The New Mutants continue their adventure in dated pulp fiction Nova Roma. And yet again, Claremont just seems happy to mine the cliches rather than do anything new with them.
That doesn’t make the issue bad though. These cliches are repeated in these type of stories because they work. So as this issue introduce a bevvy of bikini beauties to be sacrificed to the Gods in the Evil villains Volcano lair. And its still entertaining stuff.
And after a few issues in Nova Roma, another issue becomes striking. We’ve been told that this is a city of exiled Romans, allied with local Inca. Except, well, they are all drawn as white. Like the films of the fifties this is a very Northern European Rome. Nobody looks Italian. Nobody looks Incan. They all look Scandinavian, with Amara the more Nordic of the lot.
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Another issue, another cracking cliffhanger that visually captures the excitement of the final twist.
An issue that delivers on the promise of the previous one’s cliffhanger. The team end up in Nova Roma, a lost Roman outpost in a mountainous valley near the source of the Amazon.
Everything you’d want from a Roman adventure is here. Gladiators, Senatorial intrigue, Chariots. This is all the great stuff you’d want to put in if you brought a superhero team to such a location.
If there’s one issue its that this story seems to have little interest in doing anything new with the Pulp Adventuring setting. The boys on the team become Gladiators, forced to fight in the arena. The girls on the team become, well, beautiful drugged women to be ogled. If such a tale had been told in the yellowing pages of a pulp fantasy novel, or a lurid technicolor b-movie of the fifties, this is exactly the steps the story would take.
It’s a shame that, so far, Claremont doesn’t seem to have any interest in doing something different with these tropes.
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Sunspot and Cannonball in the Arena leads to some great fighting action!
It was a Product of its Time
A bigger problem with this issue’s slavish devotion to the pulp cliches of yesteryear comes when we get some insight into the background of Nova Roma. It turns out that the city, founded by Romans, is now mostly people by Inca fleeing the Conquistadors.
Which is a neat idea but then Claremont has the story tell us that its these pesky Inca. With their backward concepts of absolute monarchy, they threaten to utopian Republic the new Romans built.
This reads just like the sort of colonial attitudes that you’d expect from the source material. The white Europeans represent a civilisation, always in danger from the “savages”. Amara, a good senator’s daughter, is hoping to fight against this. All of which makes her presentation as white and blonde, out to sabve her city from the Inca something of a regrettable cliche
While the X-men are revisiting the epic “Dark Phoenix” saga, the Sister title is heading up a river.
(Actually is sister-title a good way to describe it? Its definitely related, but as a spin-off it continues to be something that celebrates its youthfulness and smallness of scale. If anything it’s a Niece title.)
The core entertainment in this issue is its simple dedication to all the tropes of “Boy’s Own” Adventuring (Mutant’s Own?). The team are going exploring into the dark and mysterious core of South America. Travelling up the Amazon to explore brave new lands.
From that premise, no end of recognisable ideas get trotted out. Piranha in the River, Savages on the Banks of the River and Dodgy types on the boat you are in.
Alongside the effectively simple swashbuckling entertainment, the issue has time for some nice character moments for the team. While none of them feel like they have a huge amount of depth, smart writing makes it easy to quickly care about them.
And then, just as the rather dated fun feels like it most be overstaying its welcome, and the cliches are beginning to grate, it springs a great surprise and then ends on the pure pulp entertainment cliffhanger.
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Had to be that entertaining cliffhanger. Trust the New Mutants to get their own version of the Savage Land, but with Romans instead of Dinosaurs. Had Claremont been in charge of a third title, the mind boggles what awesome kid obsession would have been next. A secre lost valley peopled only by Monster Trucks?
Comedy is subjective. And the same applies, I think, to zaniness in comics.
Marvel Annuals always seemed to exist slightly outside the usual run on the title. And sometimes this meant that they could be used to do something different. This is certainly the case here. The main title has just seen the “From The Ashes” saga, which saw genuine peril and genuine emotional consequences for many of the main characters. The same is also true for the recent Wolverine mini-series.
It’s not true here. A tale of a crazy super-powerful alien racing through the Marvel Universe, episodically picking up items its after – this feels like a story that exists to embrace wackiness and fun. It succeeds. Sort of.
While I enjoy the playful nature of the issue – for my money its just not funny enough. And if you’re an issue that exists to be wacky and playful, that’s a real shame. All too often what could be funny just feels self-indulgent. Also if you become so wacky that nothing appears to have any real consequences for the characters, it takes away one of the key charms of reading a run on a comic.
For me personally, this level of wackiness does need anchors in the reality of the characters and the threats posed by their universe. I appreciate that might sound weird when talking about a super hero comic book – but I do think its important when it comes to making playful stories work. Only a brief trip to the Hellfire Club brings any of this to the issue, and its completely inconsequential to the story being told here.
This feels like an early precursor to both the Mojoverse and then Claremont’s run on Excalibur – both of which add just enough darkness and reality to the mix. Having it act as a grounding from which the playfulness can soar.
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There’s a long list of artists/inkers who worked on this issue – suggesting a hurried production schedule (as does the fact that Claremont adopts his frequent trick of telling longer story in “chapters” only for this structure to fall apart half way through). But this panel is worth it! Micheal Golden drew it, Bob Wiacek inked it, Glynis Wein coloured it. Plus it features a Nightcrawler.
That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense
Another product of the hurried production is seeing Cyclops on the cover, taking on the antagonist of the issue. And yet he’s nowhere to be seen inside having already left the title.
Any Googling
You can’t read an extended block of Marvel comics in this era without starting to come across injokes and direct references to those working there at the time. Chris Claremont and John Byrne had on-panel cameos, as did Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
But this issue takes it further by basically featuring the Marvel offices, for a feast of injokes about the staff there. It’s all absurdly self-indulgent although I will say that in the days before the internet – this (and any profiles on the Bullpen page) was the only way I had to get an inkling of what the folk who worked on the comic looked like. So at the times, these cameos at least felt somewhat intriguing.
Now with the internet, its easy to find out so much about everyone working on the title – and official and unofficial newsites keep you up to speed with a lot of what goes on. But back then, this is the best we had.
None More Claremont
Another baseball game. Although, to be honest, these are turning up a lot less frequently than I thought they would. I’m beginning to suspect that the cliche of the X-men Play Baseball may be more of a post-Claremont thing.
Riffing on the titles most famous saga so far (if not ever?) this is such an enjoyable issue. Indeed, for me personally, I think this saga is even more entertaining than the earlier one.
Struggling for a name for this adventure, it did get republished in 1990 as the “From The Ashes” trade paperback. It’s how I first came across this story, so its hard not to see issues 168-176 as its own thing. But I also remember how much I enjoyed it – more than the (hugely entertaining) Dark Phoenix Saga.
Both contain a lot of similar elements – they introduce important elements of the mythos, either the Hellfire Club or the Morlocks. They both feature new characters coming into the comic, Kitty and Rogue. They both feature important guest spots from established X-men not on the team, Angel and er.. Angel. There’s Romance, with a dark threat bubbling under and there’s also Wolverine being cool.
The Dark Phoenix Saga takes those elements – and fashions out of them a proper Seventies space epic. It’s pretentious, sure, but it has fun in that universe. But what I enjoy even more about the From The Ashes saga is that while it has all these seemingly epic moments at the heart of it is a very human level story.
Arguably the self-sacrifice of Jean Grey in the earlier saga was very human. But it was All Too Human in the Epic Science Fiction sense. The moment she chooses to die it is framed in the sort of cosmic philosphical terms of this is what makes humans humans. Like a sixties Star Trek adventure, its pomposity is part of the charm.
But “From The Ashes” is all too human because its just about a very human level romance. A romance that been has hijacked by a supervillain to get revenge on the heroes. But there’s something sweet in the way that it’s the realisation that this romance is so real and human that undoes all the vast supervillainy. Cyclops working out what is going on, is a great moment – as is the way that the story sees him unravel the whole thing and bring everything back down to a very human level. And a couple.
Sadly there’s one final parallel with the Dark Phoenix Saga that isn’t great. Just as the finale of that story and its tale of sacrifice is later retconned in a fundamentally flawed way, so the happy ending enjoyed by the loving couple in this is also going to be written out and retconned by editorial decree stupidity. Both sagas, it seems, share a bittersweet, unintended conclusion.
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Another interesting take on a team shot.
Any Googling
This issue marks the departure of Paul Smith from the title. I enjoy his art, so it feels like all too brief a run. Did it end early after more Byrne/Claremont style creative differences?
From what I can find on the internet, no. Smith’s tenure was intended to last this long, reflecting the contract he signed. Indeed his work on the upcoming X-men/Alpha Flight crossover was apparently covered in the sage contract.
Smith’s tenure is so memorable because, on top of a great talent for clear striking pop art visuals, he overseas a redesign for the look of the team, shifting them into the eighties.
Storm is perhaps the most famous and most radical. But there is so much more here – characters casual looks are changing. When they dress to go to the mall they look like good looking mid eighties people heading to the mall.
This is especially noteworthy because the revamp works for the characters even when they’re being super heroic. Simple, effective colourful heroes that again seem tailor made for the eighties.
Whereas other superheroes that might have tried to move with the times back then might look superficially eighties, all too often this feels like a middle aged parent _trying_ to fit in with the times. By contrast the X-men feel like they are living in 1985. What’s more that they’re pretty cool for 1985. And while, like anything cool in 1985, this makes it all look very dated it doesn’t stop it being brilliant.
None More Claremont
This is a absolutely cracking issue for Cyclops. Especially how Claremont has really made the character tick. But i’ll save my comment on all that for the next X-men issue.
The slowly ticking bomb that seemed to be underpinning the last few issues goes off in style at the end of this one. The Phoenix returns in a way that suddenly feels like a genuinely terrifying threat.
Reading this run all together for this blog makes it even easier to spot the clues building towards the reveal. When Cyclops encounters the kindly vicar that had been Mastermind before, it all points to the return of this nemesis. He is setting something up – and that includes Cyclops’ new girlfriend.
The issue walks a clever tightrope, plenty of clues as to the supervillainous scheming going on, set against a sweet and credible romance between Cyclops and Maddie. The growing affection between them seems real enoiugh that you don’t want Cyclops’ concerns to be true and they still sometimes seem like they might be his own paranoia.
Then it all culminates in an absolutely wonderful panel. A shot that hits the reader with the same force Cyclops gets struck with.
And then the final reveal. Dark Phoenix is back – she’d been Maddie all along it seems. But why is she here now? What is her plan and what does it have to do with Mastermind? And just how screwed are the X-men. Great cliffhangers can end on a moment of great peril, but they can also make you hungry for the inevitable exposition. This is a very good example of the latter.
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It’s another gorgeous Smith issue, setting in multiple beautfully drawn locations. But this moment between Cyclops and Maddie is both lovely to look at and help make the readers really care for the couple.
None More Claremont
The Colossus/Kitty romance seems to take another step in this issue, with them reaching the stage of making out alone together. Until Storm disturbs them.
The storytelling so far has intimated that they are quite a chaste partnership, Collosus having put his foot down given Kitty’s age. So the fact that things are progressiving physically seems like quite a bolt. Is this the next comic book romance being developed? Setting up a storyline that wouldn’t age well?
Or alternatively, Marvel’s Secret Wars story arc is probably brewing right now. This issue came out July 1983, half a year before the first Secret Wars issue in January 1984. Were the storyline to be told in that saga being percolated round the Marvel office. Is this development here, primarily to remind us of their couple status given the bombshell thats going to hit it?
Or maybe had Claremont had further plans for the couple, that were derailed by Marvel’s Secret Wars plans?
One of the all-time great covers sets the tone for an issue that switches between dynamic fun action and the most melodramatic of soap operatics – culminating in that trusty of daytime emotional shockers – a ruined wedding.
Arguably the main storyline in Wolverine’s. He goes back out into the Japanese criminal underworld because he has to. And this sets up the two secondary storylines that arguably are more important in the long term.
Firstly Rogue gets to fight and prove herself alongside Wolverine. The way Wolverine has been written for a while now, and especially in relation to the recent mini-series, makes it clear that to win Wolverine’s respect is a Big Deal. This issue succinctly gives enough to make that happen without it seeming pat and easy. It’s a nice stepping stone to her being at home in the team.
That said, however, having recently gone back and read the issues of Dazzler and the unpublished original Ms Marvel that all feature Rogue before she turns up to join the X-men, she does seem a bit too nice. I miss the angry, vengeful hothead of those issues. From the outset, she seems worthy and too eager to please. This is Mystique’s daughter after all! It’d be nice to have seen a more striking transition.
The other secondary storyline sees Storm emerge from her recent existential crisis with a new look and attitude. Having defined herself for so long by her obligations to others, it’s a great moment to find her liberated from the angst and pain. And to redefine herself.
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Smith has a genuine gift for small displays of human emotion. And comedy.
It was a Product of its Time
Storm’s reinvention in this issue is peak Eighties. But also a genius redesign. It’s normal for super heroes to go through revamped looks. But it’s pretty unique for them to be on this scale and – crucially – to serve also as character development. A perfectly realised emergence from an emotional crisis, reinvented.
Spinning directly out of the Wolverine mini-series, the main title sees the team head to Japan to see their Canadian colleague get married. Only to get embroiled in the ongoing Japanese crime syndicate conflict. The Silver Samurai and Viper get to drop in on the action from the recent issues of New Mutants. The whole thing really feels like a nice exercise in pulling a whole load of ideas together. Not just plot strands, but also storytelling styles. Smith gets to have his own go at recreating the way Miller drew epic fights and does a fantastic job.
