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I don't know how I missed this one starting, but I'm very excited to see it. When I was getting into comics this was all long over with, so the Cliff Notes version you'd get would make stuff sound sort of cool, so I'm excited to see how it actually was. Also I just kinda love '90s comics. Marvel's been iffy with their trades of older material, I have the Maximum Security trade and there's an early Captain America story that I'm pretty sure should be a bit later given all the past-tense references to stuff that doesn't show up until later.
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Jun 9, 2021 05:37
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Did this thread die? It was easily my favorite read in a while and id love to see more deep dives like it.
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Jun 20, 2021 08:04
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I had to take a brief break between renovating my house and soon grading finals, but it'll be back soon.
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Jun 20, 2021 08:44
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Where were we? X-Men #43, released in August, 1995, with words by Nicieza and able but workmanlike pencils from the great Paul Smith.  Unlike the somewhat meandering and strangely low-key Gene Nation arc over in Uncanny, Nicieza keeps up the momentum from last month's cliffhanger-- Avalon is falling, AoA-refugee Holocaust is loose, Magneto might be dying, and Scott and Jean are trapped in space. Nicieza loves a baroque plot, and in theory his stories are excessively enamored with continuity and callbacks, but he also knows how to move fast enough and throw enough razzle dazzle at the reader that, for example, you don't really notice until later that you've been reading a long-simmering arc about Hard Air and late-era Alpha Flight D-listers. For the X-franchise his love of minutia-- or let's be kinder, his love of a sense of a truly shared universe-- shines, and in the mid-90s it was largely his efforts, imo, that kept the mutant books readable. This arc is a great example-- almost nothing new is being introduced to the table. We know the Acolytes, we know Colossus, Rusty, and Skids are with them, we know Magneto's status quo, we know Avalon, and despite Fatal Attractions' best efforts we know that these have been fairly dull and mishandled plot elements. But here he introduces some unexpected known quantities-- primarily the little teaser that Genocide is in the 616-- and gets some kind of alchemy out of just mushing these two neglected subplots together in a dynamic way. He's a really underrated writer and after a stint of Lobdell issues his X-Men run is a pleasure. So let's get to it. After a brief but effective prologue showing Xavier in a disconcertingly intense telepathic fugue brought on by the sudden appearance of Amelia Voght, we cut to what's eating him: a somewhat flatly structured but still kind of fun and busy splash page showing the carnage on Avalon.  I kind of actually really dig the flatness, the tableau-like structure here. it reminds me of how in some shonen mangas when a half dozen different good guys are in separate simultaneous with a half dozen bad guys the mangaka will give a little cutaway panel, often a map, just showing where everybody is (I know One Peace does this sometimes). So we see Jean and Scott looking centered and poised, kind of leaning in towards each other with a touch of casual intimacy, we have the Acolytes trying to whale on them, and then, tucked away in the upper right-hand corner, major powerhouse Exodus entangled with major powerhouse Holocaust. It's ingenious misdirection. The Acolytes and the X-Men are fighting because that's what they do, they're both in a confusing and startling situation. But the real problem of course is Holocaust, and while our misunderstanding fight rages the real players in the narrative are practically shunted to the background. It's a chaotic page depicting a chaotic situation-- so I think Smith's almost prim layout here works. Jean patches in Skids telepathically and gets a recap, both to orient her and Scott in this plot and to catch up the reader. Holocaust is running amok, Avalon is crumbling, and two Acolytes are dead-- my dear homeboy Milan and former X-Factor ally Rusty, which pisses Scott off. As one would think it would-- it's a nice character beat, with Scott lashing out at the Acolytes for indirectly causing his death by indoctrinating him, with a lovely continuity callout to his former X-Factor enemy Joanna Cargill nee Frenzy.  It feels earned because frankly Rusty and Skids were bounced around and backgrounded enough times, it really does feel like they were just opportunistically sucked into whatever faction happened to come along. So there's a note of guilt too that Cargill pounces on. What had the X-Men done for Rusty lately? Throughout we get the clear sense that all of what we're seeing, all of the interpersonal drama and fighting, is just collateral damage in the fight between Exodus and Genocide, who is effortlessly dispatching any Acolytes who manage to get close enough to interrupt their conflict. To hammer it home, Jean gets a psychic bead on just how powerful Exodus is, which startles her. It's obviously not the most innovative or elegant way to build up a character who historically laid a little flat on the page-- "oh actually his power level is EVEN BIGGER than we thought"-- but I think in this context it sells how bad the situation is, and how over their heads everyone is. Last issue was a slasher thriller-- this one is a disaster movie. The ship is sinking and nobody is going to patch it up-- so who escapes? Who survives? That's where the tension is coming from, and so every page of people punching and snarling at each other is an accumulating token of the narrative's suspense. These people need to get moving if they want to live.  As the Acolytes and Summers' put aside their differences to get moving and rescue Skids, Nicieza throws in another nice character moment. Frenzy protests that according to Magneto's teachings, the X-Men are the sworn enemies of the Acolytes. But Scott raises a good point-- most of these people barely know Magneto, who at this point has been comatose for almost two years of publication time. They know him as filtered through two profoundly biased sources-- the manipulative sociopath Fabian Cortez (lately of S.W.O.R.D. infamy, delightfully) and the fanatical Exodus. And that seems to get through to her. Although abetted by the announcement of the station's life-supported functions being terminated, we do shift into an uneasy and frantic alliance between the two groups. It's a compact and economic scene and imo it works wonderfully both to add texture to Frenzy, to do the very Niciezian move of trying to import sensible motivations and psychology onto nonsense plot elements he's inherited, and a great moment for Scott-- a guy who can, in the middle of a fight on an actively exploding space station can still convince an enemy to work with him, if not to like him. As a Cyke fan I've always thought Nicieza got him in a way that was rare in the wilderness years before Claremont and Morrison, so this little scene was a treat for me. Anyway, no sooner do the Acolytes get on board with the escape efforts then Scott and Jean are forced apart, as Jean sets out to rescue Skids. This is also smart. Just as the chaos begins to stabilize a bit, we get the most stable, functional unit in this story-- Scott and Jean-- split apart. Both of them are on the backfoot now, although Nicieza doesn't belabor this. In fact, he gives Jean a kind of bleakly funny line about how this is, after all, not her first burning-space ship rodeo.  Meanwhile things escalate. Colossus loads the still comatose Magneto into one of the last intact escape pods and jettisons out, just in time-- minutes later when Scott and the Acolytes arrive, they barely escape being sucked out into space as they discover that the pod bay is completely gone. They are, it appears, stranded-- casualties of Exodus and Genocide's extremely myopic and destructive battle. It's a fun little contrast-- Scott is leading and saving his enemies by dint of his situational awareness and lucidity, while Exodus, who is nominally framed as a religious leader to the Acolytes, is contributing to their imminent deaths by letting loose in such a way that he's actively endangering them, blowing up huge chunks of the station in a colossal mutant pissing contest. We end with another strong cliffhanger. Jean has rendezvoused with Skids, Scott and the Acolytes are hosed, and they both make similar hail-mary passes to survive. Jean with her telekinetic shield, the Acolytes with Uniscione's Unus-like exoskeleton, each plummet to earth in their respective little bubbles. The last panel shows them in flames, Jean calling out in pain-- a very clear callback to the original Phoenix Saga. I love the visual here. There's something weirdly natal about both groups protected by nothing more than these blobby, wobbly, cauls, and it sells their vulnerability and precarity in a super visceral way.  This is night and day from Lobdell's listless Gene Nation arc, which was running roughly contemporaneously. Whereas Lobdell could barely seem to care about what the stakes were, let alone how urgent they were-- for god's sakes the team takes a break from investigating a mass murder to play baseball-- Nicieza wrings tremendous urgency and suspense out of his ticking clock here. It's a great issue, and a great arc.
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Jun 20, 2021 19:41
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That was the sixth comic I ever owned (the first five being X-Man #2, X-Universe #1, Fantastic Four #400, X-Men Omega, and the previously mentioned Uncanny #325). That issue was wild and I remember being just wowed by all these weird characters. "Who are the Kleinstock Brothers?!" Stuff like that. Thank you for this thread, HW!
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Jun 22, 2021 04:00
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I really like the above distillation on why Nicieza was one of the best 90's writers. He could really take an inherited status quo and make it shine.
