Godel x Uzumeri #4: Byrne-ing Down The House (X-Men 109-113, Iron Fist 15)
Uzumeri: Hey! Welcome back to Godel x Uzumeri, where we’re taking a look at the classic Chris Claremont X-Men run. This time we’re starting with issue #109, John Byrne’s second issue on the title and the first after the epic Shi’ar/M’kraan Crystal arc. He’s read all of this stuff before; I haven’t.
Godel: IN THESE ISSUES: In short succession, the X-Men face off against WEAPON ALPHA, WARHAWK, MESMERO, and then in a two-parter, MAGNETO. But the real hook here is that this is our first chunk with John Byrne firmly installed as penciller and (at this point unofficially) co-plotter. So as a bonus, we also took a look at the X-Men’s guest appearance in IRON FIST #15, the final issue of that Claremont/Byrne title and their first time doing the X-Men together, since it came out a few months before #108.
SUBPLOT WATCH: Warhawk is sent by A MYSTERIOUS FORCE to spy on the X-Men, and Wolverine is revealed to have some possible quantity of MYSTERIOUS PAST involving Weapon Alpha and his Canadian super-friends.
ACCENT WATCH: The carneys at Mesmero’s circus are all from Texas, foah sure! Alternately, they might be from Boston (“An AVENJUH!?!?”). The Peruvian air force communicates entirely in English, except for periodic Spanish nouns, which they then translate for each other.
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So, it’s no secret that you weren’t a fan of John Byrne’s work on the cosmic story in #108; how are you liking him in these more straight-ahead superhero stories?
Uzumeri: Eh, he’s okay. Serviceable to a T, honestly. I still don’t see why he’s such a big deal – Cockrum provided more imagination, and DeZuniga nailed the personal scenes in #110 way more. And drew better-looking women. Byrne… well, he’s certainly a lot better looking here inked by Terry Austin than he is today inked by whoever the hell he gets. He tells a story well, but nothing’s really particularly pretty, nor are his layouts especially remarkable or imaginative.
Man, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that he SET the standard.
Godel: Yeah, he might be one of these guys that it’s hard to look back now and realize that a certain time, this wasn’t a house style for anybody. And Austin is doing a phenomenal job, his backgrounds, his details – – – I love how much he uses really fine line weights to kind of feather the edges of everything.
I totally have to disagree about DeZuniga, he did a nice enough job but everybody looks really off-model, to me anyway.
Uzumeri: Oh man, I loved it. Like, just for an issue, you had this weird combination of romance comic and crime book. It looked weird and off-model, and I thought that fit the ‘weirdness’ of the characters for the first time. Everything has this scratchy quality, like — and I mean, I really largely have modern references to go by — a Michael Lark.
Like, especially Xavier’s face on that last page.
(Click for the full-size image.)
Godel: I like the romance comics connection, since there’s a lot of character subplot stuff going on here. Which also helps it feel less like a fill-in issue.
Uzumeri: He also doesn’t draw everyone’s street clothes like fucking Jetsons shit like Byrne does. What the fuck is Jean wearing when she’s visiting with her parents in #109?
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Godel: ahahahahaha. To be fair, it was 1978! One thing about Byrne’s art, compared to Cockrum’s, is that it’s a lot beefier. There are generally fewer panels on the page and the characters are drawn as generally muscular (or absurdly curvy as the case may be) – there’s a kind of plastic energy to this that seems closer to the Kirby tradition.
Left: Cockrum from #103; Right: Byrne from #109.
We should probably take a look at the individual issues to some extent – – I mean, there’s a series of disconnected one-off stories here, partly due to the fill-in month, but we can take a stab at it. Iron Fist #15 is like a Marvel Team-Up issue with no villain: the X-Men and Iron Fist both show up for a party at Misty and Jean’s apartment, Wolverine mistakes Iron Fist for a burglar, and they fight for a while until it all gets sorted out. It’s your basic “romp.”
Uzumeri: It’s kind of fun, but nothing that blew me away or I thought was incredibly essential. It clearly fits into the timeline since Logan’s wearing the Shi’ar dude’s clothes; whatever his name was, the Timber Wolf ripoff.
Godel: Uh… (checks) “Fang.” No, agreed; I included this one as a curiosity more than anything. It’s kind of fun just to see the X-Men fight Iron Fist, because it never happens.
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Plus, he and Banshee have the same color scheme!
Uzumeri: I know this has absolutely nothing to do with the current material, but Iron Fist’s new white-and-gold color scheme is absolutely the shit.
Godel: Ha, agreed totally, and you know what it reminds me of more than anything is… Dave Cockrum’s original white and gold Phoenix costume! Which, if I remember correctly, was rejected because they were concerned that you’d see through the white to the other side of the page
Uzumeri: hahahahaha ….No, no, no! Then the Phoenix’s power could be telling the future three minutes in advance, BACKWARDS!
But honestly, I don’t have much to say about Iron Fist. Hero/hero misunderstanding fight #4828.
Godel: There’s also character work there, like this really interesting idea that Nightcrawler is already ditching his image inducer because he’s proud of the way he looks. With that and the Errol Flynn poster on his wall, he’s just about fully formed at this point, except for the religious angle.
And the “Wolverine <3s Jean” thing gets advanced a bit.
Uzumeri: I know I’ve remarked on this so many times, but Wolverine is SO incredibly different in these early issues than he is now. His clumsiness around Jean is so bizarre in comparison to the supersmooth James Bond thing he has going on now.
Godel: Yeah, the idea that this is the first woman that’s ever captured his heart is just straight up wrong. He really is being written as more of like, a roughneck from the wilderness – – he’s a loner, he likes hunting (though not killing the animals), he doesn’t get to wear all those stylish 70s threads, etc.
The story I’ve always heard is that they were actually going to write Wolverine out of the book, and Byrne saved him out of a kind of Canadian pride (hence also the introduction of Major Maple Leaf). I sort of doubt that; I mean, the Wolverine vs. Cyclops thing had been a staple of the title since the relaunch, but I could believe that Claremont was getting bored of the guy and Byrne argued in favor of fleshing him out, especially since Byrne’s first issue after the M’Kraan thing is all about Wolverine and his Canadian past.
Uzumeri: For obvious reasons, I can’t imagine the title without him, but he really doesn’t have what’s so appealing about him now in these early issues at all – there’s somewhat of the animalistic thing, but for instance I imagine the hunting without killing thing being a total Byrne addition.
While today, I mean – have you ever seen Anchorman? I figure Wolverine NATURALLY smells like Sex Panther, and for him, it ACTUALLY WORKS.
Godel: Well, I think his appeal at this point is still basically that guy from Giant Size X-Men who sliced off his old boss’s tie when he quit – he’s the one who doesn’t take orders, is ready to mess some people with his claws, all that stuff is in place. And, even though it’s unrecognizable as present day Wolverine, I think we can see the appeal of the guy who doesn’t know how to talk to the pretty, sophisticated city girl who has lots of other, better friends (including her, uh, boyfriend).
Uzumeri: Dude, Wolverine is totally the reader stand-in.
Godel: Wow. That’s totally true, and totally, totally weird.
Uzumeri: Socially awkward, wants the pretty girl but can’t woo her from the taller pretty successful guy who’s not even a BAD guy but just a stick-in-the-mud…
Godel: It’s almost like a Spider-Man plot. Or maybe Han and Leia, considering there’s a Star Wars shoutout in 109 and you can imagine the whole Marvel bullpen going to see it like twenty times.
Uzumeri: He basically hates rules and keeps wanting to be alone, and tells his parental figures to go fuck themselves when he gets invited to go off to boarding school.
Godel: This is a real revelation to me, I’ve never ever considered the character from this angle, because the later Claremont stories do a lot more with him as the seasoned, world-traveled samurai type guy.
Uzumeri: We know now that he’s, like, 80 years old at this point, but he really comes off as the youngest person there. You can really tell just how much Byrne must have added to his background, since Claremont seemed to be going in a totally different direction with him.
Godel: I do love the bit where Wolverine considers letting Cyclops get decapitated by the Danger Room to get him out of the way, but steps in at the last minute.
He gets a lot of page time in 109, which also has a sort of silly plot: Weapon Alpha (who we know better as Vindicator or Guardian) comes to attack Wolverine and recruit him back to Weapon X, but is baffled to discover that Wolverine is living with a team of superheroes. Overwhelmed, he teleports away at the end, and that’s that.
Uzumeri: Yeah, it feels like a silly oneshot issue, but Claremont seems to be using each of these to slowly move other plots forward — like, this gives a little more about Wolverine’s background. Namely, that he used to pal around with a group called Alpha Flight, and they were Canadian. I will give Byrne credit for Vindicator’s costume.
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Godel: Yes, “Major Maple Leaf,” as Banshee calls him! It’s a pretty nicely stylized design… you wish Captain America’s was as graphically subtle.
The other big selling point of this issue was probably the multiple cheesecake scenes of Storm, first taking a shower (while watering her plants, because, y’know, she’s a nurturing life-giver) and then hanging around by the lake in a bikini.
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Uzumeri: I can see why people thought Storm was cool and unique at the time, but she seems so silly now through the lenses of history, you know? Maybe it’s just that she hasn’t had a really compelling modern interpretation, but if you tried the whole “goddess from a savage land!” thing in 2011, bloggers would mock you into the next life.
Godel: Sort of like we’re doing now! I’m really on the fence with her in these issues. I think to their credit, they’re actually steering largely clear of Wein’s “goddess from a savage land” angle – – — at least in terms of plot points – – – and instead picking up on the origin flashback where she grew up as a pickpocket and safecracker.
Uzumeri: If I were totally cynical, this is where I’d make a “OH, so I SEE, Chris and John, black people all gotta be THIEVES and CRIMINALS” crack.
Godel: I mean, I think it’s a fair point – – your hypothetical 2011 debut would look just as bad if it was “An AFRICAN skilled in THIEVERY and DECEPTION” etc.
And then all the in-between stuff is her lounging around in no clothes. It maybe reaches its peak in the Savage Land story which we’ll get to next time, but it’s really problematic since the only other person Byrne draws as skimpily as this is Misty Knight.
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Jean doesn’t walk around with no clothes on, Lilandra doesn’t walk around with no clothes on, Moira certainly doesn’t…
Uzumeri: IF ONLY I DID NOT NEED THESE RESTRICTIVE SCRAPS OF CLOTHING
Godel: Yeah, like, oh, I guess she’s really “primal” and “primitive” or something. We’ll come back to this in the next arc maybe, but in the meantime, yeah, lots of problematic leg.
Uzumeri: She doesn’t really get a decent competitor in the teenager boner olympics until Psylocke.
Godel: Don’t forget Rogue!
Uzumeri: Later Rogue, maybe. Early Rogue was dressed like a fucking warlock.
Godel: So was early Psylocke! Or…wait, I gotcha, you’re talking about the Jim Lee Psylocke.
Uzumeri: Who just turns into, which gratuitous ass shots do you want to see today, fanboys? I don’t think they ever fetishized Rogue QUITE as bad outside of the swimsuit calendars and shit, but I could be wrong. “AND NOW, ANOTHER SWIMSUIT COLLECTIBLE CARD BY THE HILDEBRANDT BROTHERS…where she has a goiter or something.”
Godel: Well, it helped that her whole bit was that she couldn’t have a lot of exposed skin. Which has now been fixed, so she’s wearing an outfit unzipped halfway down her boobs all the time.
Uzumeri: That’s just Yanick Paquette’s art, man. As soon as he went to DC, first issue of Batman Inc, Selina’s got her shirt unzipped halfway the whole issue. And Acuna, who did the same thing with Black Widow in her ongoing.
Godel: At least with Rogue you go, well, maybe she’s overcompensating for all those years of having to cover it up but that’s still a bit …convenient.
Uzumeri: Honestly I didn’t mind it as much with Catwoman because, well… Catwoman. Also, Morrison was writing specifically for a cheesecake artist and subverting it in the script but we’ll get to that in 2 and a half years or whenever.
So, anyway, my favorite part about the Weapon Alpha issue: when he declares himself the ULTIMATE PRODUCT OF CANADIAN TECHNOLOGY.
Godel: Get ready, world: we have a man who can FLY!
Uzumeri: Also interesting to see Amanda Sefton seeded so early — and speaking of Psylocke, is Amanda’s friend “Betsy” actually Betsy Braddock?
Godel: You know, I have no idea. I figured it was just some non-character being alluded to by Nightcrawler as a possible double date, but Claremont actually cooked up Psylocke for a Marvel UK book in 1976. So it could be some kind of cutesy in-reference. I don’t think she shows up before she joins the team a few years from now….
Uzumeri: Another thing Claremont’s really pulling off at this point is the ambiguity about Banshee’s past. We know he was “involved with” Interpol, but then Weapon Alpha mentions seeing him on a flyer, so it’s totally ambiguous if he was an agent or a wanted.
Godel: Yeah, it’s a little forced, like, does Weapon Alpha have a memory of every flyer he’s ever seen? But it is intriguing. Some of that is just giving a shoutout to Banshee’s 60s backstory, but it’s still a potentially interesting subplot.
At the same time, for no really clear reason, Moira is moving back to Scotland after having just shown up, so Banshee’s status quo is really in jeopardy.
Uzumeri: I didn’t even take notice of that, because I’m so used to Moira flying in and out of Scotland the entire time she was alive. Man, I can imagine how much Morrison must have wanted to use her – this boisterous, genius, headstrong Scottish woman. She was basically replaced by Beast in his initial pitch, if I recall.
Godel: Not to mention she was a geneticist dealing with freaky mutant science… she would have been perfect. She leaves off-panel here; it’s mentioned in the captions of the baseball game issue that it’s her last day at the mansion. Frankly seems like a last-minute rewrite, but I have no idea. It’s weird, because there are still these references to her MYSTERIOUS PAST with Xavier, like you expect there to be a love triangle plot with Lilandra.
Uzumeri: Well, it’s really just setup for the Proteus storyline, right? Further down the road, I mean.
Godel: True, she sort of needs to be at Muir Island for that. And it was foreshadowed a couple of issues ago with the MUTANT X holding cell. But it still feels a bit jumpy to me.
Uzumeri: Also, it wouldn’t even be a love triangle, you know? It’d be pretty full if you had Xavier dating Lilandra but still having feelings for Moira who’s dating Banshee…
Godel: See, I mean, that sounds like a good soap opera plot! It’s surprising that they don’t go that way at all, instead sending Moira to Scotland and Professor X and Lilandra off for a romantic getaway in Greece.
#110 is the fill-in issue, supposedly commissioned to give Cockrum time to catch up. Except Byrne still finished out Cockrum’s big cosmic story, so instead it feels more like it’s in place here to give Byrne time to work ahead – – #113 is the first monthly issue since the 60s.
As Danger Room-themed fill-ins go, I did like this better than #106.
Uzumeri: Again, I really dug Tony DeZuniga’s art here, it’s got this gritty, almost EC vibe to it, all clothing beautifully draped off the women and these scratchy lines for the men, it’s almost got this noir take. I mean, dude created Jonah Hex, it’s definitely his vibe. It felt a little WEIRDER than Byrne’s stuff, which I thought sat well with the material. Great action scenes, too.
Godel: I like the EC comparison and I get that….and I like your point that the book is supposed to be about weird-looking freaks, it’s the same argument I’ve heard in favor of Kordey’s art on New X-Men.
Uzumeri: Kordey’s art on New X-Men could have been fantastic if he’d had more than, like, five days an issue.
This is also the first baseball game, isn’t it?
Godel: It is! And this is where I disagree about DeZuniga, in that I think he’s not really handling the action scenes very well. The big Danger Room scene has no sense of space to it, I don’t understand where the figures are in relation to each other, and certain key things (like the razor things coming to chop off Cyclops’s head) don’t really get emphasized by the art.
Uzumeri: Actually, yeah, you’re right. I like the individual panels, but there’s no real sense of continuity.
Godel: I’ll give DeZuniga the same pass here that you give Kordey – it’s a fill-in issue, so a nice job overall. And because of the baseball game and other subplot work, it does feel a little less filler-y than the last one.
You know, this was one of the first “classic” X-Men comics I ever read, because it was sold through the Scholastic book fair in a pocket-sized, black and white reprint, along with the first Arcade story for some reason.
Uzumeri: WARHAWK AND ARCADE: THE SHITTY VILLAINS COLLECTION
Godel: Basically. What a weird thing to publish. Yeah, Warhawk is frankly awful. He was first coughed up by Claremont back in 1975, as someone for Iron Fist to fight in Marvel Premiere; he has absolutely no personality and he’s explicitly just a henchman. Even Jean Grey calls him “a second-rate Colossus.”
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Uzumeri: He’s also yet ANOTHER iteration of the MYSTERIOUS VILLAIN PULLING THE STRINGS, isn’t he?
Godel: I mean, when you have a villain this lame, you’d better have some intimation of a bigger plot. Fun fact: Warhawk’s next appearance in an X-Men book doesn’t come until 1992, when he fights Maverick in a backup strip to the Jim Lee book. If I remember right, Maverick kills him, which was then retconned, because, god, how could you let such a great character slip away from you?
Uzumeri: I love how forgotten all of these early Claremont villains are. Gleefully, I hope.
Godel: I’m definitely not clamoring for more Warhawk. Our next one-off villain, in 111, is Mesmero, who is fighting the X-Men in revenge for the old X-Men team beating him back in the 60s.
Uzumeri: Where he was apparently working with a Magneto who was ……. a ROBOT! As a way of explaining why he claimed to be Lorna Dane’s father, which eventually got revealed as true by Chucky A.
Godel: Yeah, so basically Mesmero only appears in bad stories, I think. Similar to Phoenix dissing Warhawk, here we have Magneto effectively saying “Wait… a guy hypnotizing people at a circus? You sure this isn’t a Ringmaster comic?”
Uzumeri: You’ve also got the reintroduction of Beast, as well as Jean Grey taking up smoking. That’s the REAL villainy here. Jean’s been smoking for weeks! She could have LUNG CANCER!
Godel: I actually am really charmed by this issue, which seems to take its Silver Age premise as a gleeful excuse to give the characters really over-the-top dialogue. Jean is a scream as Miz Destiny, although I shifted uncomfortably in my seat when Wolverine snaps out of the hypnosis by slapping the shit out of her.
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Uzumeri: There really wasn’t ANYTHING else he could do? I agree, I kind of winced at that. Like, come ON, guys. He couldn’t just show his claws and try to run after her or something?
Godel: Or how about a gentle shake, or at least a few panels of “Snap out of it! Remember the M’Kraan crystal?” or something, to make us feel like he exhausted some other options. I mean, again, he’s the roughneck, but it really doesn’t play well in 2010.
Uzumeri: Or — and here’s one that mystified me the entire fucking issue — Why in the Hell didn’t Beast just take off Scott’s glasses? “Hey, remember how you SHOOT LASERS OUT OF YOUR FUCKING EYES?”
Godel: Well, Beast in general seems not to have had his coffee that day. He was just born for Claremont dialogue, so that part’s fine, but this is a guy who’s supposed to be “the smart one” on every team he joins, and here it takes him like seven pages to determine whether or not the circus freaks who look like the X-Men and have the X-Men’s exact powers (and are where Cerebro told him to find the X-Men) are, in fact, the X-Men.
Uzumeri: He should hang out more with Thor from this cover.
Godel: Or this guy. The other thing this issue gives us is a classic Byrne “swarthy, sweaty Wolverine breaks free” sequence, and possibly our first use of another great Claremont trademark: “Hit ’em hard and hit ’em fast!”
These last few issues are – like the first few Claremont/Cockrum issues – sort of hokey plot-wise. But the characters are clicking for me a lot more, I’m definitely entertained just watching them interact. And then we hit the Magneto arc, which I thought was a lot more convincing.
Uzumeri: Well, the fact that it’s a villain who doesn’t suck for once is nice, although he’s, like, ZERO dimensional here. “Fuck you guys, you beat me before!” “Oh hey, we just beat you again!” “FUCK YOU GUYS MORE!”
Godel: Totally! I was surprised by that. His sort of brief appearance a few issues ago I wrote off as Claremont just wanting to get him into circulation and undo the “turned into an infant” thing from Defenders. But now he’s really in the spotlight and he’s still a generic mastermind.
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Uzumeri: No terrors of the Holocaust, not even mutant supremacy, just straight-up revenge. Actually, is the Holocaust thing in Magneto’s backstory by this point?
Godel: Nope. And the funny thing is, his revenge is (like Mesmero’s) being carried out against the wrong people! He’s pissed that he got turned into a baby by Mutant Alpha, during what happened to be a Professor X guest appearance in Defenders. So if he should be dragging anybody to his Antarctic superbase, it should be Mutant Alpha, or failing that, Doctor Strange and Valkyrie. The New X-Men have absolutely nothing to do with his whole problem.
Setting that aside, though, it’s a well-constructed story on its own terms; the idea of the base being hidden under a lava flow is pretty cool, and I loved the long journey there in the flying circus wagon, it was a great way to raise the suspense, like what can he possibly have in store for them there?
Uzumeri: The lava base seemed really ridiculous for some reason; I’d imagine an asteroid base would be easier than a multitude of hidden volcano bases around the world that you BUILT YOURSELF.
Godel: Yeah, and then there’s this weird idea that he lost years of priceless documents or something when the base gets destroyed. Like, dude, maybe you should have moved those from your Active Volcano Base to, I dunno, a safe deposit box. I guess I just like the visual punch of this thing where, the only way in or out of the base is through the lava in a magnetic force-field bubble.
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Uzumeri: It’s totally awesome, I just could have used a LITTLE bit more comic book logic, but we are talking about a Claremont book from the late ’70s.
Godel: And, since it’s a Claremont book, we get the frankly astonishing S&M plot: Magneto locks the X-Men up and has them treated as babies by a nanny robot for days on end.
Uzumeri: As poetic justice for him being turned into a child! What’s awesome about this is that it manages to combine BOTH of Claremont’s huge writing fetishes, BDSM AND mind control.
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Godel: Oh, just you wait til we get to the Hellfire Club, my friend.
But, yeah. With Mesmero you go, well, Mesmero controls people’s minds, okay – Claremont didn’t make that up, and there’s a long Marvel tradition of circus-based mind control. But this is the kind of thing that really gets him lampooned now. And yet it gives it a unique charge, this is not a generic torture chamber or whatever, and it makes Magneto seem particularly driven and villainous.
I also really appreciated the Storm sequence here; she finally gets her turn at being the one member who breaks them free and turns the tide (after Cyclops in 100, Nightcrawler in 103, and Wolverine in 111), and it pays off the street thief/lockpick thing really well. She doesn’t just get really mad and bust loose, she has to concentrate like crazy to pull off this desperate, impossible stunt.
Uzumeri: One of the downsides of the current X-Men status quo is that due to them always having to defend the home front we never get to see them, like, sneak into secret bases and shit anymore.
Godel: Agreed – it’s a very defensive posture for the line, which makes too much of the WORLD THAT HATES AND FEARS THEM and not enough of the, like, fighting to save that same world.
Uzumeri: I agree that the Storm breakout was the best part of what was honestly a really good arc. The way they portrayed it, too – and then her dropping it, and she cries out of frustration, and then she just straight up tries again.
Like, the tears seemed totally natural, you’re trying as hard as you can to break free from this terrible fucking trap while fighting your claustrophobia AND having the reflexes of a six year old AND getting patronized by this hilarious nanny robot. And still, she just brushes it off and finishes the job. It’s one of the most emotionally convincing feats in this run so far, you know? Colossus breaking free of something is so pat.
Godel: Agreed totally about the emotional payoff, and it’s a sign I think that all that character subplot work is paying off: the reader by this point really cares whether Storm can overcome this thing. And it doesn’t feel out of nowhere, because in the Danger Room issue we saw her for the first time really getting somewhere in mastering her claustrophobia, because her friends were counting on her, etc. I do wish we actually saw the final escape on-panel.
Uzumeri: Yeah, that did legitimately annoy me.
Godel: But it does make a nice setup for Magneto coming back to the base, discovering the lights are off and everything’s amiss, and then getting jumped by the X-Men, who have prepared a plan to beat him. That’s some superhero thrill power there: we’ve seen Magneto take this team completely apart twice, but this time they just manage to pull it off by working together.
Uzumeri: Yeah, and Claremont set it up, since the previous two fights Cyclops spends the entire time thinking “WHY ARE THEY SUCH SCREW-UPS?”
Oh, also, about the flashback, holy cow Achmed is a total piece of shit.
Godel: Yeah, and that’s another kind of iffy thing, I think today you’d have to add some subtlety to his character just to not do “CRAFTY Middle Eastern THIEF.” I mean, he’s basically Fagin as an evil Arab instead of an evil Jew.
Uzumeri: The like Dhalsim limbs and missing teeth don’t help much, no, but then again this guy is being drawn by John Byrne.
Godel: Have we talked about Cyclops in a while?
Uzumeri: I can kind of see why people hated Cyclops at this point. He really hasn’t had too much face time, and whenever he does, he feels sorry for himself while people in way worse circumstances have a good time around him. He’s enormously unlikeable.
Godel: He even mopes about his relationship with the gorgeous, cosmic-level superhero, because he can no longer relate to her since she became Phoenix, or something. It does pay off on his fretting by her bedside while she was in the hospital, but I wish they had some scenes talking together so we could really see the problem.
I also love the scene between Nightcrawler and Cyclops, where Kurt calls him out for thinking of him only as the wisecracking X-Man and not a person with his own problems and feelings.
Uzumeri: Kurt’s so understanding; he’s just waiting to get belted and figures it’s okay, it’ll wear off. “Sometimes people hit you when you speak truth to them! That’s cool, I can deal with that.” Like, damn.
Godel: I guess being in the Marvel Universe, though, you’d have to get used to people suddenly punching you in the middle of seemingly normal conversations. But he makes the really good point of, like, dude, you’re moping because you have optic beams? I’m blue and furry with fangs and a demon tail, do you see me whining about it?
Uzumeri: I don’t think anyone ever really wrote Scott convincingly until Grant Morrison, unless there are some upcoming Claremont arcs that could change my mind.
Godel: Scott really does have the problem where his whole role on the team is being the team captain or the good lieutenant or whatever. And that’s not a really sympathetic role for most people, if he weren’t so competent you’d read him as Gorman from Aliens or something. He does seem like a good leader for the team combat-wise, but his relationships with the other characters are so distant and strained. I’m definitely interested to see if you come around on him.
Uzumeri: I mean, at least with Wolverine you have the entire memory reconditioning thing to explain why he’s acting so differently.
Godel: Don’t forget that Morrison inherited Cyclops shortly after the Twelve.. he was leaning on this idea that Cyclops was merged with Apocalypse and all that. Jean or Emma basically calls bullshit on it, like “Whatever, lame excuse,” but it’s certainly used as a springboard to refocus the character.
Uzumeri: Have you read the Way/Carey retcon, of Wolverine I mean?
Godel: Is that the one that established that actually it was Professor X who erased all his memories, in order to help him learn to be a good hero?
Uzumeri: Yeah, because when he joined the team, he actually had a second objective of assassinating him, from Romulus.
It’s a good explanation, I think – you can sort of read his appearances here as this domesticated guy with Logan’s real personality sort of slowly emerging from the conditioning. Or, not domesticated, but … childish.
Godel: Yeah, you could imagine that Professor X just had a really limited impression of Canadian people, and knew that Wolverine was kind of a wild guy so he figured that this backwoods trucker stereotype would be a decent fit. As retcons go, it’s annoying since it once again piles up pure evil on Professor X, but plotwise it makes a lot of sense, just in terms of explaining a bunch of other inconsistent stories.
Uzumeri: It doesn’t seem that evil on Xavier’s part, man – I’ve always seen him as supremely arrogant, not evil. And at this point, he’s pretty supremely humbled.
Godel: Well, yeah, okay, but he’s also benefited from a Tony-Stark-esque “I lost all my memories” plot device, so he’s humbled but doesn’t really have to be guilty of all that stuff. It’s probably necessary to keep the character viable between Way’s thing and Second Genesis, but that’s probably a discussion we should have whenever we do a retrospective tribute to Carey’s X-Men. COMING IN 2046, ladies and gentlemen!
Uzumeri: But yeah, again, it’s really fascinating reading about these characters in their original context like this, where it’s really BEFORE the characters’ archetypal versions had been defined. It’s like those early Batman issues where he uses a gun. Or the Superman ones where he can only jump, and casually murders loan sharks and shit.
Godel: Again, though, it’s worth noting that for lots of people, Claremont/Byrne/Austin is the archetypal read of the characters. So these are early issues of that period, but sooner or later we’re going to be looking at something that, while not contemporary, is sort of definitive in terms of popular impressions of the characters.
Uzumeri: But by the time you’re in the Mariko/Kitty Pryde era, you’ve got the archetypal Wolverine, the wise samurai who’s really gruff with a heart of gold. Who also really wants the cool guy’s girlfriend but is mostly over it.
Godel: Also, Phoenix is, by that point, and I don’t want to spoil an obscure upcoming plot point, but she will be “out of the picture.” Nuff said!
NEXT WEEK: our penultimate chunk of Animal Man! TWO WEEKS FROM NOW: more X-Men, as the team is presumed dead and embarks on a circuitous journey home from Antarctica. Although I will give you fair warning, this is a Marvel Universe book in the general vicinity of Antarctica, and you know what that means.
Uzumeri: I am supremely frustrated by the very existence of the Savage Land.
So are the X-Men, David. So are the X-Men.