Classic X-Men #16: How I Met Your Mother

Classic X-Men #16 reprints X-Men #109 (which shows us Sean and Moira getting it on), backed up with a new tale of how Sean met Terry's mother. I'm afraid we'll have to wince through Claremont's Ireland. First up, he describes the Partition:

Sixty-odd years ago, the island was split by treaty into the Irish Republic and Ulster -- the five counties of the north, which remained part of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.)

Either someone involved in the making of this comic has made a very basic mistake, or County Fermanagh is part of the Republic in the Marvel universe! Let's go with that latter one. So, a young Sean Cassidy is being harrassed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary's finest. He is returning home to Mayo after having gone to a concert in Derry. Presumably a county and western concert, given his established taste in music. This is described as a "long way off his patch". He says he missed the last train. Given the journey he's making, possibly by several decades.

Anyway, while the RUC are harrassing our Sean, a passing motorcyclist rescues him. The situation quickly degenerates, and the RUC follow Sean in hot pursuit over the border. They lose the motorcycle, fall, and Sean demonstrates his mutant abilities by flying them back to the castle.

There he is surprised to discover that his new associate is an attractive young woman - Maeve Rourke (Terry's mother). They are soon taken with each other. His cousin, Tom, attempts some cockblocking and provides a third point in a love triangle, which possibly is the cause of their longstanding emnity.

The story stops rather abruptly.

Fallen Angels #1-#8: the Original Misfits

Fallen Angels is an 8-issue 1987 miniseries created by Jo Duffy (writer) and Kerry Gammill (penciller, although not for the entire run). It's not got "X-Men" on the covers (well, not the original covers anyway), but treating it here, as we'll see, is a no-brainer.

Our main X-characters are Bobby (Sunspot) and Warlock, who you know; Theresa Rourke (Siryn), who we just caught up on, and James Madrox (Multiple Man), who we thought we knew. I'd had difficulty seeing Peter David's Madrox in the young James we'd seen before, and this is why: Duffy invents him here. Bobby has run away from the mansion after a tantrum/ostracism escalation, and Terry and Jamie are sent to locate him in the bustle of New York City. They are shown to have a strong pre-existing friendship, and are being written as older than the New Mutants but still teens, perhaps Karma's age. Madrox is still a noob (this is only his second trip to Manhattan), but he quickly becomes a far more confident man than the mouselike chap that Claremont had him. There is even a rogue dupe!

It also picks up Boom Boom and the Vanisher, from X-Factor. Throw in a few new characters: Chance, Gomi, Ariel (who vanished without trace until the X-Office brought her back for 2010's Second Comings), and even a dinosaur, and voilá. In this it serves as much a prototype for Runaways as anything (Bobby, Warlock and Terry have supervillainry in the family, you'll note), except that Vaughan's group have no Fagin.

To describe it as lacking a strong plot would be entirely true. One of its chief weaknesses is that it's just events happening, with no real overall through-line. And yes, at the end nothing has changed, if you look at it that way. Unless you count that little detail of Bobby's personal growth - the thing that led to the series in the first place. And for all the faults with its dialogue (which are numerous), it manages to portray a much more relevant street scene than Claremont and Simonson are doing with the Morlocks: these are actual people, even the ones who are aliens and technoörganic entities, whereas the Morlocks - even those who are seeing development, such as Masque and Callisto - are treated as the Other, their backgrounds and motivations left obscure. What is missing is the marriage of the two approaches: the working out of the political and social implications of a real mutant subculture: a genuine look at the question "what if there were mutants with special powers? how would society treat them" from the tradition of speculative fiction. I am afraid we're going to have to wait until X-Men #114 before we get it. If not later.

Right, entry done. Now I'm going to watch series 4 episode 8 of Misfits on E4. It's this funny show about a bunch of delinquent youths who got powers in a storm one day. One of them is a chap who makes duplicates of himself which have different personalities. Funny how these things work out.

Spider-Woman #37-#38: Siryn

I should have done this one in September or October. Oh well. Still, not too late now. So, let's pretend it is six years ago, 1981 again. Uncanny is still in the #140s, there's no Rogue, no New Mutants, Kitty Pryde is a n00b. Jean Grey is dead, there are no Morlocks to massacre, Magneto is evil, and nothing could stop the Juggernaut. That last one's easy, at least.

So. Spider-Woman #37-#38. Jessica Drew wants to get a P.I. license, and is trying to persuade Nick Fury to be a character reference, but without admitting her name to him. (hmm, a superpowered private detective, there's mileage in that idea.) She is caught in a scheme by Black Tom, the Juggernaut and Black Tom's niece, Theresa, using the codename Siryn. She is Banshee's daughter that he never knew existed and gets rescued from their clutches, obv, but is mostly there as a story hook. The X-Men arrive, tracking her on Cerebro (it still being early enough that they seem to be following every lead they can, even though we'll later find out this cannot be true). Siryn's relationship with her father ought to be part of this, but it will not be immediately explored: Banshee isn't even part of the team at this point. Siryn makes a brief appearance in Uncanny #148, but then is just forgotten about, and won't appear again until 1987's Fallen Angels.

Her absence from New Mutants is difficult to explain. One could make the case that Moira wouldn't send her not!stepdaughter to the Westchester meatgrinder... except that she did send Rahne. And why did the Mutants never meet her when they visited? They even met Jamie! In this context the fact that Michelle vanishes makes a lot more sense.

Incidentally, I found the use of a character called "Ben Disraeli" in this story really distracting. Imagine if a British comic called a character "Ulysses Grant" and then didn't have anyone make any jokes or references to it.