The X-Axis – w/c 6 October 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #39. By Alex Paknadel, Tim Seeley, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, someone didn’t get the memo about “Age of Revelation”. Astonishing X-Men ploughs gamely on as normal. Then again, it might not have a choice, because this looks a lot like it’s meant to be drawing the book’s storylines to a head – Morph goes on trial after the previous arc, and the X-Cutioner attacks the court with a greatest hits selection of all the weapons he’s used in the series to date. So that sounds a lot like we’re getting to the pay off, and it wouldn’t be the first Infinity Comic they’ve wrapped up recently. Now, there’s an inherent problem in a marginal book like this trying to play the “mutant trial of the century” card – quite aside from the fact that Magneto and Cyclops have both been put on trial before – and it means that my plot problems with the previous arc are rolled forward to this one, since I don’t really buy that the ground rules of the Marvel Universe allow people to waltz in to nuclear facilities and launch missiles just because they happened to have a high security clearance a decade ago. And this book’s take on X-Cutioner has always been a bit one-dimensional as well. So… it clunks a bit, this. But we’ll see if it can pull everything together.
AMAZING X-MEN #1. (Annotations here.) It’s the first full week of “Age of Revelation”, and this is obviously the core series – the whole thing grows entirely out of MacKay’s X-Men. In many ways I’m happy to see that there’s a clear and contained core to the thing, rather than inventing all manner of busywork sidequests to justify all the tie-ins. From all we’ve seen so far, the answer to the question “Which Age of Revelation books do you really have to read to follow the event” is… this one. Just this one. And… great! It can outsource a bit of the world building to the other titles and focus on its own story, which ultimately seems to be an episodic road trip around the AoR, coupled with a mystery about why the future X-Men are clearly lying to Cyclops about at least some of this. And a subsidiary mystery about what’s up with the Beast; I suspect the twist here may be that he is from the past, but not from the same point in the past. I’m not entirely sold on Wolverine being so unstoppable that he can just get out of a black hole, and the art feels a bit muted at times… but then again, the sequence of Revelation reprogramming Wolverine is very nicely done. It’s a solid chapter of a relatively tight core story, anyway.
BINARY #1. (Annotations here.) But there are five “Age of Revelation” tie-ins this week alone, and eighteen in total over the course of the month. Now, obviously Marvel have access to rather better sales data than we do, but I beg leave to doubt that an X-books event in late 2025 is in any state to support 18 books. True, some of them are visitors from the wider Marvel Universe – in particular, Iron Frost and Undeadpool are basically the Iron Man and Deadpool books for the duration. And World of Revelation was a one-shot rather than a mini. But it still seems heroically optimistic.
Binary is effectively a continuation of Phoenix, although since that book doesn’t seem to be returning after “Age of Revelation”, it feels a little bit lost. Jean is supposedly dead, and Carol Danvers is the new Phoenix, but she’s been spending the last few years simply preserving her hometown in a bubble to keep the virus out. (There’s some handwaving stuff about limited communication with the outside to explain why everyone didn’t starve long ago.) It’s an odd issue, since Carol seems to have no agenda to do anything other than that – she’s not searching for a way to fight back, she’s not trying to find a way to safely evacuate, she just seems to want to sit there indefinitely. I can’t make up my mind whether that’s a potentially interesting set-up about resignation and depression, or just a three-issue miniseries not getting around to the inciting event in the first issue. Frankly, Stephanie Phillips’ preceding run on Phoenix doesn’t inspire confidence that she’ll stick the landing on an interesting idea. Giada Beluiso’s art is okay, but struggles to convey what’s going on at times – the bit with the serpent and the dome is just hard to follow, and I’m genuinely unsure whether the cliffhanger is meant to be that Jean is alive after all, or that Madelyne is back, or what. Perhaps we’re meant to be confused, but if so, that’s not an effective ending.
LAURA KINNEY, SABRETOOTH #1. (Annotations here.) This is the only book from this week to feature a character who sided with Revelation. I think Erica Schultz does a pretty good job writing Laura as a mutant nationalist who’s convinced herself she’s with the good guys, even though her doubts show through in her actions. Schultz also seems to have picked up on the opportunities to use “Age of Revelation” to advance ongoing stories: since this is only ten years in the future, you can use it for a bit of foreshadowing. So this story indicates that in the not too distant future, Laura will pair up with Sabretooth’s previously unmentioned son (who must logically exist in the present), and if that’s the planned direction for the title then it’s a smart use of the three issues. Except… ah, hold on, Laura Kinney, Wolverine isn’t returning after “Age of Revelation”, so scratch that. Instead, Laura seems to be taking the trainer role in the new school book – Generation X-23 – but that’s going to be written by Jody Houser. Huh. So maybe this is a detour? Or a plot we’re never going to see? Or… I don’t know. The material with Revelation manipulating Laura makes good use of the event format (since it’s more obvious that he’s lying if you’ve read some of the other books, but if you don’t know that then it’s not really a problem). The scenes with Hellion don’t work at all, though, and Valentina Pinti draws him far too young for ten years in the future. Laura’s son Alex just looks weird, too, which is a problem when he’s so central to the plot – he doesn’t feel like a child so much as a character drawn in a different style.
