Thoughts

The X-men are back in Science-Fiction Epic Fantasy country with this Annual, and unfortunately it yet again doesn’t quite live up to quite how good that could be. Arkon is back for another appearance in an Annual and again he heralds an issue that feels stuffed with padding alongside a thin story. And this time there isn’t even COLUSSUS RIDING A SPACE DRAGON INTO BATTLE to rescue things.

More disappointing this feels like a new peak in Claremont’s habit of telling key moments of the story ‘off-panel’. Throughout this issue there are important story moments that would be great to see, but instead we have to make do with being told. Including the actual defeat of the issue’s Big Bad Badoon Brother Royal.

It’s a frustrating thing to keep being told stuff and not shown it. Given the constraints of page counts and publishing deadlines, I can understand it happening sometimes and can roll with it. But its so frequent in this issue that it ends up detracting from the enjoyment. Nightcrawler heroically saving Wolverine but nearly dying? Given everything thats been building with their relationship, I’d love to have seen that. Instead we just get this.

These narrative fill-ins also extend to convenient plot contrivances. Nightcrawler needs to explain how the Stargates can be destroyed. Luckily he conveniently asked a loads of questions about them earlier. No you didn’t see him do that. But he definitely did. As he tells us as he destroys them.

All of this would be a lot more forgivable if it was still helping to tell an interesting plot. But instead we get all of the cliches of lazy pulp epic sci-fi fantasy – daft psuedo-science, two dimensional aliens lusting after Earth women and convoluted exposition. And precious little of what makes it great – epic world-building, high concept ideas and, I appreciate I am harping on about this, HEROES RIDING SPACE DRAGONS INTO BATTLE.

Fun Panel

Ever wondered who would win in a fight, The Thing or Colossus? More important, ever wondered what the two would look like doing stretching exercises in a sauna while wearing underpants?

That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense

Another cliche of the genre that can work really well is melodramatic romance. It’s also an area that Claremont can successfully write in. Unfortunately he drops the ball here. Arkon and Storm’s romance seems to come out of nowhere and never once strikes me as credible. I’ve spent too much time with Storm by now, and especially got to know a lot about her character that the way she behaves in this issue makes no sense. If this is an issue where Storm falls in love, I want it to mean something. I want it to make sense given every development the character has had over all the previous issues. This has none of that.

Conversely I still know nothing of Arkon. He probably falls in love every five minutes, like a friend of Bertie Wooster transplanted to the world of Conan.

Any Googling

Another moment where the issue’s narration seems to drop a massive bombshell revelation, shorn of any context. Storm and the Black Panther shared a moment together! Really? I don’t recall that in any issues so far.

Even more crucially, if this development took place in another comic, this story doesn’t even bother to tell us where this event took place. It just adds to the frustration in this Tell, Don’t Show storytelling. This is far too big a revelation to drop in like this.

Googling reveals that the issue can be found in Marvel Team-Up 100, which is actually included in the Marvel omnibus I’m reading. It’s an all-too-brief back-up feature that doesn’t really have the time to explore the central conceit. Once again telling us, not showing us that the two adventured for a time together when younger. It’s nice to see a but more Claremont/Byrne, but it really does have the most astonishing mistake in the colouring – a white Afrikaner hurling racist abuse is shown on panel as a black South African. Which is regrettable.

It was a Product of its Time

The Fantastic Four appear in this Annual, classic sixties heroes that seems to being out classic sixties sexism in Claremont’s writing. Sue is either at home in the kitchen preparing food for the Fantastic Four, or shes a prisoner of an evil alien lizard being leched over. It’s such a contrast with what he’s doing, primarily with the supporting cast, in the main title that’s it becomes even more jarring.