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Oct 22 09 1:07 PM
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Oct 22 09 1:11 PM
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Golden Age
TODD TAMANEND CLARK Poet/Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist/Cultural Historian The Monongahela River, Turtle Island
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Oct 22 09 1:17 PM
Posts: 742
Oct 22 09 1:37 PM
Sackman11 wrote: When Louise took over X-Factor, her efforts made the book readable; it returned the heroes to more "heroic" characterizations. You have to remember that X-Factor was a Jim Shooter-contrived sales ploy to further capitalize on mutant popularity. Bob Layton's original storyline had heroic Scott Summers abandoing his wife and baby to hook back up with his resurrected girlfriend with no remorse, soul-searching or real explanation. It was fairly awful. In my opinion, it took Louise's writing to help the characters to regain some of the humanity and voice (originally given to them by Claremont's writing in Uncanny) which made them so popular to begin with. .
I'll agree to disagree here. Louise Simonson's excuse for Scott's behavior, as given in Inferno, was so laughable that it actually made things worse in my eyes. Scott was not really responsible for his actions since his mind had been tampered with in his youth? Gimme a break. Only in a comic book can a wife-deserter come up with an excuse like that with a straight face. Not only that, we - the readers - were expected to accept that excuse with a straight face. To top it all off, they made Madelyne one of the main villains in Inferno, so I guess it was kind of ok to desert her anyway...NOT!
I personally much prefer Morrison's interpretation of Scott Summers which gives him a darker side. Not every hero needs to be a 100% virtuous scoutboy like the traditional Superman characterization used to be. Real people aren't!
Sackman11 wrote: Something else to recall is that without Louise's creation of the Apocalypse character, X-Factor's big antagonist was supposed to be the Owl (snore), and there would be no Archangel character or story.
I wasn't aware that Louise Simonson had created Apocalypse since he debuted before she took over. Be that as it may, the Death/Archangel character and related Apocalypse story (which was the first to give Apocalypse a personality beyond the run-of-the-mill criminal mastermind that he was in his first appearance) are definitely very well done. That's one story by L. Simonson I can (and do) appreciate.
daveok77 wrote: I always found it odd that they didn't "morph" Maddie Pryor into a new Marvel Girl or use Rachel Summers or something, rather than bringing Jean Grey back from the dead, although the they did it did not completely destroy the Dark Phoenix storyline. Jean never was Phoenix, so the being/character that we all loved from UXM 101 - 137 was simply someone else who still made the ultimate sacrifice to save the universe and release the bottled up phoenix force. Besides, what more appropriate character is there to be constantly reborn?
For one thing, your analogy is a bit off. That's not exactly how the mythological Phoenix is supposed to "work". But anyway, I'm not willing to go into this again, I've ranted about this long enough before and pretty much said everything I had to say: http://marvelmasterworksfansite.yuku.com/topic/5340?page=1
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Oct 22 09 1:48 PM
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Oct 22 09 2:00 PM
Five Years Later wrote: "I personally much prefer Morrison's interpretation of Scott Summers which gives him a darker side. Not every hero needs to be a 100% virtuous scoutboy like the traditional Superman characterization used to be. Real people aren't!" I think Morrison just picked up on some the weirdness in the Scott/Jean relationship from the Lee/Kirby and Claremont/Byrne runs. Jean, especially in the Phoenix days (I refuse the retcon) was kinky, and Scott was always angry and screwed up (abandonment issues plus his physical deformity). I've never seen Scott as having healthy sexual relationship. He needs a strong woman to dominate him even though he resents her and hates himself for it.
Oct 22 09 2:08 PM
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Oct 22 09 2:12 PM
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Oct 22 09 2:13 PM
VisualFiction wrote: Having only read the first eleven issues, I can't speak much to the question although I enjoyed most of the issues. But it would be interesting to also know what people thought of the original X-Factor, maybe a comparison/contrast.