But he also excels at the personal in this issue. The best illustration of this is the moment that an awkward Rogue waits at the door. Faced with a hostile Wolverine and not sure if she’ll be allowed in. It’s a beautifully realised moment.
This is such a fun issue, full of twists and turns. On one level its quite low key, but everything feels like its building towards something.
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Another fun new team image.
That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense
It’s hard enough to try an work out what the plan was, if any, with the fact that Karma disappears off-panel between two issues of New Mutants. But this just confuses things. Karma is dead? That’s not the impression we’ve been given.
Especially since this is just a meeting of close friends, it doesn’t make sense to argue that this is the “official” line given the dangers Karma was said to be in. The earlier issues makes it pretty clear that the really the New Mutants are being fobbed off from finding Karma is because its a job for the X-men. Now the X-men are telling each other that she’d dead.
None More Claremont
The fact that this feels like a low-key issue in many respects doesn’t stop it foreshadowing something epic is coming.
In terms of the mythology of the relaunched X-men it still doesn’t get anymore epic than the Phoenix. Nowadays, the Phoenix is a regular returning concept in the mythos of the whole Marvel comics universe – but back then the hint of a return must of felt exciting and intriguing.
How could the Phoenix be back? Does this mean that Cyclops’ new partner is Jean Grey reborn? These teases all hint at endless possibilites at this stage. And as the ending of the Wolverine mini-series has already illustrated, Claremont doesn’t make the obvious decisions in resolving this.
Mutant Mailbag Mayhem
This issue starts the beginning of a short run where they answer the letters page in character, with different X-men taking it in turns to answer the letters. This managed to be both cringingly twee but quite fun at the same time.
And yes, I am such a giant nerd that it worries me how this could possibly be made to work in terms of the in-comics continuity.
One thing that this re-read in reminding me is that alongside the melodrama and epic story arcs that he’s famous far, Claremont is also capable of great cinematic storytelling. Single issues that in structure and pace would seem to be perfect for the big screen.
This is one of them – an epic tale of unstoppable vengeance when John Wick was little more than a twinkle in the eyes of Belarusian Romani parents. As he dismantles the criminal empire of his rival Shingen, we see the antagonists (including the anti-hero Yukio) repond to their oncoming doom, as the plot inevitably steers us towards the big final blow out against the big bad guy.
Miller’s art was strong enough to begin with, but its developed in scope and ambition with every issue. Culminating in this glorious visual mix of action, colour and mood. The dynamic, constantly changing panel layouts add to the cinematic vibe, feeling like clever direction, hooking the reading in with glorious 70mm technicolor mixed with scuzzy darkness close-ups.
And just when you feel that this story will go the obvious route of easy deaths – further reinforcing Wolverine’s tortured loner status – it wrong foots you with a fine twist at the end. This isn’t the easy end of a cliche. There is a longer story to be told here.
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Another of those issues where you could practically put the whole comic in this section – but this little beautiful slice of moody minimalism is another fine moment.
After two issues of ninja mayhem and romantic stoicism, Claremont gets to develop a story of betrayal here, as Wolverine learns that maybe while he can’t win he should probably keep fighting. That, for all his animalistic qualities, he’s a man. With a dream, and a capacity to fight for it.
I think there’s enough in this story to vindicate the decision to not have Logan revealed to be a mutant Wolverine turned manlike by radiation. The heart of this story only works if Wolverine is a real person, behind the violence and gruff loner cliches.
There’s still shedloads of fighting in this, but the additional layers of narrative mean it doesn’t feel like more of the same after the last two issues. Things finally feel like they’re moving to conclusion.
Miller has been quoted as basing his Wolverine on Clint Eastwood, a step in moving the character towards being the quiet stoic loner of Eastwood’s numerous Hollywood films. I can’t quite see it though – he seems to possess enough of the Hook McCracken vibe that drove his creation. Maybe the true wildness has been lost – its hard to maintain such savagery in the face of boxes and boxes and boxes of his inner monologue exposition. But I think its still there
Finally, though, there’s the murder of a friend of Wolverine. Which is meant to heighten the drama but does feel like a shame. His friend in Japanese intelligence feels like a character that could develop over recurring appearances. Exactly the sort of character you’d want if you were wanting to devise a solo title. Maybe the reason he doesn’t make it is precisely because Claremont doesn’t want such a title quite yet.
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Miller’s reputation for the grim n gritty takes quite a pasting in this issue. At its best its a pop art riot of colour and dynamic visuals. Gorgeous stuff.
The X Marathon 