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Posts: 741
May 6 08 2:30 AM
Somewhere around the original Secret Wars, when JRJR stepped in and The New Mutants was launched, Claremont's TUXM was not easy to read. Ok, so at least partially that was due to JRJR/Green art, which was a bit too sketchy for my taste (then). But the stories also became more introspective and less action-oriented, which was bad from a young guy's perspective. Too much mature themes, character psychology, and such. I later realized that this was a necessary phase in CC's 'coming of age' as a writer (further documented in New Mutants), but aside from the occasional impressive battle - such as the X-Men and the Hellfire Club forming an uneasy alliance to have a chance against Nimrod - the stories tended to be too difficult to swallow and unsatisfying to a teenager. In short, TUXM was not my favorite book back then.
But the real turning point came a little later. I was going to say that it started with the Fall of the Mutants storyline, but I guess it actually started earlier with the Mutant Massacre (or, if you want to go back to the beginning, the Dire Wraiths story... or wherever, that's how long Claremont's storylines could be). The various hints, danglers and subplots finally started coming together at a greater intensity than before. The book was exciting again, and CC set off the big bomb. He killed off the entire team, and resurrected them...in Australia!
This marked the beginning of a new X-Men 'golden era' for me. It was a daring move from Chris, especially when you consider what followed. Some would even say he was becoming too self-assured and arrogant. But it was these stories that finally convinced me of Claremont's talent. Ok, you could say I was maybe a little biased since I was at the moment involved in the comics business (no, I'm not any of the guys whose names you see in the credits, I was much further down the line), but, in any case, I consider that era one of the highlights of the book.
The stories were certainly not everyone's cup of tea. I didn't like *all* of them either. I hated Inferno (because of what it did to Madelyne), I was unimpressed by the Savage Land story (just like by pretty much all X-Men/Savage Land stories), and the Genosha story was too much of an allegory to intrigue me as a story. But the big main storyline which revolved around the disbanding and destruction of the team was what I found the most compulsive reading. The background to this storyline was, allegedly, that Walt Simonson (then writing the Avengers) and CC had a kind of competition going on: they were both supposed to destroy their teams in some fantastic manner. I would say Claremont's version was by far the wilder one.
In fact, it was so wild that it confused a lot of readers. Why on Earth would Psylocke force the X-Men enter the Siege Perilous? To me, the in-story explanation is clear enough. She had taken Gateway's 'death vision' seriously and was convinced that if they stayed and fought the Reavers, they would certainly die. The X-Men might not have agreed to flee and avoid the fight, and every second counted, so Psylocke made a quick and fatal decision. The sense of impending doom, gradually built up since the Inferno, finally meets its fulfilment: the X-Men (except Wolverine who was not present) enter the Siege Perilous...and are, possibly, reincarnated somewhere.
Now this development made the book even more confusing than before, and a lot of readers hated it. But I found the book now more surprising and exciting than ever before. I certainly no longer had the foggiest idea what to expect - and every following issue surprised me even more! A delirious and very unpredictable Wolverine taking Jubilee into Madripoor (my favorite Wolverine, by the way), reincarnated X-Men showing up here and there, with or without their memories...I was having a great time reading it all. Then it all came to an abrupt and all-too-sudden end with the dismal Extinction Agenda (by far the worst X-over until then), Jim Lee's increased role as a plotter (the stories 'inexplicably' got worse when he became the regular artist), and CC's eventual departure from Marvel.
I should also mention Excalibur. The original version, by CC & Alan Davis, was very different from the later incarnations - it combined light and shade in a way that has not been repeated since. Yes, it was humorous most of the time but it could also be dark and scary. It was high fantasy, and Davis' art served the stories excellently. In fact, as long as the CC/Davis collaboration lasted, Excalibur was my favorite Marvel book, leaving even TUXM far behind. And it is largely on the merits of these two runs - TUXM and Excalibur - that I chose to give Claremont five stars rather than four. If he had stopped writing X-books before TUXM #200...well, you now know what I would say.
Claremont's more recent stories are significantly weaker, there's no going around that. I often wonder how they can have the same author as the earlier stories! That's why I rated them separately - and sometimes I think that even 3 stars is too generous for them.
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