Masque leads an “extremist” faction of Morlocks who kidnap Leech. Caliban is injured during the fight, but escapes and warns the X-Men about what is happening. It turns out, Masque’s group is looking for Magneto to convince him to help them rule the world—and they need Leech to de-power Magneto in case he tries to kill them.
The X-Men try to track them down, and there’s a nice scene of Reed Richards helping Storm—since at the time of this story, she’s a member of the Fantastic Four with her husband, Black Panther.
It’s also very nice to have Storm back in her own book.
Oh, and Warpath fights an alligator in the sewer.
The Extremists attack a train full of passengers and Masque disfigures them, one by one, to make them feel what mutants feel as persecuted outcasts.
At the same time, Valerie Cooper learns that Magneto may be alive. Professor X reads her mind and brings a team out to look for Magneto. While tracking Magneto, there are some conversations with Nightcrawler, who doesn’t like that Professor X is indiscriminately reading others’ minds these days—where he used to be more conservative in using that power.
The reason it’s so hard to find Magneto is because he’s wearing a trenchcoat, the universal Marvel trope for a perfect disguise.
But he can’t fool me!
In the Extremists’ camp, we learn that Skids is a double-agent, working for SHIELD. There’s lots of nice little touches to the greater 616 ongoing storylines in this arc.
It culminates with the teams converging and fighting, and Magneto escaping both teams. Skids, however, meets him in a graveyard in the end and gives him a book, written by the deceased precognitive Destiny, which claims that Magneto is still a mutant. It’s thus implied that he was depowered by M Day, but it’s not entirely clear.
I like that there’s some mystery there. Good story.
Note: Most of these issues are “half stories,” sharing story space with chapters of the Endangered Species story, which is covered in its own post.
English (US) · 