This story introduces Reverend William Stryker, a bigoted televangelist who preaches that mutants are abominations against God, or whatever bullshit excuse he comes up with. He leads a group called the Purifiers, who stoke anti-mutant sentiment, and even directly kill mutants and string them up with signs saying "Muties" hanging on them. (Magneto finds a pair like this, you can imagine this did not go over well with him). He goes on TV after hearing back from some of his followers and hints heavily he is about to destroy the X-Men.
At this point we jump to Stevie Hunter's dance studio, where Kitty has gotten into a fight with another student for saying some anti-mutant nastiness. They get into it a bit, and Piotr, Illyana, and Stevie break it up, and the other student calls Kitty a mutie-lover and leaves. Stevie tells her to just ignore it, because it's just words. Kitty asks her if she would be so magnanimous if he had called her a n*****-lover instead. Except you know, she says it uncensored. I get the point she is trying to make, and the point is not wrong (even if I don't like how she made it), but that is definitely a sign of the time there that that made it to print, and it definitely is jarring to read nowadays.
Anyway, Stryker debates Xavier on TV, who has been accompanied to the station by Scott and Ororo. After they leave, they are attacked by purifiers who capture them all and fake their deaths by exploding the car with some bodies in it.
Next we split up into two groups. Group 1 is Illyana and Kitty at the X-Mansion mourning the deaths of their three friends. During a walk around the grounds they find a weird scanning device. Through a few scenes, we end up with Illyana captured, and Kitty locked in the trunk (she attempted to phase in to follow Illyana, but then got gassed. Seriously who gas-boobytraps their trunk?)
Group 2 is Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus, who investigate the scene of the crash. Wolverine tells them that it wasn't an accident, and that that wasn't them in the car. Nightcrawler finds that they are being watched. When they are attacked, Magneto pops up to say "fuck your shit" and stop the Purifiers by himself.
Back with Stryker and the captured X-Men, it turns out he is using Scott and Ororo's suffering to attempt to brainwash Xavier, who he is going to power up and then use to kill all mutants in the entire world all at once. He also explains the reason for both his hatred, and his hardcore conversion to faith: When he was in the military, he was driving his pregnant wife and was in a car accident. He had to help her give birth to their son on the side of the road. Turns out his son was visibly a mutant. He then killed his son for being a mutant, then his wife for birthing him, and put them both in the car and set it on fire. Yeah, he's a nutjob. Anyway he manages to get Xavier to "kill" Scott and Ororo, but it turns out that they are just pushed to near death.
Jumping to Kitty, she manages to escape, get attacked by Purifiers and then is saved, again it is Magneto doing the saving.
The X-Men and Magneto rescue Storm and Cyclops, plus Magik who was with them, and then Magneto shocks them back awake.
We finish with a whole bunch of tussling, rescuing Xavier before he plus the machines can kill all mutants, and then confronting Stryker on live television. They don't fight him. Instead they just talk. Sharing their beliefs on mutants and humans working together for peace.
Stryker pulls a gun on Kitty and then a police officer in the crowd shoots him before he can fire. Everyone then goes their separate ways. On television later they learn that Stryker's reputation is in the gutter after everyone saw him try to shoot a teen girl on live TV. But as we know... that won't be the end of it.
X-Tra Notes: Ok, this one is a big big big deal among X-Fans. And I do understand where they are coming from. There is a lot to like about the issue. The use of human bigots as the main villains. Confronting him with words rather than just attacking him. Magneto on the side of the good guys for the first time. BUT, I will say for all that there is to like about this comic, I also feel it has some weaknesses. It definitely feels very dated, and is in some ways a bit too preachy for my tastes. That said, overall I still think this is a good distillation of what I think X-Men SHOULD be.
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