As I’ve said in the past, I get a fair amount of mail. A lot of it is from former students
who want to ask about one comics-related point or another.
Just for fun, and to give you an idea how our odd little pop-culture backwater looks from the
outside…here is a series of letters between me and Rachel.
Rachel is a cartooning graduate, and now she is an occasional TA-slash-intern for me at the art
studio. This ever-lengthening correspondence has been going on for the last week or so and
finally I said to her, “You know, I might as well do this as a column,” and she
graciously agreed. So here it is.
It started with Rachel sending a note that she was no longer obsessed with Spider-Man. That was
over. It was time to put away childish things.
Now, she was all about The X-Men.
As it happened, I needed a model for my portrait class down at the studio that week. So I sent
Rachel a note back suggesting that if she’d be willing to come by the studio and sit for my
students for an hour or so, I would hook her up with some X-Men books, and I’d throw in the
Birds of Prey DVDs I’d been promising for a while, as well. (Over the years,
I’ve discovered that when I employ students for odd jobs, using the barter system is more
fun for both of us, and a better deal for the kids than cash money.)
Rachel did a fine job modeling for the drawing class and certainly had earned some cool swag. I
gave her some X-Men trades I’d had around the house that were superfluous for me, that I
thought she would enjoy.
(And also that I considered to be “the good stuff.” I reasoned that if Rachel was
going to collect X-comics, I owed her a proper start. She has the rest of her life to read crap
like Inferno or X-Cutioner’s Song.)
A little while later she sent this note, which I answered point-by-point.
*
Hi Greg,
I am totally in love with the X-Men comics you gave me!! I especially like the Neal
Adams book.
I had a few questions though.
In the Neal Adams book, there is no Storm, Wolverine, or Rogue in the group. Why is
that?
The Neal Adams book is taken from the stories that ran in the FIRST version of the X-Men. Those
were published in the 1960’s.
Then, later, the title was revived with a new, more international roster.
It’s all explained here.
So Alex is Scott’s brother?
Yes.
Why isn’t Beast blue?
It was before he mutated further. The character’s history is explained here.
I would appreciate if you could help me understand. 
Thanks,
Rachel
You should have one more book coming, The Dark Phoenix Saga, that falls
between the two I gave you at the studio, in the overall X-chronology. Julie and
I found it at a Goodwill and decided you needed it, so it’s in the mail.
Really, though, if you want to get caught up, you should get the Essential X-Men
books… they are great big phone-book-sized reprint volumes that give you twenty to
twenty-five comics’ worth of stories in each book.
They’re in black-and-white, which puts off some people, but if you just want to read the
stories that’s your best bet. They’re cheap.
–G.
*
A couple of days later Rachel called the house to say thank you, squealing with delight about
The Dark Phoenix Saga and how much she loved it.
Shortly thereafter we got a note that her e-mail address had changed from spideyzgirl@….
to j.thedarkphoenix@…. I couldn’t resist and sent her a reply saying I’d noted
her new address, adding, “Book must have been good, huh?”
Which led to this e-mail, that I again answered point-by-point.
*
I’m gonna try and get those Essential books - they look really
cool!
So, the girl with the green hair is Lorna, and her powers are magnetism, right? I
wonder why Alex Summers wasn’t in the movies. Probably not enough time for him, I
guess.
Alex Summers really hasn’t been in the COMICS that much when you look at the last
forty-plus years of X-Men.
But Wolverine: Origins comes out in 2009!! I’m so excited!
I’m hoping you mean the movie, because the comic wasn’t worth getting that excited
over.
For that matter, the Wolverine of the comics really was disliked by many people at the beginning.
He started out as a Hulk villain.
And later when he was drafted for the new X-Men he was primarily the guy that nobody cared for,
the agent of discord on the team. Marvel used to get letters saying “And kill off that
obnoxious Wolverine.” The star character in the revival was Nightcrawler because Dave
Cockrum really liked drawing him. And in fact there was a point when the Wolverine character was
getting so much hate mail that they were thinking of dropping him from the book.
When John Byrne took over the art from Cockrum, one of the things he wanted to do as co-plotter
of the book was ‘rehabilitate’ Wolverine… that is, make the fans like him
more. Part of it was that Byrne was Canadian himself and didn’t want the only Canadian
superhero at Marvel to go away, and part of it was that Byrne thought it would be a fun
challenge, taking a hero so despised and seeing if he couldn’t get the fans to come around.
