Yesterday, we looked at a comic that had way too little going on inside. Today, it's the reverse, a story that is so crammed, so over-stuffed that it approaches self-parody, if not incoherence:
Get used to that cover scene. We'll be seeing it again, and again.
In 1985, even though the X-Men were very popular, they hadn't expanded into a line-consuming empire yet. There was just Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants. No X-Factor, or X-Force, or Adjectiveless X-Men, or Wolverine solo series, or Cable, or...
Here's the interesting thing, though. Sometimes, and I can't believe I'm saying this, you want all of those other books around. Because Chris Claremont by this point had really big stories to tell, but he was restricted to a single book. (Sure, he could have done crossovers between Uncanny and New Mutants, but it was exceptionally rare in those days for Marvel to do cross-title crossovers). But, even though he had only one book to tell his epics in, he refused to rein the story in and all, refused to reduce the scope of the story or cut some extraneous characters out.
Which made for dense, clunky, border-line unreadable messes sometimes. Like this storyline, for example. It's clearly a precursor to such X-crossovers as X-Tinction Agenda or Age of Apocalypse...but Claremont tried to cram something that big into just 2 issues of Uncanny X-Men. And it just didn't work as well as it should have.
Oh, yeah, the full creative team:
Poor John Romita Jr. I pity anyone having to fit this much stuff into this few panels.
So, what is our story??
Don't worry, that title is not the only Lucas "homage" were going to get this issue.
Kulan Gath is an interesting character. Roy Thomas and Barry Smith conjured him up as a Conan villain...and apparently this meant that Marvel couldn't own him, as the character "followed" Red Sonja over to Dynamite.
But that didn't stop Marvel from using him in the contemporary Marvel-616 universe. His essence was contained in a mystic amulet, which let him turn up in the Claremont/Byrne Spider-Man/Red Sonja story in Marvel Team-Up. (By the way...in that story Mary Jane turned into Red Sonja. Good god, Quesada, why wouldn't you want Peter to stay married to her?!?!?) He turned up again in this story, then in the Busiek/Perez Avengers, and in one of the alternate timelines in Exiles. So, a pretty busy guy for a thousand of years old sorcerer.
So, since Spidey kicked his ass in the Marvel Team-Up story, he's back for revenge. How? Go grab a pop and some snacks, kids...we're in for Claremont exposition of Brobdingnagian proportions:
OK, so he's turned NYC back to barbarian days...
...OK, and Newish Mutants are Conanized...
...OK, OK, and the X-Men and the Morlocks and The Avengers are all transformed, too. Sheesh, how many words can one panel hold? Again, pity poor JR Jr., who had to shoehorn 22 characters around those damn captions. (and you guys should thank me...I cut a couple of panels worth of exposition out for you, because I'm the blogger who cares).
You see what I mean about the story being too big for the space? 4 teams of heroes, plus Spider-Man, plus Kulan Gath, plus Selene the immortal mutant psychic vampire wench, plus Doctor Strange, plus a transformed reality...and somehow we've got to do the story in only two issues? It's too freakin' ambitious, like trying to do Age of Apocalypse in only two issues. And it's made even worse by Claremont's growing logorrhea and insistence on giving every single character a bit (or several). In a couple of years, when they could have spread the story over a couple of titles, it might have worked.
Anyway, Spider-Man is the only one not transformed by the spell, because Gath wants him to suffer maximum torment watching his friends destroyed. Nice guy. Peter can't even understand any of the transformed heroes, as they all speak Hyborian or whatever.
Besides keeping Doctor Strange under wraps, Gath has also captured Selene, and made sure she can't use her magicks:
And he's merged Xavier and Caliban into a very weird hybrid type of Cerebro thing:
But that doesn't stop the rebels from attacking Kulan Gath's stronghold:
As I said, get used to this Colossus versus the Vision bit...
