Godel x Uzumeri #6: Back in the UGGU (X-Men 120-124, Annual #3)
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Uzumeri: What up, X-Nerds! We’re back for another look at the classic Claremont run, this time attacking a six-issue arc involving evil Canadians, inner demons, Arcade, the gullibility of Colossus, and more evidence that George Perez really, really, really likes drawing beefy, hairy-chested, half-naked dudes.
Godel: SPECIFICALLY: The X-Men battle ALPHA FLIGHT, a Canadian super-team hoping to recapture Wolverine; the team finally gets home to the deserted mansion, and has some down time (as Storm battles some JUNKIES) before a run-in with high-concept assassin ARCADE. Meanwhile, in the Annual, they battle ARKON before helping him save his barbarian planet from certain doom.
SUBPLOT WATCH: Lots of Jean stuff – she worries Moira with her power levels, and also bumps into a DASHING GENTLEMAN who secretly is plotting to control her or something. Meanwhile, Cyclops is dating COLLEEN WING, Wolverine is seeing MARIKO, Colossus has DOUBTS about being an X-Man, and Banshee’s VOICE is still gone.
Uzumeri: Let’s start with the two-part Alpha Flight arc, which makes Canada seem about five hundred times cooler than it actually is. No pun intended. But really: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s third most evil act after hitting Margaret and being friends with that devil Castro? BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR WEAPON X.
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Godel: Dude, I had no idea your country’s government was so sinister and elaborate. I mean, this might be the only time I’ve ever seen an actual sitting head of government show up in a comic surrounded by observation monitors and helmeted goons, going “I want that man BACK! And if he resigned, then you just make him UN-RESIGN, GOT IT?”
Uzumeri: Not true: there was the Ayatollah Khomeini in Batman: A Death in the Family. He made the Joker the diplomatic envoy to the UN from Iran.
Godel: Wow. Now I’m thinking there should be like a comics League of Evil Nations type thing, where all these guys get together and plot world domination.
Uzumeri: I give you every comic published during World War II. My favorite is Mister Mind’s Monster Society of Evil, get ready for this:
Mister Mind – A two-inch talking worm with telepathic powers and a genius intellect. Archibald – A satyr and graduate of the Monster School. An army of termites and worms. Artificial bodies Mr. Mind could mentally inhabit consisting of: Goatman (a half-man, half-goat creature) the first recruit. A robot that seemingly indestructible. An giant purple octopus with a human face that constantly grinning. A circus strongman with strength rivalling that of Captain Marvel himself. Bonzo – A fanged hunchback with large eyes. Captain Nazi – A superstrong Nazi warrior who assisted in the first plot. Crocodile-Men – A race of humanoid crocodiles from the planetoid Punkus. Herkimer – A Crocodile-Man who is Mr. Mind’s second-in-command. Jorrk – The greatest scientist of the Crocodile-Men and one of Mr. Mind’s three lieutenants alongside Dr. Smashi and Herr Phoul. Sylvester – A Crocodile-Man and one of Mr. Mind’s preferred gunners.
Godel: Uh…
Uzumeri: Dobbin – Mr. Mind’s seahorse steed. Dome Attendants – Creatures that tend to Mr. Mind’s undersea base, consisting of a Pig-Man, a Goblin, a Werewolf, an Ogre, and a midget submarine captain. The midget was the last of Mr. Mind’s minions to leave him. Dr. Smashi – A short Japanese scientist […]. Phoul. Dr. Hashi – A spiky-haired Japanese scientist. Dr. Peeyu – A tall Japanese scientist. Doctor Sivana – The “world’s wickedest scientist.” Evil Eye – A one-eyed humanoid monster with the ability to hypnotize. Herr Phoul – A bald Nazi scientist with a monocle[…].
Godel: Well, I do appreciate the thoroughness – no team is complete without both a short Japanese scientist AND a tall Japanese scientist.
Uzumeri: Oh, but: Adolf Hitler and all the resources of Nazi Germany.
Godel: WHAT
Uzumeri: There’s more!
