My Favorite Mutants....

I have said it before but it bears repeating for the purpose of this entry: the X-Men were my gateway drug. I had read random comics here and there, ones given to my by family just to keep me occupied for a couple minutes or found in garage sales.  Nothing stuck though until that fateful day in the Denver Airport when I picked up my very first X-Men comic (more on that in a minute) and it started a love affair that has lasted until this day albeit to varying degrees.

So while listening to Kevin Smith's "Fatman on Batman" podcast, specifically an edition where Kevin and one of his guests list their favorite Batman issues/stories, I was inspired to make a list of some of my favorite X-Men stories.  No real order, definitely not a complete list, but just a rundown of some of my favorite X-Centric issues & story arcs (oh yeah, and it is a purposeful thing that I don't dip into the sure things like Grant Morrison's run, "Dark Phoenix" or "God Loves, Man Kills"...just want to expose some other notables).

So what better place to start than with:

Uncanny X-Men #224

This was the issue that started it all and it was absolutely NOT the most first-timer friendly BUT a writer like Chris Claremont went out of his way to adhere to an old Stan Lee (so I've heard) axiom that every issue is somebody's first.  There wasn't yet an X-Men: Animated Series to lay the groundwork but he made it easy to understand who Wolverine, Havok, Rogue, and Dazzler were and what they were doing in San Francisco.  Marc Silvestri defined the visuals of all of these characters for me, particularly Wolverine, and for the longest time his was the look with which I associated these characters.  His version WAS Wolvie, it WAS Storm and Dazzler and Longshot...he & Dan Green WERE the X-Artists for me!

As for Claremont, he made the fact that I was jumping into a situation en media res completely tolerable given that the X-Books were on the verge of entering The Fall of Mutants, that the Registration Act and Freedom Force were things, that a powerless Storm was completely separate from the team for reasons unknown to me...

All of those things would, in the mindset of some in today's comic landscape (coughDCCOMICScough), be GIANT barriers to my signing on the the mutant bandwagon but because the writer made the effort to make his comic accessible, I was hooked and wanted to know not only where the story was going, but I wanted to know where it had come from.  This led to my 8 year old self finding a local comic shop which was thankfully right next door to the karate studio I was attending and spending several days a week there, not just new comic day.

This was in the age before EVERYTHING was traded so I dug deep into back issue bins, began following X-Factor and New Mutants, and reading Classic X-Men (later X-Men Classic) until my back issue endeavors collided with Classic around Uncanny issue #170.  Speaking of classic, that leads me to another couple of my favorites:

Classic X-Men #19

So just as with my first Uncanny issue, I also joined the classic adventures of my favorite mutants in the middle of a story! This time they were trapped in an arctic base, rendered powerless & child-like by Magneto, and at the motherly mercy of the android Nanny.  Claremont writing, John Byrne art, this was the stuff of dreams and a totally different visual than which I had become accustomed to with reading Uncanny & seeing Marc Silvestri's take.

And again, even though I was jumping into to a show already in progress, I was able to pretty much pick up on what was going on AND want to track down the issues that came before to see how my favorites got trapped in the first place!  Then, with the ending that split up the team, leaving Jean & Beast in Antarctica and the rest of the unit's fate in limbo, I had to know what happened!!!  This stuff was epic!

Plus, one of the bonuses of these Classic issues, there were additional pages (although at 8 years old I didn't know they were added at the time) added to the main story AND a total new back-up story!  This one fleshed out the character of Magneto in a way that I can look back on and safely say had never been done before.  It filled in gaps in his history and it was BEAUTIFULLY rendered by John Bolton.  These back-ups were a thing of wonder and the back-up alone is why this next issue is one of my favorite...

Classic X-Men #25

Wolverine solo...drawn by John Bolton...this back-up was a thing of beauty and probably one of the reasons that I fell in love with the character.  It does a great job of fleshing him out as more than just the crazy runt with claws, although in the Uncanny issues I was already seeing he was more than that, and it is just a wonder to look at.  Just thinking about it makes me want to either dig these issues out just to read the back-ups or go buy the Vignettes trades.

As an added bonus in the main story, you get Mariko Yashida making her first appearances in Wolvie's life (the previous issue being her first), you get Banshee losing his powers (a thing that stuck for well over 100 issues), and in the added pages, you get an Apocalypse appearance to tie him into Moses Magnum's origins!  Speaking of Apocalypse....

X-Factor #68

Okay this may seem an odd choice to some but this issue, with writing credited to Whilce Portacio, Jim Lee, and Chris Claremont with Portacio & Art Thibert getting the artistic nods, is the culmination of so many different plot threads PLUS the springboard into the next phase of the mutant world.

It brings to a head the Apocalypse story that has been building in some fashion since X-Factor #5, it brings to crescendo the saga of baby Nathan Christopher Charles Summers that has been on-going since his birth in Uncanny #201 and really kicked into high gear during Inferno & the subsequent Judgement War arc in X-Factor, and his Nathan's fate certainly added even more intrigue to the Cable/Stryfe mystery unfolding in the closing pages of the original New Mutants series & subsequently in the original X-Force series...plus it was set on the Blue Area of the Moon which harkens back to the original Dark Phoenix saga oh so many years prior.

The closing of this arc also catapults the original X-Men who made up X-Factor into the Muir Island Saga over in Uncanny that would ultimately lead us to the introduction of the Blue & Gold Teams in the UXM & & X-Men books.

But most importantly, and the reason why this issue resonates in my mind, is because of the heartbreaking scene when Scott Summers has to give up his child, has to send little Nathan off into the great unknown with a strong possibility that Cyke will never his son again, in hopes that this mysterious Asakani woman can save his life.  This is a man who, taking into account the sliding concept of time in comics, was without his son for 3 publishing years (so say like a year in comic book time maybe?). Now having only just gotten his son back, Cyclops was faced with the gut-wrenching choice of what to do, what to sacrifice, and...perhaps this is just me reading into it now...but giving is his son up to be saved is kind of making up for being a totally selfish douchebag since Jean Grey's not-so-dead body was found at the bottom of the ocean a few years prior.  That's a thought I'm just now thinking for the first time by the way...

