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Post by rberman on Jun 8, 2019 18:53:36 GMT -5
Dark Phoenix deserves its status as a landmark in comic books, It placed very highly in our ‘greatest comic book sagas” poll, deservedly so. But as a collaborative work put together on a deadline and modified in the process, it can’t help but show some of the seams of that process, and I find it fun to reverse-engineer the process. Originally the Dark Phoenix Story was conceived as four parts in issues #131-134. Phoenix was going to die, probably leaving Jean Grey behind. Then the X-Men would split up and have some separate adventures, with a smaller new team forming in the interim as well. Then everybody would get back together for a big anniversary issue #150 in which Magneto offered Jean the power of Phoenix again. Here are Byrne's notes from an early iteration of the plan:  That's right, there was going to be a "Cyclops replaced by a robot" story. Hey, it's no worse than leprechauns living in the walls of Cassidy Keep, right? Here are Byrne's notes (composed for the #137 Lettercol) for several ways that the Phoenix story could have ended:  Anyway, the plan got changed by editorial, probably because Claremont writes more script than one issue can handle. Instead of issues 131-134 being the whole Phoenix story, it became five issues 132-136. Starting back with the previous Kitty Pryde two parter, which became three parts: #129: Xavier, Logan, Storm, and Colossus go to Chicago and meet Kitty Pryde but are captured by Emma Frost. Kitty stows away with the villains.  Issue #130: In Chicago, Kitty fails to rescue the captured X-Men. In New York, Scott and Jean meet Dazzler at a nightclub. Mastermind gives Jean a vision of being the Black Queen in colonial times.  Issue #131: Scott, Jean, and Kurt come to Chicago and find Kitty. Xavier, Logan, Storm, and Colossus are rescued from Emma Frost, who dies (yes, dies) fighting Phoenix.  Issue #132: The disastrous X-Men assault on the Hellfire Club leads to the capture of Cyclops, Kurt and Colossus, Jean becoming the Black Queen, and Wolverine's iconic scene in the sewers.  Issue #133: "Wolverine Alone" carves his way up through the Hellfire Club. This issue was originally combined with the following one. When they were split, filler was added to this issue. Angel visits Xavier and chats. Sean and Moira have a conversation on Muir Island about Jean. More material with Jean imagining herself in colonial times and a flashback to her date with Scott on the Mesa. A lengthy mental swordfight between Mastermind and Cyclops which makes little sense. There's a fake-out cliffhanger "Cyclops is dead!" ending, contradicted on the next issue's "No, wait! He's not dead after all!" splash page. I always thought this was a cheap shot. It was obviously a late addition, an artificial climax for a story that was not intended to have been split here.   Issue #134: Page 1, as shown above, undoes the fake cliffhanger that ended the previous issue. Page 2 is a new recap page made necessary by splitting the story across two issues. On page 3 and following, Wolverine completes his rescue of the X-Men, and Jean destroys Mastermind's master mind. Note that Emma Frost is not in this story... because she is dead. The fight was probably a few pages shorter originally, and Jean’s transition to Dark Phoenix is quite awkward. One minute she’s sitting in the back of the X-Men’s “skycraft” and the next there’s an abrupt cliffhanger which doesn’t seem like where the issue was intended to end originally:  Issue #135: Once again, this issue and the next were originally envisioned as a single confrontation between the X-Men and Dark Phoenix, but it was stretched into two issues. As a result, Jean attacks the X-Men for no reason, soundly defeats them but leaves them alive for no good reason, and announces that she’s leaving Earth, presumably forever. This is when she eats the D'Bari star as part of ten pages of space opera filler not originally planned. Claremont has to come up with some dialogue for why Phoenix attacked her friends and then flew away, but it’s not very well motivated.  Issue #136: The X-Men have a second confrontation with Jean at her parents’ home, originally intended as the second half of the only confrontation. The story ends with Jean’s mind locked away from the Phoenix. But the cover was intended to tell another tale: Jean dies, in a scene inspired by the death of Lois Lane in Richard Donner’s Superman movie. (Yes, it’s a Pieta scene done many times in comics, but more directly from the Superman film.)   Byrne even drew Star Trek’s Doctor McCoy in the UPC box, declaring that Jean was dead, because that was the plan at the time he drew this.  Issue #137: As recounted in Byrne’s typewritten page above, at some point he and Claremont decided to follow up on the Shi’ar filler material added to issue #135 by scripting another “battle with the Legion of Super-Heroes” issue to provide another layer of closure to Jean being cut off from the Phoenix. We all know how that ended being undone by Shooter, and then the whole thing got retconned into “It was never Jean anyway” a few years later in X-Factor when Jean’s death proved inconvenient for future stories. Emma Frost similarly was retconned to have survived the building that fell on her during her battle with Phoenix in #131. |
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Post by spoon on Jun 8, 2019 20:00:08 GMT -5
Some of this I was aware of, but a lot I wasn't. I didn't realize that Jean dying was one of the plans that was considered early on. I thought it was only a result of Shooter dissatisfaction with Jean getting off too easy for destroying a planet. I know the alternate plan I've read the most is that somehow Phoenix gets suppressed or supposedly eliminated only to be drawn out by Magneto in #150. In some tellings, that would correlate with Jean regressing to a childlike state.
