Mutant Massacre
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The Mutant Massacre or the Morlock Massacre was a major Marvel Comics crossover, which took place during the summer 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-Factor'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] Trivia
The way the story occurred was not the original plot. The orginal plot was Marvel's comparison to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. It involved the Fury destroying the Morlocks, not the Marauders, and the Hellfire Club allying itself with the X-Men. James Jaspers was supposed to join forces with Senator Kelly to trigger the Days of Future Past events(with Captain Britain and Rachel Summers still as members of Excalibur). The reason this plot failed to occur is because of Alan Moore's legal problems with Marvel, hence the final version of the Mutant Massacre with Sinister and the Marauders.
[edit] Motives
Originally it was stated that the Massacre was held to remove wild card mutants (such as the Morlocks). It was later revealed 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.
[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 quadraplegic 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).
- Many of the surviving Morlocks were later brought into the dimension called The Hill where their children formed an aggressive terror group called Gene Nation. Gene Nation's first big action was to take revenge on "the upworlders" (normal New Yorks) by killing one human for every Morlock. The plan failed when Storm killed the Gene Nation leader, Marrow.
[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 Anniversery 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.
[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 invalidates the events of Uncanny X-Men #210, which has the Mauraders targeting Tommy, a former Morlock, in order to follow her back into the tunnels. Although, a popular theory is that only half of the Mauraders (led by Scalphunter) followed Tommy to the tunnels while the other half (Sabertooth included) were being guided by Gambit.
[edit] External links
- Mutant Massacre -- guide by Mike Phillips
- [1]--details of the original Mutant Massacre plot
