First Appearance: Porter Mack, Lucifer Robots

Villain: Lucifer, the Supreme One, Lucifer Robots

Guest Appearance: Porter Mack

Innovations: Buchanan's Bluff

Gadgets & Technology: Dominus

As the X-Men streak towards Lucifer's home base, they see a beam of light cascading down through the night sky towards a butte. They have no idea what it portends, but estimate they will find out when dawn breaks. From a distance on the ground, a group of cowboys led by dude ranch head honcho Porter Mack spot the same phenomenon and head out to Buchanan's Butte to investigate.

Xavier lands the plane near the butte, after spotting an underground river flowing under the land formation. They descend to the river so the X-Men can gain entry into Lucifer's lair without detection. As Xavier bids adieu to his teenage students, Porter Mack and his boys have come onto the scene and recognize the X-Men as being wanted "back East!" They open fire, and it takes a little doing, but the combined efforts of the mutants drive Mack's minions away. Mack himself is set up on his horse with a block of ice around his chest and arms and sent riding back home.

Iceman creates a floating ice berg that they use to ride the current into the underground cave under Buchanan's Butte. They reach a giant whirlpool that starts to drag them down. Meanwhile, up on the surface, Xavier is attacked by a couple of Lucifer's robots that are immune to his psychic powers. They bind him mwith a metal band and take him down to Lucifer, who walks the floors of a giant chamber holding a super-computer called Dominus.

Marvel Girl, Cyclops and Angel make it out of the whirlpool, but as soon as they are on dry land, a giant transparent cage springs up around them. The Beast and Iceman are attacked by a couple of Lucifer's robots, but the duo make it past them and barrel down a corridor in Lucifer's hideout. Unfortunately for them, they run smack into a giant metal wall that drops down in front of them. Lucifer, watching on a monitor, cackles in delight over Xavier.

He explains to Xavier how his race created Dominus and the robots to make it work. Eons before Earth was even a sustainable planet, his alien race had landed on Earth and set the stage for the domination of whatever organism would rise up to take control of it. Now that Earth has developed with its large population, Dominus was sent to reduce its inhabitants to servitude.

As the Professor steels himself for waging the battle he has known was coming for years, the Beast and Iceman are joined with their teammates in the transparent cage. Once they are left alone in the room with but a sole robot guarding them, Marvel Girl uses her powers to set the lever to open the cage door and Cyclops blasts their robot guard. This sets off an alarm that alerts Lucifer, who sends more robots out after them. But the X-Men make it to the Dominus chamber, where they see Professor Xavier sitting docilely in his chair, seemingly under the command of Lucifer. But at the same time, they receive mental messages, purportedly from the professor, warning them not to damage Dominus. The team is unsure if it is a trap set by Lucifer, since the whole situation seems so strange.

Lucifer bellows that with Dominus, he will take over the planet, and Angel decides to wait no longer and rushes skyward to destroy the computer, but Cyclops, much to the astonishment of his team, knocks him down with an optic blast. Iceman tries to destroy Dominus, but Cyke blocks him, too, then warns everybody to quit fighting amongst each other and work together. The Ultra-Robots swoop down to stop the X-Men. There are only five left, and one by one, the X-Men destroy them.

The Supreme One pipes in over a huge monitor, demanding to know why the robot signals have ceased beaming back data to the home planet. Once he finds out what has gone wrong, the Supreme One banishes "Agent One" Lucifer to some nameless dimension, and then retracts all the machinery of Dominus with a giant tractor beam from Earth. Without the robots to make Dominus work, it is useless. Professor X explains to the X-Men that Dominus was not capable of being destroyed, only the robots were, so that is where he wanted them to focus their powers.

--synopsis and panel images by Gormuu