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.
The shifting talents, editorial interference and bits of unresolved angst in ’90s X-Men comics really is about as complex as the plotting got after the Outback era…
I did not read these issues until recently, and I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have been an X-Men fan during this time, when the books were coming out biweekly, following the long, long burn story of the team being reunited, only for it to all flame out into ’90s incoherence shortly after.
@Omar – thank you for the summary of what was likely going on with the computer/otherworld connection and subplot. The idea of the heroes and the villains both being controlled by warring magical forces of good and evil does not sound like a plot line I would mourn, but at least it’s something.
Claremont at this time did a lot of either implying or directly stating that characters are being controlled by outside forces, and eventually it goes beyond feeling like trope to like an authorial hand pushing chess pieces around.
@ Sam and Michale – it’s helpful to see how the editorial change to Harras affected what Claremont’s plans were. It makes sense that this is part of why the era resolves in a way that feelings so unsatisfactory to me. I feel like the line was perhaps most interesting and unpredictable when Nocenti was editing, but I’m curious what others think about that.
@Thom – Yes, the magic gets old pretty quickly. Roma in particular doesn’t feel like she belongs in an X-Men book, and Claremont’s Savage Land is also a fantasy land where anything can happen but is always VERY IMPORTANT (for reasons).
RE: Bringing in Marvel UK concepts:
I’m really interested in the way that the roster gets drastically overhauled post X-Men #200, and slowly becomes a conceptually and thematically different book. I know that part of this overhaul is because of Scott departing for X-Factor, and then half the cast being shuffled off to Excalibur. But then filling out the cast with a bunch of characters from other books is so interesting to me. I like the cast a lot – Dazzler’s finger guns, Betsy’s armour and butterfly sigil, a lot of it is charmingly off-kilter, plus Silvestri’s art is really great. The Outback setting doesn’t work, and the Reavers are not interesting villains, but the team is fun, if a bit over-stuffed. Colossus doesn’t get much to do (as usual) and Longshot is mostly window dressing.
I do wonder what readers thought at the time, though – Dazzler made sense, since she was a mutant and her solo title had recently ended. But Psylocke and Longshot come from essentially other universes, and bring a bunch of new concepts to the series with them. In hindsight, this starts and ends with Longshot:
– Longshot’s miniseries runs Sept ’85-Feb ’86.
– Scott leaves the X-Men in Jan ’86 (X-Men #201), X-Factor launches in Feb’87.
– Psylocke and the Mojoverse join the X-franchise in New Mutants Annual #2 in June ’86. *In hindsight, this issue is crucial as it ties both the Longshot universe and the Marvel UK universe to the X-Men franchise*
– Rachel, Kitty and Nightcrawler written out towards the end of ’86 (X-Men #209-211)
-Psylocke joins the team in X-Men #213
-Dazzler joins the team in late ’86 (X-Men #214)
– Longshot joins the team in X-Men Annual #1 in Sept ’87, and is in the cast as of X-Men #215.
– Then Excalibur Special Edition #1 in December ’87 ties the series even more closely to Captain Britain.
I find this overhaul of the series between ’86 and ’87 to be very interesting, as it transforms the franchise from “mutants at Xavier’s School” into something sprawling and almost impossible to comprehend as a narrative. Whether that’s a net positive or negative for the series is probably very debatable.
So if Claremont’s artists were doing a lot of the scripting and pacing, how is that different than the typical Marvel Method?
@Moo, Thom H- Even worse, the plot for the New Mutants Graphic Novel was supposed to be the first issue of New Mutants. But unfortunately, the story that was intended for Marvel Graphic Novel 4 was delayed, so the New Mutants’ first issue had to be reworked into the Graphic Novel on a short deadline.
Karl Lykos was also supposed to be part of the New Mutants’ supporting cast, but that never happened.
I’m not sure how I feel about X-Men West. The proposed cast was Bobby, Hank, Warren, Alex and Lorna. It might have worked.
I think that the problems with the Nova Roma arc go beyond Claremont having to rush. “Hidden land” stories just don’t work in the modern era. And why were they all speaking modern English? (The letters page claimed Nova Roma encountered previous expeditions.) And it’s clear that Claremont’s original idea for Selene was that she was evil because she was Incan, in contrast to the Roman Democracy. That’s just racist. Instead, thankfully, she was changed to a generic Evil Sorceress Who Stays Young and Beautiful at the Cost of Innocent Lives.
