Marvel Graphic Novel #5: God Loves, Man Kills

X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills is an X-Men graphic novel, released in late 1982. Unlike New Mutants, it is a standalone work, and until the re-appearance of its antagonist William Stryker in X-Treme X-Men, there was some doubt as to whether it was "canon".

I can sort of see how that arose: it has an anomalous chronological placement. The Chronology Project awkwardly puts it just before the last page of Uncanny X-Men #168 (it doesn't quite work as Kitty Pryde's codename is "Ariel" in this, but that's easier to overlook than the presence of Wolverine and Cyclops - tricky continuity is nothing new), so let's go with that here.

The basic story is that William Stryker, a former army sergeant, hates mutants (his child was one: he killed it and his wife). After a phase of drunkenness, he read an article by Xavier, got religion, and set up his own ministry: the Stryker Crusade.

Stryker is the latest in the line of humans who are afraid of mutants and want to wipe them out, but the first to do this without the aid of giant robots, and the first to be explicitly religiously motivated. There's a little bit of anti-evolutionary rhetoric in him, and he's the first person to ever ask why there are mutants, anyway? He plans to brainwash Xavier, and use his brain and a modified Cerebro as the instrument of destruction. He fills out Madison Square Gardens and gets a live TV broadcast of his finale, so the X-Men can't very well intervene. So they send Magneto to disrupt proceedings, who has less of a PR image to maintain, while they slip in the back.

Like Magneto's revelation in #150, the climax is someone threatening violence against young Pryde. In this case, though, Stryker shows no compassion, and has to be forcibly stopped from shooting her, by a cop. He'll be serving time for this.

The entire thing is dark and moody, both tonally and graphically. There's no Comics Code Authority logo on the front of this, and Claremont has taken full opportunity of it, by having Anne call someone a "bitch". Ah. This is where I should be talking about the use of the N-word, isn't it. I'm not sure there's much new for me to say. It is difficult to compare a madey-uppy slur like "mutie" with a real life word with a century or more of derogatory usage. It has something of the "Die Cis Scum" about it - in form it is abusive, but there's no real power behind it. It feels cheap, especially in something that's presenting itself a more classy "graphic novel". But the narrative doesn't pretend that Kitty didn't cross the line - Colossus immediately makes excuses for her. Because she was wrong.

Apart from the basic premise of Stryker and a copy of Cerebro, X2 also picks up on the temporary alliance of the X-Men and Magneto. This is the first time we've had this in the comics, and I don't think it quite works. Not Magneto's characterisation so much, but the way the X-Men just accept it. This is the first time we see them find out his name is "Magnus", or that he and Charles are "old friends". If X-Men really is a soap opera at this point, much drama could be made out of these things. And yet, nothing. This is mostly explicable by this being a graphic novel - it just wants to tell its story, not further the ongoing one.

I leave you with an exchange between Cyclops and Magneto.

            MAGNETO
      Contentment breeds tranquillity.
      Discontent, rebellion.  Therefore,
      I shall ensure the one by eliminating
      the root causes of the other: hunger,
      poverty, disease, war.

      The freedoms lost will not be noticed,
      even in the most libertarian of states.
      And the material benefits should more
      than balance the scales.

            CYCLOPS
      Anyone can create an utopia for a single
      generation, Magneto; the trick is making
      it last.  Who preserves your dream after
      you're gone?

            MAGNETO
      You, of course, Cyclops.  And the X-Men.
      Why do you think I want you by my side?

Marvel Graphic Novel #4: New Mutants, New Danger

Meanwhile, on Earth, we come to the original New Mutants graphic novel, and the odd pages in the Brood run of Uncanny that lead up to it.

Xavier had come out of his coma in #161 (despite the alien consciousness, which we can assume from Uncanny is the Brood egg), but wasn't up for the trip to space, so was left on Earth, along with Moira, Alex, Lorna, Corsair and Illyana. He finds time to rebuild the mansion with the help of robots courtesy of Lilandra (we see its frame being put up in #163), and by #164 it's finished. He's given up on his dream, which although implicit all along now becomes a Big Deal, a thing you can talk about as "Xavier's dream". They only ever seem to talk about it when they give up in on it. Moira trolls him into accepting a new student, one Xi'an Coy Manh, who we have met before.

