muties in spaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

recently, i've been browsing through the X-Men eras described over at goodcomics@cbr, and it got me recalling the first X-Men comic i owned. i still remember it to this day: a reprinted copy of X-Men #97, where the (new) team had a bit of a slap-around with one of their own. now doesn't that sound similar to Deadly Genesis? of course, the creation of the new team ties directly into that.

as a child, i had a blast reading #97-101 (which were the only ones i laid my hands on). for this post, i'm just going to go through the first 4 issues, as #101 had a different thing going for it (maybe i'll post it under the half and half tag). this little arc, signaling the leap to greatness by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, would be the seed for other stories for later X-writers to tell.

i realize they don't go up to space till midway of #98 (actually the big reveal at the end of it), but who cares. #97 sets them up to be abducted by the Sentinels (because they had to have some R&R after being betrayed/ambushed by their own family), and have a great big adventure with space shuttles and space stations.

#97 actually starts with Prof. Xavier having nightmares about an intergalactic war (probably the Sh'iar and his future involvements with that race), and the frequency of his dreams lead him to decide to take a break (of course - what with the events of the recent past, recruiting two X-teams to rescue his original, one he leaves for dead, mindwiping the rest, having Thunderbird die on him). we cut to Alex Summers (Havok, Cyclops' younger bro) and Lorna Dane (Polaris, who may or may not be Magneto's daughter; they keep flip-flopping on this one), who have carved out a simple life for themselves as geophysicists. we learn that by being with Alex, Lorna feels like a woman, which then brings us to question her real gender (tranny alert!).

someone familiar shows up at the door and blasts Lorna unconscious. Alex hears her screaming and runs back to the house, then Lorna blasts him unconscious. i'm not sure what the span of time was in between those two events are, but it was enough to sew a new costume for Lorna.

three days later, at JFK, where the X-Men are saying their goodbyes to the Bahamas-bound Xavier, Kurt (who looks to out-Stark Tony Stark with the Stark-invented image inducer) is teaching Peter the finer points of "look-but-don't-touch" stylings. who would have thought this ladies' man would let go of earthly pleasures and someday be a priest!?

i don't know how the hell Havok and Polaris got through airport security in full costume in the first place (what, they took a cab? then the guards thought the circus was in town?). nevertheless, they knew exactly where to find Xavier, and start hassling with Scott. shoved aside, Scott barks orders just like the battlefield commander that he is. Colossus and Nightcrawler act like robots and wait for the exact correctly-worded order to move. nevertheless, my 7 year old self was impressed by these "X-Men".

one wrecked TWA 747 later (so that's why they went bankrupt!), the action stops and even Havok is shocked at his actions. Cyclops, now in costume and dauntless leader mode, starts twisting lapels and asking questions. apparently, the answers are not forthcoming from Havok ...

... but from Eric the Red, who makes a movie-worthy dramatic entrance (you know, like walking through the smoke and flames). at this point, i didn't know who Eric the Red was - all i know is that for a split-second, he reduces Scott to a gibbering idiot ("you're Eric the Red! but you can't be Eric the Red - i was Eric the Red!").

and as if Eric the Red-garbed masochistic jock actually had better things to say. he says he is power incarnate and nothing that lives can stand against him. they cannot take him and they will do is die. they cannot hope to defeat him. ladies and gentlemen, i give you exhibit A: the chatty villain.

Alex and Scott face off again, and here am not sure if it has been established that they are not affected by each other's powers. apparently not, because Scott thinks he has to avoid a full-on blast by Alex.

i love Cockrum's fight scenes, and you can be sure i practiced those poses a lot in my spare time (as a kid, 99% is spare time).

here's another fight scene where i got enamored by the "all-new" X-Men as my definitive X-Men through the years. even if they're all kind of chatty while fighting (a true Claremont trademark).

it would be revealed later that Erik the Red a.k.a. Davan Shakari (are you sure he's Sh'iar? he sounds like he's from Mumbai), is the Earthbound Sh'iar observer who has been tasked to prevent the X-Men from helping Lilandra, the rebellious sister of corrupt Sh'iar emperor D'Ken, who was on her way to Earth to ask for assistance. not only does Erik fail in this task, Lilandra and Charles eventually end up as longtime lovers. i always liked Claremont's multi-threaded writing style and how he throws out plotlines all over the place that build up to something (albeit slow). on the other hand, a lot of his plotlines never get resolved (either by intent or editorial meddling), especially when he left the books the first time in 1991.

so back to the alien with the Indian-sounding name. with Storm getting the upper hand against Polaris, and with the X-guys outnumbering them, Erik chooses flight over fight, and another great dramatic sequence is produced, building up to the eventual tense relationship between Scott and Logan (whom i was seeing for the first time).

weeks later, they're all at the Rockefeller Plaza having a White Christmas.

