Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Re-Reads (Now Reading: Swamp Thing: 1971 through 1985)

Lardy, I know exactly what you mean about how much those iconic Wolverine scenes still resonate no matter how much resistance a reader has built up towards the character.

Cobie, the more I think about it, Claremont didn't do too much damage to Kitty in the pages of Uncanny X-Men itself; his worst offenses, I feel, are actually in the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine mini-series, where she cuts off her hair and temporarily goes all ninja. Thank God none of that lasted. Other female characters are another story, and I'll get to that in due time.

I can't really think of anything else to add to what you guys have said about 132-134, so I'll just wait til you've both caught up on the next three issues, then I'll open the floodgates, so to speak, because I have a lot to say about those issues.

I'm hard pressed to find any artist who draws a better Wolverine either. So I think I'm in agreement!

It's amazing how obvious his influence is on the Image artists who came later. McFarlane's Wolverine is basically Byrne's but slightly more stylized. Others are directly influenced but without Byrne's mechanics and basic understanding of anatomy.

Other artists did great Wolverines too: specifically Cockrum (especially on the covers), Paul Smith, Frank Miller and a few others. But none are quite as iconic as Byrne, who has the right conbo of visceral meets superhero.

I know you like the brown and tan costume like me too, so we'll soon get to briefly see Byrne draw Wolvie in that, probably my favorite artist / costume combo for him.

Fickles, if you've already gotten to them, feel free to post your thoughts. Just because we tend to go Cobie-Lardy-Fickles in the review order doesn't mean that you can't post first! It's not set in stone or anything.....

It's funny.....before this re-read, I never thought of Byrne's Wolverine as potentially THE iconic version of the character, but I certainly am leaning that way, now!

Cockrum did a good job on Logan, but I tend to associate him more with the characters he created...and especially Storm and Nightcrawler. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing Paul Smith's version for the first time in many years when we get to it.

I just think Byrne injects Logan with so much character and brings across the attitude in his expressions. I remember Byrne's brief run on Wolverine's solo book fondly, as well.

Thanks, Lardy. Yes, as with the Proteus arc, once I started the Dark Phoenix arc I couldn't stop.

The Dark Phoenix Saga is a magnificently executed story, but it's a troubling one, because in the end, what it basically says is, women cannot handle power. And it would have had the same message whether or not it had the original ending, with the Shi'ar draining all of Jean's powers.

I believe there was a way of doing the story without having to resort to killing or de-powering Jean. If, say, she trespassed into Shi'ar territory and threatened to consume the star/destroy the planet/destroy the battlecruiser, but didn't actually go through with it because her better nature won out in the end, we still would've had a grand epic, and it would have planted seeds for lots of further stories down the line.

Instead, what actually happened, as far as I can gather (and anyone is free to correct me) is that Byrne drew Phoenix consuming the star et cetera, which wasn't in Claremont's script, and Salicrup, who if he'd been an editor worth his salt would have realized that this was pushing the envelope too far, failed to stop the comic from going to press as it was, resulting in Shooter delivering the edict that Phoenix must die for committing mass murder.

If I may digress for a moment, I think that's a little rich coming from Shooter, who, in a story he wrote himself in Avengers, sent the mass-murderer Korvac to his death, but with the bullshit caveat "His intentions were noble." There's a sexist double standard at work there -- Shooter's saying that men can wield near-omnipotent power responsibly, while women will just use it to commit destruction.

And to think it all began with Claremont and Cockrum simply wanting to turn Jean into the X-Men's female equivalent of the Avengers' Thor. We'll never know what might have been...

Having said all that, there's still a lot to enjoy about the final three issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga, especially the climactic battle against the Imperial Guard, expertly choreographed by Claremont & Byrne, but the aftertaste feels off to me.

That's my two cents. What does everyone else have to say?

