What classic comics have you read lately?
Mar 16, 2024 20:24:24 GMT -5
Hoosier X, Roquefort Raider, and 2 more like this
Post by spoon on Mar 16, 2024 20:24:24 GMT -5
I finished off the rest of the X-Men Epic Collection: The Fate of the Phoenix by reading Uncanny X-Men #139-143, the Wolverine/Hercules story from Marvel Treasury Edition #26, the Angel story from Marvel Treasury Edition #27, the Storm/Black Panther back-up story from Marvel Team-Up #100, and Phoenix: The Untold Story. The story from Treasury Edition #27 is the only one I haven't read before. Actually, I didn't re-read every word of Phoenix: The Untold Story. For those who don't know, it was a one-shot that printed the intend original version of Uncanny X-Men #137, before Jim Shooter took umbrage at the fact that Phoenix wasn't going to die for her crimes and forced changes for the version that actually saw publication. Since the published version of #137 is in the same TPB, this time I just flipped back to note and read the changed parts.
Uncanny #139-140 is a two-parter where Wolverine and Nightcrawler work with half of Alpha Flight to fight Wendigo in Canada. Meanwhile, we get various character bits with X-Men at Xavier's mansion, particularly Kitty Pryde starting out at the school. People will debate whether Claremont's X-Men (or specifically the Byrne era) is phenomenally good or overrated, but the cover to #139 is one of the simple joys of the series. It's the "Welcome to the X-Men, Kitty Pryde. Hope You Survive the Experience" cover. It's a really amusing combination of bright colors and life-or-death stakes of super-heroes comics, particularly with Kitty's big grin surrounded by musing about her possible demise. Also, Angel seems to have casually drifted back on to the team after helping them in the Dark Phoenix Saga. There's a bit of Untold Story dialogue that was altered in #137 that would've helped to set this up, with Angel noting he misses being a super-hero. He also get Kitty being weirded out by Nightcrawler again (he's sad about it), the debut of Wolverine's brown and tan costume, and the first appearance of dance teacher Stevie Hunter. Like a psycho, Storm is already jealous of how much Kitty likes Stevie.
Also, Heather Hudson, the wife of Vindicator (eventually renamed Guardian) makes her first appearance. We also a bunch of Wolverine's back story about the Hudsons discover a feral Wolverine in the woods and sculpted him into a Canadian super-agent. We're also told that fighting the Hulk was his first mission. This should've made readers wonder how he ended up a wild mess in the Canadian Rockies, since there's been scripting (like the reference to Monte Cassino in Annual #4) that his experience in the civilized world predates that. When Heather calls Wolverine Logan, Kurt says he never knew his real name. Logan counters that the X-Men never asked. I'm sorry, but this is a pile of revisionist obviously driven by the creative team's decision to make Wolverine the new star. Kurt is such an amiable gentleman; he literally bows to Heather in the next panel! It's totally implausible that he would avoid asking Wolverine's real name. I think any teammate would, but Peter and Sean also seem like people who couldn't avoid but be friendly. And Scott would ask because he'd feel like he needed to know. Anyway, it's too bad Byrne wasn't such a Nightcrawler, because he does a great job of conveying Kurt's character in moments like the bow. We also learn more about Alpha Flight member like Snowbird. The change in Wolverine's character is demonstrated when he calms Snowbird down from the effects of one of her animal transformations. In the Cockrum era, he'd probably fight her instead.
Claremont and Byrne had been credited as co-plotters for a while. Interestingly, this Canadian story has Byrne credited as the sole plotter.
Uncanny X-Men #141-142 is of course Days of Future Past. It also gives us the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Mystique who debuted in the Claremont written Ms. Marvel a couple years earlier. The roster is filled by old school foe Blob and three new characters (Destiny, Pyro, and Avalanche). It's nuts that they'd eventually become a U.S. government team, given that they're first mission was to assassinate a prominent U.S. Senator. How do you trust them? The X-Men versus Brotherhood fight sequences are very well done. It's great when Byrne gets to draw the X-Men against another team rather than a single foe or random henchmen. It's ironic that #142 has one of the most famous Byrne era covers, but it was drawn by Terry Austin (because Byrne's cover got lost in the mail). Of course, the cover for #141 may even more famous. Oddly, Jean Grey's mostly obscured head appears on the wanted poster and then we get Rachel in the story. She doesn't get a surname in the story, but the redheaded telepath/telekinetic suggested her eventual origin as the daughter of Jean Grey. How could this be? Was it because it was already plotted before the old ending to #137 was scrapped, and they just decided they're weren't going to rewrite this one two? Was this already supposed to be an alternate Earth that Kitty went back to even though she thought it was her own past? Did they already want to hint that a Phoenix could always rise again? Also, how dumb does Sebastian Shaw's greed make him that he's push to start a new Sentinel program? The story is also uses the future as a chance to foreshadow without being committed to it. Kitty and Peter are a couple, and Magneto is a nicer guy than he used to be.