Hydra – A head-regenerating serpentine monster created by Mr. Mind. IBAC – A criminal who sold his soul to Lucifer for superstrength and durability which he gets by saying Ibac. Jeepers – The last of a race of bat monsters. Marmaduke – A criminal with big ears and a fat face. Monster Brigade – Undersea monsters under Mr. Mind’s command consisting of a sperm whale, a giant octopus, a hammerhead shark, and a huge sea-serpent. Monster Professors – Teachers at Mr. Mind’s Monster School, consisting of a human, a Crocodile-Man, a fanged monster, and a humanoid with the head of a hippopotamus. Monster Students – Pupils at the Monster School that consist of Human tough guys, Crocodile-Men, and a horned black demon. Mr. Banjo – A criminal and leaker of secrets via coded music from his banjo that were played on a popular radio show.
Godel: Can we bring that guy back? Like, not even as a villain – I just think coded banjo music would make for a good experimental niche scene.
Uzumeri: Benito Mussolini and all the resources of Fascist Italy. Nippo – A master swordsman and spy for the Japanese. Synthetic Animals – Fake animals created by Mr. Mind. They consisted of Oscar (a giant lobster), Oliver (a giant octopus with human hands), Ophelius (a huge ram), and Oliphant (a dragon). Hideki Tojo and all the resources of Imperial Japan. Tough guys – Generic human enforcers of Mr. Mind’s wishes. The notable ones include a tommy-gun wielder, a cloaked swordsman, a beret-wearer, a stereotypical “Goomba,” and a Gatsby cap-wearer.
Godel: Wow. Just, wow.
Uzumeri: Mister Mind, man.
Godel: So their team includes a giant octopus, a bunch of random goons, and also Mussolini and Tojo?
Uzumeri: AND HITLER!
Godel: I love that Mister Mind got those guys together and then apparently, I guess, said, “This just isn’t enough! Get me a man with the head of a hippopotamus!
Uzumeri: By the way – this is Mister Mind:
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Godel: wowwwwwwwwwwwww. I can’t believe I’ve never heard about this before. Awesome.
Uzumeri: We *will* get to Mister Mind in our DC run. You’ll NEVER GUESS who revamps him.
BUT I digress hugely. Alpha Flight!
Godel: Yeaaaah, so Canada wants Wolverine back, because they’ve sunk a lot of money into turning him from a “feral and wild” man into what he is today. While the details of that process remain obscure, it sure sounds like more than just the “years of hypnosis” we heard about back in #96.
Uzumeri: Yeah, I do love how they all know he’s completely unstable, and yet Jimmy Hudson says in his thought bubbles that he totally was hoping to get Wolverine to lead the team.
Godel: Hudson really makes the story work for me, especially after so many one-dimensional villains. He’s not exactly villainous here (Byrne is clearly pitching these guys as a plausible super-team), but they’re the antagonists in the story and it’s nice seeing him, like, fretting about his crappy leadership, and worrying that he’s injured Banshee.
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What’d you think of this arc? I was actually pleasantly surprised by it, since I always sort of thought I hated Alpha Flight.
Uzumeri: I liked it a lot, honestly. Northstar is a DICK, though. I didn’t realize he was so standoffish from day one. I guess like Aurora says, HE’S THE FIGHTER, SHE’S THE LOVER
Godel: Hahah. Also, I love that a guy with super-speed powers takes the secret identity of a ski champion. Like…isn’t that sort of unfair? Aren’t you supposed to sort of slum it?
Uzumeri: It’s hugely unfair. With great power comes great douchebaggery for this guy.
Godel: One thing about this arc is that it’s really well-paced. Like, in two issues we get the entire repertoire of Claremont/Byrne plotting tricks: an unknown force guides the X-Men into what they know is a trap. The odds are against them, they’re separated, some of them get captured, then they turn the tables and just barely eke out a draw. Bam.
Plus, the whole sequence with their airplane being guided to Canada by a mysterious blizzard, while pretty cool in its own right, is also clearly a refinement of the flying circus wagon thing from the Magneto story, where now the X-Men don’t even know who is taking control, let alone where they’re going or why.
