Uncanny X-Men #445

Publisher
Marvel
Year
2004
Month
8
LastChanged
1/27/2024 8:15:45 AM
Death and the Maiden

The End of History
Summary

  Uncanny X-Men #445 is the second Claremont/Davis issue.

  For the moment, the plot seems to be following two completely unrelated threads. The first half of the book follows Nightcrawler and Wolverine trying to carry out their XSE jobs and being met with complete lack of co-operation from the cops. Well, not so much lack of co-operation. The cops beat them up. It's not a good day for Logan and Kurt.

  We've seen the basic idea before - the X-Men try to do good, but the anti-mutant bigots won't accept them. Still, this is meant to be a jumping on point. No harm in re-establishing the basic ideas, and showing how they apply to the XSE.

  Over in the second half of the book, Rachel, Bishop and Sam head to England to visit Brian Braddock, and end up in a fight with the Fury. I'm in two minds about this. The Fury is a fairly obscure Captain Britain villain, originally created by Davis and Alan Moore. It's a robot that kills superheroes. That's all it does. It's only ever fought Captain Britain (and succeeded in killing him).

  There are good reasons for that. The nature of the character is that it leaves a trail of superhero corpses behind it. Of course, it can't go around killing the title characters in most books because they're needed for the next issue. So it's virtually impossible to use the Fury without watering down the concept. Similar problems have dogged the Juggernaut, who's supposed to be unstoppable, but in practice gets stopped on a regular basis, to the point where his claim to unstoppability became worthless. Unless you're prepared to throw the Fury some characters to kill, it's hard to use it without compromising what made it cool in the first place.

  Cannonball appears to be the designated victim this issue, which would at least explain why he was omitted from the recent Official Handbook. But given that the Fury is thinking about "assimilating" Sage rather than killing her, I have a sinking feeling that the character is going to end up being watered down enormously. Even Cannonball can't actually be dead, given that he's due to be in X-Force in a few months time.

  That being said, this is still some of Claremont's better recent work - his dialogue quirks aren't too prominent, the characters are comfortably familiar, and the pacing's pretty good. Davis' art is also a big selling point. While the first issue looked a little awkward, this is much more comfortable. Dodgy costume design aside, this has got some beautiful work, helped by an impressive colouring job from Frank D'Armata.

  Pretty good.

  Rating: B+

Summary

  Wade River police and firemen rush into the burning building, assuming the mutants are trying to kill their kids. They find Logan, fallen but regenerating, next to Reichert, dead. The officers start beating Logan, angry that he killed the kid and demanding to know where the others are. An EMC realizes something's wrong: Reichert was at the epicenter of the explosion but wasn't harmed by it; he examines him and finds scales; Logan, now hand-cuffed, says the boy was a mutant, with an uncontrollable power to blow up things. An officer kicks him in the face, calling him a liar, but the sheriff arrives and calls him off.

  The other children have been located: Kurt teleported them out of the way, but now he's arrested, cuffed, and laid on the ground next to Logan. He's out of energy after having teleported with 30 passengers. They see Reichert's corpse being loaded onto an ambulance; Kurt, angry that they were delayed by the bigoted sheriff, now bamfs out of his shackles and confronts him.

  Just then Ororo arrives and calls him off; she has Warbird with her, who as an Avenger and DHS agent vouches for the X-Men's credentials.

  Ororo frees Logan and gets an update: the sheriff wouldn't let them in; Reichert's power was out of control, and he was babbling about a girl. Logan couldn't talk to him or knock him out; Warbird says he made the only decision possible; Logan protests Reichert was just a kid; Warbird notes many X-Men were when they started. Logan says Xavier, a telepath, knew who to recruit. Reichert deserved a decent shot at life, and there's many more like him in the world. Kurt notes they have family and friends trying to make sense of the madness; he wonders if anyone will remember the children they just saved or only that an X-Man killed one. Warbird says they're just afraid, but the X-Men aren't monsters and must keep trying to make a difference.

  In the carriage house, Sage monitors government and media outlets; no charges will be brought against the X-Men, but many are outraged; Whedon is spokesperson for the XSE, offering condolences to Reichert's family. The Purity web-site shows a caricature of Logan and announces: "Wake up world. The mutie take-over just happened, and nobody noticed."

  That night, Kurt says his prayers in (misspelled) Latin; Ororo comes to his door to reassure him it wasn't his fault. (Note: if Sam had been sent instead of Kurt, would the sheriff have reacted differently?) Kurt notes the boy's still dead; Ororo notes the other children are alive; Kurt thinks the more they try, the worse things get. Ororo challenges that, saying at one time Kurt wouldn't have gone out in public without his image inducer; it has Sage's latest upgrades. Ororo activates it; they appear in evening dress (see iss. 101), and she asks if he remembers her asking if she looked pretty; she had no idea, having lived among the Masai, who didn't waltz; now she takes Kurt in her arms and flies out the window into the night sky, dancing with him.

  Rachel drives Sam and Lucas toward Braddock Manor; she sings "White Room" (cf. X-Men II:154), her mother's favorite song. Lucas asks Sam when his family's going to form their own team, since four of them are mutants (Sam, Paige, Jay, Melody); their mom enrolled Jay at Xavier's, which he hates and so hates Sam. Rachel assures him he'll get over it (see X-Men Unlimited 3).

  Rachel is nervous to return to the mansion (see Excalibur I:1); Brian had to deal with the death of his sister alone (X-Treme X-Men 3). They drive up and knock on the door, but no answer, not even with Rachel's telepathy. Lucas uses his glasses to confirm with Sage that they were expected; the door's open, so they enter, and Sage loses contact.

  In the entry hall there's a life-size portrait of Brian and Meggan and a huge hole in the floor. Lucas has them suit up and descend to the empty caverns below the manor, which houses a sentient computer (see Capt. Britain vol. I:14, Dec-77), and although Brian shut it down, things may have changed.

  Rachel senses something; a charged particle beam blasts; Sam rockets toward the attacker and gets knocked down. Rachel breaks off a stalactite and impales the creature, which knocks her up through the ground and far into the sky. Lucas has Sam go for help while the creature regenerates; Lucas hand-blasts the creature, but it blasts him back; their power explodes, but the creature is the winner; it has analyzed these strange meta-humans and noted that at the end, Lucas was channeling the power of a small star. Sam has turned around, concerned about Lucas, and while the creature regenerates he slams into it, thinking himself invulnerable. His hand gets stuck in the creature's goopy chest, and he can't blast free. He realizes he could die now and thinks his last thoughts: he loves his mother, and Paige will be the oldest now, so she'll have to look after Jay and Melody. The creature slams him to the ground, and he doesn't get up. The creature takes Sam's glasses and analyzes its cybernetics to follow it to its source. Its prime directive is to assimilate. Sage, her monitors all showing the creature's eyes, yells for Sam.

  Note: created by Alan Moore and Alan Davis, the Fury is a cyborg from an alternate universe, designed by Mad Jim Jaspers to kill superbeings. It actually did kill Capt. Britain (Marvel Super-Heroes UK 388, Aug-82).