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Jun 22, 2021 11:03
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I want to pause a minute and go back over X-Men #43 because it occurred to me-- this is actually kind of an issue that puts on the... on the road to Onslaught.... after many many issues that just seemed to be putting us on the road to nonsense (tomato, tomahto). Because it shows us two critical components of the ultimate Onslaught "resolution"-- a Magneto who is alive but mentally pliable and damaged, and an increasingly fraught, frazzled, and desperate Charles Xavier. I am not actually sure to what extent the final canonical "nature of Onslaught" was hammered in stone at this point-- the "half and half" thing was, IIRC, wedged in over the objections of Mark Waid, who wanted Onslaught to completely be a product of Xavier's own repression and anger-- but in retrospect this is the first issue in awhile that feels like it is pointing flashing arrows to the actual Onslaught event, even if Nicieza did not (necessarily?) intend it or have all the pieces spread out in front of him. I'll dig into this a bit more once we have this whole Avalon arc behind us. Speaking of which: X-Men #44, released in September 1995 by Nicieza and Andy Kubert  I think of Andy Kubert as the epitome of the "X-Men style" of the early 90s, even moreso than pacesetter Jim Lee, just because he stuck around so long (and probably because he drew so many of the issues I had as a kid). He's angular and kind of... Expressionistic in a weird way (imo).... but still has a coherent sense of anatomy and scale that distinguishes him a bit from the Image-iste pack. He's a long long way from Paul Smith, especially as a mid-arc swap, but I like his work and I'm happy to see it here. Still-- his figures lack that softness and warmth of Paul Smith's, a quality that lent the previous two issues part of their tenseness and horror. Smith's figures look vulnerable-- you don't want them to be caught in the middle of a fight or trapped on a crashing space station because they look, you know, capable of being harmed, of being torn or rent. By placing these very creaturely looking characters in the midst of sci-fi action havok we got a creepy frisson of danger and risk (akin to Smith's great, great work on the original Brood Saga). We lose that with Kubert, whose human forms all look like very impressive action figures. Our horror story turns into an action story. Which I think is ok, but not really as interesting. We have plenty of X-Men action stories. That being said-- a lot of those action stories are bad action stories so we do have something to look forward to: Nicieza keeps the momentum and high stakes at a simmer and Nicieza sells it all expertly. So even if we're left with a conclusion that dials back the novelty a bit, it's still an extremely competent and fun comic book. Which for the Big Two in 1995 is not nothing. But first a quibble. You'll remember in UXM #325, which came out one month after this, that the plot is kicked off when a post-Acolytes Colossus appears at the mansion carrying a wounded and helpless Callisto, who then wakes up and points everybody (back) to the Gene Nation schlemiels. That doesn't line up with what we see here-- in fact we get the opposite, as we begin with a very vulnerable, very open Colossus being found and rescued by a Callisto literally shrouded in armor:  Indulge me a second and let's look at this page. Colossus' pose is very interesting. For one thing, the way Kubert renders the snow he's buried in as just blank space creates the effect of his body being shattered or dismembered. Chunks of his arms gone, the palm of his hand.... his entire crotch. It's an effect of terrible violence as well as one of rather on-the-nose emasculation. That bears out. His pose is what in a Jim Lee or Marc Silvestri comic might read as "damsely." He's splayed, he's exposed, with tears in the fabric over his pectoral muscles, one hand almost coquettishly poised on the cusp of his groin, lips parted. He's lying there like a big metal hybrid of Witchblade and St. Sebastian-- not a pose we're used to seeing Colossus in, for all of the lushness and softness Claremont imbued him with. Callisto, already familiar to readers as a hard, punky character, is looming over him, completely covered in androgynous battle armor, clutching in both hands a kind of sci-fi battlestaff pulsing with purple energy. It's not subtle, and even though at this point this character is not revealed as Callisto, the spectre of the late Claremont era, which teased a thwarted post-Siege Perilous sexual tension between the two after Piotr is remolded as an artist, fleshly and sensitive, hovers over this entire issue. I think it's very cool. Of course they then immediately fight for one hectic double splash, which ends with Colossus being almost effortlessly conked out by an energy blast. Once again, he takes the submissive position, while also being glossed as stubborn and rigid. The lady's trying to save his life and all he can do is lash out and bellow about Magneto-- his conversion into Acolyte metastasized as a tragic inability to think or compromise. She's saving him from his heel turn by reminding him of his softness, as I read it. Which is maybe imposing too much on Nicieza, but the reading is possible which interests me a lot more than