Chapter 26: X-Men – Blue and Gold Era (1992)

We’ve finally come to the era where I first started collecting — and judging by the sales at the time, so did a whole bunch of X-Men fans. This was the first big reboot of the line since Claremont took the helm 16 years earlier, and it set the template for a long time. Not only for the comics — Jim Lee’s redesigns and the new mansion set up was the basis of the X-Men animated series that brought the characters to millions of brand new viewers through the 90s.

This period also marks a welcome return to soapy team dynamics and for the first time in years, new writer Scott Lobdell has a clear sense of direction for Iceman. As we’ll eventually see, this era is chock full of suggestive fodder about Bobby’s sexuality, all of which fueled speculation on chat boards that were becoming popular on this newfangled thing called “the internet” which was about to become ubiquitous. But before we get to that, Claremont has one last story to tell.

X-Men Vol 2 #1-3 (October-December 1991)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Jim Lee

The newly reconstituted X-Men, divided into two strike teams based out of the rebuilt X-Mansion, defend the world from Magneto, after he’s goaded by a new group of fanatical followers led by Fabian Cortez, who reveals that Magneto’s powers and psyche were meddled with by Moira MacTaggart when he was in her care after being reduced to an infant in Defenders #16. The X-Men try to plead sense with him, but in the end, he chooses to nobly sacrifice himself when the Cortez destroys Asteroid M in order to make him a martyr.

Even though it’s Chris Claremont’s grand swan song after 16 years writing the X-Men, credit has to be given for making these three issues really feel like the beginning of a bold new era rather than a farewell tour. Not only is the new status quo established, but Claremont even spends time developing subplots like Gambit and Rogue’s flirtation – their relationship is still going in 2022. And Cortes is given a thrilling introduction as the self-styled leader of a new generation of mutant activist/terrorists. We’ll eventually learn he’s part of the Upstarts competition that occupies the next year of stories.

As for Iceman, he gets assigned the new Gold Team led by Storm, with Jean Grey, Archangel, and Colossus. He does appear throughout the story but he doesn’t do much more than round out the numbers. To be fair, this story has a cast of fourteen X-Men, a half dozen villains, and a half-dozen supporting characters. Poor Jubilee doesn’t even get to make an appearance!

X-Men Vol 2 #5 (February 1992)
Writers: Jim Lee with John Byrne
Artist: Jim Lee

When Wolverine is kidnapped by The Hand, the X-Men’s Blue Team goes after him in Germany. Iceman appears in a brief scene where the Gold Team discusses responding to an invitation to discuss a strategic partnership with Hellfire Club (bizarrely trailing Uncanny X-Men #281, which came out four months earlier).

We don’t really need to worry ourselves with this story that runs through X-Men #4-7; suffice it to say that it establishes Wolverine’s past involvement in the CIA’s Team X and introduces Omega Red and Maverick, all of which is very important to Larry Hama’s Wolverine run. Matsu’o Tsurayaba and Fenris are trying to use Omega Red to gain points in the Upstarts competition, which also factors into the story in Uncanny. There’s some suggestion that there’s an effort to divide and conquer the X-Men by staging the attacks at the same time but that doesn’t really make sense, since the Upstarts aren’t working together and it’s the Hellfire Club who call on the X-Men, anyway.

Uncanny X-Men #281 (October 1991)
Writer: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, John Byrne
Artist: Whilce Portacio

The debut of the Upstarts, in which debuting villain Trevor Fitzroy kills the Reavers, the White Queen, the Hellions, and Jean Grey. Er, sorta.

The White Queen invites the X-Men to the Hellfire Gala to discuss working together (or renewing the cooperation that they’d been in since around Uncanny X-Men #195) to stop a bunch of attacks on Hellfire Club members, but won’t give the X-Men any further details. What she’s not telling them is that Sebastian Shaw was killed by his bisexual son Shinobi in X-Factor #67. Meanwhile, Portacio and Byrne are far less circumspect about Shinobi’s sexuality in this scene where he’s felt up by a bunch of pool boys in speedos, in which I count four separate euphemisms for “faggot.”

Iceman spends a chunk of the Gala flirting with the Hellion Roulette, which, ew, Bobby. She’s a teenager. Once again, Bobby’s aggressively demonstrative heterosexuality with a woman who is legally unavailable to him is best understood as a defense mechanism.

Or, you could chalk it up to the intense backroom confusion that apparently surrounded this issue’s production. In fact, the ending was so unclear that the next issue begins with Storm monologuing about what actually happened but wasn’t seen on panel – Fitzroy kidnaps the White Queen and the Hellions and gets away in the confusion.

