STORY: "And Death Alone Shall Know My Name" (38 pages)  Magneto fights Sauron, with Iceman, Havok and Lorna stuck in the middle.

What you need to know:
It's mostly the Savage Land this issue.  Magneto has discovered the geothermal energy tapping devices underneath Karl Lykos' island, which Karl already told us about in issue #10.  Magneto thinks he can get them to work, and wants rid of Bobby Drake and Karl Lykos so that he can have the island to himself.

Magneto apparently doesn't recognise Bobby Drake without the ice, since he refers to Bobby and Karl as "humans."  You'd think he'd notice that Bobby's wearing a uniform with an X-Men belt buckle, but apparently not.

Iceman simply regains his memory when Magneto, Sauron, Havok and Lorna Dane all show up - the plot device to stop him recognising Sauron having outlived its usefulness.

Magneto loses the fight because he's still relying on outside energy to boost his powers as a result of his recent injuries.  The X-Men cut off the power supply, and Sauron trashes him pretty quickly.  Once again he's apparently killed, but in the epilogue he's found by Namor the Sub-Mariner, who drags him off to appear in Fantastic Four #102.  We'll come back to that story with issue #20.

Sauron hypnotically erases the three X-Men's memory of encountering him, since he's hoping he'll just be left alone down in the Savage Land.  Iceman, Havok and Lorna all head back to civilisation together.

Lorna is naturally surprised to find that Magneto has no idea who she is, even though he was claiming to be her father in X-Men vol 1 #50-51.  At this point, she doesn't know that it was just a robot.

Ashley's mutant power is identified as "psychokinetic bonding."  There's some technobabble about life forces, but basically it just means that she can animate objects.  Professor X assures us that this is "much more" than just telekinesis, although in practice there doesn't seem to be much difference.

The Brotherhood duly buy the other three X-Men.  They're paying Krueger with illusory money created by Mastermind.  Apparently Krueger hasn't yet noticed that the money he got for the Angel wasn't real, which suggests that he's either incredibly stupid or incredibly unobservant.  (Unus mentions that the first set of money is in "a trunk", of all things, but it's still stretching credibility.)

The hidden number is #78.  It's on Iceman's ice slide, just below his hands.

Comments:
This is where I really began to get annoyed with this book.  It's an extra-sized anniversary issue, and Byrne devotes it to Iceman and some supporting cast members resolving a subplot in the Savage Land.  And despite my best efforts, I cannot for the life of me work out what the point of this storyline was.  Iceman, Havok and Lorna wander around for a bit, get caught up in a random fight between two villains, and then go home.  The best I can think of is that Byrne wanted to use Magneto again in issue #12 for the anniversary, but he's wasted a spectacular amount of space getting there.  As a story, there's really nothing to this whole plot thread, and the series would have been much improved by cutting it altogether.

Worse yet is the strange, non-linear storytelling, where instead of following up on the previous issue's cliffhanger, Byrne jumps back in time - without doing anything to signal it to the reader - and starts the second half of the previous issue all over again.  It takes eighteen pages just to reach last month's cliffhanger, which is absurd.  The book was already slow but now it's literally going round in circles.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, the Angel (last in issue #8), the Beast, Lorna Dane, Havok (the latter two last in issue #10) and Marvel Girl I

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Iceman (also in flashback between issues #10-11)
Ashley Martin and Teri Martin
Candy Southern

VILLAINS
The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: The Blob, Mastermind and Unus the Untouchable
Magneto (next in Fantastic Four #102)
Amphibius (next in Avengers #105)
Sauron (next in flashback in X-Men vol 1 #115; also in flashback between issues #10-11)
Krueger, Blunt (first appearance) and other freaks

GUEST APPEARANCE
Namor the Sub-Mariner (between pages of Fantastic Four #102)

Revised: 31 May 2006

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