The X Marathon

Thoughts

When Paul McCartney delivered one of his unashamedly populist catchy crowdpleasers to the Beatles, John Lennon would dismiss it as his granny s**t music. It wasn’t satirising or sneering at this stuff. It just wanted to please.

Issues like this strike me as being Claremont’s granny music. The sort of stuff that comic fans who want to be seen into edgy and gritty stuff would vocally hate. The stuff that doesn’t have any satirical agenda, nor meta double meaning. It recognises that comics have a history of being silly and twee and embraces it.

And I really like it. It’s fun to be wrong-footed by a comic. To pick up any issue that does something you don’t expect and takes the title somewhere you never thought it would go. Genre TV, especially in the wake of Buffy, was to embrace this idea. Indeed this almost feels like the X-men’s own version of “the musical episode”.

It’s a format that Cockrum seems to love – fantastical and swashbuckling storytelling, while allowing fun new revisions of the look of the main characters.

Fun Panel

In the ongoing saga of Nightcrawler versus Wolverine, Nightcrawler clearly wins the battle of the cute fancy mini-versions. The Bamfs were to return far more in future.

Any Googling

Kitty’s t-shirt clues the audience in to the type of story being told here. Elfquest being a big independent comic of the time. Created by Wendy and Richard Pini, Claremont ackowledges the influence not just with Kitty’s shirt but the appearance of a sprite called Pini in the story. A few years after this issue, Marvel was to start publishing the title, although the Pini eventually took it back to publish independantly.

Searching the internet revealed the titles long history, and also gives an idea of quite how its style fitted with that of this story’s fairytale. Even better, most of the early issues are available for free from the Pini’s themselves on their webpage. And while I don’t think the title is really for me, I had a very enjoyable time down that rabbithole.

https://elfquest.com

It Was A Product Of Its Time

Ok. Ever since Kitty joined the title there has been something of an elephant in the room. Or rather a Colossus in the room. Namely this thirteen and a half year old girl’s obvious attraction to the older Colossus. It’s hidden at first, we discover from Kitty’s internal thoughts that she finds Colossus cute. But as the issues develop, this attraction is more explicitly stated by Kitty. And seemingly reciprocated by Colossus.

Even the Days of Future Past story seems to push the line that this romance is real and true. That one day they will be married. And while the comics themselves are still playing with the idea that their attraction is cute and chaste, the fact its out in the open in the X-mansion and not a single one of the X-men has any misgivings about it is really striking.

In part that can be rationalised by the fact that everyone does see it as being cute and chaste. Wiser heads might even be basing their silence on the fact that nothing will likely pull these two together more than trying to make a big deal of it or forbidding it. But nobody on the title seems to be having
that conversation.

It’s interesting that in a few years time, when the couple break up in the comics, Claremont never writes them back together again. Within that context its easier to deal with. It was a teenage crush, handled awkwardly but that would have reflected the time it was written in, and the world of the
characters in the comic. But once that teenage crush is broken , its seen as being just that. And the characters can develop separately.

Only post-Claremont has the idea returned to the franchise that
Kitty and Peter have a forever love. That they are characters that belong together. And that is when this gets a bit more uncomfortable. Wheedon writing their “consummation” scene as romantic has aged appallingly, much worse than the original Claremont comics. Where the presentation of these feelings come across as awkward, twee and convincingly teenage. Even if none of the adults in the room are being adult about it.

Thoughts

The Body Swap two-parters comes to satisfying conclusion, with the status quo returned but with the Hellfire Club and, especially, Emma Frost back in the X-Universe for the long term.

The final resolution is pretty pat – the device that intially swapped Storm and the White Queen appears pretty much from nowhere and conveniently swaps them back. But to get there we have some fun watching Storm, still trapped in the body of Emma Frost, win over Kitty’s trust. While the X-men and the Hellfire Club have another fun slugfest, with a few inventive twists and turns along the way.

This feels very much the sort of fun story that defined the Byrne/Claremont era. It doesn’t overstay its welcomes and it races along at a great pace. But curiously it does not herald a return to that established format. The title is about to take quite a leap into the new.