One of the other drawbacks to the short length of this story is that Claremont can't keep himself from killing off characters to make it "shocking." Of course it's no spoiler to reveal that there's a massive reset button waiting at the end of the episode, which means he can treat this as an alternate timeline and give us lots of gratuitous death without it having to count. And boy, does he indulge himself. Rogue dies first...
And apparently, even though she no longer speaks English, she retains her southern accent. She's the Foghorn Leghorn of Hyboria...or rather she was.
Warlock, who's unaffected by the mumbo jumbo because he's an alien, flees with Storm...
...but kills Wolfsbane in the process!!
Cannonball dies offscreen...that's right, we never see who or how. Claremont is so eager to kill off his own characters, he's not even bothering to show us anymore!!
Firmly under Gath's power, Danielle Moonstar uses her abilities to show Gath the things his enemies fear the most, so he can transform and control them:
Really? Janet Van Dyne's "greatest fear" is becoming an actual wasp?? Seriously, Claremont, that's the best you can come up with?? (And should I mention how JR Jr. makes Thanos look kinda like the Beast?!?)
Well, it's been awhile. How about we stop the story cold for...more exposition!!
(Again, I've cut a lot of that out for you. You're welcome).
Oh, and we haven't "homaged" George Lucas in awhile, so...
By the way, Spider-Man is Jesus:
It's time for yet another fight between our cover duo:
But this time it goes far, far worse:
Ah, more unpermanent death! Hey, there's some people left alive, Chris!!
Not any more!! Hey, can we kill Spider-Man, too?
Fortunately for the fate of the universe, Warlock grabs Gath while Storm takes his amulet...
But we get to kill a couple of more characters in a caption as Selene steals the amulet for herself.
But before he dies, Warlock gives the techno-virus to Storm, and Stormlock kills Selene:
Sigh. Before any more characters can die, Doctor Strange finally wakes up, and uses Illyana's magic and time/space powers to make it all "never happened."
Really, it all never even happened!!
So, what event was it that prevented Gath from emerging in the first place in this "new" timeline?
Oh, hell, it's Nimrod. Bring back the other timeline, please!!!!
Sigh. A story that never happened, that no one but five people even remember...what was the point, except to set up What Ifs and Exiles stories? What a waste. But still, perhaps part of the problem was that this was just a story before its time. If Marvel had allowed it to spread out longer, than maybe...And if Claremont had been able to restrain his bloodlust, been able to adjust to length he was given, this coulda been a contender. Instead, he tried to trump Days Of Future Past, and completely crushed the story as a result. Sigh...
ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:
These guys didn't actually have their own mag this month...that would come next month:
But this ad was in most of the marvels this month. And in addition to the ads, Marvel was pimping Cloak and Dagger hard with the guest appearances. This month they showed up as the stars of Marvel Fanfare:
...finished up a three part story in New Mutants:
...and guest-starred in Power Pack, of all places:
I wouldn't be surprised if they did the Hostess ads this month, too.
Obviously, Marvel thought these guys might be the next big thing. But they just never caught on with the public. Various attempts at their own series never lasted longer than 13 issues, and after 1991 they were relegated to guest appearances, and "hey look at me cameos" in alternate universe stories such as Age of Apocalypse, Earth-X, Marvel Zombies, etc. Oh, yeah, and they were in the "League of Losers" during Kirkman's tenure on Marvel Team-Up. So much for being the next big thing.
They just had a brand new special out this week. But don't expect anything to come of it.
Get used to that cover scene. We'll be seeing it again, and again.In 1985, even though the X-Men were very popular, they hadn't expanded into a line-consuming empire yet. There was just Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants. No X-Factor, or X-Force, or Adjectiveless X-Men, or Wolverine solo series, or Cable, or...
Here's the interesting thing, though. Sometimes, and I can't believe I'm saying this, you want all of those other books around. Because Chris Claremont by this point had really big stories to tell, but he was restricted to a single book. (Sure, he could have done crossovers between Uncanny and New Mutants, but it was exceptionally rare in those days for Marvel to do cross-title crossovers). But, even though he had only one book to tell his epics in, he refused to rein the story in and all, refused to reduce the scope of the story or cut some extraneous characters out.
