XFA #2: "Bless The Beasts And Children"

("It's not the same world I knew before.")

Comments

It's an entirely obvious and common point that whilst the first issue (or arc, these days) of a new comic needs to set up the characters and concept of the series, the second issue (or arc) has the job of demonstrating what a "standard" adventure in the title should look like.  X-Factor #2 is an interesting example of this, in that in some senses it clings to this approach, but in other ways it rejects it.

The most obvious rejections are at the story level. Yes, there's a brand new mutant-of-the-week for our heroes to battle (the thoroughly uninteresting Tower), but his attack on Vera's apartment causes complications for the team's X-Factor cover identities, meaning we're only two issues in and already the ostensible structure of the title is in danger of toppling over. The decision to outright reject writing a story in which X-Factor works as intended is a fascinating one, and combined with Jean and Warren's horror over the causal anti-mutant slurs offered to them whilst in disguise as mutant hunters makes it clear Layton realised very early on that the X-Factor scam couldn't last for long. In other words, only two issues in this title is obviously already in a state of transition.

Which makes sense given the wider context of the issue. Whilst plot-wise this doesn't operate as a template for later issues to riff off of, the underlying theme of X-Factor is very clear here, which is that this is about the past and the future meeting. Naturally this is clear from the book's very nature; how could a book reuniting a '60s super-team to fight '80s threats not be about that? But the degree to which past and future interact and often clash here demonstrates Layton's commitment to the idea. Newcomer Rusty develops a crush on Jean that pits him against Scott - new against old - but Scott himself can no longer function with respect to Jean in the way he used to, being now married with a child (though both have now disappeared leaving no forwarding address). Beast bumps into his old girlfriend Vera, only to find that she's ditched her '60s librarian look to bring herself up to date - a link to the past that demonstrates just how much has changed since we first heard names like Juggernaut and the Mimic. Tower's hunting and kidnapping of Beast seems like a new threat until we learn it was on the orders of Carl Maddicks, a villain from Amazing Adventure's Beast run at the start of the '70. Maddicks too has changed, though, he's no longer doing the bidding of the Secret Empire, instead he's looking for an "antidote" for his mutant son. Even Angel becomes part of this through his old friendship with Cameron Hodge which is now taking on a new and unfamiliar shape, exerting new and unfamiliar stresses on the old girders that structure their relationship.

The situations, relationships and characters have been returned to us, but in new configurations, underlining just how much has changed since Jean was thought dead (the opening pages of the issue make this explicit, in fact). Indeed, as Scott's refusal to open up to Jean and Bobby's desire to "steal"[1] Vera from Henry demonstrates that's there no good reason to believe this team can actually function at all any more, save for nostalgia. This of course would hardly be the last comic to attempt to power its sales mostly or even wholly through nostalgia, but it's nice to see it so thoroughly recognised in the text.

That said, there is a problem here, which is that the brand-new elements of the story aren't particularly interesting on their own terms. Rusty is an obvious analogue for a younger Cyclops - his powers are horribly dangerous and beyond his control, and he has a serious crush on Ms Grey - but he does little here to make himself interesting in and of himself. Tower as mentioned is thoroughly boring, a random mutant goon with nothing to distinguish him beyond an unusually unappealing costume. Artie Maddicks, the son for whom Carl went to the effort of abducting Beast is nothing but a prop, a staring, dead-eyed MacGuffin to be waved at to explain Carl's plotting. In fairness none of these characters really get enough to do here for things to be otherwise, but that just demonstrates that there are pacing problems here too. Either way, it's obviously concerning when an issue about how the old inevitably changes to give rise to the new doesn't actually have much in the way of newness that can excite us. This issue does a fine job of demonstrating the problems of a comic that spends its time looking backwards for inspiration.

Now it needs to show us some solutions.

[1] Just to be clear, I'm not arguing Dr McCoy has any kind of proprietary rights over Vera. Is she wants to pursue her ex's best friend, that's entirely up to her. I'm simply pointing out that it can be plausibly argued there was once a time when Bobby would never think of trying to make a move on Vera. The two of them used to strike me as being much more into the "bros before hos" mindset.  

Well actually, the two of them struck me as an obvious gay couple deep in denial (am I shipping? Is this what shipping is?). And following recent revelations in Bendis' X-books, I appear to have been proved at least half-right.

Clues

It's not clear how long this story takes to run its course. The pace of the narrative suggests it all takes place within the same day, but since it's also implied Carl's men drive Hank from New York to Atlanta, and at a sensible speed, which means a trip that would surely take some fourteen or fifteen hours to complete.

We shall therefore assume the action here straddles two days.

Date

Thursday 11^th to Friday 12^th April, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+40 to X+7Y+41.

Contemporary Events

Ladyhawke escapes into the world to frolic through the imagination of a hundred thousand geeks.


Standout Line

"Brainwashed by aliens?"
"Nope."
"Drug overdose?"
"Doubtful."
"Vietnam flashback?"
"Unlikely."

Bobby and Hank attempt to figure out the root cause of Vera's extreme make-over. The correct answer, by the way? Elvis Costello. Go figure.

ALF #32: "Short Story!"

("Leave comedy to the bears!")

Comments

From the tasteless pun that starts this issue to its final moral on how much it sucks to be a little person, this is a deeply frustrating issue. In part that's because there's quite a bit I like here.

So let's start with the positive. Putting the focus on Puck is a tremendous idea, because Puck is awesome for all sorts of reasons. Indeed, it strikes me as I write this that I haven't given him sufficient credit.  Puck is brilliant. Not only is he a man entirely without super-powers who has trained himself to the extent where he can operate quite happily in the world of capes, he's done this despite suffering from achondroplasia. In a world still having trouble seeing little people as anything beyond a casting pool for sci-fi films and pantomime, Puck is not just showing himself to be the equal of those of average height, but superior to most of them. Some might like to argue it unrealistic that someone suffering achondroplasia could achieve such a physical peak, but even were such people to persuade me they had the medical knowledge and/or direct experience to make that call, this is a superhero comic. Unrealistic physical feats are literally what they are all about. It is, to say the very least, hard to see how Puck's fitness and strength are more implausible than those of Batman, or Hawkeye, or Daredevil. Just as importantly, Puck's abilities here are serving a worthwhile purpose, pushing back against the idea that little people are no more than pratfalls and problems with door handles. Why choose this moment to take a stand on how comic stories should realistically depict the human frame and its limitations? Well, I know full well why, but I'm hoping the rhetorical question will scare off the those inclined to argue the point.

Puck's impressive levels of fitness is also the springboard for this particular plot. Heather Hudson has been talking for several issues now about wanting to get into the cape game, and finally she has her chance thanks to Jeffries and Bochs having rebuilt the powered suit "Dark Guardian" had been wearing during her period of pretending to be the original Vindicator.  Fighting in the armour your husband's killer wore to pretend to be him? Even George R. R. Martin hasn't tried that one yet. Or maybe he has; it's tough to keep track.

Heather's desire to up her game slapping-wise provides Puck with something of a dilemma, though, because she wants him to provide the training (in the new Alpha Flight Danger Room, modelled on Xavier's original). On the one hand, that would mean lots more time hanging out with his secret love, but on the other, Puck doesn't want to encourage Heather in any endeavour that might lead to her getting hurt or worse. That's not an easy problem to navigate, and indeed Eugene screws it up, yelling at Heather for messing around where she doesn't belong (mere seconds after she's almost blown up by a brace of missiles, in his defence), mightily pissing her off in the process.

Poor Puck. What's a secretly love-sick super-acrobat to do?  Well, he could try actually telling Heather how he feels. Puck's behaviour here is a problem because he won't give Heather the information she needs to understand why he won't train her. Refusing to help put the one you love in danger is a bit of an issue when they're asking you to do just that - it's hard to think of a way to define real love that encompasses the total refusal to respect your loved one's choices -  but it's even worse when you won't let them know why.  But as poor a showing this is on Puck's behalf, it's an entirely understandable, entirely human one. Who hasn't been desperately in love with someone and been convinced that fact could never be revealed? And when that someone is the former spouse of your dead friend, I'd imagine that cranks the complications dial up a few notches, too.

If that were all that were going on here, I'd be perfectly happy. I'd feel bad for Heather, trying to work out why her friend is acting so out of character, and I'd feel bad for Puck, because as flawed and unreasonable as he is he's trying to do what he thinks is the right thing. But then Mantlo has to push it a stage too far and have Eugene admit to Bochs (who he derides as a "cripple", just to make everything even nastier) that part of the problem here is that he thinks Heather is too wonderful a woman to settle for a dwarf.

And this simply isn't on. I'm not saying there is no such thing as a little person who believes their lack of height somehow disqualifies them from dating anyone closer to the population average. I'm saying that's not a suggestion we want reinforcing. It's entirely too well-ingrained already.  The existence, opinions and mental states of self-hating little people are not subjects that writers of average height should be dabbling in. Hell, I may just have linked to it to demonstrate a point, but even Life's Too Short bothered me a great deal on multiple occasions, and that was written with Warwick Davies' direct input and whilst Merchant and Gervais were presumably trying to atone for getting the nomenclature so wrong in an episode of the Office. Getting this right is hard.

Maybe that's why Mantlo decides that this is the issue where he will reveal Judd isn't a little person by birth, but has been shrunk by an evil Baghdad spirit which has lived within him for decades. If that is the reason - and I see no evidence of a better one - then it's a horribly wrongheaded one. Revealing a member of a minority isn't one at all is a despicable story move; a conscious choice to make a title less diverse. And for what? So we can have 14 or so pages of a giant jet-black Arabian demon (who I'm also less than happy about by the way) attack our heroes? I'd be furious with what Mantlo was doing here whatever the specifics, but at the very least you'd hope the story that results from learning Judd's dwarfism was mystical in nature would lead to something more involved than a done-in-one fight with a djinn named Razer. Razer? Tuwthbrush was taken, was it? Loofarh didn't quite scan? Don't try to tell me loofahs are less dangerous than razors, either; those things could scratch your eyes out quite happily so long as you keep them out of the bath long enough.

This isn't even a good story. The pacing is truly awful. At one point Aurora finds herself alone against Razer attempting to keep him from killing her unconscious brother, and Jeffries announces she can deal with the monster herself so Puck can explain why he's almost seven foot tall now. Speaking of which, this sudden change in age makes it all the more obvious how unnecessary the change to Puck's stature is. It's revealed here that Razer's presence inside Puck caused not only the agony Bryne had attributed to Eugene's achondroplasia (one of around 200 different forms of dwarfism, and so one would think it rather a specific diagnosis for something mystical in nature), and the condition itself, but a retarding of Eugene's aging process, so that he appears decades younger than his actual seventy one years would suggest.  So why not just have Razer's escape from his body cause Puck to become a seventy-one year old little person? Why link Puck's stature into this at all?

Alas, the answer is not difficult to discern. Razer's escape returns Eugene to his old height simply so he can sacrifice his "normality" and become a dwarf again to re-absorb the djinn. The subtext here is almost deafening: "How awful it must be to be a dwarf". And there's nothing you can do with that idea but stare at it hatefully and hope it will shrivel up and die from the sheer force of your loathing. Mantlo is telling us being a little person must be terrible at the same time as he removes the identity of that little person in front of our eyes. John Byrne has gone on record about how much he didn't like this story, and he's completely right. There are far too many people who won't understand what I mean by this, but by replacing a determined, irrepressible man with achondroplasia with a tall man cursed by a djinn to live in agony as a magic dwarf, Mantlo has made the Marvel Universe that little bit less filled with wonder.

Clues

This story takes place in approximately real time. There are no references to how long it's been since, so I'll take this opportunity to move the action forwards a full month to bring Alpha Flight closer to the parent title.

Date

Friday 24^th August 1984.

