Marvel NOW : Sister Thor, Brother America

I have often post poned this but since the handymen were in my home, which confined me to my room for a few hours, I finally had the time to read Peter Garcia´s article about the new Thor and Captain America in DOLMEN 236. And while it is true that there have been people before who posed as Thor and Captain America - or picked up the mantle - I can´t agree with his statement that we should all embrace these new versions.

Now you can boo me all you want and call me a male pig, a chauvinist, an opponent of racial and gender diversity or even a comic Nazi ( which is very popular when it comes to shutting up people from Germany with an opposing opinion, which is sadly ineffective when the person in question is genetically speaking spanish ) but there is a reason for my veto here.

Years ago I was at a panel at the International Comic Salon Erlangen about the german comic industry and when the reason was discussed why so few german comic readers buy german comic books - by german creators - a german comic artist who had just received an award for best comic of the year the day before said that you can´t expect people to buy a german comic book JUST because it is a german comic book. It also has to offer something people are willing to spend money on. It has to be a good story.

Now you might ask what my point is here but I am not an advocate for change for change´s sake because that leads to such intellectual and artistic disasters like DC´s NEW 52 and Disney´s Marvel NOW. I know there are people out there who enjoy it and also people out there who say that it is an experiment and only time will tell if it´s a good idea or a bad idea. Which is total nonsense. As somebody who has experienced such fiascos in comics a few times over the last decades I can tell you that the people responsible KNOW what kind of crap they are selling to people. They just don´t care because they are money grabbing bastards. If you don´t believe me just read the interviews with all the people who were responsible for the Clone Saga. NOW they are saying that they knew they were producing Dreck but because it was selling the marketing people said produce more of this and what started as a good story got dragged out so long that even the most adamant Spider - Man fan was fed up. Now they admit that they should have stopped it before it got out of hand. The same goes for all the crappy grim - and - gritty comics of the 90s.

Most of those were horrible. Now you can read in interviews that EVERYONE in the comic industry at that time knew that the bubble was going to burst at some point but they were just too busy stuffing their pockets with money from all the various special metallic foil glow in the dark covers to care. But back at that time you heard nothing of the sort.

And I´m sure in a few years you will read in interviews that making the Falcon the new Captain America and Jane Foster the new Thor ( which is not a spoiler at this moment ) were not the greatest ideas but that it was mandated from the higher ups at Disney that they wanted to diversify for diversities sake and damn the consequences. Now I´m all for diversity.

But I´m also a realist. There are people out there who say that if fifty percent of the world populace are women fifty percent of the super heroes in comics should also be women. Now why hasn´t that been so in comics for the last decade ? Because not all of these fifty percent read comics. Or write comics. Most comics were produced by men and read by men. So the argument was made that if more comics are written by women with female protagonists that more women would read comics. Which I would like to argue. First of all : does anybody remember CrossGen comics ?

They had really good comics and a lot of them had female leads or at least a lot of strong female characters. Now they went bankrupt so it´s hard to make definite assumptions but I don´t think that in the years they made comics the female readership spiked to fifty percent. So I don´t subscribe to the idea that if you write them they will buy them. Is it really helpful to make a female version of an already existing comic character or is it a better idea to create new characters that appeal to female readers like Dark Horse´s brilliant BANDETTE by Paul Tobin and Coleen Coover ? 

Because here is where your whole argument of me being against more female heroes goes off the rails. I read a lot of the CrossGen comics - with female protagonists or without - because they were just good.

They had great artists like George Perez or Jim Cheung who later became superstars at other comic companies. In fact, comic artists like Steve Epting developed their style that makes them so popular now on those CrossGen books. And Steve Epting is right now doing a comic for image with a female lead, VELVET which I read. Not because I need to read comics with women as the protagonist but because it´s a really good spy versus spy story by Ed Brubaker. AND of course great art by Steve Epting.

Marvel has had comics with female leads for decades but the question if they sell or not has always been a question of quality not if the creators were female or male. The new CAPTAIN MARVEL comic is not selling so well because they called Miss Marvel Captain Marvel so they could have a new Miss Marvel without getting rid of the old Miss Marvel Carol Danvers and keep the copyright for the Captain Marvel name at the same time.

It´s because the latest incarnations of the MS MARVEL comic have been crap. And I know that because my brother had it on his pull list and I read it. And it was not good. It was not horrible - they had a good idea that after the events of HOUSE OF M where Carol Danvers was the biggest super heroine in the Marvel universe she realized that she could be more.

But the writers at Marvel had no idea what that should be and in the end the reader got the same old cliche ridden comics like with all the other series. Or what about She Hulk ? The last time that title was really groundbreaking and worth reading was when John Byrne was on the book.

Also not a female creator ( the beard kind of gives it away ). I have read a lot of comics with female protagonists and when they are good I don´t stop pimping them like James Robinson´s and Paul Smith´s LEAVE IT TO CHANCE. In fact one of my favorite comics is not only about a female super hero it´s also the female version of an already existing superhero AND from an alternate universe. How´s that for embracing diversity ?

SPIDER - GIRL was the best spidertitle when most of the spiderfranchise books were utter crap. Mayday Parker was a really interesting character ( seen above in a pose worthy of Milo Manara´s Spiderwoman cover but that will be the topic of an upcoming post ) her book that lasted hundred issues before it was restarted and renumbered had lots of readers - male and female - and all Marvel did was trying to kill it in the worst way.

