Laura Kinney is having a romantic moment with "Julian Keller" in this beautiful world. The couple are about to propose a marriage when "Logan" and "Gabby Kinney" surprise them with a congratulation cheer and this causes Laura's claws to pop out from her knuckles in agitation. As Laura is starting to have doubts about the existence of 'Wolverine', she realizes that the happy family and the dreamy world are not real. Laura Kinney eventually starts to stir when she hears the unknown voices around her.
The scene cuts to Laura waking up in an unknown laboratory full of aliens and a few mutants. It turns out that Laura Kinney had been abducted by the Badoon aliens who tried to experiment on her. Laura Kinney is not the only mutant who had been abducted, there is also Beautiful Dreamer the Morlock as well as the other nameless captive mutants. Beautiful Dreamer had been kidnapped by the Badoon and was forced to use her powers to alter Laura's mind in her subconscious state. As Laura Kinney fights off the Badoon aliens in a rampage, Beautiful Dreamer frees the other captive nameless mutants with her "persuasive" powers. While Laura keeps the Badoon busy, Beautiful Dreamer helps the nameless mutants to arm themselves with weapons but the latter (the nameless mutants) are not sure how they could last in fending off the Badoon. One of the nameless mutants takes the other option by using a Teleporter Gun to make a portal for them to escape. After the nameless mutants escape through the portal, Laura Kinney and Beautiful Dreamer fight the Badoon off until they jump into the closing portal back to New York. The two mutants successfully escape through the closing portal while Badoon soldiers lose their limbs from the portal cut. Beautiful Dreamer apologizes to Laura for manipulating her mind through coercion from the Badoon. The two mutants say their goodbyes before heading home in separate ways.
To be honest, this one was underwhelming. There's always something worthy of commentary, it just feels like not much happens and it doesn't quite feel like a full issue - perhaps because it bucks the Marvel formula of the three Cs - conflict, choice, and conclusion.
Stuff certainly happens but nothing that couldn't be summed up in a few sentences at the start of next issue. The last three issues have all had high stakes, for better or worse, and without room to breathe tension burns out.
The Raid on Graymalkin is over but not much has changed, Agent Fucko and the O*N*E have stood down, and everyone is moving on. I didn't expect to see a discussion about recent events but I really want one. Serious shit has gone down very recently and all these people should have opinions on that. The X-Men are used to constant drama but still ... it feels like those events didn't matter and the characters feel thinner for it. It's said that the O*N*E visit was 'earlier' yet Beast is standing and relaxed despite being beaten badly. Maybe Xorn is that good a healer.
After a cold open on some kind of space bullshit crashing nearby, we cut to Beast and Jen Starkey running some tests on her mutation. They're on an awkward first name basis after she reminds him but they're getting along well enough. Hank theorises that she's a metamorph of some kind and tests that hypothesis. Flying seems like a risky place to start but I'm not a scientist. Fortunately he's right and she's not a reality warper or something - she grows wings and assumes avian features. Cool. We move on from them as the plot is happening to other people. Nice to see you both, say hi to Magneto for me.
Whatever crashed is making a beeline for Merle, and Scott feels the O*N*E visit has already disrupted the town enough for one day. If it wasn't coming for them he says it would be none of their business, which is understandable. The X-Men have so many red alert crises and threats coming for them that they couldn't operate as traditional superheroes even if they wanted to. I think that might be this book's identity - Cyclops and friends playing whack-a-mole with endless mutant problems. Although, in other books they're expanding the scope. They're fighting one of Cyttorak's kids right now in Amazing Spider-Man, they've agreed to be on call to the Avengers and have an alliance of sorts; though when all the heroes gather for One World Under DOOM the only mutant present is Storm. Maybe they're in space due to this issue, but the degree of connectivity feels inconsistent. That's often been a thing with X-books, except it's been explicitly set up in Avengers so I don't know what to think.
The banter is cute and the ad hoc points system adorable, but it's mood whiplash considering there's been no time skip since the last 3 intense issues. Maybe I'm nitpicking. I've certainly been known to. People who aren't able to decompress after high stress situations often turn to humour to cope. Something I find myself saying with this book a lot is 'I guess we'll see if it's followed up on.' Given the amount of dangling plot threads and character beats I can't help but feel that the book doesn't deserve that grace. I'll come back to that.
