"Beyond the Farthest Star"
This one begins in media res, but despite that and having a long flashback sequence, this is easier to understand than some past issues, because we stick to a single character and a single plot.
Wolverine is on the run, through an alien jungle. Shirtless and wild Wolverine, having hallucinations of life in Japan, while also being pursued by Brood hunters. Wolverine ends up trapped in a web, thought dead, outside of the Brood city, which is one of their gigantic Acanti living starships, crashed to earth and decaying. As the story progresses, we find that after arriving on the Brood world, the X-Men were under mind control, didn't see the Brood as they were, and thought everything was fine and that Logan was insane. Apparently, Wolverine's healing factor (which at the time, was a less-mentioned power) allowed him to reject the control by the Brood that the other X-Men succumbed to. At the end, Wolverine's body rejects the parasite, and he vows to save the other X-Men from that fate...even if it means killing them. It is pretty grim, but it is also separated from real world traumas, so we can read this as a fun adventure story. Especially with dialog like this:
"Behold, fools! Lilandra, majestrix Shi'ar, is no more! Long live the new empress! Me!"
Can comic characters
chew the scenery? Apparently they can.
Another thing to add in here is something I have noticed as a developing theme, ever since the first issue I reviewed: parasitism, in its different forms, seems to come up repeatedly in Chris Claremont's run, with two separate aliens based on Xenomorphs, the appearance of Dracula, Rogue' ability to steal powers, and of course, the Brood. The Phoenix Force is also a type of parasite, and Emma Frost's switching powers also count in a way. I also find it ironic because Chris Claremont, who is Jewish, used either the explicit idea of anti-Semitism, or metaphorical examples of it, throughout his run, and "parasites" was a common anti-Semitic trope. And while considering that heavy thought, on to the next adventure: