Sunday, February 26, 2023

Uncanny X-Men #126-128: Colossus vs Man Whose Entire Weakness Is Metal

The X-Men rush across the Atlantic, not waiting for Beast to catch up, and get to Muir island to find that everyone is thankfully OK. Phoenix managed to fight off Mutant X, and Lorna was saved by a Jamie dupe. Moira explains that Mutant X is a reality warping mutant whose powers cause his body to deteriorate, so he has to jump from body to body to survive, killing each person he inhabits. He had taken the Multiple Man dupe and left the island.

She also after a bit more haranguing finally reveals that Mutant X is her son, Kevin MacTaggert.

The team + the Muir Island crew head to the mainland to try to find him. They spread out and Phoenix gets another Wyngarde inspired trip to the 18th century, which is broken when she finds the decayed corpse of one of Mutant X's victims. Wolverine on the other hand, has tracked Kevin using his nose, and finds him in the body of a police officer. He tries to take control of Wolvie's body but he has a weakness to metal, and Wolverine's skeleton saves him.

A battle ensues, Kevin names himself "Proteus". They do their best but you know, reality warper. Wolverine and Nightcrawler get warped like a funhouse mirror. Storm joins the fight, but again, you know, reality warper, kind of hard to fight, so she gets screwed up pretty fast, too. He almost takes Storm, but then a sniper starts firing at him with metal bullets. He escapes.

Turns out the sniper would have hit him dead in the head had Cyclops not stopped Moira from killing her own son. To be honest, this story would have probably turned out better if he hadn't stopped her. Moira guesses where Kevin is going and takes off after him.

Licking their wounds, Cyclops intentionally provokes Wolverine, and then everyone, into a brawl to test their readiness and snap Wolverine out of his funk (the reality warping did an actual number on him, which is actually surprising).

Moira runs to Edinburgh to confront Joe MacTaggert, her husband that refuses to divorce her and Kevin's father. Turns out he is an abusive asshole. She even has to pull a gun on him to leave. She basically just warns him that Kevin is coming and takes off.

Turns out, Kevin was coming. He takes over his fathers body and in gaining Joe's memories and such gets even more mentally fucked up. He attacks Moira. Jean had detected Joe's death though telepathically and the X-Men arrive.

A series of fights happen, Cyclops has Jean connect them all telepathically, and they setting into a kind of hit and run method to keep him from taking over a different body while trying to burn out his powers and keep people safe all at the same time.

In the end, he burns out Joe's body, becomes a being of pure psionic energy and they bait him with human form Colossus. The moment he tries to take him over, Colossus goes metal form and then fucks him up. Proteus dies. Maybe you should have just let Moira shoot him?

X-Tra Notes: It sure is nice to have everyone together again! This one is pretty good. Some good character moments (Cyclops shaking Wolverine back to reality by picking a fight with him, with Wolverine giving actual respect to him for doing it), a good villain (Proteus is legitimately scary), and a method of winning that is clever.

No comments:

Post a Comment