The Dark Phoenix Saga is one of those cases where I can't turn off the part of my brain that 'knows' that this isn't Jean (since, retroactively, it's just the Phoenix Force pretending to be Jean), making the it all feel kind of hollow, from the X-Men being willing to fight to the death to defend her (unaware that she's asleep at the bottom of a bay on Earth), to her 'sacrifice' at the end. I'd love to be able to shut off the part of my brain that knows all this, and enjoy the story for what it was, back when this was 'really Jean.'

The 'women can't handle power' thing didn't strike me, back in the day, although the increasing portrayal of Storm losing control of her powers when she got angry or frustrated or her phobia triggered or she got a mohawk seemed to be heading in that direction as well, at this time. (Still, on a team with Cyclops, who has been since his introduction, the poster boy for 'can't control his power,' it seemed less sexist.)

But, over the years, it seemed like many female characters with significant power, such as Snowbird, Moondragon and the Scarlet Witch, were increasingly portrayed as out of control or morally ambiguous or just flat out villainous, at times (occasionally accompanied with power upgrades, leading to the 'women can't handle power' sense), while male characters who had similar awesome power levels, such as Thor, tended to get a pass. Whether or not it was a gender-issue, when it happened to Jean, it quickly became one, with even Jean-lite girl Rachel Summers getting smacked down for misuing her powers, while Jean-lite boy Nate Summers managed to avoid getting stabbed in the heart by that bastion of moral rectitude, Wolverine, for abusing his powers. Byrne, in particular, seems to fall for this trope a lot. I like his writing, generally, but he's earned his bad reputation for his portrayal of women, with even lesser powered characters like Aurora suffering from self-control issues.

Somewhat oddly, I never managed to find a copy of 137 back in the day (I was still getting my comics off a spinner rack in a local drugstore and pretty much at the mercy of whatever was there at the time), so the only version of that tale I'd ever read was the version where Jean lived, for at least a decade, before finding a copy of 137 (after she'd already been resurrected for X-Factor!) and finally getting to read the story where she died!

Loved the new Imperial Guardsmen, who weren't Legion riffs, and I'd perversely love to see them get 'counter-riffed' and for versions of Manta, Hussar, Warstar and Earthquake to show up in a Legion title as one-shot foes or something.

Loved the use of the Blue Area of the Moon, particularly along with the use of other fantastic places in the Marvel Universe, like the Savage Land. Had this run continued another hundred issues with the same creative team, I'm sure we would have visited Atlantis, or the underground realms of the Mole Man, or the Negative Zone!

I think many people my age would be shocked most by two facts of this era: that Rogue and Emma Frost were villains. Sure, it is talked about in the comics, but Rogue got great press from the cartoons. We don't have a memory of her has villain (even X-Men: Evolution painted her as a victim when she hanged out with the Brotherhood).

If I hadn't found old New Mutants comics I would not be aware of the extent of Emma's villainy. Some recent writers have been toying with Emma's morality, but it is difficult to see her going the villainous route again. She's too popular for Marvel to let go of, but I understand the recent shift back towards Jean Grey. Emma really doesn't fit the Disney image.

I'll give my own review of the last third of Dark Phoenix first up front, and then dovetail into responses to everyone else's comments...

Uncanny X-Men #135 - 137
On the heels of the magnificent 6 issue build-up before it, the final three issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga culminate in a glory of high quality creativity. To me, this remains comic books at its finest, and one of the highest points Marvel ever achieved after the Silver Age. So that should pretty much sum up from the beginning where I stand.

The change of Jean from Phoenix to the Black Queen to Dark Phoenix is not sudden by any means, yet it still feels like an alarming and tense turn of events. The ending of the story is classic and legendary, with good reason. But the final three issues are so much more than just "Jean is Dark Phoenix" and then "Jean dies". There is a lot of meat from start to finish and all of that is what actually makes this a masterpiece.

The series reaches cosmic heights again here, but there's a difference between this story and #107-108. In *that* story, we truly did see the most grandiose and cosmic peak of the X-Universe we'd ever seen. Here, we get close, but what makes this story work so well is that here we see the X-Men totally anchored by their humanity back to Earth. There is an underlying theme of friendship and more importantly love that makes it more tragic and more beautiful.

