X-MEN #170

X-MEN #170
Golgotha Part 5: Fall-Out”

Featuring: Havok, Rogue, Polaris, Emma Frost, Gambit, Wolverine and Iceman.

This issue is going to be a pain to recap(itulate? ture? I don’t know what recap is short for), because it’s almost definitely the single worst issue Milligan wrote for the X-Men. If you remember the team were recently besieged by giant fungus creatures called ‘Golgotha’ which fed off thoughts and made them realise their worst fears. Well, just as they managed to kill off the last Golgotha on Earth, a whole herd of them began to swarn towards Earth from space. We start the issue with Emma Frost trying to persuade a US general to let the X-Men deal with the swarm, but the president is apparently very happy about the idea of having a war – I’m guessing this was written during Bush’s time in power. Good ol’ Blighty writers! – with aliens, and rejects them. Polaris and Emma start complaining at him until he gives in, and gives them a week to stop the Golgotha. Cut to a splash of a space shuttle taking off.

So now we’re in space, Emma counts the number of aliens to be destroyed – three hundred and sixty two! Lorna starts feeling a bit uncomfortable with the mission, and Iceman tells her that she can stay back if she wants. Havok, of course, is a prick about it and insists she forms the main part of the attack, along with himself. Meanwhile, Wolverine stands back and mutters darkly to himself. Havok sees this as the perfect time for an inspirational speech, and discusses all the slightly mad things (“crazy” says Lorna) they’ve done over the past few days. He thinks they should pretend that none of it ever happened. Way to go, Havok.

Rogue and Gambit, who in this issue are actually quite sweet together, are standing by a big window. She asks him for a glass of water, and he vanishes for a page – therefore getting to miss all of Havok’s speech. The rest of the team agree that it would be for the best to forget everything – apart from Wolverine, who just grunts. Perhaps he’s devolving. Iceman says “Compared to you guys, I’m like a picture of mental health,” which seems a bit cruel with Lorna standing next to him. I wish Iceman would die. Gazer, who lives on the satellite they’re currently in, appears and Emma introduces him to the others. Gambit reappears with a glass of water for Rogue. Aww. Gazer tells them about the satellite, and how his mutant power allows him to withstand the massive amounts of radiation which is prevalent on the satellite. Havok starts to complain, but Gazer cuts him off, and asks if anyone wants to play chess. Gazer is amusingly befuddled. The team decide to put on their suits and get on with it.

As they do so, Gambit apologises to Rogue, and she accepts it. They put on their helmets and blow kisses to each other. Wolverine, on the other hand, isn’t sure why he’s there – the claws aren’t much use in space, really. Havok tells him that it’s because he is a born leader, and has experience. Logan worries is that’s just another word for “senior citizen”, but Alex assures him that Wolverine can’t ever grow old. He’s always going to be The Wolverine. He then tells Rogue to absorb some of his powers in prep for the fight, and with that they leave the satellite. Havok leads the way, and tells them all not to think too much – “should be second nature to you, Iceman”, brilliant – but Lorna tells him off for being too hard on Bobby. You can never be too hard on Bobby, Lorna. He’s an idiot.

Iceman, Polaris and Lorna start bickering and it’s quite confusing to tell what’s going on, but Gambit gets irritated at Iceman for shirking his duty, so all is as you’d expect. The Golgotha swarm, but the team see them off without too much difficulty. Suddenly Havok and Lorna vanish. Iceman panics, and even Wolverine starts to get nervous at their absence, and wonders if this is part of Havok’s plan to get her on her own. Wolverine and Iceman continue explaining their theory to Emma, who gets very irritated with the pair of them, but then Wolverine decides to make a break for it and see if he can find them. Again, it’s next to impossible to work out what’s actually going on in at the moment. Before Logan can go anywhere though, the Golgotha all explode simultaneously. Emma guesses this must be some kind of hive mentality, and Wolverine calls her on making up her theories as she goes along. She smiles and agrees.

From out of the massive explosion come Polaris and Havok, and the X-Men all float together in a circle. Havok is mad that the rest of the team all thought he was trying to take Lorna for himself in a suicide pact, Wolverine tells him to forget about it. Giant space fear-monsters, and all that. The last Golgotha starts to sneak away. Iceman asks Lorna is she’s alright, but she seems traumatised. “It looked right at me…” she mutters, before she blasts the last Golgotha to pieces. Iceman pushes her on what she saw, but sh shrugs him off. She doesn’t want to talk about it. With a smile, she asks if they can get back indoors now.

