STORY: "Echoes of a Lost Generation" (22 pages)  The X-Men investigate a mutant in the Himalayas, who turns out to be Yeti from the First Line.

What you need to know:
This story is a tie-in for Marvel: The Lost Generation, a twelve-issue miniseries which John Byrne had just finished working on alongside co-writer Roger Stern.  (The final issue came out the previous month.) 

The idea of the series was that thanks to Marvel's sliding timeline, all of the stories from the sixties had by this point been dragged forward to the nineties, leaving a thirty year history gap which had to be filled.  Lost Generation introduced a bunch of new heroes from that period who had mostly never been mentioned before, and for the most part were never mentioned again.  It didn't sell especially well, and it's now remembered largely as a curio.

The First Line were the world's premier superhero team during that period, and Yeti was one of their members.  He's also the yeti from Fantastic Four #99 and #117, in the sort of obscure continuity reference that the creators of Lost Generation enjoyed.

Yeti isn't actually a mutant - he's an Inhuman.  It's never entirely clear what's triggering Cerebro.  The suggestion is that Cerebro is detecting the Inhumans' nearby city of Attilan because they're kind of like mutants, although that still wouldn't explain why Cerebro hadn't noticed it before.

Because no Hidden Years storyline would be complete without a gratuitous epilogue, we get a brief subplot scene at the Angel's mansion where the police are carting away the Dazzler and the evil Dr Stuart.  This at least establishes that Marvel Girl has telepathically blocked them from revealing the X-Men's secret identities.  It also establishes, rather late in the day, that Dr Stuart was motivated by "disgust" at delivering a mutant child (ie, Warren).

In a set-up for next issue, Kraven breaks into the Mansion and kidnaps Avia in order to force the Beast to give him a fight.

Professor X is still staying with the Martins, and we spend two pages watching nothing much happen.

The hidden cover number is #82, and it's on the post just to the left of Marvel Girl's elbow.

The letters page announces that the book is cancelled with issue #22.

Comments:
If you're wondering what all this First Line stuff has got to do with the X-Men then, er, well, yes.  The answer seems to be nothing - it's just John Byrne using a pet character and trying to cement the First Line into the Marvel Universe by working them into another book.  It didn't really do any good in the long run, since they quickly faded from memory.

Meanwhile, we're left with a story where the X-Men run off to the Himalayas, meet Yeti, have the plot of Lost Generation explained to them, and say "Goodness me, how interesting."  And that's really all there is to it.  Far and away the most pointless issue of the series, and not particularly exciting either.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, the Angel (next in issue #18), the Beast, Lorna Dane, Havok (the latter two both also in flashback preceding this story), Iceman and Marvel Girl I

GUEST STARS
Yeti (last in the flashback in this story; next in Fantastic Four #117; also in flashback which follows Marvel: The Lost Generation #12 and precedes this story; between panels of the flashback, he appears concurrently in Fantastic Four #99 and Marvel: The Lost Generation #7; in the remainder of the flashback after that point, he is behind the scenes only)
Pixie (last in Marvel: The Lost Generation #1; next in issue #21)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Avia and Teri Martin
Ashley Martin and Candy Southern (both next behind the scenes in issue #18)
Kathryn Worthington (deceased; no further appearances)

VILLAINS
Kraven the Hunter I (last in flashback in Amazing Spider-Man '96)
The Dazzler I and Dr Stuart (no further appearances for either)

GUEST APPEARANCES
Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon and Karnak (all between Fantastic Four #99 and Amazing Adventures vol 2 #1)

Written: [  ] June 2006

back | next