And so we come to the original New Mutants graphic novel, the 4th in the series. Xavier has lost a team of X-Men again, and he's rattling around the school, so he decides to assemble a new team. But only for training this time. Certainly not for missions.

Moira brings him Rahne Sinclair, a 14-year-old religious Scottish shapeshifter. In her introduction the link between powers and puberty now being made explicit for the first time. She's from the Highlands, too, and was not just delivered by Moira to Xavier, but was actually delivered by her. Again we have Claremont's romanticised view of these Isles - if you're from them then you probably own an entire island or at least a castle, and if not, then you are at least from a super-rural area. Nobody with powers comes from somewhere like London or Glasgow, at least until we get the Ellises and Cornells and Gillens writing. She's yet another orphan and is a "ward of the church", with a Reverend Craig bringing her up. Unfortunately, he's the chap who was leading the mob chasing her at the start. Happily, Moira is there at exactly the right time and place to rescue her from that. What she can't - or won't - rescue her from is her internalised hatred, instilled by Craig.

Xi'an (who gets called Shan) is one of the "Vietnamese boat people", who with her family fled from Vietnam after the communist takeover. Her backstory is written as if it were soon after the fall of Saigon, rather then several years later - although refugees continued for a while, she's directly tied in to the South Vietnamese military establishment which makes a sudden fleeing several years later seem a bit awkward. The floating timeline causes further problems - Xi'an simply can't have this background any more, unless you suppose that Marvel geopolitics aren't the same as our ones (which actually solves a lot of other problems!) She's intelligent, polite, well-spoken. I'd call her a stereotype but she's a bit more than that already. She has clearly given the ethics of her powers thought - more than Xavier. What happened with Tran troubles her, but even before then, she was using Spider-Man because she'd thought she'd not be doing damage to a good reputation.

While Rahne and Xi'an are training, Xavier gets a message from an old friend of his - Black Eagle - regarding his granddaughter, Danielle Moonstar (again, a 14-year-old orphan!), who has begun to manifest powers - mainly a general showing-people-their-fears power, but also an unrelated secondary mutation of being really close to nature and shit, possibly on account of her being a Cheyenne. He, along with Moira and the students, visits her, only to find assassins sent by Donald Pierce have killed her grandfather already, and trying to take out her. She agrees to join up to get revenge against Pierce. Xavier is able to extract information from Pierce's agents - in a shocking display of lack of compartmentalisation they've been briefed with the next two targets. These are Robert da Costa, from Brazil (a hot-headed Latino!), who is decidedly not an orphan, but has a girlfriend in the fridge; and Sam Guthrie, from a Kentucky mining family, who works for a Pierce-owned company, whose father has just died, and signs up on the wrong side, but comes around soon enough.

Oddly, Moira's team are able to get to Brazil, extract Bobby, and get back to Kentucky quickly enough to help Rahne rescue Xavier (who had been captured) and defeat Pierce. I suppose they must have overclocked the Blackbird? There's some woman called Tessa who works for Shaw also being held captive by Pierce, who has broken with the rest of the Hellfire Club, and who I think we might have seen before in the Dark Phoenix saga. Xavier eventually agrees to hand Pierce over to - mutual enemies and all - Xavier's narration makes it clear he isn't sure about he can trust her, but he sees no other way.

And so, we get another batch of X-Men (well, more or less), a cohort of teenagers, the first since 1963. Perhaps they should have done this right away and skipped the stage with Kitty alone. This time majority female, and majority non-white, which may be the first time either of these things have happened in a mainstream superhero title (or at least one that doesn't have it as its gimmick). And the characterisation and powers are a mite less informed by stereotypes than in Giant-Size #1.

This is a bit less substantive than I had imagined for something billed as a "graphic novel". It doesn't really stand alone, and instead acts more like a double-size #1 for the New Mutants ongoing which is about to launch. No surprise, since this is precisely what was intended originally - Claremont says that it was repurposed to be a graphic novel after it started production. The only standout difference is the colouring, which is using a different, more sophisticated but more expensive at this point, process, and therefore has shading.