Uzumeri: I can’t figure out if I love or hate the way Wolverine escapes the *armored truck* completely off panel. I don’t know if they’d earned that with Wolverine, yet.
Godel: Yeah, that did feel kind of…rushed or something. It does provide a character plot payoff, Wolverine gets to hear how much everybody is willing to risk in order to rescue him, without them knowing he’s there, all that.
Which also means we’ve got the beginnings of the longer-term Wolverine/Cyclops relationship. It’ll still be the rebel versus the boss for a while, but we’re starting to see that under that is a kind of respect.
Uzumeri: Yeah. This is a story where — I mean, if I’d been reading this month to month, I’d be like, “oh hell yeah! Now we get to find out more about Wolverine!” when this arc hit. It’s only with hindsight that we’re even tempted to go “awwwww, not motherfucking Alpha Flight.”
Oh, not NOW, Arctic Owl!
Godel: Good call. We’ll get some more time with them towards the very end of the Byrne run, but they actually come off pretty well here, and plausibly powerful enough as foes for the X-Men.
Uzumeri: Yeah, they also kind of set them up as an anti-X-Men, you know? Especially with the mention of them possibly having their own Cerebro.
Godel: Definitely. There could also be some good material with them being a government team while the X-Men are outsiders, but the X-Men aren’t really full-fledged outlaws yet so that’s more of a latent thing.
Uzumeri: “I don’t care if they’ve got DEFINITE connections with the BOY SCOUTS!”
Godel: It would have been awesome if Pierre Trudeau had a permanent Professor X role in Alpha Flight, sending them on missions and stuff.
Uzumeri: Especially since Claremont writes him as such a dick. Which makes sense, I guess, since Byrne draws, like, the most unflattering caricature.
Godel:And meanwhile, yeah, we get a lot further with Wolverine’s character, and hints of his background. There’s a letter in 124, though, requesting “Also, could you please clear up the mystery surrounding Wolverine? Each issue brings the reader some new insight into his past and it would be nice if you would pull it all together.”
Uzumeri: Poor guy.
Godel: Can you imagine having to wait possibly as long as several months before the no-doubt soon-to-come story where Wolverine’s origin will be told, probably in a nice, done-in-one flashback issue between stories? Professor X got one, why not Logan?
Uzumeri: It must have been agony. I mean, surely after another year or two he must have figured out it wasn’t coming. When were the particulars of Weapon X revealed? Was that all Barry Windsor-Smith in Marvel Comics Presents?
Godel: That’s the meat of it, I think. Generally speaking, Claremont’s Wolverine material later on (ie, after Byrne) stays far away from Canada and Weapon X, instead loading him up with Madripoor, forgotten ties to Nick Fury and Cap, etc. I think the logic really was, “the appeal of this character is that he’s mysterious, so let’s keep adding mysteries.”
But at least here, Byrne’s influence is paying off, and not just in that the story is set in Calgary and a whole bunch of suspiciously detailed-looking extras are addressing each other by conspicuous first names. Wolverine is settling in to something sort of like your “wise old samurai” pretty quickly.
Uzumeri: Yeah, exactly – he went from FUCK YALL to IM THE WISE OLD MAN in like three issues. It seems like they used Mariko as a catalyst for a lot of that change, actually.
Godel: Yeah, all the “there’s somethin’ about that woman…” stuff. I do love the scene where he slips a flower into the window of her limo. While all the while he reminisces about the good ol’ days with, uh, “Cracklin’ Rosa.”
Uzumeri: Haha, god, did anyone ever portray CRACKLIN’ ROSA? I just imagine some gigantic woman who runs a bar or something.
Godel: Yup! The issue of Classic X-Men that reprints #120 also features a backup story by Tom Orzechowski, featuring Cracklin’ Rosa taking bets on Logan as he arm-wrestles bar patrons. Art by John Bolton. I should take a close look at that whenever I do my spiel on Classic X-Men.
Uzumeri: Ha! That’s really interesting. Kind of figured they’d do that.
Godel: Check the cover – I THINK that we can see Cracklin’ Rosa in there.
Uzumeri: Is she the one holding the cash? If so, that’s EXACTLY how I pictured her.