Moving on, Scott needs to be captured by alien bounty hunters and this is how it happens. The visitor from space is Scott's deadbeat dad, Corsair. He's here to warn him that he's got a huge battalion after him, but he really doesn't prioritise it. They greet warmly but Scott is suspicious of his motives, an attitude he had in Phoenix but one that's at odds with other recent history. Whatever - Corsair sucks and he deserves to get called out.
Haha! Krakoa callbacks have been pretty inconsistent, but this is definitely a fun one to dredge up. The Starjammers did abandon the New Mutants to Shi'Ar prison for petty reasons and Magik remembers. She interrupts Scott's interrogation and punches the old geezer in the face. Good for her. Space jail sucks and that's dry snitching.
It's interrupted by Beast detecting even more space bullshit with his instruments. A space whale carrying a whole bunch of aliens is rolling up. So that's what the situation is, thanks Corsair.
'For you. They're here for you.' Not hard.
Err, you didn't really say that, Corsair. Sure, you used that word, but there was no sense of urgency when you could have just said 'aliens are coming to get you, Scott Summers, very soon. It's an emergency.' Even after getting angry he talks about himself and deflects. Just fucking tell them what's happening dude. 'They' is vague and you basically wasted your time. He's not even finished blundering.
The X-Men leap into action with Scott assuming the bounty hunters are here for Corsair - a VERY reasonable assumption. That they're actually here for Scott is very strange. I think Scott taking the situation at face value would be correct 99% of the time - Corsair is a dodgy space pirate who's always being chased by bounty hunters whereas Scott is a Shi'Ar ally and on decent terms with the Kree-Skrull empire. As Corsair admits, he has a 2.5 million credit bounty on his head. No idea what the exchange rate is but it sounds like a lot. I wonder if they're still using Mysterium as a currency and store of value.
There's been some big changes in galactic politics recently in response to Jean and Phoenix cruising around. Gladiator freaked out about it and long story short the Galactic Council put Thanos in charge. They shouldn't be able to do that but mind control is probably involved. Hulkling, Wiccan, or Xandra have been strangely absent. Anyway, failing to get across that they're after Scott is such a blunder I have to wonder if it's not a betrayal. Corsair is an idiot, but that makes this an idiot plot. His and Scott's argument ends up being a pointless waste of time - just taking up page space.
Temper scorches the poor whale, lucky it's lobotomized. The X-Men come through a portal onto the whale ship and raise hell. It's always nice to see how effectively the team work together, though we've just had an event full of pointless violence. Scott thinks he's rescuing his dad but he's really charging into a trap. Corsair eventually convinces Quentin to let him into the telepathic group chat and HE STILL YAPS ABOUT IRRELEVANT INFORMATION. Fuck, just tell him they're here for him; Scott doesn't need to know about the economics of interstellar travel right now.
'I came to warn you, son. I'll do so after including as much extraneous information as possible.' Corsair manages to spit it out only after Scott has already realised something is up. The bounty hunters are wearing Ruby Quartz armor (which is pretty cool) and they've got Cyclops surrounded. Seems like Magik could get him out of there pretty easily, or Scott could blow a hole in the floor. Juggernaut, famously, can't be stopped - surely he can take out these chumps.
Only now do we get 'they're after you.' Three words that he could have said at any time, or even thought it at either of the two telepaths present. He even has a ship-to-speeder communicator that he could have used to get to the point. It's necessary to have characters make mistakes and have errors in communication. It's a reliable and relatable source of drama. Filling half the issue with Corsair dropping out of the sky and saying plenty of words that don't advance the plot or characters in a believable way feels like pointless filler. Corsair has had more dialogue than Glob, Xorn, and Ben Liu - all ongoing characters - and all of it served no purpose. You could remove him from this issue without affecting anything. As I said in the intro, stuff happens, but nothing that couldn't be summed up in a few sentences for the next issue.
Now that Corsair has said what he came to say he's wallpaper. Good. Idie and Quentin are looking to support their teammates when fucking Alpha Flight arrive to help (I think?) A Beaubier-less Alpha Flight is not particularly interesting to me, but I like most of them. They all got imprisoned by ORCHIS during Fall of X for supporting mutants. Definitely cool behaviour, and Puck is generally rad (not sure if he's here) but I there's one member who can go fuck himself.