Uncanny X-Men #162-#163: Feeling Broody

As we saw in the last post, Claremont and Miller have just written the definitive Wolverine miniseries. At more or less the same time (October 1982), that Wolverine makes his appearance narrating Uncanny X-Men #162 and #163.

Having been taken to space at the end of #161, they've been captured by the Brood and are revealed to have been implanted with eggs, showing our more Alien-like Brood. Wolverine had one, but happily if it's a legitimate Brood implantation, the mutant body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down. He sets to work rescuing the others. Some of them can see the situation for what it is: some can't, and it's getting through to them that's more important than punching. Which is not to say that the punching is worthless.

After they've got the team back together and going after the Brood, Cyclops and Wolverine have their largest argument so far. Wolverine wants to kill the Brood Queen, but Cyclops isn't having any of that: "X-Men don't kill", he says - a retcon if ever I heard one. It might help if Wolverine actually told the others about the eggs, but no, we have to have our melodrama.

Lilandra agrees with Wolverine, but the story cops out at that point, as the plan to send a forward detachment (Storm, Nightcrawler and Sprite) to Lilandra's yacht works, and they are teleported away. This sort of last-minute technical solution to a moral dilemma is something they've lifted straight from Star Trek, too, alongside the transporter they used to do it with.

Wolverine #1-#4: "Not Very Nice"

And so we come, at long last, to the first of many X-Men spin-offs †, the Wolverine mini-series, by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. Four issues, cover-dated September to December 1982.

I've gone through this era of Uncanny before, but this was completely new to me. It is an important piece in building the lore of Wolverine, and is going to form the basis of the 2013 Wolverine film.

Wolverine's letters to Mariko are bouncing, and he goes to Japan to investigate. He finds she's been married off, and is drawn into a web of intrigue. Significantly, this is the first X-Men comic to feature no traditional comic book villains (i.e. no robots, demons, mutants, etc) - just regular ninjas.

The series is narrated by Wolverine. We get the "I am the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn't very nice" quote coined here, and definite confirmation that his mutant power is the healing thing. And he's been around the block a few times, as his friendship with Asano indicates. But this is not quite the 1990s Man of Mystery Wolverine. He's not been mindwiped, for one - when he contrasts Mariko's dynastic pedigree to his own, he knows who his father is, even if he doesn't tell us.

The resolution is a combination of KILL ALL THE NINJAS! (the body count exceeds X-Men's total in 19 years, probably) but more improtantly Wolverine realising he's not an animal, that he can strive to be better than that. But then, we've never really seen Wolverine as an animal. From almost his very introduction into this series, he's been railing against his imagined confines - remember him touching the deer in #109?

The art is fantastic in this, and only the colouring gives away its age. It's far more confident in using the art to tell the story than Uncanny was in this era. Beat panels, entire silent sequences (the fight in issue #4, punctuated by a Snikt), and it absolutely manages to invoke an atmosphere, even a mood - not something I'd ever have accused Uncanny of managing. Otherwise, there's general toning down of Claremont's typical wordiness (Wolverine is narrating, after all). This is way ahead of what Uncanny was doing at the time, and I'm looking forward to see it catch up.

† I exclude Dazzler here, since she was a pre-existing concept that was inserted into X-Men to launch from, rather than deriving organically from tales of X.

Uncanny X-Man #161: Waiting for Gabrielle

This breaking news just in. Professor Charles Xavier is still in a coma. I'm a bit unfair, as Uncanny X-Men #161 actually advances this plot. We are told that "an alien consciousness has become part of him", and he's getting worse.

Moira says they've used another telepath to try and reach him - but he tried to use her as a means of suicide, which we've missed. Cyclops and Corsair are back from their visit to Havok and Polaris in New Mexico. Cyclops points at the complete botch that Storm made of the mission to infiltrate the Pentagon in #158, and suggests maybe he ought to be back in charge. Which seems reasonable enough, but he then backs down, ascribing it to the distress of Xavier being ill.