If it hadn´t been for the support - and vehement protests - of the readers the series wouldn´t even had reached that number. So EXCUSE me when I find it a bit hard to believe that Marvel cares so much about it´s female heroes now all of a sudden. And it´s not like there are no other asgardian gods who are female in Marvel comics. They did a great Herkules series after WORLD WAR HULK ( before he became bi - sexual ) why can´t they write a great series about Sif ? If Thor who has no secret identity in norse mythology could have a human alter ego, no, make that various alter egos in the Marvel comics for decades why can´t they do the same with Sif ?

It´s not like there is no potential for a comic there. She´s a strong and independent character who has been around for decades and who has shown that she can go toe to toe with the likes of Thor or Beta Ray Bill.

Anybody out there remember Beta Ray Bill ? Here we have another version of Thor even if technically he did not take up the mantle of Thor.

Beta Ray Bill appeared in Walter Simonson´s first issue on THOR as artist and writer ( I know he drew a few issues before THOR 337 ) and he earned his stripes by kicking the living daylights out of the mighty Thor.

And that was BEFORE he got his hands on the hammer. Which he could lift because he was worthy. You see ? Back then they knew how to write comic stories with the parameters that were established. They didn´t have to come up with crap like somebody whispered something ( which hasn´t been revealed because even the writer who wrote it has not the bloodiest idea what that should be ) into Thor´s ear and suddenly Thor was not worthy or the hammer changing the inscription on his own accord or doing things he can´t do. Because it´s only a hammer. A magic hammer but still only a hammer. A tool. Odin made it. Or made the dwarfs make it an then added his magic. But it´s something Odin made. And when it some day stops working for Thor he simply throws it away to make another one. He´s Odin, dude. Okay ? Anyway, Beta Ray Bill had an impressive debut.

There also was another new character who made his debut in the THOR series but this time during one of my favorite periods which started right AFTER Walter Simonson had left the book : the Eric Masterson Thor.

And Eric did not become the new Thor because the hammer chose him or any such crap. He did it the old fashioned way : he earned it. Eric was a supporting character who became involved with Thor and they became friends. When Eric Masterson was mortally wounded because he saved Thor ( which happened in the BLACK GALAXY SAGA which contains the only issue from this run I was missing until I got the trade a few months back ) Thor merged with Eric Masterson and Thor´s life energy saved him. Eric Masterson became Thor´s new alter ego and whenever Eric hit the ground with his walking stick he transformed into the mighty Thor.

But they were still two beings. Thor and Eric Masterson. Now later when Thor killed Loki ( say what ? read the issues, dammit ! ) Thor disappeared and Eric transformed into Thor but it was still Eric in the drivers seat.

At first Eric didn´t want to carry on as the new Thor but he soon realized that without anybody to fill the void left behind by the original Thor his enemies would rum amok and terrorize everybody. So he took on the role of Thor to keep appearances up and make people believe that Thor was still around  while searching for the original Thor. Even when he was with the Avengers he pretended to be the old Thor although he had to fill in some of the members on occassion when it was necessary like with Captain America who had to train him to become an effective Thor.

There also was another Thor introduced during the Tom DeFalco run ( which I already mentioned in this post ) : Dargo, the Thor from 2537.

Yep, still another version of Thor. And to add another wrinkle - just for diversity´s sake - when both of them clashed hammers because of the usual trademark Marvel misunderstanding Beta Ray Thor intervened before they all team up against the real villains : Zarrko and Loki.

But wait. Wasn´t Loki dead ? Unlike the identity of the new female Thor I don´t want to spoil too much of THIS story so let it suffice to say that I highly enjoyed this story because it was one of those wibbly wobbly timey wimey things which played into the issue guest starring the Ghost Rider which brought me back to the title ( I mentioned the issue in this post ).

And speaking about bringing people back to the title : eventually the real Thor returned and Eric Masterson became Thunderstrike. His series lasted 24 issues until the writers didn´t know what to do and killed him.

Which is what writers usually do when they run out of ideas and don´t have the balls to let the hero retire or go to an alien planet or another dimension or such. Anyway, as you can see there have been 4 different Thors in this run alone. And there have been a few more afterwards some of whom were even female. So what´s the beef with the new Thor ?

Quite simple : the writer didn´t do his homework. Again, Mjolnir is just a hammer. He has no magic powers of his own and he has no mind of its own. It´s not the Tardis which is a living sentient being that goes off and does things. The hammer can not heal people. Or else Thor would just go around and zapp all the sick people. Because if he didn´t he would be a colossal prick. Or he would use it on himself with all the times he died.

But that´s not how it works. I recently read ESSENTIAL THOR volume 6 which also contains issues 235 and 236 in which Jane Foster was dying.

Yeah, I guess most comic readers of Today have all forgotten about this story and the writer of the new Thor comic probably never read the story. And here´s why : in the story Sif saves Jane Foster with the help of the mystic runestaff of Kamo Tharn but Sif has to transfer her own living energy into Jane´s corporeal form. They basically become one being.

The stories were back ups in Condor´s DIE SPINNE and I remember two things. One is that Thor had to fight the Absorbing Man and defeated him by getting him to absorb a cardboard Mjolnir toy and keeping him in a big cardboard box so he could not escape. The other was Sif going on a quest with Herkules for the runestaff which had a lion´s head on top. Now if the hammer could have cured Jane why didn´t Thor use it ? Surely he would have even given up the hammer to save his beloved. I mean he even risked being banned from Asgard forever for loving her. The answer is that the hammer could not heal Jane Foster. Even becoming Thor by proving worthy of the hammer cannot heal people. Throughout Thor´s history in the Marvel universe there was only one cure for dying mortals : merging with an immortal and sharing his life force. Which is what happened with Eric Masterson and Jake Olson and with Jane Foster. In none of the cases did just being worthy and becoming Thor cure anybody.

