-Men in this story. But it means that there was even less innovation going on here than I knew of in 1979. Anyway, the plot of the issue is pretty much the separated X-Men fighting their way through one situation after another, trying to get free and get to Arcade.

As a part of his efforts, Arcade brainwashes Colossus, the Russian X-Man who recently has been feeling uncertain about his place in the group as well as having left his homeland and family behind to join it. He’s consequently recast as the Proletarian, hero of the Soviet Union, and he attempts to annihilate his fellow X-Men even though he inwardly feels guilty about doing so. He initially mixes it up with Wolverine and Cyclops, and while the battle is uncertain, the two wind up being sent through different passages into different death traps elsewhere in Murderworld. Meanwhile, the other X-Men are also attempting to survive their own life-threatening situations–Storm enclosed in a space rapidly filling with water that also triggers her claustrophobia, Nightcrawler trapped in a spherical room throughout which buzzsaw-mounted cars race, and the powerless Banshee in the midst of what seems to be attacking spacecraft right out of STAR WARS. Wolverine winds up with Banshee while Cyclops finds himself alongside Nightcrawler.

Plotless doesn’t mean without incident, however, and the structure for this story allows artist John Byrne to go wild with his flair for action sequences. He gives all of the X-Men good business that shows off their abilities, whether it’s Cyclops taking out the roomful of buzzsaw cars with a single ricocheting Optic Blast or Nightcrawler sneaking through the ductwork of Murderworld to find the control room, becoming semi-invisible in the shadows as he did in those days. It’s fast-paced and fun, and keeps the tale rocketing forward smoothly in a very satisfying manner.

But the big emotional payoff comes with the exhausted team is set upon by their old friend Colossus once more. The brainwashed mutant swiftly incapacitates both Banshee and Wolverine, and then moves to choke the life out of Storm and Cyclops. They attempt to break through Arcade’s brainwashing by appealing to their shared experiences as members of the X-Men and how they’ve all become a found family. It’s ultimately Storm telling Colossus that she regards him as a a brother that ultimately does the trick. With his park in ruins and his controls mangled as a result of Nightcrawler’s attack earlier, Arcade decides that it’s time to walk away, and he has the X-Men ejected from Murderworld.

As the X-Men regroup, Arcade even sends Nightcrawler and the three ladies out to them, with a note indicating that this round goes to them. Wolverine has no intention of letting this go that easily, but the issue is out of pages, so Cyclops is able to make him see reason–they’ve escaped with their lives and Arcade’s set-up is in ruins, that’s all the win they’re going to get today. All in all, this was a fun escapade that was well-drawn and well-delivered. And “He Only Laughs When I Hurt” is a very clever little title.

I’m also including the X-Mail letters page from this issue as it features in its response to the last letter the first in-print explanation that I can recall of how the passage of time works in the Marvel Universe. The unnamed writer, possibly either editor Roger Stern or assistant editor Jim Salicrup indicate that at this point the working theory is that it’s only been maybe 5 or 6 years since the X-Men first formed in-world, even though 16 years have passed since the publication of X-MEN #1. This is one of those ideas that makes certain readers’ heads ache, but took this revelation completely in stride. I hadn’t been bothered by the passage of time in my comics either way, so this explanation worked for me. But some didn’t like it, just as some don’t like it to this day.