On the way back home, Emma reveals that the only reason they were allowed into space in the first place is because the General assumed they’d all get killed, and thus there’d be seven less mutants to worry about. “You chose not to share this with us?” Wolverine asks. Emma says that she didn’t want them having negative thoughts before they went into battle. That made me laugh.

Back at the White House, the mutant-hating general has been impressed by the team’s work. He asks the President if they should really keep this a secret from the World. The President replies “I got nothing against these people personally… but that doesn’t mean I want to turn them into heroes.” Oh, George!


Thoughts:

The character stuff at the start was really fun, but the scenes of battle were utterly confusing and impossible to understand. This is probably the fault of both Milligan and Larocca, but Larocca doesn’t make any real attempt to differentiate the X-Men spacesuits, so it’s hard to see who is saying what. It’s a silly, overdone ending to a story which probably never needed to exist. This should’ve been dedicated to clearing up the last issue, but instead we got a space story that didn’t work. Shame, that.

X-MEN #169

X-MEN #169
Golgotha Part 4: Quarantine!”

Featuring: Havok, Rogue, Polaris, Emma Frost, Gambit, Wolverine and Iceman.

Emma Frost finally explains what’s going on for us poor readers. The Institute is being locked down for twenty-four hours because Golgotha has escaped. Emma has realised that the giant fungus things were just a shell for the little Golgotha pod that lives inside, and has now escaped and is somewhere in the building. If they don’t destroy it within twenty-four hours, it’ll reproduce and cause a whole mess of other troubles. The students have been locked in their rooms (must be strong doors then) so they won’t be a problem, and Emma doesn’t expect to be affected herself by the telepathic waves of crazy Golgotha emits. But then she looks in the mirror and sees her reflection has begun to age. She’s growing fat… and ugly. Oh dear, Emma.

The rest of the team are out investigating, with Polaris and Iceman searching through the kitchens and Gambit and Rogue investigating the tunnels. Ha! Brilliant. A creature which makes you go crazy and visualise your fears is in the building, and then send Gambit to the tunnels. They talk for a bit, but then sense that something is in the tunnels with them… Back with the other pair, and Lorna asks Bobby how he’s feeling. He’s says that he’s fine, but we get a look at the world through his ice-o-vision. He’s losing it. They go to the hangar and Lorna says they should check the jet. Straight away, Iceman says “Okay. That bird’s cleaner than Scott Summer’s underwear. Let’s go”. Lorna is understandably confused by Iceman, seeing how they never went into the jet, but believes Bobby and decides she must’ve had a blackout. She’s not helped by Bobby forcing his opinion on Lorna, and he then starts patronising her – “Don’t do that again, Lorna. It scares me” he tells her, so she blasts him away. He’s really irritating in this scene. She asks one more time if they did check the jet, and he assures her that they did.

We cut to a splash page of the pod sat in the jet. It looks adorable!

The something which is in the tunnels with Rogue and Gambit turns out to be Wolverine. He’s gone mad and paranoid on his own and is scratching up the walls something proper. You teach those walls, Logan! Before they can do anything, Logan grabs Gambit and accuses Remy of treating him like a silly old man. Rogue isn’t happy about this, and touches Logan on the back of the neck and takes him down. Instead of being happy though, Gambit is annoyed that Rogue fought his battle for him, and starts complaining about their “pretend” relationship. He says that if they could touch, they wouldn’t stay together and she’d have been just another one-night stand. He leaves her with Wolverine, saying that they always had a thing for each other anyway. Rogue is shocked, and this gives Wolverine a chance to take advantage of her – he says “is it craziness to say we always had a thing for each other?” and kisses her. Letch. And then, of course, Rogue’s powers sucks his life away. Before she finishes killing him, Emma telepathically breaks them up. She needs Rogue’s help, because her reflection has grown even more old and unattractive.

Gambit now has some time to himself, and convinces himself that he was right – he shouldn’t be with Rogue. Not because he’s a dick, though. Because she’s emotionally unavailable as a result of being unable to touch anyone. Naturally. He stops dead, as someone confronts him...

