STORY: "Blood and Circuses" (22 pages)  The Brotherhood force the X-Men to fight in a circus ring for their entertainment.

What you need to know:
The Blob has a go at raping Marvel Girl by having Mastermind disguise him as Cyclops.  Not surprisingly, she sees right through it.  Mastermind observes that Jean could only be fooled by a carefully constructed illusion built over the long term, which is what he goes on to do (slightly more successfully) in the Dark Phoenix Saga. 

More importantly, it means that the Brotherhood can't make Marvel Girl fight in their arena.  She just escapes while the fight is going on, but runs straight into Krueger.  As we find out next issue, Krueger has finally looked in the trunk, and has come for his money.

In a violation of superhero tradition, Angel immediately recognises his own girlfriend even in her Marvel Girl mask.

The Ashley Martin plot is now going round in circles, as the same conversation continues into a fourth straight issue, and once again she reassembles the Sentinel for the Beast to punch.  Even Professor X finally loses patience with the whole story, and shuts down her mutant powers.

Iceman, Havok and Lorna Dane finally make it back to the X-Men Mansion, where Cerebro alerts them to a new mutant in the Himalayas.  We'll get back to that in issue #16.

The final page is a subplot with Kathryn Worthington (Angel's mother) planning her wedding to evil Uncle Burt.  More of this next issue.

The title is, technically, a reference to the first century Roman poet Juvenal, who coined the phrase "Bread and Circuses" to describe the government policy of distracting the plebs from their problems by giving them shiny things to look at instead.  Other than the mention of circuses, it has nothing whatsoever to do with this story.  (Juvenal is also the guy who asked "Who watches the watchmen?", so his place in comic book history is secure...)

The hidden number on the cover is #79.  It's among the squiggly lines representing grass, just above Marvel Girl's head.

Comments:
Getting back on track, as the maze of subplots thins out and Byrne finally gets the focus onto the X-Men fighting some good old fashioned supervillains for an issue.  It's nothing particularly groundbreaking, and it's a fairly standard use of Mastermind (lots of illusions, heroes fight them).  Still, Byrne gets to have fun drawing scary clowns for the X-Men to fight, and there's a much needed sense of purpose here.  It's arguable that all this stuff about small circuses is very dated by the year 2000, but in the context of this book it still works.

It's worth noting that even with this issue, Iceman, Havok and Lorna have to spend a few more panels in the Savage Land before they're allowed to depart for home.  That's thirteen straight issues with scenes in the Savage Land - a particularly glaring example of how this book was spending far too long dwelling on each plot idea.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, the Angel, the Beast, Lorna Dane, Havok and Marvel Girl I

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Iceman and Candy Southern
Ashley Martin and Teri Martin
Kathryn Worthington (last in the Angel story in Ka-Zar vol 1 #2)

VILLAINS
The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: The Blob, Mastermind and Unus the Untouchable
Krueger and Blunt (behind the scenes)
The Dazzler (last in the Angel story in Ka-Zar vol 1 #2)

Revised: 31 May 2006

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