Review: Claremont’s Final Chapter
Well this is it. This is the last review I’m going to write for this blog. It covers the last chunk of Chris Claremont’s original run on Uncanny X-Men, along with the crossovers and spinoffs that accompany it. I was thinking that this was going to be a lot more comics, because I completely forgot that I already wrote a review covering the big three X-Men crossovers from the 1980s (Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, and Inferno). How does that happen? How do I just completely forget that I did bunch of work on a review that’s barely two years old? I’ll tell ya how. Early onset Alzheimer’s. Or maybe I’m busy and not as focused on this blog as I used to be. Nowadays it’s all I can do to keep my queue from emptying out while doing one post a day. I’m a shadow of my former hilarious self. But I still want to tie a bow on what I’ve been doing here for the past seven years, and I guess that’s kind of what this is. I set out with a goal, to read every X-Men comic ever written. How that was to be defined, I didn’t know, but at the very least it was going to include everything up to the end of Claremont’s big run, which I have now accomplished. I’m anxious to keep reading, but I think I’m done writing for now, and maybe indefinitely. I dunno. I haven’t decided yet and I don’t want to speak in absolutes. Only a Sith speaks in absolutes.
I mean how am I gonna be reading this and not be sprinting to my blog to shit post about it. It’s just not possible. I can’t call my mom and troll. “Yeah ma and then they did that shit where they smash the cake in each other’s faces and I puked all over everything! No ma, this was in a comic! A comic!”
For posterity sake, this reading and review cover the following:
Uncanny X-Men #244-279 New Mutants #74-100 X-Factor #40-70 Excalibur #8-25 X-Force #1-4 X-Men Volume 2 #1-3 Days of Future Present Crossover Kings of Pain Crossover
This collection of comics is the most nostalgic for me. I didn’t start collecting Uncanny X-Men until around issue #250. I was a late comer. I had already missed the best stuff. But the X-Men were still at the top of their game, and this particular run represents the exact set of comics that captivated me as a child. I’m biased toward them. This is generally considered to be the weakest part of Chris Claremont’s 17 year long run, but I cannot find the objectivity to agree with this statement. And during this reading, where I actually got to read everything that lead up to this point in time for the X-Men instead of being cluelessly dropped into the middle of it and not even knowing how to pronounce a lot of the characters names, I found these stories to be even more enjoyable.
When I was a kid, I thought Psylocke was pronounced Pisey-locke. I thought Rogue was Roe-goo. One of my older brother’s friends heard me saying that shit and he laughed his ass off at me.
Tell me what’s wrong with this story. The X-Men have become legends, both in story and in real world pop culture, but then their team is decimated. Storm is killed. Colossus, Rogue, Psylocke, Havok, and Dazzler are consumed by Siege Perilous. Wolverine is captured and broken by an alliance of villains he personally carved into cyborgs during his previous adventures. And Longshot is . . . well nobody remembers what happened to Longshot. And with growing threats rising from all over the world, it’s left to the X-Men’s fourth string, students, and attendants to continue the fight. This was a dire time for the comic, and I think for many it deviated too far from what they had grown comfortable with. These characters were real for a lot of people, and they had been scattered, their family destroyed. There was a sense of tragedy and trauma. A great loss of safety and security for characters that were written so intimately they felt like close friends you visited once a month. But I loved it. These were my first X-Men stories. I was only beginning to form my bonds with these characters, and that process was aided by the narrative drive to see them reunited. For a kid in the 4th grade, this was Shakespearian.
And then Jim Lee came along and ruins everything.
No I didn’t cover the swimsuit issue. I mean, this is it. Here, I’m covering it. Look, Logan’s a never nude.
I mean, how can I say that. I actively concede that Jim Lee is the best X-Men artist. And that comes after years of maintaining this blog and meticulously reading every X-Men comic that was released, and falling in love with the work of Barry Windsor Smith.
Bill Sienkiewicz
Paul Smith.
Marc Silvestri.
And John Byrne was ok I guess.
In my opinion, as much as I love all those other artists, none of them can touch Jim Lee’s work on X-Men. They are all phenomenally gifted, but Jim Lee was somehow transcendent on a whole other level. And when his talent swirled with the particular aesthetic of the Uncanny X-Men, magic happened. Something new came into existence that permanently imprinted itself onto our pop culture.
From the characters themselves to crazy alien space-tech, you just can’t beat Jim Lee.
How is it then, that these were the comics, the last issues of Claremont’s run, that killed my interest in the series when I was younger? Claremont was still writing the scripts, but it was clear that something catastrophic had happened behind the scenes. Something was terribly broken. And as much as I wanted to assume that it was all in my head, that there couldn’t have been any hurt feelings because Claremont would return some day, and he would even go on to work with Jim Lee again on other projects, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I just watched the Comics In Focus documentary about Chris Claremont, and he tearfully describes his feelings at the time as being “betrayed.” You can feel that in the writing, and it does not make for good entertainment. The final few issues of this run are conflicted and strained, and tedious in their pacing. So unlike the effortless storytelling the series had become known for.