Xavier is remembering his visit to Haifa, in Israel, 20 years ago (so, 1962 at the time). He'd been there after his trip to Cairo (where he encountered his first evil mutant, we will remember, and a young Storm too). He's gone to meet his friend Daniel Sharon, who is working at a hospital with survivors of the holocaust. He meets a chap called Magnus there, who he can't mindread, and a young woman named Gabrielle Heller, who was at Dachau, who is not in a good way. He's able to telepathically deal with her block and get her conscious again. Soon enough she's doing all the tourist stuff with Magnus and Charles, and starting a thoroughly problematic relationship with Charles. Charles and Magnus start having hypothetical debates about mutants and what humanity's reaction to them would be. They do not, sadly, have comedy routines about keeping trousers up, even though Xavier should probably have kept his on.

Suddenly wild NazisHydra attack, and events force Magnus to reveal that he the power of manipulation of metallic objects and magnetic forces! Yes, he's Magneto! This all means that Xavier secretly knew Magneto before Uncanny X-Men #1! They rescue Gaby, who is being held in Kenya by Baron Strucker, and Magneto decides to "liberate" their stock of gold, proclaiming that mutants will fight for survival.

This will be our first major problem with the sliding timeline. You can fix Magneto's age a bit by the fact that he's been de-aged and re-aged, and Xavier gets a new body soon enough - so they can be biologically any age you please - but Xavier and Magneto meet as more-or-less contemporaries in a period where Holocaust survivors can be young women. And we can't age Heller too much, 'cos Xavier has a kid by her. Not that we know that yet, of course.

With that flashback out of the way, Xavier wakes up, and everyone is relieved. Lilandra, who has been sticking around, makes ready to leave, and invites them to space for a space banquet - Moira and Charles stay on the surface, as does Illyana. But then drama! Deathbird appears and assassinates Lilandra, and notes that the X-Men will be hosts for the brood-spawn!

Uncanny X-Men #160: Could it be Magik?

The last issue saw the X-Men suddenly summoned back to *Proto-Utopia because Xavier's coma has worsened. Uncanny X-Men #160 doesn't do anything with that, but ends up being one of the most important fill-in issues of all time.

Illyana (who apparently got migrated to Island M/Proto-Utopia with the rest of them, rather than being sent home to Siberia which might be the more sensible thing) triggers a device that sends her to a strange realm ruled by Belasco. The X-Men follow, fight Belasco and mostly win, but unfortunately end up with a 13-year-old Illyana, who has lived in Limbo for half her life, rather than the 6-year-old one that had run off. What has she learnt from Belasco in the mean-time, and more to the point, how on Earth are they going to explain that to her parents? While the last issue is providing the inspiration for BtVS, this then is Connor. She's got a medallion that'll go off when she hits womanhood and do all manner of unspecified sinister things, too.

This all only happens due to the X-Men being stupid. They've settled on this island that has risen from the deeps and has unusual architecture and is of unknown origin and have not even yet thoroughly explored it. The fault must be laid squarely at the doors of Professor X and Storm - both of whom were in a position to order the island to be checked out, and neither of whom did.

We get another name for Illyana this issue. She is "Illyana Natalyanovna", which along with the fact that she keeps calling her brother "Piotr Nikolievitch" implies that they don't quite understand how Russian names work yet. Apart from your basic first, given, name and surname/family name, Russians have a middle "patronymic" name, derived from the first name of their father, with -ovna (овна) or -evich (евич) appended. Natalyanovna is what, a matronymic? Which you might get for someone of unknown paternity. So not our little snowflake, then. Additionally, we're not sure what Russian name "Illyana" is supposed to represent. Ульяна (which might usually be translated Ulyana), possibly. Who knows?

Uncanny X-Men #159: Kitty the Vampire Slayer †

Uncanny X-Men #159 is nothing particularly special in X-Men terms, but has a wider significance that's been largely missed. It is where Buffy the Vampire Slayer came from.

So, plot summary: the X-Men arrive - without bothering to knock on the door or anything - at Misty Knight's apartment in Greenwich Village (where Jean Grey used to live, before her untimely passing in #137).

She's out, so they disturb new flatmate Harmony Young (another Claremont/Byrne creation, from Power Man and Iron Fist #50, a professional model, and a romantic interest for Luke Cage (Power Man)). They quickly add Harmony to the list of people who know the X-Men's first names, and get changed to meet Kitty's parents, which is the reason they're there. Well, Storm and Kitty do. Wolverine, and Nightcrawler remain at the flat, trying and failing to add Harmony to the Chart, too.

