STORY: "They're Baaack..." (22 pages)  The X-Babies flee to Earth and seek help from the X-Men against Gog and Magog.

What you need to know:
The X-Babies originated in Uncanny X-Men Annual #12, although even then, they were a recycled version of an earlier gag.  The idea is that after he lost access to the real X-Men, Mojo created the X-Babies as ersatz X-Men to star on his TV shows.  For some reason he copied the X-Men's personalities a little too accurately, so they tend not to do as they're told, but eventually they agreed to return and star for him.  Since Mojo was overthrown way back in issue #11, they're now out of favour.  As we establish more clearly next issue, Gog and Magog are trying to kill them in order to curry favour with the new authorities; since those authorities are led by Longshot, they've rather misjudged what he's looking for.

The original X-Babies were copies of the Australia-era X-Men.  A whole load of new ones turn up in this issue, presumably because Mojo made some extras to keep up to date with changes in the principal team.

The X-Traitor storyline is dredged up, as Gambit and Bishop finally have a proper conversation about it.  Bishop now accepts that Gambit honestly does not intend to betray the team, but still thinks that he'll end up doing it anyway.  However, he's open to the possibility that he might be wrong.

Bishop is still reeling somewhat from absorbing all the memories of his Age of Apocalypse counterpart in X-Men Omega.  He's finding them rather hard to digest, and in practice, he's just having disconnected visions of the Age of Apocalypse.

Iceman spends most of the issue angsting about his level of control over his powers, which is fallout from a recent Uncanny storyline.

The Onslaught storyline gets underway, as Onslaught inexplicably abducts a load of scientists from a secret government base working on Sentinels.  Why did he do that?  Well, the Onslaught storyline was largely improvised and makes little or no sense, so assuming any coherent motive is questionable.  To be charitable, however, Onslaught did end up using a lot of Sentinels when he took over Manhattan, so perhaps he's just gathering information on how to control them.

Onslaught eventually turned out to be a malevolent psychic entity created when Professor X wiped Magneto's mind in issue #25; it's a combination of the worst aspects of their personalities.  Marvel kept changing their minds about crucial aspects of this storyline up until the very last moment, and heaven only knows who Onslaught was supposed to be when this particular storyline was written.

In another one-page subplot, the Joseph storyline begins, as "Magneto" turns up in a farm outhouse with no idea of who he is or where he's come from.  At this stage, there's also no mention of his having been de-aged, and the narration unfortunately bills him as "the man once known as Magneto."  Ultimately, Joseph was dismissed as a duplicate of Magneto created by Astra, who was dumped here after losing a fight against the real thing.  Joseph goes on to join the team in a few months time.

Comments:
With five issues to fill before Mark Waid turns up, X-Men gives us a fill-in run by Scott Lobdell, who was already writing Uncanny.  And boy, you can tell it's a fill-in.  Issue #50, which advances the Onslaught storyline, is actually material to the plot.  But otherwise, we get two issues tying up a long-forgotten subplot about a waitress, and this two-parter about the X-Babies. Nothing says "filler" quite like an X-Babies story.

At their best, the X-Babies are mildly amusing in small doses.  At their worst, they're zany.  This is not a good example of an X-Babies story, as it spends too much time trying to advance serious stories, and never really gets to grip with the original gag - the X-Babies are a deliberately awful spin-off, a self-parody of Marvel's abuse of the franchise.  Instead we get a bunch of miniature X-Men, and a Cyclops with a lisp.  Andy Kubert just doesn't have the charm for these characters, either.  Ultimately, it's just not funny, and an X-Babies story which isn't funny is torture. 

Meanwhile, Lobdell keeps some of the subplots ticking over inconsequentially.  That's the better half of the issue; not much happens, but at least these extra issues gave him the page count to allow the characters to actually talk over some of the storylines and have some conversations that were overdue.  The X-Traitor plot had largely fallen by the wayside, and may have been brought up here so as to remind readers about it before it got resolved during Onslaught.  It's still a decent scene.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Iceman, Phoenix III (both last in X-Men/ClanDestine #1), Bishop (last in Uncanny X-Men '95) and Gambit (last in Ghost Rider vol 3 #68)

GUEST STARS
The X-Babies: Archangel, Bishop, Cyclops, Gambit, Iceman (first appearance for all), Rogue and Storm (both last in Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Joseph (the duplicate Magneto; first appearance; between flashbacks in Uncanny X-Men #327)
Robert Kelly (between Wolverine vol 1 #95 and X-Factor vol 1 #123)
Sister Maria de la Joya (first appearance; next in Uncanny X-Men # 327)

VILLAINS
Gog III and Magog II (both last in X-Men Annual vol 2 #1)
Onslaught (behind the scenes; last behind the scenes in Uncanny X-Men #322; next behind the scenes in issue #49)

OTHER CHARACTERS
ReNeau (sic; a bar owner; first and only appearance)
Capris (a waitress; first and only appearance)
Augie (a customer; first and only appearance)

Written: 5 January 2005

back | next