Yesterday, we looked at a comic that had way too little going on inside. Today, it's the reverse, a story that is
so crammed,
so over-stuffed that it approaches self-parody, if not incoherence:
Get used to that cover scene. We'll be seeing it again, and
again.
In 1985, even though the
X-Men were very popular, they hadn't expanded into a line-consuming empire yet. There was just
Uncanny X-Men and
New Mutants. No
X-Factor, or
X-Force, or
Adjectiveless X-Men, or
Wolverine solo series, or
Cable, or...
Here's the interesting thing, though. Sometimes, and I can't believe I'm saying this, you
want all of those other books around. Because
Chris Claremont by this point had really big stories to tell, but he was restricted to a single book. (Sure, he could have done crossovers between Uncanny and New Mutants, but it was exceptionally
rare in those days for
Marvel to do cross-title crossovers). But, even though he had only one book to tell his epics in, he refused to rein the story in and all, refused to reduce the scope of the story or cut some extraneous characters out.
Which made for
dense, clunky, border-line unreadable messes sometimes. Like this storyline, for example. It's clearly a precursor to such X-crossovers as
X-Tinction Agenda or
Age of Apocalypse...but Claremont tried to cram something that big into just
2 issues of Uncanny X-Men. And it just didn't work as well as it should have.
Oh, yeah, the full creative team:
Poor
John Romita Jr. I pity anyone having to fit this much stuff into this few panels.
So, what is our story??
Don't worry, that title is not the only
Lucas "
homage" were going to get this issue.
Kulan Gath is an interesting character.
Roy Thomas and
Barry Smith conjured him up as a
Conan villain...and apparently this meant that Marvel couldn't own him, as the character "
followed"
Red Sonja over to Dynamite.
But that didn't stop Marvel from using him in the contemporary
Marvel-616 universe. His essence was contained in a mystic amulet, which let him turn up in the
Claremont/Byrne Spider-Man/Red Sonja story in
Marvel Team-Up. (By the way...in that story
Mary Jane turned into Red Sonja. Good god,
Quesada, why
wouldn't you want
Peter to stay married to her?!?!?) He turned up again in this story, then in the
Busiek/Perez Avengers, and in one of the alternate timelines in
Exiles. So, a pretty busy guy for a thousand of years old sorcerer.
So, since Spidey
kicked his ass in the Marvel Team-Up story, he's back for revenge. How? Go grab a pop and some snacks, kids...we're in for Claremont exposition of
Brobdingnagian proportions:
OK, so he's turned NYC back to barbarian days...
...OK, and Newish Mutants are
Conanized...
...OK, OK, and the X-Men and the
Morlocks and The Avengers are all transformed, too.
Sheesh, how many words can one panel hold? Again, pity poor JR Jr., who had to shoehorn 22 characters around those damn captions. (and you guys should thank me...I cut a couple of panels worth of exposition out for you, because I'm
the blogger who cares).
You see what I mean about the story being too big for the space?
4 teams of heroes, plus Spider-Man, plus Kulan Gath, plus
Selene the immortal mutant psychic vampire wench, plus
Doctor Strange, plus a transformed reality...and somehow we've got to do the story in only two issues? It's
too freakin' ambitious, like trying to do Age of Apocalypse in only two issues. And it's made even worse by Claremont's growing
logorrhea and insistence on giving every single character a bit (or several). In a couple of years, when they could have spread the story over a couple of titles, it might have worked.
Anyway, Spider-Man is the only one not transformed by the spell, because Gath wants him to suffer maximum torment watching his friends destroyed. Nice guy. Peter can't even understand any of the transformed heroes, as they all speak
Hyborian or whatever.
Besides keeping Doctor Strange under wraps, Gath has also captured Selene, and made sure she can't use her magicks:
And he's merged
Xavier and
Caliban into a very weird hybrid type of
Cerebro thing:
But that doesn't stop the rebels from attacking Kulan Gath's stronghold:
As I said, get used to this
Colossus versus the
Vision bit...
One of the other drawbacks to the short length of this story is that Claremont can't keep himself from killing off characters to make it "
shocking." Of course it's no spoiler to reveal that there's a massive
reset button waiting at the end of the episode, which means he can treat this as an alternate timeline and give us
lots of gratuitous death without it having to count. And boy, does he indulge himself.
Rogue dies first...
And apparently, even though she no longer speaks English, she
retains her southern accent. She's the
Foghorn Leghorn of Hyboria...or rather she was.
Warlock, who's unaffected by the
mumbo jumbo because he's an alien, flees with
Storm...
...but kills
Wolfsbane in the process!!
Cannonball dies offscreen...that's right, we never see who or how. Claremont is so
eager to kill off his own characters, he's not even
bothering to show us anymore!!
Firmly under Gath's power,
Danielle Moonstar uses her abilities to show Gath the things his enemies fear the most, so he can transform and control them:
Really?
Janet Van Dyne's "
greatest fear" is becoming an actual wasp?? Seriously, Claremont, that's the
best you can come up with?? (And should I mention how JR Jr. makes
Thanos look kinda like the
Beast?!?)
Well, it's been awhile. How about we stop the story cold for...
more exposition!!
(Again, I've cut a lot of that out for you. You're welcome).
Oh, and we haven't "
homaged" George Lucas in awhile, so...
By the way, Spider-Man is
Jesus:
It's time for yet another fight between our cover duo:
But this time it goes far,
far worse:
Ah, more
unpermanent death! Hey, there's some people left alive, Chris!!
Not any more!! Hey, can we kill Spider-Man, too?
Fortunately for the fate of the universe, Warlock grabs Gath while Storm takes his amulet...
But we get to kill a couple of more characters in a caption as Selene steals the amulet for herself.
But before he dies, Warlock gives the
techno-virus to Storm, and
Stormlock kills Selene:
Sigh. Before any more characters can die, Doctor Strange
finally wakes up, and uses
Illyana's magic and time/space powers to make it all "
never happened."
Really, it all
never even happened!!
So, what event was it that prevented Gath from emerging in the first place in this "
new" timeline?
Oh, hell, it's
Nimrod. Bring back the other timeline, please!!!!
Sigh. A story that never happened, that no one but five people even remember...what was the point, except to set up
What Ifs and Exiles stories? What a waste. But still, perhaps part of the problem was that this was just a story before its time. If Marvel had allowed it to spread out longer, than maybe...And if Claremont had been able to restrain his
bloodlust, been able to adjust to length he was given, this coulda been a contender. Instead, he tried to trump
Days Of Future Past, and completely crushed the story as a result. Sigh...
ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:These guys didn't actually have their own mag this month...that would come next month:
But this ad was in most of the marvels this month. And in addition to the ads, Marvel was pimping
Cloak and Dagger hard with the guest appearances. This month they showed up as the stars of
Marvel Fanfare:
...finished up a three part story in New Mutants:
...and guest-starred in
Power Pack, of all places:
I wouldn't be surprised if they did the
Hostess ads this month, too.
Obviously, Marvel thought these guys might be the
next big thing. But they just never caught on with the public. Various attempts at their own series never lasted longer than 13 issues, and after 1991 they were relegated to guest appearances, and "
hey look at me cameos" in alternate universe stories such as Age of Apocalypse,
Earth-X,
Marvel Zombies, etc. Oh, yeah, and they were in the "
League of Losers" during
Kirkman's tenure on Marvel Team-Up. So much for being the next big thing.
They just had a brand new special out this week. But don't expect anything to come of it.