Uncanny X-Men #238/X-Factor #35: Before Combustion

Uncanny X-Men #239 and X-Factor #35 are both issues on the periphery of Inferno. Let's start with Uncanny #239 first: in New York, weird happenings occur: the chief and most noticeable of these being the growth of the Empire State Building.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the X-Men are going about their business. Danger room, singing, etc. Storm is fiddling around with the Reavers' computers, doing a vanity search, and finds reference to X-Factor coming out as mutants and sees a woman who looks awfully like Jean Grey. She grabs Wolverine, who sheepishly admits that he knew all along. Or at least, he'd caught her scent a couple of times. Is this the reason why this bunch of X-Men was put in Australia, as much to sequester them from the X-Factor news, as to avoid word leaking out about their survival? And, Maddy and Alex are added to the Chart after the end of page 26.

Sinister still thinks the X-Men are dead, and is eulogising them one-by-one, not dissimilar to his obituary for the team in #544. We learn a little about Sinister. He says that he knew Havok had "potential", "from the first", "in those longago days before you ever heard the word 'mutant'". And he calls Madelyne is his "pride [and] joy". And he is interested in Baby X: which he here calls "Nathan Christopher Charles Summers". A screen shows he's in a tube somewhere. Since Rachel already knew that he was called Nathan, I think it's fair to assume that this is in fact the name of the baby as registered, rather than Sinister's invention.

We learn a bit more about Maddy's plans, too. She wants the baby back, has made a deal with N'Astirh, where she'll be told the location of the Marauders so she can find Baby X and take revenge.

Meanwhile, over in X-Factor #35, Scott and Jean have gone to Scott's old orphanage in Nebraska, which Destiny's clue interpreted by Ship has pointed at. Some hints are dropped here: expansions of what we know about Scott's backstory. A mysterious kid called Nathan is mentioned, who Scott had always saw as a simple bully, but we can see he knows Scott will get his optic blasts (he might have seen an accidental use of them when Scott was first brought in), and is trying to goad him into using them.

Downstairs they find a collection of babies. Young Baby X, (Christopher), is among them. Jean and Scott resolve to save them all. Unfortunately, demons have been sent, looking for children (see tomorrow's X-Terminators post), and another new villain, Nanny is seeking to take custody of them, too. The demons get Christopher, Nanny gets the others: including Sara Grey's children who are also here. Well, that's two steps forwards, three steps back...

Wolverine #4-#8: What Immortal Hand or Eye

Wolverine #4-#6 continues immediately from that first arc for Jessica Drew and Lindsay McCabe, but Wolverine's chronology at the MCP places Uncanny #232 though to #243 - including all of Inferno between the issues. Apparently they've just been hanging around there for weeks waiting for Patch to get back? There's a long rationale for it, which brings in non X-Men books, so I don't care, I'm doing it now.

The story opens with the by-now familiar trope of an old friend of Logan's, who we've never heard of before, and is generally either dead already or is killed in the first few pages. Teebore identifies it here as starting with Asano in the Claremont/Miller miniseries. There's a structural reason it has become so commonplace in the Claremont/Buscema run already, and that's the tension between the attractive idea of Wolverine's backstory being explored by meeting old friends, and the narrative's need to keep his identity quiet. If the X-Men hadn't have been in hiding and presumed dead when Wolverine's solo title launched, there'd be no need for all these people to die. And then he'd be able to actually use the name "Wolverine" in a series called that.

Our old friend this time is Chancellor Ranjamaryam, an advisor to the prince, who is killed because he is sympathetic to Tiger Tyger's burgeoning new crime empire. When this comes to Wolverine's attention he decides to look into the matter himself. He'd had dinner that night with a person with a smell he's sure he recognised: Karma.

Karma hasn't been seen since New Mutants #54; where she'd left to look for her brother and sister. Logan confronts her alone without letting on who he is. She misses the opportunity to explain what had motivated her to work for her crimelord uncle again. (Logan would surely have added it to his TODO list). Nyugen Ngoc Coy is planning on making a play to be Kingpin of Madripoor (after having been ejected from San Francisco), with the connivance of the prince now that Ranj has been removed and a couple of new entries for Wolverine's rogues gallery: Roughouse and and Bloodscream.

