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Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol. 8

  • X-men issues 160-167, X-Men Annual #6

  • Illyana Rasputin is taken by the demon Belasco and is his prisoner in his dimension for 7 years while only moments pass on Earth. She was taken at 6 years old and returned as a 13 year-old 

  • Prof X lies in a coma after an attack by the alien species, the Brood

  • He dreams of the past when he visited a Holocaust survivor centre in Israel after his trip to Cairo and met Erik Lensherr and Gabrielle Haller

  • Erik Lensherr demonstrates his magnetic powers and drifts apart from Xavier due to their different ideals and feelings towards mankind. Xavier wakes

  • Deathbird, Lilandra’s sister, manages to capture her and the X-men aboard Lilandra’s ship, the Z’reee Shar, and hands them over to the Brood as she usurps leadership of the Shi'ar from Lilandra

  • The Brood transfer eggs into each of the X-men which will hatch and become Queens

  • Wolverine realizes they’ve all been infected 

  • He kills 3 Brood warrior-hunters and overcomes the Brood queen attempting to overtake him through his regenerative abilities. He realizes he might have to kill the others to spare them horrible fates

  • The Brood reveal they took the X-men for their mutant abilities

  • While experimenting on Carol Danvers, they realize she is not a mutant nor a regular human 

  • Logan kills the Brood experimenting on her and rescues her

  • Logan and Carol convene with Cyclops and Storm. While Cyclops, Logan, Carol, and Colossus search for Lilandra, Storm searches for Kitty and Nightcrawler to then get to Lilandra’s ship

  • Cyclops protests against Wolverine killing the Great Mother 

  • Carol finds Lilandra and suggests they retreat but Wolverine is determined to take down the Great Mother

  • Storm gets Kitty and Nightcrawler onto and into the ship

  • As Wolverine prepares to stab the Great Mother, he, Cyclops, Carol, Lilandra, and Colossus are transported onto the ship

  • As they attempt to leave the atmosphere of Broodworld, they are pursued by the Hunter-Master who is commanded to bring each of the X-men back unharmed, save Wolverine who is now expendable

  • A space battle ensues, Carol goes through a transformation becoming a being of hyper-intense energy and destroys the attacking Brood, and Kitty manages to fix the ship and enable it’s warp speed

  • Carol repowers the ship with her abilities after the warp drive goes inert again. She rechristens herself as Binary and has the powers of a star such as generating heat, light, radiation, and gravity. This is all thanks to the Brood performing evolutionary modification

  • Wolverine tells the X-men that they’ve all been infected. Carol flies off into space in a rage to pay the Brood back as well as look for Storm who also flew off in a spacejet

  • Down on Earth, Moira advises and urges Xavier into taking in a new Vietnamese mutant named Xi’an Coy Manh, a referral from Mr. Fantastic 

  • Storm is in transition from human to Brood and draws the natural power of a nearby star to expunge the parasite within but at the cost of her own life

  • Binary finds the Brood-controlled planet of Madrizar and obliterates all the Brood there

  • She runs into an astral form of Storm in space who has safely harbored the X-men inside an Acanti- a giant alien whale-like creature which the Brood use as ships

  • Instead of taking the fight to the Brood, Storm insists on saving the enslaved Acanti instead

  • The Acanti they are inside currently is a prophet-singer and is meant to be the next leader of all Acanti but that can only happen if the previous prophet singer’s soul is released (whose body is currently being used by the Brood) from the body after being consumed by a star

  • The original prophet-singer carries with it one soul embodying all Acanti and if this soul does not pass on, the race will not survive

  • Storm reveals the Acanti found her in space and bonded her physically and mentally to this Acanti infant to guide it and in return it healed her

  • The X-men create a diversion as they fly the Acanti infant into Broodworld and get the Brood to chase it while everyone except Storm and Carol teleport to the planet to find the soul

  • Carol destroys the Brood pursuers but is then overwhelmed

  • The Starjammers arrive to fend off the Brood in space while on the planet Cyclops has been slowly transforming into a Brood and been in contact with the Great Mother

  • Cyclops and some hunter-warriors overtake the X-men while Kitty who is elsewhere is rescued from the Brood by a small purple dragon 

  • The X-men get the upperhand on the Great Mother and take her hostage as they enter the skull of the prophet-singer where the soul resides

  • The X-men begin metamorphing as Wolverine is helpless to save them

  • Carol arrives and since her new energies are literally that of a star, she intensifies and carries the soul of the original prophet-singer to the infant, liberating the Acanti’s bond to the original whose body was just barely being kept functional by the Brood

  • The soul purifies the X-men of the Brood parasites and turns the Great Mother into crystal

  • The Starjammers pick the X-men up as Broodworld explodes from the force of Carol transporting the soul

  • Storm gets her physical body back and everyone celebrates but the mood is tainted when the X-men realize the Great Mother had someone else infected- Professor X

  • The X-men rush back to Xavier Institute where they barge in and get into a fracas with the New Mutants

  • They are too late as Xavier is overtaken by a young Brood queen but temporarily regains his mind after Storm and Carol attack it

  • He asks the X-men to kill him but they take him to Lilandra’s ship where his consciousness is transferred to a clone body

  • He places Kitty Pryde in the New Mutants

  • THE EVENTS OF GOD LOVES, MAN KILLS TAKE PLACE

  • Having been under Dracula’s control before, Storm is involved with him again when he mentally summons her to obtain the Montesi formula from the Darkhold before his daughter Lilith does who wants to kill him by reading the formula

  • A showdown happens at Pendarrow castle in England where a possessed Kitty (by Lilith) obtains the book and reads the formula making Dracula vulnerable and is speared through the heart by Rachel Van Helsing

  • Van Helsing, who was turned into a vampire by Dracula, asks Wolverine to mercy-kill her with a stake which he does. Before she dies, she tells the X-men that Dracula must be beheaded to stay dead but they miss the opportunity when Pendarrow collapses

  • With Dracula temporarily disposed of, Lilith releases her hold on Kitty and Colossus (who aided her) and tells Storm she is free of Dracula’s influence forever