Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2

Reprints X-Men #101-110
Written by Chris Claremont.
Penciled by Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Bob Brown and Tony De Zuniga.
Inked by Sam Grainger, Terry Austin, Bob Layton, Tom Sutton, Dan Green and Tony De Zuniga.

After their battle in space with the Sentinels, the X-Men are travelling back to Earth in a space shuttle. Upon returning to Earth's atmosphere, the shuttle crashes in New York's Jamaica Bay.

All of the X-Men emerge from the wreckage except for Jean Grey, who was piloting shuttle.

Suddenly, Jean flies out of the water wearing a new costume. She calls herself Phoenix and says she is no longer Jean, but has become "fire and life incarnate!" Jean suddenly collapses and is taken to the hospital.

The X-Men's leader, Prof. Charles Xavier, says that Jean and Scott don't need the rest of the team hanging around the hospital and orders them to take a vacation. The professor has good timing, since Banshee has just received an invitation to visit Cassidy Keep, his family's castle in Scotland. He's accompanied by Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus.

Their vacation has barely begun when the X-Men fall through a trap door. They find themselves standing in front of Banshee's cousin Black Tom Cassidy and Xavier's half-brother, the Juggernaut!

Black Tom possesses the mutant power to project heat through his shillelagh. Since Tom and Banshee are related, they're immune to each other's powers. So they must engage each other in hand-to-hand combat.

Juggernaut is one of the strongest beings on Earth and is (as his name suggests) nearly unstoppable. Storm is unable to help her teammates due to an attack of claustrophobia. How can the X-Men hope to stop Juggernaut and Black Tom with the odds stacked in their enemies' favor?

Subsequently, the X-Men visit Scotland's Muir Island, where their friend Dr. Moira MacTaggert operates a mutant research facility. But when the X-Men arrive at the island, they are met by Magneto, master of magnetism and oldest foe of the X-Men!

This new group of X-Men is still struggling to learn how to fight their opponents as a team. Magneto exploits this and quickly gains the upper hand. Thankfully, Cyclops arrives and decides the X-Men are outmatched and not ready to tackle an enemy of Magneto's caliber and orders them to flee the scene. Cyclops also deduces that Eric The Red is planning to attack Xavier and orders everyone to fly back to New York.    

When the X-Men return home, Eric The Red is waiting for them. They attack him, but Eric is joined by another combatant. He's Firelord, a former herald of Galactus. He possesses the Power Cosmic. His power is (in Firelord's own words) "like unto that of a raging sun!". Firelord isn't evil, but he's been tricked into believing the X-Men are the aggressors. The X-Men are easily defeated by Firelord.  

At the same time, Jean Grey and her new housemate Misty Knight are hosting a housewarming party at their New York apartment. Jean's parents and Prof. X are in attendance. Suddenly, a women with avian features materializes in Jean's living room. We learn that she is an alien named Lilandra of the Shi'ar.   She has been mentally communicating with Xavier for months, telling him that her brother, Emperor D'Ken, has grown insane and drunk with power. 

A few minutes later, Firelord arrives at Misty and Jean's apartment. Jean transforms into Phoenix and takes on Firelord. Phoenix is so powerful that she handles the former herald with relative ease, blasting Firelord from Greenwich Village to the New Jersey Meadowlands!  

While Jean is distracted by Firelord, Eric The Red attacks Lilandra. He is revealed to be Davan Shakari, who was exiled to Earth by Lilandra. Eric now serves Lilandra's brother, Emperor D'Ken. He sets up a stargate that will transport him back to the Sh'iar homeworld. Eric takes Lilandra with him, to be executed there.

Eric's stargate closes before the X-Men can jump into it, but Phoenix creates a new stargate. The X-Men, especially Cyclops, are amazed at how powerful Jean has become.  

When the X-Men arrive at the Shi'ar Empire, they're attacked by the Imperial Guard, superpowered Shi'ar who are led by their Praetor, Gladiator. The X-Men are outnumbered by the Imperials, but they hold their own long enough to free Lilandra and escape.  

She explains that D'Ken has been driven mad by his discovery of the deadliest weapon imaginable.  Lilandra tells the X-Men that every million years, nine stars align and shine into the M'Kraan Crystal.  This would allow the crystal to open a gateway to absolute power.  

When the Imperial Guard resumes their attack, the X-Men are assisted by team of space pirates called the Starjammers! These pirates are led by Corsair, an Earthling who has a surprising connection to one of the X-Men.  

D'Ken positions himself at the base of the M'Kraan Crystal and the stars shine upon it, with disastrous results. The crystal causes the entire universe to "blink" out of existence. Eventually, the M'Kraan Crystal will cause longer blinks and the universe will cease to exist. Only Phoenix can save the universe from D'Ken's madness. 

Subsequently, the X-Men arrive home and are looking forward to spending a leisurely day having a picnic at a nearby lake. Their plans are cancelled when a man who calls himself Weapon Alpha arrives. Weapon Alpha wears a battle suit that enhances his strength, gives him a force field and allows him to fly. He has come to take Wolverine back to Canada. But Weapon Alpha didn't count on the X-Men arriving on the scene to help Wolverine.

Finally, a telephone repairman arrives at the X-Mansion. When Moira is showing the repairman to the phone junction, he zaps her with a stun gun. This "repairman" turns out to be the mercenary known as Warhawk.  

The X-Men are training in their Danger Room. Warhawk enters the Danger Room's control room, and decides to use it to kill the X-Men. Can the X-Men escape from the Danger Room and defeat Warhawk?

Plus, members of the original X-Men team show up at the mansion and challenge the new team to a fight.  