Emma is in her room, worrying about her looks. The only option for her is a face-life, she decides. She could even do it herself, so she picks up a pair of scissors and holds it up to her face… but she’s interrupted by Cyclops. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and she unloads. She’s terrified that if she ever lost her looks, Scott would leave her forever, and as she reveals all her fears we see that she’s talking not to Scott, but to a very confused Havok. He tries to explain but she knocks him down and reads his mind – and oh dear, sees that ‘Scott’ is in love with Polaris. Emma does not take this well at all, and starts psychically crippling Havok in revenge. Luckily Rogue turns up and breaks up the fight, and Emma realises the illusion she’s in. “Glad to be of assistance, bub”, she says, and Emma asks her why she’s acting like Wolverine. This leads to a brilliant scene of Rogue claiming that she is Wolverine – and to prove it, tries to pop out her claws. When she fails, she sits on the floor on her own, scared. Poor Rogue.

Lorna and Iceman have found Gambit, who is fighting an illusionary Mr Sinister. It’s hilarious. They stand there and wonder if they should break up the psychosis or not, and Lorna leaves this problem for Iceman to solve, seeing how she’s just had an idea. Once she leaves, Iceman freezes the entire sewers in fear. Polaris’ plan involves not believing Bobby and re-checking the jet. Which, naturally, is now covered in a gigantic spawn thing. She goes to tell the team, and they reassemble before the jet. Havok complains at the failure of the Polaris/Iceman team to spot the pod first time round, and gets into a hissy fit with Iceman where they fight for the attentions of Lorna while she wears a pained expression of “leave me the hell alone you childish losers”. Okay, I’m probably reading too much into it, but still. Alex and Bobby both make very clear their intentions with Lorna, and Emma breaks it up, disgusted by both of them for being so rubbish.

Emma sums up the issue, just as she began it, into her Dictaphone. She let Havok kill the Golgotha pod, even though she wanted to study it, and the X-Men sent the ashes into space. She sits back and relaxes at the end of the mission, but gets a message from Gazer, a mutant stationed in space. He has something to show her – a swarm of Golgotha are heading towards Earth, looking for vengeance…

To be continued!

Thoughts!

This was the best issue of the arc, by far. On top of a series of fascinating and imaginative twists into the psyche of many of the main characters, Milligan also fleshed out Emma's character and is doing a great job with the various love entanglements he's been handed. After a few shaky issues, he's got a grip on all his characters. The plotting is still a little haphazard, but within the context of the story that's a little understandable. He's not being as weird as you'd expect, but he's not playing the X-Men straight, either. It's a fun compromise, and Salvador Larocca's artwork is showing signs of promise.

X-MEN #168

X-MEN #168
“Golgotha Part 3: The Crazy Gang”

Featuring: Havok, Rogue, Polaris, Emma Frost, Gambit, Wolverine and Iceman.

In one of the best opening sequences in X-Men history, Emma unconsciously activates Cerebra even while lying on the floor, sending it several orders as she wakes up from being knocked out by Golgotha’s telepathy. What did she ask Cerebra to do? Make her a delicious cup of Lapsang Souchong. Thus satiated by her brew, she contacts Rogue to warn her that there is more than one Golgotha creature out there, but Rogue… well, she’s already found this out, because it’s attacking her team. Havok and Wolverine kill the thing, as Emma notes that some mutants in Los Angeles are still affected by Golgotha’s madness, and will need to be stopped before they kill any more people.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned mad mutants take a much-needed break after their killing-spree in LA, and Boy tells them that it’s time to set up a political manifesto. This idea promptly goes nowhere, as instead a brawl breaks out and a mutant called Frankie kills one of the other members of the group. Boy pulls him off, and tells Frankie not to be so sensitive all the time. Obviously they’re still all mental, then.

Speaking of, the X-Jet reaches LA (they must’ve beaten Golgotha off-panel, then) and Wolverine gives his orders to Havok. He wants some backup and he wants to be picked up by the X-Men once the mission is over. He then makes the customary joke that all X-Men writers make Wolverine say, when he frets about the hassle of getting his claws through airport security. Gambit and Polaris are chosen to go, but Iceman – who last issue mocked Rogue/Gambit, remember – offers to go instead. Havok isn’t happy, and Wolverine grumpily notes that Havok must still have something for Lorna. He then jumps out of the plane before he has to hear Havok complain. Smart move.

