What would a superhero wedding be without a skippable anthology one-shot?  Not that this lead-in to the wedding of Peter and Kitty is that bad, though it certainly features some very odd choices; but its very status as an ancillary set-up to a story in a fortnightly comic makes it completist fodder.

There are three stories here – a bachelor party for Peter and a hen night for Kitty, plus an opening story written by Chris Claremont.  “The Dream Before” is presumably here to provide the link with X-Men tradition, and to endorse the marriage as part of a long and storied history.  It’s very Claremont indeed, with narrative captions in quantities that would have seemed heavy even at his peak, but “very Claremont indeed” is precisely what the remit calls for.

There isn’t really a plot; it’s mainly Kitty reflecting on her history, going to a bar where she knows people, wavering a bit, and then committing to the idea that she should strike out and more forward in life by getting married.  A cynic might question whether marrying off Kitty and Peter really constitutes moving forward, but Claremont certainly appears to be knuckling down to sell the idea.

At the same time, about half the story is a recap of Kitty’s history from the eighties X-Men run.  Todd Nauck and Rachelle Rosenberg re-create this stuff rather well, and it’s got a certain charm as an old-school recap story.  It’s the sort of thing where characters actually bother to explain what a mutant is, because any comic, even this one, might conceivably be somebody’s first.  That said, what’s kind of striking about Claremont’s recap is that Peter is barely in it – he merits two panels, and one of those is a flashback to the break-up after Secret Wars.  It doesn’t exactly come across as if they’re destined to be together.

The second half of the story brings in some odder references, almost as if Claremont is trying to reference the backstory that Kitty would have had by this point, if only he’d continued writing her.  He may not have much to say about Peter, but Claremont would certain like to remind us of Alasdhair Kinross, her love interest from the 1999 miniseries X-Men: True Friends.  Then we get a trip to the Belles of Hell, a bar in Chicago where Kitty is supposed to be a beloved regular (despite the fact that she’s barely lived in Chicago since being old enough to drink).  This is an idea which Claremont tried to establish in 2002’s X-Men Unlimited #36 and which, as far as I can see, only ever cropped up again in the same year’s Mekanix miniseries.  It’s a weird idea to bring in, a concept from sixteen years ago that didn’t take – but then, it represented Claremont’s vision of how to age Kitty into adulthood, I guess.

Near the end, some ghosts show up out of nowhere to tell Kitty to embrace the scary step of marriage, although since one of them is Wolverine, I guess she’s just hallucinating for no reason.  It’s all quite odd – the text is cheerleading for the upcoming marriage, but the subtext seems to have very different ideas about what would make an interesting Kitty Pryde story.

“Boys’ Night Out” is the bachelor party, and it has the feel of editorial mandate.  It’s written by Marc Guggenheim, who’s the regular writer for X-Men Gold, and it’s got art by Greg Land in one of his less annoying efforts, so it’s not as if Marvel have roped in whoever’s passing.  But Guggenheim is already doing a bachelor party scene in X-Men Gold #26, so this comes across as an exercise in killing time to round out the issue’s “two parties” theme.  The plot – very vaguely – is that Peter, Kurt, Bobby, Remy and the new Pyro go to Vegas and get attacked by a demon who’s really annoyed about getting beaten up during Secret Empire, but they win, the end.

Quite why there’s now a casino in Las Vegas run by demons, and everyone is just fine with that, isn’t really explained.  It comes from the Damnation mini-event, which was the magical reset button that restored Las Vegas after Secret Empire.  The concept is actually pretty neat – I quite like the idea that the Marvel Universe Las Vegas would feature something as utterly absurd as that – but it feels like it needs a bit of set-up if you’re going to randomly bring it into an X-Men comic.  There’s a cute idea about the rampaging demon chafing at his new role in customer services, but it’s not a story.  And Kurt feels weirdly out of character here – I just don’t buy him being as enthusiastic about Vegas as he is here.  I think he’d be too conscious of the dark side of the place to find it fun.

Anyway, it’s a random fight plus some character marking time while they wait for their scene in X-Men Gold #26, and it’s pretty weak.

“Something Old”, by Kelly Thompson, Marika Cresta and Federico Blee, is Kitty’s hen night, and it’s the strongest of these three, but still with its problems.  Kitty gets dragged to something called “Stripperoke”, which is apparently karaoke with added strippers, and yes, it’s a real thing.  It certainly sounds stupid enough for somebody to suggest it for a hen night, though it doesn’t ring true for it to be Storm’s idea.  Still, there are some nice character beats here, the art is pretty (if a little awkward at times), and Rogue gets a little speech which doubles as an epilogue to her recent mini, encouraging Kitty to be happy with Peter while she can.

And then Callisto, of all people, shows up to yell at Kitty not to hurt Peter.  This feels a bit out of the blue; Callisto was in love with Colossus for a while, but that was during the post-Siege Perilous stuff in the late 80s, when she looked like a model and he was an amnesiac painter, and I can’t remember the last time anyone mentioned it.  So it feels a bit odd, to put it mildly, for Callisto to feel this strongly about it all of a sudden.  Perhaps this is one that works better if you don’t know the context and fill in the blanks for yourself, rather than being aware of how remote this piece of history is.

Overall, there’s at least some curiosity value here for the completists who pick it up, but it’s more of an oddity than anything else.