It isn’t every day that the world’s most powerful mutant gets to take it easy and enjoy a train ride through a classical European countryside. It also isn’t every day that the train ride happens to be in the dead of night and the European countryside is the moonlit expanse of Transylvania with said mutant in search of a mysterious body-snatching witch. For Nate Grey, the battle to save a single boy led him into the heart of a perfectly spooky Halloween adventure.
1997’s X-Man: All Saints’ Day (by Ben Raab, and Terry and Rachel Dodson) is a one-shot story that pits Nate Grey, a.k.a. X-Man, against a foe of classic horror proportions. With no team members to back him up, and no one even knowing where he went, Nate’s mission is one of the more dangerous ones he’s ever embarked on. But a hero never backs down from danger and Nate absolutely proved his mettle as a member of the X-Men when he put his life on the line for a complete stranger.
The story begins with Nate hanging out in the streets of Greenwich Village during Halloween. A simple night of entertaining kids takes a very emotional turn for Nate when he meets Jerome, a young boy confined to a wheelchair. Jerome tells Nate that even though he’s sick, he should be getting better soon. Nate senses otherwise and an intense feeling of responsibility hits him. He becomes angry at Jerome’s fate, something the young boy doesn’t deserve, and he vows to find a means to cure him.
A rumor reaches Nate, a rumor that a woman deep within Transylvania holds the key to saving Jerome. Without thinking twice, Nate travels alone into Europe in search of the woman. What he finds is a massive castle populated only by two extraordinarily bizarre men and a woman with strikingly green skin. The woman is none other than Absynthia, the owner of the castle and the very woman Nate was searching for.
But his quest to save Jerome turns south when Absynthia reveals herself to be an immortal, a woman cursed with undeath since the year 1810. Absynthia swore revenge against the man that cursed her, the villain Diablo, and had ever since fought to create a means to kill him, becoming a villain herself in the process. She explains to Nate that she had taken to kidnapping innocent people and turning them intro mindless thralls. Nate manages to defeat Absynthia and her servants, but leaves the battle without a cure for Jerome.
X-Man: All Saints’ Day is a unique story for a number of reasons. It focuses on a singular member of the X-Men and doesn’t involve multiple characters or cross-over into separate arcs. All Saints’ Day also foregoes the more convoluted plotlines that were commonplace for mutant-led comics in the 90’s. There’s nary a trace of time-travel, genetic clones, double-crossing fake identities, or three-way love triangles in the story. It’s simply a single hero trying to save the life of a small boy.
And that’s where All Saints’ Day shines, albeit in a bittersweet way: Nate fails in his mission. For all of his hard work and the danger that he faced, Nate was unable to find a cure for Jerome. It hurts Nate tremendously to know that a young boy, through no fault of his own, will never be able to enjoy the full life he deserves. Rather than wallowing in depression over the injustice of it all, Nate continues to be friends with Jerome, making his remaining time on Earth fun and worthwhile.
It isn’t often superheroes fail in such a manner, but that’s the reality of their calling. Not everyone can be saved and learning how to live with that knowledge is as hard, if not harder, than the acts of being a superhero. Nate didn’t have to put his life on the line for a random kid he met on the street, but he did. He didn’t have to step up and give his time to a total stranger. It’s a fine display of Nate Grey’s heroism and a moment that would make his parents proud of him.