Claremont vs Morrison and Whedon in X-Men Forever (Spoilers))

Chris Claremont's X-Men Forever #5 was the conclusion to his first X-Men Forever story arc (though, as Claremont is wont to do, it does not really feel like much of a conclusion). X-Men Forever picks up exactly where Claremont left off in 1991 with X-Men 3, pretending nothing every happened in the meantime -- sort of.

Obviously a lot happened in the intervening 17 years, but a lot of folks claimed -- in a bit of an exaggeration -- that Morrison was the first person to make them exciting again in his high profile New X-Men run. (I myself was always a big fan of the four month alternate universe Age of Apocalypse, but that may have just been because I was too young to know better). In a search for a successor, Marvel went to Joss Whedon to pick up where Morrison left off. In a much less high profile movie Warren Ellis picked up Whedon with a little story called "Ghost Boxes," about parallel universe invading -- the whole thing was mostly forgettable, as to my eye it looked like Ellis had this story in a drawer, and sort of shoehorned the X-Men into it. And in the larger Marvel Universe Wolverine became one of the most ubiquitous characters in comics, on both the Avengers, X-Men, and X-Force (as well as his solo title) and has two "kids" with similar claw powers as well.

Claremont is going to pretend all this -- and more -- never happened in his X-Men Forever run, except I feel him responding to these writers everywhere, making his run more like Ultimate X-Men: a riff on what we know happened in mainstream continuity.

In mainstream continuity Wolverine is ubiquitous. In X-Men Forever he is killed almost immediately, (on a book that is surely going to be flirting with cancellation since it is for such a niche audience, so many comic book readers not being able to read when X-Men 3 came out).

In mainstream continuity Wolverine has a daughter who has two claws instead of Wolverine's 3. In X-Men Forever Kitty Pryde (who always had a kind of daughter-father relationship with Wolverine anyway) literally gets one of his claws.

In mainstream continuity Storm (in Warren Ellis's run) decided she was fine with being a killer -- actually signed off on genocide. In X-Men forever Storm is split into two people at least one of which looks to be a killer, the other an innocent.

In mainstream continuity Psylock turned out to be two people: the new Ninja Psylock was installed and then out of nowhere, the old version reappears. (I don't remember how all that got resolved, or what started it in the first place). In X-Men Forever de-aged Storm, thought to have become the new one, turns out to be a separate person as well.

In Claremont's original run there is a famous image of Wolverine in the sewers of the Hellfire club saying "now its my turn." Whedon revised this image by putting Shadowcat in this same pose and situation. In X-Men Forever, Claremont sort of tries to bring it back by having Sabertooth reenact the same pose with a similar line, while at the same time having Shadowcat takes Wolverine's place in another way with this new claw.

Morrison's first story really played hard into the Mutants are the next step of evolution, and went so far as to say humanity was dying off due to a genetic trigger. In X-Men Forever, Claremont reverses this suddenly declaring that mutants are NOT the next step in evolution and are dying out do to a similar kind of internal trigger, burning out young because of their powers (The explanation does not make a lot of sense to me as it is based on the argument that there are no mutants over 60, but this seems to be more that mutants are a sort of recent development).

X-Men stories have played around with alternate time-lines, timelines that were eventually reset. Claremont's title is set in a kind of pocket-continuity, but you get the feeling he is figuring everyone else's stories as continuity to be reset so the universe can be put back the way it should have been, just as it was in Age of Apocalypse and Here Comes Tomorrow.

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Jimmy Olsen #145

[Andy Bentley continues his issue by issue look at Jack Kirby's New Gods. I make a brief comment about pop culture from generations past at the bottom.]

“Brigadoom!”

When we last left Jimmy and the Newsies, they were investigating a report of the Loch Ness monster. As we open the issue, the boys have discovered many more mythical creatures are housed in the legendary Scottland Yard. A Griffen, a Chimera and a Unicorn are all on display as well as a beast that has been dubbed “Angry Charlie” by the authorities. The rumored source of all these monsters is another mythic entity, Brigadoom. The boys decide to split up to investigate. Everyone except Jimmy and Scrapper take to the seas again to hunt for the scottish fairy tale city. The bulk of the story involves Jimmy and Scrapper getting shrunken down by compressor waves to about the size of an ant and discovering the source of this mischief is not Brigadoom, but instead the Evil Factory. Yes the same evil factory we saw in the beginning of Kirby’s tenure has moved to Scotland and shrunk in size. After entering the building, the boys are zapped by Mokkari and Symian and Jimmy is brought to their lab for direct experimentation. Jimmy appears to have a appealing genetic code to these two, as they’ve experimented with Jimmy’s DNA in previous issues. Scrapper, however, is of no use to them and is jettisoned off to a genetically manipulated lizard (translation: dinosaur). Antics ensue.

Meanwhile, the remaining Newsies again encounter the Lock Ness creature and cause him to retreat with the help of some mini-shock missiles. The boys pursue him into the previously seen compressor waves which miniaturizes them as well as the monster. They then find themselves inside the Evil Factory in the pen where the monster is kept. Antics.... ensue.

