The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 02

It’s the second issue of the new Thor series. Thor faces a threat more powerful than he alone can handle. He tries the storm, it doesn’t work. He tries his physical strength, it doesn’t work. He tries the might of Mjolnir, it doesn’t work. In desperation, he gathers the last of his strength to create a dimensional portal to send away this enemy too powerful to defeat. The best that the Thunder God can hope for is a draw, of sorts. Send the threat away and hope that, if/when it returns, he’s able to muster the strength to defeat it.

In 1999’s Thor #2 by Dan Jurgens and John Romita, Jr., the threat was the Destroyer powered by the spirit of a US Army Colonel. In 2023’s Immortal Thor #2 by Al Ewing and Martín Cóccolo, the threat is Toranos, the Utgard-Thor, the god of the superstorm, the holder of the wheel of fate. Cycles repeat.

The 1999 Thor relaunch by Jurgens and Romita came after a period of no Thor comics. The previous series had ended during the Onslaught event that took the non-mutant/non-Spider-Man heroes off the board for the Heroes Reborn line by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld where Thor was simply a character in Avengers with no solo series. Thor became Journey into Mystery and followed the plight of Asgardians as mortals on Earth while Asgard sat in ruins. When Heroes Reborn became Heroes Return, the four title of that line were relaunched, but Thor remained without his own series. This was partly to not launch more than four new titles at the same time, partly to build up anticipation and demand. To make people want a Thor series more. It would follow around five or six months later (an eternity in mainstream superhero comicbooks) to make its own big splash free of any other launches.

The first year of the title revolved around two plots: Thor trying to balance his life with that of a human, Jake Olsen, whose soul he’d been bonded with to return both from the dead; and the destruction of Asgard and missing Asgardians. I won’t go too in-depth into the former, except to say that it never really worked. It seemed to be an attempt to recreate Donald Blake, while also doing an inversion of Eric Masterson’s time as Thor where, instead of Masterson retaining his mind when he transformed into Thor, Thor retains his mind when he transforms into Olsen. It’s an idea with some legs, but never really cohered. It made for a lot of Parker-esque mishaps that didn’t go anywhere.

The second main plot of that first year wasn’t just about the destruction of Asgard and its missing citizenry, it was about the threat of the Dark Gods. A forgotten threat from Asgard’s past, the Dark Gods are presented as a pantheon that’s the opposite of Asgard’s shining golden city and its supposed code of honour. A destructive, greedy, evil pantheon that nearly defeated Asgard in war until Thor’s childhood determination inspired Odin to rally for victory. The trauma of their threat was so great that Odin erased them from all memory save his own, and this threat was now returned. They had Odin in chains and were using the other Asgardians as slaves after they transformed Asgard into their new home. There isn’t much more to the Dark Gods, no real depth or underlying motives beyond being evil, the opposite of Asgard. They’re eventually defeated via Thor’s determination and planning, along with the always lamentable Deux Ex Odin finish where the All-Father regains his power and uses it to finish off the matriarch of the Dark Gods and restore Asgard to its former glory.

The Dark Gods were far from the first rival pantheon to challenge Asgard in one way or another – and far from the last. Up until the Dark Gods, most rival pantheons had a basis in other human mythologies, like the Olympians or the Egyptian and Celtic gods. In the first arc of the Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry run, they created a threat somewhat like the Dark Gods, a rival evil conquering pantheon that had no basis in existing mythology and was similarly dismissed. It’s an appealing idea, these variations on our heroes, challenging them in ways that only other gods truly can. And, as is always the case in superhero comics, the threat is best when greater in power than that of the hero. Thor only defeats the Dark Gods by allying himself with the exiled Destroyer, using his ability to transform between himself and Jake Olsen’s forms to rescue some Asgardians, and even use another threat he faced earlier in the run as a tool to free Odin. He has to go beyond himself and his capabilities, just as we will eventually see him do when he travels to Utgard, armed with two new mystical weapons and Skurge the Executioner at his side. Because the threat of Utgard is presented as incredibly large, well beyond Thor’s abilities, even as the king of Asgard.

It’s all variations on the same ideas. Al Ewing isn’t shy about that in The Immortal Thor, purposefully referencing old stories and characters, explicitly setting up the Utgardians as the Ur-gods with everything that follows flowing from them. The best trick Ewing pulls is treating the Utgardians like they have a strong basis in Norse mythology when, really, they’re just as much his and his collaborators’ creations as the Dark Gods were of Jurgens and Romita. From the epigraphs that pull from the Eddas, to the use of names like “Utgard-Thor” (in opposition to “Asa-Thor,” which does come from the Eddas), there’s a sense that Ewing is pulling on some mostly ignored elements of the mythological roots of Thor. He isn’t, though he does a pretty good job at covering his tracks by merging elements from mythology and Marvel history and past Thor comics and simple allusions. For Utgard, Ewing mashes it all up to create these older gods that can play the role of the Dark Gods. A new threat to Asgard and Midgard and the rest of the universe, forces of power and destruction that will require Thor to gather new resources and allies to stand a chance. Cycles repeat.

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The Immortal Thor #2 opens with a three page representation of Odin sacrificing his eye before Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, to gain knowledge. It’s an odd scene for the issue, which is not one that deals with sacrifice to gain knowledge. To delay/deter Toranos, Thor doesn’t sacrifice anything. He gains no knowledge save that he is not up to the task of actually defeating Toranos. Nor does it specifically relate to the final scene of the issue where Thor, on the moon, is confronted by Loki who discusses trust and reveals the new form of Loki the Enemy. It’s a scene that stands apart from the issue, although, I have to admit, that Loki’s narration ties it into the idea that Thor letting loose with the Thor-Power against Toranos, requiring the All-Sleep as a price paid for that power, but that’s a tenuous link. One that justifies the inclusion in this issue, but distracts from the larger picture.

It’s not uncommon for issue of The Immortal Thor to begin with short scenes that tie into the larger story more than the issue they begin. Little bits of thematic foreshadowing that Ewing drops in. That this is the first of such is meaningful as it points to the most obvious idea that The Immortal Thor revolves around: the idea of sacrifice for knowledge, power, freedom... The words of Yggdrasil could form the epigraph for the entirety of The Immortal Thor, to be honest:

YES

THIS IS THE LESSON

THIS IS THE PARABLE

THE STORY ALWAYS CHANGES

THE MEANING ALWAYS REMAINS

THERE IS ALWAYS A SACRIFICE

ALWAYS A COST, BOR-SON

FOR THE WINTER TO END

FOR SPRING TO COME AGAIN

YOU HAVE MADE YOUR SACRIFICE, BOR-SON

AND IN TIME TO COME

YOUR CHILDREN WILL MAKE THEIRS

These are words that will be repeated throughout The Immortal Thor in different combinations by different characters. And, as Ewing will reminds us, Thor has already made his sacrifice beyond Odin, back in the “Ragnarok” story where he sacrificed both eyes for the knowledge and power to end the cycles of Ragnarok, freeing Asgard from the endless birth and death pattern where they always stormed towards the same story. Yet, underlying all of this is a simple fact: that didn’t end the rebirth of Asgard. The story is different. But, here we are, with echoes of the past, repetitions and variations, and is the story actually different in the ways that count? Do the sacrifices ever truly end? Winter always comes anew, after all...

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In rereading the first year of the Dan Jurgens/John Romita, Jr. run, I’ve been thinking about the choice of line artists for these books. The Immortal Thor is headed up by Martín Cóccolo, an artist that I’ll admit I wasn’t too familiar with prior to this comic. He’s got a clean line and actually, together with colourist Matthew Wilson, manages to pull off the visual design of Toranos really well, capturing the look and feel of Alex Ross’s design/art. Ross is the other element of The Immortal Thor’s art by providing the main covers (of which I’ve got most throughout the run, but did have the odd variant given to me as my copy, alas) and some of the character designs, as shown in the back of this issue. He did the redesign of Thor along with designs for Utgard-Loki and Toranos, and I’ve been thinking about that within the context of a new volume of Thor and excitement over the visual element of the book.