Any way it was the emotional hook of Cyclops and Nate that puts this one in my mind more so than anything about the Apocalypse/Askani stuff...oh yeah, and this story arc would also be the hook upon which the next entry into my arc would hang its hat:

X-Cutioner's Song

So apparently, according to Wikipedia, this was a story arc not looked upon fondly despite its high sales numbers...well I don't give a damn!  I look back on this story as one of the highlights of my comic book reading youth.  Not only was it full of awesome art from the likes of Brandon Peterson, Jae Lee, Andy Kubert, and Greg Capullo but the story also brought together a ton of characters that had essentially been separate since the birth of X-Force, X-Men, and the overhaul of X-Factor that came about 15 months prior.

It took the "Cable & Stryfe have the same face" bomb that got dropped at the end of New Mutants #100 and used it for something major...if you call something like Stryfe, decked out in Cable-wear, shooting Professor Xavier in the face major.  The arc brought Apocalypse into the field as an ally rather than enemy which in turn played into the Archangel dynamic as well as the Cable/Cyclops drama.  It put X-Force, who were sans Cable at that moment, into the mix as a fugitive team.  Guido working with Gambit, Feral and Wolfsbane occupying the same space thereby proving there were in fact two different characters (bad joke), the moon, Stryfe versus Apocalypse, Stryfe's torture of Jean & Cyclops on THE BLUE AREA OF THE MOON, and Scott Summers' nagging questions: is Cable my son or is Stryfe my son?

It was an epic tale that told a self-contained story AND built for the future!  What a novel concept in this day & age where so many crossovers end up feeling to me like they exist ONLY to set-up the future and don't tell a complete story on their own.  This was throwing everything out there and making it all work!  History also tells us that Magneto ALMOST ended up a part of the story too AND a joke by Peter David is what ultimately led to Wolvie getting his adamantium ripped out in Fatal Attractions (more on that later)!

Plus the fallout from this arc also directly led to two of my favorite X-issues of all time!  First up:

X-Force #19

"The Open Hand - The Closed Fist"...the name of the story and representing the two sides of the coin when it comes to "the dream" from the perspectives of Charles Xavier (the former) and Cable (the latter).  In the fallout of "X-Cutioner's Song" the X-Force squad is essentially being held prisoner while Xavier & Storm question Cannonball's decisions.

The beauty of this issue, along with being a great showcase for how far Capullo has come as an artist, is in its layers.  For one it reconnects the former students of Xavier (Sunspot and Cannonball) with their former home, obviously via Sam's interactions with Charles & Ororo, but also thru Roberto's interaction with Stevie Hunter.  Then it points out how distant the rest of the squad (Warpath, Siryn, Shatterstar, Feral, Boomer, Rictor) are from that touchstone.  Sure some of them (Boomer, Rictor, Siryn) have a degree of affiliation but none of them were ever under the tutelage of Xavier directly and neither Warpath, Shatterstar, nor Feral spent one second under the wing of anyone but Cable.  There are so many degrees of removal from "the dream" looking at say Beast to Feral...

This issue also provides set-up for the future but no in a way that intrudes on the main story...just enough to tease you and leave you curious for what's to come.

But the highlight, the absolute crucial part of this issue though, the thing that really defined Cannonball for the future (or at least should have), is the "open hand, closed fist" debate he has with Xavier using, of all things, a mouse.  The crux of Guthrie's argument is that the supposedly safe and welcoming open hand can be used to slap you across the face (yeah...he nearly slaps Xavier across the face) while the supposedly violent & threatening closed fist can be used to protect and comfort (that's where the mouse comes in).  THAT is my Cannonball, the guy who was taking the best from his three teachers (Xavier, Magneto, & Cable) and looking to mold them into an entirely new ideal for this new generation of mutants.  It was furthered in the Counter-X Ellis run with his tutelage under Pete Wisdom AND it was why I was furious when Cannonball was reverted to the country bumpkin when he officially became an X-Man post-Age of Apocalypse..that's a whole other rant though.

This issue gave X-Force an identity, a STRONG identity, for the first time since the series began after a bunch of meandering issues about Externals and Cannonball dying and Gideon and Tolliver and lackluster Mark Pacella/Dan Panosian art. Also, and I am totally putting meaning in where there probably isn't any, it says something to me that this article on MTV.com here from 7/11/13 uses an image from this issue!

As for that other favorite issue that spawned out of "X-Cutioner's Song":

Uncanny X-Men #303

So "Song" spawned the Legacy Virus which was a pretty clear AIDS virus for the mutant community.  It had claimed the lives of some minor characters like Infectia and Burke as well as some major ones like Jamie Madrox (later revealed to be a dupe), Moira MacTaggert (the only human), and Revanche (Psylocke's....whatever).

But the saddest moment, the one that ripped my heart out, was the death of Illyana Rasputin in UXM #303. UNFORTUNATELY her death was spoiled beyond belief when UXM #304 was released BEFORE #303.  See #304 was part of the big "Fatal Attractions" crossover and I guess delaying it would have fucked up the schedule of the rest of the x-over...that's all assumption by the way.

So Illyana's story is sad enough on its own...the little sister of Colossus, as a little girl she was kidnapped from Russia to be used as a pawn by the villain Arcade, ultimately stolen away into Limbo while the X-Men were on some island where the barriers between dimensions were weak, and although it was only minutes on Earth in which she was lost in Limbo, with the way time moves there she reemerged from the hellish dimension as a teenager.  She joined the New Mutants, struggled with her demonic side for years, was used by the demons S'ym & N'astirh to bring Limbo to Earth during "Inferno", and returned to her proper age during the closing chapters of that story.

She returned to Russia, her & Colossus' parent were murdered, she contracted the Legacy Virus, and that brought us to this story where, while the rest of the team was away, it all came to a head with Shadowcat (visiting from Excalibur), Jubilee, Jean Grey, and Charles Xavier in residence at the mansion and Moira MacTaggert there via video screen.

I'm honestly tearing up writing about this and reading the recaps...I think this was the first comic in the, at that point, 6 years I had been reading that had this kind of effect on me and it says something for my memories of it that it still does.  Jubilee bonding to Illyana in these last moments of her life, the history of Kitty Pryde & Illyana coming into play, the reaction of Colossus when he returns home to the tragic news, the reading of Hans Christian Andersons' "Little Matchgirl", the BAMF doll, it's all so...heartbreaking.  As Jubilee puts it in the end, since she has been hanging with the X-Men, she has mixed it up with Brood-things, Sentinels, Acolytes and everything. ‘So how is it ya can save the world every morning pre-wheaties…but when it comes to saving one little girl…zip?’ 