So Byrne began, very subtly, to slant stories toward Wolverine. (In those days, Marvel’s
artists had a lot more control over a story, because the art was done from a brief outline rather
than a script. Then the writer would come in and write captions and dialogue based on the
penciled art.)
If you look at the Dark Phoenix book you will see that in play.
Wolverine gets most of the cool action shots, Wolverine gets a big dramatic cliffhanger,
it’s really Wolverine Comics co-starring the X-Men.
And it worked. Wolverine became a star.
Except I almost got the Dark Phoenix saga taken away by my Spanish teacher, because I
was “reading too much in class.” I told her I couldn’t help it, and she let me
keep it with a warning.
Boy, THAT takes me back. I actually HAD books taken away. My parents were very annoyed with me
about the whole book thing. (”Why don’t you go play outside? Why do you have to spend
every penny on books?”) Mine were Star Trek books and James Bond books and Batman
comics, though. The Batman stories that really blew me away at that age were, oddly enough, by a
young Neal Adams, who partnered with Denny O’Neil on a run people still talk about today.
Ra’s Al Ghul, from Batman Begins, is an O’Neil/Adams villain.
I know I’ve already thanked you - but I seriously realllly appreciate the
books. The movies got me hooked, but the books are also really incredible!
Plus, Professor Xavier and Scott don’t die in The Dark Phoenix Saga,
which is nice, because whenever I watch those scenes in X-Men 3 I start bawling. And I like
it better that Jean realizes she has to kill herself to stop Phoenix, rather than having
Wolverine kill her which is really sad.
Something that caught me off guard, however, is that in The Dark Phoenix
Saga, Wolverine is short. And sort of “spooky,” as Kitty says. And obviously has
no relationship with Jean. So I wonder how that whole Jean/Scott/Logan movie triangle came to
be.
Well, first of all, bear in mind that model’s wages in an art studio run anywhere from
$15-20 an hour and that’s about the same dollar value of those books in a used bookstore.
So it wasn’t really a ‘gift.’ You earned them, that’s your pay for an
hour’s work at the studio. (The BIRDS OF PREY shows, well, I’d been promising to burn
a set of those for you for years, that was just guilt.)
As for the rest… Wolverine IS short. He’s named for a small snarling rodent and that
was the key to his visual.
Now, actor HUGH JACKMAN is tall, but as writer Len Wein (the guy that actually
created Wolverine) likes to say, “I don’t mind, because Jackman plays him as being
short and pissed off,” and it’s true. Jackman nails it so perfectly that none of us
really mind that he’s way too tall.
The love triangle with Jean and Scott and Logan goes back to the earliest days of the
revival– the Dave Cockrum years. Remember, Wolverine was the team malcontent, the guy that
created discord and tension. The love triangle was just one more way for that to happen. In fact,
a lot of the reason so many fans hated Wolverine in the early days was because of that triangle
and the idea that Logan might somehow break up Scott and Jean. People forget sometimes that
it’s FICTION and that writers put their characters under pressure for a reason. The more
tension you have, the more suspense there is about how it will all work out, then the more
interesting the book is and the more engaged you are by the drama.
Really the love story with Scott and Jean went through so many wild freaky twists and turns, and
taken as a whole makes both of them look so badly-behaved, that it’s best not to think
about it as a complete history. Fans tended to forgive them because we all so loved the two of
them as a couple, and the Dark Phoenix story was such a powerful love story that it overshadowed
everything. We just KNEW they were in love, and the fact that they sometimes acted crappy to one
another (Scott, especially, behaved very badly over the years) …well, that didn’t
really ‘count’ in our heads as we were reading, we always forgave everything if they
would just get back together.
The movie people wisely went back to the earliest days of the book for their story material,
before there were thirty more years of convoluted comic-book soap opera history layered on top of
it. The best way to read the X-Men is to just kind of cherry-pick your favorite era and
concentrate on that. Because there have been A LOT of bad X-Men comics
out there.
Also, Rogue is not there. Which makes me sad. Because she is my 3rd favorite
character. (1st: Jean, 2nd: Wolverine, 3rd: Rogue, 4th: Scott).
I guess you really have created a monster, as you titled your email, because now
I’m really obsessed - more than I was with Spider-Man, believe it or not.
Well, the good news is, there are lots of books out there for you. Julie and I were at Half-Price
Books in Southcenter last night and saw the first three Essential X-Men volumes for
about four dollars each, along with a bunch of other X-stuff.
The Essentials are the easiest way to play catch-up but there are lots of other books too. There
are prose X-Men novels as well. Here’s a PARTIAL list. Some of those are comics and some are
prose. Click on the book cover to find out more about a particular book.
