STORY: "Rubicon" (37 pages)  Fabian Cortez works his way into Magneto's trust, and engineers a conflict between Magneto and the world - including the X-Men.

What you need to know:
The original five X-Men have rejoined the team, thereby dissolving the original X-Factor.  (Their book was taken over by a completely new team.)

The X-Men have finally rebuilt the Mansion.  It was blown up by Mr Sinister in Uncanny X-Men #243, over two years before.

The X-Men are divided into two teams, Blue and Gold.  The Blue team, which was intended to star in this title, consists of Cyclops, Beast, Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke and Wolverine.  The Gold team has Storm, Archangel, Iceman, Colossus and Jean Grey (officially dropping the "Marvel Girl" codename at long last), and was meant to star in Uncanny X-Men.  The distinction eventually blurred away.  Professor X, Banshee, Forge and Jubilee hang around in the background of both titles.

It's the first appearance of Fabian Cortez and the Acolytes, characters who went on to be prominent throughout the 1990s.  Actually, these particular Acolytes were only used for this storyline.  But the organisation - a pseudo-religious cult devoted to Magneto's philosophy - stuck around for a while.

Cortez refers to one of the Acolytes, Annemarie, as "my sister."  It's unclear whether he means that literally, or whether he calls all of the Acolytes "brother" or "sister."

As we see throughout this story, Cortez is a manipulator.  His main aim is to hijack Magneto's reputation and iconic status for his own ends.  There's some suggestion in this arc - particularly in issue #3 - that Cortez is actually broadly sincere in following Magneto's teachings, but wants to seize control of the movement from Magneto himself.  However, later stories largely dumped that idea in favour of Cortez as a corrupt cult leader, duping his Acolytes into beliefs that he doesn't really share.

The story begins with Magneto having left Earth entirely, apparently planning to live on Asteroid M as a hermit.  On Cortez' prodding, Magneto returns to Earth to pick up some nuclear missiles from the Leningrad (the submarine he sank in Uncanny X-Men #150).  Magneto's apparently just intending to use them in self-defence, but naturally, this does nothing to calm the situation.

In a fairly baffling sequence, Rogue pursues Magneto and his missiles into "Soviet airspace."  Magneto ends up detonating one of the nuclear missiles.  Somehow, not only does Rogue survive the explosion, but she apparently falls to earth in Genosha - which is meant to be off the coast of Madagascar!

Cortez passes himself off as a healer in order to get Magneto dependent on him.  In fact, Cortez's power is to boost other people's powers.  When Magneto's charged up, he stops feeling his injuries.

Genosha seems to be getting back on its feet somewhat.  We last saw it during the X-Tinction Agenda crossover, when the X-Men, X-Factor and the New Mutants helped to overthrow the government.  The new regime claims to be following a policy of equal rights for all.  Chief Magistrate Anderson is still running the police force.

The Acolytes attack Genosha without orders, allegedly in an excess of zeal.  The more likely explanation is that Cortez is stirring again.  Naturally, Magneto comes to their defence.

Psylocke muses that she's "an action junkie", apparently in an attempt to justify her fondness for martial arts when she could just beat most of her opponents telepathically from a safe distance.  Fabian Nicieza later tries to explain this more fully with his Kwannon storyline, although unfortunately the explanation is more complicated than the original problem.

Moira MacTaggert rounds off the issue by telling the Banshee that what's happening is all her fault.  Presumably this is supposed to be set-up for what she reveals next issue, but it's difficult to see how, on any view, the events of this issue have anything to do with that.

Depending on which cover you bought - and there were five - you get a different pin-up.  Issue #1A (the one pictured here) has a pin-up by Jim Lee and Scott Williams of various X-Men villains.  The characters appearing are Arcade, a Sentinel, Apocalypse, Cameron Hodge, Magneto, Loki, Sauron, Mister Sinister, the Goblin Queen, Mystique, Dark Phoenix, Mojo, Spiral, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, the Juggernaut, the Toad, Mesmero, Sabretooth and one of the Brood.  Loki's inclusion is a little bizarre, but presumably he qualifies on the basis of the first X-Men / Alpha Flight miniseries.

Issue #1B (with Colossus, Rogue, Gambit and Psylocke on the cover) has the original X-Men in the Danger Room.

Issue #1C (with Cyclops, Iceman and Wolverine) has the X-Men and various supporting cast members in a pool party.  The characters appearing are Colossus, Jubilee, Jean Grey, Gambit, Stevie Hunter, Iceman, Opal Tanaka, the Beast, Trish Tilby, Rogue, Wolverine, Archangel, Storm, Psylocke and Cyclops.

Issue #1D (with Magneto) has a pin-up labelled "Things to Come."  The characters appearing are Selene (presumably because of her Upstarts connection), the Brood, Ghost Rider, Dazzler (wearing unusual face paint), Longshot, Matsu'o, Omega Red, Belladonna, a file marked "Weapon X", and a woman who looks kind of like a zombie with a gun for an arm.  Presumably she would have turned up further down the road if Jim Lee and Whilce Portacio hadn't left to found Image.