I feel like I've seen that issue by issue handwritten summary before. I know I've heard something about a Cyclops robot story, but don't recall exactly what that meant. And yet I'm trying to recall if I've heard of the two-part Mariko/Sabretooth storyline. Although the similarities between Wolverine and Sabretooth seem evident, I'm pretty sure it wasn't established that they had a backstory until the Mutant Massacre. So this was percolated way before it ever so print. It fascinating that a rivalry between Wolverine and Sabretooth that Claremont (and those who followed him) end up playing out very slowly is done so rapidly in this timely. I'm guessing that Sabretooth kills Mariko and Wolverine kills him in revenge. The rivalry is started and finished in two issues. And that seems like a very limited emotional payoff for the death of Mariko, since she and Wolverine hadn't had many scenes together before then. I suppose they may have planned more interactions in the lead-up. Maybe the Wolverine/Nightcrawler or the breather story would have featured Mariko. But I'm guessing the Wolverine/Nightcrawler was just a version of the Wendigo story that saw print around that time.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 8, 2019 20:28:52 GMT -5
You've summarized all of that in a way that makes it clearer to me, which it wasn't before. Whew!
I generally liked how Jean Grey was brought back leading up to X-Factor (and then later some fool put the two together again anyway, argh)... but one thing that left a sour taste for me was that creep Mastermind not just staying a vegetable, if Phoenix (and seemingly Jean Grey) paid an ultimate price the person who lit the match on her going dark ought to have been equally punished. Instead he comes back and we get a crap re-run with Madelyn Pryor. And his accomplice Emma Frost also comes back unscathed, which is fine, she was a quality baddie, but I don't think they should've had both come through so lightly at the hands of sun devourer. If Matter-Eater Lad can stay messed up at DC so can Mastermind, and how about Emma Frost as disabled in some way? Nice Paul Smith art on that Madelyn Pryor stuff but a weak as water story there, and not so long after Kitty pretending to be Phoenix in the nearly endless outer-space with Alien retread (a retread of a retread as they'd done it more succinctly in #143)! I could almost think it was Chris Claremont who died or was lobotomized somewhere after this death of Phoenix pinnacle.
The gun the pops up on the moon and wipes Phoenix from existence before the horrified Cyclops/Scott Summers was also a bit of a Ambrose Bierce blow to the back of the head type of ending. A remarkable weapon indeed but a bit of a deus ex machina, no?
I never had a problem with Phoenix dying given what she had done, but I was glad if Jean Grey could be rescued from it. Just the likeness of who she was had a positive effect on the Phoenix creature. I really think the world of mutants needs a Jean Grey around and it was too stupid that someone undid that save and threw her away yet again. Also I was getting bloody miffed with heroines popping their clogs so often following Phoenix and then Elektra. Even at 12 or 13 I knew a Phoenix rises from it's ashes. I expected eventually 'it' or she would be back... with hindsight a different host person/mutant, or would that be assumed persona, for it would've been ideal. Instead it seems readers just got ever diminishing and empty retreads.
The Rachel child of Phoenix that is also Phoenix from the future, presumably that became alternate future at the point where their Phoenix survived to have a child (conceived on the mesa?), was okay, until they started bringing ever more future Summers children (X-Man, Cable) from other alternate futures in and yeesh whatta mess! For awhile though the comics seemed more like their title should be Phoenix Jr. as she was so heavily featured.
