HOMECOMING!

MUTANT X #14 (MARVEL COMICS)

“In another place–in another life–Alex Summers led a team of mutants in a battle against oppression. His methods were extreme, his tactics questionable, but–in his soul–he knew that he was fighting for the greater good.

Now that soul has been transferred to another world, and Summers, also known as Havok, has found himself living a lie, allied with a team of mutants who are sinister, parallel versions of his friends and family. It is to this dark, new place that Havok has come, where he stands as a man alone… a mutant alone. Alex Summers is Mutant X.

Fear him. Fear for him.”

25 years ago, Marvel Comics launched Mutant X, a Havok led X-spinoff. I recently came into a complete run of the series, and so now I’m going to re-read the series once a week, and you guys get to come along for the ride!

This week, Havok meets his long-lost brother! –well, not *his* long-lost brother, since he’s, you know, inhabiting a different Alex Summers’ body and all…but it’s somebody’s long-lost brother, for sure.  Look, the point is, Cyclops is back in “Homecoming!”

THE ISSUE ITSELF

Mutant X #14 is cover dated November of 1999.  Howard Mackie returns as writer this issue, and is joined by Cary Nord on pencils and Andrew Pepoy on inks.  With the whole main team gone last issue, it’s nice to see a return to form.  I’d hazard a guess that the change-over from the planned 12-issue run of the series to a full-fledged on-going necessitated a fill-in issue, hence last month’s offering.

Out in space, a Skrull ship’s crew runs simulations of destroying the Earth, as they await orders from Skrull Home World to attack the planet that spawned the Goblin Entity.  Before they can move in, they’re boarded by the Starjammers, who in this universe are Cyclops, Binary, Nova, Silver Surfer, and Lockheed.  After a quick battle, Cyclops asks what planet the Skrulls are monitoring, and who they’re monitoring on it.  The Skrulls reveal that they are monitoring Alex Summers on Earth, leaving Cyclops shocked that his brother is still alive.  Back on Earth, Alex and Scotty enjoy a day out fishing.  Alex thinks to himself of the differences between this world and his own, and how Scotty stands a chance of a normal life, given this world’s greater tolerance towards mutants.  The pair are set upon by a large space ship, which opens fire.  They flee back to the car, and find the keys missing, having been taken by Cyclops, who attempts to make a dramatic entrance, only to be foiled by Alex slamming the car door in his face and driving off. The passengers of the ship are revealed to be Kree soldiers, who chase Alex and Scotty down.  Cyclops gets a second go at his dramatic entrance, revealing himself to Alex just before the arrival of Gladiator.  Alex and the Starjammers do their best to hold Gladiator off, but as the tide begins to turn against them, they are saved by the intervention of Uatu, who tells Gladiator to go, and informs him that Alex and Scotty are under his protection from here on out.  With the battle ended, Cyclops asks Alex what he’s been up to.

After the narrative water treading that was last month’s issue, this gets back to fleshing out the world just a little bit.  The whereabouts of Scott Summers are finally disclosed, in a story that nicely parallels the introduction of Corsair in the main universe.  We do fall back a little bit into the early run “Alex wanders through this new world largely alone” story device, but it works alright here, given the addition of the whole team of Starjammers to the plot.  It’s also a pretty nice one and done story, that still sets up some further story elements for later down the line.  The cavalier swashbuckler take on Cyclops is a ton of fun, as are the new roster of Starjammers, at least what we see of them.  This issue also features the first instance of something that will run for the next four months: “Fastlane.”  “Fastlane” was an anti-drugs story that Marvel ran in eight pages segments for four months in 1999.  They did this by shoving the eight pages into the literal middle of every single Marvel comic published for those four months, which almost always wound up being this very odd break in the story, which enraged more than a few comics readers at the time.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

After really not being about last issue, this one was very refreshing to me.  The immediate jump into the action with the Starjammers resets the story well, and feels like the more natural jump back in point following the Goblin Queen wrap-up.  I love just about everything about this issue.  Honestly, it’s everything but the freaking “Fastlane” segment, but that’s not really this issue’s fault.

I snagged this whole run from my usual comics stop, Cosmic Comix, so I want to give them a shout out here, because it was a pretty great find.