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.

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.

starless inscrutable hour 19

In the name of Claremont will you mutant me up that comicbook,

Shall I doodle cave-phantoms?

We, ah, reach that awkward point in this improvisation where I admit that the work of Chris Claremont is a bit of a blind spot for me. I’ve read some, barely scratched the surface. Mostly via a subscription I had as a kid one year for X-Men Classic, the reprint series for X-Men ala Marvel Tales for Spider-Man. The bit that I had covered Uncanny X-Men #189-200, which is a helluva run. John Romita, Jr. young and energetic, Xavier in leather and fishnets, Nimrod roaming the subways, Magneto on trial... I don’t remember a lot, bits and pieces. Some other X-Men comics here and there. Had a black and white mass market paperback reprint of a two-parter with Arcade and some other issues, too. Never went back and read the whole thing. It’s so big, so influential, that you don’t need to experience it directly. And, in my experience, when you do, it’s a letdown due to just how many folks ripped it off.

That’s the feeling of Poptopia. A rip off. Haven’t I read these stories before? Or at least heard about them? If Claremont is the Platonic Ideal, then we’re definitely watching shadows on the wall. A mutant leaving the X-Men in the hopes of living a normal life? Claremont did it. A group of desperate, freakish mutants living in the sewers? Claremont did it. A popstar all up in mutant affairs? Claremont did it. A mysterious mutant exterminator with a name recalling a previously known entity that thematically connects to what it’s doing? Claremont did it. You know the gag, because another show did it.

Except, where Claremont referenced Shakespeare and the Bible, all Casey has are mascots and X-Men comicbooks. The fight between Storm and Callisto for leadership of the Morlocks is turned into a barely-there conflict between Nightcrawler and the Cyclops. Except, there is a double meaning to the Cyclops’s name, both obvious. Immediately, he recalls the X-Men’s longstanding leader and guiding light – but, also, his own namesake, the mythological being with only a single eye in the middle of its forehead, which is how this mutant appears. Like Callisto, this character is a reference to mythology, going beyond the obvious self-referential bit to something more archetypal in its influence on all Western literature... and, by doing so, turns back on itself to point to Callisto, whose name is also taken from mythology, making the mythological reference actually an X-Men comicbook reference. Even when you think you’ve escaped, all roads lead to Xavier. The biggest twist is that Nightcrawler simply leaves the conflict, not wanting to earn the respect of these mutants through violence.

The little twists on the stories already told is the point. Take what came before and make it your own. It’s a longstanding tradition in storytelling, somehow seen as less than within the realm of superhero comicbooks. But, when you cast the Claremont run into the foundational mythological base of the X-Men – the ur-text, if you will – what other options are there? It’s no win. Everything is a variation or a reaction. You either become Claremont or you respond to Claremont. Casey takes Claremont on his own terms, casting these stories in new lights that make sense within the context of Casey’s body of work. A superhero not interested in solving problems with violence? See Adventures of Superman. A brooding former superhero looking to make a new life and avoid trouble in the spotlight of the tabloid media? See Automatic Kafka. A superhero comic that is so influenced by a single creator that you could argue that it turns that creator’s work into a genre unto itself? See Gødland.

If Warp Savant is a Casey stand-in, a metaphor for the comicbook obsessed continuity-junkie that takes it all in and has his very own head canon, then he’s Casey as a Claremont character. And his head canon is Casey’s through the lens of Claremont as a genre. What follows is Poptopia, a fever dream straight from that particular mind. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes that the entire Casey run takes place within Warp Savant. Metaphorically, of course. Isn’t that what all comicbook runs are? Little, self-contained pockets of cultural reality that we stack up to form our own canons? “Consistency, not continuity” is just another way of saying “What makes sense to me.” If an X-Men comicbook goes unread, did it even add to the mythology? I don’t want to say that Casey’s run doesn’t have its fans and its influences, but, alongside the joint run of his Man of Action cohorts and many others, it’s all detritus. Stacks of stories that are supposed to ‘count’ somehow, but I didn’t read so who cares. Maybe someday they’ll ‘count’ if I get around to them.

