X-ual Healing – It's Time for a Girls' Trip in Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor #1

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but with a corporate merger on the way, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in comics.

Each week, armed with the joy, heartbreak, and frustration of 30+ years of reading X-Men comics, we read every new X-book that comes out, recap the events, provide the historical context so you can read it on Marvel Unlimited, and wonder when Marvel will let Chris Claremont write something again.

It's the way X-Men comics were meant to be read! It's the column that can only be known as…

Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor sports quite a lineup on its cover, and no, we're not just talking about all the porn stars Greg Land probably "referenced" to draw it. This book stars Psylocke, Domino, Jubilee, Storm, and Rogue for an all X-Women tale called Mystery in Madripoor. Anything with Madripoor in the cover is an instant buy for us here at X-ual Healing. Well, technically we buy anything starring the X-Men anyway, but you get what we mean. Kitty Pryde is also in the book, though she's not featured on the cover.

Anyway, the issue starts off with Psylocke taking a trip down memory lane, reminiscing about Wolverine in caption boxes while she remembers sparring with him back in the day. She's on a plane with the other cast members, who all "loved" Wolverine. Right off the bat, this comic nails what every comic, and especially first issues, should be doing by providing introductions for all of the characters:

Now — imagine this — a reader who may not know much about the X-Men but picked this comic up because it has such an awesome title will actually know who the characters are and what they can do. Amazing!

Kitty Pryde believes that Magneto may have stolen Wolverine's body, which went missing in the Hunt for Wolverine one-shot, so she gathered this group to track him down (because she doesn't already have enough to do with all the wedding planning). Psylocke is an X-position machine, recapping Magneto's questionable decision-making from X-Men Blue, Rogue's past relationship with Magneto, and the fact that she herself stabbed him with a sword the last time they met. Too bad Domino can't read the captions, because she's annoyed that the X-Men won't tell her much about what's going on. Kitty tells Psylocke telepathically that she might need her to wipe Domino's memory of the trip. Psylocke doesn't like it.

Domino lands the plane, the X-Men disembark, and Magneto is there to greet them. Kitty wants answers, but Magneto says to meet him for dinner later. He promises to leave his helmet at home so Psylocke can mind-probe him if needed, since he has nothing to hide. As the X-Men head off to kill time until their meeting, Mindblast of the Femme Fatales watches them from the shadows. She lets her unnamed boss know that the X-Men have arrived. Her boss replies with some X-pository dialogue revealing local villain Sapphire has already drained the life force of one person and will be glad to do the same to the X-Men.

The X-Men head to the Princess Bar, another familiar locale from Wolverine's Madripoor days. Jubilee looks at a black-and-white photo on the wall of characters from those days (because back in the 1980s, we didn't have color photography yet). This book is really going for it with the nostalgia. Bartender Mr. Halliday points out that he and Tyger Tiger are the only two people still alive from the photo. He offers the X-Men free drinks for knowing "Patch," but Kitty mentions a code-word Wolverine gave her, 'Yashida', which causes Halliday to bring them downstairs to a secret room where Wolverine kept a bunch of old books and samurai armor.

As the X-Men look through Wolverine's belongings, Storm has a flashback to a conversation she had with Wolverine back in the early days of the X-Men, in which she gave him a panther head to decorate his room at the X-mansion. Wolverine kept it here in Madripoor. Rogue finds a letter Carol Danvers wrote Wolverine from shortly after Rogue joined the X-Men. Danvers hated Rogue at that time because Rogue had stolen her powers and her memories "permanently" when she lost control of her own powers in battle. Danvers talks trash about Rogue in the letter and says she's leaving the Earth (she joined the Starjammers as Binary).

Psylocke admires the armor and swords Wolverine kept here, and remembers talking to him about dying. She wonders if Wolverine worries about he'll be judged after he dies, but Wolverine didn't concern himself with that sort of thing. Kitty finds a photo of herself in her home-made roller skate X-Men costume.

The ladies get dressed up in clothes borrowed from the Princess Bar and head to King's Impresario Restaurant for dinner with Magneto. He meets them, as he promised, sans helmet. As he spars verbally with Kitty, Psylocke notices that even without his helmet, she can't detect Magneto psychically. She realizes he's not really there (and wasn't at the airport either). It's Mindblast, who takes down Storm with a psychic attack before Madripoor crimelord Viper shows up, apparently the new leader of the Femme Fatales or whatever this group is calling itself. Psylocke, bless her, points out that Viper hasn't been seen since Secret Empire.

Femme Fatale Knockout attacks Rogue and Viper sends Bloodlust after Domino. Whiplash is there as well, having taken the name Snake Whip. Viper sends her after Jubilee. As Psylocke has a mind battle with Mindblast, Sapphire sneaks up behind her and begins draining her life energy. Realizing they're outmatched, Kitty grabs Domino and Jubilee and phases through the floor to escape, but Viper's gang has captured Storm, Rogue, and Psylocke, the most powerful members of the team.

The Bottom Line

This issue did a great job at providing context about the characters and history, though it would have been better if it also provided back issue references. It's a little unclear where this story fits into continuity. Shouldn't Storm have her Thor-like powers and hammer, like in X-Men Gold? The situation in Claws of a Killer, another Hunt for Wolverine mini, is similar, with Daken, Lady Deathstrike, and Sabretooth getting together to kill Wolverine if he's back, while Daken is a member of X-Men Blue and Deathstrike and Sabretooth are on a team led by Wolverine's time-displaced older version, Old Man Logan. Ah well. It's still an enjoyable story, and the best out of all the Hunt for Wolverine minis so far.