As much as I’m a writer-focused critic and struggle with the visual side of things far too often, the artist on a book can be more appealing than the writer. When the Jurgens/Romita Thor comic was announced, I was far more excited about Romita’s art than Jurgens’s writing. I was fond of Jurgens, going back to his time writing and drawing Superman (I made an effort to get as many of those issues during “The Reign of the Supermen” period), but John Romita, Jr.’s Thor was epic. There was a cover of Wizard magazine that he did that I had a poster of on my wall and even used as the basis for this math assignment where you needed to take a drawing, trace it onto a grid, and plot its coordinates so, theoretically, someone could use your list of coordinates to draw it themselves. I was obsessed with the idea of Romita drawing this title, going back to his work on the Amalgam comic Thorion of the New Asgods #1 where he drew the mashup between the Asgardians and the New Gods. He was so good at having one foot in the aesthetic world of Kirby, even if I didn’t fully get that then, and giving a Thor that look like he was partly made out of rock, a being older than we can imagine, but solid and powerful. At that point, Romita was a solid veteran, someone proven, pretty much entering the period where he kind of became the Marvel artist where his presence on a book let you know that it was important in some way.

And meaning no disrespect to Cóccolo... he isn’t that. I really enjoy his work on The Immortal Thor and wish he’d been able to stick around longer. As I said, I look at the work he and Wilson did on Toranos and it’s stunning. But, going into this book, there’s nothing like the ‘Romita hype’ of 1999. I’ve been thinking if there is an artist that can produce that sort of excitement on a book like Thor at this point. Maybe it’s me, a quarter century on, and unable to recapture that excitement. I don’t know... 

But, if you do go back and read the first year (or two!) of the Jurgens/Romita Thor run, the time without a Thor comic definitely helped hype the book up, but the inclusion of Romita as artist did so much heavy lifting. 

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Next week, I’ll be discussing The Immortal Thor #3 along with Journey into Mystery #116.

The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 01

I used to write about comicbooks online. I guess I still do as evidenced by you reading these words about comicbooks on a website. What I meant was: I used to write about comicbooks online where lots of people would see and, hopefully, read what I wrote. While it’s turned into more of a generic popculture site full of listicles and random dives into history and trivia care of my friend Brian Cronin, CBR (Comic Book Resources) was once the most well known and trafficked site in comics. And I wrote for it in a few ways. Firstly, I had free reign to do as I wish at a sub-blog called Comics Should be Good (thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Cronin) where my main two ongoing pieces of writing were something called the Reread Reviews where I reread stuff and wrote about it, and a weekly bit of nonsense called Random Thoughts! where I (as you can guess), wrote down my literal random thoughts any given week. After a year or so, I got on as a reviewer for the main site and spent the next few years writing four to seven reviews every week of new comics. Most folks stopped at the star ratings posted at the time, but, sometimes, they’d actually read what I wrote and, even rarer, they’d let me know what they thought about my review. This was mostly well intentioned feedback, to be honest. People genuinely wanting to engage with what I wrote to agree, disagree, or just tell me I’m dumb. The comment I’d sometimes get there and in other places that always bugged me was when someone would respond with “That’s just your opinion.”

Yes. And?

It was all my opinion. Virtually everything I’ve ever written about comicbooks online has been exclusively and entirely my opinion at that moment. Maybe with a few facts sprinkled in (like who wrote or drew the comic, or the literal plot), but all in service of my opinion. Because that’s what this is about: my opinion, my interpretation, my translation. You come here to get my version of the work, how it hit me, what I think of it, how I view it, my insights, my thoughts... my opinion. As I’ve prepared for this series of writings, where I’ll be looking at The Immortal Thor issue by issue every Thursday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of translation and interpretation. The Immortal Thor is a comicbook very much concerned with that idea. About point of view and meaning and who tells the story and why.

Let the show begin.

The Immortal Thor #1 opens, as all issues of the series do, with an epigraph. Most of them are attributed to coming from some part of The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson or, as my copy is titled, The Poetic Edda (Oxford World’s Classics edition translated by Carolyne Larrington). This is in contrast/complement to The Young Eddas by Snorri Sturluson or, as my copy is titled, The Prose Edda (Penguin Classics edition translated by Jesse Byock). These two volumes make up the source for a large amount of the Norse mythology by which we get Thor, Loki, Odin, and Asgard. The Marvel Comics version is inspired by these stories, sometimes quite literally and mostly only through the use of broad ideas. It’s an interpretation, a translation...

The epigraph to The Immortal Thor #1 comes from The Elder Eddas:

He is sated with the last breath of dying men.

The god’s seat he with red gore defiles.

Swart is the sunshine then for summers after.

All weather turns to storm.

Understand ye yet, or what?

The text here is meant to relate to the coming of Toranos, the elder storm god from Utgard; the Utgard-Thor, as it were. He kills, he brings destruction to New York, which is on Earth, one of Thor’s homes. He blots out the sun, he brings the storm, and Thor sees that there are larger gods. That’s how it seems to relate to this issue. Pretty easy to see (Al Ewing starts us off with kid gloves) and understand. But, this is, of course, not what this text actually means. It may surprise you to learn, but The Elder Eddas do not tell the story of the Utgard gods coming to destroy the Aesir and the Earth. It may surprise you to learn that there are no ‘Utgard gods’ in so many words. It may surprise you to learn that my copy of The Poetic Edda has a slightly different text:

It gluts itself on doomed men’s lives,

reddens the gods’ dwellings with crimson blood;

sunshine becomes black all the next summers,

weather all vicious––do you want to know more: and what?

Same basic idea, yet different. ‘Gluts’ is not ‘sated;’ ‘doomed’ is not ‘dying;’ ‘reddens’ is not ‘defiled;’ ‘crimson blood’ is not ‘gore;’ ‘black’ is not ‘swart;’ ‘vicious’ is not ‘storm;’ ‘do you want to know more; and what?’ is not ‘understand ye yet, or what?’ It’s all translation, interpretation, read and thought upon, and put to paper with a specific intention and audience. Is one better? More accurate? Do you know which?

It’s from the first text in The Poetic Edda, titled “The Seeress’s Prophecy” in my edition and is the words of a seeress telling Odin the history of the world before the gods and, then, into the future of Ragnarok and beyond. It’s a quick summation of the broad strokes of the entire story of the Aesir and the world. Other stories in The Poetic Edda fill in details and the same into The Prose Edda. You can ignore most of the differences as, while they have different meanings (synonyms are, of course, no synonymous), the general idea is the same throughout the passage. What caught my attention was the difference in the final line, as Ewing repeats it at various times during the run of The Immortal Thor and, in fact, before the run, uses a variation.

The story of The Immortal Thor actually begins in Thor annual #1 from the previous volume of the comicbook with a five-page prologue done with the full team of Al Ewing, Martín Cóccolo, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Sabino that begins with the line that’s also the title of the story: “Would you know more?” That’s very close to the final line of the translation of the epigraph from The Poetic Edda “do you want to know more: and what?” and a bit of a jump from Ewing’s Elder Eddas line “Understand ye yet, or what?” Put them next to one another and it’s easy to see the difference...

“Would you know more?” is a question posed somewhat gently. It’s an invitation almost, teasing you into stepping deeper to gain knowledge. It places the emphasis on the action and the taking of said action to learn more, even if it’s turning a page – or buying the first issue of a new series.

“Understand ye yet, or what?” is a question posed somewhat condescendingly. There’s a sneer behind it. Maybe a playful one. Maybe not. It’s a challenge for you to grasp the meaning of what you’ve already learned. It’s inward-looking, contemplative. It suggests a riddle to be solved.

“Do you want to know more: and what?” is a question posed somewhat directly. It fits with what we know of “The Seeress’s Prophecy” where the seeress is telling Odin of what she sees with his questions directing her focus. It’s not just about gaining more knowledge, it’s about specific knowledge. Ask and you shall receive.