Uncanny X-Men #143 is Kitty Pryde alone against a N'Garai demon. The opening scene is a flashback to a scene with Storm from the original N'Garai story. It's interesting to see that Claremont repeats much of his original script verbatim, but also alters portions of it. Some of that is changing spoken dialogue to thought balloons. It's cool to see one-off stories like this. It's a little odd that after Wolverine tries to slice Nightcrawler open for kissing Mariko Yashida under the mistletoe, her reaction is not to immediately dumb the boyfriends she's seen behave like a violent psycho. Then again, Sunfire is her cousin.
Given that Cyclops had been a centerpiece of the series for the past 5 years, editors notes in some of the issues when Cyclops is gone from the team insist he is on a leave of absence. After being gone for #139-142, Scott gets a cameo when he speaks to Kitty on the phone to wish everyone back at the school a Merry Christmas. He also seeks a job from the beautiful fishing boat captain Aleytys "Lee" Forrester. How soon is too soon for a rebound relationship under the circumstances?
The Marvel Treasury Edition stories are from 1980, but placed after a trio of 1981 issues of X-Men. The chronology doesn't work for the Wolverine story, because Logan is drowning his sorrows at a bar because Jean is into Cyclops, who Wolvie thinks sucks. This is more like a Cockrum era story. There's not much to write about the Angel story except it features the unusual art pairing of Brent Anderson and Bob McLeod (I feel like they are tonally different) and Angel's boots look weird.
I'm not too excited by the Storm/Black Panther story, but it is a Claremont/Byrne tale. It turns out Ororo and T'Challa have a backstory from their childhood days. The villain is an evil Afrikaner (South African of Dutch descent). One of his henchmen who spouts racial slurs has dark skin, which seems more likely a coloring error than self-loathing.
The main change from The Untold Story to the published #137 is the ending when Phoenix is depowered instead of dying. It's seems weird until a realize that Lilandra's dialogue about destroying Phoenix and insuring she does not exist anymore don't explicitly include stating that Jean will die. There are dialogue changes sprinkled throughout the issue, but the most concentrated and interesting are in the scenes of individual X-Men the night before the trial by combat. In Untold Story, the characters reflect more on their own situations, while in the published #137 their musings are more Jean-centric. For example, in Untold, Nightcrawler thinks more about his workout, Angel about how he misses being a hero, Wolverine about Mariko, Colossus about his deceased brother (retconned back to life in the 90s), and Scott about the orphanage. Scott's musings lead Jean to say she likes who he's grown to be. The revised dialogue, I'm guessing at Shooter's insistence, have the characters all musing on the morality to protect Jean with the horror of what Phoenix has done. In another move that seems to be about promoting Wolverine's star status, he has one of the more pro-Jean opinions.
Uncanny #139-140 is a two-parter where Wolverine and Nightcrawler work with half of Alpha Flight to fight Wendigo in Canada. Meanwhile, we get various character bits with X-Men at Xavier's mansion, particularly Kitty Pryde starting out at the school. People will debate whether Claremont's X-Men (or specifically the Byrne era) is phenomenally good or overrated, but the cover to #139 is one of the simple joys of the series. It's the "Welcome to the X-Men, Kitty Pryde. Hope You Survive the Experience" cover. It's a really amusing combination of bright colors and life-or-death stakes of super-heroes comics, particularly with Kitty's big grin surrounded by musing about her possible demise. Also, Angel seems to have casually drifted back on to the team after helping them in the Dark Phoenix Saga. There's a bit of Untold Story dialogue that was altered in #137 that would've helped to set this up, with Angel noting he misses being a super-hero. He also get Kitty being weirded out by Nightcrawler again (he's sad about it), the debut of Wolverine's brown and tan costume, and the first appearance of dance teacher Stevie Hunter. Like a psycho, Storm is already jealous of how much Kitty likes Stevie.
Also, Heather Hudson, the wife of Vindicator (eventually renamed Guardian) makes her first appearance. We also a bunch of Wolverine's back story about the Hudsons discover a feral Wolverine in the woods and sculpted him into a Canadian super-agent. We're also told that fighting the Hulk was his first mission. This should've made readers wonder how he ended up a wild mess in the Canadian Rockies, since there's been scripting (like the reference to Monte Cassino in Annual #4) that his experience in the civilized world predates that. When Heather calls Wolverine Logan, Kurt says he never knew his real name. Logan counters that the X-Men never asked. I'm sorry, but this is a pile of revisionist obviously driven by the creative team's decision to make Wolverine the new star. Kurt is such an amiable gentleman; he literally bows to Heather in the next panel! It's totally implausible that he would avoid asking Wolverine's real name. I think any teammate would, but Peter and Sean also seem like people who couldn't avoid but be friendly. And Scott would ask because he'd feel like he needed to know. Anyway, it's too bad Byrne wasn't such a Nightcrawler, because he does a great job of conveying Kurt's character in moments like the bow. We also learn more about Alpha Flight member like Snowbird. The change in Wolverine's character is demonstrated when he calms Snowbird down from the effects of one of her animal transformations. In the Cockrum era, he'd probably fight her instead.
