S/D X-Men Runs

Ah, right... I remember being crushed that Kitty couldn't unphase, and Colossus couldn't un-Colossus.

the miniseries where they fixed Kitty's phasing problem was really, really great IMO

of course the permaphase was brought back by Fraction after Whedon shot her into space in that giant bullet but we knew it wasn't going to be permanent

the miniseries where they fixed Kitty's phasing problem was really, really great IMO

I don't think I've ever read this, which one is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four_vs._the_X-Men

Especially that part where Kitty contemplates killing herself

Mutant Massacre - i hated that, thought it was an ill thought out debacle (of course i bought all te books) but it was - as usually turns oust to be the case a stupid ending and it wa sthe start of my deep annoyance, verging on hate of the X-books as I (as ranted on other comic threads before) thought the variance between the rest pf the MU where these people interact with other heroes and so there should be some pushback on the hatred just went ridiculously over the line

i guess this is why i have Uncanny Avengers which, umm.., is not what i wanted (be careful what you wish for being the message again) and have no idea if just coz i have not been reading comics in a while that it seems bad or is bad

now also mebbe coz of age but i loved the mutants in asgard set across x-men and new mutants, karma lost her weight, sunball was happy for a change, hanging out with warriors three, magik turning tables on enchantess, felt like there was charcter development with just a fun bring these two worlds in the MU never meet together and have fun with it

i read that sean howe marvel marvel book last month -- totally great! made me want to read (or re-read) a bunch of things. I think as a kid the first thing I read was Fall of the Mutants, but as I went back into that mutant massacre stuff, that's the stuff that really sticks with me. the only thing i have left is a collection of those asgard stories -- pretty fun.

xp: conversely, I thought reading a multipart story where multiple heroes were seriously hurt/disfigured and the bad guys won, setting up a series of plot strands with major consequences on the books for the next several years (particularly on the X-Factor side) was amazing

yeah, I think that was why i loved it too dan

Mutant Massacre also didn't really have anything to do with public mutant-hate, right? It was basically a squad of mutant goons mass-murdering the Morlocks for reasons unexplained, and our heroes getting torn up as they try to intervene.

yup

It was a pretty shocking way to jump into collectordom

I'd bought the issue before, which was an anti-racism self-contained story where Kitty faced down a mob screaming at a kid by shaming them with a bald allegory to her own mutant powers (which she didn't use) that was intercut with the story of Frankie and her Hellfire Club guard boyfriend running from some dudes trying to kill them, ending with Frankie getting shot at the entrance of the Morlock tunnels; it was very jarring seeing them go from being able to use words to defuse a situation to them just getting torn up by the Marauders, plus mix in Wolverine's freakout over discovering Jean was back and it was just awesome plot juggling.

like earlnash i too have recently read and enjoyed sean howe's marvel book, but reading this thread now, i wonder if i liked it because i'm basically in sympathy with its elevation of the 70s material at marvel over and above anything since. it v. much paints the claremont-byrne era as the peak of the x-men, because of the creative tension-equilibrium between the pair of em (once byrne left, ironically, the title became even MORE popular, but there was nobody to counteract claremont's more hopeless flights of fancy, and in time the commercial imperative - crossovers, spin-offs, multiple titles etc - really diluted the previous 'purity' of the brand.)

also reading this thread prompted me to read the wiki entry on Mutant Massacre - hadn't known before that the plot was a reworking of a failed attempt to integrate the alan moore captain britain material into the US marvel universe (failed because moore had copyright claim on his Captain Britain strips.) marvel did ultimately publish the moore-davis Cap Brits, and i've never read excalibur, but i'm guessing that claremont did eventually get to play with that universe when he was writing it

I don't think Claremont got to using The Fury until the 2000s, but someone factcheck me on that

I think Nimrod was his attempt at the Fury, yes? Paul O'Brien gets into this when he discusses the Alan Davis run much later on.

My pet theory, spoiler alert for a blog coming in 2024 or so, but I'm convinced that what ruined Claremont wasn't the loss of a strong partner in Byrne, but having to make sense out of Marc Silvestri's fucking horrific, incomprehensible pencils month after month, for a seemingly endless period of the title. More and more each page fills up with text that's just trying to establish what's happening past all the scratchy, distorted nothingness and gradually Claremont's work-week has less and less room to work out where the plot is all going....

how do you explain Sovereign Seven, then

Can't put that mess on Silvestri, man. Claremont's baby through and through!

I guess I'm contending that his hand cramped up somewhere around the 304th "focused totality of my psychic power" and he was never the same after. It's like Nilsson and Pussy Cats.

"What's that you're doing there, Wolverine? Are you using your razor-sharp adamantium claws to bust us out of this cage? Because it mostly just looks like a bunch of random lines thrashed themselves in front of you while you stood perfectly still while clenching every muscle in your body and grimacing. Are you okay?"

"Also, where are we? Because all I see behind us is a mauve nothingness?"