The second is where Ewing chooses to rest his rhetoric, even if he uses the first to first entice us all. I don’t know what edition(s) of the Edda he’s drawing upon. I don’t know if he knew the third version was available, the one that walks the middle ground between the two. You may want to get yourself a copy of “The Seeress’s Prophecy” as it is the broader structure of these 25 issues. Thor learning about and dealing with what came before the beginning of the Aesir and the world as he knows it... forever moving closer and closer to his personal Ragnarok... and, then, the world after Ragnarok...

“The stories have their patterns. The Gods have their Ragnarok. Even Thor has a Black Winter hanging over him.”

*

I would direct you at this time to my first piece on this issue, made available on this very blog.

*

As I didn’t discuss what’s up with Loki two years ago, let’s begin there. I’m not always a good or careful reader. I miss a lot. It’s one of the reasons why I write – to figure things out. It’s, as I said, a form of translation. Often, when I’m writing about something, I’m thinking it through in real time, figuring it out, letting all of this information that sits in the back of my head, just below the surface, to come out in a, hopefully, organised manner. Which is to say, I’m not convinced that I knew Loki is the narrator right away. Embarrassing, eh?

What puts the three quotes I discussed into a slightly different light. Loki would phrase that line in a manner that is teasing and somewhat condescending. It’s a game, a trick. A story with a purpose. As we’ll see in future issues, Loki the Skald is also not above altering the story to suit their needs, some of which seems to be laid out in this issue. Much of what proceeds from this issue is Loki pushing and prodding Thor in various directions, seemingly for his own good, even if in the moment it does not appear that way. Rereading this issue in light of the entire 25-issue series and knowing where things go, particularly with the Bifrost, the scene where Loki remakes the Rainbow Bridge seemed of heightened importance. One bit of Loki’s narration caught my eye:

“What if were free? / All of us. Gods and mortals. Me and you. / What couldn’t we do, on the day all our cages open? What would that look like? Tell me, if you can. / What does the bridge to anywhere look like?”

Once upon a time, Loki sought freedom. Freedom from himself, from his past, from the story that hung around him like an albatross. And he did the most diabolical things to break free from that story, moving past the God of Lies, becoming the God of Stories, free to write their future as they see fit. They first show up in this issue by breaking free from the previously defined role of ruler of Jotunheim, declaring themselves as the official Skald of Asgard, and offering to repair the Bifrost that Thor broke while Hulked out during the previous volume of the title. A new story to tell... And this comes after Thor seemingly changes his story in the annual short by returning to his former garb and restoring Mjolnir to its previous state. These are normal events in superhero comicbooks when a new creative team relaunches a title, so they don’t seem out of place and, yet...

In retrospect, it’s apparent that Loki not only sets the story into motion, they explain a possible motive. Having obtained their freedom, do they now see the bars that cage everyone else? Do they look upon the trapped with pity and seek to free them all? Thor broke the cycle of Ragnarok once, but, lurking out there are older gods whose own cycles still cage the Ten Realms. So, why not turn the wheel a little and push Thor in the direction of breaking another cycle?

At the end of the issue, Utgard-Loki mentions the various characters that use the Utgard-gods as talismans and act as ‘understudies’ to these ancient beings, positing them as greater, more powerful, more true versions of the ideas that came after them. But, let me ask you: in our current world, what versions of Thor and Loki hold the most sway? Not the versions that appear in the Eddas, not even the versions that appear in the comics. No, that honour belongs to the versions portrayed by Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston on screen. What came first is not necessarily what matters most, not with stories. You can see the influences the works of Kirby and Simonson had on Thor: Ragnarok if you know what you’re looking for, but there’s no doubt that the majority of people just saw the movie and nothing more.

Utgard-Loki thinks being first means being more powerful. This is a story about influence and translation and that what comes later can be a more potent story. And that’s what matters most here: the story. The irony is twofold in that Utgard-Loki cannot see that they are a part of the story and bound by its rules... For, as much as Loki wishes to free everyone, they first cage them in the story. Bound by words and pictures, panels and word balloons... In becoming the narrator, the Skald, Loki becomes the new jailer. It is them who rebuilds the bridge to Utgard, them who turns the wheel...

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Ever week, I’ll discuss the next issue of The Immortal Thor along with another work of some kind (which was the short story in Thor annual #1 here), maybe also dive into the epigraphs a bit. We’ve got 25 weeks of this ahead of us. Next week, in addition to The Immortal Thor #2, I’ll be discussing, in some manner, Thor (1998) #1-12. That’s the first year of the Dan Jurgens/John Romita, Jr. run.

Monsters Who Will Never Die: On Godzilla vs Thor #1, Possessiveness, and Legacy

Aside from King Thor for the final ThorsdayThoughts, I haven’t reread Jason Aaron’s Thor run since it finished. At the time, I was pretty quick to enthusiastically put it into conversation as a contender for the best Thor run of all time. Right up there with Kirby and Simonson, and I’ll stand by that until the eventual reread that either validates my in the moment proclamations or reveals them as nothing more than overcompensation to allow me to have experienced the best Thor run in real time. I’ll be honest, the holes in the concept have already been made, the edges frayed, as it were... mostly by Aaron himself. Or maybe my expectations of him, ones that I don’t think anyone else is held to in mainstream superhero comicbooks.

When he finished his run on Thor, I immediately wanted to lock off the character from everyone. That you had this massively successful (critically and commercially) run and it just went right into another Thor run (the ill-fated Donny Cates/Nic Klein run) seemed wrong somehow. It felt wrong to not give the story that had just finished some time to breathe and settle. Like, we just read one of the best Thor runs of all time and I thought that respect was owed, for a moment of silence or something. Unrealistic when the spice must flow, of course. I didn’t think going right into a new creative team was doing them any favours by having to immediately follow King Thor #4. It was an unjust comparison and standard to have to live up to. But, you know, the month after Kirby left, Thor still came out. The month after Simonson left, Thor still came out. The churn is real and there’s always someone ready to step up and keep that train moving. The periods where the character didn’t have an ongoing title (and subsequently launched huge) were both fallow periods, in a sense. Moments where things had slid into apathy and the break was, in part, a way to generate interest. Interest, both creatively and commercially, isn’t low at the end of an historic run... that’s when all eyes are on the book and you strike while the iron is hot. Or, you feed some folks into the grinder to make way for the next run that no longer has quite as many lofty comparisons to meet...

It was more than that, though. I thought that the character should be locked off from Aaron, specifically. That he should be somehow prevented from writing Thor for a long, long time, to let the run sit untouched in another way. To not let him tarnish his achievement due to later, lesser work. Completely unfair and possessive in a weird, kind of creepy way. It’s a bit of the opposite of what superhero comicbook fans want, though. Usually, there’s strong demand for successful creators to return to their most beloved work – and, quite often, they do. Sometimes it pays off, as I’d argue it has for Jim Starlin’s periodic returns to Adam Warlock and Thanos; sometimes, it doesn’t, as it has for Chris Claremont’s periodic returns to the X-Men; and, usually, it’s a mixed response or an apathetic one, as we’ve seen in Frank Miller’s return to Batman and countless creators’ returns that appeared to some hardcore fans while everyone didn’t even notice. Hell, Walt Simonson has returned to Thor and his world numerous times since he departed the book and that hasn’t tarnished a thing.

But, the feeling persisted – the desire that Aaron remain at a remove from Thor, that he not fuck with the run he wrote... And that desire was almost immediately crushed by his still in-progress Avengers run, of which Thor was a central member of the cast along with Loki. I’ve made my feelings on that run (particularly the final year or so) pretty clear elsewhere. You’d think that would have been enough for me to get over myself. It wasn’t. It was easy to write that off as already in motion or evidence that I was right. Then, he did a story in Marvel Age #1000 that revisited the Jane Foster Thor and it was fine. Nothing amazing, nothing special, but not bad either. Almost akin to a lot of Simonson’s return to that world where he’ll come back for a short story that tells a nice little tale before moving on... It was easy to live with this and sigh in relief that the case around that Thor run was still intact.

Until.

Joined by his Avengers Forever collaborator, Aaron Kuder, Jason Aaron was doing Godzilla vs. Thor as part of a series of one shots of “Godzilla vs. [Marvel hero/team].” You can imagine my internet reaction. I don’t think I said anything online as I’m pretty good, at this point, about keeping my more obnoxious thoughts private (oops). I was not pleased, I was fearful, and I, of course, told my shop to order me a copy, because, like so many superhero comicbook readers, I am broken and dumb about this stuff.