X-Date

X+6Y+176.

Contemporary Events

It's the last full day in the life of Truman Capote.

Standout Line

There's nothing particularly pretty or well-formed in this whole issue, so instead I present an example of just how ugly Mantlo's prose can get.  This is truly, truly clumsy stuff.

"The turret blows off the tower enclosing the elevator shaft up which the pain-wracked Puck had been ascending to the roof when he collapsed."

Yeeeeeeeuurgh.

DAZ #42: "Curtain!"

(Sound Mathematics)

Comments

Spoiler alert: this is not a good final issue.

I've been complaining for a little while now about how the final stages of Dazzler's title seem to be pushing her towards the margins of her own story. This final instalment is no exception.  Of the 24 pages in this issue, Dazzler is completely missing from seven.  In nine more, she can be seen (often in the background) but has no dialogue.  That means Dazzler actually gets to pass comment on this story in only one third of the comic's pages.

Compare this to the final issues of Wolverine, Iceman, and Longshot, the other three titles we've considered here that have a single main character (admittedly all three were mini-series rather than ongoings). Dazzler is seen in 71% of these pages and heard from on just 33%. Those numbers are 64%/50%, 91%/65%, and 80%/76% for Wolverine, Iceman and Longshot respectively.

I trust you see the problem, but just to make it explicit: Dazzler is the only title character who spends more than half her final issue not speaking (to other characters or to us via thought bubbles). Indeed for fully two-thirds of the issue she is completely silent. Only Wolverine comes close to matching that, and that's because the structure of WOL #4 deliberately strictly rations Logan's appearances in the first half to ratchet up expectations. Likewise the low level of Wolverine's commentary is at least in part due to pages of silent swordplay, rather than Dazzler passing out or appearing in the background of other people's flashbacks.

There is, however, an argument that I'm being unfair here. Of course she spends most of this issue saying nothing; her enemy here is literally named Silence. This is why Dust's wife is so existential a threat to Alison. She doesn't just want Dazzler dead, she wants her silenced. This must surely be the scariest fate imaginable for a singer; to be worked to death and not even get a song out of it. Silence is the ultimate manifestation of what anti-mutant protesters want from her: to crawl into a corner and die without making a fuss.  Every time someone told he she couldn't sing because she was bad, or that she could never sing professionally because she wasn't pretty enough, or that she shouldn't be allowed to sing because she was a mutant; these were all demands for silence to claim her. Silence's assault upon Alison manages to do what this title intermittently tried with varying degrees of success - parallel Dazzler's professional and personal crises.

Not that dying in silence is something only a singer or a mutant need fear, of course. The concern that we will die without the chance to speak out terrifies all of us. It's why we're so obsessed with people's last words. It's why when we dream of nobly sacrificing ourselves it's for some great cause that will outlive us and venerate our sacrifice. It's hardwired into every teenager's belief that they might die, and "then they'll be sorry". When you comprehend death as a statement, or even a moral message, the idea it might take place whilst you are utterly silent is terrifying. So when Dazzler ultimately breaks free here by short-circuiting her own powers so that instead of turning sound into light she absorbs and redirects the sound directly, she is literally refusing to be silenced, and that act of total defiance destroys Silence, guaranteeing Dazzler her voice.

All of which is actually rather clever. So why am I unhappy? It's because whilst Goodwin is taking great pains to silence Dazzler, he's more than happy to let others do all the talking, and the result feels more than ever as though Dazzler is simply guest-starring in her own strip.  Not only do we again have O.Z. Chase and his mutt taking up space, but he's joined by Beast in his quest to rescue Alison.  Adding in Beast is a terrible idea for two reasons. Firstly, it hearkens back to the "Beauty and the Beast" mini-series, which Ann Nocenti didn't do a very good job with (the difference between this and her incredible "Longshot" mini is remarkable), and therefore carries with it all the problems of that earlier story. More importantly, though, inserting a character who has (on and off) being a Marvel mainstay for over two decades overbalances the narrative. This is no surprise, of course, this is what big names from other branches of a franchise do if they're given any more than a spit and a cough. We might call what Goodwin does here "The Enterprise Manoeuvre" after its most infamous deployment, and whilst that's a particularly egregious example, it almost never works well, because either the narrative is warped by the character into something unrecognisable as the story you are ending, or that warping is avoided and the interloper feels entirely tacked on.

Here we have the former problem, with Beast teaming up with Chase to beat up some New Wave hoods and then breaking into Silence's HQ to rescue Dazzler. The final battle of the first superheroine to get her own book in the X-Universe, and she spends most of it as a princess needing rescue. To be fair to Goodwin, he does manage to temper this somewhat, with Chase and Beast ultimately merely distracting enough of Silence's guards that Dazzler can defeat Silence herself, but the focus is far too much on how O.Z. and Hank track Alison down, and too little on how Alison ultimately refuses to surrender to Silence. This problem is added to by the inclusion of the almost brand new character Arthur Allan Smith (he first appeared last issue), a troubled young man rarely out of one institution or another, but who once caught Alison singing as a support act at a rock gig and fell in love with her. The gig also activated Smith's New Wave powers, allowing him to both sense Alison is now in danger and escape so he can help her out.

As with the overall Silence plot, there are things to appreciate here. Smith's ability to be ignored in plain sight is almost certainly a nod towards the geeky teenagers assumed to be comics' primary consumers - the big clue here is that he's a massive fan of what we know to be a comic book heroine - which ties the reader in to the story. And the idea that Dazzler is ultimately saved because her art touched the life of someone she didn't even know and one day he decided to repay her is a really rather touching one; it's already too late for Silence to silence Alison, because the songs are already out there, echoing back in ways that cannot be anticipated.