Reading these comics again all these years later brings back memories of why I quit collecting in the first place. By the very end of Chris Claremont’s run, after his narrative plans had been derailed by Jim Lee and their editors, the Uncanny X-Men weren’t stunning anymore. They didn’t stick in my brain and leave me awake at night with a mind full of wonder. They only left me with apathy. This is in contrast to how I felt when I first started reading the series and every issue was a revelation. But I can distinctly remember attempting to read X-Force #1 a second time, searching for some hook to keep me engaged, and there was nothing there. It was an empty, shallow experience that made me question whether I had outgrown the hobby. X-Men Volume 2 reinforced those concerns.
“The writer.” He can’t even be bothered to invoke his name. I’m just going to transcribe this part of the documentary and make some observations. “Comics were boring. Even Marc Silvestri, he’ll admit, he got bored.” This motherfucker thinks the X-Men were just dull as shit until he came along and saved the whole fucking thing. JFC. “Marc had already done the book for like, four or five years. And, but it’s not a job you, you don’t leave that job. It’s the best-selling comic.” This motherfucker thinks THE BEST SELLING COMIC, THE COMIC MORE PEOPLE WERE READING THAN ANY OTHER COMIC IN EXISTENCE was boring until he came along and saved the whole fucking thing. “And the writer had been on it for 15 years. You don’t think he’s burned out?” No Rob, it’s clear he wasn’t burnt out, and you deprived us of another 3-5 years of amazing comics. “It was like hey, the X-Men girls go shopping.” Hey I liked that issue. “In the next issue, the guys go to the mall.” That didn’t even happen! You drew that god damned book and you can’t even remember what it was about!! “And you’re like, this isn’t the X-Men I grew up loving! Where’s Magneto, where’s the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!? Where’s the stuff that’s gonna psyche me out?” Oh, like fucking Strife and Strobe and Thumbellina? Did that shit psyche you out Rob??
I have given up on X-Men three different times in my life. The first was in 1992, a direct result of the conflict that arose between Claremont and these idiot artists who would stick around for less than a year for abandoning the franchise completely, leaving it in shambles. Looking back at my collection, I made it to issue #7 of X-Men Volume 2 and I was done. The buildup to Onslaught brought me back in 1996, in particular the famous cover proclaiming someone had stopped the Juggernaut which I found in a back issue bin. But I did not last long, only seeing that storyline through and losing interest again by the time Heroes Reborn got underway and it was clear that the clowns in charge didn’t actually have any interesting story ideas past the initial Onslaught concept. Finally, in 2001 it was the one-two punch of Grant Morrison’s new X-Men and Claremont’s own X-Treme X-Men that brought me back one more time. And this time I stuck with it for a good 10 years before a combination of Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel’s agenda to bury the X-Men killed my interest in modern X-Men comics to this day.
I could not stand the idea of the original teenage X-Men becoming the main characters again. There was no blander, more basic concept in my opinion. Other than that shit Rob Liefeld came up with in X-Force.
Despite this on again off again relationship, the X-Men have always been with me. I have always wanted to stay engaged with what was going on in their lives. And that led to the creation of this blog. I wanted to start reading again, but the only way to do that was to start at the beginning and go from there. And I’ve loved reading almost every comic I read for this blog. Analyzing and summarizing each issue allowed me to recreate the experience of reading these comics as a kid, when I read each comic 5 or 6 times through the course of the month as I anticipated the release of the next and finally moved on. That reading pace is very hard to emulate in the age of collected editions, where we might instead read several issues in a single sitting and never look back again. It’s a completely different experience.
But going forward, I don’t think it’s going to be so important. I’m not going to want to linger on Scott Lobdell’s writing, or Rob Liefeld’s garbage artwork. I’m not going to want to struggle to think of something interesting to say about comics I’m apathetic toward. I’m going to keep reading, but I don’t know to what extent, if any, I’ll comment on them here.
Again, I don’t know how I’m going to be reading this shit and not need someone to talk to about it. So don’t completely give up on me.
I recently read through Sandman for the first time, in tandem with reading X-Men comics for this blog. It was obviously very good, but it was also very dense and challenging, and it took forever since I was splitting my comic book time with blog tasks. Then I finally read the deluxe volumes of Saga I’ve owned for years but haven’t had time to read. Compared to Sandman they were a light, breezy walk through a sunny, petal soaked field. It made me excited to read some more of the independent books I've collected over the years. Oh and there’s also these.
I’m way overdue here. I bought all these books and have yet to crack any them open. But every single day they call to me. But of course I can’t start with these. I’m going to read Hickman’s Fantastic Four first, and then his Avengers, and then Secret Wars, and THEN I’ll read these. The time has come for me to start reading modern X-Men again.
In case you can’t tell, this review is also serving as a retrospective for this blog in general. Sorry to spring that on you. I really, really appreciate those who read along with me, corrected my mistakes, offered better insights than I could come up with, and explained the shit that went straight over my head. It wasn’t like reading these comics in a vacuum like I did when I was a kid. It was like being part of an awesomely nerdy reading group. I appreciated every single like and comment you made, and those who stuck with me for an extended period. I saw every engagement you made, even if that wasn’t obvious. I don’t know if this will be my last post, but this is it for now. Thanks everyone.