WORLD OF REVELATION #1. This one-shot is an anthology of three short stories. The only one with obvious significance to the wider event is “The Message” by Al Ewing and Agustin Alessio, which shows Bei’s message to Apocalypse (from Age of Revelation Overture) being received. But the story itself is basically a tour of Arakko to bring us up to date on what’s happening there now. In that sense it’s a coda to Ewing’s X-Men Red, with some nice location work from Alessio. If you enjoyed Red, you’ll probably enjoy this. “Never Let Me Go” by Steve Foxe and Jesús Merino is a Wiccan and Hulkling story which really exists to sell us on the horror of Babels, with Wiccan having the misfortune to serve as a warning for the wider superhero community. It has a simple job and it does it pretty well. Finally, Ryan North and Adam Szalowski provide a Franklin Richards story – well, that’s how it’s billed, but it’s really more of a HERBIE story. North is an essentially optimistic writer, not particularly suited to dystopias, but squares that off rather well by doing a “this too shall pass” story. Anthologies are not generally Marvel’s strong suit, but this is actually pretty good.
LONGSHOTS #1. By Gerry Duggan, Jonathan Hickman, Alan Robinson, Yen Nitro & Ariana Maher. Oh god, it’s a comedy book. And not just a comedy book, but a wacky comedy book. This is very much not my thing. I drew the line at Wolverine and the X-Men, for god’s sake. I mean, if you’re going to do eighteen tie-ins, then sure, absolutely throw in something left field – I hope there are a few more that try to go nuts within the format – but I really have less than zero interest in this.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #6. By Marc Guggenheim, Gerardo Sandoval, Victor Nava, Brian Reber & Travis Lanham. Because you demanded it – another issue of fill-in art on the book whose main selling point is Kaare Andrews! That said, Sandoval’s art in this issue is perfectly okay. And rather than start the second arc with guest art, this is a one-off story that would have made a perfectly serviceable Spider-Man fill-in. It’s nothing extraordinary but once it gets past talking about the previous arc, it’s an acceptable little story about the characters’ attitudes to mercy killing. And that’s a sound enough subject for a Spider-Man/Wolverine team-up story. The previous issues of this series were frankly bad if viewed as stories rather than as an art showcase; this one is fine, if unnecessary.
@Aro: To be fair, the bulk of the continuity headaches surrounding Psylocke didn’t come from Claremont – it’s the body swap/Kwannon/Revanche stuff that adds eight full pages of text to the character’s bio. Originally it was just a Rachel Dolezal Redesign, and not even the first time that happened (see Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander)
Also, re: the Dissolution/Shattered Star storyline leaving characters worse off for future writers… I don’t think that was *quite* the point where Claremont started contemplating being replaced. For all we know, he might not have intended to bring the Siege Perilous crew back at all.
> Aro>
The way the Uncanny team is deconstructed at the end of the Outback era in nonsensical ways is fascinating to me. I think by the end it left almost every character in worse shape for future writers. Psylocke and Rogue at least got ‘sexy’ new looks that are currently being mined for nostalgia, but the cost was being saddled with new continuity headaches that took decades to unravel, particularly Psylocke.
I’m not seeing how Rogue in particular was damaged by it. The main thing the Savage Land arc did with her was get rid of the Carol Danvers in her head, which has stuck. The AoA Rogue/Magneto pairing was probably inspired by it, but in-continuity she was lashed to Gambit fairly quickly afterward. And the “sexy” look (which was the tattered remnants of her old costume) has never come back outside of that one flashback mini.
@Diana: My sense is that the Siege Perilous stuff was meant to play into the bigger war with the Shadow King and Claremont’s affection for the ways later writers on the UK Captain Britain stories developed the Otherworld material.
Roma seems to be hinting that the X-Men should go through the Siege almost as soon as she gives it to them in Uncanny v.1 #229, the first issue of the Outback period, but Storm refuses: “Save your Siege Perilous for later.” The mysterious computer in the Australian lair has a bunch of similarities to the Otherworld-linked computer called “Mastermind” from the UK Captain Britain stories, especially as reimagined by Alan Moore and Alan Davis.
At one point during the Donald Pierce/Reavers plotline, the Reavers describe it as having “grown” almost organically, just as the Mastermind computer did in the Moore/David Captain Britain stories. Claremont even uses very similar language to describe it. And the computer is able to ignore Roma’s spell making the X-Men undetectable by technology. And who directed the X-Men to Australia? Roma.
It seems like there was a slow-burning plan there to have a big cosmic showdown with the Shadow King, especially as Claremont had been redefining the SK as more supernatural, not just a dead mutant psychic with a grudge against Professor X. He’d already used Excalibur v.1 #22 to float the idea that the Shadow King was secretly behind the Dark Phoenix Saga and had the SK recognize Rachel Summers of Earth-616, seemingly hating her for past events.
This would refer to the events eventually published as the True Friends miniseries, a story that was originally planned as an Excalibur graphic novel in the late 1980s or early 1990s. (Claremont by this time had a habit of writing as if some of his planned projects were already continuity.)
So you’d have had a multiversal Shadow King on one hand, and Roma trying to set the X-Men up with Otherworld stuff on the other. Presumably the Siege, or at least the X-Men’s passage through it, were part of the intended plot in some way.
This seems especially the case given that Claremont showed the Muir Island replacement team becoming corrupted by the SK, suggesting some kind of storyline in which the mainline cast would return to fight and/or save them.
Regarding the Savage Land arc, there’s also the weird stuff with Polaris losing her magnetic abilities but gaining a passive “negative emotions turn into physical stature” power, but who knows where that was meant to go. It probably had something to do with her possession by Malice, but maybe it would’ve played a role in the resolution of the original, unaltered Muir Island storyline.