Los Angeles is a wreck. More so than usual, even, and the trio make their way through; Wolverine leading. Iceman is a lot nervous at the bad neighbourhood, but Lorna is concerned by the zombified state of many of the citizens. A man comes up to her with a flyer for the local church, but Iceman mistakes the man for an attacker, and freezes him. Polaris sighs at her choice in men, and tells Iceman off. She wanders away, and Wolverine tries to sort out the Lorna/Alex/Bobby triangle all on his own. Iceman protests that he doesn’t owe an explanation to anyone, and that all he wants is to keep Lorna same from everything. “From everything?” Logan says. “In this business? Good luck, Bub.”

On the Boy-front, his army go and attack a movie studio because the producers cancelled a TV show they really liked. One of the victims tries to talk his way out by saying that he’s a comedian, so Frankie asks the comedian to tell a joke. The feller stutters, and then comes out with his best effort: “There’s this Jewish guy, an Arab and a mutant…”

We emerge a short while later, after Frankie has dramatically killed the guy, and Boy asks them what they want to do next. Before they get anywhere, however, Wolverine appears. Brilliantly, the mutants are star-struck to finally meet the great Wolverine, but that doesn’t stop Frankie from attacking, proclaiming “he looks so short in real life!” Wolvie counters, “I think you’re confusing me with Tom Cruise,” and cuts Frankie’s razor-hand thing to pieces. The rest of Boy’s army attack, with Boy himself firing some nifty eye-lasers through Wolverine’s heart. Iceman wastes time icing up this wound, and Wolverine swears at him for being so useless. Luckily, Lorna takes out all the mutants in one swoop, and Iceman praises her ability as if she were a pet. She ignores him, as the X-Jet pulls up above them, and asks if she can have a window seat on the way home.

Back at the institute Emma admires the two Golgotha creatures they’ve captured and killed, which are now in giant tanks of some kind. Havok does not share her admiration. Their conversation is cut short when Wolverine and the team lead in Boy to the room, who is wearing one of Cyclops’ old protective helmets so that he can’t attack anyone with his eyebeams. Havok asks where the rest of the army is, and Lorna starts worrying about them - they’re in cells within the institute, all of them having gone mad. Boy laughs. He tells them that much worse will happen soon, once Golgotha gets into their minds. “In the land of the insane, the somewhat disturbed but not entirely fruitcake is king!” he proclaims, and Wolverine goes to shut him up. Yet Boy starts laughing at Logan, calling him an old man who hangs around with kids as a sad attempt to be relevant. This strikes a nerve, and Wolverine kicks his face in. That was not one of Boy’s wisest tactics.

Gambit pulls Wolverine away but Logan is in a berserker, and pulls his claws on the guy, saying “don’t you ever put your filthy Cajun hands on me again.” This makes Rogue mad, and she breaks up the fight and sends Wolverine away. Because she is fierce. Wolverine goes back to his room to calm down, but can’t stop going over his actions with Gambit. He self-examines himself, and wonders if Boy was right. Is he really just an old guy hoping that the X-Men’s optimism and youth will rub off on him? As ever, he stops his soul-searching to go down the pub for a beer, and heads for the door – but as he stands by the door, Cerebra suddenly hails him and says that the institute is going into lockdown for twenty-four hours. Emma appears behind him, and tells him that she’s issued a quarantine on everyone – so they can “swat this craziness out”. Crikey!

To Be Continued!

Thoughts!

This was easily Milligan’s best issue to date – from the fun characterisation which includes a new angle on Logan (and it can’t be easy to find one of those) right through to the pacing, which is FAR less confusing and bizarre. Emma and Wolverine especially come out well, while Polaris and Rogue also get small moments to shine. The setup is fun, and the sense of tension is slowly mounting. Larocca’s artwork is gaining expression, too. All in all, things are rapidly improving during this arc.

X-MEN #167

X-MEN #167
“Golgotha Part 2: The Night Of The Mutant”

Featuring: Havok, Rogue, Polaris, Emma Frost, Gambit, Wolverine and Iceman.

