Godel x Uzumeri #2: X-Men 96-101 (or, Credence Claremonter Revival)

Godel: Welcome, everyone, to the second installment of this, uh, quarterly feature (sorry about that), where we hard-headedly plow through Chris Claremont’s classic 16-year tenure on the not-yet-Uncanny X-Men. Last time we really covered the prologue: Len Wein and Dave Cockrum’s unveiling of the “All-New, All-Different” X-Men in Giant Size X-Men and X-Men (vol 1) 94-95. Now, with issues 96-100, Claremont (who scripted the last couple of issues) takes over as writer. So this is the “real” start of the run.

If you’re looking to follow along at home, this material is readily available in the first black-and-white Essential X-Men volume, or in color in the first two Marvel Masterworks: Uncanny X-Men collections.

IN THESE ISSUES: The X-Men scuffle with a demon named Kierrok the Damned and a mysterious man named Erik the Red (an identity Cyclops once adopted in the 60s run). Then, on a trip to New York, they get attacked by a new set of mutant-hunting Sentinel robots. As a couple of subplots start ticking, the X-Men fly to the Sentinels’ space-station base to beat them and their mastermind Stephen Lang. With their death-defying descent back to Earth, Jean survives a near-death experience to become the powered-up Phoenix. Then Banshee inherits his family castle and the team go on a holiday to Ireland.

So, except for a few pages of 100 and 101, which unveil Jean Grey’s reinvention as Phoenix, these are not the most well-known or widely-cited stories. Frankly, I thought the Kierrok thing was really stupid. So I feel like the real energy here is in Claremont setting the tone for each of the characters, but what about you?

Uzumeri: The Kierrok story seemed totally pointless, to be honest, but you’re right – the entire Lang arc is something you never really see talked about, even though it’s really Claremont’s first solo arc on the title.

Godel: In a way it feels like an alternate submission for Giant Size X-Men. Like, the old X-Men are kidnapped, the new ones have to go rescue them, only this time the threat involved is about mutancy-as-racism rather than mutancy-as-the-evolution-of-life.

Uzumeri: That’s an interesting take, since Claremont is clearly shifting the themes around at this point, as well as seeding a whole bunch of mysteries that don’t pay off until WAY later.

Godel: That right there is going to become one of the hallmarks of the title, or to its detractors, its greatest flaw. There’s definitely a lot of shadowy councils, villainous Dr. Klaw hands in front of observation monitors, and so on.

Then they spend #97 fighting Erik the Red, which has no bearing at all on any of the issues that follow.

Uzumeri: What was the deal with Erik the Red, anyway? I figured it was just Lang in a suit, but now I’m not so sure.

Godel: Ha, I never even considered that angle, since I know where that plot is going! No, it pays off in the storyline after the next one. But for the most part, he’s pretty good already at keeping the main plot moving while throwing a couple of pages per issue to subplots, like Professor X’s dreams. Which are gorgeously illustrated by Dave Cockrum, btw, I take back everything bad I said last time.

Uzumeri: Cockrum is on fire with the dreams, yeah. Those are just awesome nightmarish spectacles, totally SIGHTS NOT MEANT TO BE SEEN BY MAN and all.

(Click for the awesome full-size spread.)

Uzumeri: What’s really striking about these issues, though, is seeing these characters in their… original forms, before all the evolution. I’m used to Kurt being the sagacious priest, but here he’s just a skirt-chasing swashbuckler.

Godel: Totally! And in a way it’s not even their original forms, because there’s already some subtle tweaking from what we saw last time around. There’s a letter in 101 from a Peter Sanderson: “Nightcrawler’s ‘showmanship’ gives him a stronger, more appealing personality than before.”

Uzumeri: There’s definitely a point where Chris Claremont took whatever story bible Len Wein gave him and threw it in the trash.

Godel: And the overall vibe is different – without Sunfire and Thunderbird, Wolverine is the only “arrogant jerk” type on the team. Cyclops broods, and the rest of them get to be a little more varied. Nightcrawler is definitely the most fun I think – the only one who seems to think flying off into space is a really neat thing to do. You could imagine Colossus working up some excitement for it too, but then it turns out he had a brother who was an astronaut and died tragically. Damn!

Uzumeri: It’s also in these issues that things like Storm being claustrophobic or Wolverine not having any friends really start to get play and become character-defining things.

Or at least, they were. I can’t remember the last time Storm freaked out because of her claustrophobia.

Godel: That’s a good question… it used to get constant shout-outs. I dunno if it just got abandoned or if there was actually a plot that resolved it at some point. Here, it almost feels like trying to give her a Kryptonite, because on paper she way outpowers the rest of the team. Of course, then Marvel Girl gets a massive power upgrade so who knows.

Godel: Speaking of Marvel Girl, there’s another total reversal on where Wein was going with the book – she just quit the team in 94 and now she’s in the cast again.

Uzumeri: Yeah, she just kind of joins the team again simply by virtue of always having to tag along due to Scott.

Godel: To be fair, 94 sort of struggled with that and ducked the issue – Cyclops has a long dark night of the soul deciding to stay on the team because the X-Men’s his whole life, and he tells his girlfriend of however many years about it the next day as she’s walking out the door. Jean gets her time in the spotlight pretty soon, though, so maybe there’s some other reason Claremont is dragging her back into the cast…aside from gender balance, and introducing this thing with her and Wolverine.

Uzumeri: Scott’s kind of an epic loser in these issues. I really get the anti-Scott bias now, something I’m so inured against since he’s been so fantastic in the Morrison/Whedon/Fraction runs.

The thing is, the X-Men are still his whole life. That never really changes.

Godel: Totally! I think those later writers have just been able to face that front and center, and make that an interesting basis for a character rather than “god, this is the boring guy compared to Wolverine.” I mean, this is a guy who loses arguments with the captions.

CAN YOU!?

Uzumeri: Man, speaking of the captions — Claremont LOVES second-person narration, doesn’t he? That’s something you NEVER see used anymore.

Godel: Yeah, what is up with that? I never noticed it as much as I did here, so I don’t know if it falls away later, or if I’m paying closer attention now that we’re doing this project. It’s sort of loveable but also really annoying and distracting. Speaking of writing tics, #97 features, I think, the first use of “…BODY AND SOUL!” in the Claremont X-Men. That one’s not going away any time soon.

Uzumeri: There’s romantic, and then there’s what Claremont’s doing here. I also love how he constantly positions Jean as the “hip” one. Storm’s captions saying something like “Jean would call this …. ‘groovy!’”

Godel: Haha, yeah, and again, today I think of Jean as, like, the squarest possible X-person. This may also be part of this half-baked thing where Storm is the fish out of water, unfamiliar with American urban slang and social customs and that kind of stuff. That doesn’t come across consistently or clearly, but it makes sense that somebody in the pan-national cast would have that role.

Basically I think what I’m saying is “Storm’s characterization is really hazy in these issues.”

Uzumeri: Man, Storm’s characterization is STILL really hazy to me. Sometimes she’s a fun-loving, ribald miscreant and sometimes she’s an overly dour and serious drama queen who talks without contractions.

Godel: Yeah, I feel like “talks without contractions” is basically all she gets from a lot of writers. My first introduction was through the old animated series, and that’s what they had going for her really. I guess the idea is sort of…”majestic”? She was treated as a goddess before she joined Xavier, so I guess that makes a kind of sense.

Uzumeri: I think the idea is “exoticizing the shit out of the other.”

Godel: That’s definitely, definitely in play. She does get a couple of flashback scenes in the next year or so of stories – we should revisit this and see if she gets defined any better. Along with Wolverine, she’ll have the longest continuous service on the team in this feature; it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

The two big character ideas she gets in these issues are the claustrophobia thing, and this interesting speech about being afraid that at some point she will be forced to kill, which she doesn’t want to do. That seems like reasonable ground to build on, it’s just that she doesn’t have any chemistry with the other characters yet. I guess Colossus is supposed to have a crush on her but she doesn’t even seem to notice.

Uzumeri: She’s also going to become increasingly problematic on the sliding timeline the more computerized and industrialized, like, Kenya gets. I mean, probably not anytime insanely soon, but in 20-30 years Storm will not make any fucking sense.

Godel: Oh, well, if you want to talk about sliding timelines, Colossus is still our man of the hour.

Uzumeri: Oh, God, yeah, that’s totally true. Colossus is just a totally different character now. When I think of Colossus – who IS well-defined – I think big-hearted softie artist type who’s slow to anger but man, if he’s angry, you are fucked. And there’s really none of that in these issues. He just talks up Russia a lot.

Godel: I love how Nightcrawler makes some crack about a Soviet gymnast or something and Colossus is like “She is one of the great people’s revolutionary gymnasts! You should not mock her so!” Also, wtf at Nightcrawler being really up on his Soviet gymnasts.

At this point I think Claremont is sticking with the Wein thing, Colossus is the farmboy. This is his first time out in the world, probably his first crush on a girl, etc. The short skirts on Western women boggle his mind!

Uzumeri: He should hang out with Wolverine more, then, if he wants to inure himself to the concept.

There’s really none of the wise old samurai in this conception of Wolverine whatsoever, just a total antisocial dick.

Bub, humbug!

Godel: Yeah, good call! I was gonna say it was getting close to the classic Wolverine take, but you’re right, it’s missing the, like…seasoned veteran vibe. He still feels young, even though we do finally see him out of the mask. And it takes Cockrum a bit to nail down what the hair’s going to be).

Uzumeri: It’s more obvious in contrast with Jason Aaron’s conception, where basically his core concept of Logan is that he’s this really jaded dude who’s lived over a hundred years and done basically everything you can do as a human being. And here he basically acts like a fratboy who learned human interaction on Xbox Live.

Godel: I mean, at this point, I’m not even sure he has a healing factor yet. So the hundred years thing is way, way out in the future. It’s only in #98 that it’s settled that the claws aren’t part of his gloves, and in the same issue there’s still this foreshadowing that he’s not a “normal” mutant. The “mutated wolverine” thing was, it would seem, still in circulation.

Uzumeri: Yeah, but he does mention psychotherapy and hypnosis at some point, hinting at his berserker rage. Claremont had SOME conception. I wonder when exactly he came up with the ‘modern’ interpretation.

Godel: And still, there’s things like him hitting on Jean (to put it, uh, mildly) that end up being really key pieces of the character. And the first “fastball special” with Colossus in 100.

Uzumeri: Yeah, there’s a lot of key character development in these issues, it’s just hampered by the fact that the villains are all people we basically never saw from again, like Kierrok and Steven Lang. Although… huh, according to Wikipedia, Lang was one of the dudes in Bastion’s anti-mutant zombie circle. After coming back for Phalanx Covenant and not again until Kyle/Yost X-Force.

Godel: It’s a testament either to his lameness. or to the generic-henchman problem of Second Coming that neither of us managed to remember he was there. But these are awful villains, aren’t they? You sense the struggle: rebooting a franchise that, aside from Magneto, was really short on villains.

Uzumeri: It’s amazing when you realize that Claremont’s X-Men was the equivalent of, like, Brubaker/Fraction on Iron Fist. “What the fuck are they thinking, putting this promising young writer on this IP deadweight?”

Godel: I get what he’s going for with Lang, having the head of the Sentinels be this blonde-haired bigot – DO YOU SEE??!! – but there’s not much more to him. We’ll get another stab at the same idea in a few years with Donald Pierce, but it still isn’t much to hang a character on.

That panel where he starts raving about PROJECT ARMAGEDDON is the moment I stopped paying attention to him as a real villain.

Uzumeri: Who the fuck names their project that and expects funding?!?!? Like, at the budget meeting, just “yeah, and we’re giving another 20 million to… what the FUCK is Project Armageddon”

Godel: God, the campaign ads would be great! They wouldn’t even have to bend the truth to make it sound sinister. “While families in Ohio were hurting, Senator Kelly voted for Nancy Pelosi’s socialist agenda, sending our jobs to outer space and PROJECT ARMAGEDDON.”

Uzumeri: Seriously! Why not call it, I dunno, Operation Gardenia or something.

Godel: Someone should do a history of all the Marvel Universe’s fake government “PROJECT: WHATEVERS” and see how they all fared.

Meanwhile, the less said about Kierrok “I CLAIM THIS PLANET IN THE NAME OF AN EVIL HELL DIMENSION!” the Damned, the better. I mean, he just isn’t an X-Men villain, and he shows up because Cyclops accidentally knocks over the one rock on the entire Xavier estate that blocks a Hellmouth.

Victor Gischler’s next villain - we hope.

Uzumeri: Returning to Wiki: Wow, they really used Kierrok and the N’garai again?

Godel: Weird, right? Claremont would actually use the N’Garai in other, non-X-Men stories in the late 70s. Otherwise you’d assume they were just like, something Bill Mantlo threw in (he has a “plot assist” credit on #96).

Uzumeri: I still mostly remember Mantlo for writing really critical mail to the Jack Kirby’s Fourth World titles. But he’s mostly known for his runs on, like, ROM and Micronauts.

Godel: Just wait until the X-men start fighting ROM villains a few years down the line.

Uzumeri: Dire Wraiths?!? They sound like something you find in the tunnels beneath Skara Brae when you have 1/4 of your hit points.

Godel: You see an upset piece of cheese belonging to a Dire Wraith.

Uzumeri: EXACTLY

Godel: Back on the crappy villains, though, I think you can see Claremont trying to salvage what he can from the existing supply of 60s X-Men stories, and meanwhile lay the groundwork for new things in the subplots, fleshing out the supporting cast and all that.

So, like, he’s building up to this big unveiling through Xavier’s dreams, and meanwhile we get the Sentinels, which are a good idea from the 60s stories insofar as they have to do with anti-mutant prejudice and paranoia. They were introduced back in the Lee/Kirby run, and are perhaps better-known for the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams story later in the 60s… on which Claremont has a plot assist credit! And, I dunno about you, but I actually did find the Sentinel story pretty entertaining.

Uzumeri: The Sentinel story was totally fine — I liked the space twist a bunch, that was really entertaining. Kierrok was dumb as hell, but that was its own thing. What’s interesting is that Claremont’s having to pick up on basically on two levels of subplots here, with the now-discarded stuff from the original run and the second set of now-discarded ideas from Len Wein.

Godel: That’s a really interesting point… like, for example, the fallout from Thunderbird’s death.

Uzumeri: It also just felt totally out of place.. Wein had it set up for him to go out and act like the team’s Bucky. He blows up on a plane doing a big heroic action and then Cyclops sits depressed for a while about how he let him die, and then he acts as a spectre of death over the X-men for a bit.

But here Thunderbird’s death bothers Scott for, like, four pages, and it literally hasn’t been mentioned since. Claremont’s clearly moved on, with his new Scottish housekeeper and DREAMS OF SPACE.

Godel: I will say that some of CC’s Classic X-Men backups from the mid-1980s do go back and have, like, the X-Men bringing Thunderbird’s body back to his tribe, etc. And I think Thunderbird next gets a name-check sometime in the 180s of this title. But you’re totally on the money. The tragic early death of a team member was Wein’s plot, and it’s over with.

Uzumeri: It’s a hilarious mood change, honestly. It starts off OH WOE IS ME — I HAVE LET HIM DIE — but within five pages it’s just a totally random Claremont story where he has them fight a low-level Cthulhu.

Godel: And “Va-va-vooooom, who’s this new housekeeper?!”

Not yet established as a world-famous geneticist.

Godel: If the whole run was dopey monster-of-the-week stuff like Kierrok it wouldn’t have gotten far. I mean, it’s a real mess of a plot – – – Scott is wandering in the woods feeling depressed, he goes crazy with his beams and accidentally releases this demon that happens to live on the property, they chase each other back to the mansion (supposedly “thirty miles” away, which has to be a mistake), the X-Men fight Kierrok for a while until Storm seals up the dimensional portal thing. End of story.

There is fun character stuff along the way, and it only takes an issue, while today it would be a minimum 3-issue arc. I do love the panel where Cockrum draws Xavier trying to read Kierrok’s mind, and Moira MacTaggert racing into the room with a machine gun trying to kill this one-eyed elder god from before the dawn of man.

Uzumeri: Also, Wolverine feeling like he’s gonna be judged for going medieval on an elder god from before the dawn of man. “TEN YEARS o’ psycho-training. O’ hypnotism. O’ DRUG THERAPY. Ten years o’ PRAYIN…”

Uzumeri: I’ll give this to Claremont: explaining why Storm is afraid of enclosed spaces just with the art, rather than a big declarative monologue, is uncharacteristically subtle for him.

Godel: Good call! Of course, we’ll get the full flashback in due course, but for that quick feeling of an actual flashback, in the middle of combat, that works really well.

Uzumeri: And as for Cockrum, he really gets to show off a bunch in these upcoming issues. All of his space-war tableaus are totally fucking awesome.

Godel: Yeah, I like him a lot more when he’s drawing that stuff than when he’s just drawing the cast’s faces, but I’m warming up to him even on those. I love his sort of old-school adventure illustrator feel.

Uzumeri: It makes me want to check out his old Legion stuff, which I hear is also pretty awesome, but that’s another point entirely. Cockrum’s reputation is well-deserved, is my point.

Godel: Definitely. There is something inescapably “1970s” about the art here that, I guess, is a reasonable fit for a comic where Dr. Corbeau, who seems to be some sort of astrophysicist or something, spends his spare time designing his own yacht that turns into a hydrofoil for emergencies.

Uzumeri: Corbeau is such a bizarre character, and he serves such a limited purpose in this arc. He basically just gets totally fucked over by the X-Men and blows a shitload of money to help them out with their own problem.

Godel: Hahaha, totally! He also probably ruins his reputation by creating this fake space mission as a cover story for the X-Men flying into space on his shuttle – which, by the way, they completely wreck. Nightcrawler at least has the courtesy to thank him.

Corbeau seems to be here for the same reason as Moira: give Professor X someone to talk to. But Moira fulfills that role and offers this love interest thing with Banshee, who also doesn’t have that much to do, being the old fogey member of the youthful team.

Uzumeri: Which is bizarre, since he’s like half Wolverine’s age.

Godel: But here he’s totally the pipe-smoking voice of reason to calm Wolverine down. We’ll be getting plenty of Banshee in the next arc, which also features – get ready for a major addition to the X-Men rogues’ gallery – the Leprechauns of Cassidy Keep.

Uzumeri: I wasn’t aware they’d actually put in leprechauns. That’s kind of totally amazing, in a completely dumb way.

Godel: There’s also some more of this “phoenix” stuff.

Uzumeri: The Order of the Phoenix? I love Dumbledore!

The backlash against Michael Gambon began here.

Godel: This is the introduction of the first version of the Phoenix concept, which through later retcons would go on to be one of the biggest chunks of confusing and controversial x-continuity. But not much happens with it here – we should revisit it next time.

Uzumeri: Beyond that, #101’s a fun downtime issue, with the characters’ personalities really starting to come to the forefront as Cyclops and Phoenix are effectively removed from the picture. I mean, it’s hilariously convenient that Banshee finds out he’s inherited the sweetest fucking Irish castle ever, but whatevs.

Godel: Yeah, I mean, this is still the kind of book where Professor X’s back yard has evil demons living in it, I can roll with a story getting kicked off by the hoary old “I just inherited a spooky old mansion!” kind of thing.

The character work really is good, though. I like the whole thing of the X-Men hanging around the hospital, worrying about Jean, Cyclops breaking down in tears of relief when he finds out she’s all right. It’s well done.

Uzumeri: I’m still not sure what I think of the Storm scene where she makes it rain, but it’s overall a nice downtime issue, and I imagine the archetype of what all the later Claremont downtime issues would become.

Godel: Ha, the Storm scene is just straight up cheesecake, right? Really timid cheesecake by today’s standards, but basically, ahh, what the hell, let’s have her take a shower on-panel.

Anyway! I think we’ve pretty much run dry on this batch. Overall verdict?

Uzumeri: I dug it a bunch! If it only goes up from here, I’m pretty excited. You?

Godel: For me as the X-nerd, it’s really fun to revisit these kind of under-canonized stories and look at the early character work like this… but I admit I was a little worried after Kierrok and Erik the Red because, well, those are some pretty hokey comics. The Sentinel thing clicked way better for me, and I’m pretty stoked for the leprechauns, et al.

Uzumeri: And we’ve got the M’Kraan Crystal after that, right? I’m looking forward to it!

Godel: For a challenging opinion, let’s turn to another, more critical letter from #101, by one Sam Mandel: “The new X-Men are the worst Marvel creations I can remember. Chris’ scripting is really lousy. […] Dave’s art is almost as bad as Chris’ writing. He is great at drawing aircraft […] but I’ve never seen Jean look so ugly, and the way he draws Scott, well, it is so awful it pains me to think of it.”

Uzumeri: Man, that dude must have been mega disappointed with the way things turned out.

Godel: He does have some suggestions though: “1) Have Colossus and Storm get married and leave the X-Men and go back to Africa or some other place, so long as it is far away. 2) Kill off Nightcrawler by having him save the group at the cost of his own life. He was a poorly conceived character in the first place, since he can not have a real alter-ego[.]”

Uzumeri: “Africa or some other place”

Godel: Thank God no writer ever had Storm marry and move back to Africa.  Sam, are you out there? We’re hoping to hear from you!

In the meantime, that’s all for this week! Look forward to our next installment – returning to Animal Man – in about a week’s time, with more X-Men the week after that. See you soon, and let us know what you think of this feature in the comments box below!