Confronting The Factor - Part 2 (Issue #38)

ISSUE #38
Who remembers what happened at the end of the last issue? I sure don't!

SUMMARY!
I guess the X-Men escaped capture (I vaguely remember a bubble-cage and a BRATTTT Robot?) because they are now seen hijacking a couple of Factor Three's flying disc ships ["Do you  mean 'flying saucers', Jeff?" "SIR! I DO NOT! Flying saucers are an ice cream and cookie treat your grandparents buy at Carvel and keep in the freezer for when "the kids" come by ... until years pass and "the kids" stop coming by as frequently ... then they start buying sugar free Flying Saucers because of their diabetes ... then "the kids" visit and reach for a sweet treat only to get a horrible, sorbitol surprise. So, I say NO! These are NOT "Flying Saucers" and stop correcting me, or this blog will go on forever!"]

Where do our mutanic heroics go? Why, back to the X-Mansion, of course, as they only know one address because Professor X made them memorize it to tell a policeman in case they got lost.

Meanwhile, Mutant Master (MM(TM)) again exposits how he's going to orchestrate Dubya Dubya Three so that the mutants can inherit the earth. Let's take a look at those who will inherit:

Clockwise from left: Vincent Price, Flower Man, "Guy", and Louie Anderson.

These guys? Seriously? A fat guy, a coward, a guy who can vanish, and a guy who doesn't like to be touched? Though, as a fat coward who dislikes being touched, this is good news for me!

Back at X-Quarters, Cerebro just HAPPENS to pick up a transmission from MM(TM), so the X-Men know exactly where to go to stop WWIII from becoming a "thing". What luck! So off they all go in their stolen UFOs. [Where does morality sit on this issue? Are they technically "stolen" if you are the X-Men and the people you took them from are trying to kill everyone? The Ethicist from the New York Times would know. He ALWAYS knows what's right.]

Marvel Girl, Angel, and Beast try to save the lives of the heads of the communist military from a bomb which will go off, making it seem like a capitalist plot. It does not go well, and everyone is captured by Commie Joe. Ivan? Yeah, to be formally ethnically insensitive, I guess you'd say Ivan.

"Da" means "yes" in Russian.
(Thank YOU, four years of previously-useless Russian language classes!) 

Cyclops and Iceman head towards a U.S. missile base to try to convince them that their missiles are going to be used by evil, evil baddies. This tactic doesn't work as well as you think it will [oddly, people in costumes running up to military bases shouting, "HEY! HEY! YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEE!!!!" never really gets the desired effect, does it?] and they are dismissed as jokers / crackpots / fools [checked the thesaurus for more, decided to give up on synonyms, instead].

"AW, man! Grown ups just NEVER listen to us kids. We should LET WWIII happen! That'd show 'em! Then we'd never have to go to bed early or eat our vegetables or give the dog a flea-bath.  Stupid grown ups."

So this dynamic duo [what? OTHER duos can't be "dynamic"? Does Batman really have the corner on that market?] is forced to try to destroy ALL of the U.S.'s missiles by hand (well, by ice or eye, really, I suppose). Oddly, again, this does not go over so well. For some reason, military dudes don't like attacks on their nuke bases, so the military men attack back.

And then that's it. It's over. Yes, it was a short issue, but they padded out the rest of the book with a "bonus" - the first in a series, they claim - called "The Origins Of The X-Men". This month: "A Man Called ... X". [Raise your hands if you read that in the same delivery as "...some call me ... Tim?" No one? Good. That means I remain unique, like my mom always said I was.]

In this "bonus" story, we learn ... next to nothing. Honest. A couple pages to reveal that Professor X, before he had a team of mutant kids he was training to be a fighting force, went out on recruitment missions to find kids to join to his mutant squad. It's a story we could have inferred for ourselves.

EXCEPT for the fact that he did this in collusion with the GOVERNMENT! Yes, YOUR government! They want to nationalize the mutants. Give every citizen access to affordable mutants. Levy a flat, 13% tax on mutants. Uh... other political things that people are complaining about!




Wanna read the source materials? Have fun with THAT! They're in here:
Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men - Volume 4