Uncanny X-Men #166

"Live Free or Die!"
Published: February 1983
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciller: Paul Smith
Inker: Bob Wiacek

What's Going On?
Instead of following up immediately on the rather confusing cliffhanger of last issue, this issue picks up with Binary, who has been MIA since exploding out of the side of the X-Men's ship.  In the meantime, it seems that she has been taking her frustrations out on the Brood empire, blowing bases and ships to smithereens.  You might think that she will never find her friends again in the vastness of space, but you would be wrong.  It turns out that Storm --- who is now a hologram projected by the consciousness of an alien Acanti that has swallowed the X-Men's spacecraft --- is able to track Binary down fairly quickly.  And the X-Men, who are all incubating Brood children inside their bodies, are all in pretty good spirits, considering that they are all going to die.  But instead of going on a revenge-fueled suicide attack to bring down the Brood, once and for all, they are given an alternative.  Instead of just trying to kill stuff, the X-Men could choose to free the Acanti alien race from the slavery that the evil Brood have imposed upon them.  How do they do that?  Mostly by killing stuff, but they are also going to free a soul from its eternal prison...somehow.  The end result is bye-bye Brood.  Oh, and the Starjammers arrive, just in time to contribute very little to the battle.

Subplots, Oh the Subplots!
- Finally!  We are returning to the subplot introduced in Uncanny #161, where it is revealed that Professor Xavier also has a Brood gestating within him.  Since this has already been used as a surprising twist, months earlier, I don't know what it is being used as a cliffhanger here, but I'm tired of the X-Men fighting aliens and am ready for this storyline to finally end.

- Hey, it turns out that the X-Men didn't completely forget about Binary blowing a hole in the side of their spaceship a few issues back!  Even better, they don't seem to mind at all that one of their friends almost killed them.

- This is the first appearance of Lockheed, although we don't get a name for him just yet.  It's a pretty sweet first appearance, too:

It gets even better when we see the relative size of the dragon:

What a fun introduction to this completely superfluous --- but lovable --- character.


Writing!
It's nice to see the X-Men given a way out of the suicide run that this storyline initially set up for them.  Granted, it's not a whole lot better than suicide, but I suppose the change of intention is worth a lot.  I'm not a fan of the Storm/Acanti subplot, but it was short enough to keep the ridiculousness of it from being irritating.  Really, at this point, I am just happy to have the X-Men coming back to Earth.  This is definitely one of the best "X-Men in Spaaace!" storylines, but I prefer supervillains to personality-free aliens.

One of best moments of this storyline comes in this issue, with the climax of Wolverine's conflict over whether or not to kill his infected friends. 

Yes, Wolverine is a badass for being willing to make the difficult and probably wrong choice here.  And yes, Carol's hair in this scene is pretty funny.

Art!
Paul Smith is clearly still getting used to some of the character designs here, specifically Binary's.  He doesn't seem sure what to do with her, especially when she is in her Carol Danvers form.  It's a minor point, but it still gives a few giggles looking at the various hairdos she has in this issue.  Smith does a solid job with the action in this issue without getting graphic.  I could have done with more alien guts, but that's just personal preference.

One of the cooler visuals in this issue comes when the Brood are crystallized.

Granted, this is a comic that features Iceman on a semi-regular basis, so it's not like the readers have never seen a character looking like this, but it is still well done and pretty cool looking.

Retroactively Amusing:
- Carol's hair.

- I love that Storm's body being regrown inside an alien that resembles a catfish is never really brought up again.

Holy crap, that should be a trauma that sticks with a character for ages, or at least results in her having short hair or something for a while.  But no, Storm's back to business as usual when the X-Men return to Earth.  Oddly enough, this experience isn't referenced as even a possible partial cause to Storm's extreme makeover Uncanny X-Men #173 in a few months time.

Worth Noting:
- This is the first appearance of Lockheed, although he is not named here.

Everything 80s:
Check out Spider-Man hawking a puzzle toy.

Fun fact: this relatively unknown toy is actually a follow-up invention from the creator of the Rubik's Cube.  I don't know if they meant to imply that only criminals would want to play with this toy, but I suppose theirs is an untapped market.