@Taibak: it’s not, it looks like much of the initial Claremont run was done Marvel Method. When he came back in the late ‘90s, however, that wasn’t the case and his writing was worse. The people who write and podcast about Claremont’s X-Men run tend to gloss over this idea, outside of Byrne and Lee.
It’s possible that Claremont saved the Demon Bear story for Sienkiewicz or mentioned it as a possible next story arc. Whatever the case, Sienkiewicz made it his own and (with Claremont) crafted a unique story that didn’t follow the plotting structure or story beats of a typical Marvel comic.
@Mike Loughlin, Tailbak- I think that lately people have interpreted the Marvel Method as “the artist does most of the work”. That’s the way it was when Stan Lee was writing but it certainly wasn’t that way in the late 70s, 80s and 80s. The plots during that period were usually detailed enough so that the writer could truthfully said to be plotting the story. Claremont was famous for very detailed and wordy plots. Alan Davis has sample pages from a couple of Claremont’s plots at his website:
https://www.alandavis-comicart.com/scripts.html
If you look at the plots, you can see that most of the ideas were Claremont’s, while at the same time Davis had freedom to interpret it the way he wanted.
(BTW, Talibak, artists don’t usually do scripting, I think you mean plotting.)
If you look at the page you can see that Alan Davis claims that although he was credited for co=plotter on Excalibur 15-16, he felt he contributed little to the plots. It’s simply not the case that Davis was responsible for the humor. (And indeed, if you look compare the issues Claremont plotted with the issues Davis plotted, you cans eee that Brian is more of a buffoon in Claremont’s issues than Davis’s issues.)
The problems with Claremont’s later writing are the result of his talent declining with age. You can tell that he made the same mistakes and it had nothing to do with the art. For example, in Fantastic Four 12, Reed Richards has his creative genius stolen by the Enclave. At the end of the issue, Reed wins at chess but there’s no point in the story where he seems to have gotten his creativity back. In New Excalibur 24, Lionheart is under a curse that will kill her children if she reveals to them that she is alive. At the end of the story, she reveals that she’s alive to her children and they don’t die but there’s no point in the story where the curse is lifted. Both stories suffer from the same problem- a major problem in the story is shown to have disappeared by the end of the issue but there’s no point in the story when the problem is shown to be resolved. And both were written by Claremont.
Michael – I haven’t read a lot of late-period Claremont, but in the mid-2000s, circa New Excalibur, he would have still only been in his 50s. It may be that he lost touch with his muse for sure, but I think there was more going on than talent deteriorating.
His best work was when he was working in close partnership with others, both artists and editors. Those issues you mentioned are something an editor should have picked up, but Marvel editorial seemed to not be paying close attention to plot, characterization and continuity in the Jemas years. Perhaps this is the kind of thing he would have expected an editor to pick up on if it was a problem. Frankly, I don’t think plot mechanics were ever Claremont’s strong suit, and there’s plenty of stuff in ’80s X-Men comics where things just resolve without explanation.
@Aro- You may be right about that- Shooter once said that Claremont does his best work when he’s got a good editor.
@Moo: I didn’t realize McLeod felt that way, but I don’t think that’s unusual. Artists are frequently their own harshest critics.
@Aro: That’s a really interesting timeline of Claremont’s import of Mojoworld and Otherworld into the X-Men. Thank you!
First, to answer your question: as a contemporary reader, I thought the roster shake-up was exciting. The team members who were written off seemed to be in real peril. And the urgency with which all known mutants (and similar) were collected made sense at the time. The X-Men needed to circle the wagons against the Marauders.
It honestly never occurred to me that Longshot might not technically be a mutant or that Betsy was bringing a whole other universe of characters and stories with her. I think I was used to Claremont snatching up characters from the wider Marvel Universe at that point. He had used Kulan Gath not too long before, and even wrote in a cameo appearance for Carol Danver’s boyfriend from SHIELD(?) at one point.
I was 13, which means I wasn’t a super critical reader. And I didn’t have the resources to dig into every character’s history at that point (no trades, no internet, no money for back issues). I kind of took everything at face value, and Betsy’s history was succinctly explained in the New Mutants annual.
Second, what’s interesting to me about importing both Mojoworld and Otherwold is that they both introduce more magic (or “technology so advanced it’s magic”) to the X-Men milieu. And specifically transformative magic with Spiral’s “Body Shoppe” and Roma’s Siege Perilous. In fact, Claremont imported Spiral and her Body Shoppe before he snatched up Longshot, first with Lady Deathstrike (Feb. ’86) and then with Rachel Summers (June ’86).