I don’t think there’s a place for Betsy in the X-Books anymore. Let’s face it, she never really took off with readers until her Asian ninja makeover came along. Look where that led. She’s been effectively replaced by her own makeover. How embarrassing.
I remember suggesting this years ago: just have her get in with MI-13 (is that still around?). Return her to spy roots. Don’t bother trying to make a series out of it, because it wouldn’t sell worth a damn, but just put her there, leave her there, and wheel her out on the odd rare occasion as a guest star.
Betsy has room on an X-team that doesn’t have a telepath. At the time she joined, the only X-men telepaths around were Professor X (busy with Lilandra and the Starjammers), Jean Grey (lacking telepathy and on X-Factor), and Rachel Summers (in Mojoland). I’m discounting the sometimes telepathic in the Silver Age Magneto, because he wasn’t really a consistent member of an X-team, other than maybe the New Mutants. There have been a lot more since then (Emma, Cuckoos, Quentin Quire off the top of my head).
I personally liked her in the armor, but that’s me. Maybe I qualify as one of the “5 fans” of the armored version of Psylocke!
Spy Betsy could be good, and she could be matched with the miniature telepath from Mystique’s 2000s series (Shortstuff? Shortpack?). Though I also think that she could be a really good handler. Maybe she passes on missions to the Darkholme-LeBeau-Wagner theft team that deserves a book?
Betsy goes through periods in which she either isn’t used much (see: right before and right after she absorbed the Shadow King and couldn’t use her telepathy) or is on a spin-off team. She’s in a slump right now, sure. I could see the Captain Britain set-up working – she and Rachel form a new Excalibur – but it would have to be written by someone with a handle on how to write about contemporary England in an authentic way. Given that almost nothing is commercially viable these days, outside of the most popular properties, I doubt a UK-centric/magic-based title would sell well. Still, she’s not an unworkable character.
I like the idea of sprinkling extra mutants around the MCU in background roles.
There are always more mutants than even all the standard X-teams need, and it gives them a purpose. Plus, it provides the X-Men with more resources and potential stories.
And it’s a much better way to integrate mutants into the MCU than the current “give them a solo series and have a bunch of randos show up” plan like in Phoenix and Storm.
Betsy could reform MI-13. Cable could join SHIELD. I bet the Future Foundation could use a precog or two.
“Betsy could reform MI-13”
Yes, please. It’s not like she needs to be in the X-Men. Not only are they not lacking for telepaths, they’re not even lacking for telepaths with pink/purple hair.
@Omar- I’m not sure what was going on with the computers in the base. One thing that everyone later forgot about is that the computers helped engineer Maddie’s transformation into the Goblin Queen. The computer conveniently shows Maddie an image of Jean and Scott together, and then when she hits the monitor, it explodes. Which makes no sense if the Reavers designed the computer system- why would they want a computer that would explode if they hit into it? And later, the computer shows Maddie’s dreams where she’s turned into the Goblin Queen. And later on , in issue 245, Logan suggests that the computers corrupted Maddie.
And later on, in issue 249, the computer conveniently shows Havok images of him “killing” Storm (actually an LMD) and he gets knocked out when he tries to zap the monitor.
The computers were definitely evil. I’m not sure how this fits with them being from Otherworld.
@Michael My personal theory on the computers was that they were a developing Technarch. Alive, so able to see and interact with the X-men. Able to repair itself.
Maybe it could even have been baby Magus, who would have a grudge against the X-men.
Huh. I had never entertained that thought, but it does fit the available facts, including the eventual connection to Limbo via the T-O virus. Of course, this in no way explains why and how it wound up in the Reaver base, or why it wasn’t just spreading T-O and/or drinking everyone’s lifeglow like mad.
(has no one really ever made the “computer virus” joke about the techno-organic virus? It seems impossible, and yet…)
I really like @Moo’s suggestion of Betsy ending up in MI-13. It’s a sensible use of the character.
Problem is that comics are inherently visual, and Kwannon now has all of Betsy’s actually quite strong visual signifiers (butterflies knife). If Betsy is to be Captain Britain, she’s saddled with all the nationalism issues which aren’t great for a character in the 2020’s. So she’s reduced to peripheral presence at best, either way.
I think this new mini is an attempt to “set the body swap backstory straight” for new readers and will likely feature Kwannon. Equally could be a sales test for which Psylocke is more popular. Either way, it’s a further PR mess of Marvel’s own making.
Let’s not forgot Psylocke basically had no compelling plots for most of the 90s, shifted personalities, was repeatedly written out until Claremont himself killed her and I say this as a fan!! Haha
re: the Dissolution/Shattered Star storyline
@Diana – I think you’re right that Claremont was not thinking about leaving the book, but he distributed the team across so many storylines that most of the characters don’t get a lot to do … the impression I get is the Claremont decided to just plant the seeds for an epic that would eventually lead to the team reuniting – somehow – after all having been through a number of changes and mutations. It’s a kind of exciting period for the books because it’s so unpredictable, and there are a lot of fondly remembered issues, but stuff like Storm’s age regression just seem like him setting up storytelling challenges of his future self to (fail to) solve.
RE: Psylocke: I mean, in Uncanncy #256-258 we see her get a new body, new powers and new personality courtesy of … um, some combination of Mojo, The Mandarin, The Hand? and Slaymaster from Captain Britain is in there, too somewhere. It looks great, and I think most of Psylocke’s ongoing popularity comes from these issues. Of all the characters who go through the Shattered Star/Siege Perilous storyline, she’s the only one who arguably emerges MORE interesting. But I don’t think it’s clear at all what happened to her or why.
