Essential X-Men volume 10 - creator labels

Once again there's a volume with a lot of creators so here's the separate labels post.

Essential X-Men volume 9

Essential X-Men volume 9 comprises Uncanny X-Men #244 to #264 & Annual #13 (excluding the Saga of the Serpent Crown chapter that has nothing to do with the X-Men). Bonus material includes Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for Jubilee, Master Mold and Zaladane. All the regular issues are written by Chris Claremont though the annual lead story is by Terry Austin and a back-up by Sally Pashkow (or not - see below). The art is mainly by Marc Silvestri and Jim Lee with individual issues by Rob Liefeld, Rick Leonardi, Kieron Dwyer, Bill Jaaska and Mike Collins. The annual is drawn by Mike Vosburg and Jim Fern.

This volume covers one of the bleakest periods in the series so far. The early issues see the continuation of the "Outback era" as the team continued to operate out of an abandoned Australian desert town and teleport around the world. The most notable long term impact of these early adventures comes in the very first issue where the female members of the team go on a trip to a shopping centre where they battle the M-Squad, a rather lame set of mutant hunters who are a blatant parody of the Ghostbusters, before returning home with an unknown follower, the rich girl turned orphaned "mall rat" Jubilee. At first it seems she will be taking on the innocent youngster role that's been absent ever since Kitty Pryde was injured out of the series but initially she instead operates in secret without the other X-Men knowing and subsequent events mean that we don't get to see her in the traditional little sister role just yet. Meanwhile the male members go out on the town only to run into a rather ineffective bunch of alien invaders called the Conquest. It seems as though this will be a period of light-hearted tales but things will soon change.

The annual is unusual as the only X-Men issue during his entire run that doesn't have Chris Claremont's name on it. But is he completely absent? The back-up story is credited to Sally Pashkow, a name that hasn't appeared anywhere else in comics. Opinion on the net says that this is a pseudonym for Chris Claremont though everything seems to be pointing to each other, and its inclusion in the X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Volume 1 Omnibus may be more down to a sequential run than anything else. (As a result I've included a separate label to cover all possibilities.) But regardless of whether this is Claremont or a one-off writer in his style the result is a character piece as Jubilee finds herself in the outback town and hides herself away with the aid of Gateway, then starts observing the X-Men from afar and borrowing some clothes. It mainly serves to build up the new character. The lead story is part of the "Atlantis Attacks" crossover that ran through all the Marvel annuals in 1989 and it resorts very much to formula as a villain, in this case Mr. Jip from Terry Austin's work on Cloak and Dagger, recruits the heroes to find an object of power of unclear importance. The team is split in three and sent to different locations to tackle the problem, here complicated by the Serpent Society. And it's an effective failure as at the end the main villains from the crossover get their hands on the powerful objects. Overall this annual is rather peripheral to the whole "Atlantis Attacks" saga, achieving nothing that couldn't have happened without the X-Men's presence. It's a surprise that Claremont doesn't write the story, perhaps deciding to opt out of taking part in the mess, but the result is the one X-Men story in a very long time by another writer. And it almost seems to be saying that anyone who thinks Claremont has outstayed his welcome should think again as it's very dire in its handling of the characters, with some especial silliness when Dazzler and the Serpent Society's Diamondback temporarily switch bodies. This is easily forgettable.

The tension ups when Nimrod and the remains of Master Mold merge, creating one of the deadliest anti-mutant machines yet. The battle is fierce, with Senator Kelly's wife killed thus increasing the senator's hatred of mutants. Victory only comes when Dazzle deploys the Siege Perilous crystal to send Master Mold to either happiness or recreation, but Rogue is also lost in the process. Rogue has recently been portrayed with a split personality as Carol Danvers comes to the fore more frequently, generating some tensions as each takes control of the body in succession, but the battle terminates any resolution to this dilemma. This starts a steady break-up of the team with Longshot soon dropping aside to go and seek his own identity and history. It's a sign of both his insignificance to the run and the bigger events around him that this departure is almost shoehorned into wider events but he isn't really missed. Then the remains of the team, with Wolverine temporarily away, face the first of two fierce attacks on their doorstep in rapid succession. Nanny, the robotic "egg with a voice", attacks and in battle Havok's energy blast destroys Nanny's vessel with Storm onboard. And unlike most such comic explosions, the body is seen and confirmed afterwards. An interlude comes as the dwindling team respond to a distress call from the Savage Land where they face Zaladane and the Mutates, with the return of Polaris who now seems to have been freed from the control of Malice. Zaladane claims to be Polaris's sister but this plot element isn't really cleared up in time before the last of the X-Men are teleported home to Australia where Donald Pierce and the Reavers are waiting for them.