On the other hand, though, the problem with a fan rescuing Dazzler here is obvious: it is the fans who have killed her, by not buying the book. They may have had very good reasons for not buying the book - it should be clear from my posts that I think the title's best days ended long before this issue, and that Goodwin was tasked with trying to pull up a stalled plane with its engine on fire. But whatever the motivation, kill it they did. The cover even suggests Marvel readers demanded the title come to an end. The comic even references this with the ultimate solution to the stand-off with a revived Dust involving Smith shooting the undead villain and then using his powers to make everyone think the cadaver is Alison's (this is the second time in two issues that Dust has been shot by a man with a gun just as he's about to beat Dazzler). The end result is hopelessly murky. The fans have killed Dazzler... in order to save her? So that she can go join X-Factor? Help me out here.

Really though my objection to Smith is that he's just one more character in this issue who isn't Dazzler who takes up space and who the titular heroine then needs to have save her. Combine that with the slightly icky way in which this feeds into the teenage boy dream of gaining a pretty girl's gratitude by rescuing her from harm (trying to capture her interest when not in the slightest danger is apparently right out), and Smith's inclusion seems to raise more problems than it does potential.

Ultimately, most of the problems I have here stem from this being the comic's finale. Silence's negation of Alison for much of the comic, Beast's cameo, the strange interference of Arthur Allan Smith might all work just fine as parts of an ongoing story. But by throwing them all in together at the very end does Dazzler - and Dazzler - a huge disservice. With the title having gone through so many artist teams and accordingly so many iterations, a coherent conclusion to the whole run was never really possible.  But that's not really the point here. The point is that at the very least, the last Dazzler story should have been about Dazzler finally getting to shape her own fate, and that small, simple thing is entirely denied to her - and to us - as the curtain finally falls.

Clues

This story takes place two days after Dazzler agrees to help Silence, and takes place over two more days.

The story ends with Beast inviting Dazzler to join - or at least meet - X-Factor. This causes all sorts of colossal problems, since events in Uncanny X-Men forced the formation of X-Factor to take place in April at the earliest, three full months after where we've been placing Alison's adventures up to this point.

The solution to this is to pull DAZ #39 a good deal forward, since that is the latest issue which doesn't directly tie in with the one following. We need to be careful when doing this, though, because DAZ #40 features the Beyonder in his pre-massacre mood. Fortunately the Beyonder goes berserk sufficiently late in the course of Secret Wars II that it doesn't really affect things here. As a result we have that O.Z. Chase was hunting Dazzler down for a loooooooong time, but then America is a pretty big place, and he had to make a lot of stops for his dog to drink in bars, so I guess it makes sense.

Date

Thursday 11^th to Friday 12^th April, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+40 to X+6Y+41.

Contemporary Events

Socialist leader of Albania for over 43 years, Enver Hoxha dies in office.

Standout Line

"Silence enfolds every sense you possess... strangles every emotion until you have no choice but to shatter! Break!"

This much I will give this last story: Silence is an absolutely wonderful villain. Is there any person more likely to become selfish and cruel to the point of actual evil than someone who is physically pained by having to listen to anyone but herself? If Dazzler hadn't killed her she'd be David Cameron's cabinet right now.

SW2 #7-9: "Charge Of The Dark Brigade!", "Betrayal!", "God In Man, Man In God!"

("Marge, I'm confused. Is this a good ending or a bad ending?"
"It's an ending, that's enough!")

Trigger warning: sexual assault.

Comments

Usually I like to run through the ongoings from a given month before turning to the minis, but I'm keen to get the second Secret Wars series off my desk as quickly as possible.

In issue #7 Mephisto, concerned that the Beyonder is a threat to him, finds ninety-nine supervillains willing to enter into a pact with him.  Their job is to attack the Beyonder whilst each imprinted with a mystical symbol that will destroy the Beyonder should they touch him, or should his power touch them. He also hopes the Thing will join in the carnage due to his hatred of the Beyonder, but ultimately Ben Grimm attempts to save the godlike being instead.  Oooh, Mephisto is cross!

"I got ninety-nine flunkies but the Thing ain't one!"

There's some fun to be had here playing spot-the-villain, as well as speculating about what Mephisto offered, say, Emma Frost or Victor von Doom that was tempting enough for them to mess around with literal Faustian deals. The issue also has the advantage of actually tapping into what made the original series work, or at least the structure that allowed what worked about the first series to take place, i.e. the sudden attack of dozens of the Marvel Universe's most notorious villains (a genuine strike, not the brief illusion SW2 #4 ended with to justify its terribly misleading cover). Even supercharged as he is, I'm not sure how the Thing manages to do so well stopping any of them from getting past him, but Grimm has had a hard life; I'm not going to begrudge him a big win here.

That said, the focus on the Thing is odd. This issue contains enough back-story on recent issues of Ben's own comic that I can see how this story represents a change to his status quo, but for anyone not reading that book this must have read very strangely; the clearest indication yet that this series isn't intended to work on its own terms so much as shake up other books.  Certainly this all underlines how poorly the Beyonder works as a protagonist [1].  More than anything, this issue reads like an admission that the last six instalments were totally unsuccessful. Which, since generally speaking they were, and since this is a lot better in comparison (it's slight and silly on its own terms, but there's clearly a large group of fans for whom it ticks a lot of boxes, so fine) seems like a sensible statement to be making. Plus, it's always fun when Mephisto actually has a pretty solid point. And sure, his plan will release energy that will flash-fry fully one third of the universe, but that still makes him three times more sensible than Rachel Summers.

(I suspect there's something I'm missing here with the subplot about the Beyonder accidentally setting up an island retreat for the rich to sit around and think all day. Was this a craze in the mid '80s I was too young or insufficiently American to catch?)

But if issue #7 suggests Shooter has belatedly realised the Beyonder just isn't that interesting, how can we explain issue #8, which focuses on Molecule Man's attempts to psychoanalyse the Beyonder by having him discuss his childhood. Which I suppose is proof Peter David didn't actually invent the idea of putting superbeings on the therapist's couch, though he could well still be the first to get it even close to right. Owen Reese is no Doc Sampson, though in fairness he himself admits he's just trying to ape the process his own therapist took with him. Which is a rather useful warning, really; listen to your friends, offer what advice you can, but don't try to play the role of a qualified therapist. You're playing with matches in an oil field, and the blazes can take years just to find, let alone put out.

