Uncanny X-Men #57-59: Like Father, Like Son

With the X-Men and Alex still in Egypt, the story actually starts at Lorna Dane's apartment where the Sentinels rip the walls open and capture her immediately. Seriously, this comic is already off to a killer start. Instant action, and the return of a classic villain.

We then cut to the X-Men. The authorities arrive, and the X-Men try to hand over the Living Normal Guy with No Powers but it turns out he is a well renown Living Archeologist in the area, and he convinces them that the X-Men are the real criminals who blew up his dig (you know what, I can completely get why they believe that).

Alex runs off cause 1. They are trying to arrest him (reasonably) and 2. He is afraid that he is going to hurt someone (reasonably). The X-Men lose track of him in the fight with the authorities. They also receive an alert on Cerebro that Lorna was attacked (how does Cerebro know that? Convenience). The X-Men split up, with Iceman and Beast going back to find Lorna, and everyone else hunting for Alex.

Iceman and Beast discover that Lorna's apartment is trashed, get confronted by police, run and then go to Scott's old apartment to try to regroup. They then tune in the TV to see Federal Judge Robert Chalmers and Larry Trask, son of Bolivar, are on. Larry is ranting about how mutants are evil, killed his father, and how he rebuilt the Sentinel program to stop all mutants. He also cites the recent attack on police in Egypt by mutants to show how All Mutants Are Evil. Also also: He thinks the X-Men killed his father. Of course he does.

Here, there is a series of fights with Sentinels as more and more mutants are captured. Iceman, Alex, Living Archeologist Who Was About To Regain his Powers, Mesmero (who also finds out the Magneto he has been following was really an android), Banshee, Vanisher, Blob, Unus, Angel etc. etc. etc.

It turns out Alex also went willingly because Larry had made a suit that could hold back his powers to reasonable levels. He also had a remote to completely disable his powers entirely. Which he used when he backed out of the deal with Alex not to hurt any of the others.

As he talks about completely destroying the mutant menace, Judge Chalmers tries to chill him out. But Larry is going insane about it, talking about the medallion his father gave him and told him to never take off. He then orders the Sentinels to kill all mutants. Chalmers, who was apparently a close friend of Bolivar and the only one who shared a super secret snapped and pulled the medallion off, revealing the secret: Larry is a mutant, and the medallion was made to hide that, and make him forget his powers.

The Sentinels refuse to listen to him anymore, as he is a mutant, so follow the last orders from when he was a human. The remaining X-Men attack, using the costumes of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Toad (who they rescued on the way in), to confuse the Sentinels: They are preparing for one type of attack, and getting hit with another, getting around their adaptive abilities (pretty clever, the Sentinels are fun when they are highly capable, yet brokenly stupid if you do something unexpected).

Then Chalmers uses the remote to reactivate Alex's powers, and he starts wrecking shit. Then Scott wins by convincing the Sentinels that to stop mutation, the Sentinels needed to ATTACK THE SUN. They leave to do so.

Chalmers lets them all go, the end.

X-tra Notes: Oh, I love this one. This might be the best work that Roy Thomas did on X-Men. It is solid. Great villains, lots of connections with existing continuity with bringing back the Sentinels, as well as furthering the personal storyline of Alex, and bringing back Lorna again. On an extra note, it does provide us with one more "oh boy, let's not" sign of the times with this exclamation from Cyclops as they fight off the cops in Egypt.

Scott, you can't say that.