It also doesn´t fend off the illness as long as that person is Thor. So I have to cry foul on that front. But that is not the only problem here.

There have been many alternate versions of Thor, some like Eric kept the name of Thor because at that time the real Thor was gone and nobody knew where he was and to keep things easy he pretended to be Thor.

But Beta Ray Bill never pretended to be the real Thor. Even when he got his own enchanted weapon Stormbreaker and took on a more Thor - like appearance he called himself Beta Ray Thor. And in the case of Dargo, he never pretended to be Thor even when Thor had disappeared again. There was Thor Girl and she also never called herself Thor. Because that would be ridiculous. Thor is not a title, it´s the name of the Thundergod who is son to Odin and Freya ( or Earth depending on which stories you believe ) and who is a founding member of the Avengers. He is unique and nobody else can claim to be him. But Jane Foster does now. And it just doesn´t work. I can´t be Robert Downey Junior even if I somehow managed to become an actor and star in an IRON MAN movie or in an AVENGERS movie. Robert Downey Junior is Robert Downey Junior and nobody else. So Jane Foster can become a new god of thunder, she can dress up as Thor and she might be even worthy of Mjolnir. But all that doesn´t make her Thor. She can be Janeima the new goddess of thunder but she can´t be Thor. So this whole thing of Thor going by another name now - that´s pure bs. That´s some kind of political correct bs because some women keep their husbands name after the divorce or some crap.

And the other thing is the costume. Because that just looks like bad cosplay. Cosplay gone wrong so to say. There are lots of cosplayers who come up with better female Thor costumes and they do it alone and in their dank garage. Or in whatever room they make their costumes.

Now that a big multi million corporation like Disney is behind the Marvel comics you might think that they put top notch people on a big publicity thing like this but every other female Thor version I have seen on the internet so far looks better than what they are selling as the new Thor.

And to add insult to injury some artists are apparently not aware that some poses might come off as suggestive when a woman is posing with a hammer. Or where exactly is she going to put the handle of the hammer ?

But maybe that´s the way Disney wants to go with this. A woman and her hammer and sisters are doing it for themselves. Hey, if Supergirl can do it with her superhorse ..... and if you look at the title´s logo Thor IS getting penetrated by Mjolnir. Maybe he finally wanted to get lucky too.

And those are the reasons why I can´t stand the entire thing. Because you know it´s just one big publicity thing to get the hype going. That´s the only reason why they had to insist on Jane Foster becoming Thor. Because if she had become the new Sif that would not be news worthy. Been there, done that even if it would make more sense. And actually be possible without all this crazy crap about Thor not being worthy and calling himself Reverse Thor and Mjolnir changing his inscription and going off like a Green Lantern ring to find a new owner without fear. Yes, I KNOW that is from DC´s GREEN LANTERN comic universe and not from the Thor comics in the Marvel universe but how comes everybody else does not ? There is just so much suspension of disbelieve you can bear and even if I swallow that whole bit and the whole cancer victim thing - which is just soooo cliche like the whole " let´s make him / her interesting let´s give him / her cancer / a drinking problem / dead wife / gay / lesbian / bi - sexual / all of the above " writing school that´s so popular nowadays. And than there´s the fact that any cosplayer can come up with a better costume.

Time again to wrap things up for Today but I hope I could get across what I don´t like about the new Thor. It´s not that I have anything against shaking up the Status Quo or female super heroes or female versions of already existing superheroes but I´m not a big fan of stories which are only a big hype without much substance or logic to it. When writers say that you are not supposed to think and fell the story is when they have lost me as a reader. So far I have not heard anything that encourages me to read the series and I have only seen one picture where the new Thor looks like she could kick some ass. And guess who drew that one.

As you might have guessed we have to leave the part about the new Captain Falcon for another post but I guess I will get enough hate mail from this post as it is. But before we come to the video section I have to mention that if you want to read about the REAL Thor and a real comic master MICHEL FIFE has the big WALTER SIMONSON MASTER POST ready.

A lot of this post has been the deja vue feeling of me in front of a class trying to get some comic knowledge across in my impromptu hour long comic collecting beginners course. So why should the video section be any different ? There is a new comic fan out there every day and for their benefit our first video is about who else can lift Thor´s hammer. Any of them would have probably been a better candidate than Jane Foster.



This is in preparation for the big post about the new Captain America.



Another educational videos about why there is a new Miss Marvel who is a muslim and old Miss Marvel Carol Danvers is now called Captain Marvel.



Since I mentioned cosplay here is a video that also has other people than Yaya Han and Jessica Nigri. Maybe whoever designed the new Thora costume should have watched a few of these for inspiration before it.



Since I mentioned a few days ago to Terry Hooper that the episode A Touch of Brimstone from The Avengers - which was the inspiration for much in Chris Claremont´s Dark Phoenix Saga - was not shown in America when the series first aired because it was considered too racy we have been in a war as to who could find the best video with scenes from that episode. I think with this one with Diana Rigg´s best scenes I beat him.



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Marvel Visionaries - Chris Claremont part 1

In my last post about the Marvel Visionaries hardcovers I wrote that it took me five hours to get all the necessary pictures for the post. Well, that was super fast compared to this post because it took me ten days.

