So it’s farewell for a second time to Dave Cockrum. And it’s fitting that in his final issue we get elements of all his great qualities. Firstly there’s space. and spaceships.
And cool costume designs. This time being cool costume designs of SPACE stuff.
And just generally a showcase of his ability to draw really distinct individual takes on these heroes. Many of whom he created.
I really don’t think it’s understating things to consider Cockrum vital to the success of the Uncanny X-men relaunch. Much is made of the “international” nature of the new team but I think that’s not quite right.
What really sells the team is the look. They look interesting. Cockrum knows how to make a team look diverse and intriguing. You see them, you want to know more.
Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler. These are all characters that leap out the page the first time you see them. Who are they? What can they do? What are they like? Claremont had this incredible base to build on when it came to giving them great personalities.
He pulls off the exact same trick with the Starjammers. He left the title to try and launch his own team book “The Futurians” that sadly never really took off. I’ve not read any but if i take one look at the team it makes me want to know who all these characters are.
We’ll come back to Cockrum one more time for a Nightcrawler miniseries, another title from a prolific artist who enjoyed a long career working for numerous different publishers. Sadly he died on November 26 2006, leaving behind a great creative legacy. Including all these issues I’ve been enjoying.
Fun Panel
It’s Cosmic, it’s trippy, it’s got an intriguing and unique character design at the heart of it. The perfect Cockrum panel!
The Brood Saga continues, with more Alien hijinks. And whereas last issue focused on Wolverine, this time we follow more of the X-men, Especially Kitty who gets to fully embrace her inner Ripley.
The action is racing along at a great pace. Claremont suitably hangs a cloud of darkness over proceedings by setting up the fact the X-men are infected. If necessary, Wolverine is willing to kill them to stop them sharing the fate of Fang in the last issue.
Yet despite the pace, it doesn’t feel like we’re close to an ending. It feels epic, like there is so much more story to go here. There’s been some abrupt endings to recent issues, sure, but this feels comfortable in its cosmic scale. Whatever resolution there is going to be here, its not going to be just a hasty explosion in the last few panels.
There’s also a fascinating “Meanwhile Back on Earth” diversion here as we watch the mansion being rebuilt. It’s a shame, though, as in previous issues it seemed like the mansion’s destruction and the team’s relocation to Magento’s Cthuloid Atlantic Island was heralding a new direction.
Of course, its in the letters pages of these issues that we’re learning that a new book is coming. A new class of X-men. I guess the need to find a home for the spin-off meant gravitating back to the X-mansion. The idea of mutants based on a strange other-worldly island home would have to wait for another day.
We’re cast headlong into a Space Epic with this issue. So much so that the opening panels can be quite jarring. I remember when I was reading these titles as back issues initially thinking that I must have missed a comic bridging the gap between the Xavier flashback story and where this story begins.
All becomes clear as you read the issue though. An issue that very much puts the spotlight on Wolverine. It’s a showpiece for everything that has made the character the breakout star of the new X-men by this point. He kicks arse, he’s wild yet thoughtful and he’s a loner who now cares deeply about his friends.
As we journey an Alien landscape with Logan, the gap from the ending of the last issue gets told via flashback. And it’s a genuinely unsettling sequence where the Brood have bewitched the X-men into thinking everything is fine. All while something horrible has been prepared for them.
I’ve joked before about how the Xenomorph of the Alien franchise has clearly fathered (Queen smothered?) a couple of antagonists in the Claremont run so far. But this a new level of darkness.
Truth by told, while I think Aliens is an incredible film, the final Act of the film does the Alien dirty. Whereas before this point, the Xenomorphs have been something mysterious and unstoppable. A deadly danger of unknown origin, a near-unstoppable horro lurking in the depths of space. And then, near the end of Aliens, they just become Bugs. Nasty Bugs. But still just Bugs.
It’s a decision that I think scuppers the sequels. We know they are just poweful bugs now, the horror is comprehendable and their defeat viable. There’s no scope to play with the idea that we still don’t know what they are capable of. How sentient they are. What new ways to kill they might have.
And this sequence gives a possible clue. Howabout the Aliens can give off a chemical that lulls humans into a false sense of security. That you can no longer trust your senses. All to allow them to implant into you. That would be horrifying.
So having gone from ripping off the Xenomorph, Claremont now potentially shows where the creatures could go from here into a new direction. Which is paying back a creative debt with interest.
Fun Panel
Near the end of his tenure – Cockrum gets some excellent full-page fun.
