Thoughts

An issue that introduces two characters that go on to be iconic for the X-Universe.

One of those – Emma Frost, The White Queen – doesn’t really acquire her iconic status till after the Claremont Run, outside the range of this blog.

But the other – Kitty Pryde – feels like an essential element of the whole era, and a genuinely original creation.

Going back to Spider-man Marvel has a history of creating very relatable heroes. Comic book starts whose personal live and very human travails form as essential as part of their story as the adventures their powers grant them.

In creating a teenage girl as such an identification figure is already breaking new ground. But rather than re-tell the Spider-man story by basing it on her family life and fitting heroics into day to day surbutbia, she’s a teen added to a team. The identification is not just “what would i do if i acquired powers” but also “what would happen if i was on a team with cool heroes”

It’s also striking going back to this issue how quickly her character is set up in only a fraction of the issue. There’s considerable ground to be covered returning the X-men to Xavier’s tutelage – and a great moment where Cyclops tries to explain to a truculent Xavier that this new team aren’t kids that can be moulded with demerits. It also introduces the Hellfire Club and the aforementioned White Queen, further hints at Phoenix: corruption before Kitty Pryde shows her face. And yet by the end of the issue, the reader already feels they know her. It’s brilliantly sharp writing from Claremont. And Byrne draws the very “normal” world she’s living in perfectly, making the upset of the superhero world breaking in all the more striking.

Fun Panel

A great cinematic frame of a panel.

That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense

The Knights of Hellfire make a huge, showy attack on a cafe. Which makes a nice action sequence – and a front cover. Makes absolutely no sense when it comes to Hellfire’s plan to capture the X-men. They could have just had The White Queen knock them all out from the outset.

None More Claremont

“Chicago — the windy city, celebrated in verse by Sandburg, in song by Sinatra. Home of the World’s tallest building and — so they say — best pizza.”

Another very Claremontian piece of scene setting.

It was a Product of its Time

Penthouse Wolverine? You are the most Seventies of men.

Mutant Mailbag Mayhem

Absolutely cracking discussion in this letters page – with Margaret O’Connell from Princeton attacking comics for treating evil for its entertainment value, shorn of real consequences. With the editorial response building a pretty strong defence against the accusation. With both sides raising Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’. You don’t get this from Marvel’s Social Media content these days!