Certainly, Owen doesn't achieve a great deal here other than to let the Beyonder briefly summarise his adventures to date (which were underwhelming enough the first time) and then enrage him with vacuous homilies. The Beyonder is about unity and wholeness - the result of originating in a dimension where he was literally everything - and simply cannot comprehend the worth humanity places on attempting to complete oneself with possessions, experiences, or other people [2]. On paper, there's something intersting to this conflict: no man is a dimension-spanning island, leaving humanity and the Beyonder unable to understand each other.  In practice, though, this is used as nothing more than a motivation for the Beyonder to want to blow everything up. The focus then - since even readers at the time must have been comfortable knowing the story wouldn't end with the utter destruction of Marvel's intellectual properties [3] - is on what changes the Beyonder's mind (or who changes it for him). That was always going to be a tough job, since by definition we can't understand how the character's mind works in the first place. Still, I'm sure one could come up with a better approach than what we get, which is for the Beyonder to be attacked by both mutant teams (who get nowhere) to visit Spiderman and the Hulk (who do nothing, though I'm sure it helped to have their current states of play plugged to readers), in-between which he rapes someone.

Yes, Secret Wars II #8 includes a rape.  Not on-panel, but it's there. The Beyonder forces a woman to come to his suite with him, and when next we see her she's partially dressed and begging him to let her stay longer. It's done in such a way that it isn't a slam-dunk case, of course - maybe the Beyonder only mentally compelled her to unbutton her blouse; maybe she wasn't wearing a bra to begin with, etc. etc. etc. - but you have to work harder to believe the Beyonder didn't have sex than to believe he did. In a book where actually showing sex is never going to happen, the conclusions we are meant to draw are fairly clear.  It's a standard case of the horrible sci-fi rape, of course, where someone is mind-controlled into wanting sex, as though that can possibly make it better. It doesn't. It's still rape, and the casualness with which it's just thrown into the issue and then forgotten about (serving as it does literally no plot function) takes a poor book and makes it very much actively disgusting. Before I was bored, and now I am offended.   This tale? Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing. But sod it, let's toss a rape in. Gritty! Real!

(Actually, speaking of classic tragedies, I actually quite like the ending of this issue, whereby the Beyonder decides he's been hasty and owes Owen an apology, only to get back to Reese's pad to be attacked by the Molecule Man before he can make good on his original promise to destroy reality. The end result of this betrayal, to no-one's surprise, is that the destruction of all that is returns to the top of Beyonder's to-do list. It's the best part of a terrible issue and one of the rare highlights of the whole story. There's also a way we could tie together issues #7-8 in terms of the dangers of the powerful failing to think through their actions: all that keeps Earth safe in issue #7 is the Beyonder refusing to engage the Crazy Evil Ninety-Nine, and reality itself only dodges the bullet in #8 because he chooses to spend time thinking things over.

But who cares? What can themes or local maxima matter? Shooter has ticked the "Unnecessary Rape" box.  Everything else here is irrelevant).

The penultimate issue ends with Earth's mightiest heroes declaring war on the Beyonder, only to be almost instantly squished.  Issue #9 picks up with the Beyonder determined to destroy everything. First, though, he has one more experiment to run: what happens if he places himself in a human body, and tries to see things from the perspective of the tiresome insects that keep crawling over him, biting and stinging whilst he's trying to think?  Like the other issues in this final third, then, there's some credible attempt to point out the importance of the powerful considering their actions and attempting to understand those they have power over, though at this point the repeated last-minute callings off of universal destruction are becoming rather silly. We'll just add that to the eighty-two reasons the Beyonder makes for a poor protagonist. Still, his choice here has interesting consequences (and leads to the resurrection of the New Mutants to be his bodyguards, which is not so much interesting as useful information for later).  The Beyonder creates his "mama machine", a device that will turn him human, and after a few failures (by which I mean he ends up too human and freaks out about stuff like getting stitches and the inevitability of cellular decay) he hits upon a formulation he thinks will combine the best of humanity and his own limitless power, and returns to the machine.  It's at this point that pretty much the entire heroes' roster of the Marvel Universe show up, assembled by Molecule Man, for a last stand against the thug who announces the universe has had it approximately twice a week.

What happens next is interesting. We get the standard superbeing smack-down an issue like this pretty much demands, but with two teams of Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Namor, Cloak and Dagger, and even Alpha Flight (team motto: "Maybe the villains will trip over our bodies and hurt themselves, eh?") ranged up against the brainwashed New Mutants, things wrap up rather quickly, and the heroes descend to the Beyonder's underground bunker, where obviously they are defeated almost instantly. Fortunately, they escape, and when they make their second strike they find not the omnipotent bully they expect to lose their lives fighting, but a baby growing in a machine.

This sets up a rather nice moral quandary in place of the expected beat-down.  It's a common enough fictional crisis: can you justify killing a horrifically powerful enemy whilst it is still in its earliest, helpless form? But there are differences to the standard model of this question. We don't here have the innocence of youth angle which exists with, say, the old question about whether one could be justified in killing Hitler as a baby. Nor do we have the ugly idea that all those of a specific race must essentially be the same; the kind of "burn the alien eggs!" approach that's horribly reductive and would have denied us those like Broo who can grow beyond a compromised culture. Here the heroes know the baby was, is and will be the Beyonder, a single specific person who has repeatedly threatened to kill them, something he could do almost effortlessly. So is it morally acceptable to kill this baby? And if one is tempted to say no (as, alas, only the female heroes seem to) is that because of something inherent in the nature of babies? Or is it just stemming from our idea of babies; a set of ingrained assumptions which have no relevance in the case of the Beyonder? As endings go, that's more interesting than the expected brawl, and whilst you could make a case for this being anti-climactic, that rather assumes a degree of build-up from the preceding issues that is almost entirely lacking in any case. Simply put, this series has a structure vastly too screwed up for the ending to do much damage.

