X-MEN ANNUAL #13: Double Cross / Jubilation Day

 

The X-Men must race to recover four magical artifacts before the Serpent Society can!

Originally Published August 1989

We begin with a strange encounter...

What the flamin' heck is right, Logan! Do my eyes deceive me or is that Alison Blaire, the Dazzler herself, dressed in a skimpy pink teddy looking for a little midnight ride on li'l Wolvie?

The answer is both yes and no, in that that is the body of Alison Blaire, but Dazzler isn't home right now.

This shocking sex-position calls for some x-position!

We hear from a pink-haired stranger named Diamondback. Seems she is part of a snake-themed supervillain outlet called the Serpent Society (which she actually quit when its leader Sidewinder was ousted by Cobra, but nevermind that, she's back in the fold.) The Society was hired by a couple of "characters" named Llyra and Ghaur to track down four mystically-empowered items.

The Serpents split off into four groups. Diamondback and hers were to steal a -- have I got this right? -- jewel-encrusted cro magnon skull from a scholar of the black arts named Mr. Jip, only to get zapped by some mystic energy.

Looks like a scholar to me!

Jip had also captured Dazzler, by redirecting her through Gateway's portal during a routine grocery run, and as you can see here, he decided to play a little musical chairs with Dazz and Di's brains. It's a bodyswap, yo!

Jip's orders: go back to the X-Men, find the other three magic artifacts for Jip, and get your bodies put right. And the clock is ticking because there's just too much hilarious tension and bickering between these two wayward souls! 

Uncanny X-Cerpts does not endorse fat-shaming, food-shaming, or X-Men Annual #13.

Storm gathers everyone into Gateway's portal to get this fetch quest over with. Wolverine and Dazzler -- that is, the Dazzler that is in Diamondback's body -- wind up in the Savage Land, the very site of last year's ignominious annual. Both have images of a small stone idol in their minds so as to know what they're looking for.

Dazz is a little miffed that Wolverine nearly let himself be seduced by Diamondback, so she wanders off to take the Jurassic tour on her own. She spots a Serpent ship, but the snakes get the drop on her and she falls prey to a four-hour paralyzing venom, being that this body does not have her familiar light-blasting powers.

She awakes three hours and 58 minutes later to find Wolverine standing over her, having easily made his way inside using his animal instincts. He toys with Alison for a moment as payback for her haughty attitude.

"Peachy keen-o? Is that something Wolverine would say, Bob?" "I think so, yeah, Tom." "Okay, I trust you, I'm more of a Spider-Man guy."

Outside, Wolverine encounters his foes: Puff Adder, Asp, and Boomslang. Wolverine makes short work of 'Slang while reading him to filth for his overall presentation:

1989 Wolverine knows a thing or two about stupid accents

And is none too gentle with Asp...

But falls prey to their heavy, Puff Adder. As Dazzler regains her motors skills, she remembers that Diamondback's powers are to have deadly marksmanship with thrown objects. Figuring it's worth a shot, she picks up the very idol that they have come here to get and nails Puff Addy with it.

Having gone Whacking Day on their enemies and gained custody of the idol, Wolverine and Dazzler are zapped away.

We go now to Colossus, Rogue and Havok, who have been brought to another exotic locale of adventure and excitement:

Um......... what?

I tell you, the only thing weirder than teleporting into Lima, Ohio, is instantaneously knowing you've arrived in Lima, Ohio. Incidentally, I don't know if the Serpent Society has been on a rampage of destruction here, or if that's just how a decaying Rust Belt city normally looks.

You may not believe this, but thry too have been given a mental picture of their bounty. Rogue -- whose accent appears to have been way overcranked to Foghorn Leghorn this week -- leads them along the path of destruction to the mall.

Colossus, who has lived in the United States for many years now, ponders the miracle of consumerism...

Only to be attacked by Anaconda amd ensnares in her vise-like grip. 

But as it turns out, this Anaconda don't want none, and Colossus dispatches her with his proletarian strength.

Elsewhere, Havok is in the grips of a feverish vision of Lorna/Polaris/Malice, smothering him to death in vengeance for the time he tried to blast her out of the sky. (Women, am I right fellas? They never forget the small stuff.)

