Marvel 1978 Week--Uncanny X-Men #116

You can tell the youngsters all about rotary telephones, 8-track tapes, full service gas stations, and having only 3 or 4 channels available on television, and they'll believe you. It may take some explanation, and they look at you with incredulity, but eventually they'll buy it.

But just try to explain to them that the X-Men once weren't popular. That, they won't believe.

It's one of the more incredible transitions in comic book history. As we discussed back during Marvel 1968 week, the X-Men early on not only weren't popular...there was actually a 5 year period when they were downgraded to a bi-monthly reprint book!!

Now, of course, the X-Empire is so large that if Marvel were to spin it off into its own company, it would outsell Dark Horse, Image and Wildstorm combined (note--I didn't do any math, just roll with me here). Wolverine alone has more titles being published than Batman. Scrolling the the X portion of Marvel's solicits every month takes hours.

What happened? How, exactly, did the X-Men transition from being the sad sack franchise that even Lee & Kirby and Thomas & Adams couldn't make successful, to the unstoppable juggernaut it is today? Was it just that the comic public was more receptive to the idea in the late 70's than it was in the late 60's? Was Chris Claremont just that much better at tapping into the zeitgeist of a mutant book than Stan and Roy? Were the X costumes of the 1960's so godawful that they physically drove readers away (hint: YES)? Were Cockrum and Byrne & Austin that amazing? Was it just "right place, right time," or was there something more?

Which brings us to:

The time was December, 1978. The Uncanny X-Men had only leapt from bi-monthly to monthly a few months earlier. Phoenix wasn't yet Dark, and was still Jean Grey; there was only one team, and no Factor, Young, or New; Scott Summers didn't have 8 or 10 real and/or hypothetical future children running around, and the X-Men didn't yet have 6 or 7 members from various alternate futures or various sundered What If? universes hanging around; Magneto was still a bad guy, as opposed to a good guy turned bad guy reformed into good guy than turned bad guy again and then...; there was no Brood or Mojoverse; no four-issue miniseries or spin-offs or sprawling and interminable crossovers. In short, it was a simpler time.

How simple?

Hee hee. Tying the X-Men (and Ka-Zar!!) to a stake. How quaint.

There's no need to introduce them, but here are our creators:

This team, usually together with letterer Orzechowski and colorist Wein, strode the Earth like a behemoth for what seemed like eons, simultaneously creating and riding the growing tsunami of X-popularity. It was a strong, confident, ridiculously ambitious run, meticulously planned, rarely mis-stepping. So what's going on this issue?

To set the scene: our mutant heroes escaped from a deadly battle in Magneto's Antarctic fortress and ended up in the Savage Land, where they found that Garokk (which is also spelled Garrok on occasion this issue!!) , the Petrified Man, was setting himself up as the Sun God who will unify the Savage Land (and destroy it, in the process, of course). Which leads immediately to a patented Byrne/Austin two-page spread:

Whereupon our heroes are set upon by primitives riding pterodactyls...



...and several homo so-called superior get captured by cavemen. Brilliant.

A lot of this issue's little focus moments are for Wolverine. Again, this is going to be hard for you kiddies to understand, but in the early days of the All-New, All-Different X-Men, fans HATED Wolverine. Really--Wolverine was unpopular. He was a rude little jerk who didn't play well with their clean, squeaky heroes. Byrne has said that one of his goals when he came on board was to make the fans like Logan, without softening his character. Here we can see some of the work to that effect.




Rapport with savage beasts, check. Vicious killer (as vicious as you could be as a hero in a Code book, at least), check. Tough badass? Check! And all of that was in the space of 3 pages, so Project: Make Wolverine Ridiculously Popular was well under way.

So our heroes reach the arena where the others are to be sacrificed. Question: how do you execute a man made of living metal?

Fortunately, Nightcrawler frees Cyclops before things go too far.



This last panel encapsulates, in part, why Byrne/Austin worked so well--they know how to draw team action. Yeah, there's not much background in this panel, but everybody is doing something: Nightcrawler is wrestling with a goon, Cyclops is using a precision shot to free Banshee, Colossus is burst free with Kirby-like power. They always had a lot of things happening in their panels, even if it was just showing various people's various reactions. Without making the art overly busy or cluttered, they managed to give a "three-dimensional" feeling to their art. This was fairly unique to team books of the day, which all too often just focused on one character acting, while everyone else stood flat-footed and watched.

Anyway, Garrok takes off:
Why? To "re energize himself" from the city's power grid, of course!

But Scott can't let that happen:

Which of course results in:



Sean rescues Scott...

