Uncanny X-Men #163

"Rescue Mission"
Published: November 1982
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Dave Cockrum
Inker: Bob Wiacek

What's Going On?
After healing himself and destroying the Brood egg planted inside him at the end of the last issue, Wolverine comes back to rescue his friends.  There are just a few problems with that.  First of all, the X-Men are under a powerful illusion, making them think that they are at a fancy space party.  Second of all, they do not realize that they are all incubating eggs from the Brood Queen, and they will die when the eggs hatch.  Luckily, Cyclops and Storm have started to see through the illusion, which makes the whole "let's skedaddle" argument a lot easier.  Instead of just escaping, though (Storm leads a team to try and regain control of their spaceship), Wolverine wants to kill the Brood Queen.  That goes against the X-Men hero code, though.  Right when Wolverine is about to kill the Queen, he (and the rest of the X-Men fighting) are teleported to the safety of their spaceship by Storm's team.

Subplots, oh the Subplots!
- The hits keep coming for Carol Danvers.  Three years after her bizarre and rapey exit from the Avengers (circa Avengers #200) and two years after Rogue stole her Ms. Marvel powers and turned her into a normal-ish person (in Avengers Annual #10), Carol Danvers is apparently no longer strictly human.

- Heeey, people on Earth are missing the X-Men!  This is the first we've seen of anyone reacting to the kidnapping of the X-Men in this book (although the New Mutantrs graphic novel showed off Moira MacTaggart and Xavier mourning).  Oddly enough, they seem to know exactly what is going on.  That's a little odd, but I'll assume that the presence of Corsair in this scene means the Starjammers have been looking into things.  That's still a little sketchy, but it almost makes sense.  It is odd that we haven't seen Professor Xavier since the kidnapping, though...hint, hint...

Art!
This is more of the same from Cockrum.  The science fictiony scenes work best for him and are the most entertaining.  I thought his moderately subtle work with Carol Danvers and her "cosmic eyes" was quite well done.  There is also another scene of Wolverine cutting loose that is well done.  As for the issue, it's pretty solid.

Writing!
Chris Claremont may be the master of the simmering subplot, but here we see him actually progressing the main story.  This works quite well, except for the single scene set on Earth.  Look at this scene featuring Corsair:

Let me set the scene for you: Corsair has just teleported to Earth with his son, Havok.  Havok explains that his brother, Cyclops, and the other X-Men have been kidnapped by an alien race.  Havok fires a blast of cosmic energy (his mutant power) in frustration.  Vorsair is apparently taken by surprise, despite standing right next to his son.  What do we take from this?  Corsair is a terrible father who can't pay attention to his children, even when they have been kidnapped by killer aliens.  He is, though, a little slow on the cosmic draw.

Retroactively Amusing:
- Ignoring the fairly cool "cosmic eyes" on this page, I have to say that I love how quickly Carol Danvers' hair goes from sweaty and tortured to poofy hair-blown.

COSMIC EYES and HAIR VOLUME

Space torture apparently volumizes.

- I get what Cockrum is going for in this dream sequence --- a moderately subtle hint that the X-Men will turn into the Brood.  It is kind of funny seeing X-Men uniforms on thoraxes, though.

All in all, this is a solid issue on its own and it works well in the larger series.  This is one of those rare stories that are devoted to progressing the plot, and still manage to do justice to the characters.