The X-Men #96: Night of the Demon Review
Medium: Comic
Release date: 12/1/1975
Review date: 11/29/2024
Score: 7/10
You know, everybody deals with trauma differently - some people clam up and stop talking, some people start yelling hysterically, and some people have to fight Kierrok the Damned, demon child of the N'Garai, so we should all be considerate of how everybody processes these complex emotions. Cyclops begins this issue walking through the forest outside the X-Mansion (depicted in some really quite beautiful art) as he struggles with the death of Thunderbird under his leadership. Eventually the trauma overwhelms him so much that Scott just starts blastin’ with his eye beams and unknowingly destroys an ancient cairn that was just out there in the woods, which is a detail I missed on my the first read as thought the cairn was just a pile of rocks, but I guess the evil cloud appearing from its rubble should have been a giveaway. Team dynamics wise Wolverine has now taken over Thunderbird's role as the angsty loner of the squad, and everybody, including Professor X, seem rightly worried that Cyclops is taking John’s death a little too personally. Charles is apparently planning to go on vacation after the stress of psychically experiencing Thunderbird’s death, so he hires what appears to be a totally normal, no superpowered housekeeper, Moira Mactaggert, to look after the mansion, and presumably the X-Men, while he’s gone, which seems like a lot of weight to just kind of throw at Moira on her first day. Anyways, the aforementioned Kierrok shows up at dinner and starts beating everybody up as he appears to be unharmed by anything the team throws at him, leading to Professor X reading the demon’s mind, tripping out a bit, but then realizing that the team needs to destroy the cairn which summoned the creature to actually defeat him, leading to Storm flying out as she just start blastin’ the pile of rocks with some lightning, which banishes Kierrok away again. Also there’s a B Plot in the background where US Colonel Mike Ross arrives at a secret military base in the Adirondack Mountains, where he meets with a Dr. Steve Lang who is working on Project Armageddon, a secret project to let humans win the final battle between humans and mutants. However, Colonel Ross calls the doctor crazy and says he's going back to report to Washington to shut down the project, causing Dr. Lang to say he must not let Ross reach DC alive, with the final panels of the issue being firefighters inspecting the smoking remains of Colonel Ross’ plane stating all on board are dead.
This issue was fine, a bit silly but I do appreciate the writers trying to take John’s death in the previous issue seriously, especially when it comes to how the rest of the X-Men process it - Thunderbird’s demise may have been forced and abrupt, but at least we’re following through with its ramifications, even if those ramifications are a literal demon named Kierrok.