Godel: I just wish all of Wolverine’s mysterious past loves and foes would have turned out to be thinly-veiled renamings of Neil Diamond songs. They could have pitched it as a really dark, sinister, Daredevil-esque graphic novel, in which Madripoorian crime lord CHERRY CHERRI murders Wolverine’s loves, CRACKLIN’ ROSA and SWEET CAROLINE.
The narration boxes would be like “Their screams rose, a piercing sound that would have broken any man. But no one heard at all… not even the chair.” I give you… WOLVERINE: THANK THE LORD FOR THE NIGHT TIME.
Uzumeri: ….Wait, is Cracklin’ Rosa a Neil Diamond song?
Godel: … uh…. Forget I just said all that.
Uzumeri: Sorry, I just can’t think of Neil Diamond anymore without thinking of that Will Ferrell VH1 Storytellers SNL skit.
Godel: After the Alpha Flight thing there’s a trademark downtime issue – Professor X, Cyclops, Colossus and Phoenix get character subplots advanced, and just for the sake of having some action, Storm goes to the New York neighborhood where she was born, and finds it full of TEENAGE JUNKIES.
Uzumeri: You know, kudos to Claremont for doing this without making it seem like a PSA. This could easily have gone wrong in forty different ways.
I mean, it’s totally a Liberal Anger At Society scene, but he and Byrne sell it.
Godel: It probably helps that it just ends with the junkies attacking her and getting beaten, with help from Luke and Misty. There’s nothing resembling an actual fix of the problem, and the story is more about Storm being bummed than about, yknow, getting to see the perspective of a troubled teen who was led into drugs or whatever.
I still think it’s pretty cheesy, but I might have been biased by first seeing this in Classic X-Men, where the cover depicts a weeping Storm looking down at the junkies. “CRY FOR THE CHILDREN!”
Uzumeri: Yeah, exactly. Honestly, though, I really liked this issue, although it seems like a LOT is happening off-panel – for instance, in this one, Logan walks away from Mariko’s all “I’M GONNA COME BACK, THOUGH!”, and then next issue they’re just calmly having tea. I was expecting some sort of confrontation!
Godel: I also would have liked to see them ACTUALLY ARRIVING BACK at the mansion, rather than just fixing it up. I mean they’ve been gone forever, surely the scene of them showing up at the door and finding it deserted would have been nice? Maybe it happened in some other comic. But there’s a lot crammed in this issue as it is, I guess, with cutaways to Jean and the SINISTER MUSTACHIOED STRANGER, and Professor X hanging out in space.
Uzumeri: Hell, they even give the stranger a name this issue, man. He’s Wyngarde. Is this the first appearance of MASTERMIND?
Godel: Nope! Mastermind was a member of the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants – he’s one of the X-Men’s oldest foes.
Uzumeri: Wow. I didn’t know that. Did he go by Wyngarde then? So like, longtime fans were immediately like “ohhhhhhh shiiiiiiiiiiit!”?
Godel: No, the name is a new alias ginned up by Claremont. I guess some die-hards might have guessed from the shadow that he casts on the wall, but when he gets unveiled it’s definitely played for maximum payoff.
Meanwhile, as Jean chats with Wyngarde, Scott’s relationship with Iron Fist cast member Colleen Wing keeps moving forward.
Uzumeri: I love how Jean ISN’T EVEN DEAD, Cyclops is getting all up in Colleen’s business basically due to a dead phone line.
Godel: Yeah, that entire plot really needed a second look, especially because the X-Men are spending a lot of time with Misty Knight, who saw Jean alive before she left town.
Uzumeri: “Drop by any ol’ time!” was ridiculous, I love how she had to prepare that before the date, just in case!
Godel: This is one of the weirdest relationships in X-Men history really. It goes nowhere, but it goes there FAST; how long have they been dating?! They just met in the Japan story with Moses Magnum!
Uzumeri: And now he gets the key to her apartment! I’m just going to say this: in Cyclops’s life, EVERY LOVE INTEREST EVER is an inexplicable Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Godel: Oh, God, totally, MPDGs all the way, or at least GIEWWHNBTDTBUWSOOTBs. Who would ever put up with this guy on a date?
