X-Tinction Agenda

X-Tinction Agenda (Uncanny X-Men #270-#272/New Mutants #95-#97/X-Factor #60-#62) is the model X-Men crossover.  Several different teams come together to fight an existential threat towards the X-Men, something bigger than usual.  Mutant Massacre had kind of tried this but the interlinking was weak; Fall of the Mutants was basically only a thematic crossover, and Inferno had too much weird stuff going on.

X-Tinction Agenda has a nice simple premise, and then throws 9 issues at exploring it, giving ample time to its regular line-up of characters.  It has the "X-" pun, which would go on to become a vitally important part of X-Men storyline nomenclature, even to the point where it didn't make sense ("Avengers: X-Sanction").

So, what's this about?   The Genoshan government finally goes a little bit too far, by abducting some of the New Mutants (and Storm) from Westchester and forcing them to become slaves.  This allows the various teams of X-Men in existence (Cable and the nascent X-Force, the Gambit/Forge/Banshee X-Men, X-Factor, and the Wolverine/Psylocke/Jubilee group), to openly retaliate, with the backing of the US government, and endorsement from their superhero mates such as Reed Richards.

I was a bit sarcy about this on twitter. It seemed like the X-Men comics were finally taking the brave step of attacking apartheid in 1990, just as Nelson Mandela was released.  But then I kept reading, and discovered that the ending is not just that the X-Men are able to recover their friends, but that the Genoshan regime has actually been overthrown.  Change can happen.  Life is not stuck in the status quo.  It's worth pushing, as if you don't you're never going to make a difference.

There's changes to characters, too.   Warlock changes to dead, for example.  Wolfsbane and Storm were enslaved and brainwashed (I don't know that there's a word in English strong enough for what happened to them), and Havok, who had become a Magistrate on Genosha because of the Siege Perilous, is released, and stays behind to rebuild.

I'm sure it won't last, but for now the X-Tinction Agenda is the X-Men's greatest victory for mutants as a whole.  Everything they've done is firefighting of one sort or another.  They've defeated evil mutants from carrying out evil plans (Magneto and Mystique stand out), they've defended mutants from humans carrying out evil plans (sentinels), and they've protected the Earth in general from threats.  But this, despite the losses, is a victory to be proud of.

Uncanny X-Men #269: Rogue.split()

Uncanny X-Men #269 is Rogue's only appearance in a comic in 1990.  When we last saw her, in #247, she was fighting Bastion, sacrificing herself to save everyone.

Cut to: Rogue waking up in that town in the Australian outback that the X-Men briefly hid in, and learning about the assassination of Mystique and the death of Destiny from the tellybox.  I'm surprised at Rogue's naivity here: news involving Mystique should not be interpreted at face value, and although we as readers didn't see anything that contradicts the report, surely that's Mystique pretending to be Val Cooper...

This is another puzzling issue, featuring a fight with the original Ms. Marvel who seems to be being controlled by the Shadow King, guest appearance of the Muir Island X-Men, who appear to have gone bad, and, of all things, a cutaway to Lila Cheney, of the Shi'ar Imperium.  And finally Magneto arrives in time to save Rogue...  (What's he been up to, anyway?)

It also contains a good candidate for the X-Men's worst racefail yet.  Rogue has occasion to nick powers off Gateway (discussed previously).  As she does so, her skin colour changes. (No other aspect of her appearance, mind.)  The?  Please let this just have been a miscommunication with the colourist.

Uncanny X-Men #268: When Logan met Steve

Uncanny X-Men #268 is an important step in development of Wolverine into the Logan we know today.  It's The One Where It Turns Out He Knew Captain America from Back in the War.

The story itself is nothing remarkable - some fairly standard ninja fighting, but its use of two split timeframes - 1941 and 1990 - is rare. In 1941, Logan meets Cap in Madpripoor and they help Ivan Petrovich rescue a young Natasha Romanov from Nazis; in 1990 they (the three of them) fight the Hand. It's quite clever, and it's structuralist in a way that Claremont very rarely ever did. They all get on, obviously, although there's a nice bit at the end where Cap suggests that he and Wolverine make a nice team, and Wolverine is all "I don't have sidekicks". Burn.

Even though they've gone their separate ways, this story is part of a pattern of the X-Men become more well-integrated into the general superhero community - see the X-Men and Fantastic Four becoming besties in Days of Future Present for example. Their period of isolation is ending. The 1990s is beginning, the age of the crossover.