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Post by String on Jun 9, 2019 14:02:42 GMT -5
This is the first that I've heard of a 'Cyclops as a robot' story idea. I have no clue how or why such a thing would happen although tying in Ultron and the Avengers with it seems like a lost opportunity for that sounds very interesting indeed.
Hm, it's interesting that Mariko was possibly slated to be killed off that soon but would it have been as impactful though? We've yet to have the Wolverine mini-series detailing her father's illegal activities not to mention her breaking off their marriage proceedings as a result. Killing her off so quickly only to add fuel to a rivalry that comes into existence (and possibly ends) for two issues does seem like short-changing the readers in hindsight. Plus, how she did die eventually as handled by Hama seems more satisfying overall.
Till now, I've never noticed the absence of Emma Frost from the rest of the DP story hahahaha. There doesn't seem to be no big hullabaloo about her return (vs Jean's revival) other than she merely needed time to recover from her injuries. Since we never see her body in #131 though, I'm willing to overlook it.
As for Jean, I've no problem with her resurrection. How it was accomplished was inventive, creative and did not disturb the overall DP epic.
Although I notice there's no mention whatsoever of the Days of Future Past storyline that was in #141-142 unless the entire robot angle was switched over to Sentinels afterward.
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Post by rberman on Jun 9, 2019 16:56:24 GMT -5
Days of Future Past was originally planned as a single graphic novel. I guess it was “demoted” to a regular story when the idea of splitting up the team after 137 was scrapped.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 9, 2019 23:11:00 GMT -5
For what it's worth Mr. Byrne recently wrote about that... "DoFP does not have a secret life as an aborted graphic novel. I plotted it as a two part comic book story."
I do remember something about Jim Shooter in desperation for material for their not yet begun graphic novel line musing aloud as it were (and fan magazines carrying it as news) that a two part Daredevil & Punisher story by Frank Miller which didn't clear the code could appear as a graphic novel. It eventually was published in Daredevil #183 & 184 and the cover readied for #167 was never used. So DoFP could've been something Shooter looked to as it did have more graphic violence in it like the Daredevil drug use centered story. Then there was a start on a Claremont and Neal Adams X-Men graphic novel where Adams couldn't come to terms and dropped out after something like ten pages were penciled (never published), and finally Brent Anderson did do one with Claremont. So the graphic novel 'line' was around for quite awhile in development before it actually began.
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Post by rberman on Jun 10, 2019 8:23:22 GMT -5
For what it's worth Mr. Byrne recently wrote about that... "DoFP does not have a secret life as an aborted graphic novel. I plotted it as a two part comic book story." I do remember something about Jim Shooter in desperation for material for their not yet begun graphic novel line musing aloud as it were (and fan magazines carrying it as news) that a two part Daredevil & Punisher story by Frank Miller which didn't clear the code could appear as a graphic novel. It eventually was published in Daredevil #183 & 184 and the cover readied for #167 was never used. So DoFP could've been something Shooter looked to as it did have more graphic violence in it like the Daredevil drug use centered story. Then there was a start on a Claremont and Neal Adams X-Men graphic novel where Adams couldn't come to terms and dropped out after something like ten pages were penciled (never published), and finally Brent Anderson did do one with Claremont. So the graphic novel 'line' was around for quite awhile in development before it actually began. It's complicated. In 1979, Marvel was talking up a new line of higher quality, longer, direct-sales books. The initial four were going to be (1) an adaptation of The Prisoner by Jack Kirby, (2) Daredevil and Dracula (and/or DD and Doctor Strange), (3) an Avengers (or Spider-Man) product, and (4) an X-Men product, which at that point was called an "X-Men album," the term "graphic novel" not yet having been adopted. That series of projects died in the cradle.   I'm no genius, but I think an increase in sales from $300,000 to $6 million is actually a twenty-fold increase, not a five-fold increase! No wonder Marvel was eager to provide more product to this market.   