The series has been building up to this moment with a number of hints and visions that this will be the last stand of the X-Men with no way out. Instead the four - Psylocke, Dazzler, Colossus and Havok - take the one escape route to hand, by going through the Siege Perilous to begin new lives elsewhere. As they admit it is running away from the situation and to add to the indignity this ending is revealed in a flashback shown to the returning Wolverine by Gateway. Wolverine is left as the last of the X-Men and put up for crucifixion by the Reavers but escapes with the help of both Jubilee and Lady Deathstrike's sense of nobility. And so a whole era of the X-Men comes to an end not in glory but in defeat and running away.

But this isn't the end of the series at all. The X-Men have generated many ex-members, allies and influences over the years and the next dozen issues focus on a number of these characters but without assembling a new team. Issue #253 sets up the situation, with its cover reused for the volume as a whole. Initially the main focuses are on Wolverine and Jubilee as they head off into the Far East, the mutants based around Muir Island, with Banshee and Forge really coming to the fore, and a mysterious young girl found in Illinois who resembles a young Storm. Elsewhere various of the X-Men who went through the Siege Perilous come to terms with their new lives, suffering amnesia of their past lives but finding their past can't completely escape them. Unfortunately there is limited unification between the various story strands with the result that the focus jumps around between them and plots can take an age to conclude.

During this phase comes the second big crossover on this volume's watch, "Acts of Vengeance", which, for a change, comes out of the Avengers titles after three years of X-Men derived events. But were it not for the triangles in the top right hand corner of issues #256 through to #258 then one could be forgiven for not realising this is even part of the storyline. It may feature foes the X-Men haven't faced before in the form of the Mandarin and the Hand but there's no co-ordinated attack on our heroes or any reference to the Mandarin's role as one of the Prime Movers supposedly co-ordinating the entire thing - indeed the Mandarin portrayed here is the more sophisticated crime lord that had been developed over the years rather than the traditional ranting supervillain shown in the main portion of the event. This detachment may be of necessity as current events mean the X-Men are presumed dead, impossible to detect with electronic equipment and now lost and scattered by the Siege Perilous, which doesn't really lend itself to enemies launching attacks upon them. Instead we get the basic crossover theme of a villain from another series tied into some very traditional themes for the series of strong women being twisted into ever more powerful agents of enemies and ninjas, plus Wolverine's connections in the Far East from his own solo title.

The most notable event here by far is the transformation of Psylocke from a Caucasian telepath in armour worried about her physical weakness into an east Asian ninja woman. Exactly how her ethnicity is changed is rather brushed over but the whole thing now feels extremely uncomfortable. If an east Asian ninja woman X-Man was needed, it would have been easy to create a new character who could easily be added to the team. But instead an existing character has such a fundamental part of her altered to fulfil the role, as though the genuine article wouldn't do. The story touches upon aspects of culture conflict between the Far East and the West, most notably showcasing the clash with Jubilee, the daughter of Chinese immigrants to the United States, who proves a highly Americanised tourist who dislikes what she sees. Then she is captured and forced into a traditional serving girl role as a small part of the Mandarin's goal of revitalising the traditional Chinese kingdom. Overall his portrayal is a strong step away from the traditional Fu Manchu role he's sometimes given and Psylocke's transformation does fit into some of the themes but that doesn't redeem the effect even if her new look as a replacement Elektra is wildly popular. The sequence in which her mind is steadily twisted by a quest through distorted memories in order to obtain the Mandarin's ten rings is also a good idea in theory but let down by much of her background not having been previously explored outside the Captain Britain comics in the UK and so the whole things can be confusing at times. All in all the transformation was a mistake that chased a trend and it's amazing that it was allowed to stay permanently, no doubt because of the popularity of the new look.

Whilst Wolverine, Psylocke and Jubilee make their way onwards to Madripoor with the complication of Wolverine being haunted by images of Nick Fury and Carol Danvers that he thinks are real, other X-Men are coming to terms with their new lives. Dazzler finds herself a singer in Hollywood and her movie is finally released, but former producer Eric Beale stalks her. Colossus becomes an artist and a maintenance man in an apartment block but soon gets entangled with both the Genoshan Magistrates and then the survivors of the Morlocks. The child Storm is being pursued by the Shadow King who frames her for murder, resulting in her going on the run.

Forge and Banshee are built up in a way that suggests they will be the next members to join or return to the team, but it's unfortunate that Banshee's recovery of his powers goes unexplained at first and it's only after a further injury that we see the Morlock healer restore him. Meanwhile Polaris finds her magnetic powers gone but in place of them her body is growing in size and she now has super strength but this goes unexplained. The three of them become part of an ad hoc grouping based on Muir Island along with Moira MacTaggart, Legion, Amanda Sefton, Sunder and other hangers on not seen in a long while, facing off a brutal attack by the Reavers that sees them bailed out by Freedom Force with casualties all around including Destiny. The ad hoc team also wears a uniform, hinting that it could become a new new X-Men but it doesn't take off as such, not least because of one of Legion's dark personas taking over. Magneto is given the image on the volume's spine, taken from the cover, but only appears briefly as he resigns as headmaster of the school and drifts off to his old ways. It's a slightly awkward scene that appears to be trying to rationalise the increased use of the character as a more traditional villain elsewhere, most notably in the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover.