Havok, sensing the real perpetrator of this is nearby, fires wildly with his powers, and...

That'll show her! Now she's all sticky!

Now, usually, Havok's power is depicted as being wildly destructive and uncontrollable, something he is loathe to turn on another human being, but in this case....... "pip pop plup?" I guess?

Next, Rogue takes out Coachwhip, and the heroes intimidate Rock Python into giving up the totem by causing him to realize that his power is trash.

Once again, they touch the totem and are spirited away, and so are we to hopefully a more scenic locale...

Sure, okay! Iceland - volcanos, glaciers, geysers, that's a place with some visual interest. 

So we find ourselves... on a beach with some rocks.

Looking for a... rock.

As per usual, the serpents arrive, and there's a scuffle. Diamondback -- who, as you know, is currently rockin' the bod of international pop star Dazzler -- uses her shared history with the Serpents to signal her true identity and get some leverage over them in the fight.

Meanwhile, Lucky Longshot digs this needle out of the haystack, but before he can deliver it (previously, when an X-Man touches the item in question it zaps them away immediately, but not this time) he's caught in a rockslide. As the heroes work to dig him out, Diamondback touches the correct rock, and is zapped away.

The X-Men and Diamondback find themselves in Jip's Lair, where he prepares to complete the transaction -- return the two women to their bodies in exchange for the four magic totems. But first, Dazzler wants to go save Longshot, because they have kind of a thing going on.

Jip is touched by Dazzler's concern for her friend and advances his half of the bargain, undoing the bodyswap with a snap of his fingers.

Once has has the four Macguffins, he summons Longshot, alive and unharmed.

But then, just as it's all hugs and happy reunions, in zaps Sidewinder, the erstwhile leader of the Serpent Society! It turns out he and Diamondback where in cahoots all along, to grab the four artifacts and bring them to Llyra and Ghaur for a big fat payday.

What a... Ripoff!

Mr. Jip is so incensed at this betrayal that he... sends the X-Men home and gives up the whole scheme. Had it had been me, I would've maybe, I dunno, scrambled the X-Men's bodies all over again or whatever and told them to go fucking grab my magic artifacts back that we went to so much trouble to get in the first place. But I guess Jip is just tired after a long day and recognizes that the game is the game, and maybe even he doesn't want to be in this comic anymore.

Diamondback and Sidewinder bring the trinkets to their employers and are given a literal treasure chest for their troubles, while Llyra and Ghaur have a good cackle about these foolish mortals trading unlimited mystic power away for a paltry amount of filthy lucre.

Those idiots

We are left with our True Actual For Real Big Bads Llyra and Ghaur forming the Serpent Crown and summoning their man Set, while Jip promises/threatens that both Dagger (of Cloak and Dagger) and Storm (of this comic, sorta) still have roles to play in this grand drama, in case that's the sort of thing that appeals to you. 

Back in Australia, the X-Men dust themselves off and say "Well, that was weird, but let's just move on." Even Dazzler and Wolverine agree to make peace over a pop, so all is well.

Further Thoughts:

This is the second Annual to be part of a major Marvel crossover, setting our heroes on the fringes of major power plays that barely affect their ongoing lives, and while I can't vouch for the effect this approach had on sales, the concept isn't working any better the second time around to produce enjoyable quality comics. I've almost never liked the Annuals, and this is possibly the worst one.

I don't know if I'm completely off the mark here, but I feel a certain meta aspect to this story, where the X-Men are conscripted as pawns in a nigh-incomprehensible plot being carried out by forces far beyond their ken, being that here, the X-Men, as fictional characters, are dragged into this Marvel Universe-spanning crossover running through all the various annuals of the year, no matter how it does, or doesn't intersect with the adventures they are normally having. It's hard not to take it personally. To me, commentator of 30 years later, the X-Men are sacrosanct, and it's almost offensive to see them used this way. But to Marvel editors in 1989 -- and today, lest we forget -- they were just intellectual property, a product to be sold. If quality control had to be jettisoned in the pursuit of raw commerce, so be it.