Days of Future Present: The Summers/Richards family reunion

Days of Future Present is a story told a format less commonly-used these days: it runs through four series's annuals (Fantastic Four, New Mutants, X-Factor and X-Men). Each issue gives prominence its respective titular characters, with a thread linking them.

That thread is Franklin Richards. We've mentioned him in passing before, as the son of Reed and Susan Richards. He's a mutant, one of the prophecised Twelve, whatever that is.  More directly he appeared with Power Pack in the Mutant Massacre issues, with a kind of limited visions power.  This story is about Franklin's two other potentials: as someone killed by the Sentinels in the Days of Future Past, and the ongoing idea that he will develop very strong mutant powers, so dangerous that their early manifestation must be avoided.

The appearance of an adult Franklin from the future is always worrying. Does this Franklin have matters under control, and more to the point, how can we tell? There's not much doubt this time: the first two issues both involve him messing around with timestreams in an attempt to recreate his youth: both at the Fantastic Four Headquarters and at the Xavier School.  So, not a stable Hyperstorm, anyway, even if he's well-meaning.

Reed and Sue have dealt this this sort of thing before and for them this is a runaround. It's the third issue, the X-Factor annual, that things start to develop both X-relevancy and actual interest, as Rachel Summers - fellow time-refugee and indeed Franklin's partner in the future - pops in. Franklin wants to try and fix things so his future can never happen or that it will assuredly happen; the contradiction tears him in two. Rachel keeps saying she's from "the future" but she knows that's a lie. She's from somewhen else's future: the existence of young Baby X (Christopher Summers) proves that. For a while, Franklin looks like he's going to destroy Baby X to make it come true; but our Phoenix can stop that - he's no match for her.

In the end, we get a reset to the status quo: Franklin is revealed to have been a shadow of his future self, leeching from Rachel's powers; Phoenix fixes it. We're all back to normal. Except: the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are on really good terms; and Scott and Jean know who Rachel is exactly and why the fuck she dared to put on the Phoenix powers. Now this has all happened, it's hard to imagine the splintered X-Men storyline going on much longer.

With hindsight one of the funnier parts of this little story is the appearance of Cable. Cable is right there when Franklin says that Baby X will grow up to be more power than any of them, and keeps a straight face. There's surely no concept that Cable is Baby X at this point, no teasing to be had at all.

Further note: Ahab is not possibly a name that inspires confidence in underlings. Also, if you are in Gambit's to-be-retconned-in-position perhaps saying that you "like the name" Mr. Sinister on learning that he ordered the mansion be trashed is not very smart. (Gambit put together the group responsible for the Mutant Massacre, we will find out in some years time, you see.  Again, not even a hint of that here.)

Uncanny X-Men #266-#267: Meet Gambit

Uncanny X-Men #266 continues the Storm plot so directly that I think I made a mistake not just making one post about the entire mini-arc. Oh well. Either this is much more coherent than the last issue, or I wasn't giving it enough credit for me taking a hiatus and losing track.

But anyway, let's say hello to Gambit, who makes his first appearance in the issue (presumably this is the reason I wasn't able to track down a physical copy at a decent price, had to buy a digital download!) Gambit is a thief, who has the power (presumably mutant) of kinetically charging stuff that he threw. He peppers his speech with French phrases, here and there.

In the first ish, Gambit is thieving the same house that Storm is; together they escape the Shadow King. In the second ish, they're on the run from the same; they then confront Nanny and Orphan-Maker.

Gambit is mostly the Gambit we know and love, but a few rougher edges; he's not drawn particularly pretty-boy (bit more angular and blocky - perhaps that's just the art style, though), and his humour is not quite there yet. Storm is,  thank god, returning to be the Storm we know and love and, even though that involves nightmares of her past, by the end of the issue remembers the X-Men.

Meanwhile, the Shadow King continues controlling Val Cooper, and Destiny left a warning to Mystique of her upcoming assassination attempt.  This is our first hint of the idea of Destiny's Diaries, something that will be a major driving point when we come to Claremont's return.

X-Factor #56-#59: Archangel vs Ravens

X-Factor #56-#58 reminds me why I started reading the X-Men.

Archangel is still suffering the mental ill-effects from being poisoned by actually, I don't remember, but never mind that. He's a one-man vigilante squad who makes Batman look like a toddler with dimples and a cute hat. This results in an awed but not entirely positive attitude from local press. The comic asks some serious questions like: to what extent do Archangel's fellow mutants have a special responsibility to clean up, or to stop him, and about the ethics of press coverage.