The Superman ‘B’ story is only allotted two pages and has the same number of reveals. We discover Dubbilex, creation of the Life project’s genetic manipulation, has mental powers including telekinesis and limited telepathy. This allows him to detain the San Diego Five String Mob, the group of musicians that caused the collapse of the Cosmic Carousel. It also allows him to sense Superman’s shock and awe when he recognizes the boom tube the band uses to escape. Of course, Superman does not pursue, because that would give me the story I actually want to read. *ahem* No antics ensue.

There’s not much else to report on. The final page reveals Jimmy has once again gone under a transformation (one that has left him with He-Man hair) and no doubt the next issue will involve his buddies curing him. The art is capable, but nothing noteworthy. The story is certainly eccentric, but not thought provoking. However, this issue marks the end of the 2nd Kirby Omnibus which does warrant a review.

The 2nd Omnibus makes it clear that Kirby’s Fourth World tale is going to be hit or miss for me up until the end. Even removing the Jimmy Olsen title from the equation, I’ve been disappointed by formulaic plot structure and lack of forward momentum to the overall saga. However, I have enjoyed the subtext, especially in “The Forever People” and “Glory Boat” is currently my favorite piece of work Kirby has ever generated. My thoughts return to my pledge to look at the work as objectively as possible, which is difficult to maintain. I have seen Darkseid’s invasion of Earth reinterpreted and each time it becomes more streamlined and modernized. So even though this is the source material, it often reads like treading water. Yet I cannot deny Kirby’s creativity and willingness to take risks. My interpretation is also altered by the fact that I’ve read every issue Kirby released in chronological order. This is the standard today for major crossovers like Dark Reign and Blackest Night, but when these issues were on newsstands, most kids probably just bought whatever they could afford or what was available.

Although I cannot experience many of these characters an concepts as new ideas, these comics reveal their origins which gives me a more robust understanding. I will continue into the back half of this saga, with adjusted expectations and a critical eye.

[I have to agree here, and I feel this way about a lot of pop culture from generations past (and I also feel bad about it, especially when you read people like Grant Morrison who seem to experience it so freshly). With a few super-classic exceptions (I just saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and forgot how much I loved it) I can find it hard to get into the head space not to be just a little distanced by the fact that, as Bentley mentions, I am used to a more streamlined story -- even though I can see, on an intellectual level how VITAL all this Kirby is. I think The Pact and Glory Boat and the Death of Terrible Turpin are the ones where this distance is closed, but they can't all be like that.]

Uncanny X-Men #234

[Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont's X-Men run. This is a particularly good entry, as we see a lot of stuff coming together here that has been building for a long time.]

“Glory Day”

One of the advantages of Claremont’s spiraling writing style, wherein storylines are suddenly dropped midway through only to be picked up months or even years later, is that every so often it allows him the advantage of a certain kind of surprise. After the cliffhanger involving S’ym at the end of Uncanny #231, readers surely expected that it would be a good half-year, at least, before he showed up in the series again. Instead, shockingly, he returns after only two issues’ absence, revealed as the manipulator behind Madelyne’s disturbing nightmare of the previous month. What we get now is the birth of the “Goblin Queen” persona, a surprising reversal that was – to some degree – an arbitrary choice by Claremont. Something had to be done to absolve Cyclops, so he – possibly brainstorming with Louise Simonson – decided to turn Maddie into a supervillain.
Yet for all that this narrative swerve happened unnaturally – shaped more by editorial concerns than creative ones – it is crazily brilliant in its own way. First of all, Madelyne’s willingness to trade away integrity in exchange for power has a precedent in Claremont’s long-running X-Men narrative: we saw this character trait before in “X-Men/Alpha Flight: The Gift.” Also, Madelyne’s corruption by S’ym mirrors Phoenix’s by Jason Wyngarde (which occurred almost exactly 100 issues before this one, and which—in an oblique way — was beginning again contemporaneously with the present issue, in the b-side of Classic X-Men #24).

Indeed, when Maddie first appeared, the tease was that she might be Dark Phoenix reincarnated. In that original “From the Ashes” arc, it was all revealed to be a feint by Wyngarde, yet now it turns out to have been true all along. Madelyne is a proxy for Jean Grey, and since Jean was corrupted by evil, it is only natural for her successor to go down that same road. Like the Corsair-and-Kate/Cyclops-and-Jean connection that occurred with Phoenix’s death (another story turn shaped by editorial mandate outside of Claremont’s creative vision), or the Scott-and-Maddie/Alex-and-Lorna parallel from issue 219, this is another wonderful example of a classically elegant parallelism occurring serendipitously over the course of Claremont’s sustained serial narrative.

Meanwhile, a much smaller parallelism is contained in the issue at hand. While Maddie is seduced by a real demon, a preacher named William Conover deludes himself into believing he’s exorcised a fake one -- thanks to a laying-on-of-hands bit with Wolverine that occurs just as the latter’s healing ability neutralizes a Brood egg. Silvestri plays this as a kind of time-lapse-photography version of the first time we saw this, in Cockrum’s Uncanny #162. Then, Wolverine’s battle with the Brood inside him took an entire issue. Now, perhaps because his healing factor has encountered this particular infection already, the whole process transpires over the course of only two pages.