So do we kill the baby? Thinking of the Beyonder in terms of the oppressor (as I did when discussing New Mutants #37), the answer is an unequivocal "yes". The oppressed are under no obligation to leave the oppressor alone in his times of weakness. On the contrary, that is clearly the best time to strike. Whether the Beyonder really fits the description of oppressor well enough to justify his murder perhaps a little harder, especially since he's proved himself able and willing to reverse what damage he has done, even when that damage has been fatal. But even if the Beyonder doesn't quite fit the oppressor mould, I'd have thought it's at least arguable from a legal perspective that executing him is justifiable, since the only alternative is his escape. He's committed serious crimes, he's announced his intention to commit more, and literally the only way anyone can see to stop him is to kill him. As always this argument makes me a little uncomfortable, because deciding we have no other choice but to kill almost always betrays a lack of interest in considering alternatives, and a body-count generated simply through a lack of imagination or care. But as a solution to this particular moral quandary, I can live with it.

Whatever the moral justification for it, it's ultimately the Molecule Man who takes the shot, sparing our heroes the job. You could argue this is a cop-out, but really I'm happy enough none of the '80s super-heroes are actual baby-killers, there just isn't sufficient maturity in the setting to handle that even if anyone wanted to try. Besides, one of the few successes this series has had has been its work on Owen Reese, and letting him be the one to save reality is rather nice.  It also makes sense since he alone has the necessary ability to deflect the shock-wave released by the Beyonder's death, which he shunts into the Beyonder's old reality to kick-start a parallel universe (making me think of Lucifer, of all things).

The resulting coda is short but nice, reminding us that the Beyonder's real problem was trying to balance his dislike of the boredom of immortality with his fear of the finiteness of life as we know it. By transforming him into a new reality, he gains both the unchanging unending vastness of the cosmos, but also the endless cycle of death and rebirth of those who live within it. In other words, the Molecule Man finally does what the Beyonder was hoping he would since the very first issue, and brings him peace.  It's a neat end to an appallingly messy series, but what matters more than the neatness is the fact that it is at long last finally over.

But for all that this series has many insurmountable faults, it added to the tool-box for crossovers generated by its predecessor, tools that are still in use today. It would be almost thirty years before Marvel tried the Secret Wars title once more, but like the Beyonder itself, Secret Wars II has generated a series of cycles that roll on, so far as I can tell, into infinity.

[1] Or at least, the Beyonder as Shooter writes him. Claremont's unknowable ultimate threat actually works fairly well, though of course that's as antagonist. Either way, though, Shooter's bellicose rampant arsehole isn't getting the job done.

[2] In a sense the Beyonder is the ultimate solipsist. Or really, he goes beyond that, reaching a degree of self-love so profound the actual existence of the not-him causes him aggravation. How appropriate it is to focus on this idea in a sequel written on the basis that the best character to come out of Secret Wars was the only one the writer actually created himself is left as an exercise to the reader.

[3] Though those reading Crisis on Infinite Earths, which started before this series and ended in the same month, might have suspected a thorough shake-up could likewise be in the offing here. I confess to having no idea how obvious it was that the DC Universe was about to undergo total restructuring one month before the final issue of that series.

Clues

Issue #7 opens days after the events of SW2 #6, and takes place over three days. It must take place before Uncanny X-Men #202.  Issue #8 starts some brief amount of time after the previous issue, and takes place over two days. Issue #9 also seems to follow on quickly from its predecessor, and takes place over a single day.

The timing of all this is somewhat tricky. Issue #9 obviously has to take place after NMU #37 and UXM #203, and the text boxes suggest issue #8 takes place after UXM #202. This is a problem since those two X-Men issues (as always on this blog, Uncanny X-Men is the central text around which all timing issues revolve) are at least days and more likely weeks apart, and yet this issue explicitly states it's only a day or two on from SW2 #8. I don't see much option here but to ignore the proposed reading order for the crossover issues (which of course are determined by publishing schedules rather than continuity in any case) and assume the Beyonder's attack on San Francisco happened before
SW2 #6.

Date

Thursday 11^th to Tuesday 16^th April, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+30 to X+7Y+35.

Contemporary Events

The USS Coral Sea collides with the Napo, an Equadorian tanker ship.

Standout Line

"Good help is so hard to corrupt."  - Mephisto

UXM #203: "Crossroads"

(Mass Effect 3 can piss off as well.)


