Uncanny X-Men #273

[history79]

Comments

[icon_uk]

Ororo - "I wonder if our plan to fake our own deaths and hide in Australia was a bad Idea?"

Scott - "Well, as you left the New Mutants completely unprotected just after the death of one of their own, encouraging Magneto to go off the rails AND left all the old villains still running around.. if it hadn't been for the fact my plan to have X-factor pretend to be mutant hunters led to at least one teenage suicide that we know, I'd say it was the worst plan EVER!"

[zylly]

That’s the thing that’s always gotten me about the Australia era. It’s one thing to have let the world at large think they were dead. But it was outright cruel to Kitty, Kurt, Illyana, and the rest not to tell them.

[icon_uk]

I mean it's not like Illyana could come to any harm by losing contact with her best friend (who is stuck a medlab in Scotland), a close team-mate who tended to act as moral compass dying pointlessly AND her beloved big brother apparently dying live on television.

I mean what could possibly go wrong with a conflicted demon sorceress who was raised in a hell dimension feeling emotionally abandoned?

[zylly]

Why, absolutely nothing! It's totally, totally harmless and will not come back to haunt them in any way at all!

[katefan]

Honestly that was the beginning of the end for me where the X-Men were concerned. I also didn't like how every X-Man's power was malfunctioning because Claremont seemed to think what the team needed was even more angst. I hated the concept of Genosha, hated how Havok hooked up with Madeline, hated how before that Cyclops completely abandoned his wife. God how I utterly hated this entire era for turning characters I liked into complete bastards.

Oh, and I hated how aliens invaded the Earth, ones that liked to implant eggs into super powered people, and the X-Men didn't see fit to warn the Fantastic Four or Avengers. The Brood invading Earth could have actually been a really good crossover event but it seemed Claremont didn't want people playing in his sandbox.

[zylly]

While I think it eventually recovered, I do agree and generally consider the nadir of Uncanny to be pretty much everything from the Mutant Massacre to the end of the Muir Island Saga. There's just so much crap and bad decisions going on during this period.

And I could go on for days about how the decision to bring Jean back and poor writing in response to it damaged Cyclops as a character to the point where I'm not sure he ever recovered (it's why I love teen!Scott so much).

From what I understand and have pieced together in various interviews, it's always sounded like there was a lot of friction between Claremont and the rest of the writers/editors. I've often wondered if some of the powers that be weren't mad that an upstart title like X-Men was eclipsing what they thought "should" have been the flagship titles like Spider-Man, Avengers, and FF.

[katefan]

Oh absolutely, Scott's character never recovered from abandoning the wife who looked just like his old girlfriend to be with his old girlfriend. And it just kept getting worse, with him cheating on Jean with Emma.

I can imagine jealousy naturally occurring but I think it had more to do with Claremont's success rather than the tools in which he used. Too perhaps he had a lot more creative freedom than other writers did. From what I understand each editor/writer relationship is different, which I guess is why Mark Waid's run on X-Men was what I heard unremarkable because he was operating under a lot of editorial mandates. I'm sorry I don't have any links to confirm that, just what a friend told me after listening to some blogs.

Maybe the whole exile to Australia thing was Claremont unconsciously exiling himself from the rest of the MU, distancing himself from men and women he didn't know how to collaborate with. I heard his split with John Byrne had been nasty, maybe that soured him on the very thought of collaboration with others.

[tcampbell1000]

Waid and Lobdell were working on the X-books at the same time, and it quickly became apparent who was more willing to complicate things up Claremont-style. And that was what editorial wanted. It was apparent in the differences in their writing styles, but also...

Waid: Onslaught is the manifestation of every dark thought Professor X has repressed! Here's a panel from Stan and Jack's X-Men #2 that shows him thinking wildly inappropriate thoughts about Jean! See, thoughts like that! We all have 'em, even if they're only the briefest flickers in our minds, and that's what makes this idea relatab--

Lobdell: Onslaught happened because Professor X got tainted that time he tried to kill Magneto in my X-Men #25, soaking up the bad parts of Magneto into himself and merging them with his own suppressed urges! So this is kind of both Xavier AND Magneto's fault! Psychics, am I right?

