This morning I set about the task of assembling the team to lead the assault on the Shadow King in the Astral Plane. As you may be aware, that fiend has been causing no end of problems for both my X-Men and Scarlet Witch's new team, the X-Hibitionists.

Selecting the right team is a very important and often overlooked, or at least rushed, process. An efficient team must be well-balanced. This means there must be members who can fill the need of great physical strength, stealth, flight, long range attack, melee and of course, perhaps the most important of all, leadership.

The original leader of the X-Men was Cyclops. He turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I didn't really have much choice when I appointed him though. I mean, look what my options were. There was a superficial ladies-man playboy millionaire, a bounding nerdy bookworm who made every effort to fill the role of comic relief, an immature young boy, and a girl. Obviously I had to choose Cyclops. I had hoped he would eventually grow into the job. Rise to the station, as it were. Ah well.

In retrospect, I probably should have made Jean Grey the leader back then. But I was a product of my times and it never occurred to me to let a girl lead. Eventually I chose Storm to take over the X-Men. We have all seen how that turned out. She is unreliable, at least until this affair with the Shadow King is resolved. I suppose I shall have to assume leadership of this mission myself. At least on the Astral Plane I won't be hampered with my wheelchair.

The only real misgiving that I have about this mission is that I am forced to take Magneto along with me. I don't trust him to remain unsupervised back at the mansion. But because I don't trust him, I don't want to go on a combat mission with him. I went downstairs to the kitchen to see if I could talk him into leaving for Avalon to rejoin his Brotherhood before we took off. I found him deep in conversation with Emma Frost.

"The thing that I just don't understand about Pyro," Magneto was saying, "is how on Earth anyone can extol the Nazis."

"Would you please give it a rest already?" Emma said with exasperation. "The only thing that I hate more than Nazis is people who won't stop talking about Nazis. Yes, it was terrible. Move on."

"How can you possibly say that?" Magneto demanded, ire in his voice. "The Nazi movement and all that came out of it, World War II, the Holocaust, they were events of such magnitude that they had huge destructive impact on the lives of millions and millions of people."

"There have been other tragedies in the world, you know," Emma said.

"You - you have no idea what you are talking about," Magneto replied, standing to his feet. Without another word he turned away and stormed off. Obviously, this would have been a bad moment to confront him. I suppose I will be stuck with him when we enter the Astral Plane.