That is played up during the confrontation(s) with Dark Phoenix very well, as each hero struggles to beat her. We see Wolverine hesitate which goes against everything we've seen from him so far in yet another great moment. Jean's parents playing such a critical role is another stroke of genius, as those scenes are heartbreaking and as human as it gets--surely everyone can relate to a similar family situation where "powers of the Phoenix" are replaced by something more common or mundane? Of course, it's really when Scott confronts Jean on Earth that the human element is amplified to the max.

Once again Byrne (and Austen) really take this story to new heights. Byrne's touches are obvious in places: he loves to show the rest of the Marvel Universe reacting to events so we get one panel cameos of Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, etc. Peter Corbeau also shows up--usually an indication something BIG is going down--but I have a feeling that came more from Claremont, Cobeua's longtime champion. The inclusion of Angel and Beast is assuredly from Byrne. Claremont gives Angel a bit of a self-confidence problem so he has something to overcome but I think that’s more indicative of Claremont never really having a handle on the character (and as we'll see, I'm positive Angel joining the X-Men shortly is all Byrne's idea). The double-splash page in #137 is one of the best splashes we've seen ever in X-Men comics.

Claremont too shines in a big way. His words end the story perfectly: " jean grey could have lived to become a god. But it was more important to her to for ...a human."

The genocide committed by Jean, whether character assassination or not, is pretty damn epic. Byrne delivers in a style reminsicent of Kirby that few others could deliver. The race, btw, looks like the alien from Avengers #4. Has that ever been confirmed? Surely Byrne must have done that on purpose.

Bringing the Shi'Ar into the story is a stroke of genius as well, as things have now reached a cosmic fever pitch and we get a free for all of the Imperiel Guard versus the X-Men. For action lovers and lovers of stories with a plethora of characers, this really is a culmination of the last 8 issues. It also shows a united X-Men--new and old--trying to save one of their own against force that dwarves them in size and power. I also thought the Kree and Skrull bit was a fantastic little addition.

That being said, the real meat of the final issue, #137, is the first half in which the X-Men all individually prepare for what's to come. It's powerful stuff and creates a foreboding mood that is more like a noir film than anything else. It's that sensibility that leads into the heart-breaking ending where Jean actually does indeed become Phoenix again. You can see the X-Men's hearts break just as mine sunk deep into my stomach. Colossus, further endearing himself to me, can't kill her; Cyclops is barely hanging on; and finally, Jean ends things herself. Noir, the darkest and most human of all story types meets high concept space opera. I think it meshes perfectly.

There are a lot of other things to notice too in this story. Professor X plays yet again a bit of an oddball role that is hard to define. When he interrupts Scott's talking down Jean in #136 you can't help but want to scream at him in frustration. His complex relationships with Scott and Jean are always present, and that is a bonus for the series IMO. Prof X adds an element that most series don't quite have, even when he's at his most frustrating from a reader's perspective.

I also love the covers. Jean smashes the logo in #135 and then remains smashed in #136. Too bad the ugly bicycle add thingy is on the top part of #137's cover.

#137 is a double-sized finale, which is the first time in comic book history a comic book publisher did that at no extra cost. That's pretty ground-breaking! The next time? The finale to the Great Darkness Saga.

Now, getting to Fanfie's comments and my own on the death of Jean. It's a multi-layered response to what we know about how the story was made, really. To me, Shooter did indeed make the right call: killing Jean was the best way to end the story as it was the most powerful, and it also followed what happened with the genocide to its noirish conclusion. That being said, Fanfie rightly points out that Shooter is a hypocrite--and he certainly is here. He's one of the more notorious cases of "do as I say, not as I do" editor / writers, who never held himself to the same standards as everyone else.

I do think Jean dying was the right decision given all that had happened. I think resurrecting her in X-Factor / Fantastic Four / whatever was a pretty terrible call, and began a long steady decline of comic books in general, not just Marvel, where nothing mattered anymore.

