YOU SAY YOU WANT A RESOLUTION?

MUTANT X #31 (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, we find out just what the heck is going on with Captain America…and also, maybe conflict what we previously *thought* was going on with Captain America in “You Say You Want a Resolution?”

THE ISSUE ITSELF

Mutant X #31 is dated May of 2001, and has story and art by Howard Mackie, Ron Lim, and Andrew Pepoy, colors by Gina Going, letters by Chris Eliopoulos, and a cover by Michael Golden.

Deep within Earth’s core, the Beyonder sleeps. Meanwhile, at the Canadian border (perfectly normal segue), Havok, Logan, and Jean face down the Canadian government’s forces. Logan and the Professor argue, but a previously catatonic Captain America begins to stir with anger, spouting jingoistic words, calling the army enemies of the state. He begins to hulk out, as the Professor recognizes him as the only successful US super-soldier, a man whose latent mutant powers caused disaster. Cap, who has seemingly snapped, finds his way into the Professor’s mind, as the others are unable to do anything but watch. After vaporizing the Professor, Cap’s powers continue to grow, and he wipes out the army of Canadian super soldiers. This begins to awaken the Beyonder. Havok, Logan, and Jean retreat, but Havok is unwilling to leave the Six and the Avengers behind. Cap continues to spiral, facing down and killing Iron Giant Man. Havok returns and distracts Cap long enough for the other Avengers to rally, but Cap vaporizes them in an instant. Havok orders the rest of the Six to leave, and faces down Cap by himself. The collision of their respective energies creates a cataclysmic event. Seeing the moon start to crumble, and worrying about Scotty, Havok is forced to hit Cap with a killing blow. The energies discharged are enough to finally awaken the Beyonder, who pulls Cap’s remains into the Earth to study them. The Six return to their castle to discover Dracula!

Last issue was the one where we knew the book’s cancellation was eminent, and this one is the one where you can truly feel just how quickly that cancellation hit. The Logan sub-plot is very quickly pushed to the side in an effort to give any sort of closure to Captain America’s very slowly built up arc. The end result is that he’s kind of an overly patriotic Hulk, I guess? It sort of comes out of nowhere, and we’re left with little time to observe much characterization. The rest of the Six are reduced to set pieces, with Blood Storm getting two lines of dialogue, and no one else speaking. Havok gets more, of course, but everyone’s reactions to what Cap’s situation are effectively non-existent. And then he’s just gone. That’s it. Smash cut to the castle, where Dracula has shown up, in order to not drop a plot line that was just shown off three issues prior. It’s forced, but I’m sure there’s more of that to come.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I know only of the end of Mutant X in passing, so I know the general idea of where things are going, but nothing beyond that. I wasn’t prepared for this one. I liked last issues’s Cap-centric nature. This one? I don’t know. I feel like not a lot happens, but also too much happens. After more than a year of waiting to find out what Cap’s deal was, he just…is done. Also, the team is really let down by this story. And, of all the plots not to drop, Dracula? Really? Well, we’ll see where it all goes.

Also, of special note for this issue, there’s an ad for the PX-exclusive Mutant X figures that Toy Biz released, which I didn’t realize hit so late in the run. There’s a real comedy to not only the fact that only four members of the Six being released, but also the fact that two of four they did were characters who haven’t been part of the team for 20 issues by this point. For added fun-ness, 23 years later, we’re getting another Mutant X figure, as Hasbro just announced they’re doing a Legends Bloodstorm later this year!

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.