The Big Rewrite: Thoughts on X-MEN FOREVER #1-8

In 1991, longtime writer of Uncanny X-Men Chris Claremont was at loggerheads with Marvel's editorial department about the future of the franchise. Artist Jim Lee was gaining more and more influence over the direction of the franchise, and editor Bob Harras sided with him, rolling the original five X-Men back into the team and launching a second X-Men series to feature the expanded team. After scripting a three-issue arc where the X-Men battle Magneto one final time, Claremont departed the series to little fanfare, signaling the end of a long and definitive era.

At least, that's how you remember it happening.

In 2009, Chris Claremont revisited his departure from the X-Men as a jumping off point for a new series called X-Men Forever, which ostensibly explores what would have happened had Claremont been allowed to continue with the team.

In theory, anyway...

In practice, it's clear we're in an alternate universe from the beginning as Claremont faves Shadowcat and Nightcrawler are suddenly back on the team with no fanfare, even though in reality, he probably would have been perfectly keen to keep faffing around with them in the high camp adventure series Excalibur, which he presumably would also still be writing in this alternate universe. 

The X-Men's roster has also been pared down: Archangel and Iceman are off doing lord-knows-what, Forge and Banshee never kinda-sorta joined/rejoined the team (despite having been focal characters for a lot of 1990 and 1991.) Jubilee, vapor. Psylocke who. Colossus, at a lossus. Not that I mind, that would be way too many characters to keep track of, but if this had been the next comic published after X-Men #3 it would be nonsensical, even as it begins with the X-Men tracking down former Acolyte Fabian Cortez, who in our mainline universe slipped away back to Earth and was never followed up on in the immediate aftermath.

In the meantime he's gotten a job as a Zookeeper or something

Wolverine and Jean are back to flirting it up, which picks up on some threads from 1990's X-Tinction Agenda storyline, and is even the opening image of the series as Jean fantasizes (or reminisces??) about kissing Logan on a beach.

The two have there own little thing going on, which comes into play when Wolverine goes snooping around and winds up un-alived in dramatic fashion, in a development that absolutely would have been permitted to happen in the comics as we know them, sure. 

It's not like Marvel was using him for anything 

The SHIELD investigative team is baffled -- what could have killed the famously un-killable Wolverine so thoroughly? And why he only got five claws for?

Things start to fall into place when Sabretooth busts into the mansion looking for retribution. He knows the killer is here and he's not pleased about it, since he always had dibs on killing Wolverine -- his son, as Claremont was totally someday going to get around to revealing, maybe, perhaps.

The X-Men corner him in the Danger Room and Storm finishes the fight in uncharacteristically brutal fashion.

 

Sabes fingers Storm as Wolverine's killer, which the Professor corroborates by scanning Jean's mind, as she was in contact with Wolverine at the time of his death.

With Storm now on the X-Men's shitlist, she seals them up in the Danger Room, so only Kitty can follow. Shadowcat would seem to be hopelessly outmatched but as it turns out... the kitten's got claws!

Er, claw. Singular.

As it turns out, due to some power-switching wackiness during the fight with Cortez, Kitty phased one of Wolverine's claws out of his body and onto hers. And why the hell not?

They end up chasing Storm through the Morlock tunnels while some of the other members scout ahead.

Claustrophobia Schmaustrophobia

Jean debuts a new lewk that combines her Phoenix gear with a classic blue-and-gold X-Men uniform that is somehow worse than any other outfit she's ever had, and that includes the beige jumpsuit with the shoulderpads.

While Storm escapes to rendezvous with the evil Consortium -- the mysterious cadre of shadowy figures currently watching the X-Men's every move -- the "high road" team of Gambit, Rogue and Nightcrawler encounter another familiar face...

That's right, it's everyone's favourite de-aged X-person (suck it, X-Babies) Kid 'Ro!

Everyone is confused and weirded out to see a kiddified version of the X-Men's Most Wanted, but Gambit resumes his role as her protector as the bad-adult-Storm escapes both the X-Men and the Consortium, which have turned on her as she seems to have outlived her usefulness, to menace the X-Men another day.

With the mission an incomplete, the team is summoned back to the mansion for some shocking news. Beast has discovered something the Professor knew all along and had been hiding from his students: the X-Gene comes with a price, burning mutant bodies out before they hit the age of 60. That's right: mutants have an x-piry date!

Now, obviously, this is stupid nonsense. Magneto would have been getting up there in years prior to his de-aging. There are other unique long-lived mutants on the scene like Apocalypse and Selene. Mr. Sinister may not yet have been revealed to be a centenarian, but Wolverine was literally revealed not that long before 1991 to have been active in World War II. So obviously there are exceptions.