I'm crying....

That could be a good time to end it but I've got two more specific issues I want to point out and one run in particular that, for me, is probably my favorite.  First up, and kind of spiraling out of the earlier mention of "Fatal Attractions" and the Jubilee stuff in #303:

Wolverine #75

In X-Men #25, thanks to a joke from Peter David, Magneto ripped the adamantium free from the skeleton of Wolverine which, in turn, prompted Xavier to mindwipe Magneto which, in turn, led to the creation on Onslaught which, in turn, led to the Heroes Reborn story which, in turn....see how it all goes with comics?

The ramifications of Xavier's mindwipe aren't the point here though.  The point is Wolverine #75, for its fancy hologram and horror-flick image cover, is one of the most touching issues of a comic you will read.  The race to save Wolverine's life while simultaneously returning to Earth from space is pulse-pounding, Xavier's willingness to risk his own life to get inside Wolvie's mind and help him is noble, the moment of Illyana's spirit shoving Wolverine's away from the light was touching as was the fact that is was Jean Grey's voice that pulled Logan back from the brink so he could save their lives.

Seeing Wolverine weakened from his ordeal yet forcing himself into a Danger Room scenario is, in it's own way, as heartbreaking as Illyana's death because he just can't cut it anymore.  Add to that the revelation that Logan's infamous claws are in fact bone and you have a true moment in X-Lore.  The real kicker to this story though, the one that makes it linger in my memory, is the letter (and his hat) that Wolvie leaves Jubilee when he departs from the team.  It is heartfelt, it is a look at the core of the man, and can bring tears to your eyes just as well as the words of UXM #303.

Sadly, and maybe this is why they linger so, the next story that comes to mind is also one of death and tragedy in the life of Logan:

Wolverine #57

Love has been a difficult thing for Wolverine to come by and for those of us who had followed his journey from his introduction to the X-Men pining after Jean Grey up to his first meeting with Mariko Yashida, you could see it was not something he gave freely.  

Time has taught us that Logan has certainly gotten around in his century-plus on Earth but the number of women that our beloved Canuck has deeply and truly loved has been few: Jean, Rose, Silver Fox, and Mariko.  Of those four men, only Mariko ever stood at an altar waiting to be Logan's bride only to have the machinations of Mastermind dash all those dreams to hell.  It was a manipulation that put Mariko into what I can only call a shame-spiral as, in the aftermath, she attempted to clean up her families criminal ties in order to make herself worthy of Logan's love.

The truly tragic thing was that those attempts to clean up the family were what ultimately cost Mariko her life, or rather, put her in a situation in which Logan had to choose: did he leave her to die a painful poisoned death OR use his claws to end her pain?  The failed samurai chose the latter, the mercy kill, and broke his own heart in the process when he "snikted" the claws into his love...in my mind the last woman he truly loved.

My heart broke for him then, my heart still breaks for him now thinking about it and reading over the recaps, and what makes it even worse...if that's possible...is that it was not the last time Wolverine would have to make that choice.  Whether intentional or not (and since Grant Morrison was writing it I assume it was intentional), Wolverine has to unleash his claws on Jean Grey in New X-Men #148 in hopes that it would unleash The Phoenix and save their lives.  If it didn't work, well then he would have two dead loves on his claws.

This story in Wolvie #57 was a picture perfect depiction of the tragic figure that Wolverine truly was at that point...

Uncanny X-Men #205, X-Factor #87, X-Men #30, X-Force (Vol. 2) #26/UXM #524, X-Men #100, UXM #143, X-Men #110....just off the top of my head those are some great single issue stories for various reasons, most of them tragic probably, but I want to close it out with a mention of one of my favorite runs. 

Uncanny X-Men #269

Uncanny X-Men #229

From Uncanny X-Men #229 until UXM #269, the lives of the various members of the team were in total upheaval.  It all started when, in the aftermath of "Fall of the Mutants", the team elected to fake their deaths in order to (a) protect their loved ones while (b) striking at their enemies.  It was an idea first floated out by Chris Claremont maybe two years prior in the aftermath of the "Mutant Massacre" but, in typical Claremont fashion, took years to come to fruition.

These forty issues saw the team set-up shop in Australia after deposing The Reavers from their very unique home, it saw the return of The Brood, the introduction of Genosha, Inferno, the team crumble in the absence of Wolverine & the "death" of Storm, the Siege Perilous, the Mandarin, Captain American, it saw a newer & stranger team born on Muir Island under the leadership of the repowered Banshee, it saw Jim Lee come to the fold as an artist, saw Gambit and Jubilee make their first appearances, did some crazy shit to Jean Grey in the Morlock tunnels, and eventually came full circle right before the "X-Tinction Agenda" by bringing Rogue back to Australia.

It was a crazy, experimental, unique time frame in X-history in which...for a long time...the traditional idea of what the X-Men team were did not exist.  There was no mansion, no Blackbird or Cerebro, no Xavier, it was an adventure unlike any that came before it or any that has followed it.  I think it is safe to say that, aside from Morrison's run, this is the most original section in the long history of the x-books and it was all guided by the words of Chris Claremont with the pens of men like Mark Silvestri, Jim Lee, Rick Leonardi, and Kieron Dwyer to bring those words to life.

If there is one issue though that I find a must-read over all the others it is this:

Uncanny X-Men #251

There are dozens upon dozens of stories in the 50 year publishing history of the X-Men that are worth your time.  These are only a tiny handful of those that have sprung to my mind in the process of writing this up.  Be it in trade form, in back issue hunting, or by downloading at Comixology or whatever website does stuff like that, these are well worth the read. 

In fact, the only X-Men stuff I would tell you to avoid is any crap written by Chuck Austen or Frank Tieri.  The worst....

Now bring on The Battle Of The Atom!!!

SNIKT!: Thinking about Wolverine....

   

It is safe to say that those are as close to my first visuals of Wolverine as I can find on Google images. The first from Marc Silvestri & Dan Green and the second from John Byrne & Terry Austin.  Technically my first Uncanny X-Men issue was #224 but he's not on the cover and image finder was no help getting an interior page of Wolvie from that ish.  The second image is originally from UXM #113 but I first read it as part of the wonderful Classic X-Men series...ish #19 to be exact.  That series enabled me to essentially read the entire history of the All New, All Different team from their Giant Size intro until the Classic issues and my back-issue collection met up somewhere around issue #170.