Claremont and Byrne had been credited as co-plotters for a while. Interestingly, this Canadian story has Byrne credited as the sole plotter.
Uncanny X-Men #141-142 is of course Days of Future Past. It also gives us the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by Mystique who debuted in the Claremont written Ms. Marvel a couple years earlier. The roster is filled by old school foe Blob and three new characters (Destiny, Pyro, and Avalanche). It's nuts that they'd eventually become a U.S. government team, given that they're first mission was to assassinate a prominent U.S. Senator. How do you trust them? The X-Men versus Brotherhood fight sequences are very well done. It's great when Byrne gets to draw the X-Men against another team rather than a single foe or random henchmen. It's ironic that #142 has one of the most famous Byrne era covers, but it was drawn by Terry Austin (because Byrne's cover got lost in the mail). Of course, the cover for #141 may even more famous. Oddly, Jean Grey's mostly obscured head appears on the wanted poster and then we get Rachel in the story. She doesn't get a surname in the story, but the redheaded telepath/telekinetic suggested her eventual origin as the daughter of Jean Grey. How could this be? Was it because it was already plotted before the old ending to #137 was scrapped, and they just decided they're weren't going to rewrite this one two? Was this already supposed to be an alternate Earth that Kitty went back to even though she thought it was her own past? Did they already want to hint that a Phoenix could always rise again? Also, how dumb does Sebastian Shaw's greed make him that he's push to start a new Sentinel program? The story is also uses the future as a chance to foreshadow without being committed to it. Kitty and Peter are a couple, and Magneto is a nicer guy than he used to be.
Uncanny X-Men #143 is Kitty Pryde alone against a N'Garai demon. The opening scene is a flashback to a scene with Storm from the original N'Garai story. It's interesting to see that Claremont repeats much of his original script verbatim, but also alters portions of it. Some of that is changing spoken dialogue to thought balloons. It's cool to see one-off stories like this. It's a little odd that after Wolverine tries to slice Nightcrawler open for kissing Mariko Yashida under the mistletoe, her reaction is not to immediately dumb the boyfriends she's seen behave like a violent psycho. Then again, Sunfire is her cousin.
Given that Cyclops had been a centerpiece of the series for the past 5 years, editors notes in some of the issues when Cyclops is gone from the team insist he is on a leave of absence. After being gone for #139-142, Scott gets a cameo when he speaks to Kitty on the phone to wish everyone back at the school a Merry Christmas. He also seeks a job from the beautiful fishing boat captain Aleytys "Lee" Forrester. How soon is too soon for a rebound relationship under the circumstances?
The Marvel Treasury Edition stories are from 1980, but placed after a trio of 1981 issues of X-Men. The chronology doesn't work for the Wolverine story, because Logan is drowning his sorrows at a bar because Jean is into Cyclops, who Wolvie thinks sucks. This is more like a Cockrum era story. There's not much to write about the Angel story except it features the unusual art pairing of Brent Anderson and Bob McLeod (I feel like they are tonally different) and Angel's boots look weird.
I'm not too excited by the Storm/Black Panther story, but it is a Claremont/Byrne tale. It turns out Ororo and T'Challa have a backstory from their childhood days. The villain is an evil Afrikaner (South African of Dutch descent). One of his henchmen who spouts racial slurs has dark skin, which seems more likely a coloring error than self-loathing.
The main change from The Untold Story to the published #137 is the ending when Phoenix is depowered instead of dying. It's seems weird until a realize that Lilandra's dialogue about destroying Phoenix and insuring she does not exist anymore don't explicitly include stating that Jean will die. There are dialogue changes sprinkled throughout the issue, but the most concentrated and interesting are in the scenes of individual X-Men the night before the trial by combat. In Untold Story, the characters reflect more on their own situations, while in the published #137 their musings are more Jean-centric. For example, in Untold, Nightcrawler thinks more about his workout, Angel about how he misses being a hero, Wolverine about Mariko, Colossus about his deceased brother (retconned back to life in the 90s), and Scott about the orphanage. Scott's musings lead Jean to say she likes who he's grown to be. The revised dialogue, I'm guessing at Shooter's insistence, have the characters all musing on the morality to protect Jean with the horror of what Phoenix has done. In another move that seems to be about promoting Wolverine's star status, he has one of the more pro-Jean opinions.