Uncanny X-Men #162

"Beyond the Farthest Star"
Published: October 1982
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Dave Cockrum
Inker: Bob Wiacek

What's Going On?
Okay, after last month's flashback issue, we are now fully into the Brood Saga.  We find Wolverine on the run on an alien planet, fighting off the flora and fauna of this landscape, as well as killing any Brood (or "Sleazoids") that he encounters.  As Wolvie tries to make sense of the mess he's in, we flash back to the events leading up to this.  Basically, he remembers Deathbird showing up at the end of Uncanny #161 and then he remembers everything being okay.  Or was it?  In the flashback, Wolverine keeps seeing things looking pretty dire --- he and the X-Men are clearly the worse for wear and are surrounded by Sleazoids --- but only for brief flashes.  Every time he tries to concentrate on those flashes, he gets more and more disoriented.  In the end, it turns out that the X-Men are all having some psychic wool pulled over their eyes.  They have all been implanted with Brood Queen eggs, and the result of that looks like this:

The X-Men will transform into a Brood (is that the singular of "Brood"?), and that Brood will have their memories and abilities, but will presumably serve the Brood faithfully.  Wolverine has been sick and hallucinating the entire issue because his healing factor is fighting off the implanted egg.  The issue closes with Wolverine coming to the realization that, if he cannot find a cure for the others, he will have to kill each and every one of the X-Men.

Where Did All the Subplots Go?
In a rare turn for Chris Claremont, this issue is entirely devoted to a single plot thread.  We do not flash back to Earth, we do not focus on any of the other X-Men, and we do not catch up with Deathbird and Lillandra.  This is just Wolverine catching us up on the Brood plot and setting the stage for the next few issues.  I don't know how often this happens, but I'm going to be keeping an eye out for it in the future.

Art!
I'm a bigger fan of Dave Cockrum's initial run on Uncanny than this one, if only because of how well he designs characters.  After all, the costumes he created for the All-New X-Men became the standards for each of them.  But this issue really showcases Cockrum's strengths.  He does a gret job with science-fictiony stuff, and the two-page spread (that was too large for my scanner, sorry) he does of the Broodworld was excellent.  We are also treated to a rare full-page splash of Wolverine doing what he does best:

There are a lot of issues where Wolverine goes berserk, but they are usually only a few panels in a larger story.  This is Cockrum being given the room to show off, and it's pretty cool.

Writing!
One of the nice touches in this issue is the acknowledgement that Wolverine would normally follow his instincts if he was conflicted.  Claremont gets around that by having the illusion in Wolverine's mind being powerful enough to play havoc with his head and make him question his sanity.  When I was rereading this, my immediate reaction was, "Since when does Wolverine wait to stab things when his senses tell him to stab?"  That explanation made sense and doesn't take up too much of the story to explain.  Well done.

I'm a little less sold on Claremont's choice to take the X-Men back to space, though.  This is a pretty good issue, but the team has already met alien civilizations twice (the first appearance of the Imperial Guard and the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga, by my count) during his tenure as writer.  Space adventures have always struck me as missing the point of the X-Men.  Oh, well.  At least this story is off to a good start.

Retrospectively Amusing:
Cockrum's choice on how to show Wolverine's body almost-but-not-quite becomign Brood-like looks an awful lot like Wolvie is doing an impression of the Fantastic Four's Thing:

The letters page is also pretty funny for modern readers.  The bulk of the mail has fans overreacting from the very end of Uncanny #155, which ended with Colossus appearing to die at the very end of the issue.  At that point, Chris Claremont had been writing this title for five years.  Did anyone actually believe he would let an established character die such a cheap death?  The overwhelming message from the letters is that Claremont was being too cruel to the X-Men and the fans.  I can't imagine their responses to the Mutant Massacre.