Fun Panel

The title opens with a cracking car chase, and these dynamic panels.

Any Googling

The name “Cole”. Leading to a deep dive on the history of these characters that were to beomce Reavers. As a background detail, I didn’t appreciate how long a history this team of back-up thugs have and how their story with the X-men evolves.

It was a Product of its Time

Storm gets naked. Again. There should probably be a tally of this stuff.

Thoughts

Normally comics are lightweight fun. Yes, they can be great and entertaining – but even if they’re not they can be a nice distraction. It’s very rare that comics provoke a visceral reaction of anger, but when they do its amazing how palpable that feels.

I mentioned before how gutted I feel that they never revealed that Nightcrawler’s parents were Mystique and Destiny. Similarly when Claremont came off the X-franchise, one of the key moments that meant I stopped buying the title was Callisto’s suicide. That angered me so much. It seemed like such a betrayel of the character. I could read silly, even slightly boring comics and shrug it off. But treating a character I was invested in in this horrible way was just infuriating.

Whenever I came across these moments in comics I can’t shrug off, I really, really wish I was in a position to correct them. To have a job at Marvel and dole out an editorial decree that what folk thought they saw wasn’t. That the character I liked deserved better than what the comic gave us.

I say this because one of the strengths of Claremont’s Avengers annual is that it clearly comes from the same place. The anger at what was done to a character burns through, radiating from key pages. Not only does it address and fix a terrible storyline, it takes seriously just how dreadful the original handling was. Claremont cares about Carol Danvers, and is furious about what happened to the character.

This issue also has a couple of other key developments. The first is the debut of Rogue, the second the fact she acquired Carol Danvers’ powers permanently through prolonged contact.

The latter is a pivotal moment for both characters so it’s surprising that it occurs off-panel before the issue starts. Except it wasn’t meant to. Claremont had intended Rogue’s debut and her absorbtion of Carol’s powers and memory to occur in issues of Ms Marvel, and indeed scripted both issues. Only for the title to get cancelled before that story could be published.

In 1992, though, Marvel was to finish and publish the storyline in a title called “Marvel Super Heroes. The reprints (I guess technically first prints) are in issues 10 and 11 and it’s definitely worth a read.

Not just to see Rogue absorb Danvers’ powers on panel, but also to see the build-up work with Destiny, Rogue and Mystique. They make for a fascinating trio of villains that go on to feel like a coherent team within the pages of Avengers Annual 10. Rogue and Mystique possessing a strikingly similar mother/daughter wickedness.

The transfer, and it’s effect on both their lives, is also built up to in these pages. Destiny predicts that Rogue and Danvers future is linked together, potentially to Rogue’s detriment. A prophecy that becomes self-fulfilling in that story.

I’ll never say ‘no’ to more Mystique, and these appearances don’t disappoint. To such an extent that it’s a shame that Claremont’s Ms Marvel didn’t have a longer run so that the story of Mystique/Rogue and Danvers wasn’t explored for longer there.

Fun Panel

Claremont drops in a nice little reference to one of his favourite artists. With hindsight it feels like an odd hint to epic plans.

Any Googling

Its striking that the issue being “fixed” here isn’t referenced in the comic at all. Almost as if it feels too embarassing to actually mention it. A quick Google revealed the surprising revelation that the offending story took place in Avengers 200, all part of a big milestone issue.

Further Google research reveals that this story was controversial even at the time. You have to go some on the misogyny front to stand out in comics back then. Avengers 200 led to an excellent essay from Carol Strickland that seems to have been an influence on Claremont when writing this issue. It is definitely an article worth a read.

None More Claremont

Sometimes Claremont indulges his most melodramatic writing and absolutely delivers with it.

“There’s more – there has to be more — to being Heroes than simply defeating villains. You have a role, a purpose. Far greater than yourselves, you have to set an example, lead the way. You represent what we should be. What we dream of becoming, not what we are”

You screwed up Avengers. That’s human. What is also human is the ability to learn from those mistakes. To Grow. To Mature.

If you do that — even a little — then perhaps what I went through will have a positive meaning.

It’s Your Choice.”