STORY: "Power Play" (22 pages)  The X-Men and Ororo defeat Deluge by overloading him with power from Cyclops' optic beam.

What you need to know:
Deluge relates his origin story.  He's an albino mutant from a small African village.  The other villagers decided he was a freak and kicked him out, at which point he discovered that the village was being quietly observed by a bunch of white anthropologists.  Since it'd wreck their work if the villagers found out about him, the anthropologists drag him back to civilisation with them.  When he figures out that his community have been treated as scientific specimens, he gets very annoyed about it all and swears revenge.

He dies at the end of the story, after trying to absorb too much energy.  The X-Men don't seem too bothered by this, although the Beast does stress that it wasn't quite what he was trying to achieve.

Cyclops spends the entire issue unconscious until Ororo leaves and the continuity problem passes. Since his powers are essential to the climax, Marvel Girl makes him open his eyes telepathically.

Cyclops, Beast and Marvel Girl finally make it back to the Mansion at the end of the issue - still without Angel - and find the Fantastic Four waiting for them.  This leads into the next arc.

Iceman wakes up, but he's got temporary amnesia and doesn't know who he is.  As a result, he doesn't recognise Sauron (in human form) either.

Angel and Avia have been tied up by the sailors, and a guy called Arnstrom has come up with a plan to sell them to a circus he knows.

Havok, Lorna and Ka-Zar have a pointless little scene where characters from Magneto's city explain the plot of the first arc to them.

There ought to be a number #73 on this cover, but it seems to be covered by the lettering.  The best suggestion I've seen is that it's written upside down just below the "R" of "STORM", which is pushing it a bit.

Comments:
I've always liked Deluge's origin story, which actually raises some interesting ideas.  There are indeed cultures out there that we allow to remain untouched by the outside world so that they'll remain pure - the Sentinelese, for example.  We generally assume that we're doing them a favour, but of course, we're also denying them modern technology, medicine and so forth.  Deluge's reaction - that his people have been kept in "primitive squalor" as an anthropological curio - actually makes a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, it never really translates into a compelling main story, where Deluge just wants to smash things up for the heck of it, and eventually gets defeated in a fairly conventional manner.  A shame, because the character had an awful lot of potential that the story never really explores.  He's got a genuinely original and persuasive reason to be bitter.

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

GUEST STAR
Ororo Munroe (next in Giant-Size X-Men #1)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Iceman and Avia

VILLAINS
Deluge (dies; also in origin flashback which is his chronologically earliest appearance, preceding issue #6)
Sauron (next in issue #9)
The captain and Arnstrom

GUEST APPEARANCES
Ka-Zar
The Fantastic Four: Mr Fantastic, Crystal, the Human Torch and the Thing (all last in Fantastic Four #101)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Savage Land natives
Unnamed anthropologists (in Deluge's origin flashback)

Revised: 31 May 2006

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