X-Factor #65-#68: The End is Nigh

X-Factor #65-#68 is a postscript to an era. All the X-Men reunited as One Big Team after the X-Tinction Agenda saga, but the titles are proving resistant to actually doing anything with this yet. While the X-Men proper are in Uncanny dealing with the Xavier situation, the remaining five original mutants remain in New York, having one last adventure as X-Factor.

X-Factor - this iteration of it anyway - had to end like this. The original premise was the five of them reunited again to fight mutant problems in New York City. Along the way they lost their original shtick of being fake mutant hunters and in its place acquired a fuck-off massive spaceship in the city.

Now that the X-Men are gathering again, now that the construction crews in Westchester are readying their pencils and inks, we have no place for Ship. Fortunately Ship came with its own kill switch. It came by way of Apocalypse, and X-Factor have never satisfactorily understood it. It is this vulnerable to a large storyline involving him. But it has to be a big story - perhaps his biggest - if we are to have such a big status quo change as a result. The way it sort of manages that is by throwing crossovers at the page. First Avengers (briefly) and then, more substantially, the Inhumans.

Ah, the Inhumans. Again, a major part of the Marvel cosmogony that we are only talking about as we get to the 1990s. If they have crossed over with the X-Men before it had been in other pages. Our exposition on them comes courtesy of Beast, who would have worked with them before (perhaps fought them) during his time on the Avengers. Beast's time on the Avengers has been somewhat of an ignored point as far as this series goes - but then, X-Factor has always been a contradiction. A team of renegade outlaws funded by a well-connected millionaire, and staffed by said millionaire, a respected former member of the most important superhero team, an accountant, and a woman who had been brought back from the dead by the collective efforts of not just the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. They've had their losses - Angel in particular, but this is a team of winners who have been befallen by circumstances, not the bunch of misfits that X-Men wants to be.

The Inhumans are what the X-Men tend towards. Whereas Cyclops acts like the king of the mutants (with Jean his Red Queen), the Inhumans are explicitly led by their monarch, Black Bolt or, to give him his full name, Blackagar Boltagon (that never gets old). Like the mutants the Inhumans are humans plus: in the case of the mutants this arises spontaneously (or so we think). For the Inhumans it is a combination of long-ago genetic manipulation by the Kree, combined with activation by the terrigen mist. There are other differences. The Inhumans are a race, a distinct group, as opposed to the distributed minority that the mutants form. The Inhumans have a royal family formed by blood, whereas the X-Men are the ultimate in found family.

In this story, the X-Men are trying to make a transition to blood family. This is in the form of Baby X, Nathan Christopher, the son son of Cyclops (in truth) and Marvel Girl (in spirit if not in literal truth). If he is raised to adulthood without major trauma they have succeeded. But also at that point the X-Men is if not over them certainly then this generation of characters are no longer usable in the same way. This is something the X-books are still not ready to do, even in 2014, although they are perhaps the closest of all of Marvel's line to allowing it.

Scott's eventual assumption of the role he had pretended to take in the X-Terminators is many years down the line, but we can see the seed of it here, as Baby X, who had been terminally infected by Apocalypse, is taken into the future to survive. Coming to it over twenty years later, we know he'll become Cable, and he'll raise another child in the future in turn, who will return as a messiah. None of this is planned yet (well, perhaps Cable=Baby X), but the story is very forward-looking. The last dialogue spoken in #68 (other than by the Watcher), is by Scott, to Charlotte Jones:

You're wrong, sergeant. It hurts. It always will. More than I could put words to. But the dream that bound us all together - X-Factor and before us the X-Men - was based on hope.

(their emphasis) Hope is coming.

X-Marathon, now on tumblr

Hello!  I'm making this post to tell people reading this at the original blogspot location that we are now automatically mirrored to X-Marathon on tumblr.    I suppose people on tumblr will also see this (assuming the plumbing is working properly now, which is the real reason why I'm making the post), in which case hello!  I see we have a few followers already, presumably from tags?