The idea of the comicbook kind of offended me. It lends itself to all of Aaron’s worst sensibilities, the sort that I saw run rampant over the final year of his Avengers work (and dip in an out of his Thor work, admittedly). He is one of those lingering writers from what I’ve long dubbed The Age of Awesome in mainstream superhero comicbooks. The hallmarks of that period are still with us, sometimes for good, often for ill. The overreliance on the multiverse is one such trait; the inclusion of dinosaurs whether it makes sense or not is another; the odd obsession with Groot and MODOK and Deadpool... Thor as fucking Iron Fist... You know it when you see it and, after a period, I grew weary. Godzilla fighting Thor as written by Jason Aaron seemed, immediately, like the entire concept of The Age of Awesome taken to its logical conclusion in the worst way...

And, on my first read of the issue, that’s what it read like. Spinning out of his most recent Punisher book – which was itself an unneeded return to a character he has great creative success on (his Punishermax run with Steve Dillon is fantastic...) and, in conversation with that earlier work, diminished it, I’d argue – did not endear me to the comic at all. Culminating in Godzilla absorbing part of Gorr’s Necro-Sword to ravage Asgard only confirmed my worst fears. It was a fluffy bit of nonsense that took meaningful art for inane ideas that held nothing more than a shiny thrill with no substance. This is what he wants to add onto his Thor run’s legacy?

A couple of days later, I read it again. And it’s fine. It’s not a great comicbook. I wouldn’t call it fun or awesome or any of the superlatives I could find said about it elsewhere if I looked. But, it’s not terrible. It’s a dumb crossover licensed book that delivers on the title. What else could it be. It doesn’t tarnish anything. As I myself told many people when they were upset at The Dark Knight Strikes Again for ruining The Dark Knight Returns: “The original is still there!” It was unfair to hold on so tightly and personally.

I do think that there’s a conversation to be had about the legacies of great runs in an age where those runs don’t fade into back issue bins anymore. Of writers and artists maybe taking a beat before returning to characters and titles that they did their best work on. But, I also know that schmucks like me are not the people to decide that. We get to read the work (or not read it), be affected by the work, and decide where it sits for us. That’s it.

Notes on the cruellest month

Not only the title, but the underlying ideas and structure were inspired by The Waste Land by TS Eliot. The quotes were heavyhanded at times, forced at others... usually, the poem was meant to sit underneath the project or in the back of my head as I wrote. I honestly can’t remember what spurred the connection. Sometime in March, I was thinking about Uncanny X-Men #394 and the poem and something clicked and I went for it. The entire month-long project was not meant to be a replication of Another View despite being in the same mould. It was a bit more serialised, a bit more freeform. The eventual shift into other issues from the run was unexpected/unplanned and, really, if I were to actually adhere to the structure of The Waste Land, it would have been five issues. I realised too late that doing a fifth issue, either issue 400 or the annual, would have rounded things out a little more and not left, from my perspective, a bit of a gap.

Despite my education in English literature (four years of undergrad, two of grad school), I’ve never been a big poetry person. I’m too literally minded. I struggle to think in metaphor at times. I don’t always have the patience. And, yet, I’m very quite fond of TS Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is my favourite poem and the first one that I encountered, which is probably a little unsurprising. Upon doing that poem in a first year class, I went out to the campus bookstore and bought a nice little Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets edition dedicated to him. “Prufrock” remains my favourite, though I’d concede there’s more to The Waste Land, obviously. Some of the connections I found as I went...

1. While I loved the title, I loved the little graphic that I made with some pencils by Ian Churchill from Uncanny X-Men #394 and a snippet from The Waste Land from a picture of one of the early printed editions. I never did go back to find where that “listen until you figure the song out” theory came from. This was a purposefully unusual (for me) to start the project.

2. The theory that Joe Casey’s work is about what comes “after” has been a personal contention for years.

3. I never saw it through, but it was here that I considered really focusing in on the influence of Casey’s Uncanny run on Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, and the way that Casey seemed to set up a number of story/plot/character beats for Morrison. That could be a coincidence, Morrison being quite good at taking existing ideas and integrating them (like X-Corps), or even Casey aware of Morrison’s plans and foreshadowing some of them. In the end, I chose to shy away from an in-depth comparison, preferring allusions and snarky insinuations that Morrison ripped off Casey, because that amused me.

4. Karl Jirgens.

5. Aside from attacking Cape Citadel, I was struck by how little similarities between Uncanny X-Men #394 and The X-Men #1 actually were present. Given the time period, unless Casey had a copy of the first X-Men Marvel Masterworks, there was a very good chance he had no actual reference material to that comic. He had the equivalent of what Warp Savant has: a new report/summary of events taken from a distant point. Casey seems to use the very broad framework of the idea of Magneto attacking the base and goes from there.

6. Most of the quotes from Casey or anecdotes about the making of the run were taken from his newsletter. In the lead-up to Weapon X-Men, he did a multi-part breakdown of his run, going issue by issue (or by chunks) to give some context and insight – and backwards perspective. He’s pretty honest about the run’s failings and I’d say a bit too hard on himself. Despite the good humour he writes the ‘recolleXions’ with, you can tell that this run is still a sore spot, both creatively and professionally. It was a pretty spectacular failure on both fronts. An interesting failure, I’ve long contended and full of more depth than people give it credit. After a while, I gave probably a bit too much attention to advocating for it, I suppose.

7. Casey mentioned the ‘penis arm’ on Wolverine on the cover and I’m not sure if I’ve ever quite seen it. I think I have?

8. Logan is kind of a shitty dude in this issue.

9. The inclusion of Warren in the first issue was a bit fortuitous and possibly an indication of some ideas bubbling under the surface for Casey. I think I found some compelling reasons for his inclusion – his past crush on Jean was one of those ideas that I thought of as I was writing the piece.

10. It’s definitely possible that Unreal City was the connecting point between the comic and the poem. Unfortunately, the label on the fence is City Hell. I wish my note for 5 was something I thought of to include here. Alas...

11. Was Warp Savant Bugs Bunny or more like Daffy Duck? I mentioned Bugs because of the kiss, but Daffy was always the more antagonistic of the two. If you had to pick a ‘villain,’ that you root for in Looney Tunes, it’s Daffy Duck. Later, when I made this reference again, I made sure to include Daffy as a result.

12. Whenever I’ve done a project like this, there inevitably comes the piece where I think I’ve completely wasted the day. By the end, there are several. This was the first one. It’s not only that my mindset is so far removed from these hypothetical new readers, it’s that I don’t respect the concept. I can’t even pretend. I set myself up for failure – and wound up making a point that I thought was much needed about the issue. There have been too many movies at this point for anyone to care, but the idea of making comics to appeal to ‘regular’ folks who saw the movies was such a prevalent idea at one point and it always frustrated/infuriated/disgusted me. I grew up with comics in my house and was a newsstand kid who’d pick up whatever looked interesting. I always followed along just fine. These ideas are, at their core, insulting. They assume that non-comics readers are too stupid to understand most comics and that most comics are too impenetrable for non-comics readers. It’s basically a “comics suck, but people are too stupid to get them anyway” mentality that I never understood. You literally didn’t need to have read any past X-Men comic to understand Uncanny X-Men #394. Liking it was a whole other idea...

13. “starless inscrutable hour” is from “Whoroscope” by Samuel Beckett. On the bookshelf next to my bed, right near my pillow, I have the four volume Grove Centenary Edition of the complete Beckett, edited by Paul Auster. While waiting for my wife to get ready for bed, I often pick up volumes and I had picked up the fourth volume some time before this piece, which contains the poems, short fiction, and criticism. “Whoroscope” is a poem clearly influenced by The Waste Land and seemed like a suitable place to take the title as I jumped to a new issue. I had the idea for a few days before doing so and I think the twelfth edition pushed me over the edge to do it. It meant finding a suitable line to use for the title, a suitable image, and to do another graphic. I don’t recall if I knew right then that I would do more than this. I don’t believe so. I remember wanting to discuss Chamber since he was, initially, a big part of Casey’s conception of what his X-Men run would be about... and, then, he wasn’t...