But again, Fanfie has a very good point. Strong female heroines quite frankly got the raw end of the stick in comics for a long time, and it’s a shame this happened to Jean, yet it never happened to her male counterparts. The Silver Surfrer, Captain Marvel, and others are prime examples of highly powerful male characters. There is, of course, Thor, but the original idea of making an "X-Men version of Thor" never seemed to work even as far back as #101-108.

Claremont, in my mind, loved his strong female characters and always tried his best to show them off as powerful, leading figures. But whether he succeeded is hard to say. Storm is one of Marvel's best, but she was depowered for years; this isn't something I think was too bad, but it lasted far too long and had a negative effect. Claremont tried to salvage Ms. Marvel, his #1 "Marvel leading lady" but the damage had been done and even after she was Binary, there didn't seem to be anyone all too interested in doing anything with her. Rachel Summers was clearly Claremont's way to work on the aspects of the Phoenix he found interesting. He obvoiusly never intended to take her in the direction of "Jean as Phoenix" but because of what had already been done to Jean, her never-ending self-destruction felt at times like throwing gas on the fire.

All this said, I still think Jean dying was the right call given what was drawn in the issues leading up to #137, so I'm not too disheartened by it (unlike so many other things).



First, let me spend a moment imaginging if Byrne had stayed on for another hundred issues and the adventures in all those places that would have happened, plus the Microverse, the gangster Skrull universe, World War II, etc. You're so right!

Back to your first comment Set, I hear what you're saying. I don't have that, actually: to me, in these issues, this is Jean. This is NOT the Phoenix entity. That retcon, I can't wrap my head around. (Ironically since all of these issues were published when I was a baby or a toddler).

I've always found the first five or six issues of X-Factor so bad that I don't really register them into the history of the X-Men. Instead, I see them as a series of terrible mistakes that Weezie, Claremont and others spent the next several years fixing via several crossovers and more complicating storylines.

Lastly, the difference between Rachel and Nate Grey was the time they were written. Rachel Summers debuted in a time when powerful characters were seen as scary and constantly being questioned by the creators and readers. Nate Grey came a decade later when it seemed that the more uber-powerful you were, the "cooler" you were. I think it would have been an awesome story if Nate Grey went batshit crazy and Cable & others had to shut him down permanently. That could have been the Dark Phoenix redux the big 2 have been trying to achieve forever.



I think Rogue wasn't really a villain long enough for people to think of her that way in the collective memory of fandom. I certainly don't. I think it’s a cool element, but like Hawkeye or the Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver, it happened relatively quickly in a small number of years.

I still see Emma Frost as neutral at best, and an excellent choice to go full blown antagonist again. But most of her career was spent somewhere in the grey area; probably only her very first two appearances had her as a full blown villain. Once Magneto began to change in X-Men #150, most of the X-Men's villains became more complex. The Hellfire Club, while always "bad guys", usually had understandable motivations.

Uncanny X-Men #138

To close out of the Dark Phoenix Saga, we get #138 which is the funeral of Jean Grey though its essentially a "all that has come before" issue which allows John Byrne to enjoy himself recapping the entirety of the X-Men's history, featuring every single character that had appeared thus far.

The cover to #138 is pretty dynamic: "EXIT CYCLOPS!". It's one of my brother's all time favorite covers so its always stuck out to me. My comic book guy mentioned that when it came out, he thought that was it--Cyclops was gone permanently from the team. It must have felt that way at the time. It's not until the Man-Thing story in a half year that we realize he'll still be part of the cast.

The "summary of all that came before" issues were popular in the early 1980's, especially at Marvel. Marv Wolfman did one in Amazing Spider-Man that sticks out in my mind. The Avengers "changing of the guard" issues also kind of had this. As I kid, I would love them and go bananas over them. As an adult, I don't love them so much as there isn't all that much there. Still, they hold some sentimental value. This one works really because of Byrne and Austen's beautiful artwork.

The book ends of the story are where this issue really shines. The opening splash is devastatingly beautiful and ominous. I love that Jean's dad asks how he's holding up; though incredibly subtle, Jean's dad has endeared himself to me over the last few issues. Lilandra's gift to the Grey's is nice but it's always felt out of place that the one responsible for their daughter's death gives them a gift. Still, this plot point will have big story repercussions years later with Rachel.

