The X Marathon

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!

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!

Thoughts

This is probably the darkest issue of the Claremont Run so far, not just because the threat of Proteus continues to build in this issue and we watch as he commits another merciless murder/possession of an innocent.

No, the real darkness at the heart of this story lies in Moira McTaggart’s past and the origin of Proteus. It’s already been established that she is the mother of the monstrous mutant, but in this issue we meet the father. Her ex-husband Joe MacTaggert. a former Royal Marine commando and Member of Parliament. He’s wealthy enough to have a house in Queen Street, Edinburgh and even a Butler. And he’s quickly established to be a nasty piece of work.

This is first established by his clear refusal to have ever granted Moira a divorce – its convenient for his political career to be married, especially to a Nobel prize winner. But then Claremont takes the title into new territory. Because Moira drops a revelation that, when its fully understood, feels truly shocking.

The clear allusion to domestic abuse and rape in this one panel darkens and complicates the story. Proteus is a child born from this violence, and it is the hate that Moira feels for her ex-husband that is somehow seen as directly poisoning the child. The son then becomes the father, possessing him out of hatred but then enjoying his sense of power and selfishness.

Claremont knows not to overdo this – it doesn’t become central to the issue but a detail used to explain Moira’s actions and her sense of shame. And to set up the villain in his “completed” form in time for a showdown with the team.

Comics have a very difficult history with sexual issues, and rape in particular. Often used as a shorthand to make things “dark and gritty” and in a very clumsy attempt to shock. This isn’t the case here, even though I don’t quite think the concept fully works. The idea of abuse creating a monster in the next generation is an incredibly powerful one, the monstrous father and the defiant ex-wife brave new ground for comic book characters. But this isn’t a comic about that. It sacrifices exploring those ideas in order to tell a more conventional superhero comic.

But it heralds a writer willing to attempt it. And this is something that is going to become a feature in the Claremont Run. One the reasons I keep coming back to it.

Fun Panel

The comic remains steeped in death, and this is a deliciously dark murder.

Any Googling

The realisation that Moira’s surname stems from her marriage made me realise I don’t know what her actual name is. Its Kinross. Moira Kinross. Its maybe a reflection of how comics sometimes struggle with big ideas that Marvel keep her name as McTaggart. Which doesn’t really make sense – why keep her maidan name after all that happened and when her abusive husband who refused a divorce is dead?

None More Claremont

The international element of this title is reinforced by these Scottish adventures. And mercifcully this is not the sort of Scotland that would match the Ireland of Cassidy Keep and the Leprechauns. Like Calgary in the recent Canadian adventure, it feels like a modern city. Albeit one with a distinct flavour. Claremont switches between lazy global cliches and great local colour, but when he gets it right its great.

Thoughts

There’s a great sense of dread hanging over this issue – even as we mostly follow the main characters enjoying downtime. The X-men are back home, which means being back in the Danger Room. While Phoenix is on Muir Island, subtly scaring everyone with the scale of her powers.

Even Xavier half a universe away suddenly realises something might be up with Phoenix and that he needs to race home. We even get a hint that something dark is hidden in Magneto’s past.

Just a few issues back Brenda Robnett and her subsequent letter-writing allies were told that Phoenix had to be de-powered because a God didn’t fit on the team. If that was ever the reason, it’s been reversed now. Phoenix’s God-like potential is central to this issue, and Claremont brilliantly builds a sense of foreboding about it.

Alongside the creeping dread over what is happening to Phoenix, there’s also a literally creeping dread on Muir Island. And when it strikes suddenly the action is pumped up and we’re ready for next issue.

Fun Panel

A great little transition, hinting at the corruption to come.

None More Claremont

Moira McTaggart is back. Or, to give her her full name under Claremont Moira McTaggart-Highlander-Born-And-Bred.

Thoughts

The X-men have their first longer story format since Giant Size, and the first under Claremont. And it’s used to take the team into another new genre. In this case High fantasy (with a dash of sci-fi)

On paper that seems like a great idea but the execution here is mixed. Too much of the issue is lost to padding, meaning that the High Fantasy plot is pretty underwhelming.

Akron arrives on Earth, returning to the Blue Planet after featuring in an Avengers adventure some years earlier. Luckily everyone he encounters seems to remember him. Not that they were actually there for the adventure but because they’d read the Avengers file on him. Or watched him on the TV. This sort of contrivance to move the plot on quickly would be more forgivable if there wasn’t a lengthy piece of Danger Room padding also in the issue.

I’ve said before that Claremont writes great slugfests, but here the X-men arrive on a fantasy world and get involved in a lengthy fight that we barely see and which doesn’t seem that interesting.

Then when they discover what’s going on, they save the day in another multiple page sequence of them combining powers which, again, seems to take away from what should be the fun here – X-men exploring a High Fantasy world.

Indeed it’s only in the last few pages, where we’ve been told the X-men have been spending time on this world hanging out after saving it, that we get a glimpse of the X-men in local costumes and a hint at what might have been. I could have definitely gone for many more pages devoted to that side of the story.

Fun Panel

Ok, I was harsh about the big fantasy fight earlier but in its defence COLOSSUS FLYING ON A BATTLE DRAGON! This just hints at the Frank Frazetta madness this annual could have been.

Thoughts

The quality craziness of Arcade’s Murderworld concludes in this issue. Following a quickly told backstory for the spoiled assassin, we then get action that cuts between all the X-men as Arcade does – keeping an eye on how things are going with the heroes he’s been hired to kill.

Indeed, the rapid cutting between characters in this issue – rarely does each strand of the adventure get more than a page – makes me think that Arcade is a character that would work incredibly well in a movie.

You’d have to embrace the absurdity of it, present Murderworld in all its glorious size and insane scope. Moments of this would require bucketloads of CGI, but I also think there’d be room for some vast, entertaining sets.

Maybe not for the X-men though. They’ve yet to appear in the MCU and I imagine that when they do turn up, they’ll be in films emphasising the political and low-level outcast nature of the characters. Rather than something quite this insane.

Maybe it would work for Tom Holland’s Spider-man – the second film of his having a similar OTT crazy quality. Add an Ant-man and the Wasp. A She-Hulk and maybe even a Ms Marvel. And then maybe use it to introduce a couple of new heroes, caught up in the same giant hit. Maybe that’s how you can bring a Cyclops and Jean Grey into the MCU?

Fun Panel

The little panels outlining the origins of Arcade are just mini masterpieces of backstory.

None More Claremont

It becomes a bit of a repeated idea in Claremont’s work that fights between the good guys and the villains have their own code, a distinct honour system that means things don’t quite play out as you’d want it to. Wolverine is the worst for this, often espusing batsugar insane declarations of what is right when dealing with bad guys. The fact the X-men just accept that they can’t defeat Arcade and move on falls into that. Why? He’s an Assassin? What happens to all the folk he’ll kill before they bother to strike again?

Ok, so trying to find any element of realism in Arcade, a character that exists to be brilliantly absurd is being unfair. But the final walkaway of the X-men does disappoint.