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Uzumeri: They all show up out of nowhere, fall in love with him for basically no reason, and decide they’re going to FIX HIM UP!
Godel: Yeah, totally. “Am I stuffy?” Talk about your unlikely nerd fantasies, this awesome samurai crime-fighter is going to take the time to break you out of your bubble, in fact declare that she’s “just the one to do it.” What is he bringing to the table?
Uzumeri: Seriously, he better be named Cyclops for another reason for this to be justified.
Godel: ZING. But even in the context of this comic it doesn’t really make sense. Jean’s not dead, so this can only go so far. And it’s not like Claremont’s writing Iron Fist anymore.
Uzumeri: Is he not? I mean, they mention that fight with the Living Monolith that occurred in PM/IF apparently.
Godel: Yeah, I think that’s just being a good MU shoutout guy – that story was written by Jo Duffy. The other big thing in this issue is Colossus being sorta bummed out and homesick, but that gets paid off more in the following two-parter, which pits the X-Men against a figure who we’ll be seeing again (repeatedly): the pint-sized goofball novelty villain ARCADE.
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Uzumeri: I thought this would be his first appearance, too, but it seems he captured Spider-Man and Captain Britain in an old issue of… Marvel Two-in-One?
Godel: Marvel Team-Up. Which was a reprint/colorization of a Marvel UK feature by…Chris Claremont and John Byrne! I think that helps this a lot, actually, since unlike Moses Magnum or Petrified Man this is someone that the creators clearly have an attachment to.
Uzumeri: And with good reason, man. I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, having hated on the guy before, but that was a wicked Arcade story.
Godel: I was wondering how’d you take it! I have some issues here and there but this is actually just as fun as I remember it from The Warhawk & Arcade Shitty Villains Collection.
Uzumeri: I mean, his origin actually just makes him seem legitimately menacing in his apathy and ennui.
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And let’s be honest, ridiculous, overcomplicated deathtraps are a sad, lost art in superhero comics.
Godel: Arcade stories have got to be tough to pull off, because the whole thing is that he’s the guy in the control room setting up death traps. You sort of know how it’s gonna go down: people will escape their death traps, or team up and thus use their powers against the death trap designed for somebody else. The villain himself has no direct confrontation with the heroes, and no stake in the matter because he’s just a hired goon. It helps a lot that he clearly just enjoys the hell out of what he’s doing.
And, yeah, the writer has to be able to actually think of cool deathtraps. Wolverine’s funhouse mirror thing was a little lame, but I liked Byrne’s drawings of the distorted Wolverines.
Uzumeri: “Rooms with SPIKES closing in, false floors above SNAKE PITS… DEDICATED villains used to spend DAYS preparing DEATH TRAPS and now it’s all cocaine, a bullet to the HEAD, and we’re off to the local LAPDANCE BAR.” – El Sombrero, Batman #669
Godel: Hahaha, that’s great…especially because the guy ends up having such an amazingly goofy Silver Age villain name.
Uzumeri: The monologue ends with “You kids ready for an OLD TIME experience? Courtesy of EL SOMBRERO” as he points to his lapel pin of a smiling skull wearing a sombrero, man. But we’ll get to that, someday!
Reading these comics makes me think two things: #1, Arcade should have been the final boss of X-Men: The Arcade Game.
Godel: hahahahah, and #2?
Uzumeri: That I really wish Morrison had gotten to Arcade on his New X-Men run.
Godel: Man, yeah, that would have been great!
Uzumeri: Because reading this issue, seeing him peeled back to his core concept like this, there’s SO MUCH to do with updating that.
Godel: Yeah – there’s a lot of ways you could take Arcade in the present day. You could scrap the gaming thing entirely and make it about this spoiled playboy murderer – – actually, he would be a great Batman villain for that reason.
Uzumeri: Not breaking, not changing, just updating. More complex, technological, 21st-century deathtraps, more invasive voyeurism, the obvious angle of livecasting it on the web and making millions…
Godel: Or you could keep the pinball stuff and really just have fun with the idea of this OLD SCHOOL murderer, not just because he’s doing deathtraps like a Silver Age villain but also because he’s still using 1960s deathtrap technology because it’s more authentic and physical and so on. Like, basically, the villainous version of an Internet Pinball Database aficionado.
