Apr 15
House to Astonish Episode 207
Posted on Monday, April 15, 2024 by Al in Podcast
We’re back (back! Back!) with remembrances of Trina Robbins and Mark “Doc” Bright, a whiz through the first six post-Krakoa X-books and a mini-explainer of Misty and the new Gail Simone-run iteration thereof. We’ve also got reviews of Action Comics and Uncanny Valley and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe All this plus a utility cry-shoulder, A Different Murderworld and Wolverine’s favourite herd of elephants.
The show is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And do you deserve one of our lovely t-shirts? Yes, yes you do.
If the official handbook ever needs to take a rest I’d be happy to listen to more Misty synopsis read throughs, chuck a couple of fake ones in there and see if we can tell.
Still waiting for moe who’s Who in Who’s WHO.
Always love a new episode though why no talk about Ed Piskor?
Henchman to a henchman Tyrak rampages through Hollywood.
“Look, Arnold Swarzeneggar, there goes Warlord Attuma.”
“IT IS NOT ATTUMA.”
Thank you for the lovely words about Mark Bright.
He was one of those somewhat unsung heroes who produced some excellent work. His work on Green Lantern Emerald Dawn was a particular favourite and very much set the house style for that book through until the Ron Marz/Darryl Banks era began.
His GI Joe was good too, as was the famous Transformers cover you spoke of.
That clean, easy-to-follow style was always a positive.
He’ll be missed.
I was recently wondering about which X-Men characters had been most successful in solo series. Maybe I’ll start doing some research to figure out a list.
-Wolverine….
-Cable has to be at #2.
-I guess you’d count Dazzler, whose series lasted 42 issues, although it was from before she officially joined the X-Men.
-Gambit was popular at one time, but apparently had abysmal sales when they tried a solo book for him in more recent years.
I like Gambit, but “uber-competent sleazebag” is a very 90s concept.
Gambit’s popularity waned enormously by the end of the 90s and we had that last solo book, which lasted 25-30 issues, ending somewhere in the time before the Morrison run began.
Even then, I don’t remember that book being overall popular or a particularly high-seller. Bishop’s solo book around the same time suffered from the same issue.
After that he basically got folded into the X-Treme X-men cast and later Chuck Austen’s book before the ill-advised Horseman of Apocalypse storyline.
I’m not sure how the first ongoing Gambit series sold, the comic market was in the doldrums at the time. It may have been a decent seller for the period, as it lasted 25 issues. It was relatively a critical hit though. Many X-fans at the time said the Nicieza written book was one of the better quality books compared to the other X-titles being published at that time. It’s sort of damning by faint praise though, as the quality of the X-line was in a pit before Morrison.
Gambit actually had two more solo ongoing series after the late-1990s series, the last from 2012. Although, I remember them selling terribly. The second ongoing series was actually a decent read (written by Jonathan Layman).
I remember it being regarded as better than the vast bulk of the rest of the line at the time (though as you said that doesn’t say too much given the weird places it was in for that 6-7 year period leading up to mid-2001 (The flagship books dancing from the incoherent nonsense of the late Lobdell era, the aborted Kelly/Seagle runs to Alan Davis’ totally fine but dictated to by editorial committee period to the aborted second Claremont run and Lobdell’s fill in run).
The highlights of the line in the late 90s/turn of the Millenium from my recollections were things like John Francis Moore’s slacker-era X-Force run, Ellis’ single Wolverine storyline, Joe Casey and later Robert Weinberg’s Cable runs and Steve Skorce’s occasional trips to the X-book line.
If Marvel had struck while the iron was hot, they could have launched a Gambit solo comic in 1993 that lasted 50 issues. Get a Jim Lee -inspired artist to draw it (Art Thibert, Karl Alstatter, Travis Charest, Richard Bennett) and the money would have rolled in. The minis were drawn by very good artists, but ones whose style didn’t boost sales at the times. I was surprised they waited until the late ‘90s to try a Gambit ongoing.