None More Claremont
Claremont’s back in Clive-Barker-Lite territory, with Fang’s fate. A complete total absorbing, including memories, powers and “genetic potential”. Surprised the soul didn’t get mentioned.
Suitably nasty though, and this is the fate awaiting our X-men.
The recent run of diverse single issue stories comes to an end with this flashback issue. A flashback that serves to finish Claremont’s radical reinventon of Magneto. After this issue the once-two-dimensional ranting cartoon bad guy will never be the same again.
After reinvention, Magneto has become “Magnus”. A holocaust survivor who lost his entire family. A tragedy that has radicalised him into violence and mutant supremacy.
It’s all wrapped up in a tale of Nazis, survivors guilt, trauma and stolen gold. Claremont balances the need for an adventure with developing the new backstory for Magnus and adding more to Xavier. Nazis get punched and buried in collapsing caves, which is all good fun – alongside the completely realigned Xavier/Magneto dynamic. At the end of this issue, you can’t help but look forward to the next time these two characters will meet in the present day, because it simply cannot now be a retread of anything that went before.
At the end of the issue, there’s a cliffhanger that’s going to take us back into space for a multi-issue storyline. Although I’m excited by the prospect of more Space Saga action, it is a shame to move on from a run of single issue stories that has been genuinely an exciting and varied experience.
Fun Panel
None More Claremont
It feels both brave and foolish that Claremont goes all the way to unambiguously bringing up Auschwitz in a super hero comic. Issue 150 dropped it in a single speech bubble, but here it is presented clearly and unambiguously as part of the story. It marks a genuine shift in what the comic is willing to do. It is now going to play with serious concepts and ideas in a way that seems a world away from the assault on Count Nefaria way back in his furst few issues.
I think its a fair comment on Claremont that the shift to incorporate genuine real life evil in the comic does not always work. It’s hard to find a balance between the demands of a comic book super hero adventure, and exploring the genuine darkest actions of humanity. But its indicative of a new level of ambition on the title. And that’s something I am a huge fan of.
It was a Product of its Time
Eewwwwww!
Xavier embarking on a relationship with his patient when he knows how vulnerable she is really feels dodgy. And curiously ironic in an issue where Xavier has been arguing against Magneto on the need for freedom and to not determine whats best for others you deem weaker.
Mutant Mailbag Mayhem
The Elfquest references in Kitty’s Fairytale inspire a response from its creators. Which is nice. Also since writing the blog on that episode I discovered that the couple who wrote Elvenquest met when one wrote to the other after seeing their letter in a publication, including the full address. I wonder if this happened often back then? Whether getting a letter published meant you’d get unsolicited mail. Some of which wouldn’t be dreadful.
One of the perils of writing this blog, trying to cover as much of the Claremont run as possible, is that you run up against continuity. Where in my chronological running order should I place Annuals, spin-offs and – further down the line – the other X-titles.
This Annual is placed in the omnibus further down the line – after issue 167. But it never quite worked there for me, not least because it seems too perfect that that issue trails Professor Xavier being a jerk and then the first one of the next issue truly delivers.
Which then leaves this spot as the only place the story can go. Which makes it almost immediately after their last encounter.
That said, looking at their actual publication dates that’s not such a problem. Issue 159 was published on 6 April 1982 and this Annual just a few months later on 27 July 1982 so even readers at the time would have felt the immediacy of the Dracula sequel.
And it feels like a sequel. Bill Sienkiewicz is back on art duties and once again again mixes a talent for great expected comic book art…
… alongside glorious Pop Art inventive flourishes.
Story-wise this feels like another Hammer Gothic runaround. Dracula wants to get his hands on a magical anti-vampire macguffin kept in a spooky castle he can’t enter. So he sends Storm. Whose quest is opposed by Kitty – who is in fact possessed by Dracula’s daughter.
It’s a fun runaround, although Sienkiewicz does not seem as inspired by the Gothic Castle as he does in the early panels. And it all ends with the usual “Dracula is defeated… or is he?” cliche. Enjoyable enough but not really disappointed that Dracula doesn’t become a regular villain and Storm antagonist here.
Fun Panel
Any Googling
The issue opens with Dracula enslaving one Rachel Van Helsing. The name is familiar from the Dracula mythos. But not this character. So decided to explore who she was.
Turns out she was one of the leads in an 80-issue run Marvel had of a title called “Tomb Of Dracula”. An obvious attempt to cash in on seventies horror, the title concerned a crack team dedicated to defeating Dracula and undermining his plans.