James MacDonald Hudson is the worst. He's ostensibly a hero but he does a lot of reactionary bootlicking. He briefly joined ORCHIS out of fear of mutants but got cold feet when Australia was nearly destroyed. I'll rant about him another time, but woo - Alpha Flight are here to support the X-Men. Maybe the space bullshit will only take up one more issue. It ends there, so we'll find out next time.
Around issue #5 of this run I stated that I was starting to notice the narrative formula. Each issue will focus on a handful of characters while introducing some new crisis, the rest of the team will get a few panels at best, there'll be some action squeezed in somewhere and then it'll end on a cliffhanger. The cumulative effect is that the plot is glacially slow, the characters have one or two defining traits/issues, and most plot points dangle as crisis after crisis gets piled on.
Even the plot points that have been revisited haven't been resolved in any way, like Graymalkin or the ongoing O*N*E cold war. Here's a list of the dangling plot threads and character beats I could think of without rereading.
- 3K and the adult mutants
- Cassandra Nova
- R-LDS
- The Upstarts
- Graymalkin prison
- The O*N*E
- Scott's anxiety attack
- Piper Cobb
- Magik's chess game
- Idie's problems with authority and teamwork
- Magneto. Just Magneto. He's there but has little to say
- The Phoenix
- Beef with Rogue
- King Bedlam's price
Any one of these things would usually be a priority to deal with or at least discuss. I feel like it devalues their importance to just introduce a new problem almost every issue and it makes it harder to get invested in events as they unfold. This issue, for instance - I suspect it'll be resolved next issue and not spoken about again. Or, it will be a drawn out space adventure like the old days and all the Earthly problems will be put on the backburner. Either way it's a problem caused by frontloading all these crises and continually stacking them on top of one another.
There are moments of solid execution and meaningful character work, but when everything is a crisis nothing is. X-Men #11 looks pretty good, as usual, but it's entirely skippable. If you are a big Corsair fan and want 10 pages of him failing a simple task then this book is for you, but if not you can get everything you need from the intro blurb next issue.
Cover Date: September 1975
On-Sale Date: June 17, 1975
Don't bury us! We're not dead!
Doctor Strange Review has returned. My apologies for the long hiatus. A family crisis and a big move took up a huge chunk of the last four months. Both have been resolved successfully and I am attempting this once again! Let's see if I can recapture the mojo.
Last issue, after a long history lesson of the future and Doc sending young Vance Astro back home with no memory said lesson, life goes on. This issue features a teleport gone wrong subplot but the big deal is the introduction of future Guardian Starhawk, as yet unnamed here and without his signature wings.
The splash page lets us know that the Guardians and the Defenders have been spotted immediately after popping into existence in the future. The Badoon flunky lets his superior know and this tells us the ranking office is named Droom.
This is an interesting choice and I'll go off on a tangent as I contemplate if it's coincidence or tribute. Dr. Droom was a sort of forerunner to Doc with five stories published in the Amazing Adventures anthology book back in 1961. About a year after this issue was published, the character would be retconned into Dr. Druid. Droom's first story would be reprinted in Weird Wonder Tales #19 with some dialog and art edits mainly removing the racism of the original tale.
Back to the tale! The viewscreen also shows us that Doc has apparently repaired the screwed up engine on the Guardians ship. That was handy. Thanks Doc!
Droom orders his flunky not to destroy the ship. He want's it intact. Droom also has sinister plans for when the occupants of the Guardian's ship teleport.
Teleport is what the Defenders and Guardians are about to do. Specifically Valkyrie, Hulk, Astro and Yondu plan to "beam down" to future New York City. Hulk is dubious, but the muscled Charlie-27 manages to talk him into it. Now we see what Droom's sinister plan is! He deflects the teleport beams into space landing our heroes gosh knows where. Jack Norris pops out of the woodwork immediately accusing the Guardian Martinex of murder. As nobody knew he was aboard, this is a surprise to everyone.
Switching to the surface of another planet, we find that Valkyrie and Astro have not been deep frozen in deep space. They are on the surface of an unknow planet in what looks like a pool of blood.