That makes this whole run an exercise, of sorts, that stands by itself. If there is any interaction, it’s with the idea of Claremont’s X-Men work as a genre unto itself, and Casey’s other work. If there’s a Venn diagram, welcome to the centre. That makes the choices somewhat purposeful. It’s not hard to see Chamber as the flipside of Warp Savant. Similar ages, looks, outlook on life... but for a giant hole blasted in one’s chest, you know? Attacking a military base and saving a popstar aren’t so different when you realise it’s the same impulse, the same desires... X-Men comicbooks are about X-Men comicbooks... And, if Warp Savant is Casey and Chamber is Warp Savant, then Chamber is Casey...

If you like Casey...

starless inscrutable hour 15

The real world values utility, does it not. And are not the X-Men creatures of utility. They are superheroes, after all. They may get dressed up (figuratively and literally) and play pretend at politicians and statesmen and businessmen and actors and musicians and poets and husbands and wives and parents and it’s all a disguise for what they really are underneath it all. They have purpose and means in the real world these creatures of God’s nepotism realising at puberty that they were born on third base thinking that they were cut from the team. The cream of the crop, the blessed of the blessed, they wander through the world like so-much-a-Chamber not realising that they’re all Warp Savants with only the smartest most successful ones realising the truth. Be clever and beautiful for survival and success. “Hated and feared” is the old trope directed at the similarly powerful and famous only they glorify in the fringe benefits...

When I look at Chamber, I see Luke Perry for some reason. And Dylan McKay. Not the character, the type, the persona, the feeling of that poet in a leather jacket, dangerous to be around, but oh so alluring. And someone everyone knows, someone kinda sorta famous but not movie star famous. Because he’s the poet in the leather jacket, dangerous to be around, but oh so alluring. Attractive and repulsive, a good worker, maybe self-destructive... useful. The sort that we look up to and down upon, built up to be torn down with minimal effort. Cultural utility being of importance. In the grand scheme of things, hatched eight to ten days for best effect, then discard, sucking the eggie dry before the next day’s breakfast. Luke Perry playing Kevin Federline...

But, he gets a seat at the adult table because he’s useful. Not a ‘useless beauty’ as they say in the funny pages, he can actually do things. That’s how he makes his presence known, busting in, parting the waves, spreading the butter with his fiery chest and saving the damsel in distress and darting off into the night with only a dozen words ‘said’ so smoothly to hit your soul. He’s perfect and doesn’t know it, shy and confident and self-hating and brooding and able to make a girl feel safe and like she could get, ah, burned. He thinks his looks are a curse when they’re his raison d’être, his cosmic inheritance that puts him on the front page as the curious bad boy that everyone loves to hate and fear. His talents are natural and effortless, another in a long line... I wasn’t kidding when I said he’s another Scott Summer and Sam Guthrie, each moulded for their time, optimised for their target audience, the ultimate blank slates of relatability. Useful. Unfortunately, for him, he can’t blast out of his eyes or his ass, because those are taken... and ol’ Slim is already Batman so he’s part of the infinite parade of Robins who are too old to be sidekicks but not grown up to be solo heroes so they get slotted in wherever. That weird space between high school and getting a proper job. It’s fair to call Chamber’s time with the X-Men courtesy of Joe Casey more of an internship than a fulltime gig.