Uzumeri: Or large-scale deathtraps, like entire cities and daily routines, meant to kill you… Arcade’s ultimate deathtrap: making your life so shitty you commit suicide.
Godel: Good call, especially because he’s already set up as being interested in like brainwashing and stuff like that, it wouldn’t be outside of his repertoire.
Uzumeri: I also love how he plans like forty steps ahead – he’s totally prepared for everyone escaping their traps and getting fucked with by brainwashed Colossus. Because apparently Colossus is the most gullible person in existence.
Godel: Yeah, wow. The visual of him dressed as THE PROLETARIAN was kind of worth it, but it really was like the most abrupt brainwashing ever.
Uzumeri: “The state says you’re a traitor!” “That’s ridiculous! Wait, what? The state? OH NO, WHAT HAVE I DONE, GIVE ME THESE INCREDIBLY DUMB LOOKING OVERALLS”
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Godel: This is one spot where there’s something to be said for decompressed pacing…it would just make more sense to do that as a longer story. Except that would mean six issues in Murderworld and I’m not sure it can really survive that.
Uzumeri: Hahahaha, yeah.
Godel: But it’s a shame they never really do more with this Colossus-as-patriotic-commie thing. I guess it would have played kind of weirdly with the Cold War still on and him being a hero, but there would have been possibilities for stories there, or at least arguments he could have gotten into with the other characters.
Granted, that might have just ended up with him like, learning to embrace and love the capitalism he was raised to despise, which would be terrible.
Uzumeri: The thing is that there’s basically no modern explanation for this story, with the current timeline it must have occurred post-Cold War. Today’s Colossus has *none* of the communist stuff going on, and with good reason.
Godel: Actually, I was thinking about that, and I believe I have an explanation worthy of a No-Prize.
Uzumeri: Hahahahaha, go for it!
Godel: Check this out: Colossus isn’t from Russia or Ukraine, but some smaller, Russian-speaking Soviet republic we never heard of before. Maybe wedged between Latveria and Transia. They’re not a major world power, but when the USSR broke up, this one state decided to stick with Communism. They’ve been at it ever since, or maybe just recently are making the switch over or something. All previous references to Russia are just Colossus trying to make things simple for his American friends who have never heard of any of these other countries.
Uzumeri: Haha, that actually makes sense, although only regarding what we’ve seen so far, not later issues.
Godel: I mean, yeah, a ton of details would have to be fudged, it’s not exactly the cleanest retcon in the world. But it would mean being able to do stories about him going back to the old country and see how everything’s changed etc etc., without running into this huge timeline problem.
Uzumeri: I’m pretty sure they just do it anyways and pretend Russia was never communist. I dunno, I mean, other than this particular story, are there any other issues coming up that really rely on Russia being communist?
Godel: Hmm, honestly not really. There might be some inserted material from Classic X-Men that covers him adapting to American culture or whatever, but that really gets brushed under the carpet in the main title.
Anyway, another thing the Arcade story points up, that I think often gets overlooked is that Claremont, despite his angsty reputation, is always doing offbeat novelty villain stories. Arcade will show up like three or four more times, and then he basically gets replaced by Mojo doing the same kind of thing.
Uzumeri: Yeah, that’s true, although are there really any examples other than that? I mean, he does a lot of STORIES with Arcade and Mojo, but he didn’t really create a lot of offbeat novelty villains.
Godel: No, but he uses Impossible Man a couple of times, there are three different stories where a teen girl character tells a fairy tale based on the actual characters, Kulan Gath turning New York into Conan the Barbarian sort of counts for just zaniness (although it’s played relatively straight), I’m probably forgetting a few things… it’s not the dominant tendency in the book by any means, but it’s certainly part of the vibe.
Uzumeri: What was Claremont writing other than this at this point? Or was this where he was getting out ALL of his joneses?