What makes this issue work is the ending is pretty fantastic. After Scott announces his farewell, it all comes down to the last page, in the middle panel. The panel is solemn yet strangely uplifting. Scott is alone and sad; but he's engaged in the world because of Jean. Whereas he was previously cold and distant, unable to express his feelings because he was afraid of what might happen, now he's feeling things and alive. And he'll continue to try to be.

(FYI, Lardy, you can see a lot of my inspiration for how Cobie was portrayed over the years stems from Scott during this era).

Following Scott's exit, the final panels show the arrival of Kitty at the school. This ending is uplifting and important: life goes on. Along with the bad comes good in unexpected places. It's almost as if Claremont and Byrne knew they had put the fans through the ringer, and they owed us one.

And the X-Men are never the same.

It could have been glorious. Byrne and Claremont, warts and all, seemed some of the few writers of the day who *celebrated* all of the wild and whacky stuff available to him in the Marvel universe. Instead of hiding from it, or trying to ghetto-ize whatever title(s) they were currently working on into their own little compartment, they were like a kid in a candy store, wanting to stuff everything in their mouths all at once, and yet *still* were able to add to the already crazy full Marvel Universe such enduring characters as Sebastian Shaw or Emma Frost.



I was graduating high school around this time, so it *should* be the case that this *is* Jean, and the, IMO, mishandled resurrection nonsense in X-Factor, years later, was just some Elseworlds Alternate Universe Fanfic that I can dismiss, but, sadly, my brain does not always cooperate with me on such notions.

I go back and read that issue, and I think some combination of 'wow, they had a lot of thought balloons and stuff back then!' and 'aw, poor Colossus, having a moral quandary in his underwear about some bag of energy pretending to be Jean.'

Cobie, I personally think that Phoenix-as-female-Thor could have worked -- the concept never had a chance, because Cockrum left so soon after Jean became Phoenix, and Claremont & Byrne took her over to the dark side. Gradually, yes, but definitively. I do agree with you on the early issues of X-Factor, which are the low point of Bob Layton's career for sure.

Emily, I think that Rogue and Emma Frost were both quite nasty in their earliest appearances, but Rogue had the excuse of just being a misguided kid, so I can accept her as a heroine far easier than with Emma.

Uncanny X-Men 135-137

Lots of interesting insights into the Dark Phoenix Saga above--and lots of food for thought! So...where to begin?

Hm. I think I'll start for a moment with memory vs. reality. How does a story that I loved and discovered many, many years ago measure up? What surprised me and what held firm?

I think, for one thing, that it was surprising to see just how short of a time Dark Phoenix existed under that guise. Essentially, we got two full issues and a few panels in the issue before and the issue after. This is a testament to how compressed comic book storytelling was then. It's truly remarkable that the story can leave such a lasting impression when Jean's time as a bad guy was so very short. I mean, if you include her time as the Black Queen, it's a little bit longer, but no one calls it the "Black Queen Saga", right?

But I'd say, as a more sophisticated reader at 44 than the 14-15 year-old kid who read it the first time, that it probably could have used another issue or two for maximum effect. I mean, there's a lot left on the table and some beats that could have been explored. Basically, the story goes: Phoenix turns on the X-Men, heads out into open space and destroys an inhabited planet and a Shi'ar ship, returns to Earth to be defeated and de-powered by the X-Men, endures trial by combat for her crimes with the X-men by her side and finally kills herself to end her own threat. I think, for example, that we got from the initial fight with the X-Men to her destroying all those lives a little two quickly. It feels like there should have been some escalation in between, whether an ensuing fight with the Avengers or her causing some destruction on Earth or some combination or any other smaller scale mayhem. Instead, it's like we went from riding a bicycle to piloting the Millennium Falcon, y'know? We're barely processing that Jean is evil when we immediately see her commit the worst possible atrocity! From a pure storytelling perspective, it would make more sense to see an escalation.