It’s not like he has two heads or one giant eye or a bunch of fur or extra long arms or lives in the sewers. He gives up moving to a Mansion to slum it in dirty hotels and limos with popstars, after all. There’s privilege in utility that is often obscured by heavy-handed self-pity. Say what you will but Captain America looks like he works at it and, for a rich kid, Tony Stark sure spends a lot of time in the workshop building things, and Hawkeye is just a dork who spent too much time getting really good at one thing like every athlete we worship. Despite the best insistences of comicbook writers and fans, mutants aren’t hated because they’re black or gay or any other metaphor, it’s because they got it without any effort. Where’s the work? Where’s the purpose? Where’s the dead parents and the decade of training? They hit the genetic jackpot and get to be beautiful superheroes without having to try. Every story about the curse of being a mutant, how freakish and ugly and awful it is always has the same moral: it’s fucking great. There but for the grace of God... is the message of Uncanny X-Men #395. Those poor souls living in the sewers, forced to be clever because they’re not beautiful? No, forced to scrap by because they’re useless. What are mutants for? If you look at the X-Men and their various offshoots and spinoffs and villains, it’s to do many impressive actions while looking good. There’s an inherently conservatism in the concept. Despite efforts of inclusion with the likes of Beak, that never sticks. No, the useless mutants get shunted to the sewer and made fodder for handsome men with jobs like Mister Clean, the genetic cleanser. He may look like an action star but he’s just a man doing a good, honest job, not-so-secretly wishing that it was the famous sort of mutants he was killing, the ones who can do the things he wishes he could. He’s a bit of a cut rate Pyro here, isn’t he? And, later, it’s revealed that he’s been made tougher and stronger through great expense as if Piotr didn’t just wake up one day a metal hunk who can bench-press a tractor. Hated and feared? Resented and envied, for a purpose.

starless inscrutable hour 14

Generation X #75, the final issue of that series, was released the same month as Uncanny X-Men #394. A brief overlap for the end of the Counter X titles that, while part of the previous regime, seemed like they would have fit in with New X-Men, the revamped X-Force (which would’ve ended the previous one, I guess, no matter what), and Uncanny X-Men. In that comic, the students of Banshee and Emma Frost’s little spin-off school (along with those teachers) go their separate ways and it’s clear that writer Brian Wood was only given the briefest of ideas of what was next for some of the characters as Chamber seems set to join the X-Men at the invitation of Charles Xavier himself. Yet, a month later, our boy was in London, slumming it in a shit hotel and saving popstars from their adoring fans. (Emma Frost is also apparently recruited by the Professor yet, next we see her, she’s teaching in Genosha...) It’s obvious that the outgoing folks were given about as much detail as we were when Frank Quitely’s Emma Frost was splashed all over promo pics and Uncanny X-Men featured young newbie Chamber. Not a tough egg to crack.

Within the world of the comic, it’s actually made clear in a slightly obtuse way. When Nightcrawler is speaking to Wolverine about the colony of underground mutants, Logan changes the topic to Jono, making it apparent that the trip to London for the trio of X-Men was not solely about the spike Cerebra detected. The key phrase: “HE NEVER SHOWED.” What’s made out to be a bit of coincidence that he’s there at the same time as them is subtly turned into something else. He was invited to be an X-Man and he never actually arrived. Headhunted to get a real job at the premier superhero mutant team and he buggered off to Europe. It’s all pretty obvious when you read the words. And a bit clichéd, admittedly. “Backpacking around Europe to find himself” is not an original idea. It’s almost beside the point.

The point is that the X-Men don’t let go. Call it loyalty, call it protectiveness, call it a fucking cult... they don’t let the boy go. When you think about it, Nightcrawler, Iceman, and Archangel are just three guys Chamber has maybe met twice? Exchanged how many words with? They’re these legendary alumni and all of them were sent to put the hard-press recruitment on him? It’s like there’s only one path into the ‘real world’ for Chamber and X marks the spot (sorry). Insulation is the word. Hermetically sealed, bagged and boarded, kept in mint condition this little world of theirs. Even when the underground mutants burns a little hole in it, it’s still like the Mansion is everywhere...