This is all played out in the background of a tightly-plotted Archangel plot: he is is targetted by a new villain group known as the Ravens (introduced before but I seem to have skipped that issue, oops). These are a kind of vampiristic circle - Crimson sets up one of their number to be killed by Archangel, which leaves an opening to bring him in. Given how bad a run of it Archangel has had lately, the danger is palpable, and that he escapes, and is even released from the effects of the poison, is a happy moment indeed. Like many of us, Warren might never be properly right, but he's healing, and that's important.

Uncanny X-Men #265: Lost in the Storm

Uncanny X-Men #265 is just weird.  By this stage Uncanny is madly experimental book.  It's not even trying to tell a story about the X-Men going through a difficult period, it seems to have abandoned the concept of an ongoing narrative entirely.  Exemplifying this, #265 promises Storm on the cover, but then opens with a four-page sequence about a new subject species of the Shi'ar.   Which is not followed up within the issue.

Cut to: Storm (she has been de-aged, thanks to the Siege Perilous, and has reappeared in Cairo, in Illinois with no memory and is doing a bit of commissioned thievery; comics, man).   Rather than have these two plot threads interact like a normal weird comic would do, we instead bring in one of Claremont's odder villains, Nanny, who is still mad at Storm escaping for reasons that, in turn, escape me.

And then even that's all of it.  Indeed, there's another cutaway, to Val Cooper being controlled by the Shadow King, who is mad at Storm for historic reasons related in #117 or something.  We end up with this set of interlocking vendettas against a Storm who isn't even really "our" Storm, which I fail to give a damn about at all.

The thing is, I like experimental things, as a rule.  I'm a bit pretentious, like that.  But sometimes experiments fail.  And this tail end of the Claremont era is one of those times.  Part of the usual story about his departure is that editorial wanted him to bring to the X-Men back together at the mansion, and he didn't want to do that, he wanted to do interesting new things instead rather than get stuck in the past.

But this is not interesting new things.  As we found out in Gillen's run, X-Men doesn't need the school, but it does benefit from some baseline.  It is fundamentally a story about mutants who are being oppressed, rather than about any specific characters.  And I don't get the sense that this is to fill the gap until the X-Men reunite properly on Muir Island or something (like, say the Death of Superman was), it just feels like it's wildly spinning out of control.

Uncanny X-Men #264: Alphabet Hunt

Uncanny X-Men #264 starts with a couple of New York cops witnessing a Genoshan state kidnap squad attacking Forge.  The elder partner is killed, natch, leaving the more junior partner, Officer Jones, alive.  Jones had previously appeared in X-Factor #51, not that I picked up on her importance then.  The Genoshan magistrates are there to abduct Jenny Ransome and Phil Moreau, our escapees, who are staying with X-Factor. (Jean, by the way, is now aware of the Muir Island X-Men, Excalibur, the New Mutants, and is feeling very interlinked, but still no mention of phone calls.)  The Genoshans are roundly defeated by a teamup and handed over to the authorities, who then in turn send them back to Genosha with some harsh words.

This apparent willingness to tolerate continued existence of paramilitary death squads on US soil is fairly out of character for the US government, but can be read as something like extraordinary rendition.  There must have been  high-level contacts between the US and Genosha about this sort of thing, even if nothing is written down.  How high, though.  To Cooper and Gyrich, sure, but this must be going to the the President, surely?  I wouldn't want to be a mutant in America in 1990.

Oppressed people form communities in enclaves, safety in numbers.  Back in the 1960s we saw the X-Men find a kind of sanctuary in Greenwich Village, associated with the counterculture.  In this issue we see the start of another: Forge is found in New York's "Alphabet City", which consists of Manhattan east of 1st and north of Houston.  This is the same place that will later become known as "District X"/"Mutant Town" in Morrison's New X-Men and Peter David's X-Factor.  But here Claremont has this already, as a place mutants hide.  From my sofa 3,500 miles and 23 years away, it appears that Alphabet City is exactly the right sort of place to have set a mutant enclave in 1990.  It's gentrified now, of course, but where isn't?