Lobdell's method of having characters just bloviate. Meanwhile Xavier is still trying to make psychic contact with Scott and Jean, but is having an extraordinarily difficult time with it:  It turns out that there is some kind of traumatic psychic interference futzing with his ability to skim over the world's thoughts. We can surmise that this is Genocide although a footnote reminds us that he also currently doesn't have access to Cerebro, which was destroyed during the Phalanx Covenent. Amelia Voght, his ex-lover and former Acolyte seems skeptical that just bashing his mind against the wall will result in anything. She seems jaundiced in general-- she'd already given up on his dream, but now, standing there in his living room, seems equally worn down from chasing Magneto's. There's a theme in this issue about the fragility of macho stubborness and inability to admit when something's not working versus the strengths of suppleness and adaptability. The metal man is twisted and crumpled as a result of his inability to bend-- and, in another perhaps unintentional hint of what's to come, Professor X keeps tilting into this form of psychic self-mutilation rather than admit that he's over his head. But what's the alternative? Well: We discover via Bishop that Jean and Skids have landed more or less safe and sound and are currently being tended to by Psylocke, but Cyclops is totally off the grid. So cut to Scott in the Australian Outback with a gaggle of Acolytes. Look, cards on the table, I love Scott Summers. He's my favorite comic book character and while I do not own a lot of comic book related knick-knacks and trinkets I am proud to have him on my desk grimacing and clenching.  This is in part a new-found love, based on the critic Jay Edidin's reading of him as if not textually trans and neuroatypical than at least kind of a spiritual beacon to him as a trans and neuroatypical writer. It was one of those lightbulb moments where another writer's passion for a character totally illuminated that character for me. And I think so much of Edidin's reading of Scott makes sense-- he fills a narratively kind of isometric role oftentimes with Mr. Fantastic and Captain America but he's really, really not like Mr. Fantastic and Captain America. He's boyish, slight-- under the pencil of writers like Paul Smith more like the pre-serum Steve Rogers than the buff demigod we're more used to looking at. He's nebbishy and neurotic, he's prone to becoming bewildered and overwhelmed when he can't exercise his preference for rules and rituals, he's terrified of his powers' innate dangerous jouissance. In some lights he's a failure of masculinity, he's a travesty of the male Team Leader archetype. But that's where his strength is-- his ability to see beyond and around the narrative possibilities of that archetype. Reed Richards, for all his intentions to "solve everything" would never cook up a Krakoa or a Utopia. Mr. Fantastic would never hatch a Phoenix Egg. Scott is at odds with his own genre, experiencing what I might call a sort of narrative dysphoria, and like many trans people who learn how to segue their sense of unease and disidentification into a purer and stronger new mode of subjectivity, the best Cyclops stories see him reckoning with his shortcomings within the conventional superhero story and figuring out a way to turn them into a different kind of story more suited to his abilities. So you know, I'm sure Fabian Nicieza as much as I love him did not sit down in 1995 and crack his knuckles and say "ok let's queer this poo poo up" but if you are, like me, prowling around the canon with a magnifying glass trying to eke out queer readings of the X-Men by hook or by crook this is a very fun arc indeed. Because hot off the heels of seeing the failures of Colossus and Xavier as men insistent on hewing to their old methods in the face of repeated failure, we find Scott leading a group of folks who were trying to kill him 20 short pages ago, putting aside the fighting and the misunderstandings to just get everybody home safe. It's a drastic turnaround and a very very neat narrative jolt.  Indeed our first look at him in this issue is using his powers for something other than fighting and attacking, a conspicuously rare thing in 90s X-comics. He's not using them for basketball or baseball either, but leveraging them as a means of providing nourishment. This is a big thing for Scott, whose big Marvel Neurosis for a long time was feeling burdened with a gaze that killed, an inability to see his powers as anything but a loaded gun he didn't want to be charged with. So saving people, feeding people, nourishing people with his eyes-- turning them into an apparatus of care-- is very very cool to me, even if Nicieza doesn't play it as a big moment necessarily. I want to go off the deep end again and point out that the Outback is a significant place in X-Men history--- the Claremont team spent #229-250 there in an era I personally find very thrilling and well put together, an era in which they all kind of accidentally break down the conventions of the superhero team and meander around trying (and mostly failing) to build something different. It's really great. But notably, Scott was not there for it-- however, his neglected wife Maddie was. So this issue finds him in a space that has some big emotional baggage. It's a reminder of the