A mutant walks through the streets of Los Angeles, as an unknown narrator assures him that he’ll be just fine out on his own in the big city. Even as the narrator tells him that “they won’t try to hurt you”, two large mutants jump out of the shadows and attack him. Nonplussed, he casually fires hot lasers from his eyes and burns them to death before walking on. He has demon eyes! Alternatively, he’s a mutant. His name is Boy, he tells us, and he’s been working as a servant for a snooty family who treated him as if he were a sub-human. When they retreated to their bomb shelter once LA became a breeding ground for crazies (as Emma Frost informed us last issue) they had no desire to have their mutant servant live with them, so they chucked him out. Since then he’s hit the streets and recruited a small army of maligned mutants, and he is their leader. His army walk past a wall with “Golgotha!” written on it.

Back in the South Pole, Emma leads the team to Golgotha, which turns out to be a giant fungus-thingy encased in a large tank... Rogue asks her what the point of keeping a giant fungus thing in the colony, and Havok calls the dead inhabitants of the colony “crazy mutants”, which seems a bit harsh under the circumstances; and in fact Gambit of all people calls him out on it. Havok refuses to apologise. Suddenly Gambit smells the creature, and he starts to reminisce about a dead body he once found, which makes him feel sick. Emma explains that Golgotha is triggering random memories for no real reason, and must therefore be telepathic. She finds it interesting, but Havok doesn’t agree with her and is about to start an argument when Golgotha cracks the containment unti it lives in and swipes a tentacle at the blonde eejit (Havok, not Emma). He blasts it away.

Gambit, meanwhile, is in a state of panic for some reason, and Iceman tells him to “relax, dude. I’d feel like that too if my girl didn’t let me touch her.” Rogue is immediately fired up, because she rules, and gives him a thorough telling-off for being a twat. Polaris, meanwhile, is unhappy at everything around her and suddenly uses her powers to blast the fungus into submission. Havok tells her to “stop it! This is crazy!”, and she stops, upset at being called crazy. Iceman fails to console her, and Havok – who has had enough – tells them to take the fungus into the open, so they can destroy it. Cue a splash page of Iceman, Gambit (who is on all fours), Havok and Rogue all pulling Golgotha outside, while Emma is fabulously absent. Happy with where they’ve taken it, Havok tells the team to blow it up – but Emma stops him.

She wants to study it at the mansion, but Havok insists that it should be killed. He talks a lot of nonsense, while she mocks him repeatedly. It’s going nowhere, but then Wolverine appears from the wilderness and offers them a compromise. That’s right: Wolverine turns up. Yay for that. They hang Golgotha from the jet and fly home, and whilst en-borde Lorna starts talking about eating Gods, and Havok worries about her, and about his skills as a leader. Meanwhile Iceman apologies about his no touching comment to Gambit, who forgives him – but he sighs that the no-touching thing is perhaps becoming an issue for him. Rogue tries to look concerned by this news.

Back in Los Angeles, the posh skanky family are having a dinner party when they hear a sound outside. Boy has turned up, with his army behind him…

The team have put Golgotha in the bottom of the Cerebra room. In there, Emma frowns on Havok for having naughty thoughts about Polaris “after what you did to that poor girl”. And because she is now completely in charge of him and he’s a pushover, she tells him to go with the team to Calvary, which is the original site of Golgotha. He goes, and Rogue and Gambit meet an old man there selling trinkets. She starts to ask her beau (ha!) about the no-touching deal, but they’re distracted by a trinket which looks suspiciously like Golgotha. After showing it to the rest of the team, Havok decides that they should go deep into the underground caves nearby, to see if they can clear up the mystery any further. Emma, meanwhile, is still at Cerebra, and her probing of Golgotha’s mind backfires when it telepathically knocks her out. She collapses on the floor of Cerebra, with Golgotha leering from below.

On the news is a bulletin called “Night Of The Mutant”. Boy and his army have killed all the members of the dinner party, and left a message on the wall. In blood. It says “Golgotha”.

To Be Continued!

Thoughts!

This issue was downright confusing! I had to reread it several times, and fill in a fair few parts, in order for things to make sense. Lorna’s attack on Golgotha is poorly conveyed by both Milligan and Larocca so it’s hard to know what’s going on, and the later scenes in Calvary don’t make any particular sense at all. The relevance of the trinket is unknown and never really explained, which makes their decision to go further into the underground completely irrelevant to everything else. If you take it simply then the plot moves along reasonably well, but look too closely and you’ll realise that there are a lot of holes about. Further to the point, Golgotha is a bizarre thing, and isn’t yet explained properly. Hopefully Milligan will remedy this later on, because at the moment it makes the story hard to read.