note 1: "showin' each other the sights of New York" eh? is that how they called sex those days?
note 2: what do you call Wolverine's hairstyle? owlhead? actually even Peter looks like that.

oh, look who makes a cameo appearance!

i wonder who The Man was referring to as having no respect: Jean and Scott, or Claremont and Cockrum.

well, since this is the X-Men, who can't have any long R&R since they hit puberty, who else drops by 30 Rock except ... the long-thought deactivated Sentinels! (what, you thought it was Lorne Michaels?)

is it just me, or is Cyclops wearing some kind of flip visors? (which is not obvious in other panels)

by the way, doesn't he look old? this 1975 version doesn't hold a candle to the ultraconfident, take-no-prisoners, Emma Frost-boinking 2008 version.


the Sentinels also have tracked down Xavier in the Bahamas and pissed on his fishing trip and destroying his pal Peter Corbeau's spanking custom-made hydrofoil.


let's linger on that Sentinel pose for a minute. fans will recognize the same pose Jean (as Phoenix) would make rising out of the water (not ashes) in issue #101. Sentinels are supposed to be unmanned robots with unparalleled AI. is it unparalleled enough to be doing human-like poses? i would think this would make better sense if it had pilots (just like the new O*N*E models) and the unit would follow the pilots' motions. (a-la Daimos?)


let me digress a bit: given the whole choreographed sequence just to put Richard into the Daimos robot, one single mistake would fuck up the whole thing and waste precious time stopping whatever evil menace is destroying a city at that moment. do they repeat the whole thing, "from the top"? and what happens after they're finished? do they have crews to set up the whole erector set again?

ok, back to the X-books.

elsewhere, the Sentinels have also captured Sean, Jean, and Logan (that sounds like an urban multimedia company) and we meet the mastermind of this whole shebang, one Steven Lang, robotics and genetic expert who hates mutants (a recurring theme in these parts). Lang wants to take apart our merry band of mutants and find a way to exterminate the whole slew of anomalies. the moron that he is, he could have figured this out in a less-stressful (and less expensive) way by abducting mutants with non-lethal powers.

at this point, little is known about Logan (even Sean is surprised to see the claws pop out of his hands because he was out of costume), and Origin was not even a twinkle in Bill Jemas' eye. in fact, Jemas had no clue who Wolverine was at that time, as he was busy bangin' college chicks at Rutgers. so Claremont dangles the plot thread that Wolverine isn't "human", and leaves it up to the readers to speculate, as creator Len Wein did intend Logan to be a mutated wolverine cub. but then you know the rest.

what we know is that enraging this mutated wolverine cub is not the best thing to do, as Lang does when he slaps Jean around. Wolvie gets loose and its slicin' and dicin' time.

aside from slicin' and dicin', Wolvie's also good with the rippin'. y'know, like ripping clothes off women. that'll come in handy.

not being able to lug the unconscious crippled Xavier around (that useless prick), our heroes are overrun by more Sentinels and Banshee is forced to carry both Wolverine and Jean out of there, via his sonic scream/flight thing. but then there's one thing he didn't count on:

that's right, kiddies; instead of running out of space, he ran into space.

how long does can a human being survive in outer space without a spacesuit? let's ask some intelligent people.

When the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, a number of injuries begin to occur immediately. Though they are relatively minor at first, they accumulate rapidly into a life-threatening combination. The first effect is the expansion of gases within the lungs and digestive tract due to the reduction of external pressure. A victim of explosive decompression greatly increases their chances of survival simply by exhaling within the first few seconds, otherwise death is likely to occur once the lungs rupture and spill bubbles of air into the circulatory system. Such a life-saving exhalation might be due to a shout of surprise, though it would naturally go unheard where there is no air to carry it.

In the absence of atmospheric pressure water will spontaneously convert into vapor, which would cause the moisture in a victim's mouth and eyes to quickly boil away. The same effect would cause water in the muscles and soft tissues of the body to evaporate, prompting some parts of the body to swell to twice their usual size after a few moments. This bloating may result in some superficial bruising due to broken capillaries, but it would not be sufficient to break the skin.

Within seconds the reduced pressure would cause the nitrogen which is dissolved in the blood to form gaseous bubbles, a painful condition known to divers as "the bends." Direct exposure to the sun's ultraviolet radiation would also cause a severe sunburn to any unprotected skin. Heat does not transfer out of the body very rapidly in the absence of a medium such as air or water, so freezing to death is not an immediate risk in outer space despite the extreme cold.

For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of "useful consciousness" would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim's mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.

ten seconds!!! i think the whole time needed for a couple of Sentinels to launch from - tada! an orbital platform owned by S.H.I.E.L.D. - and rescue our hapless mutants took more than 10 seconds. only Wolverine would be in a better state because of his healing factor.back in terra firma, let us just bring to you a brief Geraldo sighting. even back then, he already looks annoying.