period in which he was not with his team, in which they formed bonds and rivalries and romances without him, as well as, probably, his most stark moral failure, notably his abysmal treatment of Madelyn Pryor. Again, Nicieza doesn't make a big deal out of this, but I think it's kind of haunting the entire issue. Back to it, we see some schisms emerging in the Acolytes. Frenzy and Uniscione are happy to put aside their differences and follow the guy who seems to have any idea of what he's doing, while the Kleinstock brothers, two beefy guys with the ability to fuse into each other, are having none of it. This is notable in particular for Frenzy, Joanna Cargill, who as a member of the Alliance of Evil was a recurring if not major X-Factor enemy during the Original Five era. Next we see a little bit more of the juxtaposition between Scott's leadership style and whatever it was that the Acolytes were accustomed to. Scanner, a woman who can turn into a kind of electronic ghost and fly around, has been sent forth on a recon mission which leaves her exhausted. There's some back and forth over whether Scott is pushing them too hard, but he insists that he knows the team's limits.  I think an objection could be raised that like-- how the gently caress does he know these peoples' limits? He's been working with them for like a day and has fought them maybe... I don't know.... three times? But Nicieza's point, I think, is that he is challenging them but not breaking their backs. They'd labored for a long time until complete dogshit leadership after all. Fabian Cortez was a psychopath who could bolster their powers as a kind of crutch, while Exodus was so powerful and so zealous that as we saw in the past two issues the rest of the group was kind of just vestigial. They're being asked to be resourceful for the first time in awhile and it isn't fun. Nicieza seems pretty intent on drawing a sharp contrast between the maladaptive leadership the Acolytes were used to and Cyclops' way-- one which can adapt and evolve.  Meanwhile Xavier is not doing so hot. We learn that he's slept eight hours over the past four days, the kind of overexertion that will eventually (the story will insist) lead to Onslaught. But he's also learning to bend. He reveals to Voight that he knows that her natural state is the psychic mist he can turn into, and asks her to help him turn into a being of psychic energy so he can... I guess find Cyclops better. It doesn't make a ton of sense and is a classic Nicieza bit of "I'll make up a maguffin to get to the character beat I want," which he at least does a lot better than Lobdell. Xavier is yielding, he's asking for help, and he's literally willing to compromise his integrity to do so. Narratively, Scott is rubbing off on the rest of the book.  However it doesn't work, because of the interference of whatever powerful psychic entity was screwing around earlier. That's ok though, because ring ring, Cyclops and the Acolytes have made it to the abandoned village that was previously the X-Men's hideout, and have accessed their old comm systems. They're safe and the Acolytes are willing to turn themselves in in exchange for rescue. There's a little stinger about the base having been in recent use-- I honestly do not remember if this pans out at all. I know there was a 1993 Wolverine arc (Wolverine #72-74) where he and Jubilee go back and poke around and fight some Sentinels, but I'm not sure if this is just a nod to that or what. Amelia Voight turns back into a mist and leaves, unable to commit to helping the X-Men full-time, while Callisto schleps Colossus to an old Arctic Magneto base where robots patch him up. She reveals herself and makes Colossus a stirring offer that turns out to not have anything at all to do with Uncanny #325 so OH WELL.  It really is kind of jarring how poorly this leads into #325. Here, a strong and determined Callisto is dead-set on enlisting the X-Men to save the world. In #325, she's unconscious and helpless and needs help preventing Marrow from eating a bomb or whatever. So-- a bit of a let down made even more stark by the Road to Onslaught TBP's weird structure. But let's not let Lobdell spoil this moment because this was a really, really lovely little arc. We got some much needed development for the Acolytes (there was also some charming work done on them over in Cable, RIP Milan), saw some tight, character focused action with a novel premise and a refreshingly non-fight-based resolution, and some very nice art. We're left with the hook of where the hell Magneto wound up in all of this, which will be returned to soon, for better or worse, kicking off the disastrous Joseph subplot, but again, let's just enjoy the warm glow. These were good issues and if you ever see them languishing in the quarter bin I think they're worth picking up. Next: Gambit! Rogue! And the start of a two-issue rock block of Mr. Sinister! How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 16:38
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I *could* be wrong, but I think the psychic interference was actually Nate Grey appearing on Earth-616. Unfortunately, Marvel Unlimited is missing a bunch of issues of X-Man, but they talk about him pulling Xavier from the material plane into the astral plane, and Nate spends all of his appearances telling everyone he sees that Charles is really, really bad.