However, the one thing which is clear is that Milligan has a fantastic grasp on character – Emma is on fantastic form throughout, and Rogue gets a chance to show off her fiery side, which makes Milligan the best portrayer of Rogue in a very very long time. Iceman is an idiot, Havok is a child, and Gambit is nonsensical. Just how it should be! If he can fix the plotting in future issues, he’ll be set.

X-MEN #166

Previously For The X-Men…

• Former villainess Emma Frost joined the X-Men and immediately had Magneto kill Jean Grey for her, so she could move in with Cyclops. She is now headmistress of the institute.
• Polaris experienced the Genoshan Massacre, and is suffering from trauma as a result
• Havok helped her out by jilting her on their wedding day
• To add to her misery, now she has to date Iceman
• Iceman is a tosspot
• Gambit was blinded by Rogue in an ‘accident’, but had his sight restored to him by the miraculous Sage. Naturally, this happened in a Chris Claremont comic because nobody else will feature Sage in their work.
• Wolverine likes stabbing people.

And now...



X-MEN #166
“Golgotha Part 1: And What Dark Beast…”



Featuring: Havok, Rogue, Polaris, Emma Frost, Gambit and Iceman.

Our band of heroes (and Iceman) have gone to the South Pole after receiving a distress call from some mutants who were trying to build “a mutant utopia” away from Magneto and the X-Men and all that political nonsense. Obviously, this plan has not gone well. Iceman has not read the case notes he was given by Havok, so Polaris tells him off for being such a child. After blasting a way in, Havok leads them into the compound and finds that all the mutants inside are dead. Gambit makes a sadistic joke about the poor structuring of the building, and Rogue rolls her eyes. It appears, however, that the mutants weren’t attacked by an outside force, but instead turned on each other for some reason. Iceman recognises one of the dead – Butterfly – and calls him a “z-list mutant, X-Men wannabe”, but Rogue ignores him and goes to check the bodies instead. This is because Milligan’s X-women are much smarter than the men. The body she kneels over has only just passed, and it appears that he killed himself by ripping his own heart out. On the wall is one word: Golgotha. Written in blood!

Rogue starts to explain what the word means – “Also known as Mount Cavalry, the place of the crucifixion of Christ.” She starts to explain the Latin terminology of the word, which leads the rest of the team to realise that Rogue is merely repeating what Emma Frost is telling her telepathically. Iceman asks her for the football scores, and Emma gives him the derision he deserves. In fact, she goes on better then that and tells him that his remark was so stupid that it deserves disdain. Remember the days when Emma Frost was the most fun X-Character? She tells Rogue about some other attacks – including one which has taken over the whole of Los Angeles - which may be linked to this one, but Rogue doesn’t have time to tell any of the others because a stranger appears. He calls himself “the sinner”, and then he then shoots himself in the head for no apparent reason at all.

Rogue gives us some monologue about how much she wants to hold Gambit’s hand for reassurance after seeing something so horrible, so obviously the poor girl is in shock and has started lying to herself. Lorna also has a reaction to the violence, although it is less ridiculous – she starts reliving the genocide she was witness to and starts shaking. “This is all my fault…” she begins, and Iceman goes over to comfort her by telling her that this isn’t Genosha. And in doing so, he has implied that she was responsible for Genosha. Oh, Iceman. Havok gets very clingy when he sees Iceman hug Polaris, and shouts at him for breaking defensive formation. While the two of them argue, another mutant appears and utters the immortal line “I’m gonna love you like only a mutant with superhuman explosive bone marrow, infrared eyes and low-level paranoid schizophrenia can love you…” Ooh! I love this character! Lorna does not, however, and she blasts him away. There’s a fight, but Lorna quickly ends it by choking the mutant to death with some metal tubing. Slight overreaction there, but fair enough.