I wonder where the mutants live in London.  There's lots of them working in Camden Market, of course - there are any number of stalls selling mutant-made wares (or at least, so they say, although who can tell if that pot was really glazed with mutant fire or just gas power...?), and lots of the more visually distinctive mutants like hanging out in an environment where they don't stand out too much.  But apart from the ones who got in early and bought, it's got too expensive to live round there, so they've had to retreat towards the Holloway Road, if not beyond.  Finsbury Park is pretty good for flying practice and other training, I've heard.  The sapiens-passing ones with more economically-useful powers are scattered throughout, of course, and not necessarily always in contact with the greater mutant community.  Quite a lot in Highgate for some reason.  Mutants never really did discover Shoreditch and East London, I mean, why bother, when they had Camden?

X-Factor #55: Vera

X-Factor #55 is the first issue to be written by Peter David! But other than that it is not a forward-looking issue in any sense: it features another couple of blasts from the pasts in the persons of Mesmero and Vera. Mesmero hasn't been seen in an X-book since he made all the X-Men work at a carnival, although he has made other appearances, most recently in Alpha Flight #43, and Vera Cantor was last seen in X-Factor #8.

Unsurprisingly given that Mesmero and Vera are in this, the plot is that Mesmero has brainwashed Vera, to mess with Hank. This was apparently commissioned by Infectia, for reasons which I am sure are to be made clear in a couple of issues' time. It's a fairly light story, and is presumably a fill-in.

According to the Chronology Project, Vera Cantor hasn't been seen since this issue, which is a shocking oversight. Because of this I was half-expecting her to be killed in this issue (just as Candy was gotten rid of as a plot point), but no, she survives and returns to her life as a school teacher. That was a bit surprising. But in fact, it shouldn't be: the X-Men's original non-mutant supporting cast has been gradually phased out over the years: Candy is dead, Zelda has already made her last appearance, Stevie Hunter made no appearances between early 1987 and late 1990.

This is a general ongoing heroification or dropping of non-superhero characters on superhero books (as James Hunt pointed out). This is perhaps clearest in what has happened to the Hulk supporting cast over the years: the Rosses are now Hulks too, and Rick Jones is A-Bomb. But it's also a bit political: by 2013 X-Men is no longer interested with non-mutant allies: it's about mutants doing it for themselves. It would have been incongruous to have Vera pop up during, say, the latter part of Gillen's run. But now, an opportunity has presented itself: Bendis's All New X-Men seems the perfect opportunity to revisit Vera (and Zelda, for that matter - who inexplicably failed to appear in a storyline about All Iceman's Exes in Astonishing recently). What say you, Bendis?

Uncanny X-Men #262-#263: I Heard You Like Tentacles

I posted my "help wanted" ad for "Ukko" on Tuesday, and by Sunday night I had sketches of the first panel in my inbox, from a artist I'm thrilled to be working with. I've posted them to the Ukko twitter account if you want to check them out. So, that's one New Year's resolution ticked off.

Uncanny X-Men #262-#263 will always be known primarily as the story in which Jean Grey's arms are replaced with tentacles by Masque and she kinda likes it.

Let's review how we got here (for I have been disregarding subplots). Banshee and Forge have left Muir Island searching for the X-Men, having heard a rumour. They've been trying to keep things on the QT from Moira, because she has been wearing clothes that are frankly quite inappropriate in a work environment. They saw a news report about Dazzler being alive, so decided to go to North America, and seem to have stopped off at the X-Mansion, possibly to check what's going on with Callisto who hasn't reported back after being sent to make sure the security systems on the basement are fine. There they meet up with Jean Grey and get involved in an adventure with Morlocks.

So. Masque is our villain here. Masque does things that are a bit twisted, even for Masque: apart from the tentacles on Jean and the I-Have-No-Mouth routine on Banshee, there's recognising the amnesiac and powerless Colossus and altering his skin to look metallic even though it isn't really. This sets up a great scene later on when he breaks through into his steel form and this comes as a great surprise to the smashees. But the more disturbing action is the one that goes against his usual M.O. - restoring Callisto's beauty.

We don't know a massive amount of Callisto's backstory yet, but it's plain here that she had to do a lot of mental work to accept her physical appearance. This is also tied in to her status as a Morlock - because of that convention of Masque altering them all. Suddenly changing her appearance back again, and playing mind-games is a savage attack on her identity, and a deliberate rejection of her from the group, by someone who sees her as a race-traitor. This book just got political again.