Despite the huge body count in this issue, most of the deaths were undone fairly quickly. The Reavers all returned with no explanation, but in the Internet age, the idea is probably that they downloaded themselves into new bodies. Tarot, who dies on panel in both this issue and the next, also reappeared without explanation in X-Force. Even though Empath has a speaking part in this issue, it was decided he was never actually in the story (a New Mutants story had established that he’d left the group). The Hellions were all finally resurrected in the Krakoa era. And the Jean Grey/White Queen deaths were basically fake outs – the plot doesn’t really make sense on these points. Jean moved her mind to the White Queen’s dead body before Jean was killed – but how does that make Jean’s body viable for her to return to later in the story? And despite the White Queen’s body being referred to as a “corpse” several times in the next few issues, it’s eventually decided she was just in a coma.

Uncanny X-Men #282-283 (November-December 1991)
Writers: Whilce Portacio, John Byrne
Artist: Whilce Portacio

The X-Men rescue Jean Grey from Fitzroy, but while they’re distracted by his Sentinels, he kills the remaining Hellions and uses their life energies to open a time portal that brings 93 mutant criminals from the future into his lair to back him up. Unfortunately for him, he also brings in the debuting mutant cop Bishop and his sidekicks Malcolm and Randall.

In a bizarre error, Fitzroy seems to have kidnapped dozens of faceless Hellions – far more than ever appeared in other books, especially since he killed three of them in the previous chapter, and Empath was meant to not be there. Another weird element of these issues that’s never brought up again is that Fitzroy appears to have a large staff of henchmen, including a woman who he claims is one of the Upstarts. The only one seen again is his lacky Bantam.

Fitzroy shows off his sadist side when he appears in Shinobi’s bedroom to demand his leadership ring. He taunts Shinobi with what reads like veiled comments that he plans to rape the unconscious White Queen, acknowledging that Shinobi wouldn’t be interested in that. (A story in X-Factor Vol 3 eventually establishes that Fitzroy is so evil because he was brought back from the dead by Layla Miller without a soul). Later, Shinobi gets his revenge when he captures Fitzroy, destroys his base, and has Fitzroy’s points struck in arbitration with the Upstarts’ Gamesmaster (which should have been a clue that the Reavers and White Queen weren’t really dead, I suppose).

When Bishop learns that he can’t send the escaped mutants back through Fitzroy’s portal, his team decides they have to kill all the escapees, much to the X-Men’s horror. For his part, Bishop can’t believe the X-Men he grew up revering wouldn’t kill criminals, and decides they’re all fakes. He and his sidekicks escape and go on to track down the remaining criminals.

When Colossus is injured in the battle, Iceman takes the opportunity to feel up his chest.

Uncanny X-Men #284-286 (January-March 1992)
Writers: Whilce Portacio, John Byrne
Artist: Whilce Portacio

When Sunfire explores a strange pit on the Sakhalin Islands, he and the X-Men who come to his aid get sucked into an alternate dimension and become players in a cyberpunk fantasy civil war. But more importantly, they also find Colossus’ long-lost brother Mikhail, a cosmonaut who was sucked into the void years earlier and became a hermit after he accidentally killed his wife and half the forces loyal to them with his reality-warping powers. Meanwhile, Bishop continues hunting and killing escaped criminals from the future.

Colossus does the thing he always does when he lands in an alien world: he gets welcomed into the nearest harem and fucks every available woman. Archangel, on the other hand, has to be mind-controlled into fucking the Princess.

Iceman does get an opportunity to flirt with a local woman, but once again finds an excuse not to escalate beyond that.

Oh, and Sunfire gets a new costume that he uses for most of the early 90s. I think it’s meant to evoke solar panels? It’s pretty bland.

Uncanny X-Men #287 (April 1992)
Writers: Jim Lee, Scott Lobdell
Artist: John Romita

The X-Men finally catch up with Bishop as he slaughters the last remaining escaped criminals. While the X-Men are horrified by his actions, Professor X offers him an invitation to join the team, which he accepts.

And this is the issue that kicks off the X-Traitor story that runs through to 1996. Bishop remembers stumbling across the X-Men’s abandoned War Room in the future, and finds a damaged recording of Jean Grey’s distress call saying that a traitor to the team has murdered all of X-Men. We’ll eventually learn that it’s Xavier himself. Sorta.

Parts of this issue are reprised in X-Men: The Times and Life of Lucas Bishop #3, but that story doesn’t add much. It’s also full of intentional errors (like saying that Cable, Cyclops, and Gambit are there) as it’s told through Bishop’s own unreliable narration.