But, that said, you can also see what Claremont and Byrne were doing and justify it. I mean, when the Dark Phoenix is finally unleashed, they don't pussyfoot around, right? Her full power unleashed, she just goes for it and immediately loses complete control in the worst way. And it is shocking the way it was presented, without a doubt.

But one benefit more of an escalation would have undeniably had was that we would have gotten to see more of Jean as Dark Phoenix. I think it was needed for us to connect with the story even more and to help define the character better. There's no mistaking that this iteration of Jean Grey was very enigmatic. Was she a woman who couldn't handle ultimate power or a victim of possession by a cosmic entity? Most of her long arc beginning with issue #101 points to the former, but there is also plenty of narration and dialogue in the final three issues that speak to the latter. Which was it? The eventual ret-con that brought her back is technically neither, but it is closer to the second explanation because it and the ret-con render Jean essentially blameless.

Going in, I remembered it as essentially absolute power corrupting her absolutely, but there are definitely references to the "Phoenix entity" in these original stories. These references unfortunately left the door wide open for the two to be revealed as two separate beings.....and for the separation to be taken a step further, eventually revealing that the "real" Jean was still under Jamaica Bay.

But if the story was actually forever left alone, I might be doing this re-read and trying to discern whether the tragedy of this storyline was that Jean couldn't control her power and sacrificed herself for the good of humanity or that she'd been possessed by a malevolent entity that could only be stopped by killing herself. It's a fine difference, I suppose, but it's a meaningful one to me. I feel that I prefer the first interpretation, the one I always believed, but there's some internal story waffling that disappoints and makes it hard to ignore the later ret-con as I had hoped to do.

Does all this make it a bad story? No, not at all. There are some unforgettable scenes that still hold up and make this remain a classic. For me, it's the emotional moments: Jean, confronting her family, Scott's psychic proposal after Jean's apparent cure, the process the other X-Men went through figuring out if they could support Jean, Jean's final moment with Scott. And a trio of great, dramatic fight scenes--the two between Jean and the X-Men and the climactic Imperial Guard duel--remind you that this is still a superhero comic book and a very well-crafted one.

But I don't know that it's quite the gold standard anymore that I once held it up as. And that saddens me a little.

Phoenix: The Untold Story

My Marvel Masterwork edition included this original draft of 137 and the commentary from Salicrup, Shooter, Claremont, Byrne, Austin and Jones. I still own this in the floppy somewhere, but I haven't read it in a very long time. I decide to read it flipping to every panel compared to the handy actually-published 137 handy earlier in the volume.

One thing I was very surprised to find that the last 5 or 6 pages are not the only difference between the two. The dialogue and captions throughout vary dramatically in close to half the panels. Claremont used the new ending as an opportunity to reframe the story toward the more tragic outcome. One huge example of the reworking is those scenes of all the individual X-Men weighing their options privately in the morning before their impending battle with the Imperial Guard. Originally, these were mostly opportunities for the X-Men to comment on their backstories or plotlines--Logan wondered if he'd ever see Mariko again, Peter thinking about his brother Mikhail, Angel realizing he'd missed being in action, Storm missing Kenya to name a few. In the final version, their thoughts are almost exclusively for Jean, and we get great subtext like Kurt's musing about the Holocaust. Basically, all of the additions inform the new ending much better than if only the ending had been changed. Heck, in the original version, even Scott's thoughts were more about how he's changed from being an orphan to the leader of the X-Men than about the direness of the situation they're facing!

Another big change in the final version was how the Beast objects to the lack of any trial for Jean and of justice overall in the situation. Here, he and Angel are offered a chance to back out (as they aren't currently X-Men), but they decline. In that scene where Hank is bathing, he laments not taking the opportunity to leave as a chance to bring in the Avengers instead of the great food for thought he provided with his unique viewpoint about how Jean should be judged.

It's interesting how Claremont made all of these changes with the same art. He makes it work pretty well, but Byrne would have dramatized these moments to give them the proper weight had he known what the scenes would eventually depict. (Obviously, there was no time for that. The creator commentary explains they had maybe three days to change everything.) I doubt he would have chosen showing most of the characters in whimsical situations for such hefty existential and moral contemplations.

