Thoughts

The Dark Phoenix storyline is hotting up here. Both in terms of plot, and the art. Byrne seems to be having a great time drawing a sexy, evil red head, while Claremont is clearly taken with the story of how she might reach the point she embraces the corruption.

Both images and story are pretty iconic these days – and an interesting illustration of how popular culture feeding on itself can create great new concepts. Claremont has spoken before how watching late night cult TV programmes helped feed his ideas, and “The Avengers” episode “A Touch Of Brimstone” clearly feeds into the visuals and tone of the story.

Not the Marvel comics Avengers, but ITC’s British action-adventure series. Where The Hellfire Club are presented as a corrupt, bacchanal organisation of powerful men. Avenger hero Emma Peel goes undercover in the organisation dressed as “The Queen Of Sin” in an outfit that helps inspire the Black Queen’s. Interestingly, the outfit she wore was designed by the actress Diana Rigg to ensure she was happy with it.

The inspirations don’t stop there. The comic’s main Hellfire villain Jason Wyngarde is an obvious homage to the actor Peter Wyngarde (who appears in the episode) but particularly his look in another ITC series Jason King.

The thing is, I don’t raise any of this to cry foul. To try and argue being able to spot the inspiration somehow weakens the imaginative power of the story. Because I think this shows that taking from popular culture in this way to create new popular culture is a valiud form of creativity. Which in this case helped forge an iconic storyline.

Fun Panel

There’s something amiss on the front cover. Banshee’s gone from the logo. It signifies that he’s coming off the team and pretty much disappearing from the title. Even though none of that has been confirmed within the plot yet.

It’s been striking that Banshee’s injury, sustained over a year ago from the point of view of the reader, is a plot line that’s run through their recent adventures. He’s been on the team, even if he’s lost his power. It never becomes the main storyline, but its always there in the background. Both Banshee and the readers coming to terms with the idea his powers might not be coming back. With this logo, eagle-eyed readers would have spotted early where this was going.

None More Claremont

“Neo-mutant” is a term that’s bandied about in these issues. It lasts a little while but never quite catches on.

It was a Product of its Time

Dazzler! ‘Nuff said.

Well, there’s a lot that can be said. While the last issue was to introduce Kitty Pryde who would soon join the X-men and have an immediate positive impact, the character of Dazzler that has her first appearance here was to struggle to find a place in comics.

That’s not really that surprising as she’s pretty much a corporate creation – designed to be Marvel’s disco superhero that would appear on actual disco records she was to first appear in the X-men (and subsequently in issues of Spider-man and Fantastic Four) to help build a buzz. With the details of “Dazzler” the pop star that would appear on the actual disco records yet to be finalised, these appearances are strikingly inconsistent when it comes to her personality and even powers.

Instead of finalising that characteer and actually recording anything, the record compnay ditched the idea. After unsuccessfully trying to get other labels interested, Marvel decided to simply turn her into a character with her own comic.

By this time the Disco Boom was fizzling out and the comic trundled alongwith no great vision behind it. Notable issues see an early appearance of Rogue at her most boo hiss villainous.

I also remember that back-issue bins and boxes would be full of Dazzler comics when I was a kid getting into comics. And one issue’s cover instantly drew my attention. As a photo cover I found it genuinely intriguing, so much so I bought the issue! I guess that’s just another illustration of why comics – whether on the front cover or on ripping off Diana Rigg’s “Queen of Sin” know exactly how to sell comics to teenagers!