Uncanny X-Men #165 (Jan 83): Transfigurations!Creative Team: Chris Claremont, writer; Paul Smith, penciler; Bob Wiacek, inker; L. Varley, colorist; Tom Orzechowski, letterer; Louise Jones, editor; Jimm Shooter, ed.-in-chief
Starting Line Up: Storm, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus, Sprite
Synopsis: The X-Men hold on for dear life as they are being blown into space. Cyclops orders Colossus to become steel and plug the hole. Nightcrawler teleports Lilandra to the bridge. Wolverine starts to cut a slab of steel to plug the hole in Colossus' place and everything is back to normal. Back on Earth, Moira, Stevie Hunter, and Illyana are lounging by the mansion's pool. Stevie explains her knee injury to Moira. Moira gives Xavier a letter from the Fantastic Four about a young mutant named Xi'an Coy Mahn aka Karma that they've discovered. They are requesting Xavier's help on the matter, but he doesn't want to do anything. He's so upset over the "deaths" of the X-Men that he doesn't wish to have anyone else die because of his dream again. Moira explains that child can easily find support from Magneto or Emma Frost instead. She reminds him that, unfortunately, it's the evil mutants or him. He picks up the phone. This changes the X-Men and comics forever (see below). In space, Storm is alone on her one man ship. She feels she either has to kill the creature within her and go against her beliefs, or preserve her beliefs and let it kill her. As her transformation begins, she decides on a third option - kill herself. She creates a cosmic storm and launches herself into it. Killing her. The rest of the X-Men are repairing their ship. Wolverine and Lilandra want to return to the Brood world and kill them in revenge. Cyclops, facing his own death soon, reluctantly agrees. Wolverine spots Nightcrawler praying and they have a discussion on faith. Kitty has a dream of attending her own funeral where her corpse becomes a Brood and attacks her soul. She wakes up to find Colossus with her. He tries to lighten the mood with jokes, feeling he's going to die anyway and might as well smile. Kitty worries about no dying when the transformation happens and being aware of what she's become. Kitty then essentially says she wants to have sex with Colossus (being cryptic enough to get around the Comic's Code) because they're going to die anyway, but he thinks she's still too young. But they are interrupted by the spectre of a vampire Storm but she disappears. Wolverine and Nightcrawler are having some coffee when they see a spectre of jungle goddess Storm who then disappears. A child Storm appears, then disappears. Everyone comes together to tell what they saw and teenage thief Storm appears. Finally a spectre of X-Men Storm appears. She appologizes and says she's having trouble getting her form right. One of the giant beasts the Brood use as a space ship appears and swallows their ship. Their ship has lost all power and cannot escape. Storm explains it was her doing because she did not want the beast, an Acanti, to be harmed. She explains that she and the Acanti are now one.
Yeah, but is it good? Let me see... Storm won't kill the Brood embyo, taking a life, but she's commit suicide, taking two lives. Riiiight. Storm has not been very well written in this story so far. But this is a good quiet issue to build up to the climax in the next. The conversations between Wolverine and Nightcrawler are getting better and better, and their discussion on faith here is really good. And the Kitty/Colossus discussions about sex (which they never say, only allude to) is very well done and is pretty tasteful considering one of them is 14 and the other is 18 at the youngest. And what is so damn important about Xavier's decision? Here we go.
The X-Men by this point have become a huge success. They are the second best selling title for Marvel behind Amazing Spider-Man. When Spidey got to a success, he got a second title (Marvel Team-Up) and then a third (Spectacular Spider-Man) and as the years went on more and more Spider-Man related comics a month. With X-Men, this was harder. Claremont's writting style was very soap opratic, continuing issue to issue. Creating a second X-Men title, especially with a different writter, would have caused many story telling and continuity problems. So Marvel did the next best thing, create a new team of X-Men. Storyline wise, Xavier recruits Karma and then four other mutants, Sam Gunthrie aka Cannonball (launches his body at high speeds and is invulnerable in that state), Roberto de Costa aka Sunspot (channels the power of the sun), Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane (becomes a wolf) and Danielle Moonstar aka Pysche who channels people's fear. They became the New Mutants. Now with two different X-Men related titles (and more will come), events taking place in one comic affects the other, and if you don't read both, you can easily get lost on characters and plot points. Reading both became very helpful, but not necessairy. But eventually, Marvel would start running crossovers between the X-titles. It then became necessairy to read ALL the X-titles to understand the overall story. And when they started running six titles a month, it became very expensive. This wasn't limited to X-Men. Soon, Spider-Man was running long crossovers in all of his titles, basically havign weekly instead of monthly installments. Then the crossovers would spread to unrelated titles (Captain America and Ghost Rider, for example) to boost sales where normally a guest appearance would have sufficed. This (expensive) trend would continue until Marvel collapsed in on itself and stopped gouging it's readers (as much).
I will update my reviews with New Mutants happenings as they affect the current X-Men story. Fortunately, direct crossovers are ways off yet.
Significata: Storm commits suicide but becomes one with an Acanti. The Acanti are named for the first time. Kitty wants to express her love for Colossus physically but he feels she is too young. Xavier is decides to create a new team.
