Mutant Massacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mutant Massacre or the Morlock Massacre was a major Marvel Comics crossover, which took place during the fall of 1986. It primarily involved the superhero teams of the X-Men and X-Factor, and the New Mutants, Power Pack, Thor, and Daredevil crossed over for a few issues in their own comic books.

[edit] Plot

The mysterious Marauders attack a mutant named Tommy and her Hellfire Club boyfriend in Los Angeles for the purpose of following her back to New York and finding the location of the underground mutant community known as the Morlocks. They kill Tommy and hundreds of Morlocks, before the separate arrivals of the X-Men and X-Factor fight the group of murderers and save scores of innocent Morlocks from death. The two teams however do not meet during the battle and suffer crippling losses: X-Factor's Angel is crucified by the Marauders while the X-Men's Colossus, Shadowcat, and Nightcrawler are all severely wounded. X-Factor's casualties are less due to the arrival of Power Pack and Thor, who help save the horribly wounded Angel and the rest of X-Factor from suffering any additional harm.

Thor uses his powers to cleanse the dead from the Morlock tunnels with fire, which causes problems for the X-Men, who briefly believe that the firestorm was caused by the Marauders and believe that the New Mutants died in said fire.

Meanwhile Wolverine saves the Power Pack from the Marauder Sabertooth. After the fight, Sabretooth follows Logan home to the X-Mansion. He destroys Cerebro, but is kept from hurting the other Morlocks when Psylocke engages Sabretooth in battle. Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men arrive and Sabretooth falls off a nearby cliff in order to escape the X-Men, pursued into the water by Wolverine. As the fight continues in the ocean, Psylocke is able to glean some information about the Marauders from Sabretooth's mind.

[edit] Plot structure

Because the plotline involved the X-Men and X-Factor teams not meeting during the crossover, the order to read the issues of the crossover were different from the standard crossover storyline.

There is a single scene that is shared between the Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor issues. Magneto, who at this time is working with the X-Men and acting as Headmaster of the Xavier Academy, sees the X-Factor team in their disguises as mutant hunters (mistaking Jean Grey for Madelyne Pryor) and wonders how the original X-Men would be involved in such a company. X-Factor, on the other hand, sees Magneto coming out of the Hellfire Club, due to a forced alliance in the fight against Nimrod in the previous issue. They are aware that Magneto is now with the X-Men, but seeing this makes them distrust him (and the current X-Men, because of their association with him) even more.

Later it was established that Gambit - by his own confession in front of his fellow X-Men - was employed by Mister Sinister to assemble a group of mutants capable of performing the mission. Sabretooth was among the mutants recruited along with teammates Mystique, Scalphunter, Nimrod, Lady Mastermind, Harpoon, Malice, Arclight, Blockbuster, Riptide, Scambler, Sunfire and Vertigo.

[edit] Uncanny X-Men

• Uncanny X-Men #210 (Prologue)
• Uncanny X-Men #211
• New Mutants #46
• Uncanny X-Men #212
• Uncanny X-Men #213

[edit] X-Factor

• X-Factor #9 (Prologue)
• X-Factor #10
• Thor #373
• Power Pack #27
• Thor #374
• X-Factor #11

[edit] Daredevil

Daredevil #238 is an unofficial crossover issue set after the events of the Mutant Massacre. The issue features Daredevil fighting Sabertooth after his escape from the X-Mansion.

[edit] Motives

Originally it was stated that the Massacre was held to remove wild card mutants (such as the Morlocks). It was later revealed (via a retcon by Scott Lobdell and others) that due to his arrival 20 years prior to the present Earth 616 the Dark Beast was responsible for the creation of the Morlocks.

As a result Sinister wanted all traces of this removed and had the Marauders carry out the extermination of the Morlocks. The retcon also tied Gambit into the Mutant Massacre as well.

