The “X”-Sanction!

X-MEN — Issue no. 110, January 1978

Book: X-Men

Issue No.: 110

Published: January 17, 1978

Title: “The ‘X’-Sanction!”

Cover Price: 35¢

Format: Digital scan

As of 1978, Marvel comic books stuck to a schedule. Monthly comics came out once a month, and bi-monthly comics came out every other month. Heck or high water, no matter what. So if the writer or artists were running late with an issue of a book and missed their deadline, Marvel still had to print something.

For years Marvel would drop in a reprint of an older story if the new story wasn’t ready on time. Sometime in 1975, Marvel stopped running reprint material to cover for missed deadlines and instead started using fill-in stories. A fill-in story is, basically, a story that is prepared ahead of time and ready to go (or almost ready to go) whenever the regular creative team gets behind on cranking out pages. You can read a lot more about fill-in stories (and last-minute reprints) at CBR.com.

As soon as I started this issue of X-Men, I wondered if it might be a fill-in issue. Tony DeZuniga is credited on page one as “Guest Artist,” and fill-in issues are often handled by a substitute creative team. There’s also a secondary art credit for Dave Cockrum (“— and thanks to Dave Cockrum for a welcome art assist”), and that made me wonder if this issue was put together under unusual circumstances.

When I got to the “X-Mail” fan-mail page, my suspicions were confirmed. Though this wasn’t a last-minute fill-in issue. It was apparently commissioned months earlier as a planned fill-in issue and then not used. But because of where the story fit continuity-wise, Marvel’s last opportunity for publishing it was in X-Men no. 110, so that’s what they did. And, yes, this is another example of why complete reprints (that contain not only the story, but also the ads, editorial pages, and fan-mail pages) of old comic books are better than story-only reprints.

The story here involves Warhawk (who has metallic skin — he’s kind of a low-rent version of X-Man Colossus) sneaking into the X-Men’s mansion headquarters and sabotaging the Danger Room (a high-tech battle training facility) so it tries to kill the X-Men (who are, as of this issue, Cyclops, Phoenix, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, and Wolverine).

Warhawk is unwillingly working for some mysterious third-party (which I’ve noticed is something of a trope for comic books of this era) and gets into the mansion by pretending he works for the phone company. Then he finds the Danger Room and turns off all the safety protocols via the Danger Room’s computer. Reading this in 2023, the whole story plays out like an InfoSec training lesson. Like, first, don’t just let any rando wearing a maintenance jumpsuit into your mansion without at least seeing some ID. And second, put a strong password on your Danger Room computer! Plus some kind of multi-factor authentication!

The X-Men find that an unrestrained Danger Room is tough to beat, but thanks to Nightcrawler’s teleporting abilities, they manage to escape the Room and capture Warhawk. But we never find out what his deal is or who he’s working for. At least not in this issue.

Next time — Kraven enlists the Gibbon to hunt Spider-Man!