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Jun 23, 2021 19:02
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Sounds like those could have been nice to have in the Road to Onslaught TPBS since they sound like they certainly set us on a road to Onslaught, but sadly they had to make room for execrably stupid Terry Kavanagh X-Men Unlimited inventory stories.
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Jun 23, 2021 19:33
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I also had that issue as a kid. Can I gush about that cover a little bit? Holy moley.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:17
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How Wonderful! posted:Sounds like those could have been nice to have in the Road to Onslaught TPBS since they sound like they certainly set us on a road to Onslaught, but sadly they had to make room for execrably stupid Terry Kavanagh X-Men Unlimited inventory stories. It sure would since Onslaught specifically says he learned how to do it from that event when he does it to Jean early in the actual event.
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Jun 23, 2021 23:46
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That cover really is an amazing design piece.
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Jun 23, 2021 23:50
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Ok, X-Men #45, October 1995. This is another double-sized anniversary issue, like Uncanny #325. The thing about these double-sized issues is that they really, really play up the differences between Lobdell and Nicieza. Lobdell is about stringing together a handful of high-impact moments, whether on the level of a page or a scene or even a single panel. For better or worse he's a very splash-friendly writer, because, like Jeph Loeb on one end of the scale or, to be honest, I'd even say people like Walt Simonson or even Kirby on the other, I feel like he understands the basic tempo of the 22-page superhero comics as a series of accelerations leading to jawdropping, suspended moments of spectacle, followed by another acceleration. Obviously some of the people I've named are better at this style of story-telling than others (hint: it's the two that actually know how to draw as well as write) but whatever, it's a perfectly valid way of approaching the very peculiar form of the single superhero comic book issue. The point being, it makes his books read very fast-- even his down-time issues, which can tend towards the talky, because even the more overstuffed word bubbles are about building momentum and then delivering little pops of catharsis. Nicieza is different, and if his writing has never really synched up with the times in such a way to be "stylish," I think his brand of narrative hyper-density in the mid and late 90s could certainly be seen as informing the way that some writers began to approach the form in the aughts and beyond-- I guess people normally cite Morrison for this kind of thing, but let's be honest, Morrison is doing something quite different. People like Si Spurrier, Al Ewing, Kieren Gillen-- every panel matters, every scene demands the reader's attention, and as a result reading a single issue is less like slurping down a bowl of soup soup and more like thoughtfully chewing on a big portabella. Which is to say I've put off writing this entry because this issue feels long. It is saying a lot, which is discouraging because in keeping with the loosey-goosey 90s approach to continuity and long-term planning, a lot of what it's saying is fraught with meaning that never pays off, really. As is to be expected with... pretty much any pre-Gillen appearance of Mr. Sinister. It is also Fabian Nicieza's last issue of the title, a kind of ignominious end to a run that never really saw him given the respect or breathing rooming I think he deserved. He was brought in with issue #12 following the departure of Jim Lee as writer/co-plotter (with Lobdell)-- a sensible pick, since he'd also successfully segued X-Force into stability post-Liefeld-- and chugged along in the interim during a very very thankless period. Per Nicieza: quote:"I never wanted to leave that title, and never felt my firing was justified. ... I don't recall being given a reason, and I also don't recall asking for one. ... Considering it was a Top 10 selling title at the time, I felt it was a wholly unjustified decision" quote:RV: What do you consider your seminal work? The one book you feel most readers probably immediately associate with the name Fabian Nicieza. Tell me about that work, and how you feel about it today. So there's a lot of bathos. Nicieza is laying crumbs that he will never get to follow up on, and the plots that are seeded here are eventually dropped or fumbled by other writers. But on a moment to moment level it works. He respects the issues that have come before him, does some great work with Rogue and Bobby. It's a weird teaser of hypothetical good X-Men issues that never got written. After this we have 5 issues in which Lobdell is writing both titles, and then Mark Waid comes in with #51, where he will stay until #55, a brief and tumultuous run distinguished by editorial mandates and creative