BAB #4: "Checkmate"

(So You Think You Can Rule Latveria?)

Comments

If ICE #4 suffered from its need to conclude showing too clearly through the skin of its story, BAB #4 is terminally afflicted. We've reached the end of the mini, you see, and that means the status quo has to be dashed for like its the last lifepod on Starship Titanic.

Yes, fine. It's not like the Beast/Dzzler romance made a great deal of sense, as I've said. Hank seemed to be thinking with Little Beast, and Alison was basically looking for validation.  Plenty of relationships are founded on less, of course, but they tend not to be sold to the onlooker in such hyperbolic terms as we've been forced to wade through here.  "Your ribald humour is just of the reasons I'm crazy about you!" Dazzler tells Hank, as they hang upside-down in the skeleton-strewn dungeon Flynn has to hand for some reason, but there's nothing there backing it up.

Of course, the fact the main driving force of a miniseries isn't working doesn't prevent it feeling cheap when it's casually tossed aside, especially here.  Once our heroes escape their predicament (which we'll get to later), they decide they fell in love as a mechanism for escaping the oppression they both suffer as mutant Americans. They conclude there's no point them trying to make a go of their relationship until they figure out how to live under the yoke of humanity's oppression alone.

Which is catastrophic-level bullshit. Minorities should wait until they've mastered being screwed over by society on their own before they can graduate to facing it as a pair?  What the hell kind of idea is that? Well, it's the kind of idea carelessly tossed out to justify ending a love affair editorial mandate deems not continue, but if you're going to base an entire story around the difficulties of being knocked around by society in general, you need to bring something more to the party than this.

Things get worse when Flynn reveals the sinister truth; he was influencing Dazzler all along using his charisma powers - acquired via his "magnetic gypsy blood", which, fuck off.  I know I've mentioned this before, but to reiterate, ending a story by with a mind-control reveal to cover up people acting irrationally and out of character is a punk move.

Put these problems aside, though, and there is certainly stuff to appreciate here.  Yes, obviously Flynn's plan is shot through with triple-filtrated dumbness. A hundred-odd mutant gladiator plans to take over the whole of Latveria?  I mean, we've seen mutants invade whole countries successfully (though briefly) before, but Santo Marco didn't have Doctor motherfucking Doom as its premiere, and this collection of mace-wielding sadsacks aren't anywhere near Magneto's level - en masse they can't even take down Dazzler and Beast [1].  Unless they can arrange some kind of Mouse That Roared scenario, these people are dead five minutes after they march into Doomton [2].

But that, I think, is entirely the point.  This man who claims to be a Von Doom is desperate to prove he has the dictatorial chops of his presumed father, but he's utterly incapable of pulling it off.  He's the Bill Kristol of supervillains, with a marginally less punchable face.

Which means, I think, that for all his protestations, Doom must genuinely believe Flynn is his son.  Why else did he have a Doombot (the now-deactivated Hugo) watching over him?  Why fly immediately to Los Angeles to check the situation out once his robotic spy was taken out? Why creep around the old theatre watching Flynn's plan unravel rather than take the surely far more Doom-like move of just wading in and slaughtering those who stand in his way?

To check how much of a threat Flynn is? Well, to some extent, sure. But once Doom has made the trip to the States, why not just flash-fry Flynn there and then and be back in time for a pre-supper oppression of the masses?  I think it can only be that Doom is auditioning Flynn.  He even implies as much when he settles in to a theatre seat to watch "the final performance".  Whether or not Flynn can threaten Doom is only one part of the test, the other is whether or not he can impress him.  That's why when Flynn's ludicrous plan collapses in the face of resistance, Doom chooses to lecture him and then leave him alive.  "What ends would be served by your destruction?" he muses as he leaves Flynn helpless on the floor.  But this is Doom. "Why kill you?" isn't the critical question; "Why let you live?" is.  This guy has wasted Doom's time, destroyed what was apparently his finest ever Doombot, and challenged his authority. There is no doubt in my mind that Doom has killed for less.

So I think the truth is pretty clear here, and I give Nocenti credit for not spelling it out. Still, for all that I enjoyed this strand of the story, it neither fits in with the rest of the story (Latveria's dictator would be uncomfortably close to a Doomus ex machina here, except that our heroes had already beaten Flynn themselves), or with the more general tale of Beast and Dazzler.

The end result feels like the collision of two plot ideas - Doom has a son he won't recognise, the beautiful Dazzler meets the beastly Beast - hammered together without the slightest thought as to whether they complement each other, with a thoroughly unconvincing love story layered on top.  Some of the parts are better than others, granted, but they spend so long working against each other it hardly matters.  No matter how well you cook your ribeye steak and your tiramisu, mixing them together in a bowl will never create anything but a mess.

[1] Though in fairness our protagonists receive back up in the shape of Alex, who's switched sides, and Poltergeist and Link from Heartbreak Hotel, the latter of whom is now revealed as a telekinetic and dressed as a ninja clown. Which, I confess, I did not expect to ever see.

[2] This is my favourite of the locales listed on Flynn's map of Latveria. Wonderfully, the entire centre of that map is taken up with a giant picture of Doom's face, complete with a star in the centre of his forehead which presumably represents the capital.  I hope this is common practice for all maps of Latveria.  Is Doom's face the flag?  Probably? Has he actually carved out a picture of his face across half the entire country so as to gaze imperiously into the heavens? I wouldn't rule it out.

Clues

This issue picks up soon after the last one concluded, and takes place over the course of several minutes.

Date

Saturday 11^th November, 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+255.

Contemporary Events

L. Ron Hubbard is sued for over $225 million by Howard D. "Homer" Schomer, citing physical abuse. Schomer was the highest ranking defection from the Church of Scientology to that point.

Standout Line

"It takes more than a fancy suit and an ill-conceived plan to rise above the rabble as sovereign!"

Man, Doom has himself some awesome tyrant tips to dole out.  He should go on the lecture circuit.  He could easily have the most famous Powerpoint presentation since Al Gore.

"Doom will easily acquire your feeble 'Peace Prize'!"

BAB #3: "Showtime"

("Wherefore art thou blue and hairy, and not at all my type?")

Comments

Ugh. Iceman might have exploded into delirious wonder this month, but Beauty and the Beast is becoming ever more of a slog.

The main problem here is that neither Alison's romance with Hank nor her refusal to leave the underground theatre make so much as a scrap of sense. Given Dazzler's much remarked upon hotness I can buy he's managed to mistake this brief encounter for a profound emotional connection, but Dazzler up to this point has been defined by her shallowness and self-absorption. Indeed, plenty of previous stories have centred on her struggle to overcome her own selfishness and love of bling to do the right thing.  Given this, her romance with Beast needs to be sold, and Nocenti doesn't even come close.  Frankly, it's hard to escape the feeling we're supposed to buy the attraction simply because they're both mutants, and one doesn't have to think hard to see why that's problematic if we're to view mutantism as an analogy for actual minorities (see how much fuss was kicked off when Russell T Davies married off his apparently utterly unsuited black characters together in The End of Time, for example).

This isn't an unqualified failure, to be sure.  There's a scene here where Beast and Dazzler are harassed for the crime of holding hands on the beach that resonates very well with the more general metaphor, especially the enraging, deliberate, sneering, giggling ignorance which they have to deal with.  Even so, it all just feels too artificial; too much like telling us the pair are in love rather than working to demonstrate it.

If they were having fun together, perhaps it would be easier to swallow. But really all the pair do is fight about Alison's devotion to the club.  There's lots of mooning and "why can't he/she just see"-style dialogue, and nothing else. Sure, for two people in a steady relationship the sudden arrival of a major disagreement like this is unquestionably fertile ground for drama. For two people who've been dating - at most - for a week or two, it just seems like a good reason to call it a day.

Instead, they continue to bicker, which is pretty much all they were doing last issue as well, which makes the whole thing feel more than a little repetitive (there's little reason why this couldn't have been just three issues long). Actually, though, it's worse than that, since the second time around Dazzler looks even more idiotic. Last time she was there, someone tried to kill her on-stage, and someone died. Even if it was remotely plausible that this represented someone going off-piste and a tragic accident, respectively, as Flynn and Longride claim, would you really want to hang around at a place who happily hires psychopaths and hands them medieval weaponry? Imagine handling professional wrestlers morning stars and tell me rookies wouldn't run for the hills.

Nocenti tries to explain all this by playing up Dazzler's delight in finding people who can finally accept her, but this ignores the fact that she's already been to Heartbreak Hotel, which is not only frequented by the man she has somehow decided she loves, but which sports not one single instrument of death or hand-to-hand exhibition for braying rich fatsos (they even send out a rescue mission for Dazzler this issue).  With that set aside, there's only two explanations left with her obsession.  The first is her losing control of her powers, a problem which lessens each time she's there (because, it turns out, Flynn has been drugging her).  That seems like comparative weak-sauce as a motivation - or more to the point, it would only work if Dazzler were there under sufferance rather than admiring the scars of her new co-workers - but it's much better than the alternative, which is that Alison is doing this entirely to step out once more into the spotlight.

