Originally Published May 2000
To begin with, somebody’s always got it worse than you do. For instance, if you’re a mutant who has just lost your powers thanks to the High Evolutionary’s meddling, at least you’re not a Genoshan mutate, whose DNA continues to warp due to ongoing meddling, as Hank explains to his peers, including Marrow who has gotten a haircut since last issue.
He also deduces that Sinister — known to be an associate of Herbert Wyndham the High Evolutionary, under his alias of Nathan Essex — is involved.
There’s no time to waste: apparently it may only be a matter of days before the same fate befalls our heroes. While there is some doubt over whether they’re equipped to handle such things without their powers, in the end they decide that being an X-Man is more than just having mutant powers. Hell yeah!
Meanwhile, above on High Evolutionary’s satellite, Sinister does indeed plan to use H.E.’s technology to speedrun evolution in tribute to his favourite M. Night Shyamalan film, “Old.” He prepares for the imminent arrival of heroes, lamenting the lack of innate defenses aboard. Also, he has the High Evolutionary trapped in some kind of tube.
To rectify the lack of defenses, Sinister will cook up a batch of the High Evolutionary’s trademark New Men — freaky deaky giant animals. Wyndham protests, he will not share the secret recipe for the iconic New Men with Sinister, but Sinister shrugs that he won’t be getting in the way, either.
Before jetting off to space, Rogue pays a courtesy call to her mom Mystique, who is currently rotting in a jail cell facing multiple life sentences (which seems fitting since she’s lived multiple lives.)
As they prepare for their mission, the members of the team discuss various perspectives on losing their powers, from losing part of themselves to trying to do good in other ways, to Marrow discovering humanity and boys (offscreen) in a really hurried attempt to plumb this misbegotten premise for all the thematic weight it is worth.
Wolverine finally returns, after the team spent a lot of time fruitlessly searching for him (offscreen.) He may be dying of adamantium poisoning, but you know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except in this case, the poisoning definitely will be killing him. So the real lesson is: what doesn’t kill you, only hasn’t had a chance yet. What doesn’t kill you brings you closer to death.
Back on Genosha, shit is getting real, real quick. Fabian Cortez questions why they gave their only means of escape to their enemies, the X-Men, and Magneto responds with a verbal bitchslap, reminding him that if there’s anyone who is completely useless without their power, it’s Fabian Cortez.
The X-Men get in their flying movie theatre and head for the space station.
They climb aboard, but Sinister is ready for them with his freshly-created New Men.
While the X-Men tangle with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Various Animals, Wolverine breaks off, apparently having caught scent of Sinister through the air ducts. This is despite the fact that he has supposedly lost his enhanced mutant senses, which is pointed out, and also that scent coming through an air duct would give absolutely no indication of where to find Sinister, which is not.
Storm argues that they should be looking for the controls, but Wolverine astutely points out that wherever Sinister is is probably where the controls are. Doy.
So, they find Sinister, but of course he’s prepared for them with the most brilliant Chessmaster move — more New Men!
But Wolverine, even though he’s dying and powerless, is still the best there is at what he does.
At this point, Kitty, the former gifted child, realizes that it appears that their mutant powers are returning! Probably because they’re in space, and the High Evolutionary’s ray only affects the Earth!
Sinister’s like, “aw man, what a brain fart” but there’s nothing he can do to keep Wolverine from destroying the console and restoring all the mutant powers everywhere.
The explosion is so big that Kitty declares it to be the closest Wolverine has ever come to death, which is an interesting choice of words considering he literally was death recently.
| Also there was that time he was all dead except for a cell. And that other time he actually died. And maybe once or twice besides that. Including three minutes ago. |
By and by, High Evolutionary comes out to reveal that Sinister got away in the Spacefaring Auditorium (offscreen, of course), and say he’s really sorry about making the unilateral decision to take away all their mutant powers, that was a real boner. He also reveals that it wasn’t Wolverine who destroyed the depowering machine, it was the Evolutionary himself! He’s the real hero here!
We are of course treated to a montage of mutants getting their powers back. So, you know, Blob is fat again, Jean is traumatized by the sudden return of access to the thoughts of everyone on Earth, that sort of thing. Lotta laffs.
Also this? I don’t know what this is.
And we also see Omega Red, which… when was the last time we saw Omega Red?
Mystique, of course, manages to shapeshift her way out of jail.
And naturally, Magneto is able to regain his iron fisted control over Genosha. Because you know, the best way to rule is through strength and fear, as history shows.
But psych! When everyone else is gone, we find out that’s not the real Magneto at all, as Erik is still facing song power incontinence. It’s a crossdressing Polaris!