They were a great way to immerse myself in the history of the team plus, for the first 44 issues, they contained great back-up stories that further fleshed out the characters.  Several of them are quite memorable for me including the Magneto back-up from #19, several great Wolverine back-ups with him & Crawler, him and Jean, a story about what happened between panels when Jean became Phoenix, when Proteus played with Wolverine, not to mention awesome covers & page art like these from John Bolton:

It was a phenomenal introduction as an 8 or 9 year old kid to these characters and while this blog is not intended as a a reflection on that series (the back-ups are largely available in the X-Men:Vignettes collections), it is because of stories like these, and in the way in which he was presented, that I fell in love with Wolverine.

I imagine the hairy little (at least back then) Canadian guy with his adamantium claws was a gateway into comics for many a kid.  He was tough, hell everything about him screamed tough.  He fought tough, talked tough, healed from everything, and HE HAD FREAKIN' CLAWS!  Created by Len Wein and first drawn by Herb Trimpe for an Incredible Hulk story, he immediately demanded my attention more than any other character in that first UXM issue I bought (Longshot and Havok were distant seconds).  I followed him everywhere, into Alpha Flight, into his own solo on-going series (the Claremont/Miller book was before my time so I read it much later), into Marvel Comics Presents, basically if Wolverine was there so was my (dad's) money.  I even remember him freaking out when I asked him to buy me the Wolverine Saga books because they were priced at the insanely high tag of $3.95!!!!

So yeah, suffice it to say that I was a huge fan of Wolverine...I'd dig up my Halloween costume picture if I had the slightest clue where it was located...so it slightly saddens me to realize how little I actually follow the character anymore.  I mean I still put my money down for Wolverine & The X-Men every month, or rather twice a month now, but I haven't purchased a single issue of his solo books in several years.  What happened? 

I suppose I'll show you some of the highlights of a text conversation between me and my friend that put this whole thing in my head in the first place:


ME: I want to write a Wolvie tale but despite reading the guy for 20+ years I find I have nothing original to say

RYAN: That's probably part of the problem...

ME: Aside from Jason Aaron...I can't think of the last good take on Wolvie

RYAN: Last Wolvie run that stick in my head is Millar

ME: Old Man Logan?

RYAN: Yeah

ME: All I think of was how insanely delayed it was because they though McNiven could do a monthly...

RYAN: Or even Enemy of the State

ME: Enemy of the State was good

 

 

RYAN: They need to treat Wolverine like Spidey...make it a flagship title, put one committed writer on it with a long-term plan, like Slott, and rotate a few regular artists

 

2004/5 and 2008/9....comics from eight and four years ago respectively were the last standout Wolverine story arcs either of us could think of...that's not a good thing for someone who is such a flagship character for Marvel and the X-Franchise.  Look at other flagship characters; you have Captain America under Ed Brubaker, Spider-Man under Dan Slott, Daredevil under Bendis/Brubaker/Waid, and Iron Man under Matt Fraction who have had lengthy, critically acclaimed runs.  They have told long form stories with their characters and I find myself unable to think the last time this happened for Wolverine.  I suppose it would be Millar's run from #20-#32 of Volume 2 or perhaps Jason Aaron's extended tryst with Logan across multiple books over the last several years that still continues in Wolvie & The X-Men. Still, as much as I love that book, it's not so much a Wolverine book (despite the title) but more an ensemble piece.

 

Oh wait!

 

 

Daniel Way wrote all 50 issues of this book! That's the longest run I can remember on a Wolverine book since Larry Hama wrote basically every issue save four from 31-118 and yet, despite that four year run, Origins has largely faded from my memory.  Started with lots of promise to unravel the ridiculously convoluted history of Logan and somehow managed to make it even MORE convoluted with the stupid Romulus character's involvement (which now Jeph Loeb has made even worse and I hope everyone who touches a Wolvie book from now until the end of time pretends it never happened).  Also, Way is not the caliber writer in terms of skill and recognition that a Brubaker, Bendis, Fraction, or Aaron are...

 

Anyway, before I move on, let me say that Aaron is responsible for what I think is the best single issue in recent memory of a Wolverine book:

ME: I gave up on Wolvie after its first relaunch...picked it up again after House of M...dropped it again and have DL'd ever since...bought some Weapon X

RYAN: Aaron started out great, got silly towards the end. Bunn started out ok, got lame. I'm gonna DL the new titles, not buying. "The Best There Is" kinda scared me off extra Wolvie titles

ME: Best There Is was awful...and Loeb's arc was shit. I hated that story where his memories got cut up too...was that Bunn?

RYAN: Yeah, think so. Bunn continued the Dr. Rott thing which started w/ Aaron...but I think Bunn screwed with his memories. Don't remember.

ME: It just pissed me off...like he thought "I like Wolvie better when he couldn't remember stuff" so he just found a way to make it happen

I read an interview with Mark Waid where he said "...the next guy who does Daredevil will either drop a safe on everything I did, or go back because he remembers what Ann  Nocenti did with great fondness and he wants to do that". 

It immediately came back to my mind when we were talking about Wolvie and Bunn's decision to erase his memories (I am not even sure if Aaron has incorporated that into his book now that I think about it). For the longest time, right up until post-House of M and this:

Wolverine had little memories of his past prior to the Weapon X program and the adamantium bonding process.  It made for a fun sandbox for various writers to play in because, since he had no concrete origin or history, it was possible for Logan to have been everywhere and seen everything.  He could know anybody, could have had experiences and adventures in every country around the globe, and it was a game that writers milked to death. 

It made for fun stories as Chris Claremont, Larry Hama, Fabian Nicieza, Scott Lobdell, and a slew of others over the years explored the endless possibilities that Wolverine's tabula rasa state provided.  So when the moment happened, when Marvel showed some balls by having Logan remember it all, it closed some doors creatively I imagine.  Essentially writers were now in the game of creating a true history of Wolvie, of cementing his memories as fact, and sorting out the chaos of a history that had been created over the years. 

