KPW #4: "Rebirth"

(Three men and a stupid baby.)

Comments

There's a strange moment on page 6 of this issue, when the narration tells us:

I'm Wolverine. This is my story.

The reason this qualifies as strange isn't particularly difficult to see.  It's right there in the title. At best, Wolverine should be sharing equal time in this story with Kitty, if not taking second billing.  It wasn't particularly surprising that Logan took centre stage in the previous issue, what with Sprite suffering from barinwashing (though that doesn't address the wisdom of sidelining your main character like that in the first place).  Here, it's harder to understand, and it gets us into a rather fundamental problem.

The overall plot of this issue is pretty simple: Logan wants to free Kitty from Ogun's unpleasant influence, and he figures the best way to do that is to train her properly, rather than by evil info-dump.  This feels partially like the old idea of earning something instead of being given it for free - Kitty might think Logan doesn't look the part, but there's a definite Empire... "quicker, easier, more seductive" idea going on here - but mainly this is an exercise in having Kitty reclaim her identity. If she can't unlearn what Ogun has given her, she can at least contextualise it - if she has ninja skills and goes through ninja training, it shouldn't matter too much which of the two came first.

That's a perfectly fine idea, and were we seeing it from Kitty's perspective rather than Wolverine's, I might have left it there.  The problem is that in getting Logan's view of the situation, we end up with three men - Logan, Ogun and Kitty's father, Caermen Pryde - fighting over how a young woman should spend the rest of her life.

At first blush, this might seen at least a little unfair.  Logan, at least, is insistent at every point that Kitty has a choice here.  Whilst Ogun clearly doesn't have any interest in Kitty's opinions, and Carmen seems unable to think about his daughter in any context beyond sulking over her refusal to speak to him, Wolvie at least wants Sprite's input.  But consider what that choice is, in Logan's framing. Either Kitty spends weeks having her body banged up or being thrown into freezing water, or one day Ogun will come back and that, to all intents and purposes, will be the end of her - unless she wants to run back to Xavier and hide behind him forever.

That, to me, is too close for confort to telling Kity she has to do what Logan wants, or she has to do what Ogun wants - with the only options giving herself over entirely to Xavier's largess, or  to do what her father presumably wants and burying her head in the Illinois snow. It's not hard to understand why Wolverine believes the pressure is necessary given previous events, but that just makes the problem structural.

The issue salvages itself somewhat towards the end when we return to Kitty's internal narrative. First she belatedly figures out Logan's angle - re-running Ogun's approach but with the option to quit - and then extrapolates that by deciding to face Ogun down rather than run back to the States. And in truth this does fit into the larger idea this series seems to be playing with - contrasting Logan and Kitty begore actually making them more similar.

The problem is that the agency in on Logan's part, and the changes on Kitty's.  It's a surprising choice to tell a story of personal growth and change from a man who - in this issue - does neither.  I'm hardly unsympathetic to the idea that Logan is a fundamentally more interesting character than Kitty - in their mid '80s incarnations, that is - but that's exactly why I wouldn't have paired them together as title characters and brainwashed the junior partner.

Clues

The narration during Kitty's attempts to become the new Wolverine mention that "days pass" as she trains.  That gives us plenty of leeway to work within.  Ordinarily we'd interpret this to mean as short a time as possible - perhaps as little as a week - but such an alternative isn't open to us here. Xavier's phone-call informing Logan of Storm's loss of power and James Hudson's death force us to extend the time-period significantly, since the latter occurrence explicitly takes place at the beginning of March.  I could try and move forward the whole of KPW to compensate, but that causes problems with this story having clearly begun in midwinter three issues earlier.

There's also the fact that Logan mentions Kitty having been in Ogun's clutches for a week.  This directly contradicts earlier issues, in which Wolverine arrived in Japan the night after Kitty, and crosses swords with her the night afterwards.  That said, I think the longer period makes more sense - to the extent that's a quantifiable quality when discussing mind-washing techniques to make people ninjas.  We'll therefore assume Kitty spent one week with Ogun, and two and a half weeks with Logan as shown here.

Date

Monday 13^th February to Friday 2^nd March, 1984.

X-Date

X+5Y+343 to X+6Y+1.

Contemporary Events

The 1984 Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo.

Standout Line

"You're too tall -- an' too darn ugly -- to be Yoda."

ALF #19: "Turn Again, Turn Again, Time In Thy Flight"

("But you can't rewrite history! Not one line!")

Comments

ALF #19 is the title's first time-travel story, in which Shaman takes his daughter into the past - along with Snowbird and Puck - to try and discover how Lucas Stang's demon problems first kicked off.