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Oct 22 09 2:59 PM
Posts: 110
Oct 22 09 3:29 PM
"I wasn't aware that Louise Simonson had created Apocalypse since he debuted before she took over. Be that as it may, the Death/Archangel character and related Apocalypse story (which was the first to give Apocalypse a personality beyond the run-of-the-mill criminal mastermind that he was in his first appearance) are definitely very well done. That's one story by L. Simonson I can (and do) appreciate."
Apocalypse was introduced in Wheezy's first issue: #6. Backstory: Bob Harras asked Wheezy to write a one-off story for X-Factor early around issue 3 because Bob Layton was in jeopardy of not making a deadline. It didn't get used (Layton made his deadline), but a month or two later, she was offered the full-time writing gig when Layton was reassigned. Wheezy came up with the concept for Apocalypse, Butch Guice made the original visual design, and Walt Simonson beefed it up into the visual we saw in print.
Layton's original idea was for the Owl to be X-Factor's big nemesis (the head of the Alliance of Evil). Issue 5's last panel was supposed to be a reveal of the Owl. When Wheezy got the writing assignment for the book, they had Guice change the pencils to depict a character in the shadows who would revealed in the next issue as Apocalypse.
You'll find a lot of this info (and many other X-related behind the scenes stories) directly from the horses' mouths in Tom DeFalco's great book "Comics Creators on the X-Men". It's got the skinny via detailed interviews with Stan, Roy Thomas, Neal Adams, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Alan Davis, Wheezy, Slivestri, Harras, and others.
Posts: 678
Oct 22 09 4:10 PM
Five thoughts on the original X-Men run (1-66): 1) I started buying comics at the beginning of the Adams/Thomas run and X-Men was my favorite comic at the time. I can still remember reading X-Men 66 with its annoucement that the series was over. I couldn't believe it. 2) Roy Thomas got started writing superheroes on two group titles: Avengers and X-Men. It's kind of like the movie Twins. The Avengers got all of his talent and creativity and X-Men were .... Danny DeVito. 3) Arnold Drake was first rate on Doom Patrol. It's amazing how lost he seemed on X-Men. 4) I don't think Lee and Kirby laid as strong a foundation for X-Men as some of their other titles. The characterization was weak. Magneto was a good villain but there was too much of him in the early issues. The X-Men as outcasts concept was underdeveloped. 5) For most people the Claremont run starts what is the X-Men so the first run doesn't get the respect of other silver age Marvel series.
Oct 22 09 6:41 PM
Doc Dynamo wrote: 3) Arnold Drake was first rate on Doom Patrol. It's amazing how lost he seemed on X-Men.
3) Arnold Drake was first rate on Doom Patrol. It's amazing how lost he seemed on X-Men.
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Oct 22 09 7:15 PM
Oct 22 09 7:29 PM
Oct 22 09 7:57 PM
Andy Sheets wrote: Drake seemed to characterize her almost like a co-leader with Cyclops, which I thought was interesting considering the general treatment of female characters back then.
Posts: 2389
Oct 22 09 10:29 PM
I think I probably must have chosen to willfully ignore the (valid) shortcomings that many of you listed. Generally, I liked 'team' books better than individual lead-character books, and would have cut the X-Men some slack in that regard. I never had any issue with the costumes, old or new, and in fact I thought the change was a nice evolution.
My sense of optimism would have told me to overlook the 'down' times (for instance, enduring the Barry Smith issue, before he metamorphosed from Jack-Kirby-meets-Charles-Schulz, into his Raphael-like Conan), expecting better future offerings. I nodded in agreement with the comment that a bad X-Men book was better than a bad Iron Man or Daredevil book.
Despite the editorial game of musical artists that was played, I really enjoyed the last year and one-half of the line, with Steranko, Drake, Adams (Yes!!) and even Don Heck channelling Adams. In fact, regarding the Heck issue, I remember reading several pages into it before I realized that Adams' work looked a little different, and my shock when I checked the credits. Couldn't be Heck, not possible, no way. But it was, and it was great.
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Oct 23 09 1:54 AM
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Oct 23 09 8:31 AM
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