It all really started with the Origin mini written by Paul Jenkins that predated this memory unlocking.  That story set-up his age, his true name, his love for redheads, and then it was the Origins series by Way that spun out of the returned memories that was supposed to explore this stuff.  Instead it gave us Dakken, Romulus, and a whole lot more confusion if you ask me.


RYAN: I actually think its his character in general that people have trouble with. Too man contradictions over the years. He's a killer...he's not a killer. He's a loyal boyfriend...he's a ladies man. He's a team player...he's a loner. It changes writer by writer. Doesn't help that his very memories keep changing writer to writer

ME: Yeah...it helped when you only had two writers handling him for his first 15 years but now...Remender may be the closest to what I think of

RYAN: Yeah...everyones got diff idea for what he's like, its confusing. Its easier with a character like Spidey
 
ME: To me he is Claremont & Hama's failed samurai...loyal and cares about the kids, the guy who stayed loyal to Mariko until she died

RYAN: I actually really grew to like Morrison's version.

ME: I did too...Its Grant after all

RYAN: Yeah, Just felt...different.

ME: Wolvie stripped down to his "I am 200 yrs old and have seen it all" badass core

RYAN: Yeah, I mean seriously, he's THAT old and he's still trying to "find himself"...

Peter Parker is largely the science guy for whom nothing seems to go right a vast majority of the time (except for his ability to attract the hotties), which is actually why the Big Time arc was so different.  He got the job, the girl, the respect, etc.
Reed Richards is the genius & family man, Tony Stark is the genius playboy industrialist, they all have a very concrete identity and although they may slightly stray from type occasionally, they always come back to form.

Wolverine, on the other hand, is a huge contradiction in almost every aspect of his personality.  As Ryan pointed out, and as the recent X-Force books have played up, he is a killer...for awhile he was the only true killer on the X-teams.  Sure other X-people had killed but part of the struggle of Wolverine's life was his battle with the killer inside, with the berzerker. It's part of where the Claremont ideal of "failed samurai" came into play.

He's a father figure...very evident now with the running of the school and whatnot...but it is a role he has always filled to some degree.  The list of children he has mentored or played big brother/father for is endless...and filled with females.  Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Jubilee, Black Widow, Psylocke, X-23, one of my favorite Uncanny issues of all time is basically all about this:

It's Barry Windsor-Smith art for one, but the story by Claremont is amazing as well.  On the surface it seems like another tale of Wolvie fighting baddies while on the run and at the end of his rope, but the true beauty of it is in his interaction with Katie Power.  Despite being in what was essentially an animal state, he still does everything in his power (no pun) to protect Katie just as she protects him to the best of her ability until he recovers. 

He adopts a daughter in Amiko after finding her in the rubble of a building and Tyger Tiger came into existence because Wolverine chose to save a woman, a complete stranger, who the Reavers mentally violated.  He treated a robot child who tried to blow him up named Elsie Dee (ya know I don't think I go that LCD pun when I was 10) just as a normal human girl. Even in the movies he takes care of Rogue.  Simply put, he is a caretaker for the next generation and that is why the idea of him running the new school is actually perfect.

Wolverine is a loner but yet is friends with the entire Marvel U.  Captain America, Spidey, Thing, Fat Cobra, fn Squirrel Girl (which is a whole other creepy story considering she is likely very young), he has some relationship to any every character you can think of.  He had an extraordinarily close friendship with Nightcrawler and was also quite tight with Colossus. 

RYAN: Felt to me like he wanted an excuse to write Melita out

ME: That too

RYAN: Or like he didn't wanna deal w/ the relationship so he contrives a way around it

ME: Yeah

RYAN: Kinda felt like Aaron botched it with Melita too, which is odd because he created it

ME: Yeah...part of me feels like writers have little clue how to handle his love life

He is a "ladies man" but also one of the most loyal men to have on your side.  His sexual resume is quite lengthy including Mystique, Yukio, Melita, Silver Fox, Domino, Gahck (Savage Land woman with whom he has a forgotten child), someone compiled a list here and here. Yet, despite all of those women, I will always think of these:

 

Mariko Yashida will always be the love of Logan's life.  He tried to be a better man for her, he wanted to marry her of his own free will (as opposed to Viper who he was obligated to marry), he was different...for her.  Jean Grey may be his biggest unrequited love, but Mariko is the one who truly had his heart and I wish some writer would occasionally bring back the idea of Logan visiting her grave every so often (Silver Fox's too).  It may seem like continuity porn but I think it is a way to remind everyone of who Wolvie is, where he came from, and a way to let newer readers into his rich history.

Ultimately I think that's what I am looking for...that sort of powerful story like ish #57 of Volume 1 up there. A story that resonates with me and I still remember vividly fifteen, twenty, thirty years later.  Maybe it's the tenure I have with comics, maybe it's the volume of comics I read now as opposed to back then when it was maybe four books in an entire month, but there are so few stories that linger for me.  It's not just a Wolverine thing, it's a comic book thing in general, I guess I just choose to filter it through the lens of Logan since he who I was a fan of first.

Before Batman, before Brubaker's Captain America, before Johns' Hal Jordan, there was Wolverine. Chris Claremont, Larry Hama, John Byrne, Marc Silvestri, John Buscema, BWS, Romita Jr, just to name a few, they shaped the SHORT and hairy Canadian berserker samurai for me.

Scott Lobdell, Fabian Nicieza, the Kubert brothers, Jim Lee, the brought him to another life as I got older.

Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Jason Aaron, Nick Bradshaw, those are the guys who have defined, and are continuing to define, Wolverine for me as an adult, and despite the fact that he looks absolutely nothing like any comic book incarnation of Wolverine that ever existed prior to the movies, Hugh Jackman has done a pretty decent job of bringing him to life on the silver screen.

Wolverine is marketable, and just as well known to the masses as Cap or Spidey or Thor. He deserves greatness in both story and art, not to mention in cinema.  Now with Paul Cornell & Alan Davis on one upcoming book and Frank Cho on the recently released Savage Wolverine perhaps he will get that classic story for the modern audiences.  He deserves his "Winter Soldier", his "Big Time", his article in USA Today announcing something huge to the world. 

Hopefully that day is coming soon and with the movie on the horizon, I certainly wouldn't be surprised.  He is the best in the world at what he does after all....

How I Learned To Love Matt Fraction....