So not only did he grab Spiral as soon as the Longshot mini was done, but he wove her and the Body Shoppe into 3 distinct X-men/New Mutants stories in the span of 6 months. And he added her to the Freedom Force roster!
Was all the Body Shoppe stuff a dry run for the Siege Perilous stories? Was he doubling down on transformative magic because he had plans for it later? I don’t know. Claremont famously seeded plot points into the mutant books before he knew where they were ultimately headed. But he seems to be *really* interested in the possibilities of transformation at this time. See the aforementioned Kulan Gath story (from late ’84) as another example.
For the record, I was 100% onboard for the Spiral/Mojoverse/Body Shoppe stuff. But Roma and the Siege Perilous totally bored me. I think it was something about Spiral being a really dangerous foe with a cool design and Roma being a deus ex machina with ties to boring history. That probably sums it up.
Finally, this is about the time that the X-Men get fully decoupled from upstate New York. I mean, obviously since they’re in Australia. But once Claremont introduces several long-range teleporters to the X-universe, not to mention multiple fantasy realms, then there’s no need to actually travel anywhere. The X-Men can be any place in the world in the blink of an eye, which diminished the concept for me a little bit.
They’re no longer grounded characters living in a specific place at a specific time. They aren’t having fights in Central Park. They don’t need access to a Blackbird to get to Magneto’s island. They can be across the planet or on a different planet or in Otherworld at any time. The broadened scope watered down the storytelling for me.
@Thom – Doesn’t seem like it’s that. People who are their own worst critics tend to be hard on *all* of their work. McLeod singled out his New Mutants work. Anyway, it’s on his Wikipedia page if you’re interested.
@Michael: yes, Claremeont wrote detailed plots. He also collaborated with artists beforehand (Byrne has talked about story-conference phone calls in which they hashed out plots) and artists would embellish/ go their own way at times (e.g. Paul Smith drawing an entire society of Morlocks when Claremont intended there to be far fewer). The better Claremont stories often feature artists who added elements and made the storytelling/pacing their own. Without a strong artist and/or editor, even prime-era Claremont can be rough.
Yes, he needed a good editor. I remember watching an interview once in which Ann Nocenti talked about her time as Claremont’s editor. He’d say he didn’t have a story idea, she’d say, “remember that sert-up from issue X that you didn’t resolve?” and he’d go off and use that for his next plot.
@Thom – very cool to read what your reaction was at the time, thanks for that! As someone reading the issues retrospectively, I like a lot of the same things you enjoyed at the time – it’s surprising and unpredictable, and the drama on an issue per issue basis is pretty involving, with dramatic, moody art. I like the team, the characters and their relationships.
I think the Spiral, Longshot and the Mojo World stuff works better than Roma and the Otherworld stuff in part because Mojo World is more of a science fiction concept, while Otherworld is really more fantasy. I feel like the X-Men mostly works on science fiction tropes, and even the existence of magic kind of waters down the premise of mutants.
I think you’re right about the teleportation reducing a lot of the stakes as well – that’s something I hadn’t thought about. I think this is a problem with the Outback stories in general – it’s supposed to be Australia, but it might as well be the Moon.
That’s one of my problems with Mojo as well – I like the characters and the satire pretty well. The weird psychedelic horror/social commentary is a tone I enjoy. But where IS Mojo World? How do you get there? For the stories to work it really has to exist outside of conventional reality, but in order for there to be stakes it has to have some kind of impact on the real world. And the Mojoverse DOES impact some of the characters in quite substantial ways – so it creates the idea that just about anything could happen for any reason.
Yes, Claremont was really going in hard on transformations during these years, to the point where it’s hard to tell if it’s a trope, a ?fetish?, or disinterest in the characters in their existing forms. The characters rarely seek out these transformations – they tend to just have the changes thrust upon them by chance, magic or malevolence. Arguably, transformation is a potent theme in a book about ‘mutation’, but these changes aren’t tied to the idea of the characters being mutants.
Anyway, all of this together creates a sense that anything COULD happen arbitrarily at any point – and it often does! – and it’s to the credit of Claremont, the artists and the editors that it mostly holds together as a riveting serial that feels like it has real stakes and momentum. I think it’s only by taking a more detached, higher-level view of the stories where the problems become more apparent.
@Mike, Michael – yes, this all tracks! I’d love to see that Nocenti interview.
