Azazel, week one!

To begin: damn you for making me do this. But my post on Azazel and the prologue to 'the Draco' is still getting hits; apparently out of sick curiosity over his upcoming appearance in the X-Men: First Class movie. So, we're going to blog each issue of Azazel's first and so far only storyline, hitting an issue every Thursday.

I was pretty sure Paul O'Brien of the X-Axis did a solid crucifixion of this run already; but, um, here we'll have scans! Yay! Oh, let's just do this damn thing. From Uncanny X-Men #429, "The Draco, part 1 of 6: Sins of the Father" Written by Chuck Austen, art by Philip Tan.


The story opens with Nightcrawler stealing an X-Jet, under the control of some outside influence. Wolverine, drinking beer on the roof, sees him go, and it's implied later if he hadn't, no one would've noticed Kurt and a jet were gone until somebody went down to the hangar, presumably needing to go somewhere. Wolvie asks Professor X if he sent Kurt on a mission: he did not. Meanwhile, Iceman has possibly been living in the kitchen's walk-in freezer, since his secondary mutation is apparently turning his body into ice...which I thought had happened already.

The Professor had been tracking another mutant, Abyss (who had been used as a weapon by Mystique, apparently) and had noted several mutant trails heading for the same point, but with broken lines: teleporters. Their trail leads to Isla des Demonas, which is such a made up name it makes Monster Island seem authentic; Alex (the recently returned Havok) points out his old archeology professor had a dig there and he, Lorna and Kurt had just been there weeks ago.


Off the coast of Florida, Kurt picks up a noseless blue mutant kid, the aforementioned Abyss, also under outside control. Meanwhile, Alex says goodbye to his girlfriend--not Lorna "Polaris" Dane, who was currently his psycho ex and acting legitimately crazy, but nurse Annie. Like a lot of stuff in Austen's run, this would be retconned to death later. There's also a few pages of subplot with Juggernaut and the Professor working out their abusive father issues, before we get back to the X-Men on the Isla des Demonas in the Caribbean. There, they find Kurt and a bunch of weird, demony-types having a bonfire, when these guys show up:

Out of the fire, apparently.

God, this hurt. Chapter two next week!