Byrne may well have originally written a "Days of Future Past" treatment as a two part story. However, by the time Claremont wrote a script, it was a "special project" under one cover, separate from the Uncanny X-Men line. When the direct sales "album" special project was cancelled, Claremont hoped to use the story in the 1980 X-Men Annual #4. But "Days of Future Past" needed 48 pages, and an Annual was only 35 pages. Annual #4 ended up as the Dante homage "Nightcrawler's Inferno," with art by John Romita, Jr. and Bob McLeod.  John Byrne was surprisingly hostile to the concept of graphic novels when interviewed for The Comics Journal #57 in 1979, while production on X-Men #137 was still underway. His stated reason ("comics should only be printed on pulpy paper with crummy ink") is preposterous. Was he miffed that his "Days of Future Past" story had been hijacked?   The impasse was broken when X-Men expanded from 18 pages (issue #138 and prior, though of course #137 is the "double sized, big mother of a fight" mentioned above) to 22 pages (issue #139 and following). This meant that two issues totalled 44 pages, which was close enough to the 48 pages that Claremont had planned for the "direct sales book." The first two-parter was the Wendigo story in #139-140. The second was "Days of Future Past" in #141-142. Note above that Byrne is specifically excited about Kitty Pryde joining the team, and in the "Special Project" (graphic novel) that never came to fruition, Byrne envisioned a scene in which Kitty is freaked out by Nightcrawler's visage. There are actually two such scenes. Kitty arrives at the Xavier mansion at the end of issue #138. Nobody is home; they are all at Jean Grey's funeral. What is that sequinned word on Kitty's shirt?  #139 has the first scene of Kitty being unnerved by Kurt, shortly before Kurt and Logan travel to Canada to hang out with Alpha Flight and get beaten up by Wendigo.  However, Byrne was probably talking above about a similar scene in #141.  This is used for contrast a few moments later when Kitty's teen body is possessed by the mind of Kate Pryde from the dystopian future. Kate-in-Kitty gives Kurt a big ol' hug, showing the reader that Kitty is no longer Kitty.  I also wonder how much of the detail in the dystopian future sequence of #141 was Byrne, and how much was Claremont. Things that we learn: - Kitty and Peter get married and have children who are murdered by the Sentinels. - Logan and Ororo are the only other surviving X-Men. - The Fantastic Four are dead, but Franklin Richards is not. - Rachel Summers exists, though her surname is not mentioned. - Magneto is the "new Xavier," a wheelchair-bound mentor and an "old friend" to Peter.  Byrne would later say that Claremont had Magneto turn good because Claremont wanted to write a "noble villain" but had been denied access to Doctor Doom after the "Arcade strikes a match on Doctor Doom's armor" scene that Claremont scripted in #146. But Magneto was already a good guy back in the future scenes of #141. Was that Claremont's idea, or Byrne's? Surely Rachel at least was a Claremont creation, and her romantic attachment to "my darling Kate" was baked in from the start.  |
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Post by badwolf on Jun 10, 2019 11:34:20 GMT -5
Byrne would later say that Claremont had Magneto turn good because Claremont wanted to write a "noble villain" but had been denied access to Doctor Doom after the "Arcade strikes a match on Doctor Doom's armor" scene that Claremont scripted in #146. But Magneto was already a good guy back in the future scenes of #141. Was that Claremont's idea, or Byrne's? I think this "good guy" situation is different. Most mutants, most metahumans of any kind, have been wiped out, so it's not hard to see how Magneto and the X-Men might find common ground. Having him become a good guy in the present would require a little more work. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 10, 2019 13:04:57 GMT -5
There was also a scene inside the X-Men's aircraft whatever it was (not the Blackbird) with Nightcrawler thinking "I don't think the little fraulien likes me"... #131 I think. He'd startled her in a scene before that and they sent Jean in dressed like a normal human being to make contact again without freaking her out. That issue really hooked me being 12 at the time, the idea of there being someone my age in a comic about mutants was heady stuff and of course one of the first back-issues I ever looked for was the first appearance for Kitty once I knew there were places that sold them past the month they were released. No idea what is written on the disco shirt, though I vaguely remember dark tops like that with glitter letters.