@Moo
McLeod may have singled out his New Mutants work, but you didn’t. You said he’s just generally terrible at both inking and pencilling.
So apparently *you* are McLeod’s worst critic. 🙂
@Chris V –
“Liefield never replaced Portacio on X-Factor.”
Portacio’s art was not depicting Simonson’s writing, and that was led to Harras replacing him with Liefeld.
Portacio’s art was not depicting Simonson’s writing on X-Factor, and that led to Harras replacing Simonson as writer with Liefeld as plotter on New Mutants/X-Force.
Whilce Portacio comes on credited as co-writer for Louise Simonson’s last two issues of X-Factor – 63 & 64. Liefeld and Simonson were New Mutants. The “replacement” wasn’t the same title. You are right. As collaborators assigned by Harris to work with Simonson, which was what I was remembering and meant to say while falling asleep. Chronologically, my memory here also doesn’t hold up. It was all ‘91 but she left X-Factor after New Mutants at least by release dates. In ‘91 her announced departure from Marvel, and arrival to DC was before the last arc of New Mutants. My friends and I presumed at the time that it was because she handed in the stories earlier. Simonson (to my awareness at least) never publicly had a bad word to say about Portacio. At the time of publication, I was upset that the art kept seeming to not follow her story. I have not looked at the issues in the last ~35 years, but the discussions we had at the time were about unexplained smiling robots in isolated panels with no connection to the story. My friend opined ‘maybe it’s foreshadowing? There should be an box saying meanwhile or something.’ I had complained about the antagonist being human heads on Sentinal bodies with no comment. Why were there Sentinels in the art but not the script?
I was unaware at the time of the degree that Harras was directly involved beyond being the decision maker giving the artist control over the stories instead of the writers. My perception of Portacio might actually be entirely due to Harras. What Harras did on one title, he probably did on the rest of her work. It would have been easy for me to conflate what Lee and Liefeld did onto the rest of the soon to be Image artists. With Lee it started as mostly being about Magneto, but he convinced Harris to change the long running traditional order of the production from writer instructing the artist to the artist giving finished art to the scripter aka Stan Lee’s original Marvel method. Then Jim Lee was turning it in to Claremont literately the day before print so that Claremont had to stay up all night scripting over an unfamiliar story that trashed his previous work. Liefeld was doing the same while publicly trash talking and being an absolute Liefeld.
“He [Bob Harras] would change plots, and blame it on the artist. He would change dialogue, and then say, ‘I’m sorry, but I tried to call you and you weren’t home’ or ‘I’ll be sure and tell you the next time.’ He would change some of the dialogue, but not other parts, so the things people said wouldn’t make sense. It was his way of letting you know he was wishing you’d go away.” – Louise Simonson in 2012
This is making me suspect now that neither Portacio nor Simonson directed the colorist to make the antagonist look like Sentinels.
@Chris V , @Michael, – Thank you!
*Harris should be Harras
*antagonist should be antagonists
*Portacio’s art was not depicting Simonson’s writing, and that was led to Harras replacing him with Liefeld. – the strike-through was lost, let us read that as having a ‘should have been’ before the corrected next sentance.
@Paul -thank you too!
“the Mojo World stuff works better than Roma and the Otherworld stuff in part because Mojo World is more of a science fiction concept, while Otherworld is really more fantasy.”
Yes, that’s a good distinction. And it’s probably why I preferred Mojo/Spiral/Longshot, too. More in line with the “weird science” vibe of the X-Men and mutants in general.
“all of this together creates a sense that anything COULD happen arbitrarily at any point”
Part of what makes Claremont — at this stage, at least — such a good writer is exactly this. You never knew what the next issue of Uncanny had in store.
That’s probably partly because of what Mike Loughlin mentions above: Claremont was being prodded by his editor on an issue-by-issue basis to revisit one of the many set-ups he’d forgotten about.
But also because you never knew who or what might show up from other corners of the larger Marvel Universe: Spiral/Mojo, Power Pack, Kulan Gath, Dire Wraiths, Sabretooth, Psylocke/Roma, Lady Deathstrike. In addition to all of the ongoing concepts that were already tied to the X-Men: Freedom Force, the Marauders, those Hellfire guys Wolverine messed up a while back, Storm thinking about her life, etc.
For me, Claremont eventually cast his net too wide. Like I’ve said: too much magic, too big a geographical/dimensional canvas. But it was hard to quit the X-Men when I did. The chaos had a propulsive quality that made me want to see what was coming next. And I had hope that the next issue might bring the characters back down to earth a little bit.