Uncanny X-Men #261: Wolverdickery

Hello. It's been a while. I got ill, and then eventually the queue ran out. I have decided to start posting, but on a more leisurely schedule, as I promised before! In the the meantime I've been doing other writing: I put a collaborators wanted ad for Ukko, and am very excited about the replies, and am also working on The Apocalypse Bug.

So, where were, anyway? Oh, Uncanny X-Men #261. Let's remind ourselves of where we were (frankly, at this point I need to remind myself) with a quick recap:

As an official team the X-Men are no more. They faked their own deaths in the "Fall of the Mutants" crossover, soon moved to Australia and then were picked off one by one. Wolverine got back (from one of his frequent trips abroad to have solo adventures) to find the team missing (what's happened to them isn't important right now). He was briefly tortured by the Reavers and then rescued by new girl Jubilee, who then tags along with Wolverine. Wolverine and Jubilee then rescued Pyslocke from captivity in Hong Kong. She's a ninja now, by the way. And Japanese.

#261 starts with a mercenary group called "Hardcase and the Harriers" getting a commission to go after Wolverine and the girls. These guys are treated like a first-class villain team, with a box on the cover and a double-page spread introducing them with code names and earth names. There's a special credit for their creation: Claremont and Silvestri. The core: "'Axe" and "Shotgun" (these names, I swear, it really is the 90s, isn't it), came from Wolverine #5 - and want to take revenge on Wolverine (interesting that they know him by name: wasn't he going by the name Patch at that point?), but most (all) of the others have never been seen before or since. This issue is thus immediately marked as a failure by history. It is trying to establish a new antagonist team. We never see them again. It can't work, then.

But I'm cheating. I'm using hindsight. And get this: I'm wrong. Because it's a training scenario: Wolverine has hired the mercenaries to try out Psylocke and Jubilee in the field. I've fallen for the ostensible premise hook line and sinker, just as much as Braddock and Lee have. It's just a bit of silly throwaway action to mess with his charges. Xavier, clearly, has been a bad influence on Wolverine.

This wouldn't be a late-Claremont period X-Men comic without some random subplots. Banshee and Forge have arrived at the X-Mansion on a recce. They've been combing the world for X-Men and are worried about Moira MacTaggert's behaviour. Something's changed her: she's wearing much more risqué clothes than she used to, which obviously means she's evil now. And there's a bit of Jean, too, she's gone to the same place... Some paths are about to cross!

Uncanny X-Men #259-#260: Whatever Happened to the Children of the Atom?

Uncanny X-Men #259-#260 sets aside Wolverine and Jubilee, Storm and the Muir Island set to look mostly at a couple of other X-Men: Dazzler and Colossus. They are opposite sides of the North American mainland, in familiar surrounds (LA and NY respectively), but without their specific memories.

Both of them have enormous luck: Dazzler that she's ended up at Lila Cheney's LA house, where Guido (making his second appearance) is able to tell her basic informationa about who she is. And someone digs up footage for Dazzler: The Movie and releases it. Not showing up on cameras makes a publicity tour rather difficult, though. In New York, Peter Nicholas finds himself in a loft apartment with a bunch of friends, acting as handyman for the building.

Of course, both plots have some action: Eric Beale is trying to assassinate Dazzler; while Colossus's friends are mutant refugees from Genosha being persued by a Press Gang. That, of course, has some diplomatic implications that are more readily apparent when your illegal paramilitary group are operating in the urban United States than in the Australian outback.

Both our X-Men retain their essential qualities of selflessness and heroicity after passing through the Siege Perilous.

We have the briefest of scenes to do with the Muir Island gang: Legion is now trusted enough to be hooked up to a Cerebro. And Moira is definitely acting weird, it's just not the penciller: Banshee and Forge have gone on a Special Mission to avoid her and try and find the rest of the X-Men, as per Lorna's intel. This is I take it the first hint of the Muir Island Saga?

This is the last daily post in the current run. Posts will resume at a more measured rate (like I'd originally warned would be happening back in November!)

New Mutants #86-#89: Cable

New Mutants #86 starts the run by a new, up-and-coming artist, Rob Liefeld (he'd done fill-ins and annuals for the X-Office before). Simonson is scripting him, at first.

There's no immediate stage of Liefield writing Simonson's plots: the book is changed from day one. If we look back at New Mutants so far, it can be divided into three main eras. Firstly, there is the period from #1 to #34, which is the original format of the New Mutants having wacky adventures while attending a school run by Professor X. From #35 Xavier went into space and was replaced by Magneto. The New Mutants then engage in increasingly outlandish adventures which they handle with aplomb, marred only by the killing of Doug and the loss of Magik, while evading the tyrannical Headmaster Magneto. This era ends when they decide to quit the school and join up with X-Factor (#75).