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Post by Duragizer on Jun 10, 2019 13:59:57 GMT -5
John Byrne was surprisingly hostile to the concept of graphic novels when interviewed for The Comics Journal #57 in 1979, while production on X-Men #137 was still underway. His stated reason ("comics should only be printed on pulpy paper with crummy ink") is preposterous. Was he miffed that his "Days of Future Past" story had been hijacked? So Byrne was a crotchety reactionary even back then. I wish I could say I'm surprised. While perusing Byrne's forum some years back, I came upon a thread where a regular asked this very question. Byrne stated it was the "B" word. |
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Post by rberman on Jun 10, 2019 14:10:11 GMT -5
What is that sequinned word on Kitty's shirt? While perusing Byrne's forum some years back, I came upon a thread where a regular asked this very question. Byrne stated it was the "B" word. That's certainly what it looks like. Not very in-keeping with Kitty's "golly, gee whiz" portrayal at the time! More like something she would have worn when she was aged up to be an angsty college student/Coyote Ugly bartender in Claremont's Mekanix series more recently.  Here is the thread in which Byrne confirms his intention and then faces howls of protest. m.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=39171 |
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 10, 2019 20:59:18 GMT -5
He doesn't say he intended the shirt to say bitch but that he saw such on shirts back then. I don't have a problem with it either way. It's a drawing. It can be Illinois Theater Company if you want it to be. People seem to take things he's said deadly seriously sometimes where I haven't. "Comics should only be printed on pulpy paper with crummy ink" is one of these things... it's like how 90% of people watching Saturday Night Live when they had Norm McDonald doing the fake news part just really didn't get the humor and I was absolutely howling as much because of that as for the blunt statement out of left field itself. That statement really made me laugh out loud. There's a sort of truth to it and also an absurdism. I'm not sure if I could explain John Cleese or Andy Kaufman to my mother though either, or John Cleese to himself.
I don't know, the extreme feelings about Byrne some obviously have I can only relate to how my grandfather could get my Mom all worked up by saying something simplistic like "it was better when women stayed home." He did it totally on purpose and every single time she would fall for it and you could see him chuckling. It would never go too far and I would say to her, why do you care what dumb idea someone else has? Maybe even more ironically she was mostly a stay at home Mom too, though she did try out for and was runner-up to be first police woman officer in our city (she got out of one of the officers in charge that they didn't choose her because they wanted the first woman officer to not have children).
I thought this bit from JB was rather good... "One of the more curious phenomena of which I have been aware since my earliest days in The Biz, is those fans who truly seem to think all the characters are in some fashion REAL, yet who, when something BAD happens to the characters, know exactly who to BLAME!"
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Post by rberman on Jun 10, 2019 21:42:32 GMT -5
I thought this bit from JB was rather good... "One of the more curious phenomena of which I have been aware since my earliest days in The Biz, is those fans who truly seem to think all the characters are in some fashion REAL, yet who, when something BAD happens to the characters, know exactly who to BLAME!" I was a bit puzzled (or perhaps annoyed) by JB on that point. Someone asked about how a character would behave in a hypothetical situation, and Byrne replied, "The character would do whatever the writer made him do. You know these characters are fictional, don't you?" This from the guy who retconned Doctor Doom's appearance in X-Men to be a robot duplicate because "The real Doctor Doom would not have..." Oh, now there's a real Doctor Doom, when Claremont has Doom do something that Byrne wouldn't have written him to do! I think I see how this works... Everybody knows that Byrne is prickly and comes across poorly when he says things like "My problem is that I think the audience is smarter than they are." Count me among those who can still enjoy his work, though. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 10, 2019 22:10:07 GMT -5
I'd take any interview between Byrne and someone from the Comics Journal with a grain of salt. it was more of a fanzine, at that point; but, they still had a bit of an antagonism with Marvel.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 10, 2019 22:44:29 GMT -5
I thought this bit from JB was rather good... "One of the more curious phenomena of which I have been aware since my earliest days in The Biz, is those fans who truly seem to think all the characters are in some fashion REAL, yet who, when something BAD happens to the characters, know exactly who to BLAME!" I was a bit puzzled (or perhaps annoyed) by JB on that point. Someone asked about how a character would behave in a hypothetical situation, and Byrne replied, "The character would do whatever the writer made him do. You know these characters are fictional, don't you?" This from the guy who retconned Doctor Doom's appearance in X-Men to be a robot duplicate because "The real Doctor Doom would not have..." Oh, now there's a real Doctor Doom, when Claremont has Doom do something that Byrne wouldn't have written him to do! I think I see how this works... Fair enough, I can see the contradiction. The fan can only complain (blame) whereas the pro can actually act on stuff. |
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