“Odd Men Out” & “Think Again”

Plot: In the first story, Professor X and an old friend reflect on days gone by. In the second, the New Mutants encounter a strange menace on a carefree day.

Comments: This one-shot features two catalog stories illustrated by the late Dave Cockrum. Both seem to date from the early (pre-Peter David) years of . Jean Grey is still alive, and wearing quasi-military armor and Phoenix has been revealed as an imposter. The art is most in the style of Cockrum’s second X-men run (c. Uncanny X-Men #150), and as such is retro and cartoony but solid and heroic, given to clear depictions of ideally proportioned human bodies in action.

The first story, by Stern, provides an expository history of the X-Men’s adventures leading up to the Jim Lee era of Uncanny. There’s another famous issue where the storied adventures of the X-Men are summarized, Uncanny X-Men #138, which featured the gorgeous art work of John Byrne and Terry Austin, and an air of mourning as the X-Men believed Jean had just died.

“Odd Men Out” is the chance to see Cockrum’s version of that history, set a few years later when Jean had returned. Rather than looking back in grief, Charles looks back in pride, as he discusses a long-term relationship with a Washington insider, his human friend Fred Duncan. Fred’s an old-school sort of upstanding citizen who encountered Xavier years ago, not in fear but in trust, and has acted as a sort of inside man for the Xavier Institute ever since. Not because he was mind-controlled by Charles, but because he believed in the good the X-Men could do.

That, of course, put him at odds with Henry Gyrich and Val Cooper when they show up, and his era ends in a strategic retreat from Washington (and an entry into the private security business). It’s not scintillating stuff, it’s even a little corny in its patriarchal camaraderie, but it’s an optimistic tale with an especially revealing look into Xavier’s perspective on his years away from Earth with Lilandra.

The second tale begins with the Mad Thinker uncovering a hidden lab in service of his vendetta against the Fantastic Four, but the android he revives quickly shunts him aside and proceeds on a mission to catalog the powers of a group of New Mutants ice-skating in Central Park. Reflecting on the diverse fates of many of these youngsters (and on Xavier’s admission in the first story that he assembled them initially under the influence of a Brood parasite, looking for new hosts), it’s hard to believe there was once a fun moment when Skids, Boom Boom, Sunspot, Cannonball, Rictor et al. played even semi-congenially together. As the robot absorbs their abilities, his attitude and looks have a distinctly Apokoliptian flair, but it’s nothing the teens register, as they feel they’ve driven him off. The comedy mixed in with the action marks this even more than the first story as a remnant of a bygone era. Seeing Cockrum colored by modern techniques of light and shade is the principal reward of this attractive curio.

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