It's also the issue in which we learn Elizabeth Twoyoungmen is the subject of a millennia-old prophecy. This is actually the least interesting aspect of the issue, so we'll deal with it fairly briefly. Prompted by her father, Elizabeth reaches into his medicine bag, and pulls out a tiara that transforms her into the sorceress Talisman. In theory, this is a useful idea, because it takes the standard trope of alienated family members learning what they have in common and compresses it into a single panel: Elizabeth is now a magic-user like her father.  In practice what happens is that Talisman is so powerful and ethereal she's impossible to relate to, and Shaman spends the whole issue alternating between freaking out over his daughter's transformation and refusing to help her with it.  "No time to explain now!" is a fucking awful thing to say to your daughter (estranged or otherwise) when she clearly needs help adjusting to an utterly unexpected life-changing event.

But then Shaman doesn't come off well here across the board. He hands the medicine bag to Elizabeth without warning her that if she isn't actually Talisman looking into the bag will drive her insane.  That seems like a pretty important thing to point out, but Shaman's only comment is the fact his daughter hasn't just had her mind sucked away into nothingness is further proof that Snowbird has the right person.  Once Elizabeth has become Talisman, and Shaman has taken the group into the past, he then commences lying to people - mainly by omission, but directly to Snowbird - about what their mission is.

Snowbird, you see, thinks they're there to stop Ranaq the Devourer from achieving corporeal form in the first place; to stop him gaining the foothold into the real that led to the supernatural egg-based battle in the previous issue. Shaman assures her this is the plan, but it isn't. Shaman doesn't believe the past can be changed, and is just hoping to learn the circumstances of Ranaq's arrival to more usefully battle him in the present.

This is more or less in keeping with the original Marvel policy on time-travel, which stated that one could not change the past to alter the future. Rather, an attempt at time-travel creates a new reality, one which then operates entirely independently.  Shaman's non-interference policy is presumably intended to ensure he and his companions can return to the same Earth they left behind.

The problem here of course is that it's obvious nonsense.  I'm not talking about the multi-dimensional approach to time travel; that seems as sensible a way as any to handle the idea in a setting multiple authors. Nor am I particularly interested in exploring whether total non-interaction following a trip into the past would get one around the reality-hopping issue - though one would think it wouldn't, since the new dimension should be created by the act of travel itself, not by what happens once that act is finished.  There's no need to look at that too deeply because the idea of total non-interaction is so obviously ridiculous in the first place.

What needs to be understood here is that what causality considers interference bears no relation to what the human mind considers interference. Heisenberg's observer effect tells us that, as does basic common sense. The world they return to must be different to the one they left - it is inescapable.  The best one can hope for is a world indistinguishable from the one they left behind.

None of this seems apparent to Shaman, who seems relatively unconcerned with the idea of his companions fighting Ranaq, so long as none of them actually defeat him (that honour goes to the young Lucas Stang, who banishes Ranaq and so ensures the rematch one hundred years later).  That's an insane solipsistic approach to time-travel - what matters must be ensuring the event they came to witness goes ahead. Yes, that goal can be considered as an attempt to avoid a Grandfather Paradox, but really, that's just further evidence of why the Grandfather Paradox is so unworkable in the first place. Any reasonable conception of the idea has to include it being paradoxical for a time-traveller to succeed in changing what they want changing, and that immediately dilutes the laws of causality with the petty drudgery of the human mind.

It is simply not workable that what a time-traveller can do should be determined by what they know.  The past cannot possibly become more flexible in areas the time-traveller is less expert. Going back to change what we ate for breakfast yesterday should not be harder to do than going back to change what we had ten years ago just because we don't remember the specifics of the latter. The past is mutable or it is not, and in the case of Shaman's excursion, the former is clearly the one that holds.  Some attempt to bypass this fact by arguing time is like a jigsaw puzzle that always works out in the end (Pratchett specifically states that this is how things work with the Discworld, but that strikes me more as an attempt to avoid having to come up with anything more complicated, which; fair enough), but that won't cut it either.

Let's say I write two letters to my young self, one free of useful knowledge and another mapping out the mistakes I've made in the last twenty years, and place them in identical envelopes. Then I choose one at random, head back into the past, and post it. The argument that both letters are "destined" to be somehow intercepted or destroyed is very unpersuasive, but the suggestion only the "useful" letter would meet that fate is less sensible still.

No, if the past can be reached at all, if we really can traipse our way back down the highway of causality and poke at what we find there, the Grandfather Paradox cannot hold - one of the reasons I like Marvel's time-travel policy as much as I do, though it's been some time since it was rigorously maintained.  Shaman's touch-but-don't-stop policy simply doesn't cut it.

Still, by the end of the issue everyone's back in the present. It may even be the same present. We can dispense with all this noodling about the nature of time-travel and get down to something simpler, like how do deal with vengeful women turning people into gold. How relaxing that will be.

Clues

This story takes place in approximately real time. Plus, obviously, the past.

Date

Monday 15^th April, 1884.

X-Date

X-94Y+45.

Contemporary Events

The Siege of Khartoum enters its second month, and Adolf Luderitz prepares to place his South-West African holdings (now part of modern-day Namibia) under the protection of Imperial Germany to deter British aggression.

Standout Line

"Time travel is one of the few things I haven't tried." - Puck.

NMU #24: "The Hollow Heart"

(The long, dark story-time of the soul - part 3.)

Comments

It's issue three of Claremont's strangely-paced sequel to a story I never even read, and clearly there's at least one issue still to go. Ugh.

But there are plenty places on the web where people spend their time complaining endlessly about the things they nominally love.  Let's see what we can find in here that'll make us happy.

Essentially, this issue can be broken into three parts (four, really, but the last one I'm saving for Subplot Corner), the effect Rahne and Roberto's transformation has upon their teammates, upon Cloak and Dagger, and upon themselves.

All three of these reactions contain something worth commenting upon.  Xavier is so concerned about what's happened to his young charges, for instance, that he insists on digging into Sam and Dani's minds to learn everything that's transpired, in case their descriptions aren't good enough (all he gets for his pains is a page-long plot summary).  It's a useful reminder of Charlie's central problem; he's built his entire sense of self-worth around the idea of rigorous adherence to a moral code, but it never even occurs to him that anyone other than him should be get a say in when and how that code needs to be sidestepped. Unilaterally declaring a situation as requiring invasive mind-scans is a real problem, and it doesn't matter how noble the man making that choice has convinced himself he is.

Heading out of Xavier's mansion and into the Big Apple, we find the runaways formerly known as Cloak and Dagger, and all is not well there either. Now they're out of hospital and of the superhero business, it's time to figure out a new theme, only Tyrone doesn't see how it can be done. The white daughter of a multi-million-dollar supermodel and a stuttering black kid from the slums? What could they possibly talk about? The demon darkness that used to nibble away at Tyrone's soul?

As usual, I'm far too white, middle-class and British to comment on how strong a point is being made here - I've genuinely no idea where the suggestion of incompatibility, were it to come directly from Claremont, would lie on the scale between "obviously true" and "horribly racist" - but I can certainly buy Ty believing it. And though neither he nor Tandy are actually mutants (you know, yet), the underlying point here extends to the X-books metaphor; lumping everyone into a single group labelled "mutants" puts people of radically different backgrounds into a proximity they neither necessarily want nor can handle. Intra-mutant culture clashes will take some time yet to become a particularly visible issue (indeed, it's debatable whether or not they have even now), but it's worth noting that - Logan's nicknames for his team-mates aside - the idea perhaps got its first start here, entirely by accident.  This isn't lessened at all when ultimately Tandy and Tyrone conclude they do still have something in common, the desire to good, leading to them returning to the X-Men at issue's end to offer their help with Wolfsbane and Sunspot.

Speaking of which, the troubled duo themselves. Even with my attitude stuck to relentlessly positive, this is difficult to drag anything interesting from.  Mostly this section consists of Dani and Illyana failing to cure their friends, though time is taken out for Rahne to head inside Roberto and save Colossus.  One could be petty and point out this simply restores the status quo from the start of the previous issue - two people possessed and no-one eaten - but then I suppose that's true of pretty much all successful rescue missions.  Plus, at least it gives us a glimpse of Colossus' interior monologue.  He's still blaming himself for "destroying" Kitty by dumping her. Which, of course, is horribly narcissistic, and entirely within character. It's always nice when writers pick up on this aspect of Piotr's nature.  From immediately injecting himself with the Legacy Virus cure to petitioning Cytorrak to become the new Juggernaut, the young Russian has a tendency to turn everything into a horrific immediate crisis that only his noble sacrifice/histrionic self-flagellation can solve.  A man so immature in his thinking that Kitty ultimately leaves him for Bobby Drake, ladies and gentlemen.

So far from an unambiguous disaster, then.  Even so, there was nothing in this issue so sweet as the final panel: "To be concluded".

Meanwhile, over in Subplot Corner, Magneto compliments Lee Forrester on her wardrobe, and apologises for being a dick.  Lee is bowled over by this unprecedented display of contrition, but it seems perfectly understandable to me: she's too hot to yell at. It's always tough for a man to stay mad at a pretty woman.  Up until the possibility of sex is removed of course, at which point everything previously swallowed suddenly rises to the surface. Still, that won't matter so long as Lee and Mags can make it work...

