In this story, Kurt has a threesome. No, not really.
He’s having a sexy bath with Amanda Sefton when he gets the alert call and has to save Warren’s girlfriend, who has been hurt–so he leaves her with his girlfriend to help her while he goes to get the other X-Men.
Angel was kidnapped and taken to the sewers.
The X-Men go hunting.
And we meet Callisto and the Morlocks, Caliban’s extended sewer family. She’s actually stalked and captured Angel to be her…Sex slave?
Involuntary husband, actually. Pretty much the same thing though.
Who overtake the X-Men.
Once captured, Callisto offers Nightcrawler membership in her team.
But there’s a Morlock rule: Anyone can challenge Callisto to take over as leader.
So Storm does.
This story is “the one where Storm becomes a badass.” Soon after, she got a Mohawk.
She stabs Callisto.
I like how this feels like a natural progression of Storm’s character.
Kitty is wounded and separated from the group, and thus begins Caliban’s creepy fascination with her.
In addition to Callisto and Caliban, we meet many other Morlocks who will become major characters.
Like Masque.
And in the area of subplots, because no Claremont script is complete without about a half dozen of them, Maddie Pryor and Cyclops are continuing to fall in love.
And Destiny precogs that Rogue is in danger.
More on that next issue.
Am I absolutely the only person out here who noticed that, in spite of the next-issue box at the end of issue# 168’s “Professor X is a Jerk!” ( luv that title! ) promising us an issue featuring the long-neglected ( up to that point ) Angel, ( “Angel and the Ugloids”- luv THAT refreshingly-politically incorrect title, too! ) our favorite Winged Wonder proceeds throughout the entire two-parter TOTALLY UNCONSCIOUS, without doing a SINGLE THING, or speaking even a SINGLE WORD!!!!! This is what we call A) A gyp, and B) Concrete, solid evidence of Chris Claremont’s continuing, utter contempt for the Original X-Men. Case closed. Having gotten that colossal ( npi ) point off my chest, I will have to admit that I was impressed with all the other elements of the story, especially the handling of Storm, whose development into becoming a badass shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone considering her rather rigorous upbringing first on the streets of Cairo where she was trained by a master thief into all the various arts of survival, and later, survival lessons on the harsh Serengeti plains of Kenya. Considering all of this, had Storm NOT been able to rise to all these challenges set forth by that ugly bitch Callisto, THAT would have surprised me. Storm’s knife-handling skills would seem to me to be basic training for survival on the streets of Cairo, so I wasn’t really surprised there. Callisto is so ugly, I would assume that she has won most of her unarmed fights through sheer intimidation alone, which explains why she wasn’t much competition for the presumably heavily-trained-in-hand-to-hand-combat-skills-first-on-the-streets-of-Cairo-and-later-as-an-X-Man Storm. So, the outcome of the duel came to me as no surprise, either. Cute points: Am I also the only one out here who has noticed that, at the time of this story, ( whatever the Marvel-Time slide-scale equivalent of 1983 is ) Nightcrawler is totally DATING HIS COUSIN-??? Hey! Let’s not be too quick to judgement! When you look like Nightcrawler, I guess it’s a situation of “Any ” ‘port” in a Storm”! ( I just kill me ) On a “RELATED” note, ( Okay! I’ll stop!!! ) Paul Smith’s artwork on Storm is not QUITE as X-quisite as John Byrne’s, but it’s not far FROM it, either, especially in his detailings of Storm’s legs, and that X-quisite area where her thighs join into her hips! I don’t know what eventually became of Paul Smith, but I must admit that his artwork on Storm, as well as Byrne’s and Cockrum’s as well, were primarily responsible for helping me to arrive at my eventual ( but grudging ) acceptance of the “New” X-Men. And it only took thirty-five years!!! Hallelujah!!! I must agree with Mr. Ekko’s rating of this story, in spite of the author’s DELIBERATE slighting of the Avenging Angel- ‘A-‘ !! X-Celsior!!