The cover is pretty neat. We have a rather gangly-looking Kitty Pryde holding out a flashlight, and a demon is looming over her, ready to attack. We do get a glimpse of another room, which is showing a Christmas tree. Hey, horror and Christmas go well together, just ask Bill Goldberg in Santa's Slay. The text on the cover reads, "...guess what just came down the chimney!" I'm betting that demon ate Santa Claus.
"Demon"
Writer: Chris Claremont (Also Co-Plotter)
Artist: John Byrne (Also Co-Plotter)
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Wein
Editor: Louise Jones
Editor-In-Chief: Jim Shooter
The story begins with Storm getting impaled through the heart with a spear of light.
Pleasant way to start a comic, huh? The Windrider is under siege, trying to fight off what appears to be demons from a cairn. Yeah, this part is basically a retelling of some of the events from X-Men #96 (December 1975). Here, it's revealed that one of the demons managed to escape being sealed by the events of that old issue.
Next, we meet Douglas and Ellie Moore. They were a couple of newlyweds. Young, innocent. Their lives ahead of them, the hopes and dreams of a lovely, wonderful future. Picket fences, a couple kids, long happy retirement, the works. It's their first Christmas together, and they want to chop down a real tree, as they want this one to be special. Doug and Ellie hear something in the trees. Doug goes to investigate, and well...
Goodbye, Doug and Ellie. Your job in this story is done. We now go to the Xavier Institute, where Charles Xavier is tutoring Kitty on how to ignite the engines of the X-Men's Blackbird jet. It had been a quiet time for the X-Men after the craziness of the Days of Future Past storyline, so Kitty Pryde had been concentrating on her schoolwork and X-Men training. Warren Worthington III, aka Angel, one of the original five X-Men, tells the professor that his car is ready.
In the Mansion's foyer, Piotr "Colossus" Rasputin and Logan "Wolverine" are hanging out, and Wolvie has some company: His lovely lady friend Mariko Yoshida. Yoshida introduces herself to the Professor, and she gets to see a little Christmas tradition first hand. One Kurt "Nightcrawler" Wagner teleports in with some mistletoe, and gives her a kiss on the cheek. Logan takes this with the calm, reasonable demeanor that made him one of the most famous and beloved of the X-Men of this era.
Not having any tranquilizers available, Piotr armors up and holds his hirsuite teammate back, trying to get him to calm down. Xavier does so with a bit of telepathy, which helps. Wolverine apologizes to Kurt for his loss of temper. To lighten the mood, Kitty takes the mistletoe and gives Piotr a kiss on the cheek. It makes Pitor blush. Yeah, time to get off track a bit, Jim Shooter was not fond of this whole Kitty/Piotr thing going on at the time. You see, Kitty is supposed to be around 13/14 years old, and Colossus was essentially an adult. Yeah. Shooter tried to kibosh it during Secret Wars by having Piotr fall for an alien healer.
The other X-Men leave the Mansion for various reasons, and Kitty Pryde realizes something.
Unfortunately, Kitty doesn't take the opportunity and throw a wild party. Kitty, it's the 80s! That kind of thing is expected of you, kid! Come on! Anyway, Kitty also realizes that it's also the first time she has ever spent Hanukkah away from her parents, so she decides to give them a call. No answer. The phone then rings, but it's not her parents calling. It's Scott Summers, aka Cyclops.
After the events of the Dark Phoenix Saga, a grieving Scott had decided to take a leave of absence from the team and go on the road for a bit. Honestly, this was what I felt the X-Men should have done after the 2015 Secret Wars event. The X-Men break up for a while to reconnect with humanity.
Scott had called to check in and see how everyone was doing. He wishes Kitty well, and he'll try again tomorrow. As he leaves the phone booth, Scott recalls how he spent many lonely Christmases in an orphanage, and as a result, he empathizes with Kitty feeling a bit lonely being in the mansion by herself. Scott approaches a figure working on a boat, and inquires about a Lee Forrester. Scott is looking for a bit of work, and he heard Forrester was hiring some crew.
I am curious, though. What kind of name is "Aleytys"? I tried putting it in the Wikipedia, and the closest I got is Alytus, which is a city in Lithuania. Yup, this comic is also her first appearance. She would become a part of the X-Men's lives over the years, and was one of the human friends and allies the X-Men had during that time. It's kind of something I miss about modern X-Men, they have no real human friends anymore. Having human friends and allies help give the idea that the X-Men's crusade was having an effect, and it's a part of their mythos that I feel should be brought back. Forrester would be romantically involved with Cyclops for a while, then Magneto, then she would have an interest in Cable. Nowadays, she's living in an alternate dimension, guarding artifacts with her boyfriend Skull the Slayer.
Kitty spends some time exercising in the Danger Room. She starts thinking about how the X-Men take the superhero life really seriously, and she also thinks about how they still get sad around Jean Grey. She thinks about Jean's death, and how the X-Men life could claim her next. She hears the intruder alarm and learns that something happened in Ororo's attic...which is where she keeps her garden.
Kitty decides to investigate. She was told that if something happened, she should call the cops, but last time she did that, it turned out to be a tree branch smashing a window during a windstorm. The cops were understanding, but she felt guilty for wasting their time. She's going to make sure that this time, it's not some branch. She's not worried about burglars, as her power to phase through solid objects would allow her to handle herself. Keep in mind, this was before she got the ninja training.