Clues

This story takes place over the course of a single evening/night.  Xavier mentions that the original encounter with Cloak and Dagger took place the previous year, but that works fine with our timeline.

Date

Saturday 11^th May, 1984.

X Date

X+6Y+72.

Contemporary Events

There's an solar eclipse on Mars when Earth passes in front of the Sun.  I hope the Ice Warriors and the tripod machine and whatever the fuck those things in Total Recall were supposed to be enjoyed themselves.

Standout Line

"Leave things to Slick, he'll take care o' you real good.  Rags, meals, a crib t'call your own, good times -- he got 'em all!" - A ridiculous stereotyped pimp I didn't mention because I was trying to be positive.

UXM #190: "An Age Undreamed Of"

(You've been Gathed.)

Comments

There are times, we all know, when lightning is caught in a bottle.  When those who run the gambit from mediocre to barely competent somehow strike gold - to mix one's metaphors terribly - and produce a work of inexplicable quality. Some people call this the Richard Kelly effect, though I think that largely overlooks the fact that Donnie Darko isn't really all that good.

Blah blah blah, equal and opposite reaction.  Sometimes creators one has no reason not to trust as a safe pair of hands at the very least lay a turd of such staggering proportions any analysis feels like performing an autopsy in a hot sewer.

This is the story of one of those times.  Nothing about this issue works.  The basic drive is one of those worst-of-both-worlds ideas, which is too ridiculous to take seriously and too unfunny and violent to work as a romp. Essentially, Kulan Gath - an insane sorcerer who presumably escaped from the cursed jewelry we saw last time around; KG to his friends - casts a spell which turns New York into a Dark Age town. Guns become swords, cars become horses, 20th Century New Yorkers become loincloth-sporting peasants (with oddly contemporary speech patterns), with their memories rewritten accordingly but with full knowledge of the - epoch-adjusted - relationships they have with others.

Whether this idea is actually as bad as I think it is is, admittedly, a matter of personal taste.  What seems to me more objectively clear is that a) it can't support two issues, each three pages longer than average, b) the fact this is all apparently an attempt by KG to get revenge on Spiderman makes the X-Men seem like extras in their own book, and c) requiring Valerie Cooper to explain all this through multiple pages of exposition is supremely clumsy. I suppose framing it as a briefing is a step or two above starting with phrases like "As you know, sir...", but that's faint praise.

It's a pretty awful briefing, as well.  Not in terms of quality - not just - but because it lets Claremont toss off the line "Gath also practises human sacrifice on a monstrous scale... exclusively... children".  That's just not something you chuck into a plot and then leave alone. Sacrificing children? This is now the most horrific situation the X-Men have ever faced, and they don't even know who they are. This is just ramping up the body-count for a cynical correlation with dramatic heft. It's bullshit when Rob Liefeld does it (as one day we shall discuss in eye-bleeding detail) and it's bullshit here.

(It's also an immediate clue that this story will end with the whole affair undone through magicosity. I suppose my hatred of that particular ending should make me grateful for the head's up, but it doesn't seem to have worked that way.)

Oh, and also, while we're still at the briefing, there's one gentleman there who responds to learning the X-Men are within the city by announcing his desire to have mutants rounded up and done away with. This gives another man there, a general who helped liberate Buchenwald, the chance to wax eloquent on the subject of modern-day Nazis. Which, look.  I'm all in favour of hating Nazis, and everything, but if we want to get anywhere close to serious about mutants as an metaphor for real-life minorities, deconstructing bigotry has to involve something more complicated than Godwinising the book - particulary when Jim Shooter is putting out far more interesting takes on the idea over in the still-running Secret Wars. OK, Stryker was no less strident in God Loves, Man Kills, but that was as part of a commentary on religious extremism.  Being a cockdonkey in a Whitehouse briefing is something completely different. Every time we pat ourselves on the back for resisting the most extreme and obvious bigotry, we run the risk of concluding that this is what prejudice looks like, blinding us to its millions of more subtle and more pernicous forms.  It's how right-wing politicians can simultaneously argue Martin Luther King Jr. is a conservative hero and that affirmative action is the real racism.

Anyway.  Into Ye Olde New Yorke. Storm lives on a boat and dresses like a trollop.  Turns out KG's spell doesn't so much revert women's clothing to the Dark Ages as to a particularly outre Anne Summers line. Apparently Claremont's twin love of piracy and corsets here reached the point where Nightcrawler's fantasies and the entire female contingent of Hellfire dressing like the cast of a Blue Ribbon film just aren't going to cut it. I always said a violet-furred swashbuckler was just a gateway drug.

