Mutant Massacre
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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.
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[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-Men's Angel is crucified by the Marauders while 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 the Marauder Sabretooth and Wolverine fight and 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.
[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 Sabretooth taking on Daredevil and does not have any real tie towards the actual story.
[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 using his world's Mister Sinister's technology.
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).
- Shadowcat became permanently trapped in phase form whilst protecting Rogue from one of Harpoon's attacks (Uncanny X-Men #211).
- 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 decimated 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 Sabertooth 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, but with his regenerative powers he was about to recover and make a second attempt to kill her but was concussed by Apocalypse.
[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] Continuity problems
[edit] Thor
The participation of Thor in the crossover is actually somewhat problematic due to continuity problems. Around this point on the publishing schedule, in his own series, Thor had undergone a curse by Hela which made him unable to die, but also prevented any injury he sustained from healing. Thor first learned of this condition during the Mutant Massacre, when he broke his arm in a battle with the Marauders [see below] and it did not heal. Hela appeared to him and explained her responsibility. Meanwhile, in The Avengers, the Masters of Evil had begun their famous siege of Avengers Mansion, during which Hercules was severely injured, remaining in the hospital and not returning to active duty in the Avengers till some publishing years later. Power Pack #28, which took place just after the Mutant Massacre, had Power Pack visit Avengers Mansion and meet an uninjured Hercules. Therefore, the siege of Avengers Mansion took place after the Mutant Massacre. The problem arises as Thor participated in the final battle with the Masters of Evil, but with no sign of a broken arm.
[edit] Gambit
In Uncanny X-Men #350, it is revealed that Gambit had organized the Mauraders for their boss Mr. Sinister. It is also revealed that Gambit himself led the Mauraders to the Morlock Tunnels and guided them through until he saw the carnage they inflicted. This contradicts the events shown in Uncanny X-Men #210, which has the Mauraders stalking Tommy, a former Morlock, in order to follow her back into the tunnels.
[edit] Trivia
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 Maraurders 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
- [1]--details of the original Mutant Massacre plot