The only convergence of the various plotlines comes at the end of the volume as Forge and Banshee encounter the amnesiac Colossus under the name of "Peter Nicholas" and battle first the Morlocks and then the Genosha Magistrates with the help of Marvel Girl from X-Factor. Along with some individual comments over the issues it seems as though the various mutant teams are being drawn together to be treated as parts of a single whole once more but there's a central element missing. Wolverine is at least stepping up to a Professor Xavier role when he utilises Harry Malone's Harriers to test Psylocke and Jubilee in the absence of a Danger Room. But overall the series is still in scattered pieces.

The art is often strong and it's easy to see how Marc Silvestri and Jim Lee gained such a following. However the writing on the series is in heavy decline. The series has shifted from a long-term careful build-up of plots to an almost random chucking anything against the wall to see what sticks and letting storylines drag on for much longer than they can sustain. The idea of splitting up the team and exploring individual members and the supporting cast is not a bad idea per se but it's very poorly executed and the resulting issues just don't work well. The worst idea to get through is the race transformation of Psylocke but overall this is an exceptionally poor volume for the series.

Essential Wolverine volume 2

Essential Wolverine volume 2 consists of issues #24-47. The writing sees the end of Peter David's run plus a later fill-in issue, a brief run by (Mary) Jo Duffy and the start of Larry Hama's long run. The art includes a long stretch by Marc Silvestri, plus individual issues by Gene Colan, John Buscema, Klaus Janson, Barry Kitson, Bill Jaaska, Larry Stroman and Gerald DeCaire.

Coming from the early years of the Essentials, it's unsurprising that this volume restricts itself solely to Wolverine's main series and does not include his strips from Marvel Comics Presents, with the most notable storyline, "Weapon X", running during the same period. Understandably there's too much Marvel Comics Presents material for later editions to even try to correct the omission, but nor has the series been touched by the Essentials and given its own volume, so once again key Wolverine material has to be sought elsewhere, including a major part of his origin. Fortunately there are no overt references to the Marvel Comics Presents strip, and Wolverine's mysterious past often allows for introductions out of the blue so return appearances by characters introduced in the strip don't stick out, so on a raw reading it's possible to not even realise there were other adventures published that are not included here. But once that awareness is there the lost opportunity stands out all too well.

For those reading just the issues collected here, Wolverine's background remains mysterious to the readers and, at times, to the man himself, not helped by different writers seemingly taking separate approaches to just how much he appears to remember about it. In issue #25 we get offered a possible glimpse at part of his origin. Whilst guarding and babysitting the son of a crimelord, he tells a bedtime story about a Canadian boy who was cast out into the wilderness for being small and weak, but grew up with wolverines and learned to fight when trappers came. It's clear from the pictures just who the boy is intended to be, but is the story meant to be imaginary or is it in fact a true account of Wolverine's past? Later in issue #34 Wolverine thinks to himself that he can't remember a lot of his past and doesn't know how he came to be wandering around the Canadian wilderness. However an old Mountie slowly realises that Wolverine is both a ferocious corporal he served under in the parachute divisions during the D-Day landings and also a stranger he long ago shot at in the wilderness, mistaking him for the beast known as the "Hunter in the Darkness". Subsequently we discover Wolverine is familiar to some participants in the Spanish Civil War but he can't quite remember it until he and Puck get thrown back in time to it (with the complication that Wolverine starts partaking in events and photographs that Puck can't recall him being originally there for). Then Sabretooth claims to be Wolverine's father though a blood test soon disproves it, yet according to Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. the claim is based upon a genuine belief, though he won't elaborate on this. Elsewhere issue #26 sees him relive part of his days in Japan and track down the murderer of an old friend. The whole result is a character who remains an enigma but it's not too clear if there's an actual overall plan that the writers are working to, or if they're just tossing out random ideas that will ultimately not all match up.