She makes her way to Ororo's attic garden, and notices the window is smashed open and all the plants in it are dead. Kitty wonders what exactly could kill Ororo's plants this quickly, as the cold air couldn't. She also finds herself stepping in some green slime. Unfortunately, it's not Slimer Kitty ends up meeting. That would be neat if Kitty met Slimer. What she meets...is worse.
The N'Garai demon slashes at the teenager, but Kitty Pryde is a superhero, not a slasher character. She is able to duck and get through the floor. The demon just smashes the floor open. The demon pursues Kitty around the Mansion, smashing its way through walls in pursuit of her. Kitty wonders about her options. She is way outmatched against the monster, so straight-up fighting it is out. She can't flee the Mansion, because it could decide to leave and go attack someone else, or wait for any cops to show up, and as Jack Burton says, "Cops have better things to do than get killed". So, Kitty decides to outwit it.
She does a little test of the creature's smarts. She ducks into a stairway, then phases through it in the middle of the stairway, hiding underneath it. The ploy seems to work, as the demon appears to have walked off. Kitty peeks out of the room and tries to reach for a nearby telephone. Yeah, keep in mind, this was 1981. Kitty doesn't have a smartphone yet. Heck, she probably could have invented them in the Marvel Universe. She just about has the phone when the demon lunges at her. The N'Garai monster slashes her, but it doesn't kill her, or even cause her any physical injuries. Kitty was able to phase in time, but the attack still hurt and numbed her right arm.
Despite this, Kitty is still able to escape, coming to the realization that she has to fight the demon. She decides to face the monster in the Danger Room. She programs the most dangerous sequences ever, but finds that it's taking more time than she hoped thanks to her only being able to use one arm. The N'Garai demon is smart, and ambushes Kitty in the control room. Kitty phases her way out, and the demon follows her, smashing the control room's computers in the process. The demon thinks it finally has Kitty trapped, but the Danger Room's systems activate, and Kitty's trap is sprung.
The demon rips up the floor, causing the Danger Room's systems to run wild, cancelling the special safety locks that prevent the Room from truly injuring or even killing someone. Kitty is trapped in a wild Danger Room with the demon. She tries to turn this to her advantage, leading the demon to the worst of the Room's assault, hoping it will kill it. Kitty runs up against a forcefield. Forcefields are more difficult for her to pass through than solid objects, so she needs time and concentration to pull that off. However, the demon is not willing to be that patient with her. The demon manages the thrash the Danger Room, much to Kitty's shock, and the chase continues.
Kitty is exhausted and terrified. She's not even sure if she has even hurt the beast with the Danger Room's exercise equipment. She's scared of the demon killing her, but she's even more frightened of the N'Garai demon killing her fellow X-Men. She does manage to note that fire seemed to have some effect on it, so she has one last gambit. She uses a car in the X-Mansion's underground subway to get to the hanger. The Demon derails the car, forcing Kitty to make the rest of the journey on foot.
She phases into the Blackbird's cockpit and prepares to ignite the jet's engines. She lures the creature closer to the plane's engines, then...
The demon is engulfed by the white hot flames of the jet engines firing, which also causes the jet to fly into the wall of the hangar. Kitty emerges from the wrecked jet, looking around for the demon's body. The monster's arm lunges at her, making the young mutant scream. If you're a movie buff, and this seems familiar to you...it is. Claremont and Byrne were homaging the 1979 film Alien with this story.
At midnight, Professor Xavier's Rolls-Royce pulls up to the X-Mansion. There were some various delays, due to traffic jams and icy roads, but notably there was a police roadblock. Evidently Doug and Ellie were not the only ones the demon met on its way to the Xavier Institute. Colossus notices the lights are off, but he reasons Kitty could have just gone to bed. Xavier senses that there's an evil aura about the house. He and Colossus go to investigate, and Piotr notices the house is colder on the inside. Colossus hears the TV going in the living room, and checks it out.
He finds Kitty relaxing in the living room in front of a fireplace, wearing a robe and a towel over her head. She is overjoyed to see him. The Professor also brings another surprise: Her parents are here to visit, much to her delight. The group hold a little party, despite the mansion probably still showing some damage from the demon's rampage. Ororo wants to know what happened to her garden. Kitty tries to explain the monster, and that in the process of killing it, the Danger Room and the hangar got wrecked. Ororo is shocked by this. She shouldn't really be that surprised. She fought demonic monsters once, this should not be that weird to her.
The story ends with a look at the wrecked hangar. Kitty was too tired and scared to phase when the demon lunged for her throat one last desperate time, but her gambit worked. The demon crumbled to dust, and it is dead. Kitty Pryde endured a trial by fire, and came out stronger for it.
This comic is AWESOME. It's a Kitty-focused issue, and it really helped show a lot of things that would become trademarks of the character, like her smarts. It's a story in which we got to see what this at the time rookie X-Woman was capable of, and she did not disappoint. It's a thrilling story with some scares and Christmas cheer. It also touches on some other plot points, like Logan's ultimately doomed romance with Mariko, and Kitty's own crush on Colossus. John Byrne turns in some great artwork here, and I always liked Terry Austin's inks on his work. It made Byrne's art look very clean.
If you are a fan of Kitty Pryde, or the X-Men in general, his story is a must-read. I have it from my copy of the Days of Future Past trade paperback. It's a great story to read if you're looking for something a little spooky to enjoy during the holidays. I hope you all enjoyed this belated Christmas gift. Kind of funny an issue set during the Christmas season would focus on a Jewish character. Next time, we truly begin a look at the first return of Jean Grey...
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