Yup, that's Matt Fraction....one of Marvel's Architects. Interesting looking guy, and a writer who has developed into one of my favorites at the moment, and possibly my fave X-Men writer since Grant Morrison(it's either Fraction or Joss Whedon).  To be honest, I have never read anything by Fraction besides his run on Uncanny X-Men so that's all I have to judge and thusly all this lil' blog will be about.  I'm told his Iron Man has been great stuff sooooooo someday I'll get around to checking that out I'm sure, but for now, this is the story of how I once hated Matt Fraction, and yet have grown to love him.

So Matt Fraction joined the "Uncanny X-Men" writing team, alongside Ed Brubaker, beginning with ish #500 and the X-Team's official move to San Francisco.  Along with Fraction came the art teams of Greg Land and Terry/Rachel Dodson.  This is the part where I get it out of the way how much I can't stand Land's "art" and dig the Dodson's art.  Suffice to say my eyeballs melted after looking at three issues in a row of Land's work.  Now that that's out of the way, let's move on to why we are here.

So the Fraction/Brubaker era kicked off with team relocation to San Fran, Magneto making a return with his powers back, a Celestial living in the park, The High Evolutionary, Simon Trask starting his crusade, and the Hellfire Cult making its debut. That's just all in 500!  I was immediately off put, feeling like this guy was throwing way too much crap at the wall and hoping something stuck.  Right off the bat I was mentally comparing him to Chris Claremont and his propensity to run a dozen storylines simultaneously.  Suffice to say my comparison wasn't positive, but I decided to give him a few more issues before writing him off.

 NOW, since Uncanny X-Men was my first comic book, there was now way I would ever quit reading it, but, if after a few issues, I still wasn't feeling this Fraction guy, I had resigned myself to survival mode just as I had done with Chuck Austen.

Well I'm glad I stuck it out and didn't write Fraction off immediately because the arcs that he has written have been beautifully constructed, with most plotlines having some payoff, in the same fashion that 80's Claremont & Morrison crafted the book during their runs.  It took a few months, probably not until Brubaker left, but eventually I grew to love the pages I was reading.

Now as I wrote about previously, Claremont was notorious for hinting at a sub-plot and not coming back to it for months, if not years, but that was generally doable because it really felt like he would be writing the book forever.  Fraction thus far has approached his version of Uncanny in the same fashion, and only by sitting down and re-reading his entire run (31 issues plus 2 X-Overs & an annual) have I really come to appreciate his craftmanship. 

From jump street, Fraction lays out several major plot points that would carry his book through the first year of stories.  Magneto's return, his technological repowering, and the answers to why are only teased at in 500 and very slowly addressed over the course of many issues. In fact it's pretty much left in the background until 507 where his relationship with the High Evolutionary is paid off as Mags gets his powers back for real.   Skip ahead past "Utopia X" to 515 and Magneto bows down at the feet of Cyclops, offering his services to the man who finally united mutantkind, a task neither he nor Xavier was capable of.  The following issue Mags' backstory is told, answering the question of how he firstly got to issue 500 and how he ended up pledging his fealty to Cyclops.  The following year of story is spent with Magneto proving his sincerity to the X-Men by helping to solidify Utopia's base by building the Atlantean tower, by bringing Kitty Pryde back to Earth, by fighting Bastion and armies, and, in a crazy turn of events given their history (read X-Men 25), being the man to help keep Wolverine alive in Quarantine.  And that's just one arc...

Along with Magneto's return in 500 comes the revelation in the same issue of the Dreaming Celestial setting up shop in Golden Gate Park for some unknown reason.  It just kind of hung out there, got lobotomized by The High Evolutionary to help bring back Magneto's powers, and that's about it.  Jump ahead to issue 512, the X-Club heads into the past to try and find a cure for the mass depowering of M-Day, and we get the answer to why the Celestial picked that spot to stand, as well as the first look at an early Sentinel, the grandfather of Sebastian Shaw, and how Dr. Nemesis' parents are involved in it all.  A seemingly WTF plot point with the Celestial turns out to be a much more important thing than it first appeared.

And that's a reoccuring thing for much of Fraction's run; the little things that seem unimportant, and disappear into the background, that later become major plot points.  The Hellfire Cult (500) and how that all plays into the unveiling of The Sisterhood (508), the seeming random dream of Emma Frost (506) that foretells her fate in "Utopia X" (506), another random Emma dream (510) that returns at the close of "Second Coming", and all of the random moments that build to X-Force being forced out into the open (505 & Utopia X for example).  Fraction proved quite adept at sprinkling these moments throughout his run, knowing he would be able to pay them off as he built his stories.  This is something only a quality writer is capable of doing as long as he is given the time by the bosses to flesh it all out.  For a great example of how this fails read "Shadowland".

In addition to his sub-plot sprinkling, Fraction also does a nice job of throwing in little homages to Chris Claremont & Grant Morrison moments.  Maybe I'm just reading into these moments, but there's no denying how they harken back to earlier X-Moments.  Ish 503 features a night club scene with Cyclops/Emma Frost/Madelyne Pryor that reminds me of the the Dark Phoenix moments where Jean Grey sees Jason Wyngarde while the plight of Kitty Pryde  (522-present) is one Claremont played with following "The Mutant Massacre).  The re-introduction of The Sublime Corporation (515-521) is obviously Grant-inspired, even Elixir's character talks like he belongs in "Invisibles", and the psychic tryst between Scott & Madelyne Pryor (503) includes dialogue that feels like it was plucked straight from the Emma/Cyclops moments from "New X-Men".  The wonderful thing about these homages/tributes/inspirations from the two most groundbreaking X-Writers of their time is that they come off inspired and not as just rip-offs.

Another great thing from Fraction's run has been the evolution of Cyclops into the mastermind/general that just seems like a logical progression of his teaching.  In the face of everything the X-Men have faced in recent years and with the leadership role falling primarly on Cyke's shoulders, it feels natural for him to have evolved into a "Batman" of sorts.  He is constantly game-planning and working on scenarios, but unlike Bats, Cyke freely admits when he's just winging it and reacting to situations moment by moment.  His fears and doubts are still there, but they don't plague him like they did before.  Whether it be the authorization of X-Force or the decision to move to Utopia, Cyke stands by his decisions  The only question now, the one posited by several people, is what does the general do now that he doesn't have a war to fight?