Uncanny X-Men Annual #16 (1992)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Jae Lee

This is Part 2 of the “Shattershot” story, which ran through the 1992 X-book annuals. The story tries to make sense of the various Mojoworld stories by reconciling Chris Claremont’s slapstick stories with the darker original Ann Nocenti take in the Longshot miniseries.

Anyway, the general thrust is that Arize, the geneticist who created the humanoid race that is enslaved on Mojoworld, flees to Earth to try to find Longshot to help him overthrow Mojo. In the previous chapter, X-Men Vol 2 Annual #1, the Blue Team find Arize in Afghanistan and protect him from Mojo’s forces. In this chapter, Mojo sends his team, the Death Sponsors, to collect him from the X-Men Mansion, but in the process, Arize regains his memories. In the next chapter, X-Factor Annual #7, Arize confirms that Spiral was indeed the stuntwoman Ricochet Rita that Spiral herself kidnapped from Earth in the Longshot mini and was driven insane and forced to relive that time loop over and over. The point was to drive home that Longshot himself is playing through that exact loop – constantly fighting to overthrow Mojo and losing. Unfortunately, for some unfathomable reason, the final chapter takes place in an alternate future world so the plot never actually gets resolved – or maybe the point is that Mojoworld stories never can be resolved because they’re inherently full of time loops?

Anyway, the core story was more or less resolved in X-Men #10-11, which saw Longshot and Dazzler finally overthrow and kill Mojo with the X-Men’s help. As is the nature of Mojo stories, that doesn’t stick.

There are two short back-up stories in this one as well, but Iceman doesn’t appear in either.

Uncanny X-Men #288 (May 1992)
Writers: Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, John Byrne, Scott Lobdell
Artist: Andy Kubert

Bishop attempts to acclimate himself to the twentieth century (*cough*) but earns himself no friends in the X-Men when he once again murders on sight one of the escaped convicts, Styglut.

Bishop only thinks Styglut is the last of the escapees Fitzroy brought back. He’s wrong. Another one, Mountjoy, was hiding in the body of Fitzroy’s lackey Bantam. He’ll crop up in the Bishop miniseries.

While horsing around with Cyclops, Iceman gets to be gross about Psylocke, once again demonstrating aggressively unpleasant heterosexuality as a defense mechanism. This kicks off a long-running, annoying subplot about Psylocke aggressively flirting with Cyclops and Cyclops being constantly distracted by her tits, mostly seen in X-Men.

Iceman later shows up at Opal’s home to take her on a date. She’s writing to someone in Japan who she wants to make peace with Bobby, trailing the Cyburai story that’s about to come.

Meanwhile, Archangel is flying around the grounds naked to remind himself that he’s still Warren Worthington.

Uncanny X-Men #289-290 (June-July 1992)
Writers: Scott Lobdell
Artist: While Portacio

Iceman introduces Opal to his parents, beginning a plotline about Mr. Drake being a racist. But before dinner can even begin, they’re all attacked by the Cyburai, who want revenge on Bobby for beating them back in X-Factor #63-64. Over the course of the fight, Opal finds herself taken with Hiro, the relatively nice one, who broke with his team and sacrifices himself to protect the Drakes.

Mr. and Mrs. Drake have had a complete redesign in body and personality since we last saw them in the Iceman miniseries. Although the Drakes were portrayed as being uncomfortable with Bobby being a mutant, they were never portrayed as outright bigots (indeed, a point was made that they’re an interfaith couple). Nevertheless, it’s a strong direction for the characters and fuels some of Bobby’s best material in this era.

Interestingly, Mr. Drake is very quick to frame his disappointment in his son’s choice of partner as an issue of morality.

We can’t let this issue go by without talking about Bobby’s HIDEOUS date outfit. He’s wearing bright red suspenders with not one, not two, but THREE forest green belts, plus an olive suit and a coral shirt. My god. I think the colorist just saw the fit and said “I give up.” This singly panel is the strongest evidence of Bobby’s heterosexuality in 60 years of publishing.

The Cyburai are dreadful Japanese stereotypes, by the way. Thankfully they never turn up again after this story.

This is the last Whilce Portacio story, as he decamped along with X-Men artist Jim Lee, X-Force artist Rob Liefeld, and Spider-Man artist Todd MacFarlane to launch image comics. You’d think losing half the X-books’ creative teams would be a disaster for the line, especially as we’re heading into the big crossover, but actually the books remain remarkably coherent going forward. Perhaps that’s because the new writers Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza were given a stronger hand in the storytelling.