Storm finds herself being hunted down by the Morlocks - now being used as KG's enforcers, which makes little sense, since they're neither temperamentally inclined to follow someone like KG nor powerful enough to make them an obvious choice for domination - and in the resulting fight, she and Callisto are washed down the Hudson and out of the spell's radius.  Quickly recovering, they're keen to get back into the city and take on it's new ruler, but they're somewhat short on friends. The Avengers and the X-Men have no idea who they are, the New Mutants have already been forcibly recruited by KG (Warlock excepted), and Xavier and Caliban have been crudely welded together through magical genetic antics.

There is one potential ally left within the city, however. It'll take more than KG's cheap parlour tricks to keep down Selene, either because of her tremendous sorcerous power, or because she's the only woman in Manhattan who could only have obeyed KGs magical directives by putting more clothes on.  Piggybacking on "Lady Rachel" Summers' psychic powers, she hammers out a deal with Storm and Callisto: she'll provide enough magic protection for them to re-enter the city with just enough memory remaining to compel them to ruin KG's shit.  Oh, and to believe Selene is their friend, which sounds like a loop-hole wide enough to get Xavier's gigantic new Calibarse through.

Not that it might matter. No sooner have the Avengers and X-Men objected to the Morlocks trying to arrest Magik and inadvertently started a rebellion when KG ambushes and kidnaps Selene (along with Spiderman).  Now all that's left to stand against him is a dozen or so amnesiac superheroes.  Will that be enough? We've only got 25 pages to find out!

Clues

This story takes place over a single day.

The New Mutants are caught up in this madness, but that's fine, since we're setting this between NMU #21 and #22.

Date

Friday 4^th May, 1984

X-Date

X+6Y+64.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.47 standard years

(Beast is 32 years old)

Contemporary Events

Diana Dors dies, aged 52.  "She couldn't act much, but she put on a show."

Standout Line

"How do you feel, Callisto?"
"Furious. I hate owing my life to you." - Storm and Callisto.

KPW #3: "Death"

(The space between us.)

Comments

We're now halfway through this mini-series, and as Logan heads for his rendezvous with Kitty only to find it's a trap with her serving as both bait and blade, our focus remains on figuring out what makes this title dare to believe it deserves to exist.

After three issues, something along those lines does indeed seem to be forming,  The key observation here is that sixty-plus pages in, Kitty and Logan have still yet to talk to each other (yes, Logan answered Kitty's trans-continental phone call, but she hung up immediately). This is a story about two characters interacting without an interface.

The result is interesting.  The two characters are essentially sketched out by the absence of the other. This is not always a wise approach, hence why it's a relief this series can't be subtitled "Mooning Over Colossus", but it seems to work perfectly well here.  In part, that's because the relationship between Kitty and Logan is sufficiently complicated and interesting - note how it's still being explored almost thirty years later - that it can withstand being deconstructed in this way.  It heightens both Sprite's vulnerability and Logan's disassociation from the world.

Admittedly, the former is less interesting than the latter. There's a lovely line in particular here about how Wolverine's general dislike of cities doesn't apply to Tokyo because he understands what its doing, because its attempt to generate order from chaos mirrors his own internal struggle.  Not an attempt to replace the chaos, so much as to compartmentalise it to the point where it no longer reigns supreme.

(One almost sure-fire way of doing this, by the way, is to become a parent, or at least so it seems to this childless writer.  Having children doesn't require that the mad, scrambling, explosive rush of youth be discarded, merely that it be set aside until a reliable babysitter is found. So, anyone know of somebody who could fulfil that role for Wolverine?)

As for Kitty's vulnerability, well, it doesn't look much like that's going to be an issue for a while, does it? Under Ogun's tutelage/mind control, she's become an assassin lethal enough to take down the mighty Wolverine himself, stabbing him through the chest in a manner that I'm sure would be very concerning were we not well aware of his healing factor.  Then again, Logan is somewhat off his game, made vulnerable by, I assume, his concern for Kitty.

This means our two title characters are not merely defined by their separation, but also by how that separation had led to them becoming more like each other. That close couples (platonic or otherwise) tend towards a central point is an obvious realisation, of course, but it's interesting to see it here in this strange half-separated situation.  I'm not sure it fully works - the outside pressure and compressed time involved in ninjafying Kitty cuts against my reading of the comic's intent - but it does give us a plausible hook for the second half of the series.

Clues

This issue takes place over a single night.  Logan states that this is the night after Kitty tried to swipe money from a cash machine, but this is flatly impossible unless both Wolverine's flight and Ogun's ninja brainwash process both take no more than a couple of hours.  We'll therefore place this story the day after KPW #2 concludes.