However, the problem that was present with the setup during the Magneto era is still present with the ship and X-Factor. They've had adventures while X-Factor were out on missions, and have got trapped in parallel dimensions. One team can't very well mentor the other when they both want to be off doing their own adventures. Eventually, the franchise will figure out how to do this reasonably acceptably, by swelling the student numbers and having the adult team as peripheral characters who can't give the juvies their full attention (i.e. copying the format of Buffy back). But for now, this is stagnant. It's the third attempt at this, and despite changing location this time, it still doesn't work.

Enter Cable. He turns up out of the blue, with a big but not yet ludicrous gun, looking to defeat Stryfe and the Mutant Liberation Front (who are violently protesting against the capture of Rusty and Skids by Freedom Force.) By issue #89 he's graduated to using weapons he can probably only carry because of his telekinesis. But it's not all just ridiculously stupid violence. There's also ridiculously stupid character scenes, as well (mind, the page or two where Rahne is looking at her mementoes are great). Oh dear. Cable's introduction and adoption as the team's mentor here is just so clumsy and rushed. Sigh.

I think my attempt at Reading All The X-Men ends here. Although there was no way I was going to read all the 1990s material, I'd hoped to get as far as X-Force proper. I can't. It's April now, and I'd started to draft the entries for this era in January, and I stopped. In part this was due to poor health, but there was also a component of not wanting to have to write about Rob Liefield pissing on the corpse of New Mutants. So, we'll concentrate on Uncanny, X-Factor and Excalibur only from now on...

X-Factor #51-#53: Blasts from the Past

X-Factor #51-#53 is a welcome return to street level for a series that has spent quite a lot of time in space lately. The Ship has landed them right back in New York, on their old plot, which I welcome, even if the burghers of New York do not. After having a press conference about their zoning violation, Scott and Jean and Hank and Trish go on a double-date at a fancy restaurant where they are attacked by a plague of insects launched by The Locust, of all people, one of the Thomas/Roth run's more memorable but less successful villains. It appears that Hank and Trish are an Item, so I'll mark them on the chart as from #52. It seems, by the way, that X-Factor's identities are completely public knowledge now. Scott uses his real name in a restaurant and people recognise them in civvies. The place gets trashed, but it's fine, there's talk of "superhero insurance", and it's just part of the hazards of being in New York: like you accept the possibility of a quake if you live in California. Locust's attack ties in to their celebrity, too: he got agitated by recognising X-Factor on the tellybox. Following this, Scott proposes to Jean, and she turns him down. Which is fair enough. He did abandon his last wife, after all.

Another plotline features Mole, the Morlock from Uncanny #211, who is on the run from Sabretooth (here defeated by Archangel). He hides in a record shop, where he is discovered by Opal, who shows him kindness and allows him to continue hiding under the staircase. Bobby happens by the store subsequently, and hits on her, and even gets a date out of it, making this Bobby's first love interest since, well, possibly the Champions or New Defenders, but if not, then Zelda! Mole tries to cockblock, but ends up being Sabretooth fodder. And Caliban and Sabretooth fight Archangel!

The letters page of #53 provides a nugget of information about how language changes. X-Factor #47 was a flashback fill-in which is the subject of general praise. Daryl Edelman apologises for the "out-of-continuity" story, by which she means that it is set out of continuous order; rather than the modern understanding of that term which would be that it the events cannot or should not be reconciled with the main series: that it is "non-canon". But that's another rant entirely.

Baby Christopher is talking now. His first word was "ba[ll]", and he's also learned "da". He's being drawn as if he's about 1, I would say.

Excalibur: Cross-Dressing Caper

Excalibur now engages in the Cross-Time Caper, where Claremont and Davies invent Sliders 6 years ahead of schedule. Like that show, it uses its settings principally as sources of comedy, rather than seriously as a tool to examine history; and any drama that arises comes mostly from the characters and their reaction to being stranded. Unlike that show it features a massive BDSM subtext.

I'll skip most of the immensely tedious details of the various alternate timelines (although the gay ogres, the royal marriage of Prince William and Catherine are worth a mention, as is the the world which is a a horrifying preview of what comics will be like in the 1990s. Captain America is a cyborg. Galactus comes in at the end to arresteat everyone for being too silly.)