clashes. Lobdell would then plot and co-write both titles through to 1998, assisted by perpetual journeymen Ralph Macchio and Ben Raab. Oh well. Nobody ever said the Onslaught era was actually good I guess. But on its own...this is a good issue. We begin with another gatefold cover, drawn by Andy Kubert:  This is a nice pinup but also a crisp hint to the distinction between this and #325. While the Uncanny anniversary issue was a big team vs. team fight with a jam-packed cover, this is just four characters-- Iceman, Rogue, and Gambit, with Sinister kind of looming in the background. Which is about accurate. This issue is not a subtle character study, but it is a character study, and wisely hones in on these three particular X-Men and the complicated tensions that have been building up between them. Bobby and Rogue are still on their field trip, heading inexorably to Seattle, where Rogue hopes to follow a mysterious lead from her brief absorptive contact with Gambit. We open with her freaking out and attacking Bobby, who it appears has become a bit of a nudzh in the car. It's really just a pretense for Kuburt to draw some cool shots of their powers, and to reiterate that something is wrong with Rogue-- something that is making her erratic, and which she wants to get to the bottom of. Significantly, we also get to see Kubert kind of experimenting with new ways to show Bobby's powers-- a pay-off to the long simmering subplot about Emma Frost tapping into his potential, as well as a nod to his more spiky and powerful AoA incarnation.  In particular I think this page, in which he becomes a kind of wedge-shaped ice pillar in order to rise up and talk to a hovering Rogue, is effective and strange without downplaying the humanity of the scene.  Meanwhile Gambit is already in Seattle, hoping to pre-empt Rogue from discovering whatever it is she's trying to discover (again, this will all pay off... sort of... in UXM #350, although at this point it's very unclear to what extent that reveal has been pinned down). His thought captions are, weirdly, arranged like scattered playing cards. It makes him read like a lunatic, and I don't know how much that's intentional. He's certainly shown to be kind of riding the ragged edge of a panic attack, or something. He's looking and acting rough. Interestingly, while Rogue and Gambit are extravagantly freaking out and brooding in their own ways, perpetual underdog Bobby is shown to be quietly assuming a calming and bolstering influence. He defuses a situation in which Rogue almost absorbs some college kids out of boredom and frustration, and prevents a bar from collapsing when everybody else is just barging around. It's an interesting way to move past the melodrama surrounding him and Emma Frost and his untapped potential. While Lobdell seems to have wanted to keep mining the tension between Bobby and Emma and his neuroses, Nicieza seems to be saying-- yes, he's already there, not in showy or flashy ways, but he's using his powers confidently and creatively to solve problems. He just needed an occasion to rise to. I like it and I like the way it inflects the impulse-- an impulse I share-- to read pre-out Iceman stories as still reflective of a queer story or at least a story about a queer guy. It makes sense in that reading-- his normal X-Men milieu, his life at the mansion, was safe-- it didn't challenge him, it didn't give him any need to break out of his cozy role as the emotionally stunted prankster. It didn't make him ask hard questions about himself. But now he's growing a little bit, he's kind of just instinctively falling into newer, more sophisticated ways of acting and thinking. It really does work I think. Anyway, the straights are at it again, fighting each other, flying through ceilings and charging up their cards with explosive kinetic energy, mon ami. Bobby and Gambit are left earthbound as Rogue flies off-- so at least two of the pieces to get this story moving forward are together, while Rogue, now separated from her grounding influence, is flying around just careening towards the story's endgoal. Again-- just simple, sensible storytelling, reasonable decisions about who is in a scene with who and what and why people are doing, which is a huge breath of fresh air. In a one page cutaway we find Graydon Creed being encouraged to run for president in 1996 by a sinister guy named Clay who... as far as I can tell never shows up again. Oh well! I suppose we can just enjoy the sensible storytelling when we can get it. Anyway, Rogue follows her gut memories to an abandoned theater, where Gambit correctly predicts she'll be. Something very bad happened here, and while Rogue has not yet pieced it together, Gambit is terrified that she will. They all rendezvous and Rogue and Gambit have an actually pretty candid conversation about trust and intimacy while Iceman, I don't know, meanders around off panel. Since this is a 1995 X-Men comic, this soon descends into Rogue punching all sorts of things and inadvertently collapsing large chunks of theater around Gambit, giving Andy Kubert an opportunity to punctuate the relationship drama with pictures of flipping around and lunging and dodging and stuff.  