Happy Monday! (Or Not)

It's Monday, the start of a fresh week, and my plan is to blog every day this week. Let's cross our fingers & hope I can achieve that!

So, I hope you guys here in the States are enjoying your holiday off, if you're getting it off, and for those of you elsewhere, I hope your day back is going well. :-)

Today, I'm kicking off Mutant Monday with a trip through X-Men #1. This series came out in 1991, written by Chris Clarement with art by Jim Lee. It was part of Marvel's relaunching of the X-Men titles, and it was a herald for all things that comics became in the 90s.

What do I mean by that? Well, issue 1 was released with multiple versions of the cover, which could be combined to become one big image. It was probably the first title to feature such a gimmicky cover, and gimmick covers became a staple of the 90s, especially in the X-Verse. Foil covers, holographic covers, variant covers, glow in the dark covers. You name them, they probably made them in the 90s.

Now, apart from the covers, the other things that were ushered in with the 90s were big, bombastic storylines, exaggerated bodies (you'll see some of that in a little bit), and pockets. I say the last somewhat in jest, but with artists like Rob Liefeld, you definitely get a ton of pockets & big weapons (but we'll get to that on Wednesday with Deadpool).

The late 80s-early 90s definitely brought about more cross-over stories. In just a short few years, we had the X-Tinction Agenda, X-Cutioner's Song, Fatal Attractions, Blood Ties (an Avengers/X-Men cross-over), The Phalanx Agenda, Age of Apocalypse, & Onslaught. I know there were more cross-overs after Onslaught, but that was where I dropped out of the X-books.

So where does that put us with X-Men #1? Where X-Men #1 picks up, the team is bringing everything back together. The Mansion has been rebuilt after being destroyed two years prior, the original X-Team (Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Angel, Jean Grey/Marvel Girl) have rejoined the team after disbanding their team, X-Factor, and many of the costumes have been redesigned.

When the issue opens, a couple of spaceships are having a heated battle above Earth when they venture too close to Asteroid M. Big mistake. This is Magneto's home, now that he has left Earth in an attempt to have some peace. Obviously, he's rather irate at having his home disrupted. However, instead of killing the intruders, as the old Magneto might have done, he says he'll return them all to Earth, eliciting protests from one of the men.

This man is Fabian Cortez, leader of the Acolytes (a pseudo-cult who follow the teachings of Magneto), and he manages to talk Magneto into letting them stay. This may be a bad decision on the part of Erik, as we'll see through the first few story arcs.

Cut back to Earth, the X-Mansion. Now that the original X-Men have come back into the fold and there are many new team members, they're running a little simulation. They've split the members into two teams, and their goal is to infiltrate the Mansion & find and "capture" Professor Xavier (who has a little extra protection in the form of Jean Grey).

This whole sequence is probably one of my favorites out of any X-Men book. You get a lot of great banter between the characters, some nice action sequences, and you get to see Jean kicking a little butt. But my favorite moment of all time is below. To set this up, Gambit has managed to get through the fortifications, and, being the lusty Cajun that he is, kisses Jean after he's taken her down with some of his kinetic energy card blasts. Unfortunately for him, the Jean he just kissed is a robot who explodes on him. Cyclops starts to inform him that he's been disqualified, but he interrupts and replies, "I know, Cyclops. Je suis mort - I am now dead." (this was actually one of my pet peeves on this reread, the amount of stilted French Gambit uses; I guess I don't find it as charming as I did when I was 16)

So, back up in the control room, we get this little scene that still makes me crack up:

My friends and I must have laughed over and read through this scene so many times in high school. It's nice to see a little gentle ribbing coming from Scott; he's always so stiff & angsty throughout the X-books, and his character in this issue was a refreshing change from my memory of him.

Of course, Wolverine is the one who finally "tags" Professor X, and he gets a reaming out from Cyclops for putting his claws too close to Xavier's head. Just when I started lovin' you, Scott, you gotta be the big dick again.

And, so, the X-Men have to come to the rescue when Nick Fury contacts them about Magneto. Asteroid M is currently over Russia, which is making the Russians justifiably nervous, so they start searching for Magneto's energy signature. Xavier agrees to Scott's plan to split the team into two teams, the Gold & Blue teams.

Now we come into a little goof in Claremont's writing. We cut back to Asteroid M, where the humans and the Acolytes are fighting. One of the humans kills one of the Acolytes, AnneMarie (remember this!), and Cortez uses his influence to show Magneto that the leaders on Earth will react to his presence and that he needs to act accordingly.

The X-Men get a read on Magneto, and he's in Earth's atmosphere, raising an old Russian submarine, the Leningrad, which he sunk some years ago. He had tried to remove the threat of nuclear weapons from the world, but the Russians didn't take kindly to that and attacked him. He sunk the Leningrad, all hands on board, and now he's trying to take the warheads from the ship.

He and Rogue have a little talk while Cyclops tries to sneak-attack him with the team's new Blackbird plane, but it doesn't work. It only leads to more fighting between the X-Men and Magneto, which leads to one of the most chilling panels in the book

Things quickly fall apart. Wolverine slashes Magneto with his claws, Magneto tries to flee with the warheads, and Rogue tries to talk him down, only she gets pummeled by bullets from (I'm assuming?) a Russian aircraft. In order to save Rogue, he uses his magnetic powers to shoot her down to Genosha (an island with mutant refugees; not exactly the safest spot), and then he detonates one of the warheads to cover his escape back to Asteroid M.

Back on M, Cortez notices how badly Magneto is bleeding, and he offers to use his powers to heal him. Now, here comes Claremont's big mistake I alluded to earlier: Cortez mentions that his powers will save Magneto, "as they have my sister from the SHIELD Agent's weapon." The sister is AnneMarie, who died earlier in the issue. Buwha? She clearly died earlier, but I guess Claremont didn't want to kill her off yet, so he conveniently uses Cortez to save her. Okay . . .

The story now cuts down to Genosha where the Chief Magistrate is asking that Rogue help deal with a group of mutant terrorists who are working their way through the city. Unfortunately, they show up at the hospital as they're searching for Rogue. Yep, it's the Acolytes again. Rogue is quickly overpowered, but the rest of the X-Team show up to save the day. We get a big battle before Magneto shows up again, seemingly healed from his wounds, and he declares that Asteroid M is now a safe haven for any mutant who chooses to leave Earth, but he also declares that he will take any attack against any mutant as an attack against him. Tough guy.

The final two panels are a foreshadowing: We see Banshee walking in to talk to Moira MacTaggert in her lab, but she's weeping profusely. Sean asks her what's wrong, and she replies, "I dinna ken what could've possessed me. Lord my Lord, what have I done? This terrible thing that's happening. . . Banshee, it's al my fault!" Bum bum bum!!!!!

All in all, it was a pleasant read to revisit. My biggest complaints were the written out accents (like for Gambit, Moira & Sean) and the constant internal monologues that Claremont adores. Maybe it's because comics in recent years have gotten away from the internal monologues, but they really bothered me on this read. Here's an example from Psylocke attacking one of the Acolytes:

I don't mind an internal monologue in moderation, but it seems like every single page has one or more. Moderation, Claremont, moderation!

So, that was X-Men #1. I'm still not sure what's coming up for tomorrow, but on Wednesday, we'll tackle a Deadpool book. Much fourth-wall breaking to come!