Date

Monday 6^th February, 1984.

X-Date

X+5Y+343.

Contemporary Events

Euro Tunnel is given the grant to build the... well, you can guess, I'm sure.

Standout Line

"I've always loved [this temple's] garden, the elegant simplicity of the pattern formed by the arrangement of rocks and stones... creating harmony from diversity, order from chaos.

A man's spirit, it's said, can be shaped the same way..."

ALF #18: "How Long Will A Man Lie In The Ground 'Ere He Rot"

("My God! Look at all the junk food!")

Comments

This is another of Byrne's multi-thread spectaculars, so much as we did with NMU #23, we'll discuss the main story here and then summarise the various offshoot scenes in Subplot Corner.

Ever since this blog began I've been running the "contemporary events" section, in which I nod to historic events concurrent with what I'm suggesting individual comics can be argued to have been set.  Well, one month exactly after Sunspot first felt the effects of acute Cloakism, and during the filming of Dazzler's intended debut feature, Columbia Pictures released Ghostbusters.

The effect of Ghostbusters upon pop culture is well-known, of course; as Spike said in Buffy, the phrase "Who you gonna call" is now forever entirely unuseable in its intended context.  There's also a clear link between the film and this issue. Again, comics borrowing from genre classics is hardly something of a surprise (it seems to me impossible to argue the issue of UXM involving Kitty being stalked by a N'Garai demon wasn't inspired in its entirety by Alien), but the link here is unusual because Byrne has made so odd a choice over what to ape.  He has seemingly no interest in this

or this

or this

or even this

All he cares about is riffing on this:

"Yay! Smaller gas bills!"

A strange choice for an image to replicate, one might think.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Our main plot here follows on from the sudden appearance of Shaman’s daughter, who after years of estrangement needs her father’s help.  As before, it’s difficult to get fired up by the return of Michael’s long-lost daughter because she’s so horribly unpleasant.  The fact that Michael lost his daughter’s trust and love when she was a child because his promise to save her sick mother came to nothing just about works as a beat in a frankly pretty clichéd “Arrogant man of science is brought low and embraces mysticism” way – and by clichéd I mean Marvel has done the exact same plot with a surgeon turned magician already – but bringing her back is a clear mistake.  There’s just no way to get past the fact that someone old enough to vote is treating her father like shit because medical technology only goes so far.  The only words that should be coming out of Elizabeth’s mouth are “Dad, I’m so sorry you had to lose your wife and your daughter on the same day”, and until she offers those up, she can engage in indefinite fucking off.

Shaman investigates the skull his daughter unearthed a few days earlier, and returns a judgement of angry, presumed evil. With nothing else to go on, the two Twoyoungmen head to the police station to await developments. 

It doesn't take long.  Let's head on over to the Stang place, where old Mister Stang - a bastard of the uppermost crotchetiness - is mulling over whether one hundred and seventeen years is far too long a time to spend amongst us.  All that's keeping him in this vale of tears is the love of his great-grandaughter Emily, the only member of his family he hasn't yet chased away. His bitter cynicism leads him to conclude she made contact a year earlier in the hopes of squeezing some money out of him, but apparently she's just genuinely a nice person - surprising given the writer and the chromosone combination.  Her reward is to be attacked by her own scrambled eggs.

So. The thing. It's possible here that Byrne intends for a woman being threatened by the beaten results of chicken ovulation to be funny.  He's playing it exceptionally straight, yes, but that hardly invalidates the comedy theory.  But, there's a limit here.  There's playing things straight, and there's playing things lumpen and dead.  I mean, check this exchange out:

Lucas Stang's great-granddaughter just called up in a major panic. Somthing about her scrambled eggs attacking her!

Yes... yes, that sounds like the kind of thing I've been expecting.  Eggs, after all, have the dubious distinction of representing both new life... and the promise of life unfulfilled.

I simply cannot believe that Byrne wrote that thinking it to be comedy gold.  Of course, before reading this issue, I don't think that anyone could have written those words in that order at all.  So what do I know?

Shaman and Elizabeth teleport their way over to the Stang residence and launch their attack on the world's most violent breakfast. It turns out the eggs are accessing an alternative dimension and using its energies to grow at an alarming rate.  If things aren't brought to a stop soon, the portal could widen to the point where all life on the planet is destroyed. If you want a vision of such a future, imagine evil squamous scrambled eggs everywhere, forever.  Not particularly keen on this idea, Shaman slams shut the portal. 