Don't get me wrong. I'd have no problem in the slightest with a story in which Dazzler utterly abandons her principles, friends, and sense of self-preservation for another moment in the limelight. Were this to be attempted, though, it would need to be sold (you may be sensing a theme here), by which I mean it has to be a theme, not a shortcut to justify nonsense. This is hardly a problem that originated with Nocenti, but once again we're in a situation where our heroine is unbearable but we're still expected to empathise with her.

It's a good thing that we have an alternative protagonist here, then. Or at least it would be, were Hank not once again so horrifically off-model.  The man doesn't use the word "sicko". He most certainly doesn't grab a women and angrily scrawl "warpaint" on her face with lipstick, an act which manages to be both thoughtlessly racist and pretty much count as domestic abuse.  I know I keep saying this, but there's just nothing of "my" beast here. Nocenti seems convinced that intellect is something one simply turns on when in a laboratory, with no qualities that seep into one's general persona.

So there's simply nothing here to hold onto.  It's just two people somewhere between being at their worst and being utterly unrecognisable scowling at each other. In the second half of the book, there is some attempt to explain this when Hank learns the club has been drugging Alison, not only causing her powers to go haywire when she leaves, but interacting with her adrenaline in a manner not explained, but which presumably is stimulating her blood-lust.

This raises an interesting question, which we'll face an awful lot in our tour of the X-Universe. When does being hepped up on goofballs justify ludicrous behaviour? Does the revelation that Dazzler is drugged require me to forgive the ridiculous nature of everything that has happened up to that point?

This is a fundamentally subjective consideration, obviously. For my money, "she was drugged all along" is a perfectly reasonable manoeuvre to pull as a piece of a larger puzzle. Using it as a crutch for lazy plotting? Not so much. Reasonable people can disagree on which side of the fence this issue lies; I think I've made my position pretty clear.

When Beast finds the secret lab in the theatre, he's captured and injected with some kind of bezerker serum.  Tonight, the battle is between Beauty and the Beast.  Which, as much as I love that film, could quite possibly have been improved by giving Belle access to laser powers. The resulting battle comes close to a fatality, but in the end Beast manages to overcome his drugging, and talk Dazzler out of hers (which, if nothing else, is a nice change from women acting as the conscience for raging, testosterone-crazed men; credit where it's due). Unfortunately for the proprietors, someone has to die, otherwise the murder-hungry one percenters out there will want their blood money back.

Which is where everything finally goes crazy. Flynn makes a power play by feeding Longride to his gladiators to meet his contractual obligations. That much makes sense. But then we smash-cut to Doctor Doom in Latveria, where a sweating flunky tells him the man who claimed to be his son is no longer transmitting. In response, Doom demands intel on our star-struck lovers whilst he prepares for a flight to Hollywood.

So, what? Longride was a Doombot? Why was he in the USA, or in the entertainment biz? What's all this about him claiming to be Doom's son? Is there any chance that this can blend in with what's already going on?

I don't know.  But at least it looks like we'll be spared another issue of Hank and Alison sniping at each other over the definition of gainful employment.  At this point, that's good enough for me.

Clues

This story takes place in a single day.  It's mentioned that Dazzler's inaugural bout in the arena took place "last week". Since we have that altercation on a Saturday, this story could pretty much happen any time between the following Monday and a week later. Let's assume for now that the arena bouts are a standard weekly fixture, though. This gives our heroes another week to spend convincing each other they're in love, rather than just enjoying bouts of necking in-between arguments.

Date

Saturday 11^th November, 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+255.

Contemporary Events

Robin Uthappa, an Indian cricket player nicknamed "The Walking Assassin" is born. Check out the 2007 T20 World Cup for his career highlight. Apparently; I'm not an expert.  I'm not interested in any cricket match where I can't forget it's on for two days and still not miss any of the important bits.

Standout Line

"Hey guys, look! It's the "Sizzler"... And she's taking Rin Tin Tin for a walk. Hey, babe, at least put it on a leash!" - Bigot #1

Ah, witty bigots. If only they could bend some of that imagination into thinking up ways not to be dickheads, maybe this world wouldn't be the disgraceful nightmare it so clearly is.

BAB #2: "Heartbreak Hotel"

("Down at the end of Lonely Street...")

Comments

Come with me now, ladies and gentlemen, as we take to the highway in search of Metaphor City.

Young Alison Blaire dreams of being a star. She dreams of it so totally that she actually shines herself, and the less control she feels she had over her career, the more she loses her grip on her radiating. All this existential stress has finally become too much for her, so now she lives in a broken-down commune with people who like her for what she is, not what she can do.  Their powers are useless, even ridiculous, but it doesn't matter, because showing off for people isn't what it should all be about.

