Issue(s): Uncanny X-Men #231
Cover Date: Jul 88
Title: "...Dressed for dinner!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Writer
Rick Leonardi - Penciler
Dan Green - Inker
Ann Nocenti - Editor

Review/plot:
Blame game time. Colossus is upset that he's let his sister Illyana believe that he's been killed. Dazzler, as someone else who has family, understands what Colossus is going through, and convinces Storm that he should be allowed to talk to her.

I know someone else in that scan above that has family, including a baby that's missing. But she doesn't seem as concerned as Colossus.

While Storm is considering it, Gateway uncharacteristically walks in...

...and leads Colossus up to his butte where he initiates his teleportation portal. The others wonder how Gateway knew to do this, but we see when Colossus goes through the portal that his sister is in Limbo and trying to cast a necromantic spell to bring her brother back from the dead to help her with a current problem.

Colossus' first thought seeing Magik in her demon form is that she's beyond help.

He nonetheless helps her against S'ym (apparently he's immune to magic nowadays, and apparently that also includes the techno-organic transmode virus that S'ym has been infecting the demons of Limbo with).

But S'ym isn't Magik's most immediate concern. The problem is that she fell asleep reading Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master And Margarita, and some of the characters from the story have come to life, including Baba Yaga. Yaga has captured the other New Mutants and is force feeding them through tubes (mostly off panel)...

...so that they get nice and fat for a big meal. Colossus helps fight back against the characters. To get to Baba Yaga, Colossus has to squeeze through a narrow passageway. earlier in the story, we are reminded that Colossus is still having trouble transforming out of armored form (in fact he described it as an "inability" to transform out of armored form and was absorbing massive amounts of heat in the Australian desert sun), but he's able to force himself to transform back to human form...

...and then back to armored form to defeat Baba Yaga.

When the fight's over, Illyana, still thinking she's talking to a conjured shade, tells Colossus that she's become an evil demon sorceress. But Colossus latches on to the fact that she says "I'm only good because I want to be" and convinces her that it means she's still good or at least redeemable.

She then sends him back to wherever he came from. The spell was supposed to have transformed her "utterly and irredeemably into the Darkchilde" but she doesn't wonder too much about why it didn't.

S'ym re-manifests at the end, to tell us that the Russian characters were really demons from Limbo and that Magik's abuse of her magic is causing the walls between Limbo and Earth to thin.

I guess Claremont felt like he was giving Colossus and Magik some closure for this period, but at the same time he had to know that Inferno was coming up - it's foreshadowed here and in concurrent New Mutants issues - so what it seems to me he's doing is just showing us how badly Colossus and the X-Men miscalculated their decision to pretend to be dead. It's pretty obvious that Magik needs serious help. Not only is her Limbo dimension in danger from the techno-organic hordes of S'ym, but she's personally going down a very dark path. It's fine to say that she's making the right choice to be good, this time, but having the guidance of her older brother and indeed all of the X-men might have gone a long way to keep her on that path. Pretending that he's really just a shade that she's conjured is not just personally cruel to her but also putting the world at risk.

Art this issue is by Rick Leonardi, who gives Marc Silvestri a few breaks during this period.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: A note on the opening splash confirms that this takes place after New Mutants #66 (this was published a month earlier).

References:

• Colossus recognizes S'ym as the demon who worked for Belasco from Uncanny X-Men #160.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Just to clarify, though, the only reason why Peter went after Illyana was because he had a dream that warned him Illyana was in danger. Not just because he was feeling guilty.
Note that last issue, Gateway needed a search program to find the location of the owners of the Reavers' loot. Now this issue, he can teleport them to Illyana directly. But later in issue 240, he again needs a search program beofre he can teleport the X-Men to the Marauders. Claremont couldn't seem to keep the limits on Gateway's powers straight.
Note that Colossus invokes Lenin in this issue, similar to Sam talking about his Confederate ancestors in New Mutants 47. However, in contrast, Peter uses Lenin as an reason NOT to do the right thing because the "greater good" outweighs the rights of the individual.
Alex does a good job convincing Storm to let Peter go. In fact, over the last few issues, Alex has become the moral center of the X-Men. Unfortunately, Inferno pretty much destroys Alex as a character so Scott could look better.
What did Peter tell the X-Men about S'ym? In the next arc, Maddie has no clue who S'ym is.

Although it doesn't seem to be mentioned here, wasn't Peter's immunity to transmode acquired or confirmed in #195, the Magus battle? Or is it only Rogue who got immunity that time, and Colossus's immunity is different?

Sym was vastly more powerful than Peter in his first appearance, but Claremont has made a point of saying Colossus has been getting stronger. Claremont seems to have changed the rules about Limbo magic, though, which is now as vulnerable as the Adversary was to steel, but earlier was not.

This was neat, an issue for Peter and Illyana to shine.

Not sure about anyone else but I'm looking forward to Inferno.

@Walter, i just took a look through the Magus issue (#192) and i don't see any clear indication that the characters became immune to the transmode virus. Rogue becomes transmode for a while by using her powers on Magus, so i can see why she might have developed an immunity, but it's not stated.

As for Colossus, there's a scene where he's been squeezed by Magus and he considers transforming to human form to slip free but then says, "I'll be at... Magus' mercy". I guess you could interpret that to mean he's immune to transmode when in armored form, but i didn't take it that way.

@Michael, regarding Gateway - i think he was responding to the summons that Magik was casting in this issue.

Unfortunately, fnord, the same thing happens in issue 281 (after Claremont left)- Gateway is able to transport Donald Pierce to Trevor Fitzroy even though neither Pierce nor Gateway has any way of knowing where Fitzroy is.

Thanks, Fnord. I checked Uncanny 242 to see if Colossus's immunity is mentioned there, before the X-Men's battle with transcoded Nastirh, but although the Magus fight gets referenced, not much more is said. Perhaps immunity is a point that comes up when Peter tussles with Sym or Nastirh in the New Mutants chapters of Inferno. Or I just imagined it.

When I first read this at age 13 I had no idea that The Master and Margarita would end becoming one of my favorite books.

Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master And Margarita" was also one of the main lyrical inspirations for the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," about Satan wreaking havoc on Earth and corrupting people.

On the topic of Master and Margarita, Behemoth should be colored black. Illyana must not be a very good student.

Where does Professor X get off on assigning his foreign students only works from the home lands? That's... a little weird, Prof.

It was Magneto who was assigning work to the New Mutants. Maybe he felt Xavier's Eurasia curriculum was lacking and needed a boost.

@FF3: More a matter of Xavier ensuring that despite Illyana being away from her home, she would still get schooled in the knowledge and literature of her country.

I'm a fan of Leonardi's pencils, it seems to me he draws inspiration from japanese manga.

Not in a blatant way like Joe Mad, but with more subtlety