Picking up right where last issue left off, Sauron
holds the unconscious Storm, while promising that the rest of the X-Men will
die next! This prompts Wolverine to attack Sauron, despite Cyclops’ warnings.
Wolverine ends up getting hypnotized by Sauron, making the rest of the X-Men
look like horrifying monsters and prompting him to lunge for them instead!
Cyclops is forced to blast Wolverine, before sending Banshee into the air after
Sauron, while Nightcrawler stays behind to check on Wolverine and Storm. When
he tries to awaken Wolverine, Wolverine suddenly sucker punches Kurt, the
hypnotism still in full effect. Wolverine then witnesses what he thinks is a
monster attacking Jean, when it’s actually Cyclops blasting Sauron. Cyke
narrowly avoids getting gutted by Wolverine, before being forced to blast him
once again.
Sauron applauds Cyclops for doing his work for him,
before Cyclops and Banshee both blast Sauron from either side. Weakened from
the double team, Sauron spots the recently arrived Colossus attending to Storm
and swoops down, grabbing Pete so as to absorb his energy. However, when
Colossus switches to his armored form, the power surge is too much for Sauron,
who gets knocked for a loop and reverts back to his more agreeable Karl Lykos
persona. Wolverine is still ready to shish-kebab Lykos, when he is stopped by
the arrival of Ka-Zar and his pet tiger, Zabu. Ka-Zar reveals that he had been
looking for the X-Men, after hearing that they were in the area, as he needs
their help with something dire!
Once back in more comfortable environs, Lykos explains
how after falling from a snowy cliff at the end of their last encounter, he
eventually ended up in the Savage Land. After months of surviving in the
strange land, he happened upon an even stranger ritual taking place. A woman
named Zaladane brings forth a captured man named Kirk Marston and performs a
ritual, turning the man into Garokk, the physical embodiment of their sun god.
She explains that their land has been perverted and overtaken by unwanted invaders
and Garokk swears to take back the land for he and his chosen people. Lykos
eventually found Ka-Zar and they fought back, knowing that Garokk boded ill for
the Savage Land’s future, but they were overrun.
Ka-Zar has then decided to ask for the X-Men’s help in
defeating Garokk and taking the Savage Land back. While Wolverine and Banshee
are initially down to help, Cyclops tells Ka-Zar that they can’t. He reasons
that if they survived the volcano (from UXM #113), then Magneto may have too,
and if so, that he’s likely heading for the Professor. Cyclops decides that
their first priority should be getting home, to Wolverine’s frustration, as he feels like they’re running again. Nevertheless, Ka-Zar escorts the X-Men to
where they can exit the Savage Land, where they find a huge snowfall, to
Ka-Zar’s confusion. Storm reveals that Garokk must be upsetting the ecological
balance of the area, so that the Savage Land will soon be just as cold and
snowy as the rest of Antarctica, spelling doom for the Savage Land!