Shadow and Flame with Magik

Shadows on the Soul

Writer Chris Claremont

Penciler June Brigman

Inker Terry Austin

Letterer Rick Parker

Colorist Glynis Oliver

Cover Dated July 1987

Thanks to these two sites for the bulk of the issue :

http://amocat.net/kiotr/KIOTR-Gallery/Marvel-Fanfare-33

https://www.tumblr.com/search/Marvel+Fanfare+33

The issue opens with Al Milgrom explaining that this story was in the inventory as it would have been the fourth issue of Questprobe.  I did the quick research via comicbookdb, and the villain of the issue is in all three of those issues.  He found Hulk, Spider-Man, Human Torch & The Thing.  This story was printed three years after it should have.

Page One

Issue opens with the X-Men along with Magneto and Lee Forrester on Magneto’s adopted island from Uncanny X-Men 150.  Magneto has agreed to take over leadership of the Xavier School, so this is after Uncanny X-Men 200.  Nice to see Lee Forrester again.

Colossus is throwing Kitty off of her raft like the jerk that he is!

Kitty is just staring at Magneto and Lee as they make out every where and every time they get a chance.  They are madly in love.

Kitty decides to pull a prank of Logan, but he can smell her. Which makes sense as she’s still pretty wet, so it must be easier for him to sense her.  They have an ongoing game where Kitty owes Logan a beer and he owes her a lemonade, she doesn’t like any of those.  What’s a game if you don’t like the rewards?  Just a challenge, perhaps?

Kitty is noticing the statues that surround the island, they give her the creeps.

Logan shares that he isn’t thrilled with them either, which surprises Kitty.  Logan tells her that only a fool doesn’t get scared, being scared heightens your experience – hence the entire Horror genre.

I have read this a couple times now and I still can’t imagine why he pops his claws.  It makes no sense!

Storm, who is powerless at this point, shares that she also finds the statues to be creepy.  They hint at the island’s true origins and they are no good.  Whatever happened to this island?

Kitty notices that Magneto and Lee are making out again.  It is starting to be too much for the poor gal.

Kitty brings up what Storm and everyone must be thinking or remembering, that it wasn’t that long ago that Magneto almost killed both Kitty and Storm on this island.

A flash of light happens and the statues not only come alive but start attacking!

Storm is the first to be attacked and we learn that the statues can turn their opponents into suspended animation.

Now Wolverine has a reason to pop his claws, and there is room to explain that they are made out of adamantium.  So weird how, as a comic fan, I know how to spell words like adamantium but real minerals, I probably would have to take a guess at.  Apocalypse is another one of those words.

Magneto, using his ranged attacks, is about to keep the statues from touching him.

Kitty gets the bright idea to phase though the statues, as it might do some beneficial damage.  Instead, it just puts her in suspension.

Wolverine gets surprised attacked and is also put into suspension.

Colossus, proving how useless he is, tries to punch the statues and he also put into suspension.

Where is Nightcrawler during all of this?  He’s the only X-Man not accorded for.  Rogue shows up next but this is the last page that Kitty is on until the last few pages.

Magneto realizes he is all on his own and keeps fighting off of the statues / devices.  Magneto notices that he has quickly adopted the notion of protecting others above himself.  If only Xavier could see him now.  Once he sees that Lee has also been turned into suspended animation, he starts fighting harder.

Just then the Chief Examiner reveals himself, by coming out of a black doorway that floats in the sky.  The suspension will wear off in a few hours.  He would like Magneto, since he’s the last one standing, to pass through the doorway.  Magneto is no dummy, he knows it is a trap.

Meanwhile, the final X-Man to appear, Rogue is on her way back.  Since no one is around, she can wear a bathing suit as she doesn’t have to worry about accidentally absorbing anyone’s powers or memories.  She notices Wolverine is flying at her and grabs him as he crashes into the water.  She notices she isn’t absorbing his powers, and how odd that is.  She leaves him in the boat and flies off to the island.

While we were checking in Rogue, the Chief Examiner was taking over Magneto’s body.  So we get Magneto v Rogue!  I wonder if they talked about this at all, while they were a couple?

During the fight, Rogue breaks out of a metal prison that Magneto created and flies through the black doorway that the Chief Examiner refers to as a, scanning plate.

Rogue comes out of it and falls to her knees, as she turns green!  She has the powers of the Hulk!  Which she is reminded of the time she had She-Hulk’s powers.  The footnote implies it was Uncanny X-Men Annual 9 but I’m pretty sure it is issue 7, the Scavenger Hunt issue.  Rogue dodges another attack, that sends her to a wall, now she has Spider-Man’s powers!  Once she turns into the Human Torch, she wonders if she is going to start speaking Asgardian.  I like how she thinks about how she doesn’t know much about Spider-Man, what other powers does he have?  Just goes to show how isolated she is with the X-Men, and how isolated they are!  If you have Spider-Man’s strength plus Hulk strength, I bet she doesn’t even notice the slight increase from the Hulk’s strength.

Rogue wonders what is going on and we cut to inside the scanner plate or somewhere, this part of the book is clearly meant for those who were playing those other three games.  Magneto is in an electrical form, he meets another electrical guy, Durgan.  It just isn’t that interesting of a plot, the art and coloring is nice enough but it just feels like I’m reading a fourth installment of a series and I finally got to part that continues the story.

Rogue is still fighting Magneto’s body.

Durgan explains his backstory.  Essentially, he wanted to create a robot that would be able to take aspects of mighty warriors’ powers and skills.  Once doing so, the robot would be able to fight the invading army that is coming for his home planet.  Durgan explains to Magneto that the Chief Examiner is malfunctioning but he doesn’t know why.  There is a virus in the system and that is what switched Magneto’s consciousness for his own.   Durgan wants Magneto and him to team up, overpower the system and set right with what once went wrong.

So their plan works and things are set right.  Rogue hit the robot from the outside, while the two hit it from the inside.  It tries to make itself more complicated but that’s the jest of it.

Funny exchange between Rogue and Magneto.  She wants to know if she has to hit him again, as he is waking up.  He tells her that wouldn’t be necessary.

Rogue flies through the scanner once more and is back to her regular self.  Magneto jumps through it so that the scanner now has his powers, the last ingredient for victory!

Magneto tries to reprimand the Grand Examiner that this was no accident, he will have to reexamine his system.

The X-Men start coming out of their suspended animation.  Colossus tries to show he’s a good guy by inquiring where Kitty is, as last he saw, she was thrown into the pool.  While they were in suspension, they didn’t need to breathe, so that’s why she’s okay.  That’s a relief!

Wolverine wakes up on the boat, where Rogue left him, and he tries to get back to island as fast as possible.  Turns out, he isn’t really needed.

The Grand Examiner leaves, thanking Magneto and his X-Men, which I bet Storm had to correct Magneto later about how he works for her.  Magneto is only technically the leader of the New Mutants.

The story ends with Magneto telling Rogue that he offered Durgan the X-Men’s aid but Durgan declined the assistance.

The issue ends with several pin-ups, that I am not sure who drew them.  Silver Surfer, Conan?, Doctor Doom, Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Elektra, Punisher and Iron Man are all given a page.  Some of them have their name, others don’t.