That doesn´t mean that I was working non - stop on preparing the stuff for the post the last ten days. There are many other things I did as well.

Like working on my JLA casting posts which I do inbetween normal posts. I usually work on them late at night when I can´t sleep because of the heat and in those cases I really put a lot of sweat into them because I do nothing but. It´s really insane how hot it gets. It used to be that the heat didn´t bother me as much since I always said the hotter the better. But I don´t know what it is now, if it´s the age finally catching up to me or if it´s my health faltering these last months but on some days I don´t get anything done. I can´t sleep all night long, during the day I´m trying to get some sleep but sometimes the neighbours are very loud doing some construction or what not and I can´t catch a wink. Every other day I have physio and on the days I don´t I´m too wiped out to do much of anything.

And so on some days the computer stays off and on some days I just don´t have the brain capacity to work on a real post so I fidget with my JLA posts. Which means I write some stuff, read it a few days later, erase it again because it was not safe for work, add a few pictures, add some more stuff, put up the videos that go into the post, write the text for the videos, now the post is much too long so it has to be split up, then I have to split up the videos, add some new ones, rearrange a post because it was all asian girls, put up header pictures for all posts, look for some comic relevant things I can add, write the intro and repeat it all again.

So I´m not working on one post, I´m kind of working on all of them at the same time which means I can pick the one I´m in the mood for. Maybe one day I want to work on the Janet Jackson post or the post with Akira Lane, the next time I just want to work on the videos while the next time I try to finish the posts where the main text pieces are already done and I only have to go over the video section and the comic book related intro.

There are also days when I am looking for material for my next post and with this post it was because I wanted to do it right. When I write a post the normal procedure is that I look what kind of pictures I already have on the laptop, then I do a quick search for reference on the internet or look for more pictures as the need arises. But I quickly realized that this time that was not going to do it because if I had started looking for stuff while writing the post it would have taken me those ten days to finish the post.

Because there were just a few pictures I had before and when you really want to pimp this book ( which I´m mostly doing for my german readers since you can still get it at amazon.de for 16 EUROS ) you have to show some of the amazing art of the high caliber artists Chris Claremont has worked with during his career like the incredible Barry Windsor Smith. 

Or the often underrated Alan Davis. I can´t for the life of me understand why he is not a superstar artist or why EXCALIBUR was so neglected by fans. Maybe it really was ahead of its time with it´s combination of funny yet serious mutant mayhem and character driven epic adventure stories.

Or how about Bill Sienkiewicz on NEW MUTANTS ? I have to admit I wasn´t his biggest fan when he started out because I thought he was just lazy scribbling all over the place and when I started reading NEW MUTANTS they had already gone to various fill in artists followed by Butch Guice who at that time still went by Jackson Guice. But come on, you have to show a little something something of his artistic genius in a book review, right ?

So I waited with this post until I felt I have enough material together to do it properly and any extra stuff I need I´ll just have to do it on the fly.

Like I said in my last post about the Marvel Visionaries hardcover books these posts are not me trying to pimp Marvel or Disney. The way they are going about right now you can´t even recognize the characters anymore. I´m writing the posts because I think that these books have an excellent comic value for money ratio and if Disney would be doing them right now they would probably go for much more than thirty bucks. And at sixteen bucks that´s an even sweeter deal. Also like I mentioned in the other post most of the guys who jump the comic bandwagon just to be cool may know who Stan Lee is and maybe Jack Kirby but have no idea who Chris Claremont is. But you can be sure that once they find out these books are going to demand the same astronomic prices the omnibus hardcovers are going for right now. So you better buy them while you can afford them.

Like with the MARVEL VISIONARIES - JOHN ROMITA JR book these are all reprints and I have read most of the stories in some form or another but there are also a few I haven´t read before. If you are only interested in the Disney NOW universe this is probably not the right book for you. It also is not very suited to give you a lot of background information since it contains stories from many series divided by decades in some cases. But if you want a nice collection of some of Chris Claremont´s best and best known stories for your bookshelf to take out now and then it delivers.

In the last Marvel Visionaries post I went back and forth with the stories but here I´ll do them in the order they are printed in the book because that shows you not only an evolution in Chris Claremont as a writer but also the evolution in the x - universe which is a big part of this. As I have no insider at Marvel I don´t know for sure why these stories were picked but that hasn´t stopped me from speculating before. It´s really hard to know but on the other side it doesn´t really matter because are there really any bad Chris Claremont stories from this period ? What I do know is that a lot of the stories are standalone issues or at least issues that can be read without knowing other stories, there are a lot of fan favorite stories in here and stories that are not reprinted anywhere else. And there are no stories that will pop up in any other Marvel Visionary books.

The first story is DAREDEVIL 102 and as far as I can tell it was included because it was Chris Claremont´s first issue writing for Marvel Comics.

It´s the next issue when things get interesting, MARVEL FANFARE 11, where the combo of Chris Claremont and John Byrne first teamed up. 

Which is one of the reasons why this book might get up in price : it´s got Star Lord in it and ever since the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXIES movie everything with the Guardians or Star Lord in it sells like hot cupcakes.

And this story not only has the original Star Lord in the cool costume - not the Grifter rip off with the facemask he wore in the movie - but it also is his origin story. I read this first in the german edition of Ehapa´s DIE GROSSEN PHANTASTIC COMICS but I could swear the comic was in color.

I have no idea why they chose to print the black and white version - if they wanted to stick to the original or they didn´t have the color version and this is the one comic missing in Ralp Macchio´s Marvel collection - but it is kind of a violent break in the book since the rest is in color.