I’m partial to the ones by Christopher Golden, in particular: CODENAME WOLVERINE, and the
MUTANT EMPIRE trilogy.
You can see
more about those here.
As for Rogue, she came later, and her story is very different from the movie one. You have to
understand the movies are very streamlined and condensed and tend to mash up stories together
that took place years apart in the comics. The first movie was an original story that kind of
tried to do everything, it had references to every era of the book and the team roster was a sort
of “Greatest Hits” cast culled from the forty years of publishing.
X2 was a kind of riff on GOD LOVES MAN KILLS but incorporated a lot of
original stuff from the first movie and added Lady Deathstrike to replace Anne Reynolds.
X-Men 3 grafted together Dark Phoenix and ASTONISHING X-MEN:
GIFTED and threw in Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. And so on.
Truthfully, I lost interest in the X-Men comics in the 90’s– Marvel did so many
spin-offs and tie-in series that it became impossible to keep up. Every so often something
catches my eye still– I liked GENERATION X while it was around, and that even got
a movie. (A bad made-for-TV one, but still kind of fun, you see it bootlegged at shows a lot.)
I enjoy the X-Men movies a great deal and do still sometimes pick up an X-comic. I quite liked
Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men, as well as
Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men.
But mostly I’m a Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne guy, Essential X-Men volumes one, two and
three. My X-Men are the ones in the three books I gave you, of which God Loves, Man
Kills was the newest. But every generation has their particular favorite run and their
particular favorite team lineup. I imagine that as you keep reading and watching movies and so
on, you’ll arrive at a Dream Team of your own.
–G.
*
By now it was starting to get away from me. Answering Rachel’s questions was reminding
me how much I myself had loved the Marvel mutants once upon a time, and her enthusiasm was
contagious… I’d start out to write a quick answer and it would turn into a little
mini-essay. It must have been entertaining for Rachel, too, because in a day or two this note
arrived, which I have again answered. It was about halfway through replying to this that I
thought, “Hell, this all might as well be a column,” and got Rachel’s
permission to put it up here.
*
I have more questions!
1. In the first book you gave me, it looked like Lorna and Bobby were going out, but
in the very beginning of the Dark Phoenix saga, it seemed like Lorna was with Alex. What happened
there?
Years passed. Different writers come on a book and each new one has a different idea about how
things should go. That’s really what happened.
But I imagine you want the in-story reason. In this particular case, as I recall Bobby had a
thing for Lorna but she really only had eyes for Alex. I think there have been times when she
starts to relent and maybe give Bobby a second look, but nothing serious ever came of that.
Iceman does a hell of a lot better in the movies with girls than he ever did in the comic. In the
X-comics, what I remember is that Bobby Drake was a little bit of a sad sack, someone who was
always getting his heart stepped on. He was the classic case of the guy who always ends up being
‘just friends’ with a girl. I think in recent years they’ve been a little
kinder to him, but he still seems to have a lot of girls leaving him or being revealed as
villains or something. Nothing like the movie where there’s two different girls fighting
over him, that’s for sure.
2. In the 2nd movie, when Professor X is being mind-warped by Stryker’s son
(isn’t his name Jason?) to kill all mutants..That seemed very similar to Jean being
mind-warped by Jason Wyngarde (who was really Mastermind, the illusionist guy) in the Dark
Phoenix saga. Am I just being paranoid or is that the same person?
Well, here you get into a whole thing about adaptation and what that all means. Does Jason
Stryker have the same power as Jason Wyngarde/Mastermind? More or less, I
suppose, though nobody ever tried to extract anything from Mastermind’s glands and drip it
on people’s necks for purposes of mind control. (I don’t think so, anyway.
You have to remember I haven’t been keeping up with every X-Men comic since 1975. In spite
of what my students think, I don’t actually know everything about comics.)
Is it the same guy? Maybe Bryan Singer and the movie people named him “Jason” as a
little nod to Jason Wyngarde, maybe even the character started out to be
“Mastermind,” but as characters, they’re nothing alike.
In the comics, Mastermind was kind of a weaselly little coward who used his power to make himself
suave and sophisticated, and his main concern always seemed to be insinuating himself next to
some hot girl….the Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey, whoever.
For that matter, X2 took quite a few liberties with Stryker himself.