Uncanny X-Men #274-#277: All Hail the Chiefs

Uncanny X-Men #274 is, I think, the first issue to be narrated by Magneto. Having rescued Rogue in #269, he's gone to the Savage Land with her for a team-up with Ka-Zar and a show-down with Zaladane, who is using her magnetic powers in a way that might threaten the Earth. He encounters the mess of a much earlier expedition of his to the area, in the form of the Savage Land Mutates. Zaladane has also come to the attention of Nick Fury and SHIELD. Unusually they team up, despite the reservation of Colonel Semyanov, whose son was killed when Magneto destroyed the Leningrad

Magneto is introspective and moody in a way we've never quite seen before. The flashback to the firing squad is particularly effective - and will form a centrepoint of Pak's Magneto: Testament miniseries 17 years from now. He disassociates himself from his earlier "insane" actions, comparing them to Zaladane's now, but also is unable to apologise or take responsibility for them - the Leningrad did nuke him, yes, but he was blackmailing the world with demands to be made dictator. Another new wrinkle is Rogue's claim that Magneto hates Russians for the death of his daughter Anya, which is compared to Semyanov's vendetta. It unfolds unsurprisingly, Semyanov sells Magneto out to Zaladane, and then Fury/Magneto/Rogue win anyway. What is Magneto like in victory, though? Not, it turns out, magnanimous. Indeed, he declares his period of reform over: he needs to protect mutants (but without being a cackler himself), and says that a "kindler, gentler Magneto" cannot save them. He vamooses, presumably to take up villainry once more.

This arc introduces the idea of Rogneto. In a fairly creepy way, it has to be said, Magneto is perving on a Rogue who is not her usual self and clearly lacking in judgement (why are they killing people she asks, aren't they supposed to be the good guys? Uh No.) Thankfully the matter is dropped and then never referenced again.
 
In our other plot, for some convoluted reason the X-Men (Storm, Wolverine, Banshee Jubilee, Forge and Gambit) were teleported away from Earth by Lila Cheney to the eternal Shi'ar civil war. Deathbird is empress right now, and the rebels the Starjammers (Corsair, who just happens to be Cyclops's dad) are fighting to reinstate her sister Lilandra to her rightful place on the throne. If I were them I'd be trying to undermine the entire system of Imperial rule, but perhaps they are expecting plum ministerial positions under the new regime... at least until she gets turfed out again.) The war is not going well for Deathbird, largely because Lilandra's consort is a highly powerful telepath: Charles Xavier, who also happens to be the founder of the X-Men! But Xavier is possibly secretly evil and doing a bit of genocide on the side. Except then it turns out he is a Skrull, and so are the rest of the Starjammers! And they've got the real Xavier kidnapped! And then they free the real Xavier! And then they defeat the Skrulls! And then Lilandra and Deathbird actually do the "our division caused us to be weak against our enemies, let's make up" dance.

At the end, Storm infodumps enough of the disasters to have happened to the X-Men since Xavier left, and he learns of the rise of the Shadow King. Xavier agrees to come back with them, setting the stage for our next arc, Claremont's penultimate hurrah.

I believe this is the first intrusion of the Skrulls into the X-verse; certainly it's the first time I've written about them on the blog (apart from a passing reference to John the Skrull). The Skrulls are a race of alien shape-shifters originally introduced as villains in Fantastic Four #2. In that very first story a small advance party are brainwashed into thinking themselves cows. They go on to be frequent antagonists in Marvel: a Super-Skrull, Kl'rt, who combines the powers of the Fantastic Four, is introduced in FF #18 (it's this job that Xavin out of Runaways is training for), and fight the Kree, another alien race, in the pages of Avengers; and their latest invasion of Earth was the topic of the Secret Invasion crossover.

