Issue(s): Uncanny X-Men #317
Cover Date: Oct 94
Title: Phalanx Covenant: Generation Next: "Enter freely and of your own will"
Credits:
Scott Lobdell - Writer
Joe Madureira - Penciler
Dan Green - Inker
Ben Raab - Assistant Editor
Bob Harras - Editor

Review/plot:
The first two chapters of this crossover introduced a new (future) member of Generation X, along with briefly reintroducing us to Paige Guthrie. This issue begins with Paige waking up in a room with three new mutants, plus M.

But - as the cover sort-of hints - only one of these new characters, Skin, will turn out to be lasting. The blond guy, Gregor, will turn out to be a Phalanx plant.

And the other character, Blink, won't survive beyond the next chapter. But she makes quite a showing for herself here by using her teleportation powers in a deadly offensive manner while fighting Harvest...

...and while this incarnation of the character won't live long, she became popular with fans. This led to the character's Age of Apocalypse counterpart getting a prominent role in that story and then in the Exiles series. So the appearance of "a" Blink here is significant even though she doesn't become a member of Generation X. And as it turns out, this Blink will be resurrected many years later in the X-Necrosha storyline and she'll continue as a non-zombie character after that.

We don't really see Skin use his powers in a productive way. He's just a stretched out mass when we first meet him. We do learn that Skin is Hispanic, thanks to him dropping references to "Cinco de Mayo" and peppering his dialogue with words like "chica" and "muy educational" in the finest Marvel tradition.

Another development is that M, who was catatonic up until now, suddenly wakes up. It is she who figures out that the other captive is a Phalanx plant.

M figured out that Gregor was a Phalanx based on his "antiquated colloquialisms". He didn't seem to be any more of a caricature than Skin to me.

M is also the one that breaks everyone out of their prison.

The bad news is that Paige is seemingly infected with the techno-organic virus, despite the fact that the Phalanx has been unable to assimilate mutants.

Also in this issue, the White Queen (still looking nearly identical to the teenaged Paige under JoeMad) takes Banshee, Jubilee, and Synch to her west coast home.

They also infiltrate a SHIELD base to get intel.

A letter in this issue shows how Marvel's mutant metaphor, flawed as it may have been, was inspiring to people. This is a sister talking about her recently deceased brother:

For reasons I can't remember, he told me that his sexual orientation was one of the reasons why he has always liked the X-Men - because they were mutants, hated and feared by society for just being what they were. I asked him which characters were gay, thinking after he was gone, I'd learn about my brother through them. He said he didn't know of any gay characters in the X-Men. It didn't matter to him, he said. I could see why. He was the blue-furred Beast that people glared at. He was Rogue, afraid to touch other people. He even told me he was the Iceman, bragging to his friends about women that he lusted after, but really insecure deep down inside.

Now that he's gone, I have his comic books. I don't know enough about comics to know if there are homosexual characters or stories about homosexuality out there, so I can't tell how rare I think your work is. I do know that I've seen in the few of your issues that I've read that you've had courage enough to stand up for gay rights, at a time when no amount of political correctness would compel you to do so. I've seen your sympathy for AIDS victims with your Legacy Virus stories. I've seen letters from gay people expressing how important your book is to them.

Letters like these always help put my present day criticisms into perspective. To me, the Legacy Virus story is a clumsy, unfinished mess and i kind of roll my eyes every time it comes up, knowing that it's going nowhere. But at the time, even though Marvel didn't know what they were doing with it, it had impact and value for people.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 4 - first Skin and (a) Blink

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is part three of Phalanx Covenant: Generation Next. Part four is in X-Men #37.

References:

• Continues directly from X-Men #36.

Crossover: Phalanx Covenant

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

I have no idea why, but I always liked Blink, even her weird 616 version (the AoA version was way better, partially because of the seriously hot character redesign by Madureira).