Things don't end there, though. Shaman is concerned. What if the expanding death-eggs were only a diversion? Upstairs, they find Lusas Stang, surrounded by the white light of Impending Evil.  Apparently Stang has been waiting one hundred years for the spirits to come mess his family up, which is why he's been doing his damndest to keep anyone he cares about away and safe.  Since Emily is here, though, Lucas decides she might as well die first and save him.  Which I assure you makes no more sense on the page than it does in summary.  Maybe if Byrne had had more space he could have explained more thoroughly - God knows, extensive explanations are usually his most favourite thing ever - but then that would have meant cutting down on the scrambled egg fight scene, and nobody would have wanted that.

Anyway, so it is that Emily first becomes possessed by Ranaq, the Gerat Devourer, and then starts trying to kill Elizabeth with villanous demonic eye-beams.  Elizabeth's latent mystical powers trigger in response, setting up a supernatural duel that could kill either or both women, so Shaman steps in to expel Ranaq without hurting Emily. Always nice when a man can save a helpless woman, especially one so beautiful but haunted by demons, and over the efforts of some other woman to, like, totally overract.

(Some may argue at this point I'm just twisting things to take cheap shots at Byrne.  Others will realise the fact Byrne's work can be so quickly and easily twisted is a valid criticism in itself).

With Emily saved and Stang still alive (albeit catatonic), the immediate danger is passed. This week's episode of When Haunted Skulls Get Pissy isn't quite over yet, though.  For their next trick, the amazing Shaman and his lovely daughter will wow you with their greatest feat of all - a pilgrimage 100 years back in time in order to slap around the Ghost of Angry Mr Stang Past.

We're going all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.  Pass the 3D specs and hold on tight.

Meanwhile...

In subplot one, we learn that those who might claim Byrne cannot multitask are sadly mistaken. This conversation between Heather and Judd combines both the former’s plans for rebuilding Alpha Flight and a remarkable degree of product placement.  I don’t know how much McDonald’s paid for John Byrne’s immortal soul, but I bet they’d been hoping for Claremont. If they’d caught that fine fat fish, imagine how different eighties culture could have been.

Heather starts off by phoning up former members of the team, hoping she can put together a more centralised unit (why this is useful when half your team can get across Canada almost immediately and the other half need to hitch lifts on aeroplanes isn’t explained).  Northstar rudely refuses (though how cool is it that he has a nearly-naked young man answering his phone for him?)  and Shaman, of course, isn’t about.

(Just as an aside: what the heck  is “Where the heck is High River?” all about? Any knowledgeable Canadians in my audience?)

The second subplot concerns poor old Douglas Thompson, who waits in the wilderness hoping to meet the woman he once knew – and still loves – as Anne McKenzie, now revealed as Snowbird.  He’s been waiting for days for a response on his admission of love.  It’s not really too nice to leave someone hanging like that – though I can’t claim to be objective on that point, which is all I’m going to say – but worse is to come when she returns to tell him she does love him but it can never work because she’s all messed up and yadda yadda.  When will emotionally distant women stop tormenting poor pure-hearted men? Seriously, does anyone know if Byrne ever got therapy over his fixation with implausibly curvaceous but emotionally difficult women?  Because damn.

(Oh, and for bonus ick factor, we should note that when Snowbird tells Doug she can't love him, he responds by grabbing her and forcibly kissing her. Because how can a woman knows how she really feels without a man sexually assaulting her so she knows what she's missing?  The idea people still wrote this crap within my lifetime is genuinely depressing.)

Clues

This story takes place over a single day. Dr Twoyoungmen's receptionist states it's been two days since his daughter arrived, placing this issue one day after the conclusion of ALF #16. That would make it something like eight days since Doug made his feelings known to Snowbird, which seems a bit long. But clearly Byrne wants to suggest this man is suffering unbearably for the crime of loving a woman, and we should respect that.

Well, not respect it, obviously, but factor it in. Hell, Byrne wrote that Doug's confession happened in early Spring, and claims this issue that Canada is getting its first taste of winter. We're ignoring this idea because it makes no sense to the wider timeline (ALF #15 would have to stretch over eight months), but it gives you some idea of how ludicrous the Snowbird storyline has become.

Date

Sunday 15^th April, 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+45.

Contemporary Events

Forty train stations in the Punjab are plundered by extremist Sikhs.

Standout Line

"M-my scrambled eggs...!?!?"

NMU #23: "Shadowman"

("Nothing important happened today.")

Comments

It's Claremont time again around here, and we all know what that means: subplots!  We have two this issue, but let's put them aside for a little while so we can focus on what's happening with Sunspot and Wolfsbane.

