X-Men Blue #28 is a turning point issues for one of Marvel’s earliest mutants, Cyclops’ brother Havok.
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SPOILERS for X-Men Blue #28 follow.
Havok has had a rough time of things lately. He experienced a timeline where he married the Wasp and had a daughter only to have to erase the timeline to save reality and Kang the Conqueror badly burn half of his face as a bonus.
Then, during the 2014 Marvel Comics Avengers and X-Men crossover event Axis, a combination of magic and pseudoscience left several Marvel heroes and villains “inverted,” changing their morality to the opposite of whatever it was previously. Havok was one of those heroes, and he has since become much angrier and more aggressive, associating more with villains than heroes.
For example, in X-Men Blue, Havok has recently been running with a cabal of villains – Emma Frost, Miss Sinister, and Bastion – who have been using Mothervine, genetic coding found in the mutants of the Ultimate Marvel universe, to transform mutants and anyone with latent mutant DNA into living weapons.
Things finally come to a head in X-Men Blue, as Polaris – Magneto’s daughter and Havok’s longtime former love – leads a group of X-Men to stop Havok and the others. Emma Frost turns on the villains, aiding the X-Men and turning the tide of battle.
This is the moment that Polaris has been waiting for. Emma uses her telepathic powers to take all of Polaris’ memories of Havok, good and bad, and use them to overwrite Havok’s inverted personality, restoring him to the person he was before Axis. When Havok comes out of the experience, he notes that it still feels like that inverted persona in inside him, trapped behind the facade of Polaris’ memories of him.
Havok gets one last fix. The mutant healer Elixir is called in by Magneto to help undo the effects of Mothervine and eradicate what’s left of the genetic code. While he was at it, Elixir also heals Havok’s burn scars.
What’s next for Havok is unclear, but he will he be featured as part of a new X-Men team in Astonishing X-Men very soon. For those hoping to follow Havok’s story, that seems like your next stop.
What do you think of this turn for Havok? Happy to see him back to his old heroic self, more or less? Let us know in the comments!
X-Men Blue #28 is on sale now. Astonishing X-Men #13, featuring Havok’s new X-Men team and a new creative team, goes on sale July 4th.