Which made for dense, clunky, border-line unreadable messes sometimes. Like this storyline, for example. It's clearly a precursor to such X-crossovers as X-Tinction Agenda or Age of Apocalypse...but Claremont tried to cram something that big into just 2 issues of Uncanny X-Men. And it just didn't work as well as it should have.
Oh, yeah, the full creative team:
Poor John Romita Jr. I pity anyone having to fit this much stuff into this few panels.So, what is our story??
Don't worry, that title is not the only Lucas "homage" were going to get this issue.Kulan Gath is an interesting character. Roy Thomas and Barry Smith conjured him up as a Conan villain...and apparently this meant that Marvel couldn't own him, as the character "followed" Red Sonja over to Dynamite.
But that didn't stop Marvel from using him in the contemporary Marvel-616 universe. His essence was contained in a mystic amulet, which let him turn up in the Claremont/Byrne Spider-Man/Red Sonja story in Marvel Team-Up. (By the way...in that story Mary Jane turned into Red Sonja. Good god, Quesada, why wouldn't you want Peter to stay married to her?!?!?) He turned up again in this story, then in the Busiek/Perez Avengers, and in one of the alternate timelines in Exiles. So, a pretty busy guy for a thousand of years old sorcerer.
So, since Spidey kicked his ass in the Marvel Team-Up story, he's back for revenge. How? Go grab a pop and some snacks, kids...we're in for Claremont exposition of Brobdingnagian proportions:
OK, so he's turned NYC back to barbarian days...
...OK, and Newish Mutants are Conanized...
...OK, OK, and the X-Men and the Morlocks and The Avengers are all transformed, too. Sheesh, how many words can one panel hold? Again, pity poor JR Jr., who had to shoehorn 22 characters around those damn captions. (and you guys should thank me...I cut a couple of panels worth of exposition out for you, because I'm the blogger who cares).You see what I mean about the story being too big for the space? 4 teams of heroes, plus Spider-Man, plus Kulan Gath, plus Selene the immortal mutant psychic vampire wench, plus Doctor Strange, plus a transformed reality...and somehow we've got to do the story in only two issues? It's too freakin' ambitious, like trying to do Age of Apocalypse in only two issues. And it's made even worse by Claremont's growing logorrhea and insistence on giving every single character a bit (or several). In a couple of years, when they could have spread the story over a couple of titles, it might have worked.
Anyway, Spider-Man is the only one not transformed by the spell, because Gath wants him to suffer maximum torment watching his friends destroyed. Nice guy. Peter can't even understand any of the transformed heroes, as they all speak Hyborian or whatever.
Besides keeping Doctor Strange under wraps, Gath has also captured Selene, and made sure she can't use her magicks:
And he's merged Xavier and Caliban into a very weird hybrid type of Cerebro thing:
But that doesn't stop the rebels from attacking Kulan Gath's stronghold:
As I said, get used to this Colossus versus the Vision bit...One of the other drawbacks to the short length of this story is that Claremont can't keep himself from killing off characters to make it "shocking." Of course it's no spoiler to reveal that there's a massive reset button waiting at the end of the episode, which means he can treat this as an alternate timeline and give us lots of gratuitous death without it having to count. And boy, does he indulge himself. Rogue dies first...
And apparently, even though she no longer speaks English, she retains her southern accent. She's the Foghorn Leghorn of Hyboria...or rather she was.Warlock, who's unaffected by the mumbo jumbo because he's an alien, flees with Storm...
...but kills Wolfsbane in the process!!
Cannonball dies offscreen...that's right, we never see who or how. Claremont is so eager to kill off his own characters, he's not even bothering to show us anymore!!
