Posted in: Comics | Tagged: magneto, marvel, polaris, x-men blue, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-ual Healing: Magneto and Polaris Have a Father/Daughter Ice Cream Date in X-Men Blue #27

Published Sat, 12 May 2018 13:30:36 -0500

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but with a corporate merger on the way, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in comics.

Each week, armed with the joy, heartbreak, and frustration of 30+ years of reading X-Men comics, we read every new X-book that comes out, recap the events, provide the historical context so you can read it on Marvel Unlimited, and wonder when Marvel will let Chris Claremont write something again.

It's the way X-Men comics were meant to be read! It's the column that can only be known as…

For more about the column, check out the reboot issue here.

X-MEN BLUE #27
CULLEN BUNN (W) • Marcus To (A)
COVER BY R.B. SILVA
• With the Original Five X-Men lost in space, a new team of mutants has emerged to face the White Queen, Havok, Miss Sinister and Bastion!
• But while the new X-Men are away, the Marauders will play, striking viciously at Magneto.
• Magneto is forced to make a terrible decision, leading him ever closer to the darkness he has tried to put behind him.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

The Cry Havok storyline enters Part 5 in X-Men Blue #27, picking up with a flashback to "weeks ago" in Madripoor, where Magneto's X-Men are headquartered. Magneto and his daughter (depending on when you're reading this and how Marvel's continuity has messed with Magneto's family tree this week), Polaris, are out on the town for dinner. Polaris rebuffs Magneto's attempt to take her for father/daughter ice cream, but she's smiling, so we have to believe she enjoys it deep down.

The two talk about Polaris's ex-boyfriend, Havok, who has been palling around Emma Frost, Bastion, and Miss Sinister lately. A caption box tells us to see the AXIS super-mega-crossover event for more info on how Havok turned bad, but to be honest, he's always been kind of a dick, even before his moral alignment was inverted by an event comic. Magneto thinks Polaris might be able to get through to Havok, but she has her doubts.

In San Francisco, now, Polaris and the interim X-Men Blue (Jimmy Hudson, Daken, Bloodstorm, Xorn, and Gazing Nightshade) are under attack by members of Miss Sinister's Ultimate Universe Marauders team. Meanwhile, IN SPAAAACE, the Original 5 X-Men, minus Jean Grey, who was been turned into a Poison in the Poison X crossover, plus Venom, finally get Danger (currently serving as their Blackbird plane/spaceship) up and running again. This scene takes place in-between the Poison X crossover and the Venomized event comic, which just wrapped up last week, but strangely, does not suggest readers check that out for more info or make any reference to the timeframe. Anyway, Cyclops doesn't want to accept that Jean is a Poison, but Venom tells him all he has left is revenge.

Back in Madripoor in the present, Magneto and his robot butler, Ferris, are facing off against Mach Two, who also has magnetic powers. Magneto easily overwhelms her, but other Marauders get the jump on him. Mach Two orders the mutants who Magneto was protecting and caring for after they were victims of Mothervine, a plot device that Havok and his friends have unleashed on the world in an attempt to stimulate X-genes and make mutants the dominant species, to attack and kill Magneto. They oblige. This causes Magneto to lash out and kill them all.

As the bad guys give chase, Magneto escapes via his home time travel platform. In San Francisco, the X-Men have defeated their half of the New Marauders off-panel. X-pository dialogue from Daken x-plains that the Mothervine-affected mutants are "programmed" to fight the X-Men. To that end, Polaris interrogates Toad to try to learn the location of the big bads. Toad tells her that Magneto is dead (he's not), but Jimmy says Magneto can take care of himself and that the X-Men must take down Mothervine. With no one getting anywhere, Bloodstorm reluctantly uses her vampire powers to enthrall Wanderer.

At the evil mutant headquarters, Emma Frost argues that it would be wrong to control all of the new mutants they're creating with Mothervine, causing Miss Sinister to scoff and cite Emma's less-than-savory past. This angers Emma, but Sinister says that the control is only temporary, until the mutants get a handle on their new powers. Bastion agrees this is important, as he needs mutants to flourish so that he can murder them in the future. Apparently, this is the keynote address of Sinister's tech expo, so she lays it all out:

Emma isn't buying it, switches to her armored form, and pulls a Ronda Rousey on Miss Sinister, putting her in some kind of knuckle lock, but Havok intervenes and tells them to focus on their evil goals.

Just then, alarms sound (thanks for X-plaining that, Bastion). The X-Men have arrived, and they're beating up on Bastion's mutant-preserving sentinels in the courtyard. Havok and company attack, taking out most of the X-Men, and setting up a showdown between Havok and Polaris. Havok gloats about killing Magneto (didn't happen), taunts Polaris about her daddy issues (come on, the ice cream thing was sweet), and casually says he didn't mind killing dozens of mutants to get the job done, which seems to worry Emma.

Havok tells Polaris to join him, but she explains that he's not acting like himself, and this is all the result of an editorially-mandated super-mega-crossover event. Havok has her locked up with the rest of the X-Men, and vows to show her just how evil he really is… next issue.

X-Men Blue is firing on all cylinders lately, and this issue continues that trend. We've got nothing to complain about.

This issue also contains a single-page Countdown to Extermination backup, teasing the upcoming X-over that the X-editors dropped the ball on big time when they failed to call it X-Termination. 20 years in an apocalyptic future, as sentinels attack the Xavier school in Central Park, the adult versions of the time-displaced X-Men (who are still wearing X-Men Blue costumes, as if that's not gonna change 100 times in the next two decades), battle sentinels and try to usher fleeing children to safety. Angel says this could all have been avoided if the X-Men had just gone back to their proper times. Oh, and a sentinel vaporizes Beast, who, let's be honest, deserves it.