Godel: At the time of these particular issues, I think he’s also got Marvel Team-Up and John Carter of Mars, having just wrapped up on Ms. Marvel, and gearing up to do a year or so of Dr. Strange. I’ve never read any of those comics though, so I don’t know whether he used them to work out other kinds of things, or if they all have about the same mix going on.
I would put down money that they feature some mind control, though.
Uzumeri: I would not take up that bet. Well, in that case, he clearly had a whole bunch of irons in the fire, although I imagine Uncanny eventually becomes his main focus.
Godel: I’ll put together a timeline eventually that’ll give us a sense of the guy’s workload, but yeah, basically from a certain point forward he’s the X guy. We’ll really start to see that once New Mutants launches.
So finally we have the annual featuring Arkon the Barbarian From Outer Space, which is grouped with these issues because that’s where it goes in continuity, but about which I have precious little to say really.
Uzumeri: “So, George, you want to do an annual of X-Men?” “Sure!” “What do you want to draw?” “Beefy naked guys and chest hair. Lots of chest hair. Also, shoulderpads.” “I’ll see what I can do!”
Seriously, it wasn’t even Conan, it was more He-Man.
Godel: How much of this is just Terry Austin’s inks though? Like, he really sort of wipes out the difference between Perez and Byrne as pencillers – I think there was MORE chest hair back in the Mesmero circus issue with savage Wolverine.
Uzumeri: Oh, dude, if I know anything about George Perez at all, it was him. The best part is the last page, where the X-Men are all decked out in those shoulderpad harnesses that show off their chests and shit.
Godel: Well, still. Over on ILX, user Ward Fowler made the comment that Austin got his start as “Dick Giordano’s body hair and rubble assistant.”
Uzumeri: Ahahahahaah! Yeah, rubble must be insanely time-consuming. Arkon sucks, btw.
Godel: Yeah, this is pretty stock stuff – aliens come and kidnap Storm because they think her powers can save their planet and they couldn’t find Thor. The X-Men fight their way back to the alien planet and discover another way to save the day, everybody makes friends and then they go home. Claremont must have basically liked it though, because he uses almost the same exact plot a few years later to send everybody to Asgard….and they use Arkon’s magic thunderbolts to get there.
Uzumeri: That seems kind of weird. Do they reuse the same magic thunderbolts?
Godel: I think maybe Arkon leaves them a bag of spares or something. Which Cyclops is surprisingly skilled at using to get to specific mystical dimensions. Maybe it goes with being an expert pilot.
Uzumeri: I find it so bizarre you’ve read so many comics with Asgard, and yet not a single fucking issue of Thor.
Godel: I know! I know! I think I relate to Asgard through the other characters. We might revisit that when we get to the big Asgard story, because it’s actually pretty interesting – – for some of the New Mutants it’s like a dream come true and they want to stay there. Whereas, for people like Thor where Asgard is their home, I just don’t really care.
Uzumeri: You should really read both the Langridge/Samnee Thor: The Mighty Avenger stuff and the Gillen/Fraction (and maybe JMS) runs, man, but we’ve established this before.
Godel: So yeah – ladies and gentlemen, George Perez drawing the X-Men!
(Click for the full-sized image.)
It’s a nice thing to see. You can imagine some alternate world where he replaced John Byrne, and Dave Cockrum did Teen Titans.
Uzumeri: Yeah, I could actually kind of see that happening. It would have been interesting to see Cockrum’s designs for like Raven and Deathstroke, since that was really his #1 thing, and he pretty much ruled at it.
Godel: So! Sorry for the long posting delay, folks – David’s been busy at work and I’m teaching part-time again, so the time’s been hard to come by. We may be intermittently biweekly for the next couple months, but we have fun stuff coming up so it’ll be worth the wait!
NEXT TIME: We return to Grant Morrison at DC, with BATMAN: GOTHIC! Our next X-Men post is a doozy: we’ll face down PROTEUS and also take a look at the first appearances of KITTY PRYDE and EMMA FROST….and, perhaps most importantly of all, Alison Blaire, the disco-powered DAZZLER!
Uzumeri: I’m hyped as hell for this. This is where shit starts getting real.