@SanityOrMadness – The Savage Land costume does briefly act as Rogue’s ‘regular’ costume during the Muir Island Saga (mostly while she stands around) before they give her the leather jacket in X-Men #1. I think that Savage Land look is now better remembered than any of her ’80s uniforms at this point, but I don’t think it did serious damage to her character.
I would argue that the The Magneto pairing did some damage to both characters, but that’s also fairly minor.
The main problem is the way the long-running storyline with the Ms. Marvel personality is resolved through a combination of magic and convenience. This had been a major source of angst for Rogue since her introduction, is an interesting take on the (Fawcett) Captain Marvel trope of two personalities swapping control, as well as an inversion of Claremont’s usual plot where a hero is corrupted by a villainous presence in their mind. During the Outback era, Claremont wrote both Rogue and Danvers as sympathetic and heroic, although fundamentally at odds with each other. The eventual resolution to this conflict is unsatisfying:
-First, their personalities are separated by the Siege Perilous.
-Then a zombified Ms. Marvel chases down a powerless Rogue, and is only stopped because Magneto kills her. For some reason.
-Then Rogue gets her powers back.
Rogue makes no choices has no agency in how this story gets resolved, AND it removes her fundamental inner turmoil. She becomes a more generic character, especially as this end to her main ongoing storyline also renders her thematic villain-to-hero arc complete. All she can really do is feel guilty about what happened to Carol, but that’s not a story.
BUT at least Rogue got a status quo that moved her past her previous characterization in a way that might be considered growth. She emerges as a more integrated (although less interesting) character, and is quickly moved onto a romance plotline with Gambit so that she gets something to do. Psylocke becomes more corrupted and more conflicted (and arguably more interesting), and is able to be a ninja. OK.
Storm’s character on the other hand, got basically nothing out of Shattered Star storyline that could be built upon. She was inexplicably a child for a while, and then inexplicably became not a child? Her pairing with Gambit is quickly forgotten, and then she’s shunted onto the Gold team with characters she has no particularly interesting relationships with. So I think if it’s true that she hasn’t “existed as a character for decades”, the Siege Perilous is probably the culprit.
@Michael, Omar, Sam – RE: The computers – you’re right – this is a huge dropped plot that doesn’t get any resolution in the books. There’s clearly something going on with their base, but it’s never explained. So many dropped plots and ominous, unexplained stuff. I like a lot of the Outback era, but I think it’s hard to love because Claremont seems to be bored with his own plots.
“Kwannon now has all of Betsy’s actually quite strong visual signifiers (butterflies knife).”
She can keep the knife, but I think Betsy should get the butterflies back. They suit Betsy better, IMO. They don’t look right on Kwannon. Kwannon should look intimidating. Knives are intimidating. Pretty pink butterflies are not intimidating. Whenever I see pretty pink butterflies, I don’t think, “Ooh! Scary!” I think, “Wtf was the THC of that edible I took?”
@Evilgus- Claremont killed her intending to resurrect her in her original body but Quesada’s “dead is dead” rule got in the way. (Claremont thought it didn’t apply to planned resurrections like Morrison and Magneto but Quesada claimed planned resurrections only were okay if approved by him first.)
@Aro- As I understand it Claremont was planning to merge Carol’s and Rogue’s personalities together but Harras rejected the idea so Claremont decided to get rid of the Carol personality.
Re: why Magneto killed the Carol personality- the Carol personality was under the control of the Shadow King and if you read Uncanny X-Men 275 carefully it’s clear Magneto has made an enemy of the Shadow King somehow. The problem was that Claremont was kicked off the books in the middle of the Muir Island Saga and Nicieza took over on short notice, so Magneto played no role in the finale of the Shadow King story.
Re: Rogue lacking agency in how the Shadow King story got resolved. One of the criticisms of Claremont is that his women lack agency in their transformations. There’s Psylocke of course. Tyger Tiger was turned from accountant to stereotypical Dragon Lady by being brainwashed. And Maddie was tricked in a dream.
The Outback era is the first time I took a break from the X-Men after jumping on at UXM #150. I think I stuck around through Inferno.
Looking back, I think all of the magic ultimately turned me off. I’m not sure if Claremont was bored or not, but he certainly didn’t seem like he wanted to write a mutant book anymore.
Roma, the Siege Perilous, Limbo, demons, the Adversary, possessed computers, Dazzler can’t be killed for some reason. The more the stories relied on magic, the less interested I was. Who cares how high the stakes got if the X-Men can just wander through a portal whenever they want to get away?
I’m not a fan of the Jim Lee “they’ve got to live in the mansion” era either, but I do get why fans and creators wanted to get back to the basics at the time. X-books are best with a little magic sprinkled around the edges, IMO.
@Aro I think it’s more of a case where the Outback era was the first time that Claremont was getting constant editorial interference. Bob Harras was all too ready to mess with the goose that was laying the golden eggs, something I put down to the departure of Shooter as EiC. My timeline might be slightly wrong here, as DeFalco takes over as EiC in 1987 and Harras takes over as editor in 1988, but with lead times on issues, I’m not sure when the specific issue has the swap. Harras is indicated as the editor during the Brood issues at the beginning of the Outback era.
I know that the Muir Isle Saga was also supposed to be the result of a much changed Mutant Wars plotline that was killed for some reason. Again, probably due to the new editorial interference.