Logan is still not exactly an enthusiastic supporter of Tyger Tiger, but she's cracked right down on the slavery and the drugs, whereas Nyugen has no such compunctions. Logan takes a typically direct approach, by going to the appropriate section of the Golden Triangle (real), and destroying a very large amount of Nguyen's heroin, with the help of Archie Corrigan (a potential traitor), which will put him out of action for a bit.

Meanwhile, an injured Tyger Tiger (she survives an attack by Nyugen's minions thanks to sabotage from Karma) and the Drew/McCabe team seek refuge at Landau, Luckman & Lake, and the mysterious Mr. Chang. This bit is very curious: it appears Chang is acting as a supplier for the X-Men, as he is able to supply a metal battlesuit like the sort we've seen Psylocke wear, being held for Logan. And they notice a tintype (misspelled tinytype here) photograph of Logan with Mr. Chang, which they date to the 19th century, implying a Logan who is as old - if not older - as the one ultimately revealed by Origin. The inquisition is cut short, though, by some fighting, which kills Mr. Chang and leaves the building in rubble.

Issue #6 is a massive fight scene between the parties (the captured three, Patch, Karma, and Nyugen's henchman). This is stopped by the Prince, who had (a) wanted a quick coup, none of this messiness, and (b) turns out to be a Lindsay McCabe fanboy. A compromise is reached. This is very sudden and I detect an editorial hand behind the pages. We then progress, for #7-#8 into a fairly throwaway story with Mr. Fixit (aka the Hulk: at this point he is grey, intelligent, and only comes out at the night), who has been sent to assist? Nyugen but ends up being suckered by Patch into destroying his operation.

Excalibur #4-#5: Excalibur Meet Arcade

Excalibur #4-#5 features Arcade, and despite not being any different to normal, he's understated in it. This is because he has hired Wimbledon F.C. as minions. I think I've got that right, anyway. Arcade's plan is the usual: capture a loved one (in this case Courtney Ross, as Brian's actual girlfriend, Meggan, is powered), and set traps waiting for the heroes to arrive. In this case he's doing it for revenge rather than cash. And he's doing it as a disused steelworks in Strangeways in northern England.

They go stumbling in and there's a new element in an Arcade story as his minions bodyswap with Excalibur. Ray is taken out of action by possession, lest she break the story. (There's some linkage with Inferno setup there, but it's not clear to me what's going on. Interesting fact: she thinks Baby X is called Nathan. She should know, since she was with the team around the time he was born.) Kitty remains free, and is able to convey to Courtney the information necessary to bodyswap everyone back.

And... in the soap opera bits: Meggan nearly manages to seduce Nightcrawler (I'm going to need to carefully examine their next appearances); Saturnyne swaps places with Courtney; and Brian takes some flowers to !Courtney. Kissing happens. Chart might need updating.

Issue #4 wins my prize for best cover yet:

Alan Davis writes about it here, and spoils the mystery. It was just a cheap gag because the first issue was all setup.

BritWatch

Well. Chris Claremont takes several hundred Brit points by having it be a plot point in #4 that Marks and Spencers refused to take credit card payments (that's why Kitty had to use cash to pay, which was subsequently found to be bogus).

I almost forgive him for having Captain Britain say "strewth". Curiously urbandictionary makes the same mistake, and perhaps for the same reason Claremont did. Yes, it does appear in episode 1 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, said by a man from Guildford. But it is put in the mouth of a man who is called "Bruce Foster" and has, for that one syllable he utters, a bad Australian accent.

It is clarified that the lighthouse is on the western coast of England. This consists of two distinct stretches from the Solway Firth to the River Dee; and then from the the Severn Estuary down to Cornwall. My guess would be that it is on this second, south-western stretch, because that would be more Celtic; but somewhere in Cumbria is always an option. It appears to be not that far from a major town. Kitty calls it the "middle of nowhere", but then she is a Chicago girl who spent much of the last year in suburban New York.

