Uncanny X-Men #239, Inferno prologue

"Vanities: The Prologue of Inferno"
December 1988

Chris Claremont (writer), Marc Silvestri (penciler), Dan Green (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer), Bob Harras (editor), Tom DeFalco (editor in chief)

Mr. Sinister, apparently in desperate need for a blog or at least a diary, talks to himself about the X-Men even though, like the rest of the world, he still believes they died stopping the Adversary. Abruptly he's confronted by Malice, who finds that she's now stuck in the body of her latest victim, Polaris, but Sinister manages to smooth-talk her into believing it is for the best. Meanwhile, among the very alive X-Men in their base in Australia, Storm learns that Jean Grey is alive, Psylocke and Rogue get in a skirmish, Dazzler and Longshot have a special moment, and Madelyne Pryor finalizes her plans for revenge with the demon N'astirh.

What's Important?
According to both the cover and the title page, this issue is the official prologue to the "Inferno" storyline although, in a classic case of bad timing, the first couple of issues of the limited series X-Terminators, which was part of the "Inferno" storyline, were already published.

Comments
Until about 2006 cross-overs at Marvel were very unfashionable, in no small part because audience overdoses via the X-Books, which indulged in them on a yearly basis through most of the '90s. Although "Mutant Massacre" and "Fall of the Mutants" arguably set the trend, "Inferno" was the first to have the audacity to expect its readers to buy an issue from another title to get the conclusion to the story they were reading. Sure, "Inferno" was basically a cross-company event and other Marvel Comics titles from The Avengers to Power Pack worked the premise of "Inferno" into their plots, but the central story of "Inferno" unfolded in three of the four X-Books (if you count Excalibur) of the time: Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants, with a special limited series spinning off of X-Factor, X-Terminators, being written for the event.

I admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for "Inferno," despite the many things fans and critics rightfully cite against it:

1. It took place at the apex of the brief but notorious “Australian period” of Uncanny X-Men, which fans still remember as a point where the series was stalling badly (and then the late '90s came...).

2. It gave the writers an extremely cheap escape from the whole “Scott Summers blatantly abandoned his wife and infant son for his now resurrected dead girlfriend” thing.

3. The occult theme really has nothing to do with the basic premise of the franchise, although to be fair neither does space opera, and that's been a big part of the franchise since the '70s.

4. Madelyne Pryor is turned from a perfectly good, strong female supporting character into an all-powerful, all-but-nekkid “bad girl” villain who threatens to murder babies. And her insanity is said, over and over, to be at least partially the result of her getting dumped by her husband.

All that said...

Even if you hate the execution, you have to love the basic idea behind the whole thing: inanimate objects are getting up and slaughtering people while a swarm of demons are ripping the hell out of Manhattan. The Claremontian soap opera style is at its melodramatic peak, with his Madelyne Pryor being written less like an unhinged ex-girlfriend stereotype and more like a justifiably enraged person who's really gone around the bend. It's not something you can take to a creative writing workshop to teach moral complexity, but it's a few steps above Fatal Attraction (although that may be damning with faint praise). At least there's just the idea of all hell (in this case literally) breaking loose around every corner and people in ridiculous outfits hitting each other right in the midst of it, which, if you really must have a crossover, should be what it's about.

Mr. Sinister does double-time as our villain and our narrative device. You have to wonder exactly why he would be talking to himself about a group of enemies he thinks are long dead, but there you go. To Claremont's credit, despite Mr. Sinister's laughable name (I mean, did they really have to add that 'Mr.'?) and the fact that he looks like the end result of a genetic experiment involving Count Dracula, a mime, and a butch drag queen, he is set up as a fairly credible threat. Reading this issue, it's easy to see why he went on to become one of the X-Men's most recognizable opponents, even though he didn't really do much of anything for years after this storyline.

Anyway, there really isn't much else to say about this issue. It's basically Claremont setting the stage for the big epic, so it does read much better in TPB format than it would on its own. One thing worth noting is the foreshadowing at the very beginning of this issue where a tourist family at the Empire State Building is eaten by a demonic elevator, with a puddle of blood leaking under the door which is mopped up by an oblivious janitor. Part of me is still surprised it got by the editors.

Footnotes

Page 3, Panel 1: This footnote might become redundant later when more Uncanny “flashbacks” are added, but Sinister thinks the X-Men are dead because of events in the "Fall of the Mutants" storyline. I won't explain it here, because it really is a long, long story, but at this point the general public, all of the X-Men's associates, and even their “branch” teams, X-Factor, the New Mutants, and Excalibur, believe they're dead. The events of "Inferno" undo that plot thread, which was never really used that well anyway. Also at this point the X-Men are inherently invisible to most sensors, so that's why even the endlessly resourceful Sinister hasn't been able to find any trace of them.

Page 17, Panel 7: This panel is interesting because it suggests that Rogue's inability to touch anyone without her absorption power kicking in is only at its root a psychological problem, something that's implied elsewhere in Claremont's stories too. It's a great idea, but unfortunately later writers never picked up on it.

Page 21, Panel 1-4: Sinister's dialogue implies that his ultimate goal was the standard “world domination” deal. Much later there's a bit of a retcon claiming that the reason Sinister wanted to create a powerful mutant child like Nathan Summers was so that he could have a living weapon to use against the immortal villain Apocalypse (at the time of this issue still just exclusively an X-Factor villain), who will be '”revealed” to have been involved in Sinister's own origin in the limited series The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. Of course, the two goals - taking over the world and killing Apocalypse - aren't at all exclusive.

-Chad