I always thought that getting Carol’s psyche out of Rogue was a) to reduce the amount of angst Rogue felt, and b) to take away the easy excuse of “I don’t know what to do in this case, but superspy Carol Danvers does” which started in the Genosha arc and recurred afterwards. There was also that weird panel where it looked like Carol controlling Rogue’s body could control her powers when she touched Betsy? I don’t know whether that was intentional or an art error.
As for Claremont’s women lacking agency in their transformations. I think he was trying to do for them what he did to Storm (She of the 5 Fans). Her powers were stolen from her, and then she showed everyone that Ororo Monroe was a force to be reckoned with when she didn’t have her powers. I can see the attempts to do that with Psylocke and Tyger Tyger. As for Maddie, that’s editorial interference, and I prefer not to think of it at all.
@Thom – I dropped UXM at roughly the same time you did, for the same reason. The magic stuff put me off.
Looking back on his run, I think Claremont should have departed after the God Loves, Man Kills graphic novel. I think that book should have been his swan song. He managed to squeeze out a couple of mainstay characters like Jubilee and Gambit after that, but in terms of stories (I eventually did read the rest of his run in back issue form), there’s nothing after God Loves, Man Kills that I would recommend to someone looking to read past great X-Men stories.
As for Bob Harris. He’s not my favorite editor, but he was right to push Claremont out and have the traditional X-Men setup reinstated. It was the better way to go, and it did form the basis for the sacred X-Men Fox Kids cartoon that millennial readers get really defensive about.
Damnit. Harras, not Harris. I can get Brevoort right, but I mess up Harras.
@Thom H- Dazzler’s inability to be killed came much later, in New Excalibur.
@Sam- It was intentional- Claremont’s intention was that Carol’s personality could control Rogue’s powers. Unfortunately, in a later chapter of Inferno drawn by Walter Simonson, Rogue absorbed someone’s personality while wearing gloves- and that scene REALLY was an art error. So a lot of readers understandably assumed BOTH scenes were art errors. especially since none of the characters comment on either scene later. By this time. Claremont had decided to get rid of Carol’s personality so he didn’t clarify it.
Regarding Tyger Tiger, I think the difference is that what happened to Storm was a physical change, like Stevie Hunter’s knee injury. What happened to Tyger Tiger was a result of outside influence by a man to make her into a “bad girl” and Wolverine makes no effort on panel to have Betsy or Rachel reverse the change because, hey. ,she’s sexier this way, right?
I prob stopped reading Uncanny before most people here may have started (200). But dumb teenage me also dropped New Mutants bc of Sinkiewicz’s art.
“But dumb teenage me also dropped New Mutants bc of Sinkiewicz’s art.”
Well, I can understand that. It was wildly different from the usual house style and teens don’t appreciate that sort of thing. Frank Quitely got a similarly cool reception from the young readers who grew up on Jim Lee, as I recall.
If I had been reading New Mutants at the time, Sienkiewicz likely would have driven me away as well. I recall seeing his art, and thinking “Ew.”
I never got into New Mutants, which was weird, since I was a teenager and I was already reading X-Men at the time. I don’t recall seeing the original graphic novel when it came out, but I remember my reaction to the cover of New Mutants #1 when I saw it. It didn’t interest me in the slightest. I thought it was four characters and that the wolf was a pet. Didn’t care for the old school uniforms either.
If someone is going to say that they really like the post-Claremont 90s X-men comics, then I will not say anything other than I must have diametrically opposed tastes and leave it at that.
@Michael: Am I thinking of something different? What I recall is Dazzler getting killed(?) by Juggernaut, buried under a bunch of rocks, and coming back to life. Drawn by Marc Silvestri. I could be misremembering. Also, it could have been not-magic. I just remember being annoyed by another mystery.
While I’m here: My subscription to New Mutants started with the issue before Sienkiewicz took over. One issue, it was business as usual. The next, the way I saw art changed forever, probably? I can’t emphasize enough how much New Mutants #18 blew my Southern, suburban, 10-year-old mind.
Count me in as another fan of the armored version of Psylocke, with the magenta cloak and all that. Loved that look.
Teenaged me LOVED Sinkiewicz on New Mutants. I enjoyed a lot of Claremont’s New Mutants run as much or more than I did the concurrent X-Men issues.
It did seem like Claremont lost some of his mojo late in his original run, but I remember thinking that maybe he was getting back on track not long before he left the books (but maybe it was just Jim Lee and editorial interference that made it feel that way).
The X-Men assume the Reavers built the computer in Uncanny v.1 issue #230, but Claremont deliberately contradicts this idea a littlelkater.
When Pierce’s Reavers take over the base in issue #251, they outright say that they can’t find the X-Men with their own cyborg scanners.
But Bonebreaker then notes that that “‘cloak’ don’t seem to apply to the home sensors here. They track them muties just fine.”
This line is repeated almost word for word in another scene in issue #252. The Reavers also don’t quite seem to understand the computer’s readouts; it’s definitely not their creation.
In that same story, we’re told that the computer “monitors and controls the vast, sprawling complex hidden beneath the town.” So you have a computer that has impossible long-range scanners, can ignore Roma’s spell, and that sprawls through a vast underground cavern.
In issue #252, Claremont also shows that the Reavers are surprised repeatedly at how big? the underground systems linked to the Outback base computer really are.
And then we get the kicker, as Bonebreaker says, “There’s a whole new network here, Pierce, written in a language I don’t speak. Basic configuration’s eveolving, almost as if the blamed computer’s growing. X-Men may have modified things — there’s evidence of the repair routines at work, indications of major damage to the primary CPU — but some of these elements, I swear they look less like technology than living organisms.”