The William Conover character is striking in his own right – Claremont plays with our expectations, giving us another “Reverend William” years after the “God Loves, Man Kills” graphic novel, whose chief antagonist was a violently anti-mutant bigot called Reverend William Stryker. Reversing the typical use of religious figures in mainstream fiction, Claremont now gives us a preacher who is genuinely compassionate. Both in his public persona and behind closed doors, he is explicitly sympathetic to mutant rights. Fascinatingly, the character proves to be – despite his heroic core – utterly susceptible to the sin of pride, convincing himself that he personally is responsible for the affects of Wolverine’s healing factor upon the Brood “demon.” Conover’s naivety even extends toward his wife’s healed arthritis, which he also credits to the grace of God rather than her inhabitation by another Brood embryo.

Finally, on the meta-textual level, it’s rather appropriate that a Brood alien is mistook for a demon just before being excised not only from Logan but from the overall X-Men series. Claremont is thus bringing his extended “Alien”/ “Aliens” homage full circle (the riff having begun with Uncanny X-Men #143, a story titled “Demon”), before ending it.

(Granted, it seems likely this wasn’t meant to be his final Brood story, given that he very pointedly leaves room for a sequel. Yet by the same token, since the whole story functions as a “b-movie” pastiche, the blatant pointing toward a sequel can also be chalked up simply as the concluding beat of the genre exercise.)

Twin Peaks, Season 2 Episode 14 (or episode 21)

By Jill Duffy, girl reporter

[Jill Duffy, girl reporter, continues her episode by episode look at Twin Peaks. This is going up on a weird day because I have been away from the internet. Things will return to normal soon.]

Another murder has just occurred in Twin Peaks, and the sheriff and his team are looking for clues and piecing together what happened in the moments before they discovered the body. But this murder is not like the ones that came before it. We in fact don’t care about the guy who died—he’s a vagrant—and we don’t hear much him. Instead, the focus is on the killer: Wyndam Earl.

When Laura was killed, the focus was on her killer, too, but it was also on her with the assumption that only through understanding Laura could we figure out who her murderer was and how he knew her. It was never thought to be a random act of violence with Laura, but for this new dead man, Cooper explains, he was picked at random to be a person with no meaning, just a pawn to sacrifice.

The third scene (there’s a very short second scene in which Audrey provides some set up to what’s happening with her father) is terrifying. Leo awakens and tries to kill Shelly. He fully attacks her, comes at her with an axe, and she tries to defend herself. Bobby shows up outside their house, hears Shelly’s screeches, and is able to come to the rescue and help Shelly, who actually stabs Leo in the leg, which causes him to retreat into the woods.

The scene is nearly five minutes long. Lynch and Frost really draw out horror in Twin Peaks to such an extent that it’s almost unwatchable for me. In most of the movies I watch, there’s a lot of build-up to horror, and it’s the suspense that’s terrifying. In Twin Peaks, we see minutes upon minutes of slow struggles and blood-curdling screams. We get the full effect of how awful a five-minute attack really is.

Wyndam Earl is now the focal point of the show—or rather, the plotline that involves Wyndam Earl, as we have hardly seen the mad man himself—though the other characters are charging onward. James is still living with an older woman, working as her mechanic, and I mostly fast-forward through those scenes. I watched them all in full once, the first time I watched Twin Peaks a few months ago, and at the time I remember groaning every time he or the co-actors in his storyline came on. Dr. Jacoby is observing (and explaining) Ben Horne’s madness. Horne thinks he is the general of the south in the Civil War and is reenacting battles using figurines. Andy is trying to uncover the truth behind little Nicky’s parents’ deaths. Norma, Big Ed, and Nadine are still wrapped up in their love triangle.

Briggs has the other main plotline, but it seems to come and go. I’m actually more interested in his very X-files-like scenario than anything else. The supernatural stuff that went on with Bob had my attention, and now I want to know what supernatural stuff is going on with Major Briggs. I want to know what the secret service knows. I want to know what the White Lodge is all about. But instead of finding out a little bit and opening up new avenues of curiosity, the same few key words keep stringing me along. Someone will mention the White Lodge, but I know as much about it now as I did three or four episodes ago.

Pete is still hilarious, and Catherine is dynamite to watch (and her diction is musical), but they get little screen time in this episode. However, when they do appear, we learn more about Andrew, Catherine’s supposedly dead brother, who is not at all dead. Pete does a good job of being “us,” the audience, asking what happened to Andrew and how Josie and Eckhardt are tied up with them.

When Eckhardt does show up, checking into the Great Northern Hotel, there’s demonic music and his face is shown in sunglasses with a fire reflecting in them—the sign of evil in this show. This is one of those clues and tip-offs that never goes anywhere later. We can only assume that, had the show continued past two seasons, perhaps these and other clues could be pursued and fleshed out later.

What could it have been? What might have happened to keep me interested and push the show forward? How about if someone totally unexpected died, like the Lucy, the pregnant secretary at the sheriff’s? What if Catherine became possessed by Bob? What if Wydam Early seduced Donna or Audrey?