X-Men Annual #7 (1983): Scavenger Hunt
Creative Team: plot and script by Chris Claremont; pencils by Michael Golden, except pages 28-32 penciled by Bret Blevins (thanks, pal!); inks by (whoo boy!) pages 1 & 2 Michael Golden, pages 3 to 7 Tom "New Mutants"Mandrake, pages 8-11 Bob Wiacek, pages 12 & 13 & 16 Terry "Cloak Dagger" Austin, pages 14, 15, 17, 18, 19 Brett Breeding, pages 20-23 Tom Mandrake, page 24 "Wild Bill" Anderson, pahe 25 to 27 Joe "The Rube" Rubinstein, page 28 Steve "Coyote" Leiloha, page 29 Sam De La Rosa, page 30 & 31 "The Rube", page 32 "Big Al" Milgrom, pages 33 to 37 Bret "DarkCrystal" Blevins, pages 38 & 39 Terry Autin; Tom Orzechowseki, lettering; Glynis Wein, coloring; Eliot R. Brown, editor
Starting Line Up: Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus, Sprite, Rogue
Guest Stars: Nick Fury, Ka-Zar, She-Hulk, Iron Man
Synopsis: Here we go. The X-Men and Lilandra are enjoying a game of baseball. A spaceship starts to descend on them and Galactus appears. He says he comes in peace. Lilandra warns them all of his power and Xavier tries to mindscan him, but doesn't read anything. He tries another mind he senses, but it causes him pain. The X-Men start to fight. Galactus doesn't quite act like Galactus and takes the X-Men's mansion, the disappears.
Xavier uses his psi power to follow the mind he scanned. The X-Men follow in the Blackbird It leads them to SHIELD's helicarrier. Nightcraler and Kitty teleport/phase aboard (with Lockheed) to find the person they're following interrupting Nick Fury and Contessa de Fontaine getting it on. The one they're following appears in the form of a wooden indian, but disappears again. This time he stole Nick Fury's eye patch. The two teleport out before the SHIELD agents can attack them.
The next stop is the Savange Land. They run into Ka-Zar who tells them Zabu has been kidnapped. Rogue guesses this is a scavenger hunt. Everyone thinks it's silly, but the only thing they have to go on.
Next stop, Avengers Mansion. Colossus and Rogue get their minutes too late, but are mistaken for the crook. She-Hulk tries to stop them, but gets taken down. Iron Man comes to her help. Meanwhile, the crook steals the big fancy window from Dr. Strange's sanctorum. Back at the Avenger's mansion, the two X-Men defeat the two Avengers. Kitty arrives to tell them the crook is on the move. The Avengers then reveal the crook stole all of the Wasps uniforms (using the Fantastic Four Fantasti-Car). The X-Men track the crook to the Hellfire Club. They break in through the basement and find the unconscious White Queen on a dais. Wolverine smells something funny about the flowers she's holding and slashes them just as Sebastian Shaw enters. The X-Men start to fight him, but the a balloon had appears when Wolverine slashes the flowers, and it floats over to the Black Queen costume and turns into a rocket, taking the costume away. Storm gets upset by this and uses a wind to blow her team out of the Club after the crook.
The crook arrives at 575 Madison Ave, Marvel Comics old address, to find it empty. But then he finds the new address, 387 Park Ave and goes there. The X-Men follow. The crook takes Ghost Rider's form and rides Zabu through the Marvel office. The X-Men charge through. There a shitload of inside jokes about the Marvel staff that I don't get here. Anyway, the crook turns out to be the Impossible Man (a FF supporting character) and he's looking for Stan Lee. The Marvel staff tell him Stan's now based out of Hollywood. The X-Men try to attack the Impossible Man. When he realises why, he sincerely appologizes.
Impossible Man takes them to where all his stolen goods are (lots of relics from many Marvel comics, including the Millenium Falcon). He explains that there are only four of his species left and they are holding a contest to see who can get the best treasures. The winner gets to be leader of the species. Impossible Man chose Earth since he loves Earth superheroes. A large alien fleet arrives to execute Impossible Man for his crimes. Lilandra acts as judge and when Impossible Man promises to give everything back, they leave him alone. Later, Impossible Man loses the contest and sulks by the pool with Kitty and Illyana. He gets turned on by them eating ice cream (I think) and becomes Tom Sellek. That's it. I'm out of here.
Yeah, but is it good? If my synopsis made no sense, it's because this issue didn't. The concept behind this was Marvel had an "assistant editor' month". The story is all of Marvel's editors were at a convention in California with Stan Lee, so their assiastants had complete creative control. In some cases, they editors chose to do nothing. In Spider-Man's case, the assistant editor himself drew one of the Spidey titles that month (and it looks like a 10 year olds art work) while in another, Aunt May fought Galactus. In X-Men, Eliot Brown was smart enough to stay the fuck away from the monthly title, but since the annual was released on this month (actually the one before) he decided to make Claremont write this... whatever this is. Maybe it was funny in 1983. It's not funny now. Claremont did try to get serious in at least one part, though. We finally find out for sure that it was in fact Mastermind who put the White Queen in her coma. The rest is garbage. Worst X-Men story ever.
Significata: Editor's month issue. Double size annual sold for $1.00.
