I polished off
X-Men Epic Collection vol. 6: Proteus by reading
X-Men #123-128, Marvel Team-Up #89, and X-Men Annual #3. I think I've only read the Annual once before, and I'm not sure that I've read the issue of MTU before. I've read all the issues of X-Men multiple times, but it's actually been a few years, so there were a few things (particularly in #125) that I'd forgotten.
X-Men #123-124 is the Arcade two-parter. Great elements here are the action sequences, a classic villain facing the X-Men for the first time, Colossus's short-lived brainwashed turn as the Proletarian, and the return albeit in a small role of Amanda Sefton. Colossus's susceptibility to brainwashing are a result of his homesickness, and it's the culmination of the subplot of Piotr off his game. The cons are that it doesn't make sense that Arcade would release the X-Men just for sort of winning his game when he has a contract to kill them, that I don't know why Black Tom and Juggernaut hired Arcade to kill the X-Men, and the ongoing plotholes from Claremont and Byrne keeping the team separated from Jean and others. Scott tells his date Colleen Wing that he's been trying but failing to get in contact with Jean's family. You'd think he'd be more persistent since they just live upstate. But the implication is that it's for a death notification, so Colleen knows Jean is presumed dead by the X-Men. Except Misty Knight saw Jean after her supposed death date, and Colleen and Misty are business partners. Don't these folks ever talk?
A couple of things seem No-Prize worthy, but have explanations. First, Arcade seems to know that Storm suffers from claustrophobia. But of course, Arcade was hired by Black Tom & Juggs, and they were present for Storm's Cassidy Keep freakout. Also, robot Col Alexei Vashin of the KGB appears before the real Vashin has ever appeared. I'm guessing Arcade has info on intelligence agencies and decided it would be good for the brainwashing to model the robot after a real KGB official.
Visually a nice highlight of the story is Nightcrawler using his power to disappear into shadows. That power seemed later to fall rapidly out of use.
The MTU story is mostly forgettable. It features cameos by Arcade and Ms. Locke, but the main villain is underwhelming. The story was actually published months after its placement here, so the placement is probably because this had to come after the Arcade story but was better not forced into some hard to find space amidst the Proteus and Hellfire Club arcs.
X-Men Annual #3 was the first non-reprint X-Men Annual. This is the X-Men versus Arkon. The TPB include the inked cover art showing that there were more of warriors on the cover as drawn, but somehow they got wiped out in a color separations/printing error. The story is a bit of a mess because it requires Arkon starting a fight, when if he just talked to the X-Men he could've gotten their cooperation and ended the story in like 4 pages. Although Claremont's wrote the story, for some reason the script feels like it's not the regular writer for teh series. As great as George Perez is, his renditions of the characters are not as vibrant as Byrne's.
Then again, Byrne's renditions are like the platonic ideals of all these characters. His Phoenix, his Nightcrawler, his Colossus, everytime he has Cyclops and Wolverine face: they're all brilliant during the four-part Proteus arc. I left Storm out, because maybe his version doesn't feel as far ahead of some other versions compared to other members of the team.
Uncanny X-Men #125 is a crucial issue. It's just the warm-up of the Proteus story before the action gets into full swing, but it does a lot of clean-up work. For one, when Beast stumbles upon the X-Men in the mansion, it finally ends the mistaken belief by the two groups that each other is dead. For another, we get the start of the explanation that Scott has been repressing his grief about Jean, making more sense of his oddly muted reaction. But most importantly, we get some clarity to the story of Phoenix/Jean. After saving the whole universe, Jean's has been surprisingly less effective against less fantastic threats. After first theorizing that her actions in the Shi'ar Empire had drained her, Moira's testing on Muir Island later reveal that Jean is unconsciously applying psychic circuit breakers to her powers. Also, in a couple of panels of Professor Xavier's musing on Lilandra's world, we get a clearer explanation of the M'Kraan Crystal then we did in the original story.
UXM #125 also really starts planting seeds for the Dark Phoenix Saga. Jason Wyngarde (still not explicitly revealed as Mastermind) reappears, and it's revealed that he's posed as various people on Jean's journeys to get into her head. We get hints that he's know her from her early days as a hero, he creates an illusion of the first appearance of the classic Black Queen look, and Jean starts having a time-displaced hallucinations.
There's so much I love about the Proteus arc. There's action, pathos, great character moments, reunions, interpersonal conflicts, triumph, and tragedy. Phoenix finally starts using her powers to a greater extent, which is probably a result of the manipulation by Wyngarde weakening those aforementioned psychic circuit breakers. We gets some great reality warping moments from Proteus, who trades the more Silver Age sounding named Mutant X for a better one. As a Cyclops fan and a fan of great fight choreography, I love the sequence in #127 where Cyclops tests the nerve of Wolverine, and to a lesser extent Kurt and Ororo, after Proteus put them through the ringer. It's nice that Havok and Polaris get in on the action, although their roles aren't as big as they could be. We also get some local color in the Outer Hebrides, Edinburgh, and other parts of Scotland. There's also some really tragic backstory for Moira, as we learn that Proteus is her son conceived in a brutal marital rape.
Beyond the emotional elements of the storytelling, we get great suspense and action sequences. Shaking off his recent doubts, Colossus gets to play the key role in defeating Proteus.
I feel like I want to push on to the Dark Phoenix Saga proper, but I might take a brief break to read something else.