Basically, the gist is-- Gambit is scared that his secret coming out will ruin not only his relationship with Rogue, but his entire second chance with the X-Men, his opportunity to reinvent himself as a hero. Rogue is scared of finding out his secret to, which exists in friction with her anger at him for so closely holding onto a secret, this huge wedge in their relationship. Essentially she makes the very reasonable point-- they can't have a relationship with this huge "I have a terrible secret and I'll never tell you" hanging over it. Intimacy issues aside, they can't begin to move forward without trust. It's an entirely sound way for a character respond to being in a will-they-won't-they thing with a brooding 90s Secrets guy. Gambit responds by doubling down and being a huge weirdo.  Ladies, don't let men taste your sadness unless they're willing to open up. Anyway, after dithering-- it's really made clear that Gambit is being kind of a hypocrite but is also deeply afraid of revealing himself, so it kind of holds together-- he takes his glove off and offers to let Rogue absorb his memories again, to have access to all of his mind.  And she walks away. She gives a brief speech about her place in the X-Men, the version of herself that she saw as being made for Gambit, and decides to just leave it all behind for awhile, flying off. And in fact she will be gone from the main X-Men team for a bit-- aside from a guest appearance in X-Man #11 in January 1996, she's gone from comics entirely until X-Men #52, which shows her off doing her own thing, and then isn't really "with" the X-Men again until #55. So that's actually a pretty good, impactful gap, as far as dramatic team exits go. Bobby goes home, Gambit decides to linger in Seattle for a few days, recovering from getting beaten up and getting his head cleared. There's a brief scene of him coughing which... I imagine in 1995 would have set of Legacy Virus alarm bells? I did not read this in real time and in 1995 was not super tapped into fan culture, so maybe somebody else can chip in here. Anyway out of the shadows steps Mr. Sinister in full feather-cape mode, and we learn that he's central to whatever terrible backstory Gambit is hiding. Is he vague? Yes. Is he sinister?  Oh yes. So there we have it. A tight, structurally sound melodrama issue with nice art and good character moments. Gambit and Rogue both come off as impulsive and immature here-- Gambit much moreso-- but you know what, it works. They're both people with a poo poo ton of baggage that has, at this point, never really been resolved, so it's good to remember that these are really flawed characters who have a lot of emotional impediments between themselves and a healthy relationship. It all just makes sense and works. But you know... all good things must end and in X-Men #46 we have Lobdell doing the X-Babies so maybe just unbookmark this thread and go look at QCS or something and save yourselves the heartache. But next is X-Men Annual #95 featuring more Mr. Sinister, the late great John Paul Leon, and J.M. DeMatteis!
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Jul 7, 2021 16:17
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Thinking about the Nicieza X-Men we never got is such a bummer, and this issue really drives that home. For the main X-books t's all downhill from here, folks.
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Jul 7, 2021 21:50
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Even Remy's offer to Rogue feels weird here. He knows that she doesn't hold onto the memories she absorbs unless she holds on long enough to make it permanent, like Carol Danvers. But then, Remy feels like he's got a bit of a death wish in this era, soooo...
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Oct 11, 2023 21:50
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Now that's doing your research:
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Oct 20, 2023 13:19
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Growing up in the 90's, I was never big into comics. I knew OF Age of Apocalypse, or Batman: Knightfall (the ad just being the image of Bane breaking Batman's spine is ingrained in my mind forever) and I know Onslaught from MvC. I knew the characters from the (really excelent for their time) animated series. It's just in the last few years with DC and Marvel releasing omnibuses of the storylines that I've had a chance to read through Age of Apocalypse and Knightfall. Age of Apocalypse was actually a lot better than I was expecting, sure it was still 90's edgy, but you had things like Victor Creed being an outright hero. When I started reading this thread, I was going to ask if the disdain for the Onslaught storyline was because it was actually bad, or just because it was told over a long period of time like Knightfall. I... we haven't even gotten to the storyline yet and I've lost all interest in picking up any TPB associated with it. I'll definitely contine to hate-read this thread, but so far what I've seen is a stark reminder of why I hated comics for so long. How many titles have we crossed over so far?
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Oct 27, 2023 17:11
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