@Jason – So? What’s your point?
Yes, I said McLeod singled out his New Mutants work as substandard. And yes, before that, I said that I think McLeod’s work is terrible in general. I don’t know if that makes me McLeod’s worst critic, but I’m definitely not a fan. I wasn’t exactly trying to hide it.
So what?
@Woodswalked: Nicieza has talked about how difficult it was for him to work with Harras. The constant meddling and changes drove him from the X-books (I forget if he quit or was fired). Lobdell was more in sync with Harras, and could go with the flow. It’s telling that many of the problems in ‘90s X-books that Harras was a part of resurfaced when he was brought in for DC’s Nu52. I think there were a lot of similarities between his and Didio’s management styles. Not coincidentally, his previous favorites Liefeld and Lobdell was brought in for multiple titles.
Found the old New Mutants interview with Claremont and Jones (Simonson). You’ll have to zoom in on the reproduced pages from the book it originally appeared in. Definitely worth a read, though.
https://tombrevoort.com/2023/01/29/the-x-men-companion-2-chris-claremont-and-louise-jones-simonson-interview/
@Moo- One thing about New Mutants, though- the interview was conducted in December of 1981, although it was updated in March and April 1982. Claremont and Jones say they went to Shooter 4 months ago. The New Mutants Graphic Novel was cover dated November 1982. So assuming they went to Shooter in the summer of 1981. they had about a year to prepare the New Mutants. That isn’t THAT short.
@Michael- Well, shave a couple of months off that. The GN was cover-dated November, but it was released in September. So, it was released nine months after this interview was conducted.
Anyway, yeah, a year sounds like plenty of time, but I don’t know how we can really know for sure what a “long” or “short” time is when it comes to putting together a new series at Marvel in 1981 when you and your editor/co-creator are already doing a series. Claremont did say, “Putting out one book was giving us grief enough schedulewise” at the top of the interview. It seems like just doing X-Men was already a handful. I can’t even take an educated guess as to how much time they were able to set aside each week or month or however often it was that they got together to develop New Mutants.
And Bob McLeod mentioned he had to ink the graphic novel on his honeymoon. I don’t know if that’s because he was slow and the penciling took longer than he anticipated, or if his penciling got held up because Claremont was late in giving him something to draw.
@Moo —
It was said that artists are often their own worst critics, and my point was that McLeod will never be his own worst critic as long as you’re around.
The smiley emoji was my special, super-secret code for “This post is meant good-naturedly.”
@Mike Loughlin: Wasn’t Harras also the one who drove Kelly and Siegel off their respective books post-Onslaught/Trial of Gambit?
@Moo- According to Brian Cronin, it was because the story in the New Mutants Graphic Novel was intended for New Mutants 1 but had to be repurposed for Marvel Graphic Novel 4 because whatever story was intended for Marvel Graphic Novel 4 wasn’t ready:
https://www.cbr.com/new-mutants-1-scrapped-comic-legends-shooter-claremont/
@Diana- This interview makes it clear that the problem was “editorial” but it’s not clear if “editorial” was Harras or Mark Powers:
https://www.nerdsoup4u.com/post/269-steve-seagle-uncanny-x-men-retrospective
@Jason – Well, shit. Sorry about that, Jason. I misread your comment completely and thought you were calling me out on something, but was confused as to what.
And I have a dry sense of humor, so now I’m just embarrassed that I misunderstood. I think I need to take an emoji fluency class or something.
@Michael- Oh, right. You mentioned that earlier.
@Moo – thanks for that link to that 1982 X-Men Companion interview with Claremont and Wheezie. Really interesting insight into some of the editorial thinking and creative process – Claremont hits on how he sees comics as predominantly collaborative, as we’ve talked about here.
They also talk a lot about ideas for New Mutants that didn’t really come to pass.
(I’m also fascinated by Brevoort’s VERY 2010s WordPress blog, which I guess he still posts regularly on without a care about the ossifying interface design.)
@Michael – interesting to see those two stories of editorial interference. Given how McCleod’s art looks a lot better when someone else inks his pencils, in hindsight Wheezie probably should have listened to Shooter on this occasion, and just let Bob enjoy his honeymoon without guilt! But that’s comics for you … I notice that Lousie gets NO credit at all in the New Mutants Graphic Novel (her name is no where on it as far as I can tell), which seems pretty galling given the amount of work that she did in preparing the series.