But with everything restored to the way it’s supposed to be, we end with a hopeful, optimistic hero shot of the X-Men, who have a bright future ahead of them, even though Scott Summers is still dead, Apocalypse is still on the loose, Jean Grey is still disillusioned, and Charles has left the planet again.
But other than that, tout va bien!
Further Thoughts:
In my previous write-up, I pleaded for the writers to allow the X-Men to realize they can be heroes without mutant powers sometimes and to go find the High Evolutionary and take him down. Before that entry was posted, I read this issue and saw that that was essentially what happened. I considered revising my statement in lieu of that, but I elected to let it stand for a couple of reasons. One, it was a true reflection of what I was/would have been feeling from reading that issue with no knowledge of what was next, which is the authorial perspective I like to use on this site. That makes it a salient observation. And two, this story still kind of sucks even with them doing that. Really, the X-Men’s attack on the High Evolutionary — who has, after all, been usurped as lead antagonist by Sinister — amounts to brawling with some Beastie Boys, then scaring Sinister off, while the High Evolutionary, the guy who started this whole thing, gets to be the one to take credit for ending it as well. The X-Men aren’t really heroes in their own book at this point, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened to them.
This would seem to be a clear new frontrunner in the choice of “least favourite X-Men story ever,” for this writer. The mitigating factor would be that it’s clearly knowingly a lame duck effort, just tossed together as a final closing statement from Alan Davis at the end of his tenure, just something to fill issues. But a bad issue is a bad issue. You don’t enjoy a dumb story more because you understand it was maybe just there to run out the clock.
I’m also glad to be done with the High Evolutionary, because “The High Evolutionary” is not a fun name to type over and over again.
So ends the Alan Davis run, a tug of war between big, wild ideas and leaden execution. A lot was being done — from the Magneto War to the interdimensional tour, the time travelling, the Shattering, the Twelve and this stuff here — but not a lot seemed to happen. The series never got momentum, nor did it feel like it was taking on any particular significance. It feels like just a lost year, after another lost year, where comic pages were being filled with characters who look like the X-Men and their foes doing what it seems like the X-Men and their foes should be doing, because Marvel has to put out an X-Men comic twice a month. The upside is, it was never as frustrating to read as the material provided in 1997-1998.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Alan Davis quoted in Tom DeFalco’s indispensible Comic Creators on X-Men to explain how this whole year happened:
I had only agreed to pencil six issues of X-Men and wasn’t looking for a writing assignment, but I accepted an offer of writing a plot simply so that I wouldn’t be left waiting for work while a replacement writer was found. Editorial liked my plot and asked if I’d write one for Uncanny. I agreed to do one. The following month, a writer still hadn’t been found, and I agreed to do two more. It carried on that way for a few more months, and then I was asked to resolve the ‘Twelve’ storyline. I had no idea who or what the Twelve were — but neither did anyone else — so I became interested in trying to form a story from the tangle of conflicting clues that had been spun out by various writers over the years. After starting into the process, I was suckered into wanting to finish the arc.
When asked “Were you intimidated by the assignment?” he said:
Not really, because I never invested myself in the process. At first I was just hole-plugging — solving problems rather than writing stories I would have chosen to write. That isn’t to say I wasn’t trying to write the best story I could, but each months there were a series of benchmarks that needed to be hit. Links between various books spun out — the introduction of various characters, or the resolution of some dangling plot thread.
From a professional standpoint, it does seem like Alan Davis was equal to the assignment he was given. He fulfilled those ‘benchmarks’ well enough, and I respect what he’s saying about wanting to do the best work he could under the circumstances. But it still doesn’t seem like the best way to produce quality, enjoyable material, just something that fulfills an obligation, with a writer who is only half-engaged in the material he’s generating. Knowing what we know about problems the previous writers, Seagle and Kelly, had with the editorial team, it seems that just being able to navigate that, and give those supervisors what they want, is a victory enough for a creator. I don’t want to be too harsh on Davis, just like I didn’t want to be too harsh on Seagle and Kelly, but the comics just didn’t end up being so good.
It’s now early 2000. The X-Men are mere months away from hitting the big screen and anticipation is reaching a fever pitch. After years of writers not seeming to know what to do with the characters, the decks are cleared and there’s only one big move left: the return of the King. This issue ends with an ostentatious announcement of the official return of Chris Claremont as writer, which certainly doesn’t overhype the big return by promising the moon and stars and everything beyond.
No, it all seems perfectly reasonable and level-headed. How could it possibly go wrong??
Uncanny X-Cerpts 
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