For whatever reason, Terry Austin -- who previously worked on this book as inker at various times, most notably over the pencils of John Byrne -- is the scripter here, and one might think his previous familiarity with the X-Men would let him capture at least some measure of the characters as established by Chris Claremont, but no. I don't like to slag artists, so I will say that when Mike Vosberg wants to sink his teeth into the material -- he really seems to enjoy drawing Mr. Jip -- he creates some great visuals, but otherwise the work is undistinguished. In writing, the characters are so flat you expect them to end each chapter selling fruit pies. This clunky-ass scavenger hunt plot resembles the fanfic comics I scrawled on printer paper when I was in the fourth grade, right down to having hokey-jokey ways of mocking the supposed bad guys in the very comic you picked them to be the bad guys in.

I know the X-Men, and this isn't them.

It's a cold splash of water that may have signaled to readers then, and is a grave reminder to those of us who are looking back, that Chris Claremont will not be writing the X-Men forever (well, actually he did write X-Men Forever, but we're not talking about that today.) The soul that he imbued into these characters was not an irrevocable part of their framework that would inherently follow them forever, it was the work of a specific creative voice who shaped and stewarded them. The X-Men have been blessed, in the years since, with a lot of really skilled writers whom, I believe, have gotten it more right than wrong, but it's a shocking thing to find that the X-Men are as susceptible as any to be put in the hands of a subpar writer and be reduced to "just" comic book characters.

As it happens, there's a back-up story in this annual starring the X-Men's tagalong kid, Jubilee.

It's a simple story that begins as Jubilee is following the X-Men-Ladies through the portal from the Hollywood Mall (where she has been living) to the Australian Outback. 

There she encounters Gateway, who surprises her -- and us -- by offering her a greeting!

What??! Talk about seriously downplaying a moment. The first words Gateway says in this comic and it's just a friendly howdy-do to Jubilee? It's cute, but we have no way to interpret this moment, and anyway, Gateway soon clams up, before guiding Jubilee through the desert -- to the X-Men's back door.

Soon after, Jubilee is exploring, watching from afar as the X-Men enjoy a little baseball game, as they are wont to do...

Somehow she goes seemingly undetected (despite the town being heavily surveilled and the presence of at least one mind-reader) as she pilfers the X-Men's belongings, including their clothes, which she finds to be an ill fit as she is not exactly the same physique as, say, Rogue.

But all the while strange occurrences make her suspect she's being followed.

Soon, after cobbling together her own piecemeal X-Men uniform, she encounters her pursuer -- a scary robot dog with tentacle arms!

Cornered and forced to fight for her life, she unleashes a more powerful stream of fireworks than she has ever done before, learning for the first time that these things aren't just pretty lights -- they can actually do some damage!

In the end, Jubilee stands tall over the Reaver hound, having realized she's more powerful than she ever imagined.

Further-er Thoughts:

You know, I was griping earlier about how the X-Men might be in bad hands if their longtime writer Chris Claremont were to depart the series, how other people just don't seem to grasp the characters the way he does, but maybe I'm wrong. This segment is heavily based around the newly-introduced character of Jubilee and really captures her motor-mouthed, shallow, self-doubting character, as she provides her view on herself, her life, her situation, and what she sees of the X-Men. It's a fascinating little character study and I'd love to see more from this Sally Pashkow in the future. I think that if Chris Claremont were to have to stop writing X-Men in the near future, Sally Pashkow would be a perfect replacement as she seems to have all the plotting and dialogue skills as well as intimate understanding of the characters as he does, with the added benefit of (I would assume) lived experience as a woman to help inform the writing of the X-Men's numerous prominent female characters, like Jubilee, Dazzler, Rogue, Psylocke and Storm. Of course, there's no way to judge from this whether Sally Pashkow is actually a better writer than Chris Claremont, but as an undoubtedly young writer, I assume, just starting her career, if this is where she's starting, perhaps she can end up as one of the greats.

Okay, so, for those of you who need it spelled out for you, or who already know but think I'm in on the joke, there is no Sally Pashkow. This is a pseudonym used here by Chris Claremont as a "joke" or, some have surmised, to lend a specific kind of credibility to this story written fully from a teenage girl's perspective. It works, too, as this was an enjoyable short. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say these 14 pages make this 64-page annual worth the full $2 (that's $2.75 in Canadian) they were asking for with this Atlantis nonsense. Like, gag me, am I right?