Uncanny X-Men 111-113: Circus Freaks & Baby Revenge

Our Boy Beast is off to try to figure out what happened to the X-Men. He finds the place empty, but Cerebro shows that they are all in Dallas, at a carnival. Beast is surprised to see Banshee as a carnival barker, and most of the X-Men (at least he guesses, he hasn't met most of them, and is going off how they were described to him by others) working as circus "freaks".

Confused he tries to figure out what is happening, he goes to "Miz Destiny's" Trailer which is really Jean Grey, where she is protected by "Slim" who is actually Scott Summers, cause she has to "go on a date with the boss" (ew). Still confused he tries to run and gets smacked in the head by Colossus. He wakes up confronted by their old villain Mesmero who had snuck in and brainwashed them all (going back to the whole "date with the boss" thing... I state again, ew).

Wolverine manages to break free, he gets Jean free by slapping her until she snaps back to herself, and she mentally frees the rest. They are going to confront Mesmero when they find that Mesmero and Beast have been knocked the fuck out by Magneto. Magneto has captured them all, and as they are in a carney trailer thousands of feet in the air magnetically controlled by Magneto, there is nothing they can do about it.

Magneto takes them into a secret base under an active volcano in Antarctica, and the team jump him. He handles them all pretty easily as they have zero coordination, though Phoenix almost gets him before she runs out of Phoenix power.

He then puts all of them in chairs that block their ability to control their powers and their bodies, and assigns a robot "nanny" to take care of them. Basically reducing them to "babies" just like he was (though literally none of this team had anything to do with him being reduced to a baby so... yeah). And then he leaves.

While Nanny is away, Storm knocks her headdress off to reveal lockpicks in them. There is a flashback to her time as a thief in Cairo as a small child. She focuses and attempts to pick the lock with her teeth. She fails and Nanny comes back to put her headdress back on.

Later, Magneto gets an alert that something is wrong in the base. He arrives to find all the lights out. Storm had succeeded on a second attempt, and the X-Men are now all free. Jean connects them mentally so that Scott can instantaneously give them commands, and they work as a team to take down Magneto. Unfortunately, during the fight, the shields that block the lava out break and the lava starts to flow in. Magneto escapes with a magnetic shield, leaving the X-Men.

Our comic ends with Phoenix escaping, having saved only Beast, and thinking the rest of the X-Men had perished.

X-Tra Notes: This three parter is kind of a bit all over the place. The Mesmero story is boring, but the Magneto one is pretty great. Magneto's whole "you get to be babies just like me" thing is genuinely a fucked up thing, and the setting of his secret base under the volcano and lava so only he could go in and out safely was also a great setup.