God Loves, Man Kills was originally published in the 80’s, when television
preachers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were really starting to build a following, and a
lot of their message was about us vs. them: whichever “them” they happened to be
picking on at the moment, the televangelists were always demonizing their opponents and scaring
people. Nowadays these TV ministers are looked at mostly as jokes, but in the 1980’s they
were extremely powerful public figures. So it’s a pretty easy leap from that to creating a
televangelist villain who is scaring people about mutants.
Now, in the 2000’s, it’s been the government that gets a lot of mileage out
of scaring people and using that fear to justify doing bad things in the name of
‘protecting’ citizens. Today the natural leap isn’t from televangelist to
X-villain, it’s from obsessed government official to X-villain. So Stryker got a makeover
for the movies.
The beauty of the X-Men concept is that it’s infinitely adaptable. There are always going
to be groups of people that are afraid of other groups of people because they’re different.
And that kind of fear always leads to prejudice and hatred. Those conflicts are very easy to
build X-Men stories on, because the whole premise for the book in the first place is
“feared and hated by the world they’ve sworn to protect.” Any time you have
fear and hatred you have potential story material for the X-Men.
3. Did Jean, Scott, and Professor X really die in the comics? (Obviously, I know Jean
dies in the Dark Phoenix Saga). I’ve heard that X-Men 3 pretty much veered away
from the plot of the comics, and was wondering if the deaths happened as well.
Honestly? Nobody ever really dies in the comics.
It’s kind of reached the point where everybody snorts and says “Yeah
right,” whenever a character gets killed.
Cyclops, the Professor, and Jean have all been ‘killed’ or presumed dead several
times, and so have most of the other X-Men. Really at this point I think it’s easier to
keep track of who hasn’t been presumed dead for at least a couple
of issues.
Now, as of right now this minute as I write this? Jean is dead– she was resurrected and
then killed off again, once or twice since the Dark Phoenix book you
have. Scott is still around. Professor X is still around but I think he’s not playing a big
active role at the moment, he’s retired or in hiding or sulking or something. But sooner or
later he’ll be back, as will Jean. Jean’s really easy to revive, since the whole
schtick of a phoenix is ‘resurrection.’
I kind of like Jean Grey being gone, myself; I think it diminishes the heroism of her sacrifice
to keep bringing her back from the dead as though she’s just been down with the flu, like
death’s just occasionally inconvenient. And I enjoy what writers have done with Scott and
Emma Frost. Grant Morrison, especially, just took Emma’s character and ran with it.
The idea of the X-Men’s resident boy scout romancing such an unrepentant bitch, and how
they are each adapting to one another as she tries to be good and he occasionally lets himself be
a little bad, is really a lot more interesting to read about than the swooning True Love of Scott
and Jean.
…but that’s just me.
Because it’s comics, no one stays dead, and there is always going to be that group of fans
that wants Scott and Jean back together no matter what. So I imagine sooner or later she’ll
be back.
4. About Rogue’s history being different - I heard she was raised by
Mystique??
Yes, that’s correct.
Really the movie Rogue is nothing like the comics Rogue, except for her powers. Rogue in the
movies is a lot more like the original Kitty Pryde, a teenage girl who joins the team and ends up
forging a special friendship with Wolverine. Which in turn made it odd when they decided Kitty
would actually have a real role in the third movie.
Rogue in the comics began as a villain, and her path to becoming one of the most popular members
of the team was too convoluted to even try to recap here. I will cheat and link you to this page
instead.
Marvel Comics, as a whole, tends to get a lot of mileage out of reforming villains. (Remember,
even Wolverine started as a Hulk villain.) Just in the X-Men books alone I think Magneto, Emma
Frost, Rogue, Mystique, and Juggernaut have all been ‘reformed’ at least for a little
while. So far, with Rogue and Emma, rehabilitation seems to have stuck.
5. Speaking of Mystique. She, Nightcrawler, and Beast are all blue. Are they related
at all?
Ha! This just goes to show that everything occurs to everybody, sooner or later.
Yes, Mystique and Nightcrawler are related. She is his mother, though he didn’t know it for
years and years, she abandoned him and he was raised by gypsies in a traveling circus. This was
all eventually told in one of those big shock-revelation stories done after both characters had
been around for a while. And I believe the reason this storyline was done is because someone
thought “hey, they’re both blue.”
Now, the Beast, Hank McCoy, is a slightly different story. He originally started out looking
human, just sort of bulky and Neanderthal, and he was one of the five original members of the
team.
In the 1970’s, when I was about your age as a matter of fact, he got his own series in
Amazing Adventures.
paramountuk
ANGERS7
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