Also, after Wolverine and Cable, the next successful solo X-book has to be X-Man. Regardless of quality, his series ran for 75 issues.
I hate to say it, but I think the next name on the list is going to be Havok for 32 issues of Mutant X.
Si: To address the uber-confident thing, I’ve always thought the Black Cat would be a good foil for him in a heist story. Her luck powers and self-confidence could keep Gambit from becoming insufferable.
Since it wasn’t part of the X office, it likely doesn’t count, but I know Al and I love the Quicksilver mini that Ostrander wrote that was a companion book to heroes for hire.
If we can list Cable, then we’d have to list Deadpool, the most successful solo character to spin out of the X-books since Wolverine.
Havok (via Mutant X) and X-Man are interesting: both of them had a single, long-run solo title, but neither one would get a solo starring role now. And Mystique’s solo book of the early 2000s would be a close third.
In terms of longer-term sales, I think there’s a case for Magneto. He’s had one solo series with e respectable run, but also gets to headline a lot of miniseries. His villain-hero role does make it harder to sustain an ongoing, though.
All this discussion of Gambit as a charming sleazebag makes me realize that Fantomex can be read as a parody of Gambit’s earliest appearances.
I know it’s a bit of a fudge, but Laura’s All-New Wolverine run beats out Mutant X.
Still fudging, but Daken has had decent length runs too.
Bishop, if you count District X as a Bishop book.
Emma Frost had a longer ongoing than Cyclops has.
Not sure run lengths mean much anymore without taking into account how close those runs are. Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil and Captain America seem to be relaunched these days due to change of creative team and nothing more.
If anything, the X-books have ended and launched books with even less justification during the Krakoa era. Si Spurrier’s Nightcrawler books come to mind, as do Tini Howard’s books about Betsy Braddock.
I’m not sure continuity implant series such as the recent Gambit series by Claremont should count equally with current continuity ones. And speaking of Gambit, he had a joint book with Rogue in 2018-2019 and another in 2023. That should count to some extent as well. And wasn’t Rogue lead of X-Men Legacy for a considerable time?
Omar-I doubt Morrison intended Fantomex as any sort of comment on Gambit. Fantomex was based on the Italian comic Diabolik as well as the French pulp character Fantomas, and those types of characters had already been parodied by The Phantom character from the Pink Panther film. Those were the influences Morrison was working with for Fantomex
@Chris V: Oh, I’m sure Morrison didn’t give a fig about Gambit.
But it’s funny that we’ve now got two master thieves with Francophone accents whose flamboyant charm was played as manipulative work, and both of whom were engineered facades for an X-villain agenda.
Regardless of intent, Fantomex ended up being rather like an exaggerated version of Claremont’s original intent for Gambit.
Morrison did give a fig about Gambit, at least a theoretical fig. Morrison’s initial outline for New X-Men included killing Rogue and using Gambit (as well as, if I recall correctly, ‘introducing a new, younger Rogue’).
Due to that, I’ve always assumed Fantomex was an expy of Gambit.
Mike Loughlin
You’re absolutely right and, in retrospect, it’s surprising they didn’t give him a book then given the massive expansion the line underwent in that era.
The minis sold well yet by the time of the first ongoing’s launch, the Gambit heyday had already passed.
X-man is a book that I still find genuinely surprising that it ran so long. Outside of completionists, I don’t recall it being especially popular or well-liked for the most part. It was one that the shop I frequented from the late 90s through the mid-2010s ordered a stack of copies, yet never seemed to be able to move them. They’d always end up in the dollar bin. At one point around 2002 I went through it and found they had essentially a near uninterrupted run of it sitting there which nobody had bought.
Ceran-Morrison’s plans for Rogue and Gambit were so different from their use of Fantomex that I don’t see any connection. If Morrison had gotten to use Gambit in X-Men, it does seem unlikely they would have created Fantomex though.
