The cover depicts Wolverine standing over a dead or dying Kitty Pryde, and it seems pretty obvious that Wolverine did the dirty deed, but is that the whole story?  Open the book, and by the third page, Wolverine himself is dead.

Uncanny X-Men #177 (Jan 1984) begins with Mystique systematically dispatching the X-Men.  She surprisingly beats Wolverine in a fist fight – finally cutting the X-Man’s throat with a small blade hidden in her glove, causing him to bleed to death.  One by one, Mystique, by hook or crook, murders the X-Men.  At the time of this issue’s original publication, however, any long time reader of Uncanny X-Men knew that something didn’t seem right about these X-Men that Mystique was so killing easily.

Mystique’s attack is merely a practice session, staged for the shape-shifting villainess by one of the Marvel Universe’s best illusionists/tricksters, Arcade.  Mystique and her Brother of Evil Mutants are preparing to launch another attack against the X-Men, and Arcade and his Murderworld are training camp.

Meanwhile, the real Kitty Pryde is having difficulty accepting the new Storm – with her Mohawk and leather gear.  Professor X, Cyclops, and his brother Havok are left behind as Xavier’s lover, Lilandra, and, Corsair, father of Cyclops and Havok, depart Earth and travel across space to fight a galactic war.  By the end of this story (entitled “Sanction”), the Brotherhood launches its attack just as Colossus, Kitty, Nightcrawler, and his date Amanda, are preparing for a night out at the ballet.

For all the soap opera melodrama, the drawing card of this issue is the art team of John Romita, Jr. providing pencils and his famous father, John Romita, Sr. on inks.  It’s an awkward union, as the son is trying to transition from staying close to the style of the artist who preceded him on Uncanny, Paul Smith, and introduce his own style, which was, at the time, close to Frank Miller’s.  Romita, Sr. was already considered a great artist by the time this comic was published.  Romita, Jr. was still building his rep, and up to that point, he hadn’t done anything that would mark him as being on the road to greatness.  That would change… of course.

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