It’s an oddity of fiction. The workplace comedy where coworkers at like family. Those scenes in big crossovers where, as a kid, you wonder why it seems like the Human Torch barely knows Vision... you have this macroscopic view of this biodome world where you know everyone and every story revolves around these characters and you think that, because you know them all, they all know each other. Like the rules of the literal real world don’t apply. Chuck Klosterman’s essay on Saved by the Bell in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is my favourite example of breaking this phenomena down when he discusses what he calls the “Tori Paradox,” where, for half of the senior year of the characters, Kelly and Jessie were nowhere to be seen but the remaining characters hung out with a previously-unseen character, Tori, who quickly filled the role of both characters. Viewers tend to think of this as an odd moment for the show because two longstanding characters are swapped out for a brand new one and no one seems to notice anything strange. Beyond that, episodes featuring Tori and episodes featuring Jessie and Kelly were shown concurrently or even back to back, giving the impression that the characters swapped constantly without anything thinking anything of it. Completely unrealistic and maddening for fans. However, Klosterman writes,

the more I think back on my life, the more I’ve come to realize that the Tori Paradox might be the only element of Saved by the Bell that actually happened to me. Whenever I try to remember friends from high school, friends from college, or even just friends from five years ago, my memory always creates the illusion that we were together constantly, just like those kids on Saved by the Bell. However, this was almost never the case. Whenever I seriously piece together my past, I inevitably uncover long stretches where somebody who (retrospectively) seemed among my closest companions simply wasn’t around. I knew a girl in college who partied with me and my posse constantly, except for one semester in 1993—she had a waitressing job at Applebee’s during that stretch and could never make it to any parties. And even though we all loved her, I can’t recall anyone mentioning her absence until she came back. [...] Coming and going is more normal than it should be.

Chamber wasn’t given the option to just fade out, an event that happens with common frequency in superhero comicbooks. Team books, in particular, embrace the Tori Paradox with lineups changing every few issues, sometimes, the makeup of the team seemingly set at the random whims of that month’s writer. That’s what happened here, after all. Joe Casey, enamoured with Chamber as the perfect modern mutant, has to contend with all that means. He’s got to be part of the book, but also be true to himself and try to flee it. He’s given his own story about a popstar looking to use him to bolster her image until it’s too much and he bounces off the edges of the story right back into the X-Men. All the while, they’re running around in the background fighting a racist mutant killer and trying to save mutants that don’t want their help... you witness Jon Starsmore do his best to walk out into his own story, his own world, and the glass pens him in. He can’t pass for what he’s not... he was born into this... he has no choice... until the next writer has no use for him...

starless inscrutable hour 13

Uncanny X-Men #395 is about showing the intersection of the ‘real world’ and what it means to be a mutant within the context of being outside of the usual X-Men comfort zone. It’s both familiar and different, recalling past X-Men stories because X-Men comicbooks are about X-Men comicbooks. As the first proper issue of the Joe Casey/Ian Churchill run, it’s a little meandering and directionless. No high concept or clear statement of artistic purpose ala New X-Men #114 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, it shuffles around London in the sort of vague manner of Casey’s Wildcats issues. Relationships are allusions, plots are barely there, and the world is a cold, uncaring place. While Wildcats seeks to answer “What happens to soldiers after the war?” Casey’s Uncanny X-Men work seems to try to answer “What happens after you leave school for the real world?” as it positions itself as something different from New X-Men, which focused on Xavier’s school and those still there.

Two answers/paths are given/explored. Chamber (aka Jon Starsmore) is a former member of the group Generation X and is in London, on his own. No longer a student after the dissolution of that group as the students go their separate ways, he’s alone in the world, staying at a crummy hotel, and finding himself in the company of the biggest popstar in the world, Sugar Kane. Casey is riffing on stories of Leila Chaney and Dazzler, while giving it a twist with the popstar not being the mutant. Instead, she’s intrigued by the tall, dark stranger in the leather jacket with the lower part of his face and chest spewing energy. Before ever taking the gig, Casey was asked by Wizard magazine once, for one of their specials, what his X-Men team would be (along with a bunch of other yet-to-write-the-mutants writers) and Chamber was his headliner. The cool visual, the inescapable nature of his powers, the fact that he’s somehow still treated as a bit of a broody teen heartthrob... you can make the argument that he’s the ultimate mutant star, the next step from Scott Summers and Sam Guthrie... The cover of this issue is a full-in shot of Chamber, energy chest/face taking up most of the image, his eyes just visible in the top left corner. While he’s our ‘star,’ the man is secondary to the mutant.