Claremont's work was always a little too expository but he kept getting worse over the years until 90% of his 2000s work was just long descriptions of the physical characteristics of characters and their powers

there was a fantastic issue of Kelly's Deadpool run where Wolverine shows up and has increasingly wordy speech bubbles to the point where Deadpool himself starts going "Damn Logan, how do you do all of that in one breath? Is this a mutant power shared by all X-Men?"

claremont wrote plenty of shit before, during and after his byrne collaboration (in the howe book there's a moment in the 1990s when claremont and byrne might get back together on the x-men, and it's like a pink floyd reunion gig, only not for charity, and only it never happens). i'm guessing that his increasing verbosity was partly an effect of enjoying a p free editorial hand, and partly an effect of the 'marvel style' itself, which often finds artist and writer at cross-purposes (perhaps my single fave moment in the howe bk is when steve englehart bitches abt george tuska ignoring Power Man sub-plots that englehart had included in his outline, just because tuska didn't feel like drawing em - it was easier, more lucrative to blap out twenty pages of four panel fight scene pages.)

man, if I had the energy I would totally transcribe the first five pages of Uncanny X-Men #96 right now

i guess this is why i have Uncanny Avengers which, umm.., is not what i wanted (be careful what you wish for being the message again) and have no idea if just coz i have not been reading comics in a while that it seems bad or is bad

I am happy to confirm that Uncanny Avengers is really terrible.

the latest issue is okayish, but not okayish enough for me to justify buying it

RIP Rogue and Havok, I tried

Awww for real..?

for real I'm dropping the book (Rogue and Havok are obv still alive, although Rogue apparently just killed Wonder Man's brother)

it's not the worst comic, but I feel like Remender has decent ideas and really clumsy execution

sweet art, though

oh, also leaden dialogue

it's definitely the worst of the Marvel NOW books I'm reading

I mean, X-Treme X-Men is better, that should tell you something

a book that finally delivers the hot Wolverine/Hercules action fans didn't know they needed

X-Treme X-Men was ok, I just wish it had some kind of actual ending or remembered the original premise of the book

I will say though that I had no idea I'd be picking up so many Avengers books in the wake of Marvel NOW!

Avengers Arena in particular is so much better than it has any right to be

also Hawkeye roolz

Nhex, I think DJP is talking about the new one which is basically Exiles 2.0

Nhex probably is too; the book has been canceled and is being wrapped up as part of a stupid crossover that only seems to exist as a mechanism to kill the various characters created for X-Treme X-Men and the AOA series

That Lapham AOA series had some moments

oh, i had no idea they brought the title back. i was thinking of the Claremont book that ran concurrently with Morrison's New X-Men ten years ago

it would be funny if black Cyclops survived in regular continuity though, because then there would be three Cyke variants running around and other characters could start calling him "nu-Jean"

they really didn't have enough time to flesh out black Cyclops

what do you mean, we know he's black and he's Cyclops, and... um...

Black Cyclops? Maybe I do need to start reading X-Men comics again

we forgot to mention that he's dressed as a Union soldier, btw

Thoughts on Jason Aaron's Wolverine & The X-Men? I'm really enjoying it as of about ten issues in

I think it started great but went downhill somewhere around the circus issues. Had at least a good year/18 months.

That's about right. The recent Hellfire Club showdown is an uptick in quality but not as high as the initial issues.

Agreed. I think I described it somewhere as a half-hearted attempt at rehashing Mojo Mayhem, which might be a bit crude but probably works in big handfuls.

Reading the first Uncanny omnibus. So great, and I haven't even gotten to Byrne yet! Also:

http://i.imgur.com/S3VtNUN.jpg

For those fans of the Claremont/Byrne X-Men, be sure to go and check out Essential Marvel Team-Up Vol. 3. That is a really good Marvel Essential and is filled with Bill Mantlo and Claremont stories with primarily John Byrne artwork. In hindsight, I would think the Spider-man/X-men story in Marvel Team Up along with that Iron Fist/X-Men story should probably be reprinted along side the Uncanny X-men issues. Maybe they will catch those when they re-do the X-men in those new 'epic' trade series Marvel is starting.

It's hard to defend Byrne considering some of the things he said. I know I kind of lost some respect for him back in the 80s when I went to one of the Mid-Ohio cons and he just came off like an ass (and the fawning fans around him was weird), but I still liked his artwork quite a bit. He definitely seemed like a guy that probably thought he crapped gold.

That said, John Byrne had a pretty cool style that seemed to cut the middle between Gil Kane and Neal Adams and I think in hindsight through Byrne's influence through Jim Lee is pretty much become one of the de-facto styles of super hero comic artwork. Those late 70s through mid-80s Marvel comics though are still quite well done. I think in hindsight, you can see even the cracks in the DC Superman run. There are a few issues that are pretty good, but there are some total dogs in there too (like the Big Barda Action issue).

xp lol chuck was such a dick

It's kind of funny reading that panel considering how Ed Brubaker and Josh Whedon kind of went back and really ret-con made Xavier look like an ass.