In the other plots, Forge asks Storm to marry him, then leaves her and the X-Men when she doesn’t answer immediately. He takes Mystique – who’s been staying at the mansion since Wolverine #52 – with him, fulfilling part of a prophecy Destiny made when she died in Uncanny X-Men #255. Mystique is apparently insane following her ordeal in that story, but Bishop says files from his time say she’s started slipping when her lover Destiny died.

Archangel is brooding and talking about ghosting his girlfriend Charlotte Jones. For those who like to wonder about Marvel Time, it’s apparently been “months” since Warren became Archangel in X-Factor #15-23, sure. And Mikhail shows signs of PTSD-related insanity when he kills a hapless pizza delivery guy. Boy, the body count sure was high in 1991-92! And it’s about to get bigger!

But first…

Infinity War #1-6 (June-November 1992)
Writer: Jim Starlin
Artist: Ron Lim

In a follow-up to the previous year’s hit Infinity Gauntlet miniseries, Adam Warlock’s evil doppelganger Magus conspires to trick the universe’s protectors into giving him the Infinity Gems and making him a god. Warlock and Thanos defeat him, with minimal help from the assembled Marvel heroes who mostly just clutter up the story.

The story is supposed to involve the Magus creating evil doppelgangers of all the heroes, and maybe even of every planet in the universe? It’s really not clear. This plotline seems to exist just to give Ron Lim some wild scenes to draw and keep the heroes busy while Starlin waxes philosophical.

Iceman is with the X-Men throughout the series, although he barely appears in the actual story (and no, he never gets shot as appears on the cover above). I haven’t read all the tie-in issues, since they’re surprisingly not all on Marvel Unlimited, but for the most part his appearances there are off-panel too. We get to do this all again next year with Infinity Crusade. Joy.

Around this time, Iceman also makes a bunch of appearances in Marvel UK titles. The UK line was a flood of titles Marvel pushed in 1992, which by editorial mandate had to include guest appearances from the mainstream Marvel characters in every issue. But the guest appearances were all excised for the UK editions, so they had to be completely inconsequential pages. So I’m not including them in this because I have to draw the line somewhere, and they’re also not an MU. The issues Iceman guests in are Hell’s Angel #1-2 & #4-5, Dark Angel #9-10, and Mys-Tech Wars #1-4.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled slaughter.

Uncanny X-Men #291-293 (August-October 1992)
Writers: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Tom Raney

After the Morlocks attack Callisto (who’s been living as a New York supermodel since Masque made her beautiful in Uncanny X-Men #260), and the X-Men fail to stop their rampage, Mikhail installs himself as their leader and then leads them all into a mass suicide. But before he does that, he uses his energy manipulation powers to push Iceman’s powers beyond their previous limits, turning him fully to water for the first time.

The important bit for us is that this kicks off a long-running story that Bobby is seriously holding himself back from exploring the limits of his own power. There is a definite queer reading to the idea of a guy who hides his true capabilities behind a dopey, pleasing façade in order to be liked. Over the years – and this story continues even to the present day – the explanation for Bobby’s holding back goes to everything from shame at being a mutant, to shame at being gay, to a general lack of confidence stemming from both.

Also, this goes unremarked on in-universe, but after this story, Bobby never wears the homosexuality inhibiting power inhibiting belt again. Perhaps whatever Mikhail did to him returned his control, or maybe the experience just challenged Bobby to control his powers himself.

These early Lobdell issues do read like a real deck-clearing exercise to get rid of characters and subplots he’d inherited that were inconvenient. In a handful of issues we’ve said goodbye to Mikhail, Forge, Opal, the Morlocks, and the long-running subplot of Archangel’s evil wings, which Jean says have no mind of their own and never did.

And look at the body count over the last year or so: dozens of Morlocks, Mikhail, Callisto, Healer, the Hellions, the Reavers, the White Queen, the Cyburai, Sebastian Shaw, Magneto, his Acolytes, Malcolm, Randall, and 93 mutant outlaws from the future plus dozens of random human victims of their violence.

In the event, the Morlocks don’t really die. Mikhail actually transports them all to a pocket dimension as seen in the 1997 Storm miniseries. Some of them will come back as Gene Nation in Uncanny X-Men #322.