[edit] Consequences

• Angel was pinned to the wall by Harpoon and Blockbuster, causing massive trauma to his wings. These later required amputation following the onset of gangrene (X Factor #10). He would eventually have his wings replaced by Apocalypse and become Archangel.
• Shadowcat became permanently trapped in phase form whilst protecting Rogue from one of Harpoon's attacks (Uncanny X-Men #211). This resulted in a molecular deterioration that almost killed her, until she was saved at the last minute by Reed Richards and Doctor Doom (Fantastic Four vs. X-Men limited series.)
• Stabbed by hundreds of throwing stars by Riptide, Colossus was briefly quadriplegic as a result of Magneto using his powers to heal the damage done to his metal form (Uncanny X-Men #212).
• Nightcrawler, already badly injured after a battle with Nimrod, was beaten by Riptide who used his speed to injure the weakened X-Man, leaving him comatose (Uncanny X-Men #211).
• The massacre diminished the Morlock community and allowed for the villainous Morlock Masque to assume control over the Morlocks who returned to the tunnels after the Inferno. Masque's tenure as leader of the Morlocks would be equally devastating, as he used his flesh altering powers to forcibly disfigure all Morlocks under his rule, an act that caused many, many Morlocks to go insane as a result of having their faces and in some cases, bodies, warped into inhuman new forms.
• Wolverine discovers that Jean Grey is alive after smelling her scent in the tunnels, but keeps the knowledge a secret from the rest of the X-Men.
• Apocalypse saved Plague from being killed by Harpoon and teleported her back to his ship so that she could be transformed into his horseman Pestilence. She had already staved off one attack from Sabertooth, by touching him and making him sick. Harpoon was about to kill her from a distance but was concussed by Apocalypse.

[edit] Death list

Here is the list of Morlocks that were killed during the Mutant Massacre and the issue they were killed in:

Hundreds of other Morlocks were killed, but they haven't been identified on paper.

[edit] Covers

The core issues of the Mutant Massacre storyline (Uncanny X-Men #211 and X-Factor #10) and the Thor #373 tie-in issue were published in November 1986. That month was the 25th Anniversary of the publication of the first issue of Fantastic Four and the start of the modern Marvel Comics Universe. As a result, all covers for that month featured a special portrait of a particular character in each book (or the star of the book in Thor's case) surrounded by a cavacade of Marvel heroes. Uncanny X-Men #211 featured a battle-ravaged Wolverine by John Romita, Jr. while both X-Factor #10 and Thor #373 featured Walt Simonson drawn portraits of Cyclops and Thor respectively. The Power Pack tie-in did not feature a special cover due to its bimonthly publishing schedule at the time--Power Pack #27 saw print the month after the anniversary.

[edit] Creative background

This section does not cite any references or sources. (March 2007) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Chris Claremont originally conceived the Mutant Massacre as a stand-alone storyline in the pages of Uncanny X-Men, with the plotline originally planned as the prelude for his original plan for what would ultimately become "The Fall of the Mutants".

The plan was for the massacre to be committed by the futuristic Sentinel Nimrod, who would have encountered, defeated, and assimilated the powers and abilities of the evil alternate universe hero-killing android "The Fury". Nimrod would massacre the Morlock community (picked as the victims because Claremont wanted to get rid of the concept after becoming bored with the idea of a large and secret underground mutant community existing in the Marvel Universe) and critically injure Nightcrawler, only to be stopped by Shadowcat, who in the process of phasing into Nimrod, would drive the Sentinel away only to be trapped in her "phased" state as a result of Nimrod using the abilities acquired via the Fury to stop Shadowcat from hurting him.

The plan was thrown out though due to Marvel's then legal problems with Alan Moore over Marvel's plans to incorporate aspects of Alan Moore's run on Captain Britain overseas for Marvel UK. Claremont was forced to abandon the use of the Fury and abort his plans to use the Marvel UK character Mad Jim Jaspers in a sequel to Moore's famous "Jaspers' Warp" storyline.

Despite these changes, Claremont pressed on with his "Mutant Massacre" storyline and changed several aspects of the arc: he decided to use the Marauders (a group of super-villain assassins who Claremont planned to introduce in the lead-up towards "The Fall of the Mutants") as the perpetrators of the Morlock Massacre. He also decided to expand the storyline, citing that the storyline would work better as a crossover with X-Factor and the X-Men running around the Morlock tunnels, fighting the Marauders and helping the survivors escape. It was also decided to write the story so that the X-Men and X-Factor (made up of the founding X-Men, including the newly resurrected Jean Grey) never meet, though Wolverine would discover through his enhanced sense of smell, that Jean was alive.

[edit] External links

• Mutant Massacre -- guide by Mike Phillips