the cruellest month 04

Uncanny X-Men #394 is an X-Men comic about X-Men comics. When I was a grad student, I had a creative writing professor that was all about allusion and reference. “It gives your work resonance,” he would say again and again. He was a poet and I think liked to think himself a postmodernist; I’ve always preferred modernism myself. The idea that art is built up out of past art, not so much self-referential as aware of history and the inescability of it. There are no new stories, just new versions of the same stories. I’ve never asked Joe Casey what line of thought he would place himself in (or if he would at all). It’s where my mind goes with X-Men comics about X-Men comics. Perhaps it would be more fitting if it were building upon a Greek epic poem ala Ulysses rather than casting its gaze back 393 issues of the same series. But, the foundational myths of superhero comicbooks are superhero comicbooks, particularly previous stories involving the same characters. The obsession with retelling origin stories, with alternate versions, with updating and modernising the characters, the stories... There’s a sense of the way that legends have been told and retold over the centuries, like in the collection of Arthurian literature I have on a shelf in my office. The same stories told and updated and altered, some new details added, some changed, some eliminated... Imagine a collection of just Batman or Spider-Man origin comics – at this point, would they, perhaps, be omnibus editions? There’s no need for these retellings at this point. We’ve all seen them how many times? I myself joke that all I want out of a superhero movie is no origin story. Ah, but tradition, eh?

The paradox is that, as much as superhero comicbooks are obsessed with superhero comicbooks, they’re also obsessed with the idea that superhero comicbooks are so self-referential that no one can understand them from the outside. This is part of the reason why the same stories are told and retold, updated and made ‘new’ all over again, under the auspice of simplifying and removing layers of continuity that only the most experienced and knowledgeable fanboys could possibly make sense of. Assumptions are made, as are choices, and the only thing truly accomplished is the increasing amount of continuity. A new layer of paint is added to the picture. “All-New, All-Different!” is a lie. Or, if it’s not, it’s certainly of no interest to superhero comicbook readers, usually. Add on as many updated costumes and reworked backstories and new subtext and it’s all still about the same superhero comicbooks. It may be about other things, too, but.

Joe Casey likes to tell stories about what happens ‘after,’ I’ve told you. I’ve also argued that there’s no ‘after’ for him to work with in Uncanny X-Men #394, except for the previous X-Men comics. A heap of continuity, of characters that go one way and then another, from hero to villain to hero to anti-hero to friend to enemy to lover to alternate reality comrade to lost in space to leader to follower to hero again. Does any of it mean anything really when the next writer can make it the opposite at a whim? When they can make it never have happened at all? And the next writer can bring it back as a crucial event around which everything revolves going forward. Discussing the context of this issue is odd in that way because I’m not certain if it still has a place within the history of the X-Men. Is it there? Or has it been forgotten? Not by us, by the characters. “Does Cyclops remember a punk kid playing out Magneto fantasies?” Odd question whose answer I’m not sure I actually care about. I am a proper fool.

The first issue of a ‘new era,’ Uncanny X-Men #394 is very much about its place in X-Men history. The main plot, of 18-year old Warp Savant recreating Magneto’s takeover of Cape Citadel from The X-Men #1 places this issue within that history, repeating its beginning in service of a new beginning. Swapping out Magneto for a young, tattooed ‘hot’ new mutant is about establishing this new beginning while also reasserting the dominance of this specific lineage, this history, in the face of a reimagining of that history featuring the X-Men looking not so different from the antagonist here. Ultimate X-Men had begun just a few months prior, offering an updated, new version of the story of these characters. Unburdened by the history of the comic yet able to draw upon it, the Ultimate comics were viewed by some as a threat to the ‘real’ comics. I don’t think that Casey cared much one way or the other; he was never one to be above taking a well-meaning post shot at his peers. Having Warp Savant recreate Magneto’s actions from the first X-Men comic is a symbolic moment, one that updates that moment for the modern age, but also asserts its place in history. The issue begins with Warp Savant reading about Magneto’s actions, because they happened. It’s history. This isn’t a writer deciding to retell a story, it’s someone in that world making the decision to emulate someone else with it being made explicit that that is what they are doing.

The true believer that he is, it’s never about out with the old in with the new. It’s about the history, the lineage, the Easter eggs, the allusions and the references... This, of course, is why Wizard once proclaimed that Joe Casey is ‘the next Kurt Busiek.’