THE GOOD…THE BAD…AND THINGS GET UGLY!

MUTANT X #21 (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 gets a *lot* of exposition thrown in his general direction in “The Good…The Bad…And Things Get Ugly!”

THE ISSUE ITSELF

Mutant X #21 is coverdated July of 2000, and it has story and art by Howard Mackie, Bart Sears, Tom Lyle, and Andrew Pepoy.

Jean has taken Havok to see Apocalypse, revealing to Alex that it is Xavier, not Apocalypse, who is the current threat.  Havok struggles to accept Apocalypse as an ally, but is swayed by arrival of Magneto, who it turns out was *not* killed when the X-Mansion was nuked back in issue 14.  Magneto and his X-Men were saved by Apocalypse, who has been keeping them shielded from Xavier since.  Magneto explains to Alex that Xavier started out much like his main universe counterpart, but was changed by an encounter with the Shadow King.  Xavier emerged from the encounter more ruthless.  The unintended death of Moira MacTaggert leads to a falling out between Magneto and Xavier.  Magneto threw himself into building up the X-Men, while Xavier disappeared, supposedly tracking down and turning every mutant telepath he could find, allying himself with Mr Sinister in the process.  Magneto in turn allied with Apocalypse, whose goals remain consistent with his mainstream counterpart, but have placed him opposite Xavier and Sinister.  Magneto and Jean warn Alex that Xavier wants something with Scotty, so Alex returns home.  He confronts Xavier to protect Scotty.  Xavier fights back, first attacking Elektra.  Alex pushes him back, and is aided by the Six, before Xavier rallies, armoring himself and preparing for further battle.

There’s soooooo much exposition in this issue.  It’s not bad, but it does sort of come out of nowhere, since we haven’t really been doing as much of that as of late.  That said, the series kind of needed it.  It was nice to re-check where we are.  I was also glad to see that Magneto wasn’t *really* dead, because his sudden death did feel like a bit of a waste.  I do look forward to Apocalypse potentially being an actual character of his own, rather than just the plot device he is currently, but we’ve got time for that.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

We’re again getting back into some of the territory I was already familiar with from back when this was new, since I picked up around the wrap-up to the Xavier stuff.  It’s interesting to see how it actually builds up.

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.