Before they can figure out what's going on, they're attacked by green lizard people. Vance doesn't last too long, but Val manages to hold out a bit longer. She seems to be doing well at first, but starts feeling queasy. (It's not mentioned here, but these are the Badoon ladies and Val has an enchantment on here that makes it rather difficult to fight females.) Astro uses his telekinesis to fight the scaly ones off. Val is in bad shape, but a glowing man bids them to follow him.
Back on the spaceship, Martinex tries to figure out what went wrong but only discovers that the instruments are working fine. Mr. Norris is still having a fit. I guess you can't blame him. He just saw what might be his "wife" getting atomized. Doc's like "this won't do" and casts a spell to immobilize him until he thinks he can act more sensibly.
I think we have an example of Doc doing this too long and losing the normal human perspective. Personally, I don't think Mr. Norris reaction is unreasonable. Doc apologizing for him as if he's an unruly child is uncalled for.
Now we check up on Hulk and Yondu. They are also not dead, but seems to have landed on a planet of space beatniks in the middle of a party to make Woodstock look tame.
The revelers talk what sounds like nonsense to the heroes. They then hear a woman scream and Hulk is glad to have an excuse to punch things.
Yondu uses his Yaka Arrow (later referred to as a weird shaft and I'll skip the Peyronie's joke) to take out the assaulters. The victim is less than pleased at her rescue, but before the pair can ponder this, they are attacked by robots. They don't provide much of a workout for Hulk.
However, the giant mama robot shows up, has a fit about them killing her babies and hypnotizes the pair. Seems like this would have been a better course of action to start with. Hulk and Yondu are walked off somewhere and we return to the Guardians ship.
Doc has been wired into the ship's computer and is using the enhanced capacity to search for the missing teammates. Apparently this has made him super-efficient. Oh, and one with the universe.
Doc's new capacities manage to burn out the Badoon's instruments and Droom frets that the humans may have found a resource that lets them topple the empire.
Back on the planet of the pools of blood like substance and scaly ladies, the glowing man has healed Val and coalesced into a more humanoid form. This is our first view of the yet-to-be-named Starhawk, who is very cagey about telling about himself. (Oof, that's awkward!) Before we look in on Hulk and Yondu, Starhawk proclaims the heroes in his debt.
The mesmerized pair of Hulk and Yondu are marched into what looks like a throne room where a rather robust looking king figure sits in a set of dollar store robes. At least they're purple which is the color of royalty. We are also told in a caption that the writer is tired of writing the nonsense language and all will be presented in modern English from now on.
We learn the King's name is Goozot, which was said by one of the high-as-a-kite revelers when the pair first arrived and that the mama robot is named Zinnia. How darling. Goozot believes that Hulk and Yondu are gifts from the Badoon. The pair are led off, but Goozot isn't all that pleased with Hulks signature purple pants and asks for "more suitable clothing for the emerald one. He also slips that the Badoon are their allies. Uh oh!
Finally, back on the ship, Doc is still searching when an alarm goes off. The Badoon have invaded!
Unlike last issue, where we got to see Doc being all nice with Vance Astro's younger self making sure he gets home safe and doesn't remember paradox generating history lesson, Doc returns to being more of a plot device. He's arrogant, but in a more subtle way. It's on full display with his treatment of Jack Norris. A normal dude who thinks his wife has gone crazy and may have witnessed her being blown into little tiny atoms, may not act all that rationally. Doc chooses to freeze him and chide him to calm down. Maybe some talking with would help!
Besides Doc's issues, there are some interesting things going on here. I would really like to know if Droom is a coincidence or an homage, but Mr. Gerber is long deceased and we'll probably never know. Val falling ill during that battle is a nice, subtle way of letting us know these are the Badoon women even if she isn't cognizant of it yet. It's good when writers remember continuity!
Zinnia resembles an early form of Ultron.
Doc's one with the universe bit after getting tied into the ship's computer reminds me of Reginald Barclay in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Nth Degree." In that episode Lt. Barclay is tied into the Enterprise computer and becomes super intelligent. I wonder if writer Joe Memosky read this issue of the Defenders first.
All in all, this is a fun, action packed issue with lots of fights and some revelations to push to story along. There's not much in the way of character growth here. I guess last issue was packed with it so they took a break for this installment. I like it and look forward to the next issue. Hopefully we get to see Starhawk earn his wings!