[zylly]

I know there was a lot of sniping back and forth from Claremont and various writers during their period.

Such as Claremont and Byrne feuding over Reed Richards saving Galactus when Phoenix had to be killed. Or Stern and Claremont over where Margali Szardos fell in the mystical hierarchy. Or Shooter's handling of the X-Men as major jerks in Secret Wars. Or the various issues that cropped up in the first Avengers vs. X-Men thing.

...So yeah, lots of feuding.

[starwolf_oakley]

Genosha isn't the best concept. Aside from "mutants brainwashed into willing slavery is bad." Genosha was usually a "metaphor of the moment," with it being Bosnia in "Bloodlines" and then becoming "mutant Israel" once Magneto took it over.

[katefan]

Very true, all of it.

[tcampbell1000]

As a concept, I feel like Genosha's fascinating. Of course different countries would respond differently to "the mutant question," and some of them might even be defined by it. But you need a solid interest in economics, politics, demographics, culture, and all the other things that make up a nation to follow that up, and that is something Marvel writers have rarely taken time to do.

Plus, that "metaphor of the moment" problem has always been a little bit of the problem with the X-Men (they are every marginalized group in humanity and none of them, all at once), so it's not too surprising Genosha would end up echoing it.

[zylly]

Your "different countries would react differently" thing reminds me of Excalibur, up until Warren Ellis took over, where its basic answer to the mutant issue was "did they save the country? Yes? Then no one cares that they're mutants."

[starwolf_oakley]

Yes, not the best plan Claremont. I mean Storm.

[bj_l]

But X-Factor and New Mutants were so badly written at that point! I'd want to stay far away, too.

Also, jesus, Storm "the farthest reaches of the Earth"? You had a teleporter and there are places farther than Australia, you know. And less hospitable.

[katefan]

Yeah, X-Factor was a dumpster fire of a comic around then. Can't speak for New Mutants but I do remember flipping through my friend's copy and wasn't there a bird character? And didn't the characters seem to drop two or three years of age?

[bj_l]

Yeah that was New Mutants during Fall of the Mutants. Most of the New Mutants I've ever read has been crossovers so outside of Mutant Massacre it hasn't made a great impression.

[bruinsfan]

I did think that annuals crossover with X-Men set in Asgard was pretty awesome.

[icon_uk]

The New Mutants was a solid series, often dealing with far darker and mature themes than the X-Men did.... and the Bill Sienkiewicz run was amazing. When it was bad it was... really not good, but otherwise, I'd really recommend it.

[bj_l]

What little I've read (well remembered, about ten years ago I went on a massive X-Book binge reading every single issue of every single X-Book and X-Book character appearance up until, probably, Reloaded in about a month, it was way, way too much.) of New Mutants has been either a few scattered Claremont issues (really good), the most recent (?) Zeb Wells stuff (also quite good), the Weezy stuff (not good at all) or the Weird/Defillips run (low key but really enjoyable).

[bruinsfan]

Oh, those were the Louise Simonson years, weren't they? I dropped those comics as if they burst into flames in my hands.

[katefan]

Ah, so that's who was responsible. She took over X-Factor too, right? She is the one that introduced Apocalypse, for better or worse. Wasn't a fan.

Hmmmm, now I'm wondering if there is anything she ever wrote that I was into...

[bj_l]

Quite as good editor, not so good a writer.

[icon_uk]

The apparent de-aging was an editorial mandate, they wanted the junior team to act more like kids their age. As this was not something that was made clear to the reader, it was something of a gear changing without a clutch sensation.

And ah yes, Bird-Brain.... we do not talk of Bird-Brain

[zylly]

Wow. Couldn't disagree more. I like X-Factor from this general time period way better than the Australia/scattered X-Men stuff. But to each their own.