His handling of characters from Cannonball (finally someone besides Warren Ellis who doesn't treat him like just a hick) to Pixie to Nightcrawler has been spot on, not to mention how he has treated Hope since her return in "Second Coming".  And speaking of the Elf, I just want to point out how...upon 3rd reading...his death STILL brings tears to my eye. 

Now that's not to say things have been perfect with Fraction's run, although after my re-read I don't find much fault, but one story arc in particular has probably been lacking: the Sebastian Shaw situation.  Emma faked his death in Annual #2 to convince Namor to join up, and then apparently hid him in the brig.  The problem being that in recent issues it has been played up that Shaw was a big secret.  Problem is, until Danger came around, there was no one to monitor the prisoners (Shaw being the second), and they were all just locked up and depowered.  Shaw was kept with Empath and the others, not exactly a secret.  And whether it be an artists mistake or just oversight, Shaw is shown during "Second Coming" (now on Utopia) as a prisoner right alongside Danger's other prisoners.  It doesn't ever seem like Shaw is a secret until Emma (527) states he IS a secret prisoner at which point she has to spirit him out.  Maybe I'm thinking too hard, but if it's so hard to sneak him out, how the hell did she sneak him in?  How the hell did he get from Graymalkin Industries to Utopia when the facilities moved?  And why does Madison Jeffries have absolutely no reaction to Shaw's presence when Danger tells him Emma kidnapped Sebastian?  Little things, and probably the only arc that has bugged me.

So now with the apparently impending departure of Fraction from the book, I'm anxious for what the future may bring.  I'm excited to see where this HX-N1 arc goes, or how the Atlantean troubles recently introduced play out.  I'm hoping Fraction is here to play those out, as well as this Black Dragon/Wolverine connection that was just introduced in Chinatown, and to see if Emma's most recent dream (528) turns into a plot point like the previous dreams. 

It's been a fun 3 year run, great to see how all the things I listed (as well as all those I left out) have tied together, and it's gone by fast!  So let me say thank you to Matt Fraction and Marvel for these 40 or so issues, and for however many more Mr. Fraction has left in his Uncanny run.  It's introduced a new status quo, not unlike that of Grant or Claremont before him, so let's just hope Marvel doesn't decide to ret-con everything important as soon as you depart ;)

If you're interested in checking out Fraction's X-Work, click on the link....I don't get jack for it, just want people to experience different stuff: Matt Fraction's X-Men Work

Claremont: The Other Side Of The Coin

Back to our regularly scheduled blah blah blah....





That cover up there marked the return of Chris Claremont to the X-Verse after 101 issues away.  On the heels of the terribly disappointing "Apocalypse: The Twelve" story, the meh "Ages of Apocalypse" follow-up, as well as a really terrible 2-issue arc where everyone lost their powers, the man who made the X-Men into Marvel's premiere franchise finally returned!  The results: blargh....with an addendum.

See at the time somebody (Bob Harras it seems) decided to herald the return of the prodigal creator by putting a 6-month gap (storyline-wise) between ishs 380 & 381, as well as across the X-line.  Almost all the titles saw some level of change from this gap, with X-Force, X-Man, and Generation X, undergoing the most radical changes in the form of "Counter-X".  Warren Ellis writing X-books??? Whodathunkit!  The "Counter-X" books got a story arc called "Shockwave" to explain what happened during the gap, a luxury none of the other books received, and something which certainly hurt Claremont's two books the most.

In the 2 books Claremont got handed (Uncanny & X-Men), the gap saw new members to both teams, new leaders in the form of Gambit and Rogue respectively, new characters like Thunderbird III, and new villians in The Neo and The Goth.  Little explanation was given as to what happened during the time-jump, and new stuff was immediately thrown at the reader. 

At the time, reading these as a devout Claremont fan, I felt let down.  Re-reading these a few months ago, not much has changed.  It felt rushed at times, too much crammed into the readers' brain all at once, and little attention given to the how and why.  To his credit, Claremont did attempt to tie his new villains into the "powerless" story arc that preceded his run (an arc he may or may not have been ghost-writing anyway) but it still felt....forced.  The idiosyncrasies of Claremont (extensive internal monologues for example) did not translate well to an audience 10 years later, and the idea of long drawn out stories that took years to flesh out were not entirely feasible either.  Call it a lack of patience from the reader, or maybe just the feeling of being alienated from the book as a result of "6 months later", but after 9 months...two of which were spent in crossovers ("Maximum Security" and "Dream's End"), it didn't look good for Claremont. 

At least "Dream's End" was an X-Over where as "Max Security" was a Marvel wide story shoehorned into the two books.  "Dream's End" one real lasting effect on the X-Verse was the death of Moira MacTaggert at the hands of Mystique as well as the discovery of a cure for The Legacy Virus after what felt like a million years.  All in all, as a fan of Claremont's, these issues were not indicitive of his talent as it pertains to new fans of the book.  Later on, with some research, one can find out that his run was cut short by the promotion of Joe Quesada & Bill Jemas and they wanted changes in light of the 1st X-Men movie's success.  The slow-burn story that was Claremont's specialty wasn't going to happen and without any "Shockwave" style arc like the "Counter X" books, it left readers...especially this one...very disappointed with the highly anticipated return of Claremont to the X-books. 

Claremont got thrown the bone of  "X-Treme X-Men" after getting bumped from the other two books...well actually it was either take his own book or stay on the flagship books and coordinate with someone else.  He opted to do it on his own, and for me, this is where Double C's wheels truly fell off.  A nobody villain kills Psylocke right off the bat and injures Beast (who at this point was already in "New X-Men" looking completely different), forcing the book to initially be set before "New X-Men" starts.  Of course since Chris wasn't remotely attempting to coordinate with the other X-Writers, no mention of Beast's beating or Psylocke's death is ever mentioned by Grant Morrison or that other ass clown who was busy trying to ruin Uncanny X-Men at the same time as Grant was revolutionizing the X-Men.  "X-Treme" started on the basis of a hunt for Destiny's diaries (a subject introduced in "Dream's End"), but that plot point quickly went away in favor of...well in favor of doing nothing of importance. 