“X-Cutioner’s Song”
Uncanny X-Men #294-296, X-Factor #84-86, X-Men #14-16, X-Force #16-18 (November 1992-January 1993)
Writers: Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, Peter David
Artists: Brandon Peterson, Andy Kubert, Jae Lee, Greg Capullo

In the big annual crossover, Stryfe, while disguised as Cable, attempts to assassinate Professor Xavier by infecting him with the techno-organic virus that once infected Cyclops’ son Nathan, and Cyclops and Jean Grey get kidnapped by the Horsemen of Apocalypse, leading X-Factor and the X-Men to track down and arrest both X-Force and the Horsemen. They learn that Stryfe was behind both the assassination and the kidnapping, so they team up with X-Force to hunt down and arrest the Mutant Liberation Front. With a surprise assist from Apocalypse, who’s also been attacked by Stryfe, they attack Stryfe’s base on the moon, where they learn that Cable and Stryfe are somehow both the grown up versions of Cyclops’ son Nathan, who’ve returned from the future. Cable sacrifices himself to trap Stryfe in the timestream (don’t worry, they both escape eventually) and Apocalypse is killed by the Dark Riders (don’t worry, he gets better). In the epilogue, we learn that Stryfe has double-crossed his supposed ally Mr. Sinister and tricked him into releasing the Legacy Virus into the world.

I’ve always loved this crossover because every part of it is so deliriously over-the-top. Stryfe is possibly the X-Men’s most tragically camp villain. Anthony Olivera described him as a sad gay boy who just wants a hug but wears a costume made out of knives. The story is just his attempt to get revenge on the parents who he believes abandoned him but actually never stopped loving him – or did they? After all, Stryfe is not even in a literal sense the same child they gave up.

As for Bobby, he gets a handful of plot advancement, complaining in Chapter 1 that Opal has passive-aggressively dumped him. Just look at this homosexual try to decipher “woman-ese” while shopping for pork rinds with his buddy.

And in Chapter 5, he notes that he’s been working with Storm to coordinate their powers, showing that he’s actually challenging himself. Growth!

Warren also goes on what will be his last date with Charlotte Jones, using an image induce to make his skin appear Caucasian and generally acting the horny Warren Worthington of old.

Xavier gives a speech at a unity concert in Central Park where he casually equates the fight against anti-mutant prejudice to the fight against racism and homophobia, which gets him booed off the stage. It’s very rare at this time to see the words “sexual orientation” used explicitly in a Marvel book, let alone to have the X-Men’s themes so supportively compared to the struggle for gay rights. Nevertheless, a fan will complain in the letters column of Uncanny X-Men #298 that comparing homophobia to racism is itself racist. Sigh.

Bobby only appears in a random silver age flashback in the crossover epilogue in Uncanny X-Men #297 – we covered that one last year. Bobby also doesn’t appear in Stryfe’s Strike File #1, a sort of “secret files” one-shot of Stryfe’s thoughts on various X-characters, written entirely in Stryfe’s campy purple prose.

Where to find these issues: They’re all on Marvel Unlimited, unless otherwise noted. All of the X-Men/Uncanny X-Men issues have been collected, between the X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Vol 2 Omnibus, X-Men: Bishop’s Crossing and X-Cutioner’s Song Original Hardcovers. The X-Men Epic editions Mutant Genesis and Bishop’s Crossing cover up to Uncanny #288 in TPB format.

Meanwhile, in other X-Books:

The X-Men team up with Ghost Rider to fight the Brood, and meet Gambit’s secret wife (X-Men #8-9, Ghost Rider #26-27) and fight Xavier’s childhood friend Carter Ryking (#12-13).
The New Mutants were relaunched as Cable’s paramilitary group X-Force, consisting of Cable, Domino, Shatterstar, Feral, Warpath, Cannonball, Syrin, and Boom Boom. They fight the Mutant Liberation Front, fail to stop the Juggernaut and Black Tom from destroying the World Trade Centre (ooof), fight Toad’s new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and then lose Cable and the woman who had been posing as Domino the whole time (X-Force #1-15)
X-Factor is revamped as the new Freedom Force — a government-salaried super-hero team consisting of Havok, Polaris, Madrox the Multiple Man, Strong Guy, Quicksilver, and Wolfsbane. They fight Mr Sinister’s new henchmen the Nasty Boys, the Mutant Liberation Front, Cyber’s Hell’s Belles, the new Brotherhood, and a group of Genoshan refugees who refuse to believe the government was overthrown (X-Factor #71-83)
Excalibur had a bunch of allegedly funny off-world adventures.
Wolverine mostly delved into Wolverine’s background as a special agent, and explored the idea that his memories were fake and full of holes.

Next time: The X-books ramp up speculation that Magneto is back in anticipation of the X-Men’s 30^th anniversary.

ROB SALERNO

Chapter 26: X-Men – Blue and Gold Era (1992)

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: