TWTYTW: 1983

If 1981 is notable as the year the X-Men arguably grew into a franchise (I know not everyone agrees with me on this, but Dazzler counts, dammit!), and 1982 important for the publishing of Marvel Graphic Novel #4 and the first Wolverine mini-series (both extensions of Claremont's personal vision rather than simply Marvel expanding their reach), then 1983 is the year that the X-Books were finally solidly established as an ongoing concern, and Claremont ascended to the role of caretaker of Marvel's mutant population.

By the end of 1983 there were no fewer than four mutant-centric series in publication.  Two were written by Claremont himself, a third was based on characters he created (Byrne's Alpha Flight) and a fourth concerned itself with a superheroine he so seamlessly wove into a 1980 issue of Uncanny X-Men that an awful lot of people mistakenly believed him to have created her, rather than simply introduced her to comic fans.  On top of that, we saw the start of a second X-Men limited series (Majik: Storm and Illyana, which Abigail assures me gets better).

That was written by Claremont, of course, so at this point he's been responsible for taking the still-young X-Men relaunch and turning it into a smash hit, demonstrated how to put together a successful spin-off, provide the bedrock for two more, and provide templates for both the "important" one-shot and the limited series.

It's not just Claremont's recent work-load that suggests he's taken on a holistic role, though - a role that really no-one before him can really be said to have had.  It's also expressed in his choice of stories.  Just think about the ideas Claremont introduced into the Marvel Universe in 1982: Binary, the Brood and the Acanti, the revelation of Magneto's past and Wolverines Japanese connections, the Sidri and the Bamfs, and of course the New Mutants themselves.  1981 was even more full of new creations and concepts (the Morlocks, for one).

In 1983, though, there's a noticeable reduction in major new ideas.  You've got Selene and Amara (and Nova Roma along with them), and you've got Maddie Pryor, and that's about it, despite Claremont having a whole extra comic to fit ideas into.

This isn't intended as a criticism, not at all.  I think drawing on the Marvel Universe's past and extended cast of characters is almost always a good idea - provided of course that it's in the pursuit of a strong story, and not intended to be an end in itself - and in a situation where one's own slice of this giant sandbox is expanding rapidly, absorbing characters like Viper, the Silver Samurai, Henry Gyrich, or Team America (well, maybe not them...) strikes me as sound method for strengthening the franchise's foundation.  So too does drawing from the book's own past, though of course this practice is fated to cause far more than its share of problems in the future.

For all that much of Claremont's material hasn't aged well, and tends to have jarring changes in tone that I can't believe weren't problematic at the time, this kind of top-down awareness of how to treat a multi-book concern always seemed to be one of his strengths.  Not just in terms of the overall nature of his output, but also the clean distinctions made between titles.  Compare the differences between UXM and NMU with, say, New Avengers and Mighty Avengers between the latter's debut and the conclusion of Secret Invasion.  Whatever one's feelings regarding Brian Michael Bendis (and I'm a lover of that particular brand of Marmite, though perhaps that's helped by having read too little of the Avengers' previous adventures to be upset by the massive errors in characterisation others have accused him of making [1]), both those books mainly exist in order for two different groups of superheroes to talk a lot before they punch out some poorly-defined horde of mooks.  There's nothing in either book that would feel out of place in the other.

UXM and NMU work somewhat differently.  Whilst UXM gets ever darker (as evidenced by how Kitty seems more and more out of place), NMU begins as a far lighter read, interested in the unique behaviour of teenagers and how to extrapolate that to the super-powered, rather than struggling to protect a world that hates and fears them. Eventually, the idea that the new team only ever get into life-threatening scrapes entirely by accident will be dropped, but right now the difference between sending Wolverine and Storm to combat terrorists and sending the New Mutants to the Amazon in the hope of getting some R&R is noticeable.  Looking at these two comics, along with the blood-stained Wolverine ongoing series and bonkers Excalibur when they appear a few years down the line, it's obvious Claremont - at least at this stage in his career - understood the need for clearly defined identities for each book, something that has often not been true in recent years.

In short, then, Claremont proved here that not only was he the right man for the job of building the X-Men into an international phenomenon, he was the right man to capitalise on that success by assembling and overseeing the franchise.   Dazzler may be struggling, having gone bi-monthly and seeming to have lost its direction following Fingeroth's departure, and Byrne's Alpha Flight, whilst fun, has severe structural problems regarding its female cast that are more than a little worrying, the heart of these mutant books is entirely solid.

[1] That said, though, there was nothing in All-New X-Men that particularly bothered me, other than the fact that it's replacing a comic cancelled after a 37 year uninterrupted run for no good goddamn reason whatsoever.

Majik: Storm & Illyana #1: "Little Girl Lost"

("What good is the ability to see the future, if no-one listens?")

Comments

For those that don't already know, Magik: Storm & Illyana is a four part miniseries that deals with what happened to Illyana when she fell into Limbo back in UXM #160, describing her development from an innocent seven year old child into a twisted thirteen year old sorceress.

Unsurprisingly, it's pretty dark.  I say that not just because a Limbo-based story isn't something you'd expect to be draped in rainbows and kittens, but because Claremont's last foray into the world of the spin-off mini was Wolverine, which was very dark indeed.

It was also very good.  This is less so.

The obvious hurdle, at least for this first issue, is that Illyana cannot possibly hold down a narrative in the same way Wolverine can.  When Illyana was a seven-year old, she was the blankest of blank slates, something that didn't particularly bother me at the time (she was hardly in the comic at all, for one thing), and there's been almost no effort put into fleshing out her post-Limbo character over the last eighteen standard months since she returned to Earth a teenager.

This is not necessarily a crippling problem, but it does mean the story has to rely heavily on at least one of the following three things: Storm, an intriguing plot, and/or artistic spectacle.  The trouble is, none of those are working in this first instalment.  There's nothing bad about the artwork here Tom Palmer finishing John Buscema's layouts) but it's nowhere near as good as the stark, shadowy Wolverine, with its evocative palette.

The plot doesn't really do much for me either, and again there's an obvious issue: we already know how this turns out.  I've no problem with the idea of filling in the blanks, of course, but when we know the story starts at A and ends at B, there needs to be something more for us to hang our interest on than the simple transistion from one point to another.  In this issue, Illyana has her soul corrupted by the demon and would-be world-ender Belasco, only to be rescued by Storm and Kitty (now calling herself Cat), the only two X-Men still alive from the previous timeline in which Illyana escaped but each of the rest of the team was killed, corrupted, or abandoned. Belasco now wants Illyana back to complete the process, Storm wants to find a way to uncorrupt her, and Cat wants to kill her to ensure Belasco's plans don't come to fruition.

That's by no means a bad set-up, but as I say, we already know Kat doesn't get her way, because Illyana survives, and neither does Belasco, because to quote Oz "We know the world didn't end because: check it out." So a lot of weight is getting put on the moral quandary Storm is in: risk the world to save a little girl, or kill her to keep humanity safe.  Again, there's nothing wrong with that set-up on paper, but even if we didn't know everything works out fine - and as much as Claremont tries to convince us Illyana is a real threat by having her beat the crap out of Storm in the psychic realm - it's just impossible to imagine Marvel in 1983 green-lighting a project in which a seven-year old girl is murdered by two long-time superheroes, alternate versions or not.  So now we're a step back again; the story can't even rely on that dramatic tension narratively, because it doesn't plausibly exist.  It can only rely on it emotionally, in terms of how the characters respond to it.

But even this isn't really possible, because Storm is so far removed from how we know her, and Katherine Pryde even more so (it turns out her time in Limbo has partially changed her into a literal cat, a revelation Claremont holds back until page 18 and is quite the best thing about this book), which means two characters who are more or less strangers are arguing rather heavy-handedly over a choice both historically and narratively inevitable.  And by "heavy-handedly", I mean Storm tries to argue that if they kill Illyana, they're no better than Belasco, which is easily the most enragingly idiotic example of an enragingly idiotic argument we've seen yet.  Killing a seven year old girl in order to save six billion people is not no better than twisting a seven year old girl into a demonic sorceress in order to kill six billion people, and anyone willing to base the central character clash their story relies on on such an obviously terrible idea isn't capable of taking the one escape route left for this story.

There are some nice bits in here - a brief nod to the difficulty in teaching children respect and self-discipline when others are offering them immediate self-gratification, and an ending which suggests Cat may have found an alternative method to save Illyana, or may be lying in order to kill her - but really, it's a poor issue, and poor for such fundamental structural reasons that I don't have high hopes for the next three installments.

Clues

Since almost all of this issue takes place in flashback during a period we already know to have been mere hours according to "our" time, there's very little to say here.  All we need is to place where Illyana is whilst she's relating this story.  I don't see any reason not to put that in line with that month's issue of UXM. Excitingly, since Illyana tells us it's her fourteenth birthday, that gives us an opportunity to cycle out Colossus from the age tracker, and put her in there instead.

Date

Saturday 17^th September, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+197.

Contemporary Events

The Lebanese army begins an attempt to flush Syrian-backed militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas out of the mountain ranges overlooking Beirut.  US President Ronald Reagan argues that attempts by Congress to exert authority over the length of time US troops spend in that country would send a "dangerous signal" to the Middle East and the USSR; one more interesting data point in the repeated attempts by the executive branch to argue Congress has no authority in military matters.

Standout Line

"Laughter helps me maintain my perspective." - Storm

ALF #5: "What Fools These Mortals Be..."

(Don't carry on, nurse.)

Comments

If pushed, and not that anyone asked, but if I had to name my favourite Alpha Flight character, the only way Puck would fail to win would be if I decided to rank him joint top alongside Sasquatch (who's brilliant, but a bit too obvious of a Beast clone).  So whilst the running joke of him failing to get to the action in Alpha Flight's first issue was genuinely funny, I was disappointed not to see him in action (it's difficult to see what he could have done against a colossal magical earth elemental determined to destroy mankind, but that's exactly why it would have been fun to watch).  Then, we only got a few pages into ALF #2 before he got his guts ripped out and he had to be hospitalised, sitting (lying?) out issues 2 to 4.

In short (no pun intended), a nice slice of Puck-related action is definitely overdue.  And this time round, he's going to provide it, the fact he's basically two pieces of Eugene stapled together be damned.

While everyone else has been skipping around the Arctic Circle making nuisances of themselves, Michael Twoyoungmen has been working on fixing Puck up.  Puck himself has been catching up on his reading and flirting with every nurse within reach. Not that he has much of a reach, you understand, but the nurses seem quite willing to move within range.  Everyone loves a silver-tongued dwarf with a war-wound you could fit a microwave into.

Whilst we're on the subject of those of the feminine persuasion, I should state up front that to no-one's surprise, this is going to be another post about gender politics.  Also to no-one's surprise, Byrne isn't going to do too well out of what I'm going to say.

The basic plot of the first half of the comic is that one of Judd's nurses is acting strangely.  Not the one who keeps giving him sponge baths he doesn't need - that's merely unprofessional, though since Eugene is enjoying it I don't suppose it particularly matters, so long as she's off-duty.  No, we're talking about the one who goes missing in the middle of the night, forcing Puck to drag himself out of bed in exceptional pain and stagger through the hospital, looking for someone who can fill him up with morphine.  He eventually finds the nurse who was supposed to be on the desk, and it looks rather like she's sampling the wares, so to speak.

On its own, this wouldn't be worthy of comment.  It's a bit of a prosaic storyline after four issues of extinction-level threats, but that makes for a welcome change of pace.   And if nothing else, the comic's comparatively low on sledgehammer moral messages; Puck just wants to bust a potential drug ring, not make speeches about how smacking up is bad for you.

So what's my problem?  Well, here's the thing.  Nurse Daly is a woman who's supposed to be looking after Puck, and instead she's ignoring her duties.  Marinna was a woman who was supposed to have Puck's back, and instead she attacked himl.  Aurora is a woman who's supposed to work alongside Alpha Flight, but keeps working against them or even putting them in danger.  The reasons are different each time - the down-to-earth in the form of drug addiction or mental illness, the fantastical in race-memory mind-control - but that's three instances in five issues of a woman dropping a fairly important ball.

A pattern, in short, is emerging.  Hell, this issue opens with Puck and Shaman talking about how they don't really get on with Snowbird.  None of these are objectionable in isolation (indeed Daly might be the least objectionable of all), but all together, it's hard to avoid noticing.  The fact that it variously takes Puck, Northstar and Namor to keep these wayward broads on the straight and narrow just makes things worse.

Outside of this problem, there's actually more than a little to like in here.  I don't think watching Puck go about the business of punching hoodlums could get old; it's like watching Wolverine without claws and with more of a sense of showmanship.  There's also a neat swerve out of comic coincidence when it looks like Puck just happened to stumble onto the crooks the very first night he went looking, only for it to transpire the head doctor (in who Eugene confided) was in on the drug ring all along. And since the "How the band got together" backup strip has returned, the whole thing is nice and breezy (and as always, at least twenty-seven times more bearable than Hidden Years).

I'm just not shaking the unfortunate undercurrents, though.  Mind you, neither can Byrne, as the issue reaches its conclusion, Puck mentions his conviction that Nurse Daly couldn't be in charge.  There must be a top guy, eh?

Eh?

On to the back-up strip, "Deathwatch", in which we travel back in time fifteen years, where a young surgeon, brash and arrogant, ignores the truth of the mystic arts, sure that his medical skills are all he will ever need.  Seriously, how cool would it be if Shaman's real name was Strangeyoungmen?  The answer is very.

Alas, this prideful man, filled with foolish cupidity, does no better than any other prideful man, filled with foolish cupidity.  He learns from his own doctor that his pregnant wife is seriously ill, and though he works for months to save her, he fails, losing both wife and baby, along with his daughter, who thinks he lied to her by promising to save her mother, and his grandfather, shaman of the tribe, who's died on the same day, in a way some might see as ironic, but I choose to consider selfish.

Oh, and it turns out his daughter and Guardian's wife-to-be were friends as children, which seems kinda pointless, but maybe something will get made of it later.

Clues

There's no real suggestion of how much time has passed since Marinna left with Namor at the end of last issue, so we're left trying to figure out how long it would take for Puck to partially recover from being almost disemboweled.  I've no inside knowledge on this score - mostly I deal with diabetes and IVF, though recently I've taken a sidestep into septic appendices - and the nebulous nature of mutant healing prowess would make such info questionable in any case.

I think it's safe to say a month is at least not wildly implausible, though.

The story itself takes place over two nights and two days. It's not clear if it stretches into a third day, but given how far behind schedule this title is, we'll assume it does.

Date

Monday 10^th to Wednesday 12^th of January, 1983.

X-Date 

X+4Y+289 to X+4Y+291.

Contemporary Events

Nikolai Podgorny, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR until six years earlier, dies aged 79.

Standout Line

"Come on in, sweet thing, and this time let me tell you about the time I went tiger-hunting in Nepal..."

So much cooler than Wolveirne.

NMU #10: "Betrayal!"

(Nova Pompeii?)

Comments

OK, so; good news first.  This issue manages to avoid the various flavours of racism that plagued the last two instalments of the title.  Bad news: this is presumably due to lack of space owing to all the teenage girls in bikinis that show up halfway through.

It's been twenty-four hours since Rahne was declared the reincarnation of Julius Caesar, and it's apparently been wall-to-wall processions and feasts since then. As one might expect, the pious Wolfsbane is more than a little bothered at the idea of being considered a god, but on balance, you'd have to say things have taken a better for the team, even if there's still no sign of Roberto's missing mother.

There are a couple of nice moments as the New Mutants relax in the palace Senator Gallio has loaned them. Roberto notes his own father was a slave like those now waiting upon them, which is a nice callback to his character's history.  It's also interesting watching Gallio argue the Roman gods themselves might in fact have been mutants; he does this to placate Rahne, which probably demonstrates his political instincts, but it's a nice idea in any case.  Nowadays the "myth X was mutants" idea has been done multiple times, but the overuse of "proving" such things shouldn't detract from the idea of people wondering how much of what they assumed to be fiction and legend was actually brought about by superbeings.  It's one of those logical reactions to the appearance of "the Marvels" that doesn't get enough play.

Gallio also explains to the team what's going on in Nova Roma; there's a battle of wills taking place between himself, and the plebian Aquilla.  It's interesting that Gallio would frame things in those terms.  He goes to pains to note plenty of plebians (descended from slaves, basically) make for fine citizens, but even so, the way he casually suggests that Aquilla's heritage is to blame for his misdeeds is striking.  This is basically classism, just as surely as we've had racism and are headed for some rather dodgy scenes of scantily-clad girls, but the difference here is that Claremont can plausibly be argued to be criticising rather than engaging.  I have to confess, I quite like the idea of a citizen of Nova Roma saying something so hideously objectionable to contemporary sensibilities (see Andrew Mitchell, resignation of), and it not even occurring to them that there'd be a problem.  It would have been even more interesting coming from the mouth of someone we didn't already know was a villain, of course.

Despite his regressive views on class and heritage, however, Gallio has no trouble winning over Rahne. Partially this may be because she's more pleased than she'll let on about being feted as a goddess (particularly now Gallio's given her an out by suggesting Caesar, Romulus and Remus might all simply have been homo superior as well), but mainly it's because Gallio has set himself against Amara's father, and Rahne despises the blonde girl for the unforgivable crime of getting Sam to like her.  She's so disgusted by the possibility that Sam might have the hots for Amara that she announces the entire team will serve Gallio's cause.  Not surprisingly, this starts off an argument. Sam claims to simply be leery of taking sides without really having any idea as to what is going on in the city, but it's entirely possible his position is no less hormone-fuelled than Rahne's.  Either way, it's pretty obvious that the group needs a replacement for Xi'an as leader. Inwardly, Roberto votes for Dani, though that might be for the sake of a quiet life as anything else.

Not that a quiet life could possibly be on the cards in any case. Sunspot is so distracted by everything that's happened - everyone he's lost - that he doesn't even take up a sexy slave-girls offer to "ease [his] sadness" (that's not how I remember my hormones working when I was thirteen/fourteen, but there it is). But no sooner has Roberto headed outside to get away from Wolfsbane's quarrel with Cannonball, and he thinks he spots his mother being manhandled by two other women.  The guards outside the palace won't let him past, though.  For his "protection". For once Roberto manages to keep his temper under control, and heads back inside, but for those of us less distracted, the implication is clear.  Our heroes are not guests, but prisoners.

Once this sinks in though, the mutants settle on a plan: Dani sneaks out of the palace (using her ability to generate enticing illusions to distract the guards with surround-sound floozyvision), hoping her Native American heritage won't seem too out of place in a city with a sizable Inca population.  It's not a bad plan in theory - though in Nova Roma I don't think Sam would stand out any more than she does - but unfortunately all it gets her is swiftly kidnapped.

As the hours pass the three remaining New Mutants become concerned about Dani's failure to return. Rahne is in a particularly bad way, since in addition to fretting over Dani she has to deal with having been spectacularly unpleasant to Sam, worry about whether her pretence at godhood will have pissed off the guy upstairs, and scared that the wolf side of her nature is gradually winning the battle over who she really wants to be.  Roberto does his best to console her, but it's a tough job, especially after he gets shot and falls out of the window.

Sam blasts his way to Roberto, catching him before he hits the deck, whilst Rahne wolfs out and pounces on the hidden assassin.  Turns out it's Castro, the guy who knocked out the New Mutants back on the boat, and thus caused the crash that almost killed them all and got Roberto's mother swept down the Amazon.

None of the three kids are happy to see him, of course, particularly not Roberto, who would happily have caved the guy's face in even before he shot him in the shoulder.  Presumably this is why they don't see the cracks in what follows.  When Gallio and his guards rush in, Castro gives up the name of his employer with almost comical speed (ostensibly in fear of what Sunspot will do to him otherwise). This was all the evil plan of Senator Aquilla!

None of this makes any sense, or at least requires further answers.  How did Castro sneak past the palace guards? How did he make such a hash of shooting at a stationary target from point-blank range? Did Aquilla not have any professional assassins unlikely to either botch the job or give him away seconds after being captured? What made him sabotage the boat before anyone had even seen Nova Roma? How does being Gallio's political opponent immediately translate into attempting to murder children?

Alas, these are not considerations the mutants are willing to entertain.  Their blood is up, and in Roberto's case, somewhat out all over the floor as well. Gallio orders his men to head to Aquilla's villa and arrest him, and our heroes sign up to help.

Maybe they're hoping Aquilla has Dani stashed away somewhere, because otherwise it seems like they've forgotten her entirely in the excitement.  Of course, we're not expecting her to be Aquilla's at all, and it looks like we're right.  Instead, she's in some kind of cave system with Amara and Random Victim #1, all of them in bikinis and drugged to the eyeballs.  Looks like they're set to be sacrificed by some kind of fire cult (helpfully if unimaginatively named "The Cult of Fire", which apparently is only interested in chucking young girls into a caldera if they're dressed for a beach party.

This all looks pretty grim for our heroine, and she's appropriately terrified (in a nice touch, though, she insists to herself that her fear could only be down to the drugs she's been hit with, as oppose to her imminent death in boiling rock).  It gets rather worse still when Selene  - "Daughter of the Moon, Mistress of the Fire" - teleports into the cavern, and kicks Random Victim #1 into the lava pit.  Poor old Random Victim #1.  Only ever there to demonstrate the stakes for the people with names. Thinking about it, though, I wonder how long its been since an innocent person was explicitly killed in an X-book?  We're still a ways off from the hideous, deadening death tolls of the early '90s.

Of course, no-one's told Selene that.  She's feeling pretty good right about now.  Another one in the thousands of sacrificial ceremonies she's hosted over the years is about to go down without a hitch.  The victims are assembled, her psychic powers have left Dani unable to generate her spirit forms; what could go wrong?

Over at the Aquilla place, it looks like things are going pretty well for Selene's husband, too, as Sunspot and Cannonball make short work of the mansion's defences. Roberto is more than happy to just wade in and maximise his head-busts-per-minute speed, but Sam is a little more circumspect, having begun to realise that all of this is perhaps a little too convenient.  And once Gallio's men start massacring Aquilla's guards, it becomes clear that aside from anything else, it's probably a good idea to make sure Aquilla survives being arrested, which they ensure by capturing him themselves. Gallio is rather annoyed when he learns his planned "stabbed to death whilst trying to escape" approach has failed, which perhaps leads him to reveal a little too much whilst gloating over his defeated enemy.  Since he's crowing in Latin, he thinks he's safe, but Roberto has been hiding his knowledge of the language, and quickly realise they've been on the wrong side all along.

Back underground, and Selene is in the middle of a traditional villain's gloating monologue.  Apparently, Amara's mother was fed to the volcano some years ago, and Selene can't wait to make it a generational thing.  Once the gloating's done, that is.

Dani doesn't intend to give her the chance. She breaks free of both her guards and Selene's psychic dampening, and throws herself at her captor.

It doesn't work. Selene is just too powerful, and when the distraction briefly shakes Amara from Selene's mental power, the older woman simply kicks her straight into the lava.

Pretty much everyone reading this, I'd have thought, knows what happens next: one of the most aggravating examples of ludicrous comic coincidence ever seen, which is no mean feat, especially where Claremont is concerned (I ranted at length about "Madelyne Pryor was supposed to just be a coincidence" argument in the comments thread here, where this very issue came up in response). Amara, we learn, is not only a mutant, not only a mutant of just the right kind of age to make her New Mutants material, but she learns she's a mutant just as she's thrown into a volcano, and because her powers are volcano-based.

There's not much to say about all that, it's pretty much self-explanatory in its ridiculousness.  The best defence one could muster - and it's an interesting one - is that Amara (or Magma, as we should start calling her) wasn't necessarily going to turn out to be what she became.  What if her abilities were more along the lines of Darwin's, only with a greater power level (Darwin could certainly survive being chucked into a volcano, but actually casting lava around would presumably be beyond him), and either got stuck, or were always intended to just stick at whatever life-threatening situation she first encountered.  Had Selene tried to drown her, would she have grown gills? (Update: turns out Abagail considered this idea just days before me, and came up with the same example as well.  Spooky!)

Obviously, all this is academic.  For whatever reason, command over molten rock is what Amara has been handed, and she's more than willing to use it to fry Selene to a cinder, even if the resultant earthquakes look like exceptionally bad news for the city above.  Who will gain the upper hand?  Tune in next time!

Clues

This issue begins the day after the team's battle in the arena.  It continues late into the night.  It's not clear if they move past midnight, but I'm inclined to believe they have, if only because that seems the appropriate time for Selene to be pushing scantily-clad girls into volcanoes.

That said, Brazil is two hours ahead of New York in any case, so from the perspective of our NYC-centric system, we can assume this all takes place over a single day.

Date

Tuesday 23^rd August, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+173.

Contemporary Events

James Collins is born, a player for West Ham United and the Wales national team, a fact I only mention because my Welsh girlfriend might shout at me if I don't.

Standout Line

"Amara's dad! Ah thought ah noticed a resemblance!" - Sam

It's fucking uncanny, is what it is.

Later on, we learn Amara is adopted.

UXM #176: "Decisions"

(Just count the fucking tentacles!)

Comments

After all the sound and fury of UXM #175, it seems it's time for something of a breath-catching exercise. This issue is made up of one major storyline and three major ones, but all feel like they're either marking time or setting up stories further down the road.  There's nothing with taking this tack from time to time, of course, though later examples of the approach are generally somewhat more cohesive, and it has the distinctive advantage of allowing me to split up my comments like so:

1a. The Storm

Scott and Madelyne are onboard the latters' plane as they head across the Pacific [1] to Boragora (either Claremont is thinking of Bora Bora, or he's a Tales of the Gold Monkey fan) for some time in the sun, whilst they try to decide whether to take Christopher Summers' offer of berths on the Starjammer.  This being a superhero comic, nothing proceeds as planned, and a large storm on the horizon bodes ill.  Our plucky duo are unable to outrun it, and when the high winds preceding the main storm hit, Madelyne's rather creaky plane is pitched into the drink.

With time rather running out before the oncoming storm sinks their plane and their chances of survival, Scott gets to work trying to fix their broken engine, only to come within a hair's breadth of being swallowed whole by a twenty-foot great white shark. Cyclops blasts it to discourage further attacks - in one of only pages which feature any application of mutant power in the issue, interestingly - but what actually finishes it off is an attack from below, as long sucker-lined tentacles wrap around it, and drag it down towards an unseen mouth.

1b. The "Squid"

So, something large and betentacled is lurking beneath the plane, and rising fast.  No sooner has Scott finally managed to repair the engines than Madelyne is plucked from atop the plane and dragged into the deep.  Cyclops dives in after her, and comes face to face with a giant octopus.

Or as he calls it, a squid, because clearly we all look alike to him. This is nothing less than cephalopod racism.

Hungry for human flesh, or possibly just enraged by offensively poor taxonomy, the octopus (which is at least three times too big to be real, but I guess freakishly oversized aquatic carnivores are as close to a Halloween link as we're gonna get here) grabs Scott as well, but a barrage of optic blasts rather changes its mind on the matter.  It's a long, difficult swim back to the goose, but the pair eventually make it, spark up the engines, and escape from mollusc and storm both.  Scott announces he's decided to remain on Earth, and Marvel's newest married couple fly off into the sunrise.

2.  The Spurning

Mariko awakes in Agarashima to find a sword on her bed, and an angry ex-fiance on her case.  Wolverine has flown out to tell her exactly where she can stick her high-falutin' sharp-edged presents.  Turns out that jilting someone at the altar and then posting them an ancient and priceless family heirloom doesn't really work as an apology, so much as make the jilting even more difficult to process.  Not unreasonably, Logan demands to know what kind of messed-up thought process leads Mariko to decide he's worthy of the symbol of her clan's honour, but not of her.

So, here's a thing.  I really want to be careful here, because my two years of Japanese language courses notwithstanding, I'm nowhere near sufficiently versed in Mariko's culture to judge whether her interpretation of honour is appropriate.  Maybe Claremont has a handle on the country that I've not attained yet, I don't know.  With all that said by way of disclaimer, though, to these western eyes Mariko's position seems utterly ridiculous.  She was forced by Mastermind (I'm still not quite clear on how) to reforge her family's ties with the underworld that Logan severed in the Wolverine limited series, and this has stained her family's honour.  That I get, though she's clearly being too hard on herself.

But the idea that this stain is so great she can't marry her true love? What possible sense can that make? It's not like Logan is exactly a paragon of honour either.  That's what makes him so interesting, in fact; he combines a strong moral compass with a near-total regard for any kind of formalised system.  The guy sweats Chaotic Good from every grimy pore.

I think what Claremont is trying to get at is that Mariko figures she must clear up her mistake, and the only way to stop Wolverine from interfering is to dump him, but that still feels distinctly weaksauce.  In fact, this whole thing smacks of Claremont not wanting Wolverine to get married, and pasting together a justification that wouldn't hold up against a gentle summer breeze.

3.  The Senate

Up on Capitol Hill, NSC Agent Henry Gyrich has been summoned to a meeting by no less than the President's National Security Advisor, Judge Petrie, and he has no idea why.  Turns out, Petrie has put together representatives from critical governmental agencies and departments pretty much across the board so that they can discuss the problem of the super-powered.

It seems the CIA have been busy since Magneto's destruction of the Soviet city of Varykino six months earlier (X-Date reckoning).  They've been chasing up reports of mutants around the globe, and even run a simulation to determine how difficult the Avengers would find it to conquer the world.  Turns out: not that tricky at all (which seems a little unlikely, quite frankly, but it's not like overwhelming paranoia isn't a standard CIA feature).  The CIA want something done about it, and Petrie's staffer Val Cooper (Hello, Val!  Glad you could finally join us!) figures she has the solution: a government-sanctioned mutant team they can use to beat up all those nasty foreign superheroes.

This starts off an interesting (albeit brief) debate, and I mean "interesting" in the sense that neither side is clearly wrong; which still feels like something of a novelty in the X-books up to this point.  Gyrich, like Kelly before him, isn't entirely devoid of a point when it comes to being worried about the risk of mutants within the population.  It's their prescriptions that are problematic, not their diagnoses.  I think a more full discussion regarding Kelly's approach at least is worth its own post, but for now just let me say that I'm not writing Gyrich off as a clear-cut villain.

Interestingly, though, the Gyrich we see here doesn't really seem to line up with the one that put together Operation: WIDEAWAKE.  This Gyrich is arguing that signing mutants up to fight other mutants is exactly the kind of move Magneto would be liable to find provocative.  Which isn't a bad point; just because one refuses to negotiate with terrorists doesn't mean one must ignore their likely responses to a given action.  What I don't understand here is why Gyrich didn't figure sending Sentinels out to abduct mutant teenagers wasn't equally as provocative. Was he hoping Magneto just wouldn't hear about that, or something?

Inconsistency aside, Gyrich's point is well made, but I think Val gets the better of the debate. Magneto has already demonstrated he is willing to hold the world in general for acts, so once other countries start assembling mutant task-forces, there's really no reason to not get in on the deal.  That said, I think Gyrich is wise to suggest waiting for a little while, if only because it would be worth checking other countries are assembling such teams, rather than assuming (as Val seems to be) that the Russians are just bound to do it because they're all smelly jerkfaces.

4.  The Subterranean

A thousand feet below Manhattan, Caliban has visitors.  Callisto, along with Masque and Sunder, have arrived to check up on him, since he's not been around much.  Apparently these four were the original founders of the Morlocks, though I assume they carried Sunder for most of it; if that guy found God he'd lose Him behind the sofa.

Caliban is still mourning over Kitty, who promised to stay with him forever in exchange for his assistance in saving the X-Men from Callisto, only to renege on her word once her friends were sage.  Callisto swears to return Kitty to him, ostensibly to see moral justice done and to cheer up her old friend, but she's not putting any real effort into hiding the truth: she's hoping Storm will get in the way and give Callisto another crack at carving herself up a weather witch.

Clues

Madelyne mentions it's been weeks since the couple took off for their honeymoon, so we'll place this exactly a fortnight after their wedding.  The issue itself takes place over several hours.

That said, though, I think there's some value in splitting up the issue into two time periods.  Mainly, this is because there seems no reason to move the whole narrative forward in order to fit in with conversations between two characters we're not going to see for a little while in any case.  If we ignore the Summers' honeymoon for the moment, we can assume only three days have passed since the events of UXM Annual #7, since that gives enough time for Wolverine to receive the sword sent by Mariko and to get to Japan to confront her about it.

One problem in all of this is that Madelyne says they're not in hurricane season, which would place this story somewhere between the start of December and the middle of May.  It's possible Madelyne just got this wrong, of course.

Date

Wednesday 7^th and Saturday 17^th September, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+187 and X+5Y+197.

Compression Constant 

1 Marvel year = 3.66 standard years.

(Colossus is 26 years old.)

Contemporary Events

Vanessa Williams becomes the first black woman to be crowned Miss America, a racial breakthrough in the field of sexist anachronisms that presumably caused progressives at the time no small amount of confusion.

Standout Line

"New York City... Everyone thinks of it as reaching for the stars, skyscrapers turning its streets into man-made canyons.

They forget it reaches the other way, too."

[1] Strangely, they're heading east to do it.  Maybe they stopped off in Japan first, actually; I presume Wolvie had a few things arranged for his honeymoon that he ain't going to be needing no more.

UXM Annual #7: "Scavenger Hunt"

(It was never like this with Anneka Rice.)

Comments

It's interesting that Cyclops is up on the cover there, since he doesn't appear in the comic at all, presumably being busy on his honeymoon.

The rest of this comic is not interesting.  I've said it many times at the other blog, and I think at least once here, but Claremont is always at his very least interesting when he tries to be zany.  Sure, his melodrama tends to be desperately over-egged, but at least you can latch onto it.  Carefree Claremont is just a rickety assembling of mutually incompatible ideas, with more than a hint of self-indulgence to it.

Exhibit A is "Scavenger Hunt".  More precisely, there's a section inside this book that perfectly encapsulates the very worst Claremont excesses.  Since that's what I want to focus on, we'll power through the bits that lead up to it.  The one sentence pitch to this story goes as follows: the X-Men are playing baseball when Galactus shows up and steals their house.

Now, fair enough, that's a fantastic idea (no pun intended).  Anyone who doesn't think that's a great start to a story is frankly in the wrong hobby. I can fully understand anyone who might be worried the payoff can't possibly match it, of course, but as kick-offs go, that takes some beating.  And in any case, Claremont drops at least one hint that "Galactus" isn't actually the real deal (it's hard to imagine The Hunger That Does Not Cease describing anything as "neat" in it' literal sense, let alone as slang).

The X-Men attempt to give chase, and as the story progresses they meet more and more superheroes, each of which has something stolen from them, and most of whom decide to blame the X-Men.  One could argue that this is in itself a form of self-indulgence - Claremont deciding he's going to drag the entire Marvel Universe into one of his foolish flights of fancy - but if you're going to link in the X-Men to rest of the Marvel line, an annual is a good place to do it.  It's the execution that's problematic here.  It's one thing to decide you want to have a Nick Fury cameo in your silliness, it's another to have him fail to notice when a shape-changing alien steals the eye-patch off his face.

But it's the last item on the alien's shopping list that causes the real problems: he wants Stan Lee.  Now, in terms of meta-narrative, that makes perfect sense.  What's a collector going to go for after he steals things from every major superhero but the guy who created most of those superheroes in the first place?  As a subdivision of a narrative, though, it's a total disaster.

OK, so, one should always admit their biases.  I hate fourth wall breaking. For some reason it pisses me off even when it shouldn't, like in 30 Rock for example, but I really can't stand it in any situation where I have invested in the narrative (which is not the same thing as suspension of disbelief, I hasten to add, lest Dr Sandifer show up and start shouting at me).  I think I just love fictional histories too much (witness the growth of this ever-more ridiculous blog) for me to see it as anything but a frustrating and self-destructive interruption.  That said, I'm generally perfectly alright with Deadpool, which suggests either that it's different when the idea is baked into a character from the start, or, and I think this the more likely option, it's not so much that the fourth wall mustn't be broken, so much as if you're going to do it, you better damn sure you stick the landing.

This is not a landing that has been stuck.  It has not been velcroed.  It hasn't even been that thing where you've been lying naked entwined with someone else and you have to peel yourselves apart when it's time to make a cuppa.  This is an astonishing seven and a half pages of Marvel bullpen references built around the X-Men fighting an alien, during which they run into seemingly every employee on Jim Shooter's books. I'm at a loss to understand who this is aimed at.  I've read every X-book from 1963 to this one, and I only dimly recognise most of the names here.  I certainly have no idea about whether the personal traits they're exhibiting are accurate, or funny caricatures, and the fact that every person here (save Claremont himself) has their name and job title included suggests plenty of people weren't supposed to know who was who. 

In which case, what was the point at all?  There's a great moment in the first season of The Office in which David Brent, with typical cluelessness, describes how sometimes people are left confused by his jokes, and he has to explain to them why they're funny. "And then they say 'oh, yeah.  Yeah, you are the best'.  It's their opinion!".  It feels like the same thing here: "Michael Golden is a prodigal freelancer working with Marvel.  Meeting actual Marvel characters is thus amusing."

Not only is this self-indulgent and unfunny, but it throws the pacing all to shit as well.  If you've got a shape-changing alien calling himself "The Impossible Man" running around town nicking everything that isn't super-nailed down, you have to keep the pace up, just so as to stop people thinking too much about how ludicrous this all is.  Forcing your readers to trudge through panel after panel of names and titles absolutely kills that.  Even if you do end it with the lovely image Colossus hugging a sabretooth tiger to try and keep it calm.

The long chase finally ends when Rogue grabs the alien from behind in an attempt to absorb his powers.  The resulting backlash, but it also encourages the alien - "last survivor of the planet Poppup" - to stop and talk.  He's pretty pissed off about Rogue's attack, but soon becomes upset when he realises just how much grief he's been causing, and takes the X-Men to his secret stash in the Gobi Desert.  This has all been a trial, he explains, a method to decide which of his family who fled Galactus eating their planet (so he's not the last survivor, I guess) gets to be in charge.

This, needless to say, is full-on ridiculous soup.  And even if it wasn't, I don't think it would be racist to tell the Poppupian to go fuck himself; he's on our world now, and we have our own ideas about how to gain and apply authority.  You don't get to just steal everything in sight and justify it through your own crazed desire for influence. <INSERT BANKER JOKE HERE>.

Before the team can decide what to do about all this, though, a rather large alien armada pops into existence in the Mongolian sky.  The Impossible Man's relatives have been causing quite the interplanetary stir, it would seem.  Luckily, Empress Lilandra is on hand to demonstrate her flair for inter-species diplomacy, promising to adjudicate the Poppup's competition and see the stolen items home, in exchange for the Poppup's promising to behave, and the other aliens to not attempt reprisals, something which as Lilandra points out could well go badly in any case.

So all's well that ends well.  Unless you're the Impossible Man, that is, who somehow loses the competition despite having spent all that time filching from the great and the good (presumably he was beaten by whichever Poppupian started half-inching from DC superheroes; if you manage to nick Batman's bat-pants then You. Have. Won.). At least he gets to stick around long enough for an iced lolly, though, so he can't claim this has been a total waste of time.

Would that we could say the same.

Clues

The presence of both Wolverine and Rogue places this at least after UXM #174, and more likely after UXM #175.  The introductory narrative implies spring has just arrived, but this is impossible since Wolverine's aborted wedding took place in mid spring.  Also, it's hard to imagine Kitty and Illyana wanting to hang by the pool wearing bikinis and eating iced treats in a New York spring.

Date

Sunday 4^th September, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+184.

Contemporary Events

Six men walk underwater across Sydney Harbour.

Standout Line

"What are these?"
"Hulk's trousers, looks like."
"Wow." - Sprite and Rogue.

What I wouldn't give to have read that story instead.

ALF #4: "Resolutions!"

(Capture/release.)

Comments

It's crossover time!  I figured the arrival of Sue Storm and Namor at the end of last issue was some kind of fake-out, but no, it's them, trying to figure out what drove a barbarian horde south in Fantastic Four #260 (or so we're told). Namor's preternatural senses lead them to a massive structure buried under the Arctic ice, but their only reward is to be shot out of the sky in exactly the same manner as Alpha Flight was between issues 2 and 3.  Outside the complex, Snowbird hears the resulting explosion, but decides to follow her team-mates inside rather than investigate.

Under the surface, Guardian and Sasquatch have their own problem: Jeanne-Marie.  Sasquatch is appropriately angry that James was prepared to sign up someone with multiple personalities to be part of a superhero squad, and Hudson's defence that he met Northstar's sister as Aurora first doesn't really get him anywhere, as indeed it shouldn't. Fortunately, Jeanne-Marie recovers in time to interrupt the brewing argument with her outrageously stereotypical Frenchiness.  "Do not call me zat name!", etc.  This sounds like something that could get old fast - even given the likelihood of Byrne using the woman's speech patterns as a way of demonstrating which personality is dominant -  but the angry Quebecois quickly runs away, which is probably for the best.  Guardian wants to go after her, but Sasquatch argues that he's the best man for the job, because he totally fucked her once, or something.

And what do you know, it works.  All that it takes to reach the lady with MPD is to be reminded of the time a nice guy did her in New York.  This really isn't one for the sisterhood, right here, even if the memory of doing the nasty with a clump of orange shag-pile doesn't so much placate Jean-Marie as cause her to punch Walter in the face.

While all this is going on, Guardian has found Northstar, and convinced him to leave his sister with Sasquatch  so they can find out what's going on in the heart of the complex.  Bryne then winds the clock back a few minutes, partially to show Sue Storm and Namor extricating themselves from the crashed Fantasti-Car and entering the ship, but mainly to allow "the Master" another opportunity to fire exposition at poor old Marinna, who at this point might be happy to have the pain dials on the machine torturing her cranked up all the way to 11 if it would shut this guy up.

Long story short: Marrina is the scion of a race that attempted to seize control of every primitive world in the galaxy. The plan was to land a ship in inhospitable terrain, use hypnosis to draw life towards it, and seize whatever poor mook with enough wherewithal to arrive so it could be dissected and studied as the presumed dominant species.  The results could then be used to massage the DNA contained within the egg-sacs carried by the colony vessel, which would then be spread across the world.  This would have been Earth's fate, had not the ship crashed rather than landed, causing premature ejaculation.  Apparently only Marrina survived, partially conditioned and abandoned underwater; hence her current amphibious state.

I'm not sure how this fits in with the idea of her "brood-mate", suggested all of one issue earlier, but then Byrne clearly has no interest whatsoever in ensuring the two books match up; there's no continuity at all between last issue's arrival of Sue and Namor and this one.  That always annoys me in comics, but it's particularly galling here because I don't see any reason for the change being necessary. It's just pointlessly sloppy.

In any case, the Master realises he's out of his depth here, and throws a few giant mechanical arms at his opponents as a distraction whilst he flees the scene.  Apparently letting the heroes think they "control their own destiny" is critical to his plans.  Also of seeming importance: letting Guardian and Northstar beat the crap out of the ship's vital systems, which they prove only to happy to do.  As explosions rock the complex and entire sectors go dark, Snowbird arrives and frees Marrina, and all eight heroes assemble to decide on their next move.

Finding the Master or fleeing from the rapidly collapsing complex seem the only options.  Guardian is for the latter choice, there's not much point looking for the Master if whilst they're doing it the entire complex explodes.

Then the entire complex explodes.

Actually, it's more like it dissolves, and along with it any trace of the Master.  Sue uses a forcefield to keep everyone alive through the collapse, but it's still not clear whether the team can chalk this up as a win.

At least Marrina was saved, of course, although she decides to follow Namor home to Atlantis rather than stay with the team, reasoning the underwater kingdom is a more logical place to explore exactly who and what she is. This leads to a rather nice little scene where James Hudson has to explain to Marrina's sort-of brother that she won't be coming back.  It's difficult for me to feel much regarding her departure, since as a long-time reader my only response to Marinna in the first place was "Why haven't I heard her name before?", but there's still something affecting in watching James struggle to explain what's happened.

Clues

According to the opening narration, it's still summer, but we've already dismissed this as impossible back during ALF #1.  This story takes place over the course of a few hours.

Date

Wednesday 10^th of December, 1982.

X-Date 

X+4Y+258.

Contemporary Events

That stuff what happened last time.

Standout Line

"Hold, "Master". Namor of Atlantis forbids this action!"

That's just begging to get the internet treatment.

NMU #9: "Arena"

(Am I not entertained?)

Comments

So, when I covered the issue immediately proceeding this, I pointed out that a white girl pretending to be an Amazon tribeswoman in order to avoid detection sailed somewhat too close the the Sea of Bigotry.  Abigail was somewhat more direct in the comments section, going with "profoundly offensive racist bollocks".

This issue, if you're wondering, is a good deal worse.

The basic set-up is this; the New Mutants have been captured by the forces of Nova Roma, an attempt to replicate the glory of Rome in the middle of the Amazon Basin.  Amara Juliana Olivia Aquilla - briefly the mutants' captive and now pretending to be part of their party in order to avoid detection - was born in said city, but has been in voluntary exile for some time, in fear for her life.  Her father, Lucius Antonius Aquilla, is "first senator", in the midst of a political struggle that has the capacity to turn violent enough for him to want his daughter safely out of the city.

None of that is a problem, obviously.  Crazy, but not a problem.  What is problematic though is the nature of the struggle. The conflict is between the original Roman settlers (however they got here) and those descended from a large contingent of Incas that fled when the Spanish invaded in the 16th century.  The former want to keep Nova Roma a republic, the latter want to resurrect their monarchy and carve out a new Incan Empire.

In other words, all those nice white dudes who love them some senatorial action are in danger of having their vision for South America quite ruined by those pesky South Americans.  If only those natives would shut up and let the colonials decide what's best, everything would be fine, and the beautiful blonde girl the team has met would be safe from harm.  PROTECT THE BLONDE GIRL!

And it all that wasn't bad enough, it seems that those nasty, interfering foreign types have hooked up with some kind of murderous priestess, too, who's all about black robes and chucking people into calderas.  Human sacrifice, in other words.  In other contexts, it would be interesting to juxtapose a writer's condemnation of vilifying a native culture with me suggesting including one of that culture's religious ceremonies itself marks them out as villains.  I'm not going to do that here, though, because frankly the source material isn't worth it.

With the racism angle set aside (an analytic move, not a moral choice), there's actually some interesting stuff going on here.  The team itself is going to be split into two groups: those that fight as gladiators, and those that are sold off as slaves, which is hardly inspired, but the political shenanigans behind the scenes are at least diverting.  Amara's father doesn't know she's been captured, of course, but he does know three girls of around his daughter's age, along with two boys, have been seized, and he's more than willing to sacrifice all five of them so as not to give his opponent Marcus Domitus Gallio a possible opening.

Of course, Aquilla genuinely believes that beating Gallio is important enough to let five children die or be enslaved.  And given Gallio is shacked up with Selene, who even now is revealed as basically Lady Macbeth with added "dark arts" (and later becomes one of the X-teams most enduring adversaries), and had planned on using the New Mutants as troops in a coup d'etat, it's not like the guy is entirely without a case.  All that said, though, it's clear we're dealing with shades of grey battling it out, and whilst one shade is clearly darker than the other, Claremont deserves some credit for not trying to make Aquilla particularly sympathetic.

(That said, we know Amara is going to be the sixth person to sign up to a team whose fathers thus far have been dead, dead, dead, evil, and dead and replaced by an evil uncle.  Having Lucius turn out to be a bit of a dick doesn't seem quite so interesting in that context. We're not actually told Amara is a mutant just yet, actually, but she's shown to be immune to drugs and susceptible to bouts of agonising, idiopathic pain, which is pretty much case closed these days.)

Anyway, on with the plot.  With the mutants now out of bounds, Selene introduces Gallio to Castro, the saboteur from last issue, who claims Emanuel DaCosta would be up for an exchange: the resources of Nova Roma in return for enough boomsticks to take control of the city.  Gallio is suitably intrigued. Selene herself decides to check out the captives her husband mentioned, and is delighted to discover not only have two of them been drugged (in order to make them more compliant and get full enjoyment out of their friends' dismemberment in the arena the next day), but that the third is Amara, Lucius' daughter herself.

Noon the next day, and the games are about to begin.  The gladiators' handlers, having helpfully drugged Sam and Roberto to keep them docile all night, now show equal consideration in hepping them up on some kind of berserker drug, so at least they'll die in style.

(They'll also die in some kind of bright white war-briefs, too, which leave very little to the imagination.  Especially if you've been imagining both of them as eunuchs.  Which is fine.  I'm not judging.)

The problem with Nova Roma, though, is that for all the talk of the Romans' phenomenal gifts to civilisation in general, they never got around to slapping together power dampers, which means they now have two psychotic mutants on a rampage without the slightest idea about how they can stop them (though the oversized death rollers the gladiators are employing as APCs was a decent attempt, I suppose).  Indeed, the only the reason they don't destroy the entire stadium is that their drug-addled minds decide they're time would be more productively spent beating the shit out of each other.

This probably saves a lot of lives, actually, and it has the added bonus of shaking Rahne inside her own drugged state; she's terrified of losing Sam, who she's apparently secretly in love with.  She wolfs out and attacks Sunspot, and her transformation brings Dani to her senses.  A quickly-assembled illusion of Professor X later, and everyone is more or less back in their right minds again, just in time to be trampled to death by an enraged mob, who frankly just saw the most awesome show imaginable and should just shut up.

Gallio apparently feels the same way I do, and tells the crowd to shut up.  After all, was not Rome itself founded by two men raised by a she-wolf?  And now another walks among them, alongside four others with amazing powers.  The Gods have returned to the Roman Empire!  That's actually a really nice idea, tying Wolfsbane into this civilisation's creation myth.  It's not going to turn around my opinion on this issue at all, but still, well played there.  It's also an ending that neatly ties in with the plotting of Amara's father earlier; he was willing to sacrifice the mutants in order to stop the power-crazed would-be-dictator Gallio, and Gallio himself has now saved their lives.

Clues

This story takes place over approximately 24 hours.

Date

Sunday 21^st August to Monday 22^nd August, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+171 to X+5Y+172.

Contemporary Events

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson talks to the Guardian about his decision to cut back on his lavish lifestyle, presumably in the hope that quotes like "I can't abide to eat in an inferior restaurant" are just the ticket if he wants to persuade the common man that he's one of them.

Also, this seems more than a little appropriate right now:

Standout Line

"Minerva protect you if your master finds you attractive!" - Amara

This is not one of those lines that stands out in a good way.  Every time I read it I get shivers of horror.  Just why does Claremont write so many plots involving slavery anyway?

DAZ #29: "Fame!"

("Light up the sky like a flame!")

Comments

OK, so this is a little different.  First of all we've got Springer and Shooter sharing scripting duties.  This issue is also a little shorter than usual, as well, so that it can end with three pages of slightly disturbing Dazzler "pin-ups".  That's bad news for feminism, but good news for the poor schlub that has to summarise this issue: i.e. me.

So what have Frank & Jim managed to squeeze in?  Well, Dazzler is having a whale of a time at her sort of stepdad's mansion.  It's all lounging by the pool and dreaming of her name on the marquee for her right now. Lois is a little more torn about the whole thing, because she was actually around for Nick's "beat the shit out of my wife" phase, which is rather wrenching the olive from the martini, so to speak. This puts Alison in something of a bind, since right now she's pretty much entirely reliant on Nick to get her career going again, but fortunately for her, Lois is smart enough to realise that, and not push too hard for for advice on how to deal with a formerly abusive father.

(Of course, in an ideal world, I'd be insisting Dazzler refuse any offer of help from Nick after what he did to her mother and her sister.  That said, I already have a job.)

Whilst we're on the subject of how Nick can help Dazzler; today is her meeting with Roman Nekoboh, the music business big-shot who can jump-start her career.  Being the audience, however, we get to meet him first.

When we are introduced to him, it's pretty interesting.  I could be wrong, but I think Roman's first few panels represent the longest continuous set of wordless comic panels so far in any X-book; nine of them taking up a full page's worth of space.  Basically, Roman is very old and more than a little fat, and so it takes him a full page of panels to get into his disguise - contact lenses, girdle, false teeth and wig. Like William Shatner before a convention, or when he's telling people he wrote TekWar.

Alas, Roman has bigger problems than encroaching senility; his accountant has arrived to tell him he's flat broke. His music career is in tatters, his Hollywood portfolio a smoking ruin. His ex-wives all want their alimony, too. Faced with such dire financial circumstances, Roman agrees to have his butler light his cigarettes with matches rather than a Zippo. Because sacrifices must be made.

With financial business concluded, there's time for a little fencing practice (and associated angina), and then Roman has to run off to meet Dazzler, or as he calls her: "One I haven't married yet."  Smooth.

Back with our heroine, and Alison is starting to get a good idea of the deal she's making here; Nick's determined to replace Osgood as her manager.  Honestly, that's not necessarily the worst career move imaginable, but Dazzler wants it on her own terms, thanks very much.  Further discussion on the topic will have to wait, though, because Roman has arrived to offer his "advice."

Except, obviously, the only advice he wants to dole out regards carnally satisfying the ancient and deluded.  He seems to have his approach down pat - one assumes he's done this more than a few times already - the basic plan being to keep bowling Alison over until she leaves her clothes on the floor.

(Actually, he's pretty entertaining whilst he's trying this. "Enough talk about me, you ravishing creature!  Let's talk about you! Tell me, how did you love my last album?"  "Let's take my plane.  This car is beginning to bore me!  Does it bore you? It bores me!"  It's almost charming, in a sweaty, unpleasant way, and as long as you avoid dwelling on the fact that any cocktail Dazzler chugs in Roman's jet will have far more drugs in than just alcohol.)

For her part, Alison doesn't really care how many swanky cars he buys fresh off the lot; she just wants to know if he has any career advice he can dispense in-between demonstrations of ludicrous opulence.  Ever the optimist, she allows him to drive her to his private jet, certain that once he has her up in the air with no-one but his employees to talk to, he'll definitely stop the borderline sexual harassment and dole out the secrets of fame.

Needless to say, this is exactly what doesn't happen.  Roman has decided Alison is to be his co-star in his next film, and is determined to start practising the love scenes as soon as possible.  Dazzler is finally pissed off enough to fend him off, but this awkward scene is interrupted when an incoming fighter jet tries to shoot them down.  Frankly, I suspect Alison considers this something of a relief, but even so, she'd rather not be spread across the landscape.  Using the onboard stereo system (originally engaged by Roman to help in rocking her world), she generates enough power to take out the attacking plane, but Roman's pilot is shot during the battle, which means a rapid interaction with terra firma might be in the cards after all...

Clues

Dazzler mentions that her battle with Rogue was the day before.  The story itself takes place over several hours.

Date

Friday 29^th of July, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+102.

Contemporary Events

Standout Line

"Let me look deep into those magnificent eyes and take your trembling hands in mine!"

Is there anyone this line could fail to work on?  THE ANSWER IS NO!

UXM #175: "Phoenix!"

(Use Your Illusion.)

Comments

It's the 20th anniversary issue! More or less, anyway. And what better way to celebrate two decades of stories than by re-heating a tale three years old?

Not that this story brings absolutely nothing new to the mix.  For a start, we get to see the X-Men doing some gardening.  Maybe that's not the most exciting idea in the world, but at least it gives the newly-returned Wolverine to tear into with his claws. Unfortunately it also gives Storm an opportunity to bitch about how much her new outlook has cost her.  Look, lady, Logan just got his heart ripped out and eaten right in front of him, and Rogue's only just gotten back on her feet.  No-one cares if you can't tell when a tree's had its chips any more. It'd also be easier to sympathise if you hadn't sold off your entire attic garden the instant you decided punk rock and leather jackets were more fun.

Before anyone has the chance to tell Ororo to buck her ideas up, a flare of energy announces the arrival of the Phoenix Force.  It disappears again almost immediately, but leaves behind a gift; Cyclops, falling from out of the sky. Storm and Rogue bring him safely back to earth, but the Phoenix clearly is not messing about.

The Professor calls his X-Men together and outlines the plan.  It's... not very good.  The fact that Cyclops survived gives Xavier enough hope to play things cool, and try to make contact with the Phoenix before going in powers blazing.  To that end, he points Cerebro towards the unstoppably powerful cosmic entity, and gets his brain flash-fried for his trouble. He's lucky the Phoenix didn't kill him.

Still, we can't blame Charles entirely.  Whilst 'Crawler teleports him to the medical wing, Logan points out that Cerebro has safeguards in place precisely to make boiling its operator's noggin a tough things to pull off. The list of suspects basically has one name on it: I-Scream Scott, who's been possessed by the Phoenix all along!

Phoenix has the whole team on the ground in moments, but announces she'd rather play with her victims for a while than executing them immediately, because that plan has never gone wrong for any supervillain ever.  At least her definition of playing is pleasingly warped; her first order of business is to blow the Starjammer out of space, the second to reduce New York to a smouldering ruin.

Now, obviously, any remotely genre-savvy individual will be pricking up their ears at this point, figuring a two-panel farewell to some fairly major supporting characters (including Charles' lover) is implausible enough even before the largest city in the United States gets itself glassed.  To Claremont's credit, he doesn't waste too much time in making that point explicit: Cyclops has a weird trippy coma-dream in which he meets his dead mother and is denied access to the afterlife, but once he recovers from this he immediately figures out the team is being manipulated, and he has a pretty good idea who's pulling the strings.  After all, how many people outside the X-Men saw the Dark Phoenix the first time around, anyway?

But how can he get the word out?  Everyone saw how at one point he was possessed by Phoenix before she left to blow up New York! Maybe he's still possessed!  How can the X-Men be sure except immediately trying to punch him to death when he shows up!  This month on X-Men: all the X-Men are fucking idiots! Because thirty-eight pages aren't going to fill themselves!

(That's enough exclamation marks for now, I think.)

Being a master tactician and their former field leader, Cyclops gets the upper hand very quickly, until Lockheed forces him to retreat, for fear he might accidentally injure the little dragon otherwise.  You'd think refusing to fight the same monster Phoenix punched in the face a few minutes ago might cause the penny to drop, but today the X-Men are determined to be as irritatingly stupid as possible.  The fight continues through the mansion and into the Danger Room, where we learn Scott has spent the last ten minutes rewiring the controls to lock everyone else out (he calls this a gamble; I call it an utterly ridiculous move that gets no points just because it ludicrously happened to pay off).

The fact that "Phoenix" seems to want to fight this battle using holograms and trickery at least makes the team stop and think for a few moments, but Rogue insists that all this proves is that Phoenix isn't as powerful as she's making out - this on the same day Phoenix obliterated New York.  Storm too is determined to tear Cyclops to pieces - interestingly, not one of them seems to give two shits about where the real Scott is - and even he admits to himself that she's making the right call.  I can only assume that Mastermind's powers have reached the point where he can make people unable to see the part of their brain that makes them not act like total berks.  Either way, out in the simulated Savage Land under Xavier's mansion, the hunt is on...

INTERMISSION

So if all of this is just so much smoke and mirrors, then where's the real Madelyne Pryor?  Turns out, she's an unwilling guest of Jason Wyngarde.  His plan, which he insists on going to great lengths to detail (presumably this is why he didn't let the X-Men kill her already; who would be left to hear how great he is) is simple.  He's persuading the X-Men that the Phoenix is back in town, and make things look so desperate that they take out Madelyne, to the horror of all and sundry once Mastermind pulls back the curtain.  He's still a little sore over how the real Dark Phoenix made him lose his marbles some forty issues back - as a direct result of him trying the same on her, but never mind - and he's been trailing the X-Men for months. It was he who uncovered Yukio's ruse when she dressed up as Mariko in UXM #172, and who dropped the photo that sent Scott over the edge last time around.  This, of course, would be the perfect time for him to fess up to have manipulated Scott's perception of her appearance as part of his master plan, but, no.  Apparently it really is coincidence that she looks exactly like Jean Grey, and crashed her plane at the exact same moment Jean died.  This will eventually be addressed, of course, but that doesn't make it any less annoying right now.

Back in the Danger Room, Cyclops is running rings around his team-mates.  His superior knowledge of the program is proving decisive.  He even had time to whistle up some poppies based on Rogue's medical files that stun her the instant she breathes in their pollen.  Which, obviously, is bullshit on a bollock-stick, but whatever. It's a nice Wizard of Oz reference, at least (though horribly overplayed). With Wolverine and Storm unconscious, and Colossus trapped in simulated quicksand, Cyclops grabs the drugged Rogue and flees the scene.

Scott's hoping he can get the newest X-Man to Xavier and have her absorb his powers, so she can scan his mind and figure out what's going on.  With calm analysis this probably wouldn't convince anyone, since Xavier didn't figure out Scott was possessed earlier, but then Cyclops just needs to get everyone talking for a little while.  Of course, since Rogue has never to his knowledge borrowed the powers of a telepath, this could all end up going a wee bit Scanners:

Delightful.

Scott gets away with it, though, using his acquired vicarious experience via Xavier and Jean to keep Rogue more or less functional.  Just in time, too, the other X-Men have escaped the Danger Room and are now more pissed off than ever.

And ohhhh! Now I get it. Mastermind has been making Cyclops look like Phoenix all this time.  That wasn't very clear at all.  He obviously reverted to looking like Scott when he fainted after "Phoenix's" initial attack, otherwise they'd not have put him in the medical wing, but Mastermind must have re-started the illusion after Cyclops woke up.  It's not often one would say this, but it wouldn't kill Claremont to have spelled that out a bit more.

Rogue's attempts to calm the team down are only partially successful, but Mastermind must be panicking that she'll get through to them, because he immediately sends in another Phoenix illusion.  Just to make things more interesting, though, he's brought along a silenced pistol as well, so he can shoot those people his illusions are targeting.  He hits Cyclops in the shoulder this way, but unfortunately for him Wolverine's hyper-senses pick up the pistol's "PHUT", and the jig is up.

That still doesn't mean they can find Mastermind himself, though. Storm solves that particular problem by unleashing a tempest of terrifying force.  It smashes Mastermind into unconsciousness, but the X-Men don't fare that much better, and both Kitty and Rogue realise that Ororo doesn't really care either way.  Still, it's a happy ending at last, as they pump Mastermind full of drugs to keep him quiet until the authorities arrive, and an exhausted Madelyne is finally freed from the villain's confusing influence.  Of course, she came within a hair's breadth of drowning in Storm's squall, but let's not get bogged down in the piddling details.
EPILOGUE

X-Men weddings, huh?  You wait for ages...

Mercifully, this one goes off rather better than the last one.  Scott spends some time in the grounds explaining his feelings to Jean's grave, which seems entirely reasonable, and then he goes back inside and ties the knot with her exact double who almost died on the exact same day, which, y'know, doesn't.

But let's not worry about the future we're all fully aware of.  The whole Summers clan is reunited; Beast has popped over to quaff champagne (though if I can be blunt, it rather looks like he might want to lay off the booze for a little while, lest he find himself unable to squeeze into his black super-briefs); Banshee and Moira are there, it's all very nice.  Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Summers.

Clues

Scott notes that twelve hours have elapsed since he was first attacked by the Phoenix (indeed this is a critical plot point, as it starts him thinking about what's really going on).  That doesn't give Wolverine time to get back from Japan according to last issue's proposed timeline, but we can easily extend that by one day and have everything converge.

It's not clear how much time passes between Mastermind's defeat and the marriage of Scott and Madelyne, but under the circumstances - what if Madelyne goes all Mariko on Scott's ass? - one can understand how they might not want to let the grass grow and further under their feet, so we'll put the wedding day as being the very next Saturday.  It's not like the superhero wedding guests lack for transport to get them there at short notice.

Storm also mentions that it's been weeks since she saw a Phoenix flare in Japan, but that tracks just fine.

Date

Wednesday 31^st August to Saturday 3^rd September, 1983.

X-Date

X+5Y+180 to X+5Y+183.

Compression Constant 

1 Marvel year = 3.67 standard years.

(Colossus is 26 years old.)

"You will not escape our vengeance!"

Contemporary Events

Korean Airlines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet interceptor, after it strayed into USSR airspace due to a small autopilot issue.  All 269 people on board were killed, including a US Congressman.  The USSR denied the incident, switched to accusing the passenger plane of espionage once the truth was discovered, and refused to hand over the flight recorder until eight years later, following the Union's collapse.  How lovely.

Standout Line

"Jason Wyngarde, ma'am, at your service. Or, as the X-Men know me: MASTERMIND. I am a villain."

You have to respect a man who loves his job.  A man who's gone career evil.