We can compare this line to one from Alan Moore’s script from the Captain Britain story in the Marvel UK Daredevils #2.
There, Brian Braddock discovers that the Mastermind AI has regenerated itself, growing to the point that it has taken over the natural caves beneath Braddock Manor: “It’s like being inside a mind. These stalactites….they’re not stone. They’re machinery. But it’s as if they’ve grown here. The computer. It’s found some way to grow and extend itself as if it were organic. The whole cave is the computer!”
So it seems to me that Claremont has defined the Australian base computer in very much the terms that Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, and Alan Davis describe Mastermind in their earlier stories.
And we also have an Otherworld connection because Roma is involved in directing the X-Men to the computer’s location in the first place.
My sense, then, is that Roma was meant to be up to her father’s tricks, trying to maneuver the X-Men into place to thwart another major, multiversal menace, the Shadow King. Much as Merlyn did with Captain Britain in his Marvel UK stories, Roma acts like she’s calling it “quits” with the X-Men in Uncanny v.1 #229, but she’s actually positioning them to have the computer and the Siege Perilous.
By going through the Siege, the X-Men are transformed in various ways. Rogue has some of her internal dilemmas resolved.
Notably, while Rogue is sent through the Siege gateway accidentally, it’s Psylocke, who seems to go into a trance of sorts, who herds most of the remaining X-Men through the Siege Perilous just before the Reavers attack again, led by Pierce, who then crushes the Siege gemstone.
Psylocke, of course, has the same Otherworld heritage as her brothers.
It seems as if Claremont was playing with a lot of the Marvel UK stuff he’d wanted to use for years, dating all the way back to his original plans for Uncanny #200 and the subsequent Mutant Massacre storyline. (And that was also when Psylocke joined the team.)
To add a bit more context, in Captain Britain v.2 #7, a story by Moore’s successor Jamie Delano and Alan Davis, the Mastermind AI explains to Betsy and Brian that their father “came from Otherworld. he was one of Merlin’s chosen guard. He came to prepare the way. And he formed me, a node of the Omniversal knowledge, a watchpost in this young and ever more glamorous continuum.”
When Brian points out that the computer killed James, Sr., Mastermind replies that “I am grown from an organic base. There was contamination in the spore. It set up a logic fault” that Brian Braddock supposedly cured when he “reprogrammed” Mastermind.
The computer then announces that it will start guiding everyone more actively rather than passively maneuvering them to serve its original purpose as Otherworld’s watchdog system on Earth.
The “organic” line is also very close to Bonebreaker’s description of the computer at the Outback base in Uncanny v.1 #252.
Add in the implied connection to Roma from issue #229 and I think Claremont’s intended reference starts to emerge. The Outback base computer is another “node of the Omniversal knowledge, a watchpost,” and Roma has set it up so that the X-Men take it.
How did the Reavers get it? Well, they lead an attack on Muir Island as the Muir Island Saga gets going. And they’re directed there by the computer. So there’s likely meant to be Shadow King manipulations going on. That would also explain why Pierce crushes the Siege Perilous when he finds it; the Shadow King is puppeteering him, using him to eliminate one of Roma’s gifts. (Note also that in Uncanny v.1 #230, the X-Men openly wonder why the Reavers would ever have lived in a ghost town in the Outback to begin with.)
Also, the only X-Man who didn’t go through the Siege, Wolverine, is the one who the Reavers nearly kill when they retake the Outback base. He only survives because of an unknown factor in Jubilee.
@Thom H- In issue 217, Juggernaut is specifically NOT trying to kill Dazzler. She collapses after blasting Juggernaut and Juggernaut thinks she’s dead. Juggernaut buries her, and she wakes up. it was presented at the time as Cain not knowing the difference between temporary unconsciousness and death. (Cain isn’t shown checking for vital signs.) It was only after New Excalibur 1 that this was presented as possibly another incident of Ali coming back to life.
@Sam: Not the Byrne/Lee/Portacio stuff, obviously, but I think there’s a case to be made that by the time X-Cutioner’s Song rolls around, Nicieza and Lobdell have a fair-to-decent grasp of the characters. Stryfe is certainly a grandiose, operatic villain in the Claremontian tradition.
A case could also be made that by the time X-Cutioner’s Song rolls around, all the magic of the Claremont era has been killed, stone cold dead.
Anecdotal evidence: Me. I was reading and loving Claremont’s X-Men through to 1991, and I stuck around to see if the good times could keep on rolling.
When I got to the end of X-Cutioner’s Song — (Mr. Sinister traded Scott Summers away in exchange for … “the Summers genetic material”? What?) — I was like, “That’s it. I’m out.”
Bill Sienkiewicz is my favorite artist, but I wasn’t conscious of his work until I was 12 or 13 and buying New Mutants back issues. I can see why his art would not appeal to some readers, but I loved it. Also, the pre-Sienkiewicz issues of New Mutants are pretty lackluster. I don’t think Claremont had any real idea what to do with them, and letting Sienkiewicz cook opened up some ideas.
I tapped out of the X-books shortly after X-Cutioner’s song. Nicieza’s Colossus and Psylocke stories, uninteresting villains, and my not liking JR Jr’s art on Uncanny drove me away. I came back occasionally (Generation X, AoA, the Seagle/Kelly run), but to this day I don’t like most ‘90s X-Men comics.