Later on, Havok has a chat with Lorna about how killing is bad, and that true X-Men don’t do it ever. Well, sometimes. He’s interrupted by the arrival of some zombified mutants. I’m not sure the X-Men even move for the majority of this issue. The problems always seem to come to them. Anyway, Havok tries talking to the zombies but gets nowhere. This is probably because they are zombies, Havok. Rogue has another idea, and takes off her glove… Havok tries to stop her, but she says “what’s the point of having these ridiculous ideas if I don’t use them once in a while”, which tells us that Milligan’s going to write the first interesting portrayal of Rogue in a long while. She touches a woman and instantly relives all of her life – in reverse order, which means she ends up as a foetus. A Rogue-foetus. It’s an odd image, and Emma immediately goes in after Rogue in order to save her from regressing back into someone else’s testicles.

When Rogue wakes up again, she finds herself in the middle of an attack from some crazed mutants, and has to go on the offensive. While fighting, Havok asks her what happened, and she replied “I got weirded out.” It turns out that the memories had been wiped by someone, leaving blank holes of memory for her to get trapped in. Once the battle is over, Havok interrogates one of the attackers, but gets only babble in return. “You’ll be next!” cries the attacker, before he bites off his own tongue. Yikes. Rogue sighs, because she knows that she’ll have to touch this psycho in order to find out what’s going on, but Havok blocks her yet again. Before he can do anything, though, Emma turns up and immediately takes over, which says more about Havok’s leadership skills than I ever can. She takes the piss out of Alex and Rogue for a bit, and then watches on with a smirk whilst the tongue-biting mutant suffers a heart attack and dies.

Emma is smirking because she managed to quickly read the mutant’s mind before he died. “I know who Golgotha is,” she tells the group. “Or more to the point… I know where Golgotha is…”

To Be Continued!


Thoughts!

This was a solid first issue, although there are some jarring scene changes throughout. The way in which the creatures all came to find the X-Men one after another was a bit silly, and the artwork by Salvador Larocca – although solid, and with great emphasis on the characters – sometimes grows confusing and hard to follow. Milligan is having to deal with several old plotlines as he starts off, most notably that of Polaris/Havok/Iceman, and at the moment it seems that both Havok and Iceman are going to behave childishly as a result of their feelings for Lorna, so hopefully this is leading to a payoff later on. Lorna herself is far more broken than she was during Austen’s run, and seems to be reacting more realistically to the trauma she’s meant to be suffering from. The relationship between Rogue and Gambit seems forced, and they both seem quite bored of one another.

Milligan Mondays Are Coming

Peter Milligan:
Writer: X-Men #166-187
Primary Roster: Havok, Polaris, Emma Frost, Iceman, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit

Ladies and gentlemen of the good ship Wilftonville, bring out your back issues! We’re about to tread into familiar territory, in the form of a newfangled ‘Peter Milligan: From The Beginning’ fortnightly update thing.

Now, many people don’t think too much of ol’ Pete’s tenure with the X, which lasted from issues 166-187, a few years back. He followed on from perhaps one of the least-liked writers in X-Men history, in the form of Chuck Austen, and was given a team made up primarily of clutter. There was Polaris, Iceman, and Havok, for a start. Polaris had been on Genosha during the Sentinel Attack, and was experiencing a mental tangent of sorts: after Havok left her at the aisle for some reason she had gone mental and attacked everyone, and then started dating Iceman. It was a tangle which hadn’t really made much sense at the time, and was even more bizarre now. Also on his roster were Rogue and Gambit, whose relationship was the same as it ever has and probably ever will be: untouchable (see what I did there? Ha!) You can start to see the troubles that Peter walked into now, can’t you? At least Juggernaut wasn’t around anymore.

But despite all this, his run isn’t nearly as bad as everyone remembers it being. In fact; it’s rather jolly. So in this thread, let’s see if we cant all revaluate his run with the X-Men and enjoy it for the subversive, shiny, spiffy piece of super that it really is. Eh? And even if you didn’t like the run and refuse to ever do so, now you have a chance to slag him off repeatedly in a place where your fellow dislikers can appreciate it. Drag out your old boxes and rummage through them in a feral manner, get out the comics he wrote, and join in! There’s going to be laughs and there’s going to be tears, and at one point Emma Frost is going to try and cut her face off. What more could you want?

So, Milligan Mondays start next week – but for now here’s something to get you started. What is your memory of his run? Do you remember it as fun and groovy, or as poor and bland? Before you read it again, what did you think at the time and are you hopeful that this thread will turn you into a Mate Of Milligan?