Rachel is introduced in issue three, and lasts right till the end of the run. It’s an impressive stint leading a comic at the time for a female character.
Which does make it surprising that Claremont brings the character in for this issue only to have her enslaved by her nemesis in the first few pages. And then die at the end. Given the fact that he’s been building quite a roster of interesting women as supporting characters, it’s odd that there was no place for Rachel Van Helsing.
As a reader with no knowledge of the earlier comic, her appearance doesn’t really carry much weight. I want more of the story of Storm and her link to Dracula. Whereas fans of the comic she led for 78 issues are unlikely to find this epilogue that sees the victory in that title undone, and her dead at the end.
Dracula’s daughter is another carry over from the comic, suggesting that Claremont was a fan – at least of the mythos. But again the revelation of who is possessing Kitty seems weird for anyone not aware of that title.
I don’t know if Claremont planned further trips into the world of the “Tomb Of Dracula” mythos – but this ended up being the last one. A curious coda to a strikingly atypical Marvel comic.
None More Claremont
“Now, she hungers for LOVE. No words are spoken between them. None are needed”
The moment characters don’t need words in Claremont they are getting it on!
We’re staying in the world of horror with this issue, but this doesn’t mean that the run of single issues radically different to the one before is over. Because while the last issue was a surprisingly bloodless and one-dimensional tale of Dracula, this is a much, much darker affair.
It begins with the abduction of a small child by a demon and ends with her having effectively lost her childhood. It feels like a genuine shock when a much older Illyana Rasputin emerges from Limbo, and is played as both a tragedy (Brent Anderson on guest art duties draws a truly haunted Colossus in the final panels) but also that the darkness is not yet over.
Claremont was to build on this tale of lost childhood a larger narrative that is full of implied subtext – with details that make the tale even darker – but even at this stage he’s not shy of the disturbing ideas and imagery.
One aspect that remains shocking is the corrupted Nightcrawler. As limbo plays with time, the X-men sent to rescue Illyana come across themselves many years after failing to rescue her. Wolverine and Colossus are dead but Nightcrawler was nearly killed in limbo. Then healed by Belasco, who now owns his soul.
This is presented in the comic as a truly evil character. He attempts to sexually assault Kitty, and delights in suffering. Is this meant to be some reflection of the true Nightcrawler?
Across his run Claremont asks questions about what such corruption and loss of soul actually amounts to. And sometimes it’s hard to know exactly what his answer is. At times the corruption reflects only on elements that were already there twisted and magnified. At other times the act of corruption itself is the erasure of the “good” self to be replaced by an Evil version. We don’t get enough of the story here to know what happened to Nightcrawler here, but it’s definitely easier to see it as the latter.
But it’s all part of what makes this issue work. It captures a uniquely dark, disturbing and genuinely unsettling tone. In Limbo it presents a Hell that avoids much of the cliche – Sym does not easily fit into the tried and tested presentations of Demonic realms. And it is a feeling that lingers after the final panel in a way that has lost none of its power.
Fun Panel
Brent Anderson has tremendous fun with the setting here. Hell is a great excuse to play with some truly dark and striking imagery.
The genre whiplash rollercoaster continues – with this issue shifting from US military espionage to a horror tale of X-men versus Dracula. And given the BDSM elements of the Dark Phoenix/Hellfire Club story, it’s no surprise that the element that interests Claremont here is Dracula as a seducing Dominator.
Dracula ensnares Storm, and the text unambiguously defines the Count as Ororo’s “lover”. Having been bitten once in an apparant mugging, Storm becomes Dracula’s seemingly willing partner. She flies off with him into the night, bespite Kitty’s best efforts to rescue her.
The story, and the pacing, seem appriopriately stately and gothic – like a Hammer Horror film. It begins with the team in a happy, down-to-Earth place, visiting contemporary New York. Then something bad happens that doesn’t seem that odd. And then things get worse and worse…
It’s got some great moments – including the reveal of Dracula and Kitty get’s to be suitably smart and heroic. But it never quite goes into Storm’s seduction in any depth, meaning that she spends most of the issue as a rather uninteresting victim. Indeed as the narrative makes it clear they are now “lovers”, there’s an uncomfortable subtext here given we’re never seen the reasons why Storm might embrace the sexy, corrupted vampyric world.
Meanwhile Dracula doesn’t get to indulge in some nice (albeit Comics Code approved) Horror antics. It’s a surprisingly blood-less and death free adventure given that the villain is Dracula.