The next issue is IRON FIST 14 where the creative team of Chris Claremont and John Byrne went next to work their combined magic.

If you can trust the internet gossip - and we all know how accurate that is - there´s an Iron Fist series in the works which together with the Netflix Daredevil series and the Luke Cage series will culminate in an Heroes for Hire series which is another reason why this book might rise in value.

As for the story itself, no disrespecting Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and David Aja but Chris Claremont´s and John Byrne´s IRON FIST series is a thing of beauty. Chris really grabs you with that second person narrative and nobody draws kung fu fighting like John. If you want to do yourself a favor you got to get the ESSENTIAL or MARVEL MASTERWORKS of this.

IRON FIST 14 is one of the most reprinted comics - it even had a Marvel Milestone edition - because it´s the first appearance of Sabretooth. Who was created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. In the story Daniel Rand ( who is not a teenager like in the terrible ULTIMATE SPIDER - MAN cartoon which just shamelessly tries to pander to the non comic reading masses ) and Coleen Wing are on the run, get caught in a blizzard and a snowblind Iron Fist has to go up against Sabretooth which means he can´t use his Iron First power. Which is basically what the readers were waiting for in each issue. You knew that it was just a matter of time before Daniel opened a can of whup ass on his opponents by summoning his chi — the essence of his spirit and strength, channeling its raw power down into his arm, into his hand until that hand becomes LIKE UNTO A THING OF IRON.

Which brings us to UNCANNY X - MEN issue 137, the death of Jean Grey. Can you make a book about Chris Claremont and NOT include this ? His run on the book with John Byrne is still the gold standard, the best stories are The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past and the best issue from that is the death of Jean Grey issue. Even the covers are so iconic that both will be featured in upcoming DEJA VUE posts. Now they could have chosen to reprint the original version from PHOENIX - THE UNTOLD STORY ( if you don´t know what this is I covered it in this post ) but I guess they wanted to stay with the version everybody knows and loves.

I don´t want to comment too much on the issue because I still hope I can do a DEATH IN COMICS : THE DEATH OF JEAN GREY post on of these days but this one has it all. You have the band coming together one more time in a battle against the Legion of Super - Heroes ( which the Shi´Ar´s Imperial Guard basically is ) for the life of one of their beloved members.

The epic battle takes place in the blue area of the moon which leads to Wolverine paying a visit to the Watcher´s crib, you have fastball specials on the moon and Jean Grey making the ultimate sacrifice in the end. It still holds up - even after Jean Grey´s death had been retconned by John Byrne - and there´s a reason why it´s THE classic Uncanny X - Men story. 

Let´s continue. With our next issue in the book we leave the confines of the x - men universe, or better said we go to the point where it connects with the Avengers universe in the famous AVENGERS ANNUAL number 10.

Why is it famous ? For three things. First up it´s the debut of Rogue who went on to become on of the most popular X - Men members. So this also raises the value of this collection for geek speculators. Originally she was slated to debut in MS MARVEL 25 but the series was cancelled so she first appeared in AVENGERS ANNUAL 10. That´s just one of the things I can´t understand. MS MARVEL 24 was finished and MS MARVEL 25 was half done but they decided to cancel it with issue 23. It´s the same crap as with Jack Kirby´s KAMANDI series that was cancelled although there was one more finished issue to be published. Anyway, in 1992 Marvel DID publish the final issues of MS MARVEL in MARVEL SUPER HEROES 10 and 11 and you can check out some of the pages in SCANS DAILY post on the history of Mystique´s and Ms Marvel which fills you in on the events leading up to Rogue absorbing Carol Danvers powers, personality and memories and leaving her basically a braindead vegetable. Which is reason number 2.

AVENGERS ANNUAL 10 is where this pivotal moment happens - not only in Rogue´s life but also in the life of Carol Danvers - that leads to everything that followed like her gaining new super powers and adopting the persona of Binary. As well as hanging with the X - Men for a while before becoming a members of the Starjammers and her long journey to becoming human again and finally returning to the Avengers active roster under the name of Warbird during the AVENGERS series by Kurt Busiek and George Perez.

Kurt Busiek picked up on the clusterf AVENGERS 200 in LIVE KREE OR DIE ! and later on she met another version of Marcus in THE KANG DYNASTY. 

Can you also hear the comic geek chique cash register go KA - CHINK ?

Last but not least AVENGERS ANNUAL 10 is Chris Claremont Sticking Up for Ms. Marvel as the guys from CBR put it so eloquently in their Meta Messages post that also goes over the events of AVENGERS 200 where Ms. Marvel gave birth to the guy who had impregnated her - time travel can be tricky - and the Avengers´ reaction to this was to sent her off with him to another dimension basically to be raped without much consideration.

If this infamous story is new to you ( right now the comic bandwagon hopping hipsters are probably having an orgasm ) check out the link above and you can read the final pages of AVENGERS ANNUAL 10 - which has absolutely gorgeous artwork by Michael Golden - on SCANS DAILY .

And with this I´m ending this post since it would get too long otherwise. Next up is another JLA casting post that oddly enough touches on Frank Miller´s SIN CITY and afterwards we will return to MARVEL VISIONARIES - CHRIS CLAREMONT where we may talk about Frank Miller on the first Wolverine series but definitely about Bill Sienkiewicz on NEW MUTANTS, Barry Windsor Smith on UNCANNY X - MEN and Alan Davis on EXCALIBUR.