The only art change before those last few pages is one panel, the one where Cyke offers a hand to Angel for he and Beast helping them out. In the original, he offers a hand to Gladiator instead, both wishing each other an honorable battle.

There's no mistaking that the final version of 137 is superior to what was originally intended. It's a much more powerful ending with a better build-up than what would have been published. It definitely feels like all the pomp and circumstance amounted to very little with Lilandra simply wanting to remove Jean's powers after all of that effort. The roundtable included with the creators show, however, that Shooter didn't tell anyone they had to kill Jean, only that he wanted them to come up with a different ending that didn't let her off so easily. Claremont, in fact, says that it was none other than Roger Stern who suggested killing her off!

The discussion goes on to give a rough idea of where Jean's storyline would have gone. There was always a plan with Claremont and Byrne to have 150 feature Magneto. However, the general idea was that Magneto would have taken Jean and use her against the X-Men. He would have found some way to restore her powers and would tempt her with restoring them. This would be after she struggled to come to grips with what she had done as Dark Phoenix but would be tempted because she'd essentially been stripped of all of her abilities, making her akin to a cripple. She would ultimately reject this and choose to live out her days as a normal human. She and Scott would marry, retire as heroes and basically live happily ever after.

It's like seeing an alternate version of a great movie you loved. In this case, the final version was superior.

Lardy, even if Shooter didn't actually tell them to kill Jean, I've heard an alternate behind-the-scenes report (I can't remember if it was Byrne or Claremont, or where it was published) that Shooter suggested a Promethean punishment where she was tortured by cosmic forces for all eternity. Given the misogyny that Shooter has shown in his own writing, that's not surprising to me.

The idea that Stern was the one who came up with the idea to kill Jean is very disturbing to me, given that he wrote the female Avengers so well.

The point that the seeds had already been sown for the retcon five or six years down the line is a good one, and well taken. But I'm surprised at the lack of comments about my alternate idea, where she almost commits genocide but doesn't, or about my point that Phoenix-as-female-Thor could have worked given the proper opportunity and development.

Uncanny X-Men #138 and Annual #4

A beautiful issue which more than transcends its "summary of all that came before" status. Claremont's stroke of genius was to have it be narrated by Scott, giving us a very revealing look behind the stoic shell. This issue is one of the main reasons why Scott used to be so attractive -- the strong, silent type whom lots of fangirls (and lots of fanboys) wanted to bring out of his shell the way Jean managed to.

Byrne shines, too, managing to cram lots of visual easter eggs for the hardcore X-fans into only 17 pages. And Austin matches Byrne every step of the way.

On the other side of the spectrum is the highly disappointing Annual #4, which exists mainly to give us a partial origin of Nightcrawler and to show that Claremont writes a pretty good Dr. Strange. Unfortunately, Kurt's origin is truncated to a few panels near the end, and Claremont and artists John Romita Jr. & Bob McLeod spend way too much time on a series of tediously repetetive supernatural battles, which are too pristinely and too unimaginatively rendered. I know I'm generally very harsh on Junior, but in this case it's because he went on, almost a decade later, to portray hellish realms and the supernatural brilliantly during Ann Nocenti's Daredevil run. Then there's the creepiness of the revelation that Amanda is Kurt's adoptive sister, and the bittersweet final hurrah for my beloved original Wolverine costume, which won't be seen again until the early 1990s. In my opinion, the X-Men annuals from 4 all the way through 8 are nothing special, and wouldn't scale the heights of the Claremont/Perez/Austin annual until the Art Adams-drawn Asgardian Wars tie-in in annual 9 (I don't rate the Dracula annual, because I hate that Rachel Van Helsing becomes Dracula's victim.)

I've also never read (don't own) Annual #4. I was really curious about it since it's an important story for Amanda, but I can't say I'm overly anxious to try now! Overly tedious magic battles are one of my pet peeves in magic based superhero stories.

