Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #153

[Guest blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men Run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]

“Kitty’s Fairy Tale”

Cribbing the premise from an issue of Wally Wood’s series T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents entitled “Weed’s Fairy Tale,” Cockrum was the chief instigator behind this issue. Chris Claremont, about to inaugurate the Brood saga -- his first long-term story arc since Dark Phoenix -- thought the “fairy tale” idea worked well as a good palette cleanser for readers.

While the initial idea is Cockrum’s – as is the sense of whimsy particularly evident in the middle section of the issue – the plot is clearly Claremont’s, another example of what John Byrne identified as the writer’s inability to “let it go” when it came to the death of Jean Grey. Thus, minus the children’s-fantasy trappings, issue 153 emerges as yet another retelling of Dark Phoenix. The twist is that it ends happily, with Scott and Jean getting married – but that’s hardly enough to redeem a premise that, after the recap of issue 138 and the hallucinatory revisits of issue 144, had already been stripped to the bone by this point.

By far the best thing about the issue is Cockrum’s brilliant sense of visual humor – the quintessence of which is found in his fairy-tale versions of Nightcrawler (a big-headed Smurf precursor called Bamf) and of Wolverine (a similarly cartoonish gargoyle referred to only as the Fiend With No Name).

Claremont has some fun with the reactions of the eavesdropping “real” versions of Nightcrawler and Wolverine to their bedtime-story counterparts, but generally speaking proves incapable of matching his partner’s sense of whimsy. The author even admits as much in his intro to a reprint of “Kitty’s Fairy Tale” in the X-Men Visionaries: Chris Claremont paperback. He can’t even resist throwing in misguided angst, as when the fairy-tale Colossus laments the fact that he is not as metropolitan as Pirate Kitty. (Why would the real Kitty put something like that in a bedtime story for Peter’s sister, with Peter himself sitting right across from her?)

Still, Claremont has his moments. His dialogue for the Bamfs is fun, particularly the unattributed word balloons surrounding an entire crowd of them at one point. (Claremont will prove so enamored of this device that it will become a staple – almost every crowd scene in Claremont’s X-Men from this point on will find itself adorned with unattributed word balloons. Credit letterer Tom Orzechowski with the gimmick never losing its novelty.)

Also, some sort of Sound Effect Award should go to whoever came up with the sound effect “Bamfitty bamf bamf bamf.” It’s the funniest bit in the whole story, almost surely Cockrum’s idea, but one can never be sure.

Issue 153 also has a place in X-Men history as being, sort of, the first appearance of Lockheed the dragon. Here, it is the X-Men’s “modified SR-71 Blackbird” transmuted into a dragon for Kitty’s story. It’s oddly appropriate that the Blackbird is given dialogue for this issue – certainly the jet has become something of a character in its own right, and an iconic part of the X-Men’s mythology. X-fans have Claremont’s pet love for airplanes to thank that while the Fantastic Four have a Fantasticar and the Avengers have a “Strato-Jet,” the X-Men fly an actual real-life aircraft (albeit always described with that “modified” qualifier, just in case the plane ever needs to do something ridiculous).

At any rate, over a year after the publication of issue 153, Kitty will befriend an actual dragon on an alien world, and without any preamble start referring to the creature as “Lockheed.” As we see, that’s because the preamble is here.

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The Migration (Commonplace Book)

I meant to put this up yesterday. Sorry.

I do not know anything about the football, but this commercial is beautiful.

Scott on ‘Lost’ Projects (Guest Blog)

[Guest blogger Scott on projects never completed.]

No matter whether you’re into film, music, or comics, you’re bound to have heard of some ‘Lost Project’; these are those masterpieces that coulda, woulda, shoulda been but were never realized as the result of contract disputes, the project getting away from the artist, editorial interference, various legal issues or, in the worst case scenario, the death of the artist. Here are just a few of my potential-favorite-works-that-never-actually-existed:

Alan Moore’s Twilight of The Superheroes

This Alan Moore penned tale, proposed circa 1987, would be his vision of the ‘last days’ of the DC Universe. The plot would have evolved around the heroes being arranged in various ‘houses’ in the future: The House of Steel (Superman and Wonder Woman, now married), The House of the Bat, The House of Thunder (The Marvel Family). An impending union between the House of Thunder and Steel threatens a future rife with Super-Fascism. There were many rumored similarities to the plot and Kingdom Come. The series would have been the centerpiece of a company wide crossover and would have resulted in the re-establishment of DC’s multi-verse (much like 52).

