X-amining Uncanny X-Men #-1

"The Boy Who Saw Tomorrow!"

July 1997

In a Nutshell

Rachel Summers tracks Sanctity to the early days of the Sentinels creation.

Writer: Scott Lobdell
Penciler: Bryan Hitch
Inker: Paul Neary
Letters: Richard Starkings
Colors: Steve Buccellato

Editor: Mark Powers
Editor-in-Chief: Bob Harras

Plot

Following her disciple Sanctity into the past, Rachel Summers arrives in South Dakota, near where Bolivar Trask is close to completing the first Master Mold. Bolivar is tending to his son, Larry, a mutant with hidden precognitive abilities. Just then, Sanctity attacks Rachel, and the two argue over the merits of trying to change the past, something with which Rachel is all too familiar. But Rachel quickly realizes she's only fighting a psionic projection of Sanctity. The real Sanctity is confronting Bolivar, revealing herself to him as his daughter, Tanya. She explains how her powers caused her to be lost in time, but that she was saved by Rachel. She wants Bolivar to give up the Sentinel project, but Rachel intervenes, erasing Bolivar's memory of the encounter in an effort to preserve the timeline. The two women return to the future, but Sanctity manages to secretly upload a file on the Twelve into Master Mold's programming before she goes. 

Firsts and Other Notables

May of 1997 was Flashback Month at Marvel — every series released a special "-1" issue, featuring a story set before the first issue of each book. It works better for some series/characters than others (four Spider-Man comics in a month without Spider-Man got a little tedious...), but the more annoying element of the initiative is just the way it completely interrupts the flow of a series, with the X-books in particular feeling that disruption as it comes *just* as "Operation: Zero Tolerance" kicks into gear, delaying the start of that story by a month (of course, this is all less of a problem *now* when you can read the issues in whatever damn order you please, unless you're a nutter like me going through these chronologically, but I still remember what it was like back in the day). 

Along with the flashback gimmick, many of the #-1 issues feature an introduction from a fourth-wall breaking Stan Lee caricature.

 

Specifically, the main story of Uncanny X-Men #-1 is set about three years before the public debut of the Sentinels in X-Men #14.

Rachel Summers is the ostensible protagonist of the story, appearing at a point in her personal timeline after she disappeared into the timestream in Excalibur #75, when she's still early in her "Mother Askani phase. 

Sanctity, the Askani priestess from the Askani'son miniseries, who ended that series turning heel and allying herself with a young Stryfe, is the antagonist of the story (we last saw her in Cable #42), though like Rachel, she is appearing here before her later actions in the Askani'son book and that issue. This issue also reveals that Sanctity is Tanya Trask, daughter of Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask and sister to Larry Trask, with the mutant ability to travel through time (by manifesting "chronal energies") as well as telepathy. 

Hilariously, the actual first encounter between Rachel and Sanctity gets a footnote pointing readers to...nothing, because that story doesn't exist. 

Sanctity references the Twelve, the mysterious group of mutants important in some vague way to the future, first teased all the way back in X-Factor #14 when Master Mold referenced them while fighting Cyclops. As is usually the case with references to the Twelve, it doesn't really fit with what actually happens in the story when its told at the end of the decade, though Sanctity is a little closer here in that she seems to be suggesting the group is meant to oppose Apocalypse in some way (whereas originally, Apocalypse was suggested to be one of the Twelve, not the force they were meant to stop). 

As a result, Uncanny X-Men #-1 establishes how Master Mold had information regarding the Twelve in the first place: it was programmed in by Tanya here (presumably this is not a bootstrap paradox, as Tanya could have knowledge of the Twelve from her time in the future, independent of the knowledge we as readers first received from Master Mold). 

Continuing Marvel's then-nascent experimentation with variant covers, this one gets a variant by interior artist Bryan Hitch (with the Stan Lee figure lifted from Chris Bachalo). 

Creator Central 

Jose Ladrönn provides the "A" cover, in some of the earliest X-work for the Moebius-esque artist with a penchant for channeling Jack Kirby. He will shortly become the regular artist on Cable during that series' creative high point. 

A Work in Progress

In an acknowledgement of the cliffhanger ending to last issue, Stan Lee observes the ship crashing to Earth. 

He proceeds to provide a recap of X-Men history. 

The issue briefly checks in on a pre-teen Jean (a few months after the "death of Annie Richardson" flashback from Bizarre Adventures #27). She also has a Star Wars poster and pennant for Bucce (colorist Steve Buccellato) on her wall.  

Larry Trask experiences a flashforward to the events of "Days of Future Past" in an expression of his mutant power. 

It's also noted that he predicted his mother's death (something referenced in X-Men #59).  

Bolivar Trask is seen meeting with Henry Peter Gyrich; though Gyrich was introduced much later than Trask/the Sentinels, it makes sense that he'd have some connection to the inventor.  

Sanctity does create a boostrap paradox of sorts in that Larry Trask becomes convinced his father his right about mutants as a result of the destruction caused by Sanctity's actions in this issue. 

Austin's Analysis
When this issue first came out, I wasn't the biggest fan of it. Even for a burgeoning continuity nut, it's deeply inside baseball, playing around in the roots of the Trask family tree, characters that hadn't been relevant for decades - and whose previous appearances were largely relegated to expensive back issues in those pre-trade, pre-internet days. In Rachel and Sanctity, it had as protagonist/antagonist two characters who were, at the time, at the farthest fringes of the X-Men narrative (Sanctity, arguably, has never NOT been on that fringe). The flashback gimmick is a fun one; there's plenty of neat untold stories in the X-Men's pasts. So why is this issue centered on Bolivar Trask's time-traveling daughter from that one Cable miniseries? 

Revisiting it now, none of that has really changed (I will admit to being slightly more taken by the Trask family drama, having at least read and internalized those stories to a greater degree than when I first read it, thanks to, you know, having since been able to actually read those stories). But for whatever reason, I completely missed on the Hitch/Neary art back in the day, whereas now, it looks fantastic.

Hitch already had a lengthy career for Marvel UK and was dabbling in the X-Books at this time on his way to superstardom, but this is really the first of his issues I've reviewed for this project where it feels like we're getting the Hitch/Neary "widescreen" aesthetic that will, in a few years' time, take the industry by storm and supplant the dominant Joe Madureira-inspired manga aesthetic as the industry default. 

Given how that led to Hitch's work on The Ultimates, and how much The Ultimates in turn inspired the visuals of the early MCU films, one could argue that roughly two decades of superhero aesthetics can be traced back to this weird issue in which the heretofore unknown time-traveling daughter of the Sentinels' creator who teamed up with Cable's evil clone one time fights his half-sister briefly. Granted, *I* am not making that argument. I'm just arguing that someone one could. 

Next Issue

We return to the Age of Apocalypse (again) in X-Man #-1!

Like what you read? Then support us on Patreon & gain access to exclusive reviews of Classic X-Men, X-Men: The Animated Series and more!

Become a Patron!