Firmly under Gath's power, Danielle Moonstar uses her abilities to show Gath the things his enemies fear the most, so he can transform and control them:
Really? Janet Van Dyne's "greatest fear" is becoming an actual wasp?? Seriously, Claremont, that's the best you can come up with?? (And should I mention how JR Jr. makes Thanos look kinda like the Beast?!?)Well, it's been awhile. How about we stop the story cold for...more exposition!!
(Again, I've cut a lot of that out for you. You're welcome).Oh, and we haven't "homaged" George Lucas in awhile, so...
By the way, Spider-Man is Jesus:
It's time for yet another fight between our cover duo:
But this time it goes far, far worse:
Ah, more unpermanent death! Hey, there's some people left alive, Chris!!
Not any more!! Hey, can we kill Spider-Man, too?
Fortunately for the fate of the universe, Warlock grabs Gath while Storm takes his amulet...
But we get to kill a couple of more characters in a caption as Selene steals the amulet for herself.
But before he dies, Warlock gives the techno-virus to Storm, and Stormlock kills Selene:
Sigh. Before any more characters can die, Doctor Strange finally wakes up, and uses Illyana's magic and time/space powers to make it all "never happened."
Really, it all never even happened!!
So, what event was it that prevented Gath from emerging in the first place in this "new" timeline?
Oh, hell, it's Nimrod. Bring back the other timeline, please!!!!Sigh. A story that never happened, that no one but five people even remember...what was the point, except to set up What Ifs and Exiles stories? What a waste. But still, perhaps part of the problem was that this was just a story before its time. If Marvel had allowed it to spread out longer, than maybe...And if Claremont had been able to restrain his bloodlust, been able to adjust to length he was given, this coulda been a contender. Instead, he tried to trump Days Of Future Past, and completely crushed the story as a result. Sigh...
ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:
These guys didn't actually have their own mag this month...that would come next month:
But this ad was in most of the marvels this month. And in addition to the ads, Marvel was pimping Cloak and Dagger hard with the guest appearances. This month they showed up as the stars of Marvel Fanfare:
...finished up a three part story in New Mutants:
...and guest-starred in Power Pack, of all places:
I wouldn't be surprised if they did the Hostess ads this month, too.Obviously, Marvel thought these guys might be the next big thing. But they just never caught on with the public. Various attempts at their own series never lasted longer than 13 issues, and after 1991 they were relegated to guest appearances, and "hey look at me cameos" in alternate universe stories such as Age of Apocalypse, Earth-X, Marvel Zombies, etc. Oh, yeah, and they were in the "League of Losers" during Kirkman's tenure on Marvel Team-Up. So much for being the next big thing.
They just had a brand new special out this week. But don't expect anything to come of it.
As a D&D playing kid, I loved Uncanny X-Men #191, even if all your points are completely accurate, and Claremont does jam in entirely too much graham. But then again, that's kinda how things were done back in the day. And I might've enjoyed, oh, Secret Invasion or Civil War, if they had been two issues and sixty cents each...
ReplyDeleteThe tentacle-hand look that Selene gets, also weirdly reoccurs in Claremont's work. A lot.
Well, I guess that with readers so accustomed to "decompressed" storytelling the effect of reading a compressed two-part epic like UXM #190-191 is a bit like someone accustomed to eat "a flavorless mush I call root marm" (Jebediah Springfield) suddenly being exposed to a hot curry. These days they probably would have done this story as a maxi-crossover involving several titles and running on for at least half a year, but that would not really have improved the story enough to justify the additional cost.
ReplyDeleteTo me the story felt and feels neither too long nor too short. The thing is, because Kulan Gath and the whole Hyborian mythos was involved (and New York was transformed into a Hyborian facsimile), readers could be certain from the outset that NOTHING that happened in this story was going to stick. So it was a worthier and more memorable sequel to MTU #79 than the more recent Spider-Man/Red Sonja mini-series (five (!) issues). As far as I recall, back in 1985 I actually was surprised by the extent of the carnage in the story - I had not expected that many people to be killed off, so Claremont managed to surprise at least one reader. And we got Nimrod out of the story, who during Claremont's run was a very scary mutant-hunting robot...