There is a real Strangeways, in Manchester, better known as the location of HMP Manchester, and immortalised in the album by the Smiths. But Manchester has never been known for its steel.

Uncanny X-Men #235-#238: Holiday in Genosha

Uncanny X-Men #235-#238 is a ridiculous retcon that shouldn't work. We are supposed to imagine that there has been a highly-advanced nation, Genosha, built on mutant enslavement, all along, and that nobody mentioned this until now (its existence is outright contradicted by dialogue in #200 which explicitly mentioned systemic oppression of mutants as a theoretical thing rather than something happening in the world right now.)

But, actually, I don't care. Genosha is a fantastic idea, and yes, it would have been better if Claremont had written it in a hundred issues ago, or even if Stan Lee had written it into #4 as the nation that Magneto was overthrowing, or whatever. But that didn't happen, and it's only now (possibly to provide an example of what Mutant Registration could lead to if the government tries to enforce it).

So, what exactly is going on in Genosha, anyway? Well, we're told it is an island country north of Madagascar, and that it owes its wealth - which supports a first-world lifestyle for "ten million" people - to the results of slavery of a "few hundred" mutants. This is seems like unfortunately broken worldbuilding. Mutants should be really very rare, and yet we see them randomly in city scenes. You wouldn't waste one by using their extra-long limbs to pick up garbage, for example. And there would be no need for mutant-only railway platforms. Still, it's a very powerful idea, and it can withstand the details now being quite right yet. The enforcers are called Magistrates, and the chief of their number a woman named Anderson, in what I take to be another Dredd reference.

We're also told - in an attempt to justify why it had never been mentioned in the more than 300 other X comics that - that they have been able to keep the oppression secret, despite open segregation on the streets, and despite the country sending "Press Gangs" abroad to abduct people. Fine, whatever. Just get on with it.

Apart from the concept, there is some character work for some of our team who had been stuck in a rut. Wolverine admits that his claws kinda rely on his healing powers to not kill him: when he is depowered he starts to die (possibly from adamantium poisoning although I don't think that's made explicit). Rogue, when depowered, takes on the persona of Carol Danvers. Together, the two of them, as Ace and Patch, take a tour of Genosha and expose its nature to the Genegineer's son. He and his girlfriend - whose extrajudicial extradition had been the proximate reason for the X-Men getting involved - leave with the X-Men. Wolverine threatens that Genosha had better get its shit together, or they'll blow the entire thing sky high.

The fact that enslaving a few hundred mutants can result in such a boost to a country's economy - and we're not talking a tiny little island nation here, but talking something with the population of Portugal - implies that similarly powered mutants in less segregationist parts of the world would be able to get a very good wage, which is a curious result. Mutant dominance of the world could be economic dominance?

Keep Calm and Carry On X-Men

If, as SpaceSquid agrees, the Carry on X-Men poster is the pinnacle of human achievement, then it is surely a calamity of the greatest order that the art (without the distressing or lettering, if you're wondering) was still available for sale in Chris Weston's art folder at London Super Comic Con this weekend. I briefly but seriously considered buying it before realising that I did not in fact have a thousand quid burning a hole in my pocket.

That is all.

Wolverine #1-#3: Multitasking Is My Mutant Power

Wolverine #1-#3 is much stronger than the Marvel Comics Presents Wolverine story. That had somehow ended up feeling like a generic Wolverine-in-Madripoor story, even though it was the very first one. This is another Wolverine-in-Madripoor story, but despite being an immediate follow-up is a little more distinctive, as his worlds collide.

Wolverine is in Madripoor on Wolverine-in-Japan-related business travel. There's a talisman being couriered to Mariko, and someone had murdered an entire 747 of people to get information about it. Wolverine has revenge to take, and people to protect.

Problem is the courier is Lindsay McCabe, Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman's business partner, who knows him as Wolverine. And he doesn't want to break the "X-Men are dead" line. So he wears and eyepatch and calls himself Patch. What he doesn't do is skip the morning hair routine, but then how else would we know it was him?