All these alien races were made up independently: the Skrulls in those very early days of the Marvel Silver Age; the Kree a bit later, in FF #65, and then the Shi'ar in the 1970s in these very pages. These, then are the Big Three Marvel Alien Species. Rather than anyone having sat down and worked this out, this is worldbuilding through crossover, things in a shared universe being patched together to form a galactic quilt. But that's just a larger-scale version of a continuity that allows Doctor Strange and Iron Man to co-exist; throw everything at a particularly sticky wall and watch it not going anywhere. Because... indeed, it's not going anywhere. It's rare for cosmic dynastic stories to have a point: it's just The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on repeat. If I wanted that, I'd just read Foundation again.

New Mutants #98-#100: No New Mutants

For all that I waffle about comics, I don’t talk about comic art much, which is a habit I am trying to break.  So, let's talk about the art of this final arc of New Mutants.  As I have been reading more of this era I am starting to appreciate what artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (who is the guilty party for New Mutants #98-#100) were trying to do.

Before you start up the flamethrowers, let me clarify.  Yes, they did not have the anatomy and often ended up drawing ridiculous contorted poses, but the generation of artists before that were not trying those poses at all.  They are doing stuff with perspective and angles and dynamism and action and composition and people coming at you from the weird directions and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but whatever happens it’s always new and different.  If we treat panels as shots in a film, they are an exciting wave of cinematographers.  (And that’s precisely how they were treating the panels.)  They were very raw but I can see why people got so into them.  They (well, most of them) got better at it, too, and them and the next wave, of people who have refined their techniques are responsible for lots of great comics art today.

What else do we have here?  Well, the cover for New Mutants #98 promises us three new characters!  Excite! These are a rather more heavily built Spider-Man lookalike called Deadpool, someone with a domino pattern on her face called... Domino.  And some chap called Gideon, who, with a name like that, is clearly going to be a major player in the future.

Deadpool has been sent by a Mr. Tolliver to assassinate Cable (who I will note he addresses as Nathan - I don't know whether that is a new thing or not though, due to not having been bothered to read the intermediate issues of New Mutants).  Deadpool is immediately a mercenary with a mouth on him, something that I think it's worth pointing out was a novelty at a time given the prevalence of the taciturn grim villain/anti-hero.  The fight is truncated by the arrival of Domino, an old friend of Cable, who has the pouches to prove it.  They send Deadpool back to Tolliver by mail.

Domino sticks around to help Cable recruit: the team has lost Warlock and Wolsfbane due to the recent crossover.  All previous New Mutants (Rusty, Skids, Xi'an, Amara, and Dani) are ruled out due to alignment or in some cases their faint hint of rubbishness.  While he's off headhunting John Proudstar from the Mass Acad, other students are evaporating (not literally - it's good to clarify that in a superhero comic), as Rictor goes off back to Genosha and Sunspot inherits his father's business, due to Gideon's machinations. (Gideon, by the way, turns out to be an old family friend of the da Costas.)  He just lets them fuck off, which annoys some of his team but not enough for them to fuck off too.

#100 introduces another couple of characters: Feral, an escaped Morlock who I am forever confusing with Wolfsbane, and Shatterstar from the Mojoverse.  Cable and the New Mutants protect these folks from their respective enemies and accepts their assistance in return for same.  At the end we get a few pages of cutaway to Stryfe, leader of the Mutant Liberation Front, who is on the last page dramatically revealed (I presume, it's oddly structured otherwise) to look quite a lot like Cable,  What a mystery!

Although clearly these issues are going to be important, they're also quite shit,  The plot is paper-thin, the characterisation subtle (in the sense, barely there, rather than that it's clever), and coming back to this series after a few issues doesn't make me worry about having missed anything good.  The end of the New Mutants is effectively arbitrary: it's already been X-Force for a while, but it's at this issue - apparently for no other reason than that they've finally got to issue #100, that they make a symbolic break, by leaving the basement of the mansion, and taking on the new name.

Incidentally Cannonball and Boom Boom clearly have a quick one in the woods between pages 33 and 34.  And by that I don't mean a pint.

Uncanny X-Men #273: Together Again for the First Time

The opening splash in Uncanny X-Men #273 is the happiest this project has made me.  The X-Men!  All in the same room!  As a team!  With captions!  We have here Storm, Cannonball, Banshee, Boom-Boom, Jubilee, Cable, Wolverine, Psylocke, Beast, Archangel, Rictor, Gambit, Iceman, Sunspot, Forge, Cyclops and Jean Grey.