But Ororo is less successful rescuing Garrok:


And there you have the best and worst of Claremont in a nutshell. There was definitely a deeper level of characterization at work in the X-Men than was being seen in most contemporary comics books, even at Marvel. But there was also a...shall we say, lack of subtlety in applying it...a hammerhead approach, as if he didn't trust his audience to follow what he was doing, or the artist to explain it. You could never have Storm feeling claustrophobic without Claremont having to explain, in detail, her childhood trauma, again and again. You could never have an emotional scene without one of his characters serving as a narrator, pontificating to the audience on what emotion we were seeing and what it meant. At times it could feel very condescending to the reader, particularly the older ones whom the good characterization was attracting.

Well, the X-Men pack up and leave the Savage Land...in a wooden boat. Not smart.

So Storm's ability to sense weather works like Deanna Troi's ability to sense emotions: state the freakin' obvious. And isn't the point of having a "weather goddess" around her ability to control things like that??!?

That's the end of our issue. It's not the greatest story by any means. Garrok is really a crap villain, who doesn't do much...Ka-Zar is not really used at all. Claremont and Byrne were not quite at their peak yet. But they were getting there.

The X-Men globe trot a bit next, to Japan and Canada, make it home, deal with Arcade, go to Scotland to fight Proteus, face off with the Hellfire Club, deal with the Dark Phoenix saga....

Did you notice anything about that list of stories? There's not a ton of "human vs. mutant" angst stories, are there? Yes, earlier they had had a Sentinel story, and of course Byrne would leave the X-Men with Day of Future Past. But there wasn't the over-arching obsession with "us versus them" stories, of "our persecuted species" tales. It was still there, in the background of many stories...but it didn't dominate. The X-Men were mutants, but that wasn't their exclusive concern. We weren't constantly deluged with "humans are going to wipe us out" stories, with an increasingly bleak world view. We weren't getting visitors from 17 alternate futures telling us how much life was going to suck for mutants, or the constant dread of genocide. I mean, I got the metaphor, you're preaching to the choir, bro. Can't we just fight a super-villain once in awhile??

Unless, of course, that super-villain is the evil clone of the son you had with a demonically transformed clone of your dead lover. Oh, too late.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

You know, I never got into Ghost Rider...just not my cup of tea, I guess. But when I see this cover...check out this synopsis (from GCD):

Johnny is trapped in a ghost town when he is confronted by a prospector with amazing powers and the two are captured by a giant ship spouting motorcycle riding robots.

Wait a minute--a cover shout-out to Close Encounters, with a giant space ship spewing out motorcycle riding robots? AND prospectors with amazing powers??

Hmmm, I'd better find this book...

Marvel 1978 Week--Iron Man #117

Well, well, well.

Iron Man.

OK, let's see if I can do this. I pledge to make it through this entire post without referring to the Civil War or Skrullapalooza or Purple Reign. No references to Tony Stark being a fascist, or a dumb@$$, or anything like that.

It's gonna be tough.

So what do we have?

Ha ha ha it's a clever topical movie reference...and by topical I mean it was only a year and a half old at that point.

Anyway, that's no mere spy--that's SPYMASTER!!!
This tale is brought to us by:

Dave Michelinie had just begun what was to be the first of two prodigiously long runs on Iron Man, 42 and 36 issues, respectively. He took over from Bill Mantlo in the middle of a two-parter (Bill must have had to free up time for the soon-to-be-launched Rom and Micronauts). As we'll see, even this early Michelinie was starting to introduce elements that would continue throughout his runs.

As for John Romita Jr, this is where it all began--two issues earlier was his first penciling job ever!! And this was also Bob Layton's 2nd issue of Iron Man, the work that he was best known for, and for the entire run with Michelinie he shared a "plot" credit. So we were really getting in on the ground floor here.

So how's the story start?!?

Well, that was quick. See ya tomorrow, folks--drive carefully!!

OK, I knew it couldn't be that easy.

It turns out that someone bombed Tony Stark's penthouse last issue, so he was expecting the attack. So it wasn't really Stark who was shot, meaning the proper story title should have been The Spy Who Shot My LMD.

And our mystery assassin?

Spymaster!!! The very name strikes terror into--oh, who am I kidding? Do you see why some folks are worried about who the villains might be in future Iron Man films? Because, Mandarin aside, Tony has a pretty lame rogues' gallery. I mean, Spymaster, master of industrial espionage?!? I can't get enough of that in my movies...Amongst the other Iron Man villains during this period: The Unholy Three (seriously), the Unicorn (no, really), Melter, Whiplash, Blizzard...Hey, they were all good stories, but let's face it--they were mostly C-listers, and it's hard to see any of them heating up the silver screen.

(For the record, this was the first Spymaster. Just so you know.)