Comments

"Good morning, Ms... Summers, is it?"
"I prefer Phoenix."
"The... I'm sorry. The Phoenix that took over your mother, murdered billions, and came within inches of obliterating the entirety of existence?"
"The very same."
"I see. Well, welcome to the First Bank of M'Kraan, Ms Phoenix. I hope your journey wasn't too arduous?"
 "It was fine. I stole the life-force of several of my friends to power me, so it wasn't too long a slog in the end."
"That's... good. Onto business, anyway. As I'm sure you can understand, there are a number of stages to an application like this, all sorts of dots and crosses we need to push through. But let's start with the biggest question: how much do you intend to borrow?"
"Everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything. Everything you have. Everything the universe has. The whole nine billion trillion square yards. I'd like to take every life, every planet, every molecule in the universe. Right now. Please."
"Ms Phoenix, that's... well, that's certainly a refreshingly original request. Just so as we can understand your application fully, when exactly were you planning on paying this back? Because I'm not entirely sure how I can start calculating compound interest on literally everything. It'd be a philosophical and mathematical nightmare, I would've thought."
"I wasn't exactly planning on paying anything back. There won't actually be anything left five minutes after you approve the loan. Not so much as two molecules to rub together."
"Hmm. This is not exactly what banks like to hear, Ms Phoenix. One of our central operating principles is that, on balance, we be repaid through cash or electronic transfers that actually exist."
"I thought you'd say that. But there is a deal that I can offer you. Once I've obliterated all that exists, I'm quite sure a new universe will be created in the resulting vacuum.  You can consider that yours."
"So to summarise, Ms Phoenix - and our apologies if we appear dense, but I'm sure you can understand that it is rather new territory to discuss the destruction of all territory of any kind - you are proposing that you borrow the sum total of corporeal existence, and utterly obliterate it?"
"That's right. I want it utterly absent. I want to finish what my mother started.  And don't worry; I know what you're thinking."
"There are very few thoughts to choose from regarding a proposal such as this."
"Also I'm a telepath. I know it sounds insane, even inhuman-"
"We are inhuman, Ms Phoenix. Do not attempt to... tar us with your brush, is it?"
"-But it's the only way. The only way to stop the Beyonder's horrific plan."
"Which is?"
"To destroy the universe! To obliterate all that lives!"
"I thought that was your plan?"
"That's different. I don't actually want to have to do this. but it's the only way to kill the Beyonder!"
"And you're sure he wants to annihilate existence?"
"Absolutely. I read his mind just a few weeks ago."
"A few weeks? People can change their minds, Ms Phoenix. I came in to work this morning thinking I would enjoy this meeting, for instance. I ask again: are you sure this is what he wants?"
"OK, maybe not totally sure. But how can we afford to take that risk?"
"I am - look, there's so much here it would take six weeks and a qualified psychotherapist to wade through it. We might have to dissect your brain. But again, start with the biggest question. Why would the Beyonder want to destroy reality? Won't he end up just as dead?"
"No. He's not like us. Not tied to one reality. He can side-step into his own dimension once the fuse is lit."
"So, if I may summarise: you are so terrified an entity of terrifying cosmic power might destroy the entire universe, a process only he can survive, that you want to use your status as an entity of terrifying cosmic power to actually destroy the entire universe, so as to kill the only person who can survive the process?"
"He won't escape if he doesn't see it coming!"
"So as long as the being who can see atoms doesn't see the universe collapsing, we'll be OK? Well, except all the people who will die. Which is everyone."
"Stop twisting things! It's not the same! At least my way will result in the birth of a new universe!"
"Are you really going to sit there and tell me you have sufficient background in theoretical physics to guarantee this is a restart and not a shutdown? Weren't you just moments ago arguing the stakes are too high for us to take risks?"
"I know that framed like that it sounds foolish-"
"No. It does not sound foolish. It sounds monstrous. It sounds like a madman with his finger on the button, convinced that if destruction might be coming anyway all that matters is that he fired first.  It sounds ike a lunatic convinced that their foe outstrips them so totally in every way that mutually assured destruction is the only way to destroy him, as though it were impossible this utterly superior enemy might not have prepared for such a scenario.  You should never run a battle plan that relies on the enemy being stupid, Ms Phoenix. Especially when the enemy is a god and the battle plan is "set fire to all that lives". You come to our bank shouting "Nothing lasts forever, so why not destroy it now?" and expect applause for the sacrifice you demand everyone else must make. You're a nihilist who wants to be seen as a humanitarian, a murderer who wants credit for not stretching out her kills. You'll forgive us if we don't find you sympathetic. You'll understand if we look at you and struggle to keep our breakfast down. You stole your friends' lives to betray their life's work, and you did it because you thought your banal desperation someone made you better than them. You've taken the genocidal heritage of the Phoenix Force and somehow made it worse. We are the oldest banking institution in the cosmos, but even we aren't going to touch something this fucking evil."
"So... I don't get the loan then?"
"You don't get the loan. Good day Ms Phoenix. Do please take a complimentary pen."
 
Clues

It's apparently been a few weeks since the events of New Mutants #36, which puts this issue towards the end of March/start of April. Since this issue has to take place after NMU #37, I'll start this on the following day. The issue itself starts in late evening and continues to sunrise of the following day.

Date

Sunday 14^th to Monday 15^th April, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+44 to X+7Y+45.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 3.17 standard years

(Beast is 33 years old)

Contemporary Events

South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriages.

Standout Line

"I'm not an executioner, Ray. We do that... we play the Beyonder's game -- provin' ourselves no better than him." - Logan.

The one and only time this argument will ever be acceptable, folks. You saw it here first. Or, you know, back in 1986. Or any time between then and now.

NMU #37: "If I Should Die"

("What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night" - Crowfoot, Siksika First Nation)

Comments

This is about as far as you can get from the swashbuckling larks. Everything here that isn't gloom is doom instead. Well, there's a brief bit at the start featuring the kids relaxing whilst the senior team is away. These little "slice of life" sections are always some of Claremont's best, even if they tend to be stuffed with more corn than just the kernels Amara is popping to make snacks.  Even here there is sadness, though, as Rahne is forced to take the others to task for cheering on a Western filled with villainous "Indians" whilst their friend Dani is in the same room. Not being American, and to my great shame never having to my knowledge ever met or spoken to a Native American (though I've read writing from some) I can't tell whether this is too heavy-handed or not, but I personally appreciated it. Especially since Dani is trying to talk to her Cheyenne mother but can't hear her over the sound of hooting teenagers rooting for the US Cavalry. That's a hell of a metaphor about the violent overwriting of indigenous dialogue by colonial oppressors to be found tossed away on the first page of an '80s superhero comic.

 But then what is the Beyonder but the ultimate colonial, a force come to our lands to overwrite the story of humanity however he sees fit, secure in the knowledge we cannot stand against him, and utterly convinced that this same weakness makes us ineligible to contribute to the discussion of our fate. It's the ultimate white man's fear: that someday someone else is going to do to us exactly what we did to others for centuries with impunity [1]. Shooter's main SW2 title rather bypasses this in favour of elevator-pitch tales of hilarious misunderstandings and reality-juggling, but Claremont here takes the far more plausible route (to the extent that phrase has meaning here) and presents the arrival of the Beyonder as being a terrifying black swan event that would terrify you so much every internal organ would vacate your body.