Young Hank McCoy dreams of the normality Alison seems so afraid of. He's got a really good heart, he just can't catch a break, owing to how he's he's kind of simian, and covered in blue hair.  You couldn't get much further from the George Clooney-type an aspiring singer-actress with a white hot body would be expected to court. He sees something to love in Alison, and doesn't understand why she can't. Women with low self-esteem can be so alluring, can't they? Well, they can if they're also unfeasibly beautiful. It's strange how that somehow becomes unattractive in those that aren't attractive.

As the days go past, Beast's constant drooling attention somehow begins to make Alison feel better about herself.  But she still yearns to be a star, even knowing the damage her ambition has already done to her, and when Alex Flynn arrives to ask her to honour her deal with Longride, she finds she cannot resist.

What Longride has in mind is entertainment for the rich and powerful of Hollywood. They want to see the young and the desperate for glory tear each other apart in front of them.  Dazzler simply singing for them doesn't hold their interest for more than a few bars.  What is talent without cut-throat competition? Why give fame to those who haven't proved they themselves hungry enough for it, by climbing over the bodies that got in the way? Even when Dazzler learns the truth, she can't break free.  "It's all pretend", they tell her; "all just a game". Desperate to believe anything that will get her her dream, she believes this - her reaction to the drugs her new "friends" are spiking her drinks with no doubt help here.

Only Beast can save our damsel in distress!  But will he stick by her, despite her poor decisions, and the fact she is no longer relying on him totally to validation? No!  No, he'll throw a tantrum and abandon her, so he can sulk all alone.

Tough when a woman leaves you for her career, isn't it? And by "leave you", I mean "not let you utterly control her every step of the way through that career".  Gods, I love Beast more than any other character in the X-Universe.  But that Beast is not this Beast.

Fuck this Beast.

Clues

The narrative here uses the phrase "days pass" twice here, and it seems clear we're rejoining the action at least a day after the previous issue ended, so we'll more or less arbitrarily assume we're looking at around a fortnight of time.

As mentioned when looking at DAZ #35, that issue clearly takes place before this miniseries, so we'll move all dates one week into the future to compensate.

Date

Sunday 22^nd October to Saturday 4^th November, 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+235 to X+6Y+248.

Contemporary Events

The EEC stump up £1.8 million to help combat the famine in Ethiopia.

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated.

Standout Line

"Sometimes just getting up in the morning is like getting hit with a shovel full of dirt."

Poor old Hank. It's not easy being an unpretty academic. Of course, it may be that I'm over-identifying.

Beauty And The Beast #1: "Beauty And The Beast, Part 1"

(A creature of surpassing ugliness.)

Comments

Released (at least nominally) in the same month, it's tempting to view Beauty and the Beast as a a close companion to the Iceman mini-series.  Not only did they start at the same time, but both are four issues long, and both feature a long-absent member of the X-Men (Beast hadn't been part of that team for over a decade in real-time by this point) and current member of the New Defenders taking some well-deserved - and obviously doomed - downtime.

There is an important difference between the two, though.  Back when I talked about Bobby Drake's newest escapades, I suggested that we didn't need to search too hard in an attempt to justify the series, because having Iceman back for a little while was of interest in itself.  In theory, the same should be true of Henry McCoy.  Hell, it should be vastly more true, on account of Beast being the greatest X-Man ever create.

The problem here is that Beast is utterly unrecognisable here.  There is literally nothing beyond his look and name that connects him with the character we spent more than half a decade with in the '60s, or even the rather more brash iteration we saw in Amazing Adventures after his self-inflicted transformation. Beast does not say "Wotta view!" He doesn't comment on the arrival of another mutant by saying "Get a load of horse-face."  He doesn't grab hold of people and threaten them because he doesn't like the way they're talking to women - if he did think some prick was bothering a woman, he'd have much better ways of locking that shit down - and he doesn't do it out of unthinking jealousy.  And he certainly doesn't give a woman shit because she turns him down when he announces she's leaving with him.

I mean, it's hard enough swallowing this kind of unpleasant chauvinist attitude - a strange thing to write about when reading the first X-book to be written by a woman - without it coming from so educated and thoughtful a character.  There is nothing here, nothing at all, that doesn't feel like this is a team-up between Dazzler and Generic Male Superhero.  Indeed, the title seems to be the only reason they've included Hank at all; there's clearly no interest in doing his character justice.