This issue see Bill Sienkiewicz join the X-universe as a guest artist. As an X-fan I know him best for his iconic run on the New Mutants that we’re going to get to later in this blog. But this issue is a good reminder that he’s a great artist at drawing in a more conventional Superhero style. There are moments where the experimental side of his art shows itself, but at other times its great Pop Art imagery.
Again, though, the ending feels rushed and turns into another moment where the Dracula they are fighting doesn’t seem as cool and as dangerous as Dracula could be. He just sort of gives up, humbled by Storm’s rejection of him. It’s a peculiar twist to the tale – and feels anticlimactic after Kitty effectively engineers Storm’s rescue in a nicely written fashion.
Fun Panel
The reveal of Dracula is a great moment – both with a creative flourish to show off the vampire’s teeth and Storm’s willingly displayed neck. I wanted more of this coy Sexy Vampire hijinks!
None More Claremont
We’re in the world of binding souls and lifes to Dracula, embracing darkness and a fancy gothic costume. Slightly amazed this didn’t end up being a six issue story in Claremont’s hands.
If there’s a defining trait to this era of Claremont’s era is that, while it retains the scope of the Claremont/Byrne run – even arguably widening it – it also has incredibly tonal, stylistic and even genre jumps in the type of story it tells from issue to issue.
Last issue ended with space opera. This issue is espionage and US army base skullduggery. It’s an abrupt change, but one that works. A sort of pleasing tonal whiplash.
After seeing her own solo title cancelled, Claremont seems to be making Carol Danvers into a player on this team. She’s an important driver of this story, and Rogue’s appearance in the title seems to be to stress their rivalry. The implication seems to be that Rogue is a Ms Marvel antagonist, so shes now going to be semi-regular villain in the X-men.
Claremont doesn’t just set-up a Rogue/Danvers ongoing rivalry here – but also teases yet another sub-plot of an insanely super powered woman. Yet again a scientist is shocked by the potential in Danvers after investigating her potential. Dark Phoenix Mark 2 anyone?
It does raise the question as to whether it was after this issue – and particularly the set-up of Rogue as a recurring antagonist – that Claremont decided to not make Danvers a permanent character on the team but bring in Rogue instead. There doesn’t seem to be any groundwork laid for a sympathetic Rogue at all here. She’s delightfully cruel and awful.
Fun Panel
This is the first time i’ve owned this issue where you can actually make out the yellow Ms Marvel outline. On the old back issue i had it had faded away. Then the black and white epic collection just had a huge space there. It’s nice to finally get to see it!
That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense
I guess if you can absolutely shapeshift to look like anyone, you probaby stop trying too hard – but its pretty incredible that Mystique infiltrates US security using her actual name. And not some contrived alias to go with the disguise.
None More Claremont
A long-time Anglophile Claremont references the actual BBC current affairs show “Panorama” in this issue. It’s a nice touch that adds reality to an attempt to make things seem more serious.
Indeed this issue also marks something of a change in the way that mutants are being treated by the book. While before Mutants were feared, the villains that expressed their hostility to mutants were always Comic Book Villains, ranting and coming up with insane Super Villainy schemes to defeat Mutants. Schemes that inevitably invoice giant robot sci-fi sentinels to get smashed by the mutant heroes.
But Claremont is now changing the presentation of this. Mutants aren’t a menace to inspire frothing super villainy. They are phenemonon that is having a realistic societal impact. The scare is becoming one with roots in the way politics and society are hostile to change and to the other. There isn’t a super villains screaming mutant hate from his underground super villain lair. There’s a serious current affairs TV programme discussing the fact that the World is having to deal with the emergence of mutants.
All this is now such a defining feature of any X-franchise, its interesting to see when the comic started treating the mutant menace this way. Taking its cues not from the need to give a ranting villain an OTT motive, but from recognisable media, politics and societal attitudes. With this issue – subtley – Claremont is changing the whole X-universe.
Mutant Mailbag Mayhem
It’s been a while since we had a letter that out-and-out slagged off the very title its printed in. Steve Spzak of David Avenue in Hamilton is not a happy man at all. I wonder if he did stick around?
That’s quite some front cover on this issue. The moment you see it, and given all the hype and epic standing of Dark Phoenix even then, this must have shocked a great many readers seeing the cover for the first time. Even the speech bubbles (and yes – hooray for speech bubbles on the front cover, a much missed feature of super hero comics) give a context that sounds credible. Phoenixes (Phoenixi?) do return from a fiery death. That’s pretty much their gimmick. So it all seems likely? Yes?