When last we saw Roberto DaCosta, the young man flipped out during a training session and developed inexplicable new powers, which he used to beat Colossus.  In this issue, he develops inexplicable new powers, which he uses to beat Colossus.  Naturally, this does nothing to contradict my earlier argument that NMU #22 was entirely marking time - a pointless fairy story and a brawl repeated here anyway.  At least this time the throw-down happens at Harry's Hideaway, and we get our first glimpse of Harry Morrel himself. The man Wolverine trusts to provide him with booze. That's a dude to respect.

Xavier obviously thinks so, given his promise to repay Harry for the damage incurred when Sunspot breaks loose.  There's more than just broken bar-stools to contend with, though; whatever has affected Roberto has left both him and a thoroughly pummelled Colossus in comas.

Whilst Charles and Moira try to figure out what's happened, Sam and Dani have their own problems.: Rahne has disappeared. Using the mind-link Psyche and Wolfsbane share, the duo track their friend to a swanky hotel. This worries Dani, who dreamed of checking into the very same place last night, only in the dream she was a glamorous redhead with flowing locks.  Now it appears that the dream was a subconscious jack into Rahne's activities, which means their little Scots flower has been sneaking around the night in someone else's body. 

Rescuing a distraught Rahne from her suite and returning her home, the pair find a mysterious necklace in their friend's room; one more piece of a puzzle showing no sign of resolving or even swimming into focus. Luckily, Sam finds another clue just moments after; a police report about two people attacked a few nights earlier, torn to pieces by a wolf only to be completely healed by the time the paramedics arrived.  If that wasn't a big enough link to carrot-top, the paper is kind enough to give them a photo. 

The two people attacked are Smoke and Dagger.

For those who don't recognise the names, these two are teenage runaways and (generally) street-level heroes with a focus on smashing up the drugs trade, having been kidnapped and forcibly injected by an insane criminal chemist with concoction that made them super-powered.

In general, I come down on the side of characters from the wider Marvel universe making cameos in the X-books.  It's a nice reminded that there's a wider world outside the mutant issue, and that not everyone in that world are mutant-loathing dicktrains.  Cloak and Dagger wouldn't necessarily be my first choice, though.  They're not advancing the metaphor here, they're just two other super-powered beings who happen to live in the same city. Yes, this is a sequel to an earlier story, but that wasn't in any of the X-books, so re-heating it seems like an exercise in MU networking rather than a valid story angle.  It won't be for years yet that the pair are retconned into being mutants - and frankly they still don't do anything interesting on that score; they even join the X-Men in the 21st Century and then disappear entirely - but again, that's not necessarily bad.

The real problem here is just how slowly everything is progressing. Two issues into this storyline and it isn't until the final pages here that Cloak and Dagger appear, and once they do it's only to tell Dani they don't intend to help her friends. The issue ups the ante in its final page as whatever Sunspot has become consumes Colossus and apparently kills Xavier, but there's nothing here to justify this snail's pace.  The total absence of Doug, Warlock and (one panel aside) Amara doesn't help either; we're stuck with half the cast crawling through a sedate and uninspired story.

Can we get this over, please?

Meanwhile, in subplot corner: Selene and Roberto's father Emmanuel are officially inducted into the Hellfire Club, with Sebastian Shaw convinced the former will kill him the instant he makes the slightest mistake, and Lee Forrester returns Magneto to his home on Similar-To-But-Legally-Distinct-From-Cthulhu's-Island-Island [1].  Poor old Mags is pretty knackered after falling to Earth and dodging sharks, but there's not a level of exhaustion invented which can stop him being a cocktrumpet to the human who rescued him.  Naturally Lee - last seen dating the emotionally stunted raging paranoiac Cyclops - finds something appealing in this. Holy Jeebus, lady, other species are available.  Or, you know, nice mutants.  Plenty of fish in the sea; you don't need to focus on the crazy mutant ones.

[1] Yes, I know it's Ry'leh. Don't write in.

Clues

This story takes place over a single night and creeps into early morning. Colossus mentions his previous altercation with Sunspot took place "the other day", so we'll place this two days after that.

Date

Friday 10^th to Saturday 11^th May, 1984.

X Date

X+6Y+71 to X+6Y+72.

Contemporary Events

Ezra Klein is born, a name that will be most familiar to US political junkies. Klein will forever be my hero for writing a piece in which he called out then-Senator Joe Lieberman for risking the lives of tens of thousands of American citizens a year simply so he could be a shit to his former party.  Alas, Klein was later forced to ameliorate his stance. He shouldn't have. Joe Lieberman is one of the worst people alive in America today.  Fuck Joe Lieberman.

Standout Line

"I never imagined the master of magnetism, one of the foremost mutants on this planet, getting seasick."