Marvel 1995 Week--Uncanny X-Men #322!!

Uh-oh.

Most of the time when I do my Marvel Weeks, I'm pretty mean to the X-Men.

I don't mean to be--really. It's just that, for various reasons, my tastes and most eras of the X-Men don't seem to sync up very well. And after I bailed on the franchise at some point in the late 1980s, I'd still check back in occasionally...and pretty quickly find myself bored and/or unenthused, and quickly save my shekels for something else (sorry, Matt Fraction!). Try as I might, the X-Men generally leave me cold.

So, given that, and given how cranky I've been to the 1995 versions of franchises that I generally do like, you can imagine what's going to happen now.

Surprise!! I actually sort of kind of liked this story:

But, that cover...it looks kind of familiar...hmmm, I guess I'll think more about that later...

Anyway, just at this very second in 1995, the X-Men is one of the few Marvel franchises not caught up in their own epic event crossover saga. That's because they just finished one, of course--the Age Of Apocalypse had just concluded, during which all of the X-titles were "replaced" for four months by "alternate" titles exploring the adventures of our mutants in Apocalypse's happy era. This was actually the first post-AoA issue.

Thus, instead of continuity-ensnaggled stories joined in the middle, here we get sort of a fresh start, as the X-Men just start up with a normal story, with most of the characters not even remembering what happened, meaning that (for once) we're going to be far less burdened with ridiculous exposition dumps posing as dialogue!

And ironically, given that the X-Mags were primarily responsible for the popularization of the Liefeld/Lee "style" in the first place, in 1995 those X-Mags didn't seem to be under the general editorial diktat to "draw more like Image"--there's not a pouch or ammo belt in sight here!!

So let's begin:

And our creators??

I've always liked Tom Grummett's pencils (although results vary a bit in this issue, with 4 different inkers!). Good, clean super-hero stuff.

It turns out that Warren has been called in by his x-girlfriend (did you see what I did their?) to help investigate a grizzly crime.

There's bad blood betwixt human authorities and mutants...

(although someone might want to let Lobdell and Grummett know that pumping a shotgun does not produce the sound of "a bullet slipping into the chamber")

But today there's a reason for these tensions: there's been a mass murder at a dance club!

And:



We're never shown in this issue how the "aerial view" revealed this to be a mutant-on-human crime. Maybe be bodies were arranged to spell out HUMANZ SUK or something.

Meanwhile, Storm is out for a walk, and encounters Wolverine in a patented X-hero pity party:


Ahhh, it just isn't a proper X-comic without someone struggling against their "dark side." How Claremontian...

Well, perhaps it's time to hop over to our main story, in which the Beast and Bishop are out for some recreation...



...and we find out that Bishop doesn't get Tarantino films!!

We get a great view of Bishops Rorschach do-rag as something flies through the night sky:

Damn, that seems familiar...

That something crashes to earth, leaving a big trail:

Familiar...

And a big reveal (which was not really so big, as it was given away by the cover):

And, again, familiar:

Damn!!

I could suggest that Roger Stern and Lee Weeks completely ripped off Uncanny X-Men #322 in this year's Amazing Spider-Man #627--from the "super-powerful unknown punches Juggernaut across the country" concept to the exact ways our heroes discovered it--but that would be uncharitable.

I will note, however, that despite the Beast's shock, the simple fact is that the Juggernaut has been stopped dozens of times. Obviously, because he always loses, right? Even in 1995 we were at the point where Juggernaut was Marvel's version of J'onn J'onzz: someone supposedly ultra-powerful and unbeatable who gets defeated handily every time as a lazy way for the creative team to let us know how bad ass the true villain is. So, to that extent, Stern and Weeks weren't ripping anyone off, but were merely continuing a long Marvel tradition. Yeah, that's the ticket.

One thing we can take from this comparison, though, is yet another lesson about what Marvel's coloring process has become in the 21st century. Really, Marvel, does every book have to look like I need a flashlight to read it? Have bright colors gone the way of the thought balloon? What, exactly, changed in the last 15 years to make this narrow, dim palette the defacto coloring scheme for the whole Marvel universe?!?! Sigh...

Meanwhile, we take one last detour to check in with Jean Grey visiting her parents, mourning over the death of her sister:

Really? One of your powers is that you remember everything?? Really?? Why have I never heard this before? Or I am really that far out of the X-loop?

One final scene switch--back to the main event. After an expositional panel explaining Cain Marko to the reader:

The big lug wakes up, and:

Fortunately, guess which telepathic/telekinetic/teleporting/invisibility having/psychic katana wielding/bionic eye having/body switching/former Captain Britain/ninja shows up in her civvies?


Man, they never get tired of trotting out that trick, do they?? (And HEY!! I thought Marko's helmet made him immune to psychic attacks...oh, well)

However, Juggy is still a panic-puss, so they've got to somewhat forcibly calm him down.


Well, of course, that doesn't work...


He forgot to say "Bitch!"

Leave it to Bishop, then:

And it works!! (And I've got to say, the thought of Bishop having to lug around huge piles of city electrical cables in order to do anything is a pretty cool comment on how lame the character is...)

So, with just the question of exactly who punched Juggernaut across part of a continent, let's be grateful for this respite from the nutsiness of the rest of marvel 1995. Just a nice little story, a few subplots churning away, a good superhero slugfest--no ties to any unnecessary and embarrassing events, no need to read 15 other mags to understand what was going on, and...


Oh, crap. Never mind.

(By the way, have I ever mentioned how ridiculous it was to have Onslaught be a completely and totally X-villain, yet have him be the cause of the OTHER heroes getting kicked out of this universe? Shouldn't some actual X-Men have "sacrificed themselves" to beat the guy? Lame)

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

I won't belabor the number of X-comics Marvel was putting out each month in 1995 (ahem 17), as I've done that before. Let's instead look at one in particular, just to show how intense the craze was:

Sabretooth Classic was a monthly series reprinting Sabretooth's original appearances in chronological order.

Read that last sentence again.

At a time when Quasar and Namor and She-Hulk and Warlock and Blade and others couldn't carry their own original series, the X-Men were so popular as to justify 4 separate monthly reprint series...including one for a relatively minor villain. Yow.

In fairness, this was the final issue of Sabretooth Classic, and 2 of the other reprint mags would be cancelled in a couple of months. But that was more as a consequence of Marvel tightening its belt and trying to reduce the number of books on the shelf in the wake of the speculation bubble bursting, not because the X-Men were suddenly losing popularity...and by the end of the year Marvel would be publishing a 99¢ series "retelling" the original X-Men stories, one issue at a time, with new scripts and art. Because apparently, Stan wasn't angsty enough for modern readers, and Jack's work wasn't as "detailed" or "kinetic" as modern audiences required...