Lindsay is just a decoy: Jessica is being sent with the real thing. The Silver Samurai finds out and attacks her, and we find out that the item is the Black Blade, which is like the Black Blade, but more Japanese, which is to say it gives its bearer supernatural powers. Drew uses it to defeat the Samurai, and then we discover it has possessed her and Wolverine has to take her down. Unfortunately, this doesn't work out very well and he merely becomes the latest victim of the weapon.

This is probably not a great thing to happen, especially as its plan is to sacrifice Jessica. So, Lindsay, Samurai and O'Donnell from the MPC story team-up. The end is an anticlimax: the Samurai takes the blade, is not transformed because handwaving, and then Wolverine allows him to walk off with it, apparently content that none of his allies died. The 747 of people is forgotten. It's plain that Samurai recognised Logan for who he was, even if Lindsay and Jessica are none the wiser, so perhaps Logan is doing the discretion rather than valour thing.

The Black Blade is described as a "dai-katana", which is not in fact the name of a type of sword; but that didn't stop John Romero making a game called it, which features a sword with special powers (of time travel, as I understand it). Romero attributes the name to a D&D campaign that he and other people at ID played when they were just starting (in the early 1990s). I'm guessing John Carmack got it from here: he certainly knows his comics. In any case, "katana" (かたな) is just Japanese for any type of sword. Its use in English to mean a Japanese sword is a typical example of semantic narrowing when words are borrowed. Wolverine should know better: but unfortunately Claremont does not.

Classic X-Men #26: The Tony Slattery of Mutants

Who is Tony Slattery, you might be asking? And what does this have to do with Classic X-Men #26.

I grew up, as I think I've mentioned before, in a telly-obsessed middle-class family in the English Midlands in the 1980s and 1990s. We used to watch a lot of panel shows. The British culture of panel shows is a thing of particular uniqueness. Sure, other countries might have a panel show or two or three, but they likely don't have a panel shows circuit. When I was was growing up we would watch A Question of Sport, Have I Got News For You, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, They Think It's All Over, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Vic and Bob's Shooting Stars, and (if school was out) Call My Bluff. Different in content and tone, but likely to have much of the same sort of guests. HIGFNY is still part of my adulthood (I watch irregularly, if I remember, and go to a recording every couple of years - last time I hit the jackpot by getting the one with Nigel Farage and Harry Shearer), supplemented by a bit of Mock the Week; and a smidgeon of QI, although I tend to find that too smug.

Now, you may be very well be wondering what this has to do with X-Men. And you would be right. So perhaps I had better cut to the explanation: Tony Slattery was an actor and comedian, and a regular on many of these so-called "panel shows". He was on quite a lot of them. And I mean that in the English sense of "quite", which is to say a metric fucktonne. Sometimes you would be watching Tony Slattery on a panel show and change channels and then there he was on another panel show.

In other words, Tony Slattery is a lot like Wolverine.

In this backup story from Classic X-Men #26, it is revealed that Wolverine is more ubiquitous than previously implied, and he used to know Sean Cassidy back 20 years ago, and this just hadn't been mentioned before. This is part of a new wave of plot development, in which Wolverine will be given a secret history with every named Marvel character, including those he probably shouldn't, like prominent Avengers such as Captain America.

Mr. Slattery vanished from our screens in 1996, and people, who had previously made jokes about his omnipresence, were worried. It was eventually revealed he had a breakdown. He got better.

Hope the same thing doesn't happen to Wolverine. He's on every team going now, after all, and the load is surely going to get to him. Although this is often attributed to cynical sales-grabbing, I think he works well as a character in environments where he's out of his depth a bit. Since he is unbeatable in combat, he therefore needs to be presented ethical or social problems he can't solve simply with his claws. And some of the criticism I've seen of this is just straight facile nonsense, as if it a character saying one thing ("I'm a loner") but doing another (join all the teams) was incomprehensible, rather than, you know, a basic literary technique.

Meanwhile, Britain's addiction to panel shows continues unabated. Red Nose Day 2011 saw a 24-hour panel marathon in which David Walliams took part in all 19 shows. It can only get worse.