Dr. Doom kidnaps Arcade, so Arcade’s gal-pal Miss Locke kidnaps Illyana Rasputin, Amanda Sefton, Jean Grey’s parents, and others to coerce the X-Men to save Arcade.
Peter’s baby sister was taken but…He’s smiling? He doesn’t seem all that worried.
They ask Beast for information from The Avengers’ files.
Storm talks to a crystal ball holding Jean Grey’s….What?
I must have missed the issue, but the ball is clearly reacting to Storm–so it’s got some kind of essence of Jean.
Storm leads the landing team at Doom’s castle.
Doom makes quite an entrance.
Throughout, it becomes clear that Doom is crushing on Storm. And it appears to be at least a little reciprocated.
So he does the Jabba/Han Solo thing to her:
Note that Bobby can’t come with them at first because he’s got homework.
He says that’s a beer but it really looks like a soda. I’m calling this a typographical error. Anyway, he joins the team before long.
After a lot of very fun fighting and stuff, the X-Men save Arcade and tease Miss Locke.
Along the way, Storm seems to tap into her deeper, more powerful potential.
The team members have to fight through Arcade’s sequences. Banshee finds himself int he wild west.
Wolverine’s sequence is especially well done.
There’s also a flashback showing that Wolverine was sick before he joined Weapon X.
That’s James and Heather Hudson of Alpha Flight with him. I hadn’t realized that Deadpool’s backstory was kind of a lift from this toss-away panel in an old X-Men comic. Cool.
Turns out, Arcade insulted Dr. Doom, and all Doom wants is an apology.
Nice. And even though he turned her into a living statute, Storm ends the story by flirting with Doom.
That’s a little weird, and it kind of undermines Storm’s character as a strong female lead.
And because Chris Claremont wrote this, it has to end by showing us what’s to come. Scott Summers is out on his own mourning Jean Grey’s death when he gets shipwrecked with a nice blonde and comes upon a hidden city.
I have only read this story twice since it was first released in 1981. For me, the big draw was the participation of the Original X-Men, aka, quite correctly, the “First Class”- these issues just drip with Claremont’s treacly writing style, which grates on me at times, but the presence of the First Class makes up for it. The Iceman’s resigned attitude towards Lorna’s relationship with Havok was the very first real indication of his having reached full maturity. Too bad that his relentless failure with every woman he ever pursued eventually drove him into the arms of men! ( Hey! It happens! ) I would not have thought that a team as powerful as the X-Men- both First and Second Classes- would have had such a hard time with Dr. Doom, who, as Storm points out in this story, is just a man with a bunch of gimmicks- and she’s right! Nevertheless, Doom makes mincemeat out of the entire combined team, underscoring just how powerful and dangerous Dr. Doom really is! I wonder how Doom would have fared against Professor X, though. I don’t see Doom as having any defense against the power of Professor X. It was just a good thing for Doom that Xavier is nonambulatory, or the story’s ending would have come by the end of the first chapter. Maybe Havok, too. What’s Doom gonna do against Havok?? You got me. But Doom did kick our boys ( and girls ) in the dirt, which apparently kinda turned Storm on! Thank the Goddess! I do believe this was the very first time that we ever saw Storm become aroused by anything or anybody!! Up until this issue, I had begun to seriously worry about the old girl! It does make perfect sense that she would be drawn to an extremely powerful monarch. Look who she eventually married! Doom is, weirdly, Storm’s type! Considering how the feeling was clearly mutual, I found myself by the trilogy’s end sort-of hoping that Storm would have to bail the team out of Doom’s clutches by, uh, “spending a little time” with ol’ Vic- knowhutimean-?? That would have created infinite interesting grist for future issues, for many, many years to come! Kinda like that thing going on between Storm and Count Dracula! Which brings up a good point: Why haven’t Dr. Doom and Count Dracula ever crossed swords-??! Latveria and Transylvania are, after all, in the same “neck” ( npi ) of the woods- middle-Eastern Europe. Doom and Drac have the same goal: Taking over the world! So, why haven’t they met-?? I know! Maybe they could meet on the field of battle, and the prize: Storm!! I need to get to work at writing this! X-celsior!!!
I had another thought on the matter of the X-Men versus Dr. Doom: What would Doc do against Polaris-?? Polaris’ magnetic powers would wreak…………..havoc……………on Doom’s body armor!!! See what I did with that-??! And what could Doom do about it-???! That’s right! Absolutely nothing!! Noooooo, no- if Doom is smart- and he IS- he’ll give both Polaris AND Professor X a wide berth, baby!!! Ten-four!!!!
He could do magic. He could do anything that he desires.
Naaaaaaaahhhhh. If THAT’s true, howcum that pesky old classmate of his from Empire State University and his three sidekicks keep beating his ass???!!!