Great commentary on Scott in #138, Fanfie. He was such a strong character and this issue hits all the beats that show that.

I'll comment a little more on Dark Phoenix when I'm not posting from my phone...

Thanks, Cobie. Scott was my first real superhero crush because one of the first superhero stories I read was the original Dark Phoenix Saga trade with the Sienkiewicz cover. I'm appalled at the way that Scott is periodically ruined by creators, be it Bob Layton in the mid-1980s, Grant Morrison in the early 2000s, or the committee which, over the last couple of years, has pretty much taken Scott past the point of no return.

That's probably my single biggest problem with the way Marvel handles the X-Men in general. There are no shortage of other things, but the handling of Scott by one creator after another who blatantly don't understand him yet feel the need to destroy him to further their stories is infuriating.

Well said. That's one of the reasons I'm enjoying this re-read so much, for the reminders of how awesome and sexy Scott is when he's written right. I'm looking forward to his solo showcase in 144.

It's in this run that we see Xavier come back and flip out on Wolverine threatening him with 'demerits' if he doesn't play well, and it's *Scott* who tries to explain that this is not how you lead someone like Wolverine, and Xavier then snaps that the problem is that maybe he shouldn't have put Scott in charge in the first place.

It's kind of amazing how well Scott comes off compared to Xavier (who, at this point, is well before Onslaught / Xavier Protocols and closer to 'St. Xavier who can do no wrong').

And yet, these days, Scott has a reputation for having a stick up his butt and being some sort of tin-plated tyrant. It's completely bizarre.

When I was younger, Scott, especially compared to Logan, was always my favorite. He played well with others, had friends, had respect, and always, always, always had the hottest girl in the room, ever since he was a gangly teenager! If there was an in-group, he was not only 'in' it, he was *in charge* of it.

Logan, by comparison, behaved like an awkward schoolboy around Mariko, which was kind of awesome to see, and yet gave the impression that he was, underneath it all, shy and uncertain in that area, which, as a teenager, was not the sort of role model I was looking for. I wanted to be like the confident guy with the hot redhead on his arm, not the anger-management-issues short hairy guy who started stuttering when a pretty girl entered the room.

So yeah, probably not for the same reasons as Fanfie, I totally dug Scott.

Cheers, Set.

Lots of good comments. I've noticed too that I still feel like I did when I first read these issues when I was about 19 or so, which is that I just admire Scott in a huge way. Even now, at an age where I'm older than the character himself, I still feel that way. Claremont and Byrne (and others during this long era) just present him as being an admirable man who knows he isn't perfect but strives to be the best he can be.

The same can be said for most of the others in their own way. Ororo and Kurt are two others that are both very strong and very vulnerable in different times. They are wholly unique--there is no other character like either in fiction. Neither has been trampled on as badly as Scott over the years but most writers don't know what to do with then because they are interchangeable and easily plugged into some hair-brained plot.

Loving all this Cyke love. I also can't wait for #144. I'm also a big fan of Lee Forester.

Lee Forrester was awesome...until she started dating Magneto. But even at her worst, I still liked her a lot more than Madelyne Pryor.

Oh, dear. I'm getting way ahead of myself again.

Back in that day, I found Cyclops far more interesting than he had been before 'All-New X-Men.'

And the new characters, I found Nightcrawler, Colossus and Storm crazy cool, personality-wise (and with powers! How many weather controllers were there? How many teleporters on teams? These days, half the teams have a pet teleporter which they use as a neighborhood bicycle, and otherwise ignore, like Manifold). Wolverine was useful, as a narrative device, because every leader needs someone to challenge that leadership (and therefore demonstrate leadership!), or else it's terribly boring and feels 'unearned.'

Thunderbird came and went so fast that he was a bug on the windscreen.

Banshee was the one that puzzled me. It seemed like they really didn't know what to do with him, and when they did focus on him (Super-awful haunted leprechaun-infested Cassidy Keep? Oy.) it turned into an LSD trip...

I feel like they really struck gold with Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm (and, since he's literal gold, Wolverine), but kind of floundered around with Banshee.