14. I always thought Chamber was from Australia for some reason. He’s actually British.

15. I tried to address issue titles, but found them oddly worthless (aside from “Rocktopia Part 8 of 5” of course). I worked in the title to issue 395 in this piece rather hamfisted. I did like the idea of mutants as God’s nepobabies as the real reason why they’re so hated.

16. 

17. I don’t like the title “Playing God.” I don’t think it suits the issue at all. I tried to make it work. What I never found a place for and did want to discuss at some point was the title page of the issue. I really hate that page. The text choices and layout are both terrible. The visuals are fine with the blood cells making a double helix and the little circle headshots. But, the title over the X-Men logo followed by the combining the name/bio of each character with a creative credit was clunky and confusing. Easily the worst part of the comic.

18. The Waste Land lines 128-130.

19. “Whoroscope” lines 66-67.

20. Part IV of “The Waste Land: FiveLimericks” by Wendy Cope. I was oddly proud of the idea of discussing the influence of Chris Claremont on these issues by rewriting parts of the poems that I took the titles from. At whatever point I decided to do more than the two issues, I went looking for further Waste Land-influenced poems and came across Cope’s Limericks, where she does five limericks, summarising each part of The Waste Land. Hilarious and clever, I love them. “In April one seldom feels cheerful;” is how she begins the first Limerick, so it seemed like a natural choice to play off “April is the cruellest month.” The text over the eyes was harder to find here and was taken from some project where people wrote out poems by hand. Sizing was an issue, but I figured, by this point, clarity wasn’t essential.

21. Settling old business.

22. I was initially unimpressed with Warren’s speech and this piece was me talking myself into thinking it was actually really clever and well done.

23. Why Adventures of Superman #612 and the rest of Casey’s final year on the book matters so much.

24. I shied away from Jean’s privilege and the ways that she may or may not encourage Logan’s feelings towards her. I had a paragraph half-written that touched on the Susan Richards/Namor thing, too, another trope that I’ve always hated. I took it out because it didn’t feel right, particularly in what happens this issue – and how the issues between her and Scott actually play out in New X-Men.

25. I was never prouder than discovering the line “April is the coolest month” in “The Waste Land” by John Beer. His poem is part parody, part sequel, part its own thing. It’s much larger and funnier than Eliot’s poem. I couldn’t find a great image for the text, so I highlighted it and used that, giving the fourth graphic a bit of a pop. I really do love the title “Rocktopia Part 8 of 5,” but discovered something odd: when Casey wrote about the issue in his newsletter, he referred to it as “Rocktopia Part 5 of 8,” and had a picture from the comic showing that. I had to doublecheck the issue for myself and mine shows 8 of 5. I think that I gave a pretty good explanation for the numbering, too. 8 of 5 is far superior. I guess it was meant to be 5 of 8 and was corrected after the fact or someone changed it thinking the numbering was a mistake, and Casey doesn’t remember the original.

26. Jack Kirby and Sean Phillips, fuck yeah.

27. I fully intended to push the idea of Nightcrawler as the mutant missionary in Casey’s run and the way it prefigured his role in Krakoa and it never felt right.

28a. The Waste Land lines 27-30.

28b. The Waste Land lines 108-110.

28c. The Waste Land lines 301-302.

28d. The Waste Land lines 385-390.

The idea of doing a single post jumping between the four came earlier and it seemed like a logistical nightmare to pull off well if kept in a single post. Doing four posts, all with the same number, based around a singular theme was much better. I wrote these somewhat as a single piece, albeit more like parts of a single piece. As always, I ignore the art and that seemed like a logical place to bring the four issues/titles together, particularly under the argument of how the art impacted the idea and execution of Casey’s run. Ian Churchill is so associated with the run, but he didn’t do three full issues. Ron Garney only did two. Sean Phillips did the most and, yet, he’s not really thought of as the artist of this run for obvious reasons.

29. I used the term ‘comicbooks’ throughout the project, because that’s Casey’s preferred way to write it. The idea that this run was actually part of a larger tapestry/tradition came late, well after the idea that it was the precursor to Krakoa in many ways. I almost leaned into that idea hard, but eased off for whatever reason. I referred in passing at some point to misquoted lyrics because Warp Savant quotes from the song “Black Diamond” by Kiss (off their eponymous debut) but gets words wrong. He sings “Darkness will fall on the city... seems to fall on you, too,” but the lyrics is “seems to follow you, too.” I debated writing about that for an edition at one point. It seemed a little unseemly to focus on Casey shoving in a line from another piece of art somewhat randomly and incorrectly...

I don’t know if this piece – or the project as a whole – works. It did what it need to for me. But line 252 from The Waste Land does sum it up nicely.

the cruellest month 29

X-Men comicbooks are about X-Men comicbooks are about superhero comicbooks. Uncanny X-Men #394 is an X-Men comicbook and a superhero comicbook and a Joe Casey comicbook and an Ian Churchill comicbook and. The intersection of multiple. The shadow of Claremont and the shadow for Hickman. Another brick in the wall. Modernist and postmodernist and oh what’s the difference anyway. Did I? Did it?  Too cruel, too cool.

A perfect piece of popart that speaks to me because the process of creating the comicbook is the process of reading the comicbook. “Reading and rereading and pondering and rereading and pondering on and on for decades has not been an effective process, so I will attempt to write my way into insight. All of my best ideas come at the keyboard.” Go in with a vague idea, sit down, bang away, come away with a chunk of something and keep going until you get somewhere. Casey kept writing until he figured it out; I’ve kept writing until I figured it out. Did I? Have we arrived at the elusive insight? And so, declarative statements:

Uncanny X-Men #394 was a misstep. Uncanny X-Men #394 was a mismatch. Uncanny X-Men #394 was a misfire. Uncanny X-Men #394 was not a mistake. Uncanny X-Men #394 was not a mistake. Uncanny X-Men #394 was not a mistake.

You can’t just reach in and pluck these comicbooks out, you know. You may or may not have read them, but they’re part of the linear progression of the comicbook. Davis, Claremont, Casey, Austen... you don’t get one without the one before. And so it goes until you eventually land upon Hickman or Gillen or whomever and you don’t get there without here. You don’t get Quentin Quire without Warp Savant. You don’t get Hickman mutant economics without Casey mutant economics. The emphasis in Uncanny X-Men #394 is on interpersonal soap opera, because that’s what matters. It doesn’t matter that Casey wouldn’t continue that particular soap opera subplot, because it’s a river and you jump in, you jump out. I must have mentioned somewhere why I love taking the bus (aside from its cheap convenience): the bus does not care about you. There’s no monetary privilege of a cab or an Uber where you take me where I want because I pay you. The bus does its route and how many people get on and off does not matter because the bus does its route. Mainstream franchise superhero comicbooks are the bus. Casey got on the bus at stop 394, got off at stop 409, and it kept going. Not everyone understands that they’re riding a bus when they take on a project like this. Casey understands. He drops the Scott/Jean/Logan stuff into his issue and never touches it again, left for another passenger. He leaves a Nightcrawler plot behind, on the seat, purposefully. He gets it.

Uncanny X-Men #394 prefigures “Rocktopia Part 8 of 5” by being a single issue. Decidedly not for the trade. It is in the Poptopia trade, because I own that. It and issue 399 sit somewhat awkwardly on either side of the four-issue storyarc, settling into a typically-sized six issue package that doesn’t end neatly or nicely. Casey tries to be commercial, because it’s his career and he wants to have it last and make money to live and pay bills and all of that... but the dude cannot help himself. It’s a constant push and pull with him. Take the big gig, have no real desire for it. Need to kick it off with a bang, don’t use any of your book’s characters. Get paired with the flashy artist, deliver mopey shoegaze scripts.

You know Reveal? Sure y’do. If you know Casey and Sean Phillips, then you know Reveal, because it has “Autopilot” in it, the short comicbook stab at autobiographical fiction by Casey. Each of his three major gigs from this period get a page with Phillips going all out with visual allusions. And I quote:

The FIRST movie was successful. The SOURCE MATERIAL, on the other hand...

It’s the big FRANCHISE team. The heavyweight champs. Another rung on the career ladder...

Okay, you admit... there are some underlying ANALOGIES involved that interest you. The FREAKS who inherit the Earth. The OUTCASTS that find solace amongst themselves. What was UGLY has become BEAUTIFUL.

Whatever.

They offered you the gig. You took it. You did your job. Big sales. Big royalties. Big heat. Okay, not your BEST work, but you don’t regret these things when you’ve just bought a HOUSE...

You think it MEANS something to work on the top-selling franchise. You think you’ll feel DIFFERENT...

...until you GET there and discover the editorial office is more CONFUSED than the thirty years of FICTIONAL CONTINUITY you don’t really want to reference anyway. You’ve got your OWN convoluted continuity to deal with...

Typical, in its way. That final paragraph/caption rings false, to me. Casey reveled in referencing “the thirty years of FICTIONAL CONTINUITY.” He loves that shit. He began his run by referencing the oldest bit of continuity, going back nearly FORTY years to do so. One of the big visual beats is an allusion to the first cover. As I always round my way back to: Wizard named him the next Kurt Busiek for a reason. Hell, he’s been annotating his current Weapon X-Men series in his newsletter with the various references he’s managed to pack in. There’s a bit of know-it-all punk kid to this impulse. That “look at what I’ve read” sort of thing. Certainly nothing that I relate to. Let us go then, you and I...

Warp Savant – Warps Avant

Casey does a great little verbal bookending to his run. Issue 394 ends with Cyclops saying, “LET MOVE, PEOPLE. / NO ONE EVER CHANGED THE WORLD BY JUST STANDING AROUND...” Issue 409 ends with Wolverine saying, “LIKE, I SAID, PAL... IT’S A NEW WORLD. / WE’VE CHANGED IT MORE THAN ONCE. WE’LL CHANGE IT AGAIN.” Change or die. That’s all Warp Savant is trying to do. Change something. Change himself. Change his world. Sometimes, you do that by giving it a kiss on the head before you disassemble it. Sometimes, you do that by taking away the toys. He removes some weapons of death and destruction; Warren Worthington III removes some chemicals of death and destruction. Why is one acceptable and the other not? There’s a certain privileged hypocrisy baked into superhero comicbooks – and X-Men ones in particular. A sense of superiority, not of mutants over humans... Xavier mutants over non-Xavier mutants. It’s about the school, the club, the team... when you’re in, you can do as you wish; when you’re out, you’re cannon fodder. You ask some and they’ll say to dismantle the military base and let the drugs flow freely. They don’t know what the master of them that do did, if you jump ahead to your Gillen and Xavier keeps the world on even keel. In a comicbook about evolution and survival of the fittest, there’s a certain tribalism, a certain might makes right at the heart. No one sees them as evil...

“I’M A MUTANT AND I’M EVIL!”

That youthful rebellion masquerading as nihilism. Pure id, pure Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck... putting the comic in comicbook. It’s traditional is what it is, going back to the beginning when men were men and villains were evil. The old ways coming back, patterns repeat, cycles and cycles and cycles and fragments shored. Plucking ruins from the past and colliding them, hoping to find meaning...

...I haven’t solved it, of course. That was my stated goal and I’m no closer, further away, perhaps. Frustrating. Out of grasp, unable to grasp. Warp Savant doesn’t matter. It’s a little sad, because he wanted to matter. He wanted this to matter. I did. It did.

‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’

the coolest month 28

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

What can one say about Sean Phillips? He has been one of the premier artists working in mainstream comicbooks for the past two-and-a-half decades (and his work was damn good before that, but it was really Wildcats that seemed to push him more and more into the spotlight). For a time, it seemed like his main creative partner might turn out to be Joe Casey; instead, it was Ed Brubaker thanks to Sleeper, their Wildstorm book that wasn’t their first collaboration but was basically what made them partners ever since. I’m less interested in what Phillips brought to Uncanny X-Men #409 as I am in was if his presence was what finally made the book work.

His presence on Uncanny X-Men was first felt in issue 396, drawing anywhere from one to three (four?) pages, mostly in a manner to try and fit in with Ian Churchill’s art. Then, he was part of the issue 400 jam, came in with issue 404 and wound up doing five full issues all told. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the title comes together once Casey is working with an artist he knows well and has worked with a lot, but it was also well into the run where he began to finally settle on a direction and obtain a comfort level with the characters. It’s hard to say how much was experience and how much was Phillips.

What I’m trying to imagine are the other issues I’ve discussed as drawn by Phillips. What would his Warp Savant been like? Something akin to the world we saw Voodoo or Cole Cash wandering through? There’s such a grounded realism in Phillips’s work that it’s hard to imagine him nailing the dreamscape of Warp Savant’s subconscious... but I’ve also seen Phillips do wild stuff like that. Those initial issues would have definitely had less of a glossy sheen, which works a little against Casey’s ‘pop eats itself’ ideas where the one area that really leaned into Churchill was the flashy nature of Sugar Kane.

The idea that Phillips would have executed naturally was the idea of the X-Men going out into the ‘real world’ beyond the Mansion. Wildcats and Hellblazer before and Sleeper and Criminal after demonstrate Phillips’s adeptness and comfort in drawing books grounded in the less fantastic, more realistic world. When he wasn’t trying to fit in with Churchill, he would have given a seedy, sad freakishness to the underground mutants. And his Mister Clean could have hit the right balance between action star and scummy shit. There’s no doubt that a run completely (or mostly) drawn by Sean Phillips would have been more cohesive and artistically satisfying as a whole, from the beginning...

But, would it have been better? Would Casey have been more focused and gotten a clearer direction to head in sooner? Was the inconsistent art the problem? Was it ill-matched artists? Does anyone consider Uncanny X-Men Annual 2001 a resounding success despite Casey and Wood being in pretty good sync as they rushed, eventually, towards Automatic Kafka? As tempting as it is to say that a Joe Casey/Sean Phillips Uncanny X-Men run would have worked, I’m really not convinced that a more simpatico artist alone would have saved the stalled enthusiasm of those early issues. Maybe it would have dampened expectations to a more manageable level given Churchill’s higher profile over Phillips... but, Wildcats was a bit of cult success and that maybe have raised expectations in a different way.

I wonder...

one seldom feels cheerful 28

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

After Ian Churchill left the title, having done two-and-a-halfish issues, Uncanny X-Men went through a bunch of artists doing bits and pieces starting with issue 396. Oddly, the most consistent artist through issue 400 was Ashley Wood, probably not anyone’s first pick for one of Marvel’s franchise titles from a commercial standpoint. Issue 400, in particular, seemed to push the boundaries of an artistic jam that would decidedly not appeal to X-Men fans. Never mind the Sienkiewicz influence and his landmark work on New Mutants, placing Wood in the tradition. But, hey, there was also Cully Hamner and Eddie Campbell in that issue. Following that, Casey was paired with another popular headliner sort of artist, albeit one that matched up with him creatively better: Ron Garney. Their first issue together was the silent issue as part of Marvel’s ‘Nuff Said month where every comic had no dialogue or captions. That allowed Garney to ease in by dominating the book.

Uncanny X-Men #402 was the first ‘proper’ collaboration between the two where both had their hands untied. Garney’s line work isn’t quite as distinctive or flashy as Churchill’s but he’s surprisingly adept at establishing mood – and the final X-Corps designs are perfect. There’s a bit of visual alignment with Casey’s collaborators on Adventures of Superman, Mike Wieringo and Dustin Aucoin. A kind of blockiness to the forms. Garney isn’t quite as animated as Wieringo or as rough as Aucoin... he kind of delivers a middle ground between the two, still in continuity with two artists Casey was working well with.

Even still, the fit wasn’t perfect from what I could tell. Casey was progressing towards figuring out the title and characters, highlighting the trio of Nightcrawler, Iceman, and Archangel more, treating Chamber and Stacy X as supporting, ‘junior’ members, and leaning more into a thoughtful approach by the team, even if they come off as overly judgmental and reactionary in this issue. Instead, it’s X-Corps that provides the action for Garney to flex those muscles and show off. His action art is crisp and clean, never confusing. It flows better than Churchill’s panel to panel work, but is able to pull off some of those dramatic angle changes better. There’s a more natural storytelling logic to Garney’s art. One of the small details that I enjoy is that he always has the Blob break the panel borders.

Like Churchill, though, Garney didn’t last long before fill-ins took over (this was his last issue with Casey), and Sean Phillips became the de facto regular artist, completing the transformation into a Wildcats copy. There was, once again, no chance to find a groove and good working relationship. The X-Corps story would be finished by Aaron Lopestri and Phillips.

starless inscrutable hour 28

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

Joe Casey and Ian Churchill’s second issue, Uncanny X-Men #395, is a less successful comicbook. Churchill’s strengths from the previous issue are still on display, only less so. From what I can tell, there are two reasons for this: Casey’s script isn’t as tight or aimed at providing a big impression like on the previous issue with its one-off structure and mandate to kick off the new creative era; and, judging from the ensuing issues and Churchill’s quick absence, he was possibly already pushing to make deadlines (which is not meant to criticise Churchill as there are any number of reasons why this could have been the case, many outside of his control – I’m not here to litigate someone’s ability to hit deadlines, particularly with no knowledge of the situation).

That second point is partly contextual, partly the final sequence of the issue where Mister Clear attacks the mutants in the sewers, and that scene is Churchill’s weakest batch of pages. Although, to be honest, the first sequence in the sewers is also below Churchill’s other work. He seemed to really struggle with depicting the ‘freakish’ mutants. Even one that seemed relatively simple and in his comfort zone, the Cyclops, never really hits visually. It looks like Churchill could never get the one big eye in the middle of the forehead to look right. In a lot of panels, he has it shut, giving the character this big slit in his forehead that looks awkward.

The two characters that Churchill absolutely nails whenever they show up are Chamber and Nightcrawler. Chamber is such a visually dynamic character, even when standing still, due to the energy effect of his powers. His first appearance in this issue is among Churchill’s best: energy spewing from his chest, long leather jacket kinda blowing along with his hair, the tail of his shirt blown up to reveal his navel... it’s a magnificent introductory panel that just stop you dead. Nightcrawler is the opposite of Chamber, who doesn’t do anything physically dynamic but is visually appealing anyway. For Nightcrawler, Churchill leans into his leanness and agility and rarely has him simply standing like anyone else. It’s all flips and hanging upside down and weird bent-over-backwards yoga poses. Like Chamber, you get a real sense of who this character is just by looking at him.

The way this run lost its steam quickly is down to the disconnect between Casey and Churchill. Casey has said that Churchill was recruited first and, even knowing that, it doesn’t seem like Casey made enough of an effort to hit the artist’s strengths. Moreover, I’m not sure Casey was in the right space to do so. At the beginning of the run, he didn’t quite have a handle on a strong direction and his scripts meander a bit. Less action, more talking... more like Wildcats. Which is a shame, because I was actually excited by the combination of these two when they were announced on Uncanny X-Men back in late 2000. Both men had won over my approval thanks to the multi-year subscription that I had to Cable coming out of Age of Apocalypse where I was just a bit too naive/out of the loop to not know that X-Man wouldn’t go on forever and, while I got the final two issues of that series, it transitioned to Cable (rather than issue five of X-Man). That meant reading a bunch of Jeph Loeb/Ian Churchill issues (his cover to Cable #25 is still a favourite, speaking of a time where he nailed cramming a ton of figures/detail into an image – it was a gatefold cover, I believe) and, eventually, the first Joe Casey Marvel issue, Cable #51. While the two never worked together on that title, it was a nice coming together of people whose work I dug at different periods of the title on another X-book... and it didn’t work.

Just one of those things.

the cruellest month 28

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Was it Joe Casey’s fault that his Uncanny X-Men run unfurled the way it did? Paired from the onset with Ian Churchill, it never felt like a smooth pairing, one of two creatives meshing, which is a bit of a prerequisite for a comicbook to be successful on nearly any level. Unless one of the two primary members of the creative team is doing such stellar work as to compensate for the other, it’s almost impossible for a comic to really hit if there isn’t some level of harmony. While Casey would admit to his own failings when discussing Uncanny X-Men #394, I don’t think the mismatch with Churchill was as apparent in their first issue.

What’s readily apparent in Uncanny X-Men #394 is that Churchill’s strength is single images. He’s not a bad panel to panel storyteller, it’s that he really shines when he can try to hit a single, impactful visual that’s meant to arrest your attention. Flipping through the issue, almost every page has one or two panels that, taken on their own, at wonderful compositions. Usually, these images are built around a single focus. Churchill isn’t a George Perez kind of artist where you want to pack panels with tons of characters and objects. His more unsuccessful panels are where the focus is divided or there’s too much going on. The first page is practically perfect in the way each of the four panels have a single focus that he can make pop and draw your eye towards.

I think this is what Casey meant when he said that the inside of Warp Savant’s head wasn’t suited to Churchill’s skills and that he should have done a better job tailoring the script to his artist’s abilities. As written/requested, it seems like Casey wanted a chaotic realm full of random objects and subconscious tidbits, filling up every bit of every panel with details; except, Churchill’s best compositions are the ones where the background is minimal or absent. He’s so good at giving a character or two posed just right. From the cover to Cyclops’s turning to talk to Jean to Warp Savant charging into Cape Citadel or warping the general... It’s not about big panels or splashes necessarily, but really tight foci for Churchill to home in on and present in the best possible way.

For all its flaws, I think Casey gives Churchill a lot of opportunities to do that in this issue. As I said, nearly every page has a panel or two that absolutely sings. A big part of Churchill’s problem is that he appears to put too much emphasis into adding movement over the course of scenes, often by changing angles. That limits the effectiveness of panel to panel transitions, and winds up creating some awkward compositions. The page where Warp Savant does his little rant before Wolverine descends from on high is a great example with the middle panel opting for this odd angle from beneath the character before jumping to Wolverine’s perspective from above over the final two panels – both of which are quite good, particularly the transition from distant-above to closer-above perspectives. Another fantastic sequence of panels is on the second page, while in a club, Warp Savant looks at a bottle of alcohol in one panel, warps it in the next, and then keeps looking at us/the girls with an empty hand raised – all done from the same perspective with the same sized panels, it’s great, basic visual storytelling over successive images.

This issue provides a good indication of how to tailor scripts to Churchill’s strengths with a brisker-paced issue, lots of opportunities for single/dual character panels, and really simplifying the visuals requested. I don’t think Casey had enough lead time to really see that and alter his approach, nor did Churchill last on the book long enough.

the coolest month 27

Warren Worthington III buying himself a drug empire is something to naturally focus upon with its novel method of defeating a supervillain mutant. The focus of Uncanny X-Men #409 is not so singular, dividing its time between the acts of businessmen and the effects of their wares, advancing a subplot that Casey would never get a chance to see through... What exactly is going on with Nightcrawler?

Largely absent from the Warren/Vanisher plot, Nightcrawler is alluded to be of a differing opinion on how to proceed from Warren. By stepping back, Kurt is basically ceding leadership of the squad to Warren, a reversal from how the team was generally portrayed from issue 395. Part of this is the split on Warren’s plan; mostly, though, it has to do with the confrontation with Church of Humanity, its Supreme Pontiff, and the way that the group smashes up against Nightcrawler’s Catholicism. In issue 400, something happened with the Supreme Pontiff that Kurt doesn’t recall and he’s been increasingly erratic since then, struggling with a ‘crisis of faith,’ as he puts it to Warren in issue 407. In issue 408, he discovered that humans were using the Vanisher’s drug, one that gives humans a temporary mutation, often killing them in the process, in the basement of a Catholic church. Here, he confronts the cardinal of that parish, only to find him in the middle of injecting himself with the drug.

