Writer Chris Claremont
Artist Ron Wagner
Letters Tim Harkins
Colors Glynis Oliver
Girls’ School From Heck Part One of Three
Cover Dated December 1990
Issue opens with an alternate timeline. This one, what if the members of Excalibur were all men, except for Captain Britain. Kitty Pryde is now Dark Tiger. Phoenix is now Arizona – Completely missing the point. Meggan is now Morgan. Also they with Nightcrawler, who is still male, now all seem like very young teenagers. Captain Britain is their tutor and leader.
That section ends with no tie the proper story. This section’s art is a bit all over the place. Where Wagner excels is the quieter and female dominated rest of the issue.
Before we get to that, we get a page of Mesmero trying to go straight by being a psychologist. He finally realized that if you don’t try to cheat people, you don’t quite get punched in the face as much. His current client? The Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher.
At this point, Cross Time Caper is thankfully over. Unfortunately, Kitty and the rest of the team are still separated. Both are on the same version of Earth, the Proper Marvel Universe, they just don’t know the other is a well.
Kitty got back sooner, so Courtney Ross has enrolled Kitty into her former school, St. Searle’s. The headmistress is Miss Rutherford. She seems nice enough.
Kitty has nowhere else to go. Her parents are divorced, she can’t decide who to live with. Her former team, the X-Men, are believed dead. Her current team, Excalibur, is presumed missing, and she doesn’t want to live in their lighthouse base by herself. She might as well get a proper education.
Kitty gets to her room and meets Phoebe Huntsman and her friends. They have gone through all of Kitty’s things, keeping what they want. One of the friends, Veronique starts reading from Kitty’s diary. After she reads a passage regarding Colossus, Kitty starts throwing punches. Turns out, for some mysterious reason, Kitty can’t phase, so Phoebe gets a lucky shot in.
I like Miss Rutherford’s reaction. Even if the young ladies were stealing her stuff, Kitty shouldn’t have resorted to violence. Up to this point, Kitty’s inner monologue has been giving us how much experience Kitty has. She has traveled through time, to different dimensions and timelines, has saved numerous planets, including her own. By the time children her age were thinking of junior high school, she was already taking college courses. When she joined the X-Men, age was nothing but a chicken wing. The X-Men only cared about what she brought to the team and treated her as the peer she was. But she has been honed to be a soldier in Xavier’s army since she was 13 and a half so violence comes easily to her.
Miss Rutherford’s punishment is to have Kitty write out a sentence one thousand times, “St. Searle’s teaches young girls to become young ladies.” This is hard on Kitty has she is used to typing, which I can completely relate too. My handwriting is horrible but now that I type so much, my hand hurts after writing a bunch in a brief moment. There is this fun moment when Miss Rutherford keeps calling her Katherine, and Kitty finally corrects her and says she prefers Kitty. Miss Rutherford believes Kitty’s childish behavior is due in some part due to her willingness to keep a childhood nickname. Never really thought about that before.
Kitty somehow finishes the task, and I can only imagine a lady like Miss Rutherford, when she says a thousand, she doesn’t mean, do it for an hour and move on to something else. She meant a thousand times.
We cut to the other members of Excalibur, minus Lockheed – of course, they are chasing Vixen and her criminal gang. Vixen turns back into Nigel Frobisher, a guy who has been a bit of a running joke in Excalibur up to this point. He was a womanizing sort of jerk slash goof ball and then he flirted with the wrong lady and now he spends some of his time as a woman. That will teach him! Except, for the most part, it hasn’t.
We cut back to Kitty as she is leaving the school, she is running away as no one talks to her or wants her around. On her way out, she overhears a phone conversation of Miss Rutherford’s, the school is losing money and may have to close down. As soon as she steps off campus, she notices she can phase again. There is definitely something going on at that campus. She gets to a bar and calls Courtney, waking her up and then promptly hangs up. Kitty is no quiter and will see this through to the end.
We cut to the next morning, and the students are about to play field hockey. Kitty hasn’t been seen yet and their teacher, Mr. Reeve, notices that Kitty is missing. That darn Phoebe is still wearing Kitty’s leather jacket, as if it is hers. Phoebe and her friends start trash talking and then Kitty shows up, still wearing last night’s clothes, but she is ready to be goalie and leave everything on the field.
Kitty makes me proud when Phoebe calls her a Yank, and Kitty is quick to say she is a Cubs fan and being called a Yankee is a high insult. Of course, these are British young ladies and they don’t know baseball that well. But still, represent Kitty! Go Cubs in 2014!
The game is 0 to 0 for the most part until Kitty finally scores in overtime. Her outfit is battle worn at this point as she scores off of Phoebe. We see from the bushes that Courtney Ross has been watching this entire time.
Issue ends with Mesmero happy with his new face turn. Then two AIM Battletanks, that’s what it looks like at least, tell him that he is going to start working for them as they want his access to world leaders to start bringing in real money and power. Poor Mesmero, he wanted to be legit so much. Of course, if he had just stuck to non-famous people, he wouldn’t have this problem but there isn’t any money in that.
. . .
And with this, we are off in 2014! Got some major plans for this here blog and I am really excited about all of them. Thanks for reading this past year!
Shadow and Flame with Magik 