You know who really wasn’t a fan of post-Claremont X-Men? Claremont.
A year and a half after his departure, when asked what he thought of how X-Men was being handled since he left, he said: “This has been my life’s work and it’s taken them eighteen months to gut it like a fish!”
I still think that when Claremont wrote those first three issues of volume two (his last issues), he was Magneto in that story and Fabian Cortez was meant to be Bob Harras (a supposed ally working behind his back to undermine him).
My fuzzy memory is that Claremont had explained that he had intentionally made complicated overlapping plots for so long that he wanted to change it up for ~30 issues of short arcs and stand-alones. He then planned to return to more complicated plots and writing style. This would have been just before Harras & Jim lee took a wrecking ball to all of his work.
Ten takes that I am probably on an island by myself for having…
1)Jim Lee is a talentless hack of a writer, and an %$#* for how he treated Claremont.
2)Portacio is an excellent writer, but was an %$#* for how he treated Simonson.
3)Lobdell was worse than Chuck Austen, and never wrote a decent story. Seemed like a nice guy doing his best though.
4)Nicieza was the best x-writer between the Claremont and (PA)David eras.
5)Armored Betsy Braddock was the best Betsy, including the Alan Moore years.
6)Both Sienkiewicz and Quietly are much better artists than Lee.
7)Silvestri couldn’t ink over legendary Dan Green’s pencils without turning it into a mess and needed either Portacio’s touch ups or to do his own plotting in order to produce good work.
8)Ayodele is a very good writer who simply has very different taste than mine. Yes, he is non-linear but so was Kurt Vonnegut.
9)Daniel Way wrote stories that I hated, and thought were bad, but it wasn’t because of his talent. Jeph Loeb wrote stories that I hated, but it wasn’t because of his effort. I think he tries to write what he likes. However, Stephanie Philips is the only Marvel writer that I have accused of mendacity and rancor. I am convinced she is writing poorly with intent. Is her work a Ph.D’s piss-take? Is she insulting her readers? I am convinced of both her of malignancy and her competence.
10)Mutant X was pretty good so long as you didn’t expect either an ongoing plot or even a completed sentence. It worked as a kind of picaresque pointillism.
Claremont doesn’t seem to have a problem with Jim Lee. He wrote some issues of Wild CATs after he left Marvel. I think Claremont’s problem was solely with Harras, and he felt that Harras came between the creators (favouring Lee over Claremont), but that Claremont doesn’t blame Jim Lee being a young guy trying to make a name for himself in the biggest franchise in comics.
I don’t know of many who would disagree that Jim Lee couldn’t write.
There’s no doubt that Sienkiewicz and Quietly are far better artists than Lee. Sienkiewicz is probably my favourite artist in comics.
Unfortunately, it’s Jim Lee whose art sold like hotcakes. That’s just the facts of life with mass culture. The masses are philistines, but they have plenty of money.
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Fabian Cortez would seem to be a stand-in for Fabian Nicieza. The young upstart trying to take Magneto’s place. Meanwhile, Magneto (Claremont) just seems tired of it all.
@Chris V- I doubt it. Fabian Nicieza wasn’t supposed to take over the X-Men when Claremont wrote issue 1-3. it was supposed to be John Byrne scripting with Jim Lee plotting. Nicieza was supposed to script X-Force. Then Byrne complained about Jim Lee and got replaced with Lobdell. Then Jim Lee left and it was decided that Lobdell would script Uncanny and Fabian would write Adjectiveless. Besides, Nicieza was 29 and Claremont was 40 at the time of X-Men 1- that’s hardly comparable to the Magneto- Fabian Cortez age difference.
@Woodswalked- Claremont had been planning on writing a yearlong Dark Wolverine plot when Harras kicked him off the -X-Men.
And what did Whilce Portacio do to Louise Simonson? She had already been kicked off on New Mutants because of conflicts with. It was probably Harras who was responsible for SImonson leaving X-Factor.
I was thinking of Nicieza coming in to script Claremont’s final two issues of Uncanny, but I’m not sure if that would be plausible based on deadlines and the such.
@Michael – Harras had the power and ultimately the responsibility. My memory (which has been wrong before) is that Portacio’s art was not depicting Simonson’s writing, and that was led to Harras replacing him with Liefeld. She quit because of Liefeld and Harras. My distain for Liefeld is far greater, but I am in very good company on that popular take.
Portacio was still on art when Claremont wrote the final story-arc of the original X-Factor iteration (after Louise was gone). Liefield never replaced Portacio on X-Factor.
@Moo: That’s unsurprising – he didn’t get to end his run properly, or on good terms. But if his subsequent output from Revolution on proves anything, it’s that he’s long since run out of things to *say* about the X-Men. Claremont hasn’t written a story that was both current and (relatively) original this millennium.
@Jason: I can understand that point of view, as someone who adores almost the entirety of Claremont’s original run… but I’m forced to disagree. One has to wonder whether Claremont’s overreliance on woowoo abracadabra nonsense, mind control and BDSM imagery would’ve been as prevalent as they are today even if he’d never left; he’s said, for example, that one of his plans towards #300 would have essentially been the “Enemy of the State” Wolverine arc that Millar ended up, ahem, “borrowing”. In other words, Logan would’ve been brainwashed by the Hand, relatively soon after Betsy was brainwashed by the Hand.