The Who’s Lifehouse

This was Pete Townshend’s intended follow-up to Tommy and is one of the most ambitious musical projects ever envisioned. The story, a sci-fi tale set in a futuristic dystopia, would have incorporated elements of technology that sound much like Virtual Reality and the Internet. The problem with this is that this was 1971 and, by Townshend’s own admission, no one really understood it but him. In addition to the complex plot, the project would have been, not only an album, but a film and, presumably, a concert tour which would have had interactive features; Townshend would have supposedly taken vital statistics from his audiences and then, using a synthesizer, create musical templates from which the band would build upon (Supposedly, the synth bit of “Baba O’ Reilly” was created by doing this with the stats of Townshend’s Guru Meher Baba). After the project was abandoned, many of the songs written for the concept became the Who’s Next album (To my knowledge, John Entwistle’s “My Wife” was the only song not connected to Lifehouse in some way). Townshend would revisit the Lifehouse concept on several other occasions in an attempt to ‘finish’ it. Elements of the plot surfaced in his 1993 concept album/radio play Psychoderelict, he released a boxed set of the out takes of the project in 2000 which also included a radio play version of the story and would revisit the story yet again on the ‘Wire and Glass’ portion of the Who’s 2006 album Endless Wire, however, rather than the story becoming more concrete over the years it has only become more convoluted which makes one wonder what that album may have been like had it been completed as envisioned in 1971.


J.D. Salinger’s The Fall of the House of Glass

Supposedly a manuscript of this exists somewhere, I have no idea what the plot would have been about other than bringing an end to the ‘Glass Family Saga’ that had been featured in works like Franny and Zooey and “Perfect Day for A Bananafish”

The Jimi Hendrix/Miles Davis collaboration

The two musicians were rumored to be working on this around the time Hendrix died and this may have been the inspiration for Davis’ own Bitches Brew album (an album that would lay the groundwork for Jazz-Fusion).

Richard Donner’s Superman I & II

Okay, so we’ve already gotten a taste of this with the Donner Cut of Superman II (which you should check out if you have not already… so much better than the original and, unlike most director’s cuts that add a scene or two, this really is 50-75% a completely different movie) but, in listening to the commentary, the first movie would have ended differently and Superman’s ‘spinning time backwards’ trick would have been reserved for the grand finale of the second film after Lois falls to her death in one of the chasms during the fight with the Kryptonian villains. I also think the Donner cut of Superman II is a great example of a ‘Lost Work’ that finally saw the light of day.... and, unlike most 'Lost Works' that eventually see the light, came out better than expected.

And while we’re on the subject of Superman….

The Kevin Smith written, Tim Burton directed, Nicholas Cage starring Superman Lives!

This was rumored somewhere around 1997-98. Smith got the job based on the quality of his Chasing Amy script and, from what I have read, the story would have been an adaptation of sorts of the whole ‘Death and Return of Superman’ story. Producer John Peters (who had produced Burton’s Batman) wanted to do a ‘darker’ Superman movie (Kevin Smith tells the hilarious story of Peter’s ‘vision’ on the Evening With Kevin Smith DVD). Later, Tim Burton was brought aboard to direct (eventually rejecting Smith’s script in favor of one done by his own people) and Nicholas Cage was cast as the man of steel…. At which point it fell into development hell. If nothing else, this one gave us a great Mad TV bit which imagined Cage (fresh off of his performance in Leaving Las Vegas) as an alcoholic Superman in a sketch entitled Leaving Metropolis. (Sorry, I couldn’t find the clip anywhere online).

So, folks … what are some of your favorite non-existent works? (this reminds me of how in The Sandman Morpheus had that library of books that were never written… wouldn’t it be awesome to have one of those?)

[GRANT MORRISON on WILDCATS and the AUTHORITY. Scheesh. I know projects have been aborted before, but I can't think of one that I actually cared about being aborted after such a promising and limited start (one issue of Wildcats and two of the Authority). Well, Wildcats was not so promising, but Brad and I have a weird affection for that title, and the Authority start was genuinely awesome. Too often Morrison is paired with weak artists, and the fact that he had solid collaborators would have meant great things I think.]

Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #152

[Guest blogger Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men Run. For more in this series, see the toolbar on the right.]