Before wrapping up I have to mention two posts, CBR´s Top Five Most Heroic X - Men Deaths which includes the death of Jean Grey and MARVEL COMICS OF THE 80s post on John Byrne´s AVENGERS WEST COAST .

I´m starting Today´s video section with two videos that I should have posted in my DAYS OF FUTURE PAST post but didn´t want to insert after the fact, the first one explains everything you need to know about it.



The second one goes over the two issues that make up the story.



Our next one is an interview with the master himself from THE DRAWN WORD TV where he talks about - among other stuff - writing the X - MEN.



I had to compromise with Today´s cartoon video as it seems that you either have a video with no huge border around OR good quality on YouTube. But you can´t have both. So I opted for better quality and hope you don´t mind the giant border on part one of THE PHOENIX SAGA.



Last but not least here is the trailer for the newest Bond movie which I lifted off Terry Hopper´s COMICBITS ONLINE blog. I made the mistake of watching it and was so psyched I had to re watch SKYFALL. Be warned !



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Christmas with Marc Silvestri´s X - Men

It´s that time of the year again and after having a really bad day ( and night ) Yesterday I feel much better and ready to spread some Christmas spirit. As usual I´m doing things a bit different here so let´s get started.

UNCANNY X - MEN 230, written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Marc Silvestri with inks by Josef Rubinstein is an issue that has been covered by a lot of blogs ( I will include some of them in the link section of this post for those who want to read more about it ) especially on Christmas.

The issue takes place after the events of the FALL OF THE MUTANTS storyline and is the first one with the X - Men in their new headquarters in Australia which they just repossessed after defeating a really nasty band of mutant cyborg baddies called the Reavers in the previous issue.

Now this was a time when I was fully immersed into the X - Men universe and Marc Silvestri was my man. I had seen his artwork on other books like the first AVENGERS vs X - MEN mini but here he was on a monthly title.

I´m not quite sure but I think his first issues were not where I did start. Like most of my comic reading in that day I read issues out of order and I think the first time I saw Marc Silvestri on the X - Men book was during FALL OF THE MUTANTS. Naturally I also did not read those issues in order and I bought them at various comic conventions and comic fairs. In fact I think I got the first ones at the first International Comic Salon in Erlangen I ever attended. Or the first Comicbörse in Stuttgart. Man, that was one event that was a big deal for me. Before that I only found some scattered issues at the kiosk at the bus stop or the train station in Ludwigsburg and now there were hundreds, no thousands of these issues. I know I got a lot of John Byrne SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS issues the first time at the Comicbörse in Stuttgart. In any case, I know that I didn´t start reading the series on a regular basis until much later into the Marc Silvestri run because the very first issue I bought at the newsstand at the central train station in Stuttgart was the one with Wolverine and Rogue in Genosha.

It must have been pretty early into my X - Men reading - at least of the original american issues - because at that time neither Psylocke nor Rogue were familiar to me. And what happened to Rogue shocked me.

For those that haven´t read the issue I´m not going to spoil it but as a result of it Rogue became catatonic and the Carol Danvers part of her id took over. Which also was very fascinating. Here was this mutant whose powers were to absorb powers and memories by touch ( thankfully this and most of the other X - Men´s powers were explained in the issue because without it I would have been lost ) who had another personality inside her head as kind of a back up. Okay, not really but since I had no intimate knowledge of Rogue´s backstory that was how it looked to me.

I think that was one of the reasons why Rogue very quickly became one of my favorite X - Men. Which sounds a bit weird and reminds me of when Jubilee started to hang out with the team ( much later ) : " Why do they call themselves X - Men when there are so many women on the team ? "

With this issue I thought the same, not that I was complaining. I always say, the more hot women there are on a team the merrier ( I become ).

Okay, but as fascinating as you may find my time travel back to the days when I was just starting with the X - Men franchise you probably want to know what all this and UNCANNY X - MEN 230 has to do with Christmas.

Like I said, this was just after the X - Men have set up shop in Australia. They had defeated the Reavers in the previous issue and all the Reaver´s stuff was still there - including the loot from their years of plundering. One of the new X - Men ( at least for me as a new reader ) was Longshot who had the power of psychometry - the power to read an object´s history by touching it. Now he heard the voices of all the valuables in the vault or wherever it was kept and went down there to see what it was. Check out this incredible double page by Marc Silvestri and inker Josef Rubinstein :

And here is the colored version by Glynis Oliver that was printed :

Anyway, overcome by the sheer number of voices Longshot blacks out. At first the rest of the team doesn´t notice this because they are all busy setting up shop in the new headquarters, cleaning up the Reaver´s mess.

After Longshot regains consciousness he insist the X - Men have to give the loot back but the other team members don´t know if they can take this serious. So they all share one of the strange visions Longshot gets when touching an object thanks to Psylocke´s telepathic mindlinking.

After that the X - Men are discussing IF and how they should do this. In the last issue the X - Men´s new status quo just had been established.

After the events in Dallas during FALL OF THE MUTANTS the world thinks the X - Men died, saving the world from evil once more. Which they did.

But unbeknownst to the world at large Roma brought them back to life although with a little catch : the X - Men are now invisible to any kind of electronic device like cameras and the likes except for the ones in their new base of operations. She also leaves the Siege Perilous in their care but that is - hopefully - the topic for another Marc Silvestri X - Men post.

I´m only mentioning this whole " believed to be dead " thing because it is one of the arguments Logan makes for not returning the stolen goods.