Whilst Beast is utterly unrecognisable, Dazzler by contrast is wearyingly familiar.  When last we saw Dazzler - in her very own graphic novel no less - she was finding herself increasingly out of sorts as she tried to fit in with Hollywood in order to kick-start her career, only for the people she trusted to betray her.  This time around, she's finding herself increasingly out of sorts as she tries to fit in with Hollywood in order to kick-start her career, only for the man she trusts to betray her.  Er, yay?

That's not entirely fair, I grant, because of the two set-ups, I think this is the more interesting.  OR at least, more grim, and really I don't see the difference between those two adjectives anyway.  Whatever else one wants to say about Beast's behaviour here, he does at least have good instincts.  "Horse-face" is part of Hugo Longride's mutant theatre, and under the guise of helping her career Alex has been systematically ruining what little reputation Dazzler has left, so that she has nowhere else to work but his exploitative freak-show.

The idea of people making use of mutants like this hasn't really been used too much up to this point - there was the occasion Mesmero hypnotised the X-Men into thinking they were carnival attractions, but the grotesque idea wasn't really made use of - and given how often it happened to people born with non-standard body shapes here in the real world (see, for example, the 1932 film Freaks, which depending who you talk to is either a reaction to such mistreatment, or an example of it in itself).  It's something of a shame that Alison is portrayed as being stupid enough to not realise Longride is doing her more harm than good - this is, what, the third time in a row this has happened - but again, that's more of a criticism of this story directly following MGN #12 than a problem in its own right.

What the issue does has to own for itself is how little it does with this idea, though.  It also has to answer for how unimpressive Dazzler comes across here. Longride is apparently applying psychological pressure in order to break her will and leave her helpless to resist him. All of which apparently requires almost no effort on his part.  A fall into a swimming pool, a shitty newspaper story about her, and Dazzler is already close to collapse, to the point where she has to flee the city because her light powers are out of control.  It's frustrating in the extreme to see a genuinely capable (if frequently aggravating) female character to be reduced to a damsel in distress, especially since one of the best features of the fairy tale this takes its name from is the idea that its Beauty who saves the Beast from himself.

Here, Beast appoints himself protector and saviour of Beauty, and it's all very unpleasant. Quite aside from the gender politics issues, Beast acts in an appallingly judgemental way towards Longride's mutant charges, to the point where one calls him on the hypocrisy, and he still dismisses them as "decrepit people".  When Alison disappears - having run to the coast to hide - he immediately assumes the horse-featured mutant he threatened at the previous night's party is responsible, and heads to the guy's hotel before attacking him without warning.

Think about that for a moment. Beast physically attacks a fellow mutant based on a jealous hunt and rumours spread about the group of mutants he belongs to.  The fact that this mook - Rocker by handle [1]- turns out to know Longride is planning something nefarious for Dazzler is entirely beside the point.  This isn't how heroes are supposed to behave.  This isn't how Hank is supposed to behave.

All this comes together when Beast overhears Rocker receiving a tip on Dazzler's whereabouts, and heads to the coast to find her being sheltered by a group of squatters in a nearby house.  There he finds Dazzler pumping out massive wattage, and promises he's arrived to protect her.  You know, from light.  Light she's generating herself.  Actually, proper Beast could probably manage that.  New and unimproved Beast? Shit out of luck, I'm guessing.

But I guess we'll find out next issue.  Next year, in fact, since this post brings us to the end of 1984's X-books (except for that year's Uncanny X-Men Annual, which will have to wait until Kitty and Logan get back from beating up ninjas).  Everyone break out the tiny flags!  Woo!  Tiny flag waves! WOO!

[1] This is probably Doctor Doom's bastard child.  I didn't know he had one until this issue, but given Doom's presence in the prologue it's clear he'll be showing up, and Rocker's shared love of horsie-based statuary and dislike of knocking on the door during the appreciation of same makes guessing his identity reasonably simple. Let this be a lesson to you, kids! Dabble in the black arts; end up with unacceptably equine children.  It could happen to you! 

Clues

Like ICE, there's little here to tie the issue to wider X-book continuity, other than the fact that the events of the Dazzler graphic novel are described in the past tense.  Since they share no cast members, we can actually run this simultaneously with Bobby Drake's latest adventure, though this issue takes place over a much longer time frame of around a fortnight.

Date

Saturday 30^th September to Saturday 14^th October, 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+213 to X+6Y+227.

Contemporary Events

The Brighton hotel bombing: the IRA attempts to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet.  Five people were killed and several more permanently disabled, but the Prime Minister herself escaped injury.

Standout Line

"Best thing for my hangover is to just relax and look at my sculpture collection." - Rocker