Jean and Angel have fun when he proposes marriage.
Fun?
Have you all forgotten this is 1993 X-Men? No room for fun here!
This issue updates us on the many, many storylines going on in the X-Verse. It is a good interim issue to refocus on characters at a time when all the x-books are so plot heavy (and so full of characters) that they get extremely hard to follow.
We see some more X vs. Magneto battles. Storm and Forge are flirting again.
And a very nice goodbye to Angel’s long-time girlfriend Candy Southern, who gets reconstructed by the Phalanx/technovirus.
Next issue will be another crossover tie-in.
‘Uncanny X-Men’#306 is so important to the saga of the Angel that I am the proud owner of no less than six copies of it! The opening shot where the Angel ( playfully ) threatens to kill Marvel Girl if she refuses to marry him, is, indeed, a very rare moment of joy for the otherwise-tortured characters of this franchise. I do, ( no pun intended ) however, believe that the Angel was serious when he told her on the following page that he would have gladly and happily married her on the day they first graduated from the X-Men, if only she would have had him. Of course, had she had, poor, dead Candy Southern would most likely still be alive and with us today. The late Miss Southern was a very beautiful young woman who suffered greatly for the man she loved, and she didn’t deserve to die. And this is from me, the guy who is always saying that Death- true, irrevocable Death- needs to be more of a prevalent thing in Marvel and DC Comics! Just not to sweethearts like Gwen Stacey and Candy Southern, please! John Byrne had me going for a minute there in his X-cellent 1999-2001 ‘X-Men: The Hidden Years’ series when he implied that Candy MIGHT be pregnant with the Angel’s child! ( as interesting as that MIGHT have been, I’m glad it turned out to be a red herring- superheroes need kids on their hands about as much as liberals need more things to bitch about ) The final attack of the hate-maddened Cameron Hodge here raises, to me, a big question about the Angel which has never been satisfactorily answered: In the Simonson’s ‘X-Factor’ opus, it was established that Hodge, in his bid to utterly and totally destroy the Angel- a man who thought Hodge to be his friend- not only arranged to have him maimed, but swindled his entire fortune out from under him! This second detail is a point that the various ‘X-Men’ writership seems to have totally forgotten about! The Angel’s wings eventually return due to the ( illogical ) machinations of Apocalypse, but how did Worthington manage to regrow his bank account??? Things that make you go “Hmmmmm….” There was a throwaway line in ‘X-Men’#319 about how Worthington mentions to Psylocke that “Hodge didn’t get ALL of it.”, but that line remains unsatisfactory simply because it fails to address the mechanics of the question, which IS, just exactly HOW did Hodge fail to swindle the entire amount???!! That’s one sucker who seriously seemed to know what he was doing, even if he WAS a complete nutcase!!! Cameron Hodge should have stayed with us as well, simply because he WAS such a great villain! The RARE type of villain who didn’t wear a weird costume, or have any special superpowers- just a relentless, knowledgeable, pain-in-the-ass who WON’T die, like J.J. Jameson!! So, that’s it- “Mortal Coils”- one of those single-issue turning points, this time for the Avenging Angel! Peace out!