Peter David's two issues both have the aura of fillers, rather than any substantial conclusion to his run or latter-day revisitation. The first is a piece of macabre humour as an assassin called the "Snow Queen" finds her plans disrupted when a child steals her briefcase, leading to a chase through the back streets of Madripoor and a grim discovery at the end. The second is at the far end of the volume and sees Logan tackling a drug crazed mad man in suburbia who needs to be neutralised, whilst remembering how he and Silver Fox had a dog which caught rabies and had to be put down but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Jo Duffy's work also starts in filler mode, even though it drops in pieces about Wolverine's past in both Japan and the Canadian wilderness, but then switches into another feature common to the era - the multi-part "biweekly" saga when a book's frequency was briefly increased to twice a month (perhaps that's why there's no annual here). "The Lazarus Project" winds up serving as the winding down of the title's "Madripoor era", throwing in a guest appearance by Karma of the New Mutants and the writing out of Jessica Drew and Lindsay McCabe. The story sees Wolverine briefly lose his memory though in the process he experiences the atrocity of a village being wiped out for an utterly insignificant McGuffin.

The arrival of Larry Hama for what would be quite a long run sees a bold shift in the title's focus, with the Madripoor setting and the various supporting characters rapidly abandoned, albeit with a final brief storyline that also takes in a trip to Japan. Taking their place are adventures set mainly back in North America with an increased use of guest stars. Fortunately there aren't any crossovers within this volume, but it feels like the series is being dragged into being a mere offshoot of the main X-Men titles (the last issue in the volume is from about the time when a second X-Men series was launched) rather than continuing to carve out its own distinctive niche. It's a pity, but perhaps Hama didn't have enough confidence in the Madripoor set-up to make it continue to work. Or maybe reader demand wanted Wolverine on more traditional territory. Equally Hama may have been wary of repeating himself. By this time he had about eight years of the G.I. Joe books under his belt and he may have been conscious of having already depicted a man with ninja connections and a mysterious past so there was a risk of turning Wolverine into another Snake-Eyes. Instead Hama's run, or at least the early part reproduced here, takes the series back into the superhero mainstream.

That's not to say there aren't some occasional detours, such as "Blood and Claws" which sees Wolverine, Lady Deathstrike and Puck (from Alpha Flight) temporarily thrown back in time to the Spanish Civil War, with the complications that they are reliving at least Puck's past. Lady Deathstrike remains a constant theme back in the present day, with her Reavers preparing a trap with two robots, one a duplicate of Wolverine dubbed "Albert" and the other a five year old girl called "Elsie Dee" who is largely comprised of explosives. This leads into a lengthy story as the two robots gain increasing intelligence and start to think for themselves, with Elsie Dee coming to admire Wolverine even though she is programmed to get close to him and then automatically detonate the explosives within her. Both Albert and Elsie survive seeming destruction to keep coming back. Just to add to the complications are the return of Sabretooth and the appearance of Cable which is not at all a sales chaser at a time when he was one of the hottest X-Men characters and giving Wolverine a run for his money as the pre-eminent man with a mysterious past. The whole thing is interspersed with encounters with the Morlocks as well as with various one off killers. There's a mad man who enjoys torturing animals until Logan sets a real wolverine on him, and another who murders several pregnant women having discovered one of them will give birth to a baby who will grow up to be something special. On a different level is Molly Doolin, the vengeance seeking daughter of the Canadian Mountie who died pursuing the "Hunter in the Darkness".

Puck, Storm, Forge and Jubilee all make recurring appearances throughout these issues, but there's no real indigenous supporting cast introduced and developed to replace those from the Madripoor days. We're left with just Wolverine himself, a man with a limited past that generates some interest but which can also limit the opportunity for actual development since the past isn't being properly explored here (or the origin of his adamantium being explored elsewhere referenced here). Instead the main focus is on multi-part adventures with lots of action rather than a great deal of development. It was an early sign of the decompression movement that would see comics drawn out without a great deal actually happening in them. This volume also comes from an era when artists were becoming ever more prominent and at times comics slowed stories down just to emphasise the art. It's hard to resist feeling this was the forerunner of the Image style when Marc Silvestri would be one of that company's seven founders.

These issues were originally published in the early 1990s, which was the time when I first discovered Marvel superhero comics - perhaps a slightly later arrival than many but I plead the mitigating circumstances that Marvel UK had largely dropped out of superheroes for four years, focusing instead on licensed toy and TV tie-ins and that Marvel US titles had no distribution that I knew of in my home town (my local newsagent didn't stock any comics at all). I should in theory take to this volume with all the instinctive loyalty that most people have to their personal "Golden Age" in just about anything, with it being the time when they first got drawn in. But instead I find this volume rather washes me over. Perhaps it was because the comics market was simply so large at the time and Wolverine is a distinct niche appeal that didn't draw me in then and so these issues evoke no nostalgia whatsoever now.

It's a pity because whilst there are some good moments and issues within this volume - my favourite is issue #34 with the hunt in the Canadian wilderness - the overall volume sees the series dump its unique setting and tone in favour of a rather generic style. The result is a rather generic and less than spectacular run. Still it does get bonus points for being a series from the era that doesn't get sucked in to endless crossovers.