It's was like Big Brother and MiniTrue; Tessa is a good guy, and has always been a good guy in secret.  Bishop is named Lucas, Rogue is Anna, and they've always been that way.  Fans spent years begging to know Rogue's real name and he just pissed it out like so much dreck.  There was an attempt to recapture "God Loves, Man Kills" but instead it felt like, as it did for most of the series, Claremont was writing characters he had never written before.  Nobody felt like the characters they had always been.  Rogue got tattooed (no other artist has ever acknowledged this), Masque came back (Cable blew his head off and burned the body), Callisto got tentacle arms again (this was just dumb), it was one giant clusterfuck!  The only positive that came from the whole damn series was bringing back Rachel Summers into the X-Men.  I tend to hold onto a series until it either ends or gets so atrociously bad I can't justify spending a dime on it.  X-Treme became the latter after only 20 or so issues.  I didn't even make it for 2 years, but I did go back in later years and scour back issue quarter bins for issues I misssed just cause I'm a completist. 

What followed? A New Excalibur book that shat all over the way Grant Morrison ended his run and forced subsequent writers to create some BS rationale for why Magneto wasn't dead despite being killed by Wolverine pretty definitively.  This was actually worse than X-Treme!

Another run on Uncanny X-Men as part of "Reloaded" that saw the return of Psylocke, the introduction of X-23 to the team, and the Shiar scarring Rachel with the Phoenix tattoo...oh yeah they slaughtered the entire Grey family too.  This wasn't terrible, but was totally overshadowed by the amazing work of Joss Whedon on "Astonishing X-Men".  In the same way that Morrison's "New X-Men" highlighted how behind the times his X-contemporaries were, in my opinion, Whedon bascially did the same to Claremont & the assclown writing X-Men.

Now-a-days Marvel still seems to think they can make some money off letting Claremont write a book with a X on it.  So we get "X-Men Forever" and its sequel of the same name.  With the premise being that this was CC's intended story line if he'd stayed on the book after X-Men #3, the book immediately goes to hell by not following the premise at all.  Just like "X-Treme" we are treated to characters and storylines that are totally unrecognizable given that premise.  Wolvie and Jean Grey are having some kind of tryst, Storm's a little kid again, SHIELD is all up in the X-Business, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  The dialogue is like taking the worst of CC's traits and amping them up 1000%.  This book managed to alienate me pretty quickly despite having an interesting premise of mutantkind nearing extinction (the opposite of the now-ignored Morrison plot from "E for Extinction").   So repulsed was I by this book that I dropped it after ten issues (and having a bi-weekly schedule was ridiculous).  The 2nd volume could be great, I'd never know, because as much as it pains me to say it...

I have given up on one of the writers who turned me into a comic book fan.  No book with Claremont's name on it will see my dollars, hell I won't even take the time to download it for free ;)  "X-Treme X-men" hurt me, "Excalibur Vol. 3" tore out my heart, and the combination of reading "X-Men: The End" and "X-Men Forever" shattered my soul.  Melodramatic?  Most certainly, but highly appropriate when discussing Double C. 

So instead of thinking of those books, I will think of the man who gave me "Inferno", "X-Tinction Agenda", "Fall of the Mutants", "Mutant Massacre", and much much more...


RIP
Chris Claremont
1975 - 1991

Chris Claremont...222 Uncanny Issues

Chris Claremont circa 2008


Uncanny X-Men #94-279, 381-389, 444-473

Two hundred twenty-two issues in total, one hundred eighty-five of those consecutively, all that spanning portions of four decades, and that is representative of Chris Claremont's work JUST on Uncanny X-Men.  That says nothing of X-Factor, New Mutants, Excalibur, Wolverine, or his forays into X-related mini-series, one-shots, annuals, and various other X-centric work.  He holds the honor of being the writer on the Guinness World Record holding X-Men #1 from 1991 (8.1 million copies and nearly $7 million) as well as being the father of the mutant boom

For this writer, Claremont holds the distinction of being the definitive X-writer.  He established the personalities, breathed new life into the existing characters, fleshed out the "new class" that he inherited, and gave strong identities to those he created.  His ability to define a characters' identity was second-to-none, usually done in the form of lengthy interior monologues, and he truly turned the sketches of some of comic's best artists into three dimensional beings.  He is the reason I got teary-eyed when Nightcrawler died in Second Coming, when Colossus sacrificed himself to cure the Legacy Virus, and when little Illyana died of that same virus.  It wasn't the writers handling the book at the time, as good as they may have been, but rather the character I had grown so attached to during the initial 185 issue run in which Claremont defined the core of each X-Man.  Even a character as briefly lived as the original Thunderbird was given a very strong identity that made the reader actually care about his death, despite his life only lasting the course of three issues.  That is a testament to the ability of Claremont to get inside his characters.

This is the man responsible for stories that have stood the test of time with repercussions that still carry today: Dark Phoenix, The Mutant Massacre, The Trial of Magneto, The Brood Saga, and my personal favorite...the run of stories that carried the team from "Fall of the Mutants" to "X-Tinction Agenda", especially the "Australian Saga" chunk.  He mastered the art of the slow burn, allowing stories to fester in the background before taking over the top slot.  The best example I can think of for this took place in both UXM #218 and UXM #232.  In the former, the reader simply sees Havok & Polaris ran off the road by a speeding bus and you see the fallout from the perspective of the two mutants.  Jump ahead to the latter, 14 issues later, and we finally see the events landing that ultimately led to Havok & Polaris' hit-and-run with Harry Palmer.  The Mr. Sinister/Madelyne Pryor/Jean Grey story, the Genosha story, the Siege Perilous, all stories that culminated over months and years.  All that in the days when only the major story arcs were collected in trades.

The effect Claremont had on the X-Universe is seen in nearly every author that followed him on the books.  With Scott Lobdell, Steven T. Seagle, Joe Casey, Alan Davis, and Ed Brubaker, there were some traits of Claremont in each.  Matt Fraction, with his use of on-going subplots, and general treatement of the book, may as well be the reincarnation of Claremont.  It's funny because I hated Fraction at first...but that's a story for another blog.  Oh yeah, and fuck Chuck Austen's run...

So thank Claremont for the stories that have endured decades, that have inspired movies, that turned Wolverine into a pop culture figure, and drove fanboys into protest over the potrayal of Gambit.  And after you do all that, you can then tell Claremont that it might be time to call it a night....

...To Be Continued...