But there's something about these old X-Men that makes Cyclops doubt they're the real deal.

Review:
In short, this is a great collection of X-Men stories. The creative team really hits their stride in this volume and produces some of the most memorable tales of the Bronze Age.

Story:
Chris Claremont continues his run of great action and drama in Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2.

This book opens with a space shuttle crashing into Jamaica Bay and Phoenix rising out of the water. It's one of the most iconic moments of the Bronze Age. But then Phoenix collapses and isn't seen again for 76 pages. The next time we see her, Phoenix displays god-like powers, trashing Firelord and saving the universe.  

Fans of Claremont's trademark narrative captions will be glad to see the return of the "malicious narrator." In the images scanned below, the narrator reminds Wolverine that he's "never had any friends."  

During Phoenix' absence we get great battles that feature Magneto and Juggernaut, two of the old X-Men's greatest foes. Storm's claustrophobia flashback to her childhood during the Juggernaut battle gives Claremont a chance to give us more information about Ororo's past.

Claremont makes a gutsy move in the Magneto story. The X-Men retreat from one of comicdom's most powerful villains. That's not something that superheroes did in the Bronze Age. But Claremont makes it work, since the X-Men aren't ready to fight Magneto and saving Xavier is the more important matter. Once we learn that the mastermind behind most of the X-Men's problems has been Emperor D'Ken, Cyclops' decision makes more sense.

The Firelord-Phoenix duel does a nice job of showing how powerful Jean has become. Scott thinks to himself that Jean was the least powerful member of the X-Men and now has become one of the most powerful beings on Earth. Claremont follows up with Phoenix saving the universe from D'Ken's insanity. Claremont's narration is amazing during the M'Kraan Crystal portion. It's even more wonderfully over-the-top than usual. Just read the captions in the images below:

This book also contains one of Claremont's trademark "downtime" stories, when the X-Men get a few moments to relax at the mansion and talk to each other. This gives Claremont time to develop the characters a little more. Wolverine feels that everyone has misjudged him since he arrived. Colossus bemoans the fact that he lacks the words to describe his homeland to Storm. It's interesting to watch Cyclops feel alienated from Jean when she gains the Phoenix power (this will be very important down the road, when Jean/Phoenix is presumed dead). Nightcrawler shows that he's an all-around good guy. Kurt tries to get Cyclops to open up about his feelings and also tries to set up a date for Colossus.

The Weapon Alpha fight helps build Wolverine's backstory. It also shows the X-Men coming to his rescue, since they've grown to care about the abrasive Logan and consider him a friend.

On a less positive note, Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2 also contains some lackluster material. The book includes two fill-in tales that are a step down in quality from the rest of the stories. The Old X-Men/New X-Men duel (from X-Men #106) feels like a case of "been there, done that" since it's a bit too similar to a fight featured in X-Men #100.

The book ends with the Warhawk story, another fill-in. Warhawk was created by Claremont as an Iron Fist villain, but here he's just a generic criminal-for-hire bad guy.

On a personal note, the Cassidy Keep two-parter has long been a favorite (even if I find the leprechauns a bit silly), since it was my introduction to the Juggernaut.

In spite of the fill-in material, the stories are excellent, they add up to another great chapter in Claremont's long saga.

Art:
Dave Cockrum pencils the first 89 pages of Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2. His work is strong throughout and sometimes it's fantastic. Cockrum does some great work in this two-page spread from the Firelord story:

It should be noted that the Imperial Guard is an homage to DC Comics' Legion Of Superheroes. For instance, Gladiator is a stand-in for Superboy and Hobgoblin strongly resembles Chameleon Boy. This was a bit of an inside joke, since Cockrum penciled the Legion's stories and designed many of their costumes. It's Cockrum's last story and it's a nice farewell for the New X-Men's co-creator.

Speaking of homages, Cockrum also gets a nice Star Trek tribute in the image below. The Shi'ar bridge looks a lot like the bridge of the USS Enterprise.

John Byrne and Terry Austin succeed Cockrum and the art gets even better, even if it takes a few stories for them to develop what would become their classic style. Byrne and Austin's art at the end of the D'Ken story, when Phoenix saves the universe, still looks amazing  nearly 40 years after it was first published. Check out their work below:

Simply gorgeous work by Byrne and Austin.
That's one of the best examples I've ever seen of a writer, penciler and inker working together to make a great comic book story. Even today, when I read those pages I can almost hear the creative team saying, "let's knock the readers' socks off!"

I also love the way Byrne and Austin depict Peter's transformation into Colossus in this image:

The first fill-in tale features Bob Brown on pencils inked by Tom Sutton. They both did some nice work in the Bronze Age, but I didn't feel that their styles meshed well here. Which is too bad, since this tale is the last artwork Brown created before his untimely death.

Tony De Zuniga penciled and inked the last story. I enjoyed his work in Bronze Age horror titles, but De Zuniga's art here is a step down from Cockrum, Byrne and Austin.

How Does It Look?:
Here's a great image scanned from X-Men #107:

Here's how the same pages appear in Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2:

Extras:
Comic legend Stan Lee wrote an introductory essay for the 1993 edition of this collection. It's reprinted here in this book. If you enjoy Stan The Man's alliterative writing style, you'll want to read this essay.

Rating:
Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2 is highly recommended to any X-Fans. The M'Kraan Crystal story is reason enough to pick it up. While the aforementioned fill-in stories aren't great, the great far outweighs the mediocre in this book. The introduction of Phoenix and the art of Cockrum, Byrne, and Austin make this a must-have for any fan of Bronze Age comics.  

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Sals!