Sunday 4 November 2012

Uncanny X-Men #180: Kitten and Storm

So, Xavier's playing basketball.

A history of Xavier's legs: In X-Men #1, he claimed a "childhood accident" was responsible. Soon afterwards, it was instead revealed to be the doings of Lucifer. Xavier had then been recently killed (due to the Brood) and his mind was transferred into a new cloned body. By rights his legs ought to work in that. But they don't. Possibly for psychological reasons. In New Mutants #14 he was able to walk, and had the privilege of a dance with Illyana.

It's a delight to see him do a little bit of basketball - which is a callback to the mention of him being a sporty sort way back in the first Juggernaut arc of #12-#13. It's rather a setback when, on the third page, he collapses in pain, triggered by an alien scanning wave that has been troubling him for a few issues now.

Storm is by to rescue him, and he and her talk about her new look and 'tude. Xavier digs it - thinking to himself that "[finds himself] aware of how female, and attractive, she is", and makes the point that changing is OK. He is a mutant after all. But Storm has been scaring herself. I suppose a certain level of moping is expected of the field leader of the X-Men. Both her and Kitty are worried about their relationship. Kitty has been very strongly against Punk Storm, and has felt a change beyond mere clothes, something that Ororo doesn't deny. We at least find out that when Ororo got rid of the plants from the attic, she didn't just kill them - they've been transported to the New York Botanical Garden. She stops a mugging, gets some knives drawn on her, and deals with the situation much better than she had that crack house in #122.

Kitty is trying to figure out a way to deter Doug from going to the Massachusetts Academy (which we found out he'd been accepted to at the end of New Mutants #14). Meanwhile, joining in the self-pity party, Peter is moping about Kitty being friends with Doug, and lamenting that if this were Soviet Russia, they could be married already, which I'm not sure checks out legally.

Ororo and Kitty make a sort of truce. Kitty agrees to go with Doug - by plane! - to the Academy for a week, to check it out with him. Unfortunately, it turns out that Emma Frost is alive and headmistress! (The last time we'd been there, that was the twist too, somewhat undermining its power.)

While they're gone, Xavier and the rest of the regular team (Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler) survey the source of the scanning waves that Xavier has been sensing, and are teleported away somewhere, to appear in a crossover.

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