The ensuing mutation and battle is a bit heavyhanded with the cardinal screaming “BEGONE, DEMON!” as he transforms into a hulking form resembling that of the Thing, except with the black of the cracks and yellow/orange/brown of the stone reversed, and glowing red eyes. As Nightcrawler tries to subdue him, he yells “AT LAST I AM CLOSER TO GOD...!” to further demonstrate the subtlety of the scene. Three members of the Church of Humanity then teleport into the church, kill the cardinal for debasing himself and God, and, then, refrain from attacking Nightcrawler despite him being a mutant because “THE SUPREME PONTIFF HAS PLANS FOR THIS ONE,” teleporting away before Nightcrawler can stop them – which is, in and of itself, a lovely reversal to add an extra level of frustration.

In a final issue of a run, it’s a bit peculiar to include a scene like this. There is no point to Casey trying to further this subplot that he won’t resolve, except acting under the principle of the world he’s writing. This is the other side of the “interpersonal soap opera” of superhero comicbooks, where he could rush a conclusion, temporary or permanent, to this subplot... but, that’s not how things are done. Pick up the baton from the previous writer, pass it to the next... that’s the spirit of the work-for-hire writer in a shared universe. Even more than the Warren/‘mutant businessman’ plot, this one feels particularly unresolved. That story does end, to a degree, by Warren buying out the Vanisher’s men and putting a stop to the flow of drugs. Not every future threat can be solved by simply paying a bunch of money to some criminals, so this could be treated as a one-off resolution without too much cognitive dissonance. The Nightcrawler story, on the other hand...

If I recall, it would make up a decent chunk of Chuck Austen’s infamous run that followed Casey’s. In my head canon, it all ends here and how it plays out is unknown. I’m not sure if Casey even knows what happened next – or cared. But, what this shows is his dedication to the tradition of the form and the X-Men in particular. What’s an X-Men comic without a dangling mystery left by one writer for another to resolve? When Casey was on Cable, he began trying to resolve a previous mystery by bringing back The Twelve and, then, when he left the title in solidarity with Ladrönn, Alan Davis wound up finishing that story in the two main X-Men titles... and one of those plot points, Cyclops’s possession by Apocalypse, would linger enough to play a role in Casey’s first issue of Uncanny X-Men. There’s something fundamental about Casey’s love and respect for superhero comicbooks and the unwritten code about how you do them...

For all that he tries to push the boundaries, particularly at this point in his career, this is still a writer who grew up loving comicbooks. His Uncanny X-Men run is rooted in the tradition of the title, its history, and the shadow of Chris Claremont in particular. He started there and tried to write his way out, eventually hitting that point just in time to be shown the door. The Nightcrawler scenes are less about the character, for our purposes, then what their inclusion says about Casey’s approach to the job. Except, his approach is rooted in doing right by it and the characters... basically, there’s no concern about not finishing the story, it’s about continuing to tell it as long as he’s paid to and remembering that the real author is Marvel Comics. This is the end of Joe Casey’s Uncanny X-Men, not Uncanny X-Men.

the coolest month 26

You grow up thinking things have always been the way that they are. That something came into existence only a short time before you birth means nothing to you, because, for you, it’s always been there. As a result, sometimes, what’s novel or different isn’t actually so, harkening back to a time before you, even a short time before you. Part of growing up is learning different histories and realising the larger picture, that your narrow perspective actually skewed things. In superhero comicbooks, I’ve found the biggest area of obscured history is how the most well known characters settle into a softer version of themselves, with the edges rounded off, and, often, the dramatic changes or revolutionary new takes are sharpening those old edges once again. What I’m saying is, Warren Worthington III drugging the Vanisher and buying up his drug business isn’t the first time some morally ambiguous means were used to defeat the villain.

“HE’S PREDICTABLE AND GREEDY.”

Warren says that near the beginning of Uncanny X-Men #409, brimming with confidence about his plan to take down the Vanisher’s drug empire. The plan where he’s drugged via Stacy X’s pheromone controlling powers, undermined while in a bliss coma, and, then, has it all revealed to him over lunch at Tavern on the Green actually work incredibly well. Because Warren knows Telford Porter all the way back to the beginning when he first emerged on the scene, displaying nothing but greed and overconfidence that didn’t just make him predictable but had him boasting about what he would do before he did it. I spoke of rounded edges, well that never happened to Vanisher – he was always a piece of shit going back to The X-Men #2. An irredeemable shitheel that wouldn’t see much difference between robbing banks of money, the Pentagon of state secrets, or overseeing a drug empire.

No, the edges refer to Charles Xavier, the founder and philosophical head of the X-Men, who is constantly being built up and torn down, remembered as the paragon of virtuousness, revealed as another form of shitheel. Except, he was always a morally ambiguous man, willing to use his powers in ways that would eventually be frowned upon until it was ‘revealed’ that he always had done so. In The X-Men #2, the team and authorities have a hard time managing a man who can teleport at will, and are unable to defeat him as he leads an army of thugs against the X-Men on the grass of the White House. (Side note: it’s actually pretty cool that Professor X leads the X-Men into battle against the Vanisher and an army of regular street thugs on the White House’s front lawn.) Xavier’s method of defeating the Vanisher: erasing his memory of who he is and what he can do. Simple, efficient, effective, and, by the standards later set for the character and all telepaths, completely immoral. I wouldn’t even call it clever as Xavier uses his powers like any other X-Man.

That’s the one area of evolution from Xavier to Warren four decades later. The moral ambiguity is there in their methods – as is the knowledge that Porter is the type of smug asshole to think himself untouchable (his name ain’t Unus, though). In both cases, calling Porter out is what makes him so easy to neutralise. Warren’s plan has main elements, all equally important: Stacy X using her powers to take him out of commission for two weeks, buying him out while he’s away, inviting him to lunch, and Iceman freezing him mid-teleport. The first two elements are based in greed; the latter two are in his predictable overconfidence. Porter wants everything he can get, so he takes Stacy up on her offer – while he traffics in a world where greed is king and his own people hold no loyalty to him beyond a paycheck. When he’s awoken and it’s revealed that Warren engineered the forced timeout, he can’t resist taking Warren up on the invitation because he doesn’t think Warren can actually do anything to him. He underestimates how vulnerable he is as a ‘businessman’ – and in reality as it never occurs to him that the X-Men would basically kill him. He forgot that the X-Men have always fought dirty against him.

It’s funny how it seems so new and different, this plan, when it’s the same playbook as the one from The X-Men #2: call the guy out and kick him in the nards when he least expects it, which is whenever you want because he never expects it. Porter loses because he’s never changed, never grown... he may have faded into the shadows a little more, only barely. He still has to remind everyone he meets that he’s in charge, he’s powerful, he’s the man. The key panel is the look of shock on his face as he hears over the phone that Warren bought his people, that “HE’S RUNNING THE SHOW NOW.” It’s the same look he has on his face when Xavier begins messing with his mind, thinking “WHA... WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME? I CANNOT CONTROL MY POWER!! I CANNOT VANISH!!” Utter disbelief and panic, that sinking feeling in your gut as the world stops making sense.

What really strikes me is not only Warren’s comfort level with the morally ambiguous actions he endorses, it’s how much he enjoys it. He likes playing the smug rich asshole for Porter, calling him scum, letting him stew in his powerlessness in the form of a higher level of capitalism, and the fake magnanimity when he plasters on a grin to say “YOU CERTAINLY TRIED. I’VE GOT TO GIVE YOU THAT. / SORRY IT DIDN’T WORK OUT FOR YOU, PORTER.” Said as if it was a minor business deal no more important than what to order for lunch. It’s such a twist the knife move that it would feel cruel if the guy receiving it wasn’t so awful. It’s the final reminder that what beat Porter was Warren learning from Charles Xavier, who was kind enough to spell out his lesson at the end of The X-Men #2: “ALWAYS REMEMBER, MY X-MEN! .. THE GREATEST POWER ON EARTH IS THE MAGNIFICENT POWER WE ALL OF US POSSESS... THE POWER OF THE HUMAN BRAIN!”

Fittingly, after his first issue of Uncanny X-Men went back to The X-Men #1, Joe Casey’s last picks up with The X-Men #2.