"The End" Week: X-Men Gold #36!

I'm almost positive there's at least one of these last issues this year where the heroes win in dramatic fashion, then go on to bigger and better adventures. It's not this one, but maybe it's around somewhere. From 2018, X-Men Gold #36, "Feared and Hated" Written by Marc Guggenheim, art by Pere Pérez.

This was from late 2018, but still feels like a million years ago from the current X-books. Part of that was by design: on the closing letters page, Guggenheim mentions the book "was conceived as a love letter to that era. Sometimes at the expense of some originality, I admit..." It may have been a bit more retro, but I did like this series more than the previous Extraordinary X-Men. On the other hand, I'm hard pressed to tell you what stuck from this run: Storm had a magic hammer, oops, lost it. Rachel Grey had a new codename--Prestige--and costume; I don't think they stuck. Nightcrawler was unkillable for a bit, that plot was just dropped. There was a replacement Pyro, but don't we have the old one back? Kitty and Colossus were about to get married, didn't; but Rogue and Gambit did, and that may be what stuck?

Kitty, Storm, Kurt, and Rachel get called on a mission, the manifestation of a new Omega-level mutant. There's a bit of the usual soap opera first: Kurt still sad Rachel declined his proposal, Storm missing the extra oomph of her lost hammer, Kitty wondering if being an X-Man is mostly just loss. The Omega kid, scared and throwing random energy blasts all over, is panicked; but Kitty talks him down to a powered-off state. He is then promptly shot by a bystander. Kurt ports them to the nearest hospital, where in the same vein, the doctor refuses to treat him: if the kid's powers went off during surgery, he could destroy the entire hospital.

Furious, Kitty runs down her options: have Kurt get Cecilia Reyes, too far. Have Rachel psychically make the doctor do it; Rachel points out that's a bit too far. Kitty's still willing, but another doctor steps up: she had met Kitty back in the first issue, when Kitty said they were going to earn back people's trust. Surprisingly, here at least, they did. The X-Men wait, into the night...and since I don't think we've seen this kid again, he maybe didn't make it. I haven't been paying enough attention, I don't know if the Krakoa mutants have brought back the forty or so Omega mutants that went out like that.