The Nicieza/Lobdell era isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I maintain that they understood the basic principles of Claremont’s approach to the X-Men, and were able to follow through with those when they could: the quiet character-centric issues after big storylines, the romantic entanglements, mysterious pasts, grand villains, dark futures… there’s no question it’s a bit dumbed down compared to Claremont at his best, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the magic was *gone*, just changed.
@Woddswalked, Chris V- Yeah. it’s possible Woodswalked is thinking of Bret Blevins on New Mutants, who was replaced with Liefeld, which eventually led to Simonson quitting.
Yeah, the first year of New Mutants is nothing to write home about. But I think that’s mainly because Claremont regretted the O5 lineup he’d created for the graphic novel and took way too long to make corrections. They were in Nova Roma for forever.
But the book really gels starting immediately after that. The new roster is set, the team’s relationship to the X-Men is established, and they’ve now got serious rivals. I’d say Claremont was already cooking with gas by #13. And (luckily) Sienkiewicz came along just a few issues later to kick things up a notch.
@Thom- If the first year of NM wasn’t so great, that might be because Claremont had to rush into it. He and Louise Simonson (then Jones) had been batting the New Mutants idea around for a bit, but they hadn’t yet developed it to the point where they ready to pitch it to Shooter.
Mark Gruenwald forced their hand by pitching an X-Men West series, which Shooter was prepared to greenlight. Claremont and Jones realized they had to “put up or shut up” as Claremont described it, and pitched their not-quite-ready-to-go New Mutants idea just to get Gruenwald to go away.
After the series was greenlit and before it finally saw print, they were still workshopping it. Peter Sanderson, in a 1982 interview, asked them (Claremont and Jones) about characters, and Claremont mentioned that Sarah Grey’s children as possible cast members. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
So, yeah. Seems like it was hurried through development.
@Moo — I’d heard something along those lines before, but I didn’t know that Gruenwald was the catalyst. So glad we got New Mutants instead of X-Men West. Or Sarah Grey’s children, for that matter.
I wonder if the extended Nova Roma storyline was a stalling tactic for Claremont then. He could rejigger the cast while shoring up his future plans for the book. I’m just making that up, but it makes sense, especially if he didn’t have a lot of lead time to plot.
Claremont was a writer who really wrote to the strengths of his artists. I doubt he was coming up with the plans he would use once Sienkiewicz took over as artist, as those ideas mostly seem tailor-made for Sienkiewicz. I guess that Claremont was maybe sowing the seeds for the Demon Bear arc beforehand, but thank goodness for Sienkiewicz as before that the Demon Bear looked like a typical bear.
I didn’t hate the early New Mutants comics, but there were some really bad stories mixed in with the good parts: Team America, Mr. T, the Nova Roma storyline stretched out beyond the breaking point.
Another reason Claremont and Jones held their New Mutants pitch back was because they were waiting for an artist to become available who they actually wanted to work with (I’m guessing Claremont became a little more particular about that following his tense collaboration with Byrne). They wanted to be able to suggest an available artist of their choosing rather than get stuck with someone they didn’t like.
Claremont said that it was fortunate that Bob McLeod happened to be available when they were forced to deliver their pitch because he happened to be one of the pencilers he preferred to work with, though I can’t imagine why. He’s terrible. He’s an even worse inker. Anyone seen him ink Perez? New Titans 50-53. It was butchery. Perez inked the first page of issue 50 and the rest was all McLeod, and boy can you see the difference.
I don’t know. Maybe he was just easy to get along with.
Claremont’s writing being better or worse depending on the artist wasn’t just because one artist was more skilled than the other. It’s very obvious that the artists were doing a lot of the storytelling and pacing. Byrne and Lee are two of the few who received plotting credit. Still, Paul Smith X-Men comics read very differently than Cockrum, JR Jr, or Silvestri X-Men comics. There was nothing in New Mutants or X-Men that was comparable to Sienkiewicz’s Demon Bear arc. It was like reading a nightmare. Excalibur was an entirely different X-book because Alan Davis worked in the humor (not Claremont’s strength), was great with action, and embraced the Captain Britain plots. That’s not to say that Claremont wasn’t the main creative force behind ’80s X-books, but the evidence on the pages indicate that several artists had more input in the stories than they’re usually given credit for.
In the ’00s, Claremont probably wrote full-script. His 2000 return to X-Men was a mess. Artists like Adam Kubert and Leinil Yu had done better comics with other writers, and the issues they did with Claremont were sometimes incoherent. The stories also got more repetitive (mind control! power changes! slavers and/or gladiators! telepathic villains!) Claremont’s skills might have fallen off, but it also looked like the artists were doing less heavy lifting, storytellingwise. Having your main collaborator be Salvador Larocca didn’t help.
I liked Bob McLeod’s work on New Mutants. He kept things really grounded in the graphic novel and drew believable teenagers. I can’t imagine he was a good fit to ink George Perez. Perez was so fiddly and detailed, and McLeod is so broad and open. Total mismatch.
I agree that Sienkiewicz was the right person to model the Demon Bear. Buscema was definitely just drawing a regular bear with a little smoke trail, like it was a weird genie. Not very menacing.
I wonder how far in advance Claremont knew that Sienkiewicz was going to take over the art duties on the book. McLeod only lasted a handful of issues as penciller, and Buscema was Marvel’s go-to fill-in guy, right, because of how fast he was? Maybe Claremont had a bunch of stuff teed up for Sienkiewicz way in advance. Again, I’m just speculating with no proof.
@Thom – You liked McLeod’s work better than he did. He left New Mutants because he couldn’t keep up with the monthly pace and felt he was producing substandard work.