The conclusion to Inferno starts with Maddie’s dead body.
And of course Cyclops feels guilty.
Because he feels guilty about everything.
And then it’s a focus on Sinister. Because he’s about to die too. Honestly, I had kind of forgotten that the whole architect of Inferno was Mister Sinister, since we haven’t seen much of him throughout this big event.
He smashes through Jean Grey’s psyche and starts destroying the elements of Madelyne’s psyche that were merged with Jean’s when the Phoenix Force destroyed Maddie’s body last issue.
Jean fights to retain Madelyne’s memories, because–since Maddie was a clone of Jean–without Madelyne in her head, Jean will effectively be wiped out of existence.
Or something like that.
Of course, Phoenix starts to come out.
Meanwhile, in the physical world, the two X-teams go after Sinister, who is still protected by his Marauders team.
Storm finally kicks Malice-possessing-Polaris’ ass.
Faceplant!
Havok kills Blockbuster (above), then Wolverine disables Sabretooth with his “fast draw special.”
Psylocke also beats up Sabretooth this issue.
Poor guy.
I guess there’s just three Marauders, because then it’s everyone against Mister Sinister and Malice-who-is-possessing-Polaris.
Let’s look closer at that
Malice/Polaris uses her magnetism power to completely humiliate Colossus (question: Why doesn’t she just kill him?)
Sinister takes the entire team out, and then Beast and Longshot—who had been putting baby Cable in a safe place—return to the battle and manage to hold their own until the others start waking up.
Sinister seems to be immune to most of their powers. Cyclops is unable to effectively eye-blast him, Havok’s blasts just bounce off, Rogue’s brain is overwhelmed when she tries to absorb him, and as for Longshot…
…Longshot’s powers misfire.
We then get into a whole series of Cyclops recovering memories of how Mister Sinister abused him when he was a child at the orphanage, and he has to overcome that childhood trauma in order for his optic blasts to affect Sinister.
Which of course he does, and fries off all of Sinister’s skin, and blows him to bits.
The repressed memory angle feels a little forced, but overall a solid conclusion to a decent line-wide event. Not great, but good. And lots and lots of killing. And none of it is by Wolverine (who could have killed Sabretooth but instead just knocked him out).
X-Factor forgives the X-Men for letting them think they’d died, and the two teams go their separate ways again.
Of course, Kitty is away with Excalibur and still thinks Colossus is dead.