Issue #1E, the gatefold cover, has all four covers, no ads, all the above pin-ups, some sketches, and a pin-up featuring the members of the X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force and Excalibur at that point.  (For some reason, Quicksilver is missing.)

Comments:
1991 saw the comics industry going through a boom period.  For Marvel, this largely involved audiences getting behind a number of particularly popular artists.  One of them was Jim Lee, the regular artist on Uncanny X-Men.

After the enormous success of Todd Macfarlane's Spider-Man vol 1 #1, it was only a matter of time before Marvel decided they wanted an X-Men #1 as well.  The result was a reshuffling of the line that effectively rearranged X-Factor and the X-Men into two separate X-Men teams, leaving a new set of characters to take over the abandoned X-Factor title.  Hyped as an enormous event, bolstered by multiple covers, and assisted by speculators, X-Men vol 2 #1 was an enormous hit.  Counting all of the variant covers together, it sold millions.

It must be said that many of those copies went to speculators whose grasp of the laws of supply and demand was somewhat rudimentary.  Incredibly, people honestly believed that the price of this book would go up.  Of course, with that many copies around, there was always going to be more than enough supply to meet demand.

The incredible success of the hot young artists of the time had an obvious effect on the X-Men.  As Uncanny X-Men's artist, Jim Lee took a very active role in co-plotting - often, by many accounts, to the point of rewriting large chunks of the story.  As the story is usually told, Claremont complained to the editors, and they sided with Lee.  (Given the relative success of Lee and Claremont over the next decade, this was - commercially at least - probably the right decision in retrospect.)  Claremont then quit.  This three-part storyline, co-plotted with Lee, was his swansong.  After all, if Marvel were going to make a small fortune off the book that he'd spent 16 years building up, it was only reasonable to hang around for that.

Against that version of events, it should be noted that Claremont subsequently worked with Jim Lee at Image, only a year or so after this - so clearly relations can't have been as strained as all that.  Nonetheless, Claremont was out, Jim Lee was in, and with this story serving as the launchpad for a new title, it wasn't really on the cards for Claremont to use it as closure to his run.  Instead, we get an introduction of the new set-up, and the first appearances of some characters who were to be important throughout the nineties - Fabian Cortez and the Acolytes.

In fact, there's an interesting idea at the core of this issue.  Magneto has become such an iconic figure, even to the other characters, that it's become inescapable for him.  He doesn't really do anything particularly provocative in this story, and he certainly doesn't have an evil plan in mind.  But merely showing up at all is enough to send everyone else into a panic.  It's precisely this image that Cortez is trying to hijack for himself.  The nineties see a lot of stories built around people fighting over Magneto's legacy while poor Magneto slumps in the background and drools gently, and this is where that emerges as a major theme.  Magneto's image and iconic power are more powerful than Magneto himself - as long as you can get them under control.

The issue suffers from somewhat incoherent plotting in several respects, and it often feels as though Claremont is trying to hammer a chaotic story into some semblance of structure.  Annemarie dies only to pop up alive and well at the end.  (Cortez claims to have healed her, but it's a key plot point that he can't really heal people, so...)  Harry Delgado inexplicably defects to the Acolytes with no explanation whatsoever.  The X-Men have a training session and the story can't seem to make up its mind whether or not it's in the Danger Room.  And Rogue somehow falls from Soviet airspace to Genosha, off the coast of Madagascar, which is just plain impossible.  And why does Moira think she's caused any of this, given that there's no causal link and Magneto doesn't even find out about her tinkering until next issue?  None of these derail the thrust of the story too badly, but they're certainly irritating.

It's not a classic, then.  But it does have an interesting idea at its core, and for all its incoherence, it's certainly still got the energy that drove the success of Lee and his Image contemporaries in the early nineties.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (last in X-Factor #71)
Archangel, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Psylocke (all last in Damage Control vol 3 #4)
Colossus, Gambit, Iceman and Rogue (all last in X-Factor #70)
Forge and Storm (both last in Deathlok vol 2 #5)
The Banshee (last in Uncanny X-Men #280)
The Beast (last in Avengers vol 1 #339)
Wolverine (last in Marvel Team-Up vol 3 #19)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Moira MacTaggert (last in X-Factor #70)
Chief Magistrate Anderson (last in Uncanny X-Men #272)

VILLAINS
Magneto (last in Uncanny X-Men #275)
The Acolytes: Fabian Cortez, Chrome (real name unrevealed), Annemarie (full name unrevealed; surname possibly Cortez) and Harry Delgado (first appearance for all)

GUEST APPEARANCE
Nick Fury (last in Avengers vol 1 #337)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Nance and Deke (Delgado's teammates; first and only appearance; Deke is apparently killed)

Updated 8

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