Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1
Aug 2009
The first in a six-chapter crossover between the Dark Avengers and Uncanny X-Men, this issue kicks off the Utopia storyline set within the Dark Reign crossover. Northstar appears as a regular member of the X-Men, having joined up in Uncanny X-Men #508.
The storyline kicks off in San Francisco, the newly recent home of the X-Men after they reorganized in issue #500. In parallel to the real-world political controversy surrounding Proposition 8, a law passed by the voters of California to change the state constitution to effectively ban gay marriage, Proposition X is introduced, a law proposed by Simon Trask to force sterilization of all mutants. All hell breaks loose as protestors and anti-protestors clash violently all over San Francisco.
Since Northstar joined up with the X-Men, he’s not been used all that much. In many scenes that depict large groups of mutants, he’s absent, and he’s yet to get a feature issue. The way Uncanny has been written with so many multiple plot lines at once, it’s been hard for anyone except Cyclops and Emma Frost to appear on more than 2 pages in a row. Not surprisingly then, Northstar doesn’t appear too many times in this book, but it’s nice to see him om the front lines protesting, as if Matt Fraction singled him out as a character who would be deeply affected by the awful hatred of a law such as Proposition X.
After a city-wide scuffle between protestors and anti-protestors in which Northstar appears in a few more panels, the X-Men regroup back at their headquarters. In a panel showing nearly all of the mutants at Greymalkin watching the riots unfold on TV, Mister Jeffries can be seen.
He can be found (circled in red) to the far left, bathed in the glow from the TV screen, just in front of fellow X-Club member Dr. Takiguchi and to the left of Colossus. Unnamed, his identity has been confirmed by the character listing in the Official Index to the Marvel Universe #13.
Meanwhile, Norman Osborn takes advantage of the civil unrest to send in his Dark Avengers. Ares, the god of war, jumps out of a plane, no parachute, and smashes down in front of a now-costumed Northstar to lay down the gauntlet. Fortunately, the mismatched pair do not engage and that’s all we see from JP this issue.
Note: Northstar appears on the cover on the ground all defeated, depicting events which do not happen in the book at all. He clashes only with puny human street protestors and does not fight Ares, so there’s no way he’d be on the ground knocked out.
There are four variant covers for this issue:
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Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1 Simone Bianchi variant |
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Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1 Jae Lee variant |
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Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1 SDCC sketch variant |
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Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia #1 Second Printing variant |
Tags: Dark Reign, Madison Jeffries, Northstar, Utopia
Alpha Flight Collector 
October 1, 2009 at 5:30 am |
“as protestors and anti-protestors clash violently”
lol. “anti-protestors”? wouldn’t they be at home eating potato chips?
October 1, 2009 at 9:15 am |
Yeah, I think the correct term is “counter-protest” but it sounded cooler to use “anti-protest” because it sounds more like matter/anti-matter. There’s all big explosions and stuff when protons and anti-protons annihilate each other and I’m a huge fan of big explosions so I used protest and “anti-protest.”