Essential X-Men volume 3

Essential X-Men volume 3 first contained Uncanny X-Men #145 to #161 and Annuals #3 to #5. Later editions have seen Annuals #3 & #4 transferred to volume 2; Annual #6 transferred from volume #4 (where I'll look at it) and the addition of Avengers Annual #10. The writing is all by Chris Claremont and most of the art by Dave Cockrum; other issues are drawn by Jim Sherman, Bob McLeod, Bill Sienkiewicz and Brent Anderson. The annuals are drawn by George Pérez, John Romita Jr and Brent Anderson. The Avengers annual is drawn by Michael Golden.

This is predominantly a volume of consolidation and development rather than creation, with very few significant first appearances. Dave Cockrum returns to the series and there's some more space opera with the Shi’Ar but otherwise there's a continued focus on the core characters within a world that is growing steadily more hostile to mutants. There are very few changes to the team - Angel storms out in protest over Wolverine's presence and Cyclops comes back on, but otherwise it's a period of stability for the line-up. We get more use of past X-Men in the form of reservists, with Ice-Man, Polaris and Havok all pressed into service for one adventure whilst Banshee appears more and more in a supporting staff role; his powers not having restored themselves. Another supporting character comes in the form of Carol Danvers, now depowered following events in Avengers annual #10, who hangs around with and helps the X-Men for the time being.

However we get a number of character developments, with Cyclops and Sprite especially benefiting from strong focuses. Within these issues Cyclops and Corsair of the Starjammers finally discover that they are son and father, leading to the inevitable confrontation about why Corsair never came after his son in the orphanage. It's a tense situation at first but soon Scott accepts that his father naturally believed both Scott and Alex had died when their parachute caught fire, whilst the horrific treatment and death of their mother had further distanced Corsair from Earth. The family reunion is handled well and helps add to Scott's character growth as he becomes ever more a strong individual, unfettered by the trauma of his childhood or the loss of Jean. The early issues see him marooned on an island with Lee Forrester, the captain of the ship he signed aboard before they were swept out to sea. Although the island scenario itself drags on for a few too many issues, it shows Scott slowly discovering another woman and moving onwards.

Also growing rapidly is Kitty Pryde, though she retains her youthful optimism and role as the team's little sister. Her crush on Colossus is becoming a relationship, with surprisingly nothing said about their different ages. Otherwise she shows enthusiasm and at times is at the core of a plot's resolution. However one thing that is off-putting is her constantly changing costumes in an attempt to get more individuality than the original style X-Men outfit she is given pre-graduation. At one point she comes up with an outfit that may have resembled early 1980s sparkly fashions but looks hideous and is mercifully subdued by the black and white. On another level she is growing ever closer to both Storm and her dance teacher Stevie Hunter. Issue #148 sees the three on a girls' night out, together with guest stars Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman and the Dazzler, which is interrupted by the introduction of the lonely mutant Caliban who comes searching for company, causing panic and chaos but also making Kitty realise how some mutants like Nightcrawler cannot help their strange appearance and she shouldn't be so uncomfortable around them.

But the biggest developments come for one of the X-Men's greatest foes. Issue #150 brings some of the strongest material yet for Magneto, with further enhancements in a flashback in issue #161. We get the clearest statement yet that he sees himself as a warrior defending his people, the mutants, making him a Malcolm X figure much more so than before. His background is also filled out with the exploration of his drive coming from the horrors he endured in the Holocaust. Rejecting Xavier's vision of mutant-human co-existence as unrealistic, he instead seeks to bring about mutant superiority, securing peace through security. Although there have been hints of this in some of his earlier appearances, we now have a clearly rounded vision of the character that moves him away from the run of the mill would-be world conquering supervillains and into a much more complex character. Yet the same issue also starts him down a new path when he thinks he's killed Sprite. Earlier he had no regrets about sinking a Soviet nuclear submarine that had fired upon his island, yet now that he thinks he's killed a child, he realises he's become like the monsters of his childhood, the guards at Auschwitz who joked as they herded people to their deaths, their lives meaning nothing to them. The horror that he has become a monster to the innocents he sought to protect and the very thing he hated and despised is a striking moment for the character. Was it also meant to be a subtle wider comment about events in the real world? Whatever the external intentions, there is a hint that he changed forever though it is not followed up on within these pages.

Magneto's shift comes not long after the X-Men's first encounter with another world-conquering villain from the early Silver Age. It's quite a surprise that the X-Men haven't clashed with Doctor Doom before now, given how much he's appeared all over the Marvel universe over the years. Here he seems rather subdued, being in exile from his kingdom and operating in a strange alliance with Arcade, with the gamesmaster also Doom's prisoner. Though there's a brief scene with Storm that sees the two slightly drawn towards each other, overall it's a rather disