Coming home after a long absense.
When the Starjammers and the X-Men join forces
to return the Shi'ar Throne back to its rightful leader, they're guided by her mysterious warlord - who reveals himself to be Professor Charles Xavier.
When Magneto was on trial for crimes against humanity, the courtroom was attacked by the twin children of Baron Strucker, looking for revenge. They were defeated, but Professor X was mortally wounded during the battle. In one of the deus ex machina moments of all time, Lilandra and Corsair showed up to rescue him, but that required he leave Earth. That was in 1985's Uncanny X-Men #200, and the X-Men wouldn't see Xavier again until #275 in 1991, six full years away. Even when he was literally dead for real (killed by Cyclops in AvX #11) he wasn't out of the books for six years! Chris Claremont definitely wasn't afraid of change.
"Warlord" (it was never a codename, just a title, so it's the equivalent of calling him "general") was able to be revealed as
Professor X because he wore this large, ornate helmet. We'd love to know what was in the air circa 1990, since both Xavier and Stryfe were given this same kind of helmet around the same time; there has to be some common ancestor that both Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee saw around that time that influenced them to both create versions of the same thing, right? The Shi'ar helmet looks like a halfway step between the way Liefeld drew Stryfe (curved panel covering everything from the lips up) and the way later artists would (shorter, layered panels on the sides). Wonder if the appearance of this influenced that?
Moving down from the head, Charlie also gets a new piece that combines his cape and armored collar into one. On the cover of UXM #275,
the cape was purple and the helmet was gold, but that was just a choice made to help the figure stand out visually - he appears right in the center of page one inside the comic, and there the cape is blue and the helmet is silver, just like this toy. Hasbro could absolutely do a second version of this, exclusive to a different store or perhaps in a multi-pack, that gave him the cover colors instead. We are, after all, talking about the company that did both black and white versions of Storm's 90s costume, so there's precedent. The choice to paint some metallic blue highlights on the armor here probably would have worked out better if they hadn't skimped and restricted that paint to the front of the toy.
The figure uses the medium superarticulated body, which is not one used for any Xaviers before, but that's okay - yes, normally we say that all versions of a given character should be the same size, but it's an established fact that a standard Shi'ar medical technique is "put his mind in a new, cloned body," so between that and the fact he's running around having action battles instead of just sitting back and directing everyone else, it's perfectly acceptable that he might be slightly bigger than before.
The figure has no accessories, but he does get alternate fists and
an alternate head. Naturally, it would have been better if the helmet were simply a removable piece rather than needing to do a separate head to show him unmasked, but so it goes. This head has the same style as the ones meant for "Legendary Riders" Prof. X, meaning it's slightly cartoonish without actually using the animation models. It's a new expression, too, with one eyebrow cocked and a big, slightly creepy, grin.
I honestly wasn't too worried about getting a Professor X to go with the rest of the "Strike Force" figures; the team seemed complete enough without him, so it wasn't a high priority. Even when he was announced as part of one of those Walmart Collector Con events, I still didn't feel the urge to get him. And yet, when he went up for preorder, I bought in. Why? What's wrong with me? Why am I such an easy mark? "Oh, a second head? Yeah, sign me up!" The figure's good, and I'm not upset that I got him, but he's still not what you'd call "necessary."
-- 09/02/24
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