Here´s the colored version, well, the part I could find in good quality :

Of course the X - Men decide to go through with it - otherwise this would not be a Christmas story - and after dividing all the robbed items into huge piles for each continent thanks to Longshot they go on a worldwide trip where they even have a little run in with some of the New Mutants.

Now I don´t want to go over the whole issue step by step because that´s not what I do here and there are other blogs out there that already did.

GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE do their usual in depth analysis of the issue and Chritoph Maurer has a long post on it with many pictures at the SEQUART ORGANISATION website where he has many extensive posts about X - Men : To the Outback & Beyond . If you don´t have that much time but still want to know what the story is about Christopher Cummings covers it in his ten panels or less post , it´s number 20 on CBR´s countdown of THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS STORIES EVER TOLD and it´s mentioned in the Psylocke Psunday episode 21 : Everybody hates Psylocke at BULLY SAYS : COMICS OUGHTA BE FUN ! ( I hope I got the name of the website right ).

All I want to say about the story is that it´s really well done and it not only works as a Christmas story it also helps new readers get their foot in. There are also some funny bits like when the X - Men are trying to turn their new homes into an environment fit for a human being / mutant.

Now the reason why I picked this particular Christmas story Today was that it gave me an opportunity to talk about my favorite X - Men period which is not when John Byrne was on the book. Now, don´t get me wrong.

The classic Chris Claremont / John Byrne issues are still the gold standard for me and, well, the reason why they are so classic is that they still work. You can read them now and you will not find anything on the stands Today that compares. Yes, ALL NEW X - MEN is great but it´s not coming close.

And I don´t want to downtalk the new stuff that is out there. Especially since I´m not reading much of it besides WOLVERINE AND THE X - MEN.

There´s like I said ALL NEW X - MEN and - based on a recommendation by Comicbookgirl19 - I just recently got the first trade of the new X - MEN LEGACY series PRODIGAL written by Simon Spurrier and art by Tang Eng Huat ( which I didn´t like that much ) and Jorge Molina, who reminded me a bit of Olivier Coipel on one of his better days. It is a good read.

No, what I mean is that there are a lot of different periods in the X - Men´s run from the earliest stuff to when Neal Adams stepped in, to the John Byrne issues, the John Romita Jr stuff, the Paul Smith issues then John Romita Jr again ...... I could go on ad infinitum, you get the idea.

There are those parts where we can all agree on that were the best. And then there´s the one that´s special to you. For some it´s connected to a storyline, it may be AGE OF APOCALYPSE which I´m also a big fan of. It´s one of the rare cases where the fans won over the critics because at first the critics hated it. But because it´s beloved by so many fans over such a long period of time now it´s one of the classic eras in the X- Men history.

For me that special time was the outback period. The John Byrne issues came out before my time and even the few spanish issues I got were old. I read a lot of them in trades ( the DARK PHOENIX SAGA and DAYS OF FUTURES PAST were two of Marvel´s earliest trades ) and in the X - MEN CLASSIC edition and before that I had to rely on Condor pocket books.

With most of the Paul Smith or John Romita Jr issues I was also behind.

One of my favorite Marvel crossovers was SECRET WARS II ( as longtime readers have probably noticed by now judging on the number of posts I have already done on the subject ) but that also was a time where I had to look for those issues at conventions and just got one or two issues at a time because I didn´t have a regular comic shop where I could get them.

Well, all of that changed when Marc Silvestri came on the book. It´s true, I also got the FALL OF THE MUTANTS and the issues before that at comic conventions but with the Genosha issues I got them at the newsstand in Stuttgart and soon after that I had my first subscription at a real comic shop where I got all the issues I needed. Times were good and when I got my monthly package the only thing I did that weekend was read comics.

And then one day my brother came back from the Art Academy in Erlangen and brought me two brand new issues of UNCANNY X - MEN.

It were two issues from Marc Silvestri´s run and the issues were far ahead of what I was reading at the time. Also it came out twice a month.

Two issues in one month by Marc Silvestri ( he has drastically decreased his monthly output since then ) and it introduced me to creepy new villains in the X - Men universe : the Brood. At this point I hadn´t read the X - Men issues by Paul Smith so the Brood were all new for me.

My brother got the issues at that comic shop in Erlangen, SAMMLERECKE and the rest is history. Okay, some people may think that I got my X - Men comic buying timeline confused since the Genosha story came out after that and I bought it at a newsstand and had my first comic subscription after I discovered I could get them there. What you have to understand is that buying comics back then was much like reading comics - which means non linear. You were used to read comics out of the normal order because that´s how you got them. It´s not like nowadays where you have dozens of online comic shops and when you have found one that´s where you get all your comics. No. Even if you had a regular comic shop where you could get your issues you never knew if they would not skip an issue or two or not get an issue from their supplier. So while I had my monthly comic subscription I still got the issues I could from the newsstand or anywhere else and if some of them were comics on my list I just phoned the comic shop ( yes, that´s what we old folks did before the internet ) and told them that I already had issue such and such and they should take it out of my regular comic order for that month. Which happened quite a lot now that I think back on it. I guess I was a really difficult customer.

Anyway, it took a few months before I finally switched to the comic shop in Erlangen but when I did UNCANNY X - MEN was one of the titles on my pull list and it soon became the first one I read every month. I guess most comic fans who have a monthly subscription have a special order in which they read their comics. My order was always that I read all the good stuff last and the other books first. Except one book. There was always one book that was the best of the best and that was the book that earned the top spot on the reading pile. Because that was the book I read first.

And for the longest time that was X - MEN, in fact together with NEW MUTANTS those were the books I read twice or even three times. Yes, I had much more free time then. Like I said this was before the internet.