The unstated situation that Chamber finds himself in is that, upon leaving the ‘safety’ of Xavier’s school (or one of its offshoots in his case), what does a mutant actually do? What life specifically is Chamber suited for, particularly if he doesn’t have a strong desire to be an X-Man? There’s no hiding who he is. The moment he enters the comicbook, protecting Sugar Kane from the onslaught of fans, everyone knows he’s a mutant. He faces nothing but whispers and shouts and rude comments. His the walking embodiment of feared and hated, unable to pass as human no matter how he tries. As the Poptopia arc progresses, it becomes apparent that Sugar Kane is only using him to generate headlines and add a bit of controversial edge to her image. He’s the token mutant in her entourage until it becomes too controversial. Are those his only choices? Token mutant or X-Man?

The other option given is what the trio of Nightcrawler, Archangel, and Iceman encounter when they go seeking the source of a mutant spike that Cerebra (mutant-detecting technology at Xavier’s) pinged them to: a group of homeless mutants living underground ala the Morlocks in New York. These are the mutants that can’t pass for human who have ‘powers’ like acid-sweat, or gills, or one giant eye (the Cyclops). They live in squalor and fear, and immediately treat the trio of X-Men like outsiders even though they’re also mutants. These people do whatever it takes to survive, including killing intruders. This is what the world outside of the Mansion is for mutants... and Nightcrawler is a total loss of how to handle the situation. The X-Men are superheroes and students and teachers... but social workers or humanity relief workers? Particularly when this group of mutants doesn’t want their help. These former students taught to use their powers and help mutants encounter something that isn’t theory or easy ‘punch the bad guy in the face’ and they don’t have any idea of what to do. The conversation between Wolverine and Nightcrawler is enlightening as Wolverine is the stand-in for the wise old professor who’s got a ton of real world experience and is now passing on that knowledge to the next generation, and all he has is “MAYBE IT’S ENOUGH OFFERIN’ UP AN ALTERNATIVE. MAYBE HELP ‘EM GET OUT OF THE CITY...” before he moves on to the question of Chamber. Because it’s easier to avoid the real problems when you can focus on the simple stuff like a former student on his own in the world...

As an introduction to the idea of the X-Men operating out in the world, it’s all about putting up contrasts between what mutants and humans experience. The issue ends with a stark, brutal example where a human calling himself Mister Clean enters the underground area where the mutants are living and attacks them with a flame thrower. It’s panic and violence and death with the big reveal being that he looks like an actor straight out of an action movie. You could almost picture a movie doing gangbusters in this world where Arnold or Tom or Sly play this ‘Mister Clean’ killing all of those evil freaks as the hero.

It’s pretty obvious why a brand new era of X-Men comics centred on showing just how ineffective the X-Men actually are didn’t quite catch on. It worked for Wildcats, because that wasn’t the flagship title at DC (or even Wildstorm) by that point. It could be the quiet book about this group of characters finding their way through a life that was no longer familiar to them. Here, Casey is paired with Ian Churchill, an artist best suited to big bombast and action, yet is trying to write a comicbook meant for his Wildcats collaborator, Sean Phillips (who would draw future issues of this run). Sometimes, when the writing and art work at crosspurposes, that juxtaposition can produce something greater and more interesting; others, it sinks the project through no specific fault of anyone. Welcome to the real world... welcome to the show...