Peter Corbeau, surviving the cold waters and sharks of the Atlantic, seems to have managed to hitchhike to Westchester. after figuring out where the Sentinels could be located (the stupid Sentinel that captured Xavier couldn't keep its mouth shut, worrying about solar flares), Scott uses Corbeau's NASA connections and manage to get themselves into a scheduled shuttle launch, their only ticket to getting up there (neither the famous Blackbird was in place yet, nor their infamous ab-use of Sh'iar tech).

no one bothers to scuttle the mission due to the potential threat of solar flares, and the X-Men just go into space without any astronaut training. and their plan is to dock at the space station and stroll right in. beautiful.

Colossus wrecks his spacesuit in panic (Storm does a better job, considering her claustrophobia), Lang's sensors pick them up as mutants, the Sentinels are deployed, opening a hole in the shuttle where Storm gets sucked out, so the only hope they have is to crash the shuttle right into a wall of the space station. beautiful.

in Hollywood, this immediately causes a huge spectacular explosion. (right, Michael Bay?)

of course, such maneuvers ensure that the striking object acts as an airtight stopper, in which no one gets sucked out into space, and everyone can behave normally as if a hole wasn't punched through in that space station. by behaving normally, we mean "let's have a big old-fashioned fistfight".

note: this is how dated this gets. Olga Korbut was a celebrated Soviet hero in the mid 70s for her Olympic achievements in gymnastics. in 2002, she's shoplifting in Georgia (the United States, not the former Soviet republic, you geography-challenged monkeys).

we can understand how life can pass you by and suddenly you're a has-been. but we can't understand this other Soviet, Peter, who's young and in the prime of life, losing it. oh, that's right, he has some affections for Ororo (Kitty wasn't in his radar yet, or Zsaji).

"you. know. nothing!" angry much.

by the way, the number for the Colossus Cares Foundation for Homeless Collective Children is 1-888-727-7886. call them if you want to donate.

what if we whispered in Peter's ear, right there and then, that his sister Ilyanna will die years later from the Legacy Virus, he'll join the bad guys, and then die himself of it later? and then he'll be revived by aliens? he'll probably run off the orbital platform, screaming his head off, until the airless space chokes the sound out of his mouth (and there'll be no Sentinels left to pick him up).

a few panels later, its Cyclops' turn to lose control, waling into Lang like the latter stole his lunch. oh, worse, he stole his gurlfriend for a few days and slapped her around.

uh, Scott ... not that i'm siding with that murderer, but how the hell can he answer if your fists are kissing his mouth?

conveniently, they are interrupted by a familiar figure ... or figures for that matter. yeah, you know where this is going.

i can't believe no one among the X-Men would figure this out in a snap. i guess Cyclops would, but he was knocked out by "Xavier".

at least we get a multi-character splash page fight, and these was before the days of George Perez and Phil Jimenez. this is where Cockrum rocks!

and of course, we get the patented fastball special.

its always fun to have X-Men fighting each other. (e.g., Inferno where X-Men meets X-Factor)

for the second time in this post, we see Wolverine getting sucker-punched by a teammate. this is actually a case where your teacher lays a hand on you. that's against the law, man!

"Jean Grey" joins the fight and either telephatically tells him to shut down, or telekinetically squeezes his brain. either way, it drives Wolverine to revert to his homicidal tendencies. and for good reason.

how indeed? the X-Sentinels were a marvel of engineering. not only did they act much better than the patented S.H.I.E.L.D. LMD, they had annoying personalities and freakin' powers! whoa!!

and each costs about a billion dollars (in 1975 prices), and Wolverine just sent one to the junkyard, just like that. how dare he!!! my taxes paid for that mutant-killing machine!

and just like that, the house of cards falls down, and Lang runs for dear life from a righteously-angry Cyclops. of course, he has his own definition of "coward". it involves having a weapon.

the joint efforts of Cyclops and Jean result in Lang redecorating his huge-screen plasma TV with his body parts. of course, this won't be the last time we'll be seeing Lang as he is revived twice, which is par for the course in the Marvel Universe.

now, the next issue is how to get back to Earth, which is kind of a problem since they don't have a fully functional spacecraft. plus there's that solar flare that we've kept mentioning since the beginning of this post.

Jean, bless her brave heart, volunteers to fly the shuttle manually (by absorbing the knowledge from Corbeau's mind) and tackling the solar flare (by whatever means necessary). Cyclops, adrenaline still running in him, snaps at her and gets mentally whacked (for the nth time in this whole thing) for his concern.

safe inside the radiation-resistant lifecell section, the X-Men could only wonder what the heck was happening out there, as Jean flew the space shuttle right smack into the middle of the solar flare, and her destiny to be the vessel of the Phoenix Force set into motion.

and that was a classic. 'til next time, kiddies.