So if you ask me about my favorite run on X - Men it´s the outback years by Marc Silvestri. It´s FALL OF THE MUTANTS and INFERNO, it´s Reavers and the Brood and everything that came after the Siege Perilous, it´s Longshot and Jubilee, it´s grim and gritty and Storm´s leather outfit.

Like with GIANT SIZE X - MEN 1 this was a team with a lot of members I knew nothing about and Chris Claremont was still at the top of his game.

There were epic storylines, new twists around every corner, a lot of crossovers with other X - books and the brilliant art by Marc Silvestri.

I have often said that we buy the same books over and over again and Marc Silvestri´s X - Men issues ( or his Wolverine issues which is where the shot of Storm above is from ) are what would indeed get me to buy an Artist´s Edition. So far I have only seen a few of them at german online comic shops - they are practically non existent on amazon in Germany - but so far there is none where I would think I absolutely have to have it.

But if there was an Artist´s Edition with Marc Silvestri´s X - MEN, some FALL OF THE MUTANTS stuff, some INFERNO issues, some Brood pages and the likes - I would totally get that. Even right now I´m thinking about investing the amazon gift certificate I got for Christmas in the INFERNO PROLOGUE omnibus hardcover although I already have all of the issues.

I thought about getting the FALL OF THE MUTANTS omnibus but I saw a copy at a comic convention or at the Sammlerecke and the production value and the printing is really not good on that one. Besides I already have that story in a spanish edition because it was in a bigger format.

But I really could go with the INFERNO PROLOGUE omnibus because it not only has six issues of Marc Silvestri´s UNCANNY X - MEN run including the Brood story which I have to cover at length in another post ( the other four UNCANNY X - MEN issues were done by Rick Leonardi ) , it also has seven issues of Walter Simonson´s X - FACTOR and nine issues of NEW MUTANTS including the aftermath of the Birdbrain story by my favorite artist Bret Blevins which also ties in with my DEATH IN COMICS theme.

Man, I really have to be careful with all this comic pimping because I end up buying all these great comics ( I totally went and got the Avengers Marvel Masterworks volume from my last post ) and now I have to get a new porn shelf. And I really don´t want to help Disney filling its pockets.

So despite of the fact that I´m probably buying the same issues again in an expensive hardcover collection ( 125 dollars is the regular price but it´s only 75 bucks at amazon ) you should still check out the UNCANNY X - MEN issues by Marc Silvestri. I think you can still find most of them in dollar bins and if you don´t have a comic shop near that has a dollar bin you can get the ESSENTIALS. I got two ESSENTIALS at Erlangen at a real bargain price and volume 8 which has all the issues after the FALL OF THE MUTANTS I mentioned here is one of my favorite ESSENTIALS ( I used it as a resource for preparing the material for this post and the next ones about Marc Silvestri´s X - MEN run ). Most of the issues are out in this format and now that Disney has switched to the Epic Collection format I think that´s your best chance to read it. With the newly released INFERNO PROLOGUE and the stuff that´s already in the FALL OF THE MUTANTS and INFERNO collections ( man, I should have bought the INFERNO hardcover when it was offered at amazon at half price ) I don´t think there will be any of that material put into any Epic collections any time soon. And they are still far away from it with the X - MEN pocket books from PANINI UK.

But that´s the topic of another post that will be all about the nice pocket books from PANINI UK. For now it´s time to come to an end because it is already late and even if Tomorrow is a holiday there might be other things you wish to do. But don´t be afraid, we will continue this topic. There are too many pages of original art I want to post and so many things to say. 

I hope my ramblings were not too boring and you enjoyed the black and white pages I found at various websites like Comicartfans without whom making this post would have been impossible and I wish you a Happy Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Fröhliche Weihnachten and Feliz Navidad !

Now there are a lot of Christmas videos on YouTube but I thought this time I´d pick some of my personal songs that just HAVE to be part of every Christmas. And the first one is Do they know it´s Christmas by Band Aid. When I was still working at the printing company we were doing a lot of 10, 12, 20, 24 or even 36 hours shifts often working through the holidays. Now if we would have gotten paid the overtime this would have been quite a bonus but since our boss didn´t like to pay us the extra hours they just kept accumulating. So this song became our special Christmas anthem and we sang the refrain - Do they know it´s Christmas time - especially loud because we would be thinking about our bosses.



As a child that grew up during the german disco era my second pick is Boney M´s MARY`S BOYCHILD - no contest there. I picked the group´s appearance on Top of the Pops in 1979 because that has the best quality.



My next video is a more recent one from one of Michael Bubble´s Christmas shows. I have to admit that totally passed me by and I had no idea that this was kind of an annual tradition. Like no Christmas is complete without singing Feliz Navidad here is a duet with Thalia. It´s kind of a substitute for the Thalia videos that were here and have now moved to my next post ( kind of complicated but trust me on this ).



And we continue with the Michael Bubble duets because I just couldn´t pass All I want for Christmas with my favorite Santa, Mariah Carey.



If like me you haven´t seen one of Michael Bubble´s Christmas specials here is a full show from 2013. Naturally I picked the one from which the clip above is. There is also a second appearance by Mariah Carey later on.



I also want to add an animated video for my readers who are not that into music videos and because nothing quite says " Merry Christmas ! " like giant robots and senseless violence here is VOLTRON - THE MOVIE from 1984. According to the title it´s the violence restored version but since I have not seen the movie before I just have to take them at their word.



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