No.
For want of a better analogy – this feels very much like the early eighties equivalent of clickbait. A cover that’s going to grab anyone in the comic book shop. Yes, the promise isn’t quite going to be matching by the story within but by that point hopefully the story would have grabbed the punter anyway.
It’s a reminder that comics were still seen as being quite ephemeral back then. Get the issues sold, get the readers hooked and hopefully they’ll buy the next issue and you can keep the title going. All’s fair in love and getting comic books readers hooked.
And I do think it pays off in this issue. The front cover isn’t a total cheat – it does relate to events in the issue. Indeed it relates to a plot development in the issue that’s been subtle teased previously. It’s another twist in a twisting and turning space saga that continues apace in this issue. And Cockrum draws the action amazingly well, keeping up a frantic pace throughout.
If there’s one quibble with the issue is that we’ve had a multi-issue space saga nicely brewing for a few issues now and then, in the final couple of pages, it seems to come to an abrupt halt. Indeed, if you’re not paying full attention to everything in the text bubbles you’re going to be pretty surprised when the next issue opens back on Earth.
Still, that would have been the case back in the early eighties. Us enlightened type reading in the future that is 2023 know that the saga isn’t quite over yet. But we’ll get to that…
Fun Panel
Don’t mess with Nightcrawler.
Any Googling
In a fun little sequence, Kitty gets swallowed up by an inventive alien. Sadly the alien is unaware of her powers, and she phases away. After doing so she remarks she is no Doug Henning.
Who??
Sometimes when American comics reference their own popular culture you can get it from context. Normally it’s a famous sports personality being referenced. But here?
I was absolutely stumped. What popular culture celeb of the time could possible be a reference for someone phasing out of a tentacled octo-alien attack?
Thankfully the internet had the answer. The reference was to a Canadian magician whose “World of Magic” tv shows seem to have been big in the late seventies.
Images suggest a dayglo disco Doctor Strange – but his biography takes an even odder twist. He retired in 1985, when still pretty famous and devoted his life to transcendental meditation.
He even was to stand as a parliamentary candidate in the UK for the Natural Law Party in 1992. A party that promoted transcendental meditation and at the time famously became the butt of jokes in UK media when candidates talked of “yogic flying”. He failed to impress the voters of Blackpool South and got so few votes he lost his deposit.
Sadly he died aged 52 in 2000, reportedly having ignored conventional cancer treatment for a diet of nuts and berries.
After last issue’s set-up plot infodump – the story really starts rtacing along at a cracking pace. The X-men get teleported into space. Some return on a mission. There’s a fight, nice character moments and the scale of the threat gets amped up.
Kitty and Nightcrawler get some nice moments together in space. And there’s a lovely moment where Kitty gets her first glipse of the cosmos. And not just any cosmos – Cockrum Cosmos!
Meanwhile back on Earth, the X-men have 24 hours to turn this case around and find the kidnapped Lilandra. Which means coming up against the second Xenomorph-style creature of the Claremont Run. Visually the similarity is there, but these Aliens feel much less threatening with their B-movie bad alien patter. But they do come across as a credible antagonist.
All these different storylines are deftly handled, and its a great issue. The only slight downer is the ending that pretends Colossus is dead. The exact same trick was pulled with the finals panels a few issues ago where Storm, trapped in the White Queen’s body, “kills” Kitty at the very end of an issue. It feels like a cheap and lazy cliffhanger. Maybe, at the time, readers with no knowledge of what happened next would have seen the cover and thought that it was just possible that this was the Russian’s final issue. But here its a bit of a damp squib at the end of the great issue.
Fun Panel
Cockrum designs great costumes – the type that can only really work in comics. But he also designs a great outfit in this issue for Storm to wear. Almost wish they’d use this as the basis for a brand new costume.
Any Googling
Deathbird turns up in this issue, and I initially assumed that this was her first appearance. Clearly Shi-Ar and up-to-no good, it fits to be a villain created for a plot about a kidnapped Lilandra.
Only the issue mentions her appearance in a relatively recent Avengers issue, which then mentions her as a Ms Marvel antagonist. Following this rabbithole, she first appears in that title in 1977 – not long after Lilandra’s first appearance – and is already clearly alien.
That’s also a Claremont title and its tempting to think that this was planned at the time. An avian villain exiled to Earth around the time Lilandra appears. If so, its fun to finally see it get a pay-off!
The X Marathon 