STORY: "Behold a Goddess Rising..!" (22 pages)  The X-Men team up with Ororo to fight Deluge, an albino mutant who has seized control of one of her storms.  Deluge defeats and captures them all.

What you need to know:
It's the first appearance of Deluge, our villain for this arc.  As we find out next issue, he's basically just out to wreck things in revenge "against a world he believes has wronged him".  His powers are rather confusingly defined as "energy manipulation", which in practice seems to mean that he can steal other people's powers and use them himself.  So for purposes of this story, he's basically an evil version of Storm.  Evidently an old school villain, he provides a classic retro deathtrap where the captive heroes are tied to stakes at the bottom of a newly-constructed reservoir that he's planning to flood.

The X-Men who actually team up with Ororo are really just Beast and Marvel Girl.  Cyclops remains unconscious for this entire storyline. This preserves the idea that he meets Storm for the first time in Giant-Size X-Men #1, which is slightly more of a problem for him than for other characters given his larger role in that story.  Of course, Ororo still gets to see him and observe his powers in action, so it doesn't really answer the question of why she's never mentioned this adventure.

If you're wondering why the X-Men are able to talk to all the African characters in this storyline, it's because of the lingering effects of the translating gas from the previous storyline.  (The Beast points this out expressly.)

Readers of a certain persuasion will be excited to learn that, as per the cover, Storm spends this entire storyline topless but with strategically placed hair.

Iceman is washed up in the Savage Land, after presumably passing out while trying to cross from Chile under his own power last issue.  He's found by Karl Lykos (unnamed, although anyone familiar with the character would recognise him instantly) who resists the temptation to absorb his energy and turn into Sauron again.  This kicks off another lengthy subplot.

Angel and Avia both end up unconscious in the South Atlantic, where they're picked up by the crew of a fishing trawler, the Sigurd Jarlson.  Again, this kicks off another lengthy subplot.  "Sigurd Jarlson" was Thor's secret identity at one point, but the relevance of this is thoroughly obscure.  Note that the rest of the X-Men are in Kenya which is on the east side of Africa, so the X-Men have been scattered to a degree that requires a tremendous degree of artistic licence.

Elsewhere in the Savage Land, Ka-Zar, Havok and Lorna (who's already dumped the "Magnetrix" name) turn up at Magneto's ruined city to investigate it.  The survivors don't recognise Ka-Zar as their ruler - and why should they? - so they promptly attack. 

Candy Southern is still at the X-Men Mansion talking with Professor X, and they spend a page failing to advance the plot in any way.  Candy does however give a rationale for why Xavier can't just wipe her mind and kick her out.  She claims that the Angel would immediately realise what would happen, and that would leave Xavier with a choice between justifying himself to Angel or wiping Angel's mind too.  To be honest, given the way some other writers have approached Xavier, it's arguable that he wouldn't baulk from doing either of those things, but Xavier accepts the logic here.  Then again, maybe he's just playing along - it's not as though he has a powerful motivation to throw Candy out.  In any event, this is as far as the story follows Candy for now.  Her original mission to find out what's wrong with Xavier pretty much gets forgotten about.

Only two days have passed since issue #1.

The hidden issue number on this cover ought to be #72.  Again, it's not readily obvious, but it might be at the top right of the exclamation mark, with the "7" covered by the lettering.

This issue includes the fourth and final "Fast Lane" anti-drugs insert.

Comments:
Ah, well.  This arc doesn't really work.  The strongest thing in it is the origin of Deluge, but that's in the next issue.  For the moment, we've got a pre-Storm Ororo hanging around with the X-Men, and there's no getting around the fact that it all seems terribly forced, since it seems unlikely that the characters would have failed to mention this before now. 

Byrne's answer to this is that, other than Cyclops (who is kept unconscious throughout), the characters in Giant-Size X-Men #1 don't have an opportunity to talk to one another until the flight back from Krakoa, which takes place off panel.  Technically this is correct, and there's nothing to stop the story working if you're prepared to accept that the characters simply had all the obvious conversations off panel.  But that's an awful lot to ask people to swallow, and the retcon falls into the category of "technically possible, but just not plausible."

As the notes above show, by this point the series is starting to get alarmingly bogged down in subplots, which tend to move at a very slow pace.

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

GUEST STAR
Ororo Munroe

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Candy Southern (next in issue #8)
Iceman and Avia

VILLAINS
Deluge (real name unrevealed; first appearance; last in flashback in issue #7)
Sauron (last in flashback in issue #10)
The captain of the Sigurd Jarlson and Arnstrom (one of the crew; first appearance for both)

GUEST APPEARANCE
Ka-Zar

OTHER CHARACTERS
M'Kumba and other tribesmen
Savage Land natives

Revised: 31 May 2006

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