Instead on Earth-616, Nigel Frobisher continues his long-running plotline. You remember what I wrote about body mod fic in the Lady Mandarin entry. Well, that's not the only fetish stuff that appears in late 1980s X-Men. Nanny would just about slip under the radar if we weren't looking for it (as has pretty much everything involving heroes being tied up), but now we're primed to see what we can find, there's adult baby and ageplay, well before the mass media coverage that that attracted in the early 1990s. The Frobisher plotline has feminization, where Frobisher is briefly transformed - against his will but in line with his innermost desire - to the form of Courtney Ross. It's immediately brushed off as a joke, but those few panels are no more an accidental invocation of this than I am a steeplejack.

Phoenix's costume is kind of a bit, too, and I don't just mean the spikes, when suspended upside down; Kitty is able to wriggle out from her boots (amateur work tying them up). But Ray admits that her boots go up to her neck. This sort of garment exists but is very specialist; typically catsuits are worn with separate boots, even in the fetish community. Even by comic book costuming standards, this is impractical. Catwoman doesn't wear one: the cover of the recent Catwoman #1 shows this quite clearly. And there would have to be a zip or other fastener, something Ray's costume does not appear to have. We know that Ray can shift atoms around to make clothes: is that how the Phoenix costume works? Did she magic it up around herself? She's three openings in her costume away from being Fetishman. Of course, this all ignores the fact that the costume was forced on her, back when she was a hound in the future, which isn't fetishy at all, no. In #16, she dresses up in a different costume entirely, to enter a tournament. This one is a bit more ponygirl.

This stuff, put together, makes the Hellfire Club and Emma Frost look vanilla.

Uncanny X-Men #256-#258: Lady Yellowface

Going by the cover dates Uncanny X-Men #256-#258 contains the first issue of the 1990s. And as if they already know what the decade is going to be like, the first thing they do is make one of their characters into a bloody ninja.

So.

The Mandarin. He's primarily an Iron Man villain, and he's going to be played by Ben Kingsley in this film that's coming out later this month. Do I need to go into his name? Mandarin is a word in English that originally referred to Chinese imperial bureaucrats. In this sense it has a bit of a perjorative usage. Because of this, it also the name used in English for the standard spoken Chinese used by the Chinese government, and also that of the northern varieties of Chinese spoken in the north. In both senses it is an exonym: a word applied to a group by others. Do you imagine Stan Lee knew any of this in 1964 when he invented the character? Of course not. Why then do I bring it up now? Because hey, it is the 1990s, and people really ought to be thinking.

So.

The Mandarin. Hong Kong. They tried to book Madripoor, but it was in use by a Wolverine storyline. OK, so can we get Wolverine? Psylocke. Mojo. Ninja brainwashing. Obviously ninjas have to be East Asian. Skin colour. Epicanthic folds, installed on a face hidden behind a mask. Psylocke becomes "Lady Mandarin", Mandarin's chief enforcer. Wolverine and Jubilee arrive on a boat; Wolverine disguises himself as "Patch", which worries Mandarin, and Psylocke is sent to deal with him. When the mask is revealed Wolverine recognises her. It's her face, just changed a bit for the 1990s. Psylocke takes a rare look inside Wolverine's head (and sees the Nick Fury and Carol Danvers inside there), a sight so shocking it breaks the conditioning.

The body transformation thing is just dropped in there as a minor detail. Well, beyond the Mojo-y dream sequence thing which reads awfully like bad transformation fic. I find it hard to believe this got published in a Code comic as far ago as 1989, before comics had really given up on the teenage market; but there it is, in front of me, in four (or more) colours. The colourist is told to draw her skin one shade darker. Betty doesn't even really acknowledge what happened to her physically, the real problem is the brainwashing. Lots of things will go back at look at the corporeal aspects. For now, the Japanification is just there as a fetish element.

And that's why it's - without question - problematic. If you had the exact same story elements used differently in a story that was actually about race, then could one make a case that it was worthwhile. That's not happened. It's a gimmick.

Still, we've not had much post-Lady Mandarin Psylocke to deal with yet; perhaps there will be some thoughtful consideration of identity (you'll note that in addition to having her appearance taken from her, she remains in the swimsuit with ribbons that she was assigned in this storyline - her codename had come from Mojo, too, back in the day) And she can compare notes with Sharon and Tom, who had a similar experience. But this story isn't it.

