UXM #115: "Visions Of Death!"

(The friend of our enemy's enemy is our, wait... hang on...)

Comments

Wow, Cyclops and Wolverine got themselves dressed in a hurry.  Especially Logan.  One minute he's sitting atop a rock with the tattered shreds of his costume and a sewing needle, the next his threads are looking brand new again.  Sod the healing factor, being able to mend his own clothes is clearly a far more rare mutant power.  Amirite, ladies?

All this hurried donning of clothes is so that the team can face off against Sauron, who's busy leeching the energy from Storm.  Some wise deployment of his hypno-eyes against Wolverine keeps Sauron in the fight for a while (as well as giving Scott an excuse to blast Wolverine in the face not once but twice), but no being who spent his teenage years reading Lord of the Rings over and over is going to last for long in a scrap, and Dr Lykos proves no exception.  Wolverine is about to - of course - gut the now-human Lykos in retribution when Ka-Zar arrives, announcing that Lykos is under his protection, and that the two of them were on their way to find the X-Men and ask their help.

Wolverine shows remarkable restraint here, in my view.  After all, as he points out, if Ka-Zar had wanted to talk to the X-Men he might've considered not sending in the mutant-gobbling monster first.  Or did Karl just leave the guy a note whilst he was taking a piss somewhere?  "Dear Ka-Zar.  Have gone on ahead to find the X-Men and suck the mutant marrow from their bones offer them coffee and biscuits.  Don't worry too much about catching up I'll make sure that your time comes all too soon I save you a jammy dodger. Kthanx, K."

In any case, Wolverine not only doesn't fly into a beserk rage, he even makes the important gesture of not stabbing Ka-Zar's pet sabretooth tiger to death, which I think we can all agree shows real class.

Once Storm is awake and everyone's agreed not to kill everyone else, our eclectic band sit down around the fire for a quick Jackanory session. Karl Lykos kicks off, explaining how he survived the fall from Tierra del Fuego, and how he watched a priestess named Zaladane bring back the rock god Garokk from the dead.  Frankly, I think it would be more important to explain what possessed Karl to start rocking a denim loincloth, but that might just be me.

Ka-Zar finishes the tail by describing the metropolis Garokk has built, and the petrified man's insistence that all in the Savage Land live within it or die. Banshee and (obviously) Wolverine are immediately champing at the bit to sign up for Operation: Ruin That Guy's Shit, but Cyclops overrules them.  He wants to get back to the Professor in case Magneto survived the eruption in UXM #113 and decides to take his frustration out on Xavier. This complex interplay of motivations is liable to become an issue next, er, issue.

For now, though, the X-Men have bigger problems - it's snowing out in paradise.  And that can mean only one thing: the Savage Land is about to get a taste of how the rest of Antarctica rolls.

Clues

This story follows on immediately from the last one, and takes place across two days.

Date

Saturday 20^th  to Sunday 21^st of March, 1982.

X-Date

X+3Y+354 to X+3Y+355.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year =  3.82 standard years.

(Storm is 34 years old.)

"A snow-fall!"

Contemporary Events

Manchester United goalkeeper Tomasz Kuszczak is born.

France performs a nuclear test.

Standout Line

"This bargain-basement Rodan just chopped an X-Man!" - Wolverine.