Well, I say as a team.  In reality they are having a massive argument about what to do next, whether they should press on from their victory in Genosha to take out other threats.  Cable is keen on that, Cyclops and Storm (by the way did I mention she's an adult again now?) less so.

Cyclops and Storm discuss where to base the X-Men, since the security basement of the mansion is a bit cramped.  Storm agrees that moving to Australia was probably a mistake, but declines the offer of using X-Factor's Ship.  Jean decides to use Cerebro to track down other friendly mutants (Longshot, Dazzler, Rogue, for example), but no, she hasn't got her telepathy back, and she is owned by the Shadow King, whose storyline is looming.

Apart from the SRS BSNS, there's lots of fun bits of new characters interaction.  Wolverine and Gambit get some banter; while Iceman and Boom-Boom have a competition as to who is more immature (my vote is for Bobby).  And Psylocke gets one of the best lines ever, in response to being asked whether she had told her brother (Captain Britain) of recent events yet.  "And say what?  Hullo twin, guess who this is.  Back from the dead, just like you!  Remember last time we met and you couldn't believe I had purple hair.  Well, the hair's still purple."

Uncanny has stopped being a slog, if only for an issue or two.  Onwards! But not long now until the end...

posting frequency and general update

Incidentally, no, you are not mistaken, it is a Thursday.  We're going to be upping the posting frequency now, to 2 a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This is because I am feeling quite comfortable with the one a week rate and want to get a bit further ahead, but also because I am going to have a lot more time on my hands soon, having resigned from my job.  I'm going to spend a month off (by which I mean writing posts and possibly an Android game) before properly jobhunting.

Comics-making has been going well, but there's nothing really I can show anyone yet.  Well, apart from Lost in Bitstrips.

Oh, and I got a piece in the New Statesman, that was nice.  But that's nothing at all to do with comics!

X-Factor #63-#64: Drake out of Hell

X-Factor #63-#64 is a massive tonal shift from the doom-soaked epic of the X-Tinction agenda.  Instead we have a happy light story about the abduction of Opal,  Bobby's lover, by her blood grandfather, who turns out to be the head of a major Japanese crime syndicate. 

They the the snatch right there while Bobby is watching, but he can't do a thing to stop them (well, no successful thing anyway).  Although he is all "this is something I have to [do myself]", he is persuaded to allow the rest of X-Factor to come along for the first half, and also relies upon the help of Mariko, Wolverine's former flame and head of a rival Japanese crime syndicate.  It helps to have the right friends. (X-Men, man!)

When this was a Wolverine story, it was stained in blood and angst. Because it's Iceman, there's a limit to that: Opal's kidnapper is being explicitly generous with the terms of her abduction, and she even gets to pick which one of the five technically-enhanced goons (called - get this - "cyberpunks") he will force her to marry.  Isn't that charming, it's almost like a romantic comedy - especially with Hiro, the most well-sketched of them.  He didn't always want to be a cyberpunk,  you know, he has a poet's soul.

Opal gets some good bits, although they are scarce.  She is openly defiant initially, but then realises playing along might help, bidding her time until she can execute her plan.  A plan, which sadly, turns out to not involve any ass-kicking by her - just screaming for help at the right moment and hoping.  But at great personal risk.  It's agency, of a kind.

Bobby is not the wisest of the X-Men (hardly, it must be admitted, a high bar), and ends up in a a solo fight with this Hiro, having both agreed not to useI should hate this comic.  I wonder why I don't. their powers.  Love can make you do all sorts of things you might not have when you're sober, it turns out.  Bobby takes a pummelling  and Hiro somehow realises that he's not really deactivated his powers, they were built in.  For a minion of a major gangster, he's not a bad sort, so he lets the crazy kids go.  And only hours after he had been scaring her into marrying him.  Isn't that sweet?