Thoughts

I know he gets a bit of stick for being a gimmicky villain – but I absolutely, unquestionably love Arcade. I think he’s one of my favourite super villains of all time.

And by that I mean this Arcade. The bow-tied, flare-wearing spoilt kid showman who has built a giant, ridiculously silly and outlandishly complicated Murderworld. An assassin who goes to the most absurd lengths, and gives his victims a chance to escape.

The best stories with the original Arcade don’t mess around when it comes to this scale and silliness. And this issue is no exception. From the outrageous kidnappings to the giant pinball of death to all the individual traps for the X-men this is non-stop fun.

Fun Panel

Another entry for my file of just great, inventive team shots…

And also a lovely, dynamic little scene with Spider-man.

Any Googling

This issue reveals that Arcade previous fought Spider-man alongside Captain Britain in an issue of Marvel Team-up. Indeed Google revealed that its part of a run on the Marvel Team-up title for Claremont and Byrne. Alongside Claremont its another related title I need to explore. Plus Byrne draws an absolutely fantastic Spider-man.

It was a Product of its Time

One of the striking things about modern film restoration, especially when it comes to films of early Hollywood is the extent to which modern restoration techniques mean you see the film in a better quality than pretty much anyone who went to see it on its original release. This does, however, have the odd consequence that revealing outfits on the women – part hidden by the projection techniques and even film print quality of the time – are now restored to sometimes quite shocking effect.

The same is true with these comic books. I owned a yellowing original copy of this title. I even had a slightly ropey reprint with this in. None of them have quite the obvious nipples that this full colour restoration reveals through Storm’s tight bathroom gown. (and depressingly, of course its Storm)

Mutant Mailbag Mayhem

Brenda Robnett’s thoughtful letter from Issue 117 gets a set of intelligent responses in this edition of X-mail. Before an editorial response as to why Phoenix had to be de-powered as she’d unbalance the team if she had God-like powers. I wonder how much of this response is a deliberate red herring, misleading the audience over what was coming? Or maybe the response came before they had definitely settled on it? Either way its interesting.