Since you mention "Days of Future Past", you could have made a lot of your remarks about that story with equal justification. For instance, her you're upset because Cannonball (who was not even an X-Man in 1985) is killed off-panel in UXM #191? In UXM #141 most of the X-Men and Marvel's other heroes and villains are dead at the beginning of the future segment, freakin' Magneto is killed off-panel, and at the end of UXM #142 only Rachel and Kate are left alive.
The Wasp's "greatest fear" is fairly universal or generic, but not implausible and easy for a reader to relate to. But what really would have been better? Janet really always seemed a very happy and upbeat personality with no inner demons gnawing at her soul, so I guess it was something like this or an equally "generic" fear of death...
This was one of the very first comics I bought. I was 12 and it CONFUSED THE HELL OUT OF ME! All I had read up to this point were the X-Men & New Mutant graphic novels and a few of the Secret Wars issues that were still coming out. I liked the X-Men so I thougth I'd try and jump on board. The rule of every comic is someones first really applies to this. I couldn't makes heads or tails of what was going on. It was quite frustrating, I wanted to get into it, but it felt like a private club and I wasn't on the short list. Thankfully I picked up Fantastic Four #278 a few months later. John Byrne did a neat succint recap of Dr. Dooms origin and told a coherent story that made me feel quite welcomed into the Worlds Greatest Comic Magazine.
ReplyDeleteI've been a FF fan for 25 years now thanks to that one issue.
This recap does bring back some memories. I actually felt a little bit of anxiety reading it.
The difference between Days of Future past and this storyline is that Days of Future Past's deaths were about something: how to avoid this terrible future. The Kulan Gath two-parter had no such point, no such future to prevent. it was just an excuse to present as many "shocking" deaths as possible--and then reset everything at the end.
ReplyDeleteIn DoFP, the stakes were real--this would happen unless we act correctly. In X-Men 190-191, nothing was real, no lessons to be learned (except, perhaps, don't pick up old amulets): just fake death porn, and not even well-done fake death porn.
As to length, yes, this was too short to adequately present all the stuff Claremont wanted to stick in. DoFP was a snapshot of a particular point in the future...if that story had tried to show us each and every death of all the characters (plus the Avengers, plus the Morlocks, plus...) it would have been a bloated, intolerable mess. Seriously, Claremont tried to give us a final fate for 30+ characters in the Kulan Gath story, and show us each and every one (and screw it up...Wolfsbane kept showing up after she was "dead").
(And there's a difference between "offscreen" deaths that happen prior to where we pick up a story and those that happen with no explanation during a story...Hamlet's father's death is never shown, but that's just part of setting up the story, whereas not showing Polonius' death during the story would have been bad storytelling. And yes, I did just compare DoFP to Hamlet, and I should be shot for that).
As to the Wasp, that particular fear is completely unsupported by anything ever written about the character before or since, and is a sign that Claremont was already regressed to tragic overuse of the "confront your greatest fear" mode of characterization as his main writing tool. If he couldn't have thought of anything better, maybe he shouldn't have done it...
"t was just an excuse to present as many "shocking" deaths as possible--and then reset everything at the end. "
ReplyDeleteI remember that puppy and still like it. I'd say more it was an excuse to tell a Conan story using the X-Men and crucified Spiderman really did scare me. Sure we all knew it would be OK in the end but in the same way we know that anything we read is just a story. The point is the journey, not the ending.
Reread this recently in an X-Men 1975-1991 readthrough and noticed a trend in the upper #180s-#190s that Claremont might've been padding the issue count a bit to reach #200. The Dr Doom/Arcade story in #197 is particularly egregious in my mind (Murderworld AGAIN?!). As silly as Claremont's novel-like exposition became in this period, the art of JR JR in this 2-parter is still great and at least we don't suffer quite so much from the Anti-Mutant Hysteria drumbeat until Nimrod arrives.
ReplyDelete