After leaving Kitty with her parents, Storm is found in an alley with two suspicious looking wounds on her neck, and a severe case of blood loss. She's rushed to hospital, where they can't find a blood type match for her (mutant blood is detectable with 1982 regular hospital technology!). She checks out and goes to stay in Misty's apartment. She starts feeling the call of the night, opening windows, curiously not recovering from her injury, wearing a scarf around her neck, disliking Kitty's Star of David (I wonder if Kitty worries that she's being a bit anti-Semitic), developing an uncharacteristic aversion to sunlight, and wondering whether there are eyes in the fog. (SPOILER: There are).

Would you believe it it has turned out that she's been bit by a vampire and has gone all Lucy Westernra (which has been allowed by the Code for ten years). It's no less than Dracula himself, even. She goes to meet him for more blood exchange. Their meeting is interrupted by Kitty, arriving with a hat and a cross. The cross doesn't work, but the Star of David does. So, belief is important. Wonder why the hat didn't work on its own, then. Ororo, even turned, doesn't much like people picking on her Kitten, so sort of protects her, but then absconds with the Big D.

Nightcrawler acts like belief in Dracula is a well-accepted fact in post-war Bavaria, and the others agree to track Storm down, to Belvedere Castle in Central Park, which I thought was Claremont and Cockrum just having a laugh (à la Doom's castle in Upstate New York), but turns out to actually exist, having been built as a folly in 1869. At time of publication it was disused and in the process of restoration, so it's just about plausible that ol' Vlad has taken up residence there.

They fight. We learn that Wolverine is not a Christian (his cross doesn't work) and that Nightcrawler is (his does). Storm manages to break the hold, despite having been part-vampirised, and turns on Dracula (but lets him flee rather than staking him), and then I dunno, gets better?

It's a matter of record that Kitty Pryde is an inspiration for Buffy Summers (Joss Whedon will write a Kitty-centric arc or four of his own which we'll get to in due course...) I submit that this issue, which features a teenage computer-smart Jewish girl with special powers and divorced parents fighting a vampire to protect her friend, is a major inspiration. Kitty has been split to form Buffy and Willow. The name "Harmony", even. And for that matter "Summers" (and Anne - we heard "Anne Summers" as part of a name only in the last arc!) As did Malaclypse the Younger, I find this more and more manifest the harder I look.

† No vampires were actually slain by Kitty in the comic. I suppose I could have gone with "Kitty vs. Dracula" instead.

Uncanny X-Men #158: The Battle of Arlington

Uncanny X-Men #158 starts again with our mutants on their island base - it doesn't seem to have got a name in the comics ever - so I'll call it Proto-Utopia. (It's either that or "Island M".)

Harking back to the inital run, the X-Men suddenly remember that the government has a lot of computer information on them. That Robert Kelly is on the telly - on Panorama, in fact - scaremongering about them (the interviewer's name is Mr. Cheever. In a strange coincidence, the only famous Cheever died in the cover month). And the X-Men have suddenly somehow become "outlaws" (that happened as early as #154, according to a caption there - before the property damage of the Shi'ar arc). They decide to infiltrate the Pentagon, and introduce a computer virus to erase what exists. A caption repeats the urban myth that the Pentagon was originally designed as a hospital.

So, Colonel Carol Danvers (who's found that some of her advanced physiology as Ms. Marvel is still present), Captain ??? (I wonder what name Logan was using on his ID here - there's no reason at this point to suspect that it isn't something like John Logan or Logan Smith), and their civilian colleague Ororo, bluff their way through the security at probably the world's most heavily guarded government installation. Making their way to the target, they embarrassingly bump into Mystique and Rogue, of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who are also infiltrating the Pentagon. Mystique is using a cover identity of "Raven Darkhölme", which is surely not her real name, and she shifts back to the blue-with-white-clothes form when she's knocked unconscious, which is a bit unfortunate. Rogue has got her canonical set of power-stealing powers, on contact with flesh, and has recently acquired the powers of Ms. Marvel (in Avengers Annual #10), which is the very thing that Carol has been recovering from...