As I understand it, those are two different pitches Morrison had for X-Men. The first involved killing Rogue and replacing her with a younger Goth female as Morrison said the Rogue in the comic was so different than the one featured in whatever X-Men cartoon was airing at the time. Morrison felt the Rogue in the comic was unbelievable since her character revolved around her powers making her isolated, but she was a brash woman who usually dressed in revealing clothing. There was no mention of Gambit in that pitch. Marvel nixed that idea.
Morrison reworked his pitch as Gambit losing control of his powers so that Gambit would no longer be living in three-dimensional reality. In that scenario, Rogue would be the one who wanted to have a relationship with Gambit, but Gambit would no longer be functionally human. Marvel apparently liked this idea, but Claremont said he had already chosen Gambit for his team.
Personally, I’m happier with what we got on the page.
I wish Morrison had written Nightcrawler and Storm (beyond one issue), but I’m glad they didn’t get to use Rogue and Gambit. I like that they focused on the younger class, and Rogue and Gambit don’t fit as well with the school setting.
Speaking of Rogue and Gambit, does anybody remember that NYX was going to be a MAX title by Brian Wood? I recall details like Rogue having a drawer of sex toys and Gambit was going to be sexually assaulted in prison.
…this is the first I’ve heard about it. Sounds dire.
Oh, it was even more of a binfire than you would guess
https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/beef-star-david-choe-was-once-in-a-truly-crazy-feud-with-marvel-over-x-men/
That’s too bad. Brian Wood’s Generation X run was really good. It was like a prototype for his Demo series. This does not sound positive like that one.
I’m glad Morrison didn’t end up using Rogue and Gambit — that would have been a waste of space in New X-Men.
I’d read that MAX NYX book, though.
ISTR my sister got the Misty annual for Christmas one year, and I naturally flicked through it, because it was reading material and I was a kid who’d read anything available. I was also a kid who always watched Doctor Who from behind the sofa, and sometimes The Real Ghostbusters as well. I. Freaked. The. Heck. Out. (Although all I remember now is that one strip ended with the heroine’s best friend suddenly having glowing red eyes. It may have been scarier in context.)
The idea that Tyrak is the Atlantean super-soldier, but is also a henchman with imposter syndrom makes me think that he’s not so much Captain Atlantis as AltlantAgent. (And if Tyrak always wears sunglasses, is there also an Atlantean called Sunglazhut who always wears a tie?)
We did used to have books called “Superman Family” and “Batman Family.”
I only recently found out that Lana was now Superwoman and engaged to John Henry Irons.
I was trying to think who was missing from that rundown from the older Superman books: Ron Troupe, Cat Grant, Steve Lombard, and I suppose Morgan Edge. If ever there was a villain to be dusted off for relevancy in 2024, it’s Morgan Edge.
“Rogue in the comic was unbelievable since her character revolved around her powers making her isolated, but she was a brash woman who usually dressed in revealing clothing”.
Like, in the Savage Land? Where else? Swimsuit special?
@Dave: There’s also X-Men v.1 #8, where Rogue wears a tied up shirt as a bikini top and some very skimpy cutoffs for her picnic date with Gambit.
Lee also had Rogue make her return from the Siege Perilous by falling to frame naked in a double-page splash panel in Uncanny X-Men #269, then has her fight the Reavers in a shirt but no pants.
And this leads into the Savage Land arc, where her costume is torn to shreds so Lee can draw her in what amounts to a skimpy bikini and loincloth. So the biggest X-Men artist of the 1990s spent a lot of time putting Rigue in revealing outfits.
And, of course, JRJR, Silvestri, and then Lee moved Rogue out of jumpsuit-style layers and into one-piece spandex. Along with the 90s tendency to pose women characters for sex appeal, Rogue’s spandex onesie look was often played for titillation.
One counterargument is that all of this reflects Rogue coming out of her isolation, coming to be comfortable in her body. And her costume still technically covers everything but her face.
But it’s likely Morrison was coming at it from the idea that the “powers mean I can’t touch you/I’m isolated from human contact” thing is a core character concept that should be emphasized in the visual design.