"The Goldilocks Syndrome (Or: Who's Been Sleeping in My Head)"
The X-Men return from space, after last issue's victory and revelation that one of The Brood parasites was still gestating in Professor Xavier. And on the cover, we have Cyclops carrying what appears to be the body of Professor X, while the other X-Men look downcast. Could it be, Not a Hoax! Not a Dream! This Issue an X-Man Dies!? As we find in our first panels the X-Men rushing the mansion, meeting and fighting the New Mutants for the first time, as superhero teams are wont to do. In the middle of this, Professor X finishes his transformation into a Brood. a process that is usually irreversible. But, you might say, "I have been consuming X-Men media for several decades, how did Professor X die in 1983." Well, apparently, there were some "tissue samples" onboard the Starjammers vessel (and also here I have to admit: I imagined Sikorsky, the alien doctor dragonfly searching the Professor's old quarters with a black light), and they created a clone, and then psychically transferred the Professor's mind (that was still fighting inside the Brood!Professor) into the clone, and also this time he could walk, but not very well. So actually, since 1983, the Professor has been a clone. Which actually is less complicated than the average X-Man, who is a time travelling clone from an alternative dimension, and probably also their own grandfather.
Also, on one page, Professor X's girlfriend, the Empress Lilandra, transports into the Baxter Building and wakes a sleeping Mister Fantastic to threaten him for saving the life of Galactus, which would be the prelude for a famous Fantastic Four story.
Okay, so after playing it straight with my reviews, I had fun with this one. I was a little bit disappointed in this issue, to be honest. Maybe at the time, Professor X dying and then being revived as a clone in a dozen age was still a dramatic move, but as mentioned, killing off and bring back X-Men using some version of cloning/mental transfer/time travel/dimensional equivalent got to be quite cliched. But beyond that, I thought that we had already dealt with this, six months ago, when Professor X's flashback to being a psychiatrist working with victims of nazi Germany gave him the mental fortitude to defeat the Brood? So, as with much of this story, there is a bit of a poor choice of pacing, as a revived story is brought back for reasons I don't quite understand, especially after a Double-Sized Issue! that already had its share of plot twists.
On the other hand, we do see Susan Richards backside in bed, so that is a treat.