But let's buy in for a second. Let's say for regular-degular mutants with blasty powers like Cyclops or something more physical like Beast, or even Rogue, your power burns out your body at an accelerated rate. That's kind of a cool idea, but it's not one that you would put into action if you were Marvel Comics (which has a tenuous relationship with linear time anyway.) It's too "big" and far-reaching of a concept to be put into comics, with too many implications to keep track of and would generate a huge re-alignment in what the X-Men are and do.

In case the premise of "This is what Chris Claremont would have done with the X-Men in 1992" wasn't completely obliterated by the death of Wolverine, this surely tanks it.

As kooky and out-there as Claremont's ideas may have been, he would never have had the latitude to implement any of this stuff, so the idea that we are seeing a window into that alternate reality is bunk. and you know what? Perhaps that's for the best. 

The actual premise of X-Men Forever is, what if Chris Claremont had complete autonomy to go totally insane while writing the X-Men? Kill Wolverine and replace him with Sabretooth. Have Storm go bad and re-introduce Kid Ororo. Give Kitty Pryde a claw. Break up the Jean and Scott relationship and severely damage the X-Men's trust in their mentor, whose shadiness, which was there from the beginning, finally comes back to bite him in the ass.

Something crazy happens in just about every issue of this comic, and for at least the first few installments I am actually living for it. Why not zag every zig that would have been done in "mainline" X-Men comics? Whereas most "What if" stories have one particular divergence, this story is more like "What if literally everything was done differently" up to and including the editorial philosophy at Marvel comics (a fact that Claremont acknowledged in pre-release interviews.)

The "real" comics would have been beholden to their monthly sales, their place within the Marvel universe, input from artists, et cetera et cetera. The point on a single issue back then was to provide regular content for invested readers without upsetting the status quo too strongly. Claremont, in his day, navigated these needs with aplomb by constantly managing to refresh the X-Men without stripping them of any of the things people expected of them. So members would leave, or die, or be de-powered, but the story could continue and interest wouldn't flag... until about 1990, when he took that philosophy a step too far, disbanded the team and saw fan interest wane for the first time in years. In this context, where they weren't any longer counting on the newsstand sales for the book that was "The X-Men," that's all the tip of the iceberg of what could be accomplished, and I'm intrigued.

It should be noted that the comics are not great. The dialogue is more stilted than I've ever seen from Claremont, the plot such as it is drags on between insane happenings. Tom Grummet's art, while capable, is staid and more in line with a DC legacy title -- it hardly invokes the flashy days of the early 90's and, with computer coloring techniques, looks a little like a fast food giveaway tie-in comic. So the whole thing feels a little more off-brand than it needs to, but that's not really a complaint that you can do much about.

Once you leave aside the notion that the return of Claremont means any kind of storytelling sophistication and character course-correction, a curative to the style-over-substance philosophy of the 90's, and embrace it as a raw, primal feed of the absolute weirdest shit that could have happened to the X-Men, that would never be permitted to play out "in continuity," id and impulse unfettered, the appeal of X-Men Forever starts to become clear. It's fanfic writ large, by the guy responsible for much of the original material.

To speak candidly, the series is only marginally wilder than the actual X-Men comics published in 1991-1992, where Jean Grey "died" but escaped into Emma Frost's body briefly, and the team meets a gun-toting psycho cop from a future where they are revered legends, and then learn that that legend ends when they are betrayed by one of their own. These comic lack some of that zing from the first time around, but have the advantage of being a place where Wolverine can die and Storm can turn traitor (or did she?)

Unfortunately, it can't quite keep up the pace, as the second story (drawn by Steve Scott) is a dry-as-toast Sentinel outing that could hardly be more rote -- the Consortium have reached out to yet another heretofore unknown member of the Trask family to jumpstart the Sentinel program, etc etc. It slips into being "just comics" when its main appeal would be to provide a constant shock to the system with an unending supply of twists and swerves, torturing the characters in ways to make Robert Kirkman blush. The moment it settles down is the moment it ceases to have any point.

Yawn

I'll continue to leaf ahead and report my findings if the book becomes delightfully insane again -- thinking about it that way really did earn it a lot of goodwill but I'm a busy guy so I need that instant gratification if I'm going to give it any more airtime on this blog. Let's hope for more wacky shit like Rogue hooking up with Sabretooth or Beast going rabid and eating Xavier's face.