“The Hellfire Gambit”

A recurring mantra of Claremont’s during his entire tenure on X-Men is that the protagonists should not kill. They are heroes, goes the refrain, and if they kill they are no better than the villains. The philosophy is repeated twice in this issue, first by Kitty then on the final page by – of all people – Wolverine. This liberal sense of morality, which in the context of the X-Men often seems naive, is part of what comics like The Authority and The Ultimate were rebelling against (as Geoff points out in his book). In “The Hellfire Gambit” at least, Claremont offers up a practical demonstration of why, in the sci-fi universe that the X-Men inhabit, killing your enemies isn’t a great idea – your enemy might have body-switched with one of your best friends. It’s superhero cliché used as metaphor again: In the story, Kitty is right to save Emma’s life, because although she doesn’t know it, Storm is trapped in Emma’s body. In real life, the death penalty is wrong because a good person might be somewhere inside the body of that seemingly heartless murderer. (Ironically, the White Queen will actually go on to be reformed over the decades, eventually going so far as to replace Jean Grey as Scott Summers’ main love interest during Morrison’s New X-Men series.)

Or an alternative interpretation is that this is a slight variation on a Morrison philosophy that Geoff so enjoys: Simplistic right-wing solutions like the death penalty just don’t work in the X-Men’s complex world of mutants and body-switching telepaths.

Whatever the case, morality lessons aside, issue 152 offers up a tidy and well orchestrated conclusion to a fun two-parter. While this second appearance of the Hellfire Club can’t possibly match up to the first (during the Dark Phoenix Saga) in terms of the overall scope and sense of dread, it does mark several notches of improvement in terms of the Club members’ individual characterizations. While previously they seemed like fairly generic evil-doers with an affected style of dress, this new story plays up the fetishism as integral aspects of their characters. It’s still tame by modern standards, but Kitty’s comment in the previous issue that Shaw, Frost, et al are criminals “for kicks” and that “they’re sick” gives the first hints of what sets the Hellfire Club apart from other villains. As with Magneto’s increased dimensionality and the curing of Sauron, the undercurrent of kink in the Hellfire Club is another example of Claremont attempting to avoid stagnation within the superhero paradigm of the recurring villain by adding a new twist each time.

The process continues here. Shaw’s casual romantic aggression towards Emma implies a sexually permissive relationship between the two, and the fact that Shaw is undeterred despite Emma inhabiting an entirely different body is telling as well. Indeed, Emma’s desire in the first place to take over Storm’s body can be read as motivated by twisted or fetishistic desire – it certainly doesn’t play out as an integral part of the Hellfire Club’s plan to invade the mansion. Its primary purpose seems to be to spice up the sexual interplay between her and the Black King. With the Club viewed in this light, it’s hard not to wonder as well about the White Queen’s single-minded desire to acquire Kitty Pryde. Is there a kinked motivation for that as well? (A story in New Mutants will eventually reveal that, no, the White Queen is not a pedophile – she merely seeks protégés.)

Apart from the implications of deviant sexuality, “The Hellfire Gambit” is not a standout story, though it is a supremely competent one. Claremont’s use of Amanda Sefton is a clever wrinkle; having established her as a witch in the otherwise useless X-Men Annual #4, Claremont now lets her be an important part of the action, her spells saving Wolverine from murder at the hands of cyborg Hellfire mercenaries. (The cyborgs are survivors of Byrne’s intensely violent opening sequence of Uncanny #133. Byrne obviously intended Wolverine to have killed them, but Claremont – steering the ship solo now – circumvents that intent and makes them recurring villains.)

Shaw is a great villain, always forcing creative solutions to defeating him. Here, master strategist Cyclops has Colossus “fastball special” Shaw into a lake, forcing him to burn off his absorbed kinetic energy in the act of swimming to shore.

Also notable is the implied parity between the X-Men and the Hellfire Club in Storm’s dialogue of the final panel. Like Charles’ musing in issue 149 that he and Magneto are “uncomfortably alike” – which hints at Magneto’s eventual replacement of Professor X in issue 200 – the pointing out of common ground between the X-Men and the Club opens up intriguing notions about the X-Men themselves, and plants the first oblique seed for the implicit “friends with benefits” relationship that will eventually evolve between Wolverine and Storm.

[It is interesting how the comic book idea that the villains are reflections of the heroes makes it easy to may characters like the White Queen and Magneto X-Men leaders.]

[There is also a bit where Cyclops sweeps a Sentinel off the lawn that reminded me of a moment in Whedon's Astonising. This whole period is really burned in Whedon's mind, both on X-Men and in Buffy.]