Rather than sort out some sort of awkward compromise ("why are you here?" "no, why are you here?"), they start having a superhero fight in the Pentagon. Storm and Wolverine somehow find the time to change into their costumes, which is not just one of those "where did they get the time?" moments, but is literally a terrible idea - as a "mutants infiltrate Pentagon" story becomes an "X-Men infiltrate Pentagon", aided by the guards overhearing them use the word "X-Man". If there were ever a job for X-Force, this was it. Mystique is captured (but she'll get out - she's that good), Rogue is subdued, the X-Men flee, and Danvers wipes those files. Not that it'll do them any good.

This would have been a perfectly good explanation as to how the X-Men became outlaws, but it's frankly incomprehensible as their reaction to it. In the end Kurt complains in a thought bubble

The X-Men will probably end up portrayed as the villains of the piece.
If Senator Kelly is any indication, the government is already paranoid about mutants. This will only make matters worse.

And since the X-Men have no official sanction, like the Avengers, they've no way of telling their side of things.

Yes, I'm quite sure that explaining how you were merely planning on illegally entering the government installation to remove the records on yourself would clear things up nicely.

While all this is happening, Corsair and Cyclops visit Havok and Polaris, and introductions are made. No mention is made of any other relatives - of either their mother or father - and neither of them were John Does - so presumably any grandparents are dead?

Uncanny X-Men #154-#157: First Brood

Uncanny X-Men #154 starts with the mansion still mostly wrecked. Storm and Cyclops are still there (and Storm's still leader, although she asks Cyclops if he wants it back and he declines). The other X-Men have now moved to the island that had previously been Magneto's base in the Bermuda triangle, citing a wave of anti-mutant sentiment. Islands and mutants are a thing, evidently.

In space, Corsair is fleeing towards Earth, bringing with him a protracted four-issue story arc involving Lilandra and the Shi'ar and the Starjammers and the Imperial Guard and Deathbird (now seen in these pages for the first time, having debuted in Ms. Marvel #10 in October 1977). We also have the Brood, who display none of their later Alien-like traits, instead acting mostly as thinking minions of Deathbird, who of course, eventually turn on her.

Characterwise, the most important bit in this is Corsair revealing himself as Cyclops father. This makes the timeline rather wacky. Corsair has been gone for 20 years, it keeps repeating. And Scott was ten, wasn't he? So Cyclops is 30, now? That can't be right, can it? Corsair keeps referring to his wife as "Anne" for several issues before realising his mistake (she'd already been named "Katherine") and calling her "Katherine Ann".

#157 teases the return of Phoenix on the cover, which is way sooner than I'd expected. Turns out to be Kitty dressed up in costume. This is a good moment for her (as is the bit where she phases into space), and she's rapidly becoming actually competent. She's 14 now, we're told in the next issue, and Peter is 18. And so far there's no actual indication that he's acting on any attraction that may or exist, so this is staying firmly off the Chart. The age of consent in New York is 17, by the way. I do not know what it is in Shi'ar space, but I would guess that the Starjammer counts as a U.S.-flagged vessel.

We end up with Lilandra restored to that throne, but Professor X in a coma. Oh dear...

It's........................ Uncanny X-Men #153

Uncanny X-Men #153 is an odd one. The mansion was wrecked last issue, and they're doing basic cleanup work. Kurt reports back that they're screwed, and they need lots of expensive specialists to rebuild. I guess that usually Xavier would tap Warren for this (he did seem happy to pay before), but since he's quit in a huff, not much can be done. Later we'll find out that Xavier is independently wealthy (I think this idea first originates as an excuse in letters columns before appearing in the comic proper), but for now they are screwed.

Amidst this, the increasingly prominent Kitty Pryde tells a fairy tale to Illyana (has she ever gone home after the Murderworld arc?) At first I thought she's got far too serious about her crush on Peter and has learnt Russian, but later on the page we find that the Professor just implanted Russian in all of their branes, something that explains a lot actually. Well, by "a lot", I mean, how Hank knew Russian. I'm not sure the story is entirely in good taste, depicting as it does a fictionalised version of the Phoenix, who Kitty wasn't really around for. But Scott seems to like it, anyway...