Much of the rest of this issue is taken up with scenes of Iron Man being bumfuzzled by the C-lister until he sucks it up and remembers that he's a freakin' Avenger. So there's a lot of scenes like this:


All very well drawn, as only JR JR and Layton can do--seriously, they were genetically bred to draw Iron Man. But do we really want a hero who goes "huh?" as often as Tony Stark? Iron Man has got the Superman problem: he's one of the most powerful cats in his universe, but his villain roster is filled with lightweights. So we have to keep having Kryptonite/having his armor run low on power stories...or people who make him look silly through unlikely trickery and technological absurdity, like Toyman and Prankster. (I should note that the problem is even worse these days, with Tony being ultra-powerful and having Extremis and such. They keep having to find more and more things that are magically immune to his powers in order to have a credible story) It's no wonder Michelinie leapt off in other directions fairly early, emphasizing Tony outside the armor, and the politics of Stark Industries.

So we leap to a flashback, and see that Tony has been evicted after Spymaster blew up his crib. A bit depressed over how awful the life of a billionaire is, he heads to a party.

Wait a minute?? Senator Mountebank?? Why not just call him Senator Bad Guy to really emphasize the foreshadowing, David? Sheesh. (Note: I'll bet he's the Senator from Illinois...zing!!)

And speaking of foreshadowing:

Can you guess which story is less than a year away?

Also at this party, we meet for the very first time...

Bethany Cabe, who would go on to be Tony's love interest for most of Michelinie & Layton's tenure. Wow...we're really getting everything introduced this issue, arent we? And of course, Tony is, as always, the ladies man:

But back to our fight, wherein Spymaster continues to beat the crap out of the "Invincible" Iron Man:

Saving grace...the skates!!

But Stark continues to under perform against a man with the proportional strength of...well, a man:


Tony finally realizes he's been a total puss:

But before he can get tough, Spymaster unleashes his secret weapon:

Too late, though, as Iron Man has finally realized, "Hey, I'm Iron Man!!" And he's not amused at the ludicrous thought of an industrial spy trying to take down the Golden Avenger with a pair of nunchucks:



Uh-oh, this is going to hurt.

Yup, I was right.

Searching Spymaster, Shellhead discovers his true goal:


A good question, bro...especially since records of stock holders are, you know, a matter of public record, so instead of stealing them you could, you know, just look them up. (Unless, of course, Tony is hiding something from the SEC...)

And who, exactly, are the dudes who hired Spymaster?

Meeting?

D'oh!!

It turns out that this group of rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, working in cahoots with Senator Mountebank, wants to kill Stark, because they think Tony's a wuss for not making weapons anymore...they want him out of the way so Stark International can go back to making things that blow people up. But after Iron Man sorts their hash, he finds out that while their methods were unapproved, their goals were Nick Fury approved. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been buying up Stark stock, and will soon have a majority interest, and thus force SI to manufacture the munitions that are "vital to national security!" No wonder Tony was driven to drink.

Ironically, only 28 years later, Tony Stark would take over S.H.I.E.L.D., and end up getting blamed for all of Nick Fury's screw-ups that led to Skrullapalooza...oh, right, I can't talk about any of that.

Elsewhere of interest, you've no doubt noted that all of the Marvels this month are emblazoned with:

And from the Bullpen Bulletins page:

It was an interesting time, as DC was going crazy quilt with their formats--some mags stayed at regular length for 40¢, others went to 44 pages for 50¢, and still others became bi-monthly giant-size dollar comics. So Marvel was taking the high road and vowing to "hold the line" at 35¢.

5 months later Marvel went to 40¢.

Something to ponder as comic companies promise to hold the line at $2.99.

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Marvel Premiere #45 saw David Kraft and George Perez go nuts and try to completely re-purpose John Jameson, Man-Wolf, as a sword and sorcery hero!! It turns out the wolf form was just a corrupted version of his true form of Stargod (snicker...really) which only fully manifested when he entered this mystic realm via a portal on the moon and...

OK, it's ridiculous, I know. But as someone who admires Master of Kung Fu's success at marrying James Bond films and Kung Fu movies, I have respect for this ambitious attempt to mash genres and rescue John Jameson from the obscurity of "not really a villain but he'll crop up every couple of years and have to be put down." It didn't really work, but it was fun--I mean, c'mon, werewolves and sword & sorcery!!--and the art was gorgeous (George--you bailed on the Avengers for this?!?).

This was a great time for Marvel Premiere, the little bi-monthly try-out mag that could. In the past year, or coming soon, were the introduction of the 3-D Man; the Torpedo; a Jack of Hearts solo story (before Bendis destroyed the character and then arbitrarily killed him); Michelinie and Byrne's introduction of the Scott Lang Ant Man (before Bendis destroyed the character and arbitrarily killed him); Tigra (before Bendis destroyed the character and made her the beat-down dummy for misogynistic villains); Dominic Fortune; Black Panther, the Falcon...it was a heady time, as Marvel seemed seriously committed to letting creators float out new concepts for 2 or three issues, just to see what happened.

Could the market place support something like that today? Maybe not at $2.99. Why not make it a loss-leader book--a dollar fifty, all-new stories, and let creators just go ape-shit and see what happens?