Here Claremont ties in the sheer incomprehensible horror circling humanity's head by tapping Dani's status as an agent of death, specifically Hela. I've discussed before my discomfort with having a native American forcibly added to the ranks of the force of a white culture's god, but it certainly has some power here. There's a particularly nice moment in which Dani sees death hovering over each of her friends, but the form death takes depends on the beliefs of each New Mutant - so for Illyana it's a demon, for Amara it's Pluto, etc. For some reason Sam's death appears to be Jesse Custer, but then I suppose he did do more than his share of killing, so fair enough. Roberto manages to escape the portentathon, since he's elsewhere, doing a bit of standard hero work and Claremontian brooding, presumably to remind us that normal service at least continues somewhere; that the Beyonder's shadow does not yet cover everything. But for everyone else on the team, it looks like being a pretty bad night.

For Beyonder, God of Imperialism, is a jealous deity, easily offended. He offered Illyana the chance to join him willingly last issue, and she refused. He came to her all smiles and gifts, and yet she rejected him, wanting to choose her own path. What is the Beyonder to do in response to such obvious and total irrationality? How could anyone fail to see his way is the best way? Who else can claim such power? Why would he have such total control over reality if not to rearrange it as he saw fit? Illyana's refusal is a sign she does not understand. Worse, that she would happily doom her own people rather than attempt that understanding.

The Beyonder turns her to dust the moment he sees her.

The rest of the New Mutants try desperately to avenge their friend, but the fight is obviously hopeless.  Indeed, the only reason it happens at all is because the Beyonder seems to want to toy with them, offering them hope specifically so he can take it away, as Dani puts it. This is more or less inarguable, given the Beyonder could have erased them all from existence without them even knowing he was there. Ultimately, though, the effect is the same; the Beyonder murders the team one by one (in a way that's probably the most horrifying team wipe-out I can remember since Alan Moore gave us The Fury) and then erases them from the entire timeline. Removing their stories utterly, and replacing them with his own.

The End.

[1] Claremont underlines this by gifting Dani a vision of her grandfather explaining how some amongst the Cheyenne believed the white man had been sent to punish them for their pride. I confess I've been unable to find anything on whether this is something that was genuinely believed at the time, or whether it's entirely fictional.

Clues

This story takes place over a single evening.

Sam mentions that summer is almost over, though since he turns that into a discussion about Thanksgiving it's not clear quite how good his grasp of chronology is.  In any event, with the Beyonder having been on earth since at least the start of the year (see UXM #196) placing this issue eight or so months later strikes me as letting him plague the planet for entirely too much time - the gaps between issues of #SW2 would have to become too large.   We can move the timeline on a few weeks, though, since it's clear from the next UXM issue that the X-Men have spent quite some time in San Francisco trying to sort out the mess there.

Date

Friday 13^th April, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+33.

Contemporary Events

American model, burlesque dancer and actress Carmen Carrera is born.

Standout Line

"They're watching some dumb cowboy movie -- of course we're the bad guys -- yeah, I wish things were different too."  - Dani.

NGT #4:"The Wizard Of Oops!"

(Like Sliders... on acid!)

Comments

This shouldn't take too long to wrap up. since all the problems of the last issue are still present here: Claremont's "Boggie World" didn't really work as an exploration of Kitty's whimsy in any case, but it's even more unsuccessful as the primary location in the second half of a four-art mini, unless you have a much stronger tolerance for silliness than I do.

Actually, I don't think it's silliness that's the problem per se, it's silliness that doesn't show much in the way of invention. The basic building blocks are borrowed, and the structure Cockrum builds with them entirely unsurprising. It's not entirely without charm, I confess; every now and again something surfaces here that I really quite like. The giant lumbering Dark Bamf is lots of fun - his dismissal of our own dimension as being "weird... all straight lines!" is such a nice little artist's joke - and Nightcrawler trying to get home by taking a cue from Mr Mxyzptlk is a nice nod to the Distinguished Competition. And defeating a living wall of grasping tentacles by discovering it is ticklish is exactly the sort of silliness I adore, which if nothing else suggests my aesthetics as regards this kind of romp are all over the map and shouldn't in any way be trusted.

Still, though, the not-X-Men fight Shagreen for a while, then defeat him, and nothing else happens beyond a parade of individual slices of nonsense. These don't have a high enough hit rate for me, though YMMV. The one thing here that seems to move beyond personal taste into something genuinely unfortunate is the inclusion of the female Bamfs, who are just as horny as their male counterparts, but look like teenage girls rather than stuffed toys.

The problem here is a stuffed toy with omnidirectional horniness is funny (or at least, it's funny to a point, in small doses and not pushed too far).  A young woman with the same drive is something rather different.

Anway, as I say, fight fight fight, win. Nightcrawler gets sucked into a vortex as a result of breaking Shagreen's staff though, and ends up in yet another dimension. And then all of a sudden, a cowboy dinosaur appears, and everything is briefly wonderful. Let's just take a moment to process that. A Cowboy. Dinosaur.

Don't deny mammals, Kurt! Mammals are your mother!

 If only it all could've been like this. I mean, I highly doubt a Tombstonasaurus tale would keep up the momentum through a whole issue, let alone a four-part mini, but it's an indication of how much more interesting and fun this title could have been had Cockrum had more interest in exploring his own whimsy instead of borrowing Claremont's.

A little more reality hopping, a thoroughly unconvincing (though commendably brief) bit of hand-waving about how all this came about in the first place, and Nightcrawler is back where he belongs. And same as he ever was, of course. No changes to body, mind or soul. Hell, even the clocks haven't shifted all that much, what with the Narnia effect in play. The whole story, in effect, might as well never have happened.  Which is about as appropriate a conclusion to this minseries as you could ask for, really.

Clues

This story seems to take place over a few hours max in the "real" world. Kitty and Illyana are in the same clothes as the previous issue, suggesting it takes place on the same day.

Date

Tuesday 25^th December, 1984

X-Date

X+6Y+298.

Contemporary Events


Standout Line

"Dark Bamf only pawn in game of life".

Poor Dark Bamf. All he wants is love. And to smash people. That most of all.