Marvel Comics Presents #38-#50

Marvel Comics Presents ran a Wolverine feature from issues #38 to #47, named "Black Shadow, White Shadow". This was written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by John Buscema. It offers a fairly simple story about monochromatic monsters that turn out to be manifestations of some guy's mind, and emphasises the idea of Wolverine as a someone who is by temperament a family man, but has been prevented from such from fate and his own decisions. I like how Logan starts wearing the Wolverine costume half-way through, and people call him "Patch" (with scare quotes, in dialogue).

#48-#50 runs another story, "Life's End", by Erik Larsen. This is one of the first Wolverine/Spider-Man team-up stories (the first was I believe Marvel Team-Up #117 from 1982). It's a combination that will later form (with Luke Cage) the core of the New Avengers, and I kind of like their chemistry here. The comedy aspect might be a bit too much for some, though: the story is a fairly simple team up to defeat a villain, but with added fourth-wall breaking. In particular: Spider-Man has become aware of how amazingly improbable his life is, and how all his supervillains turn out to be people that Peter Parker happens to know, even though so far as he knows his secret ID is solid. What gives? Having set this up, it then delivers a payoff by having one of the minions of Critical Mass be... Peter Parker's... dentist. Hah. Well-played, Mr. Larsen. Well-played.

New Mutants #81: Of Gods and Mutants 2

New Mutants 81 gives me cause to revisit Of Gods and Mutants, the post I made three months ago about how it was probably, on balance, a good thing that Dani's Cheyenne gods did not walk on page.

What I didn't note was that there was another member of the New Mutants who worshipped gods that definitely have been part of the Marvel universe. Amara, a.k.a. Magma (for her lava powers), is from a lost Roman colony in Amazonas. I called the story that she was introduced in profoundly offensive racist garbage, and I continue to stand by that. This story, while working with elements previously introduced, sort of understands what's gone wrong with them and seems to make amends. Claremont (for it is he, this is a fill-in issue set before Amara left the New Mutants, but with a hastily added extra three pages to make it a flashback) in the first page acknowledges the atrocities of actual European colonialism done in the name of Rome.

Magma, for all that she's supposed to be a product of a Rome/Incan hybrid culture, has instead been essentially treated as a time-displaced person from Ancient Rome. This story goes definitely takes that line, being about about what happens when someone comes face-to-face with one of their gods: it needs to be Hercules she believes in, not some syncretised version. She doesn't believe Hercules - who comes to her when she prays - to be him. It could just be a superhuman pretending to be a god, after all. Especially as Zeus plays the role of trolldad, by refusing to allow them to go to Olympus to show off. Amara eventually recognises Hercules. And although it's mostly played for laughs, Amara's underlying faith in her gods is treated with a profound respect, something that it would be easy not to.

X-Factor #43-#50: Judgment War

X-Factor #43-#50 is a quite long plot arc that takes place away from Earth-616. For some reason all the team books apart from Uncanny did that in summer 1989: Excalibur has started its Cross-Time Caper, and the New Mutants are in Asgard. I assume they just want to keep the other teams off-planet to make the plottings of Uncanny X-Men work.

X-Factor accomplishes this quite directly, by having the Ship take off into space, where they meet Celestials ("space gods") and get involved in all sorts of hijinks, before returning home in time for Acts of Vengeance. I have barely anything to say about it, so short post. Scott is still keeping little baby Christopher with him at all times, at least until Jean makes a telekinetic bubble for him to live in. I suppose he's overcorrecting. Really they ought to sort out a nanny, but Steve Ditko's finest creation has yet to come.

New Mutants #79-#80,#82-#85: Return to Asgard

Have you ever had one of those days when all you've tried to do is get some medical attention for your colleague who is a young mutant originally with the power of manifesting illusions, which lately have been actually solid, you end up in a fight with a government-sponsored mutant strike team where you have to defend another teammate from being taken away back to the naval prison you broke him out of, before you are then teleported, without warning by a surgeon-cum-sorceror, to Asgard? Yeah, me neither.

This story (New Mutants #79-#85, except that #81 is an unrelated fill-in issue) seems to go on far too long, though, and I'll have to confess that I kind of skimmed most of it. In what I flicked through there's a nice dynamic between the ex-X-Terminators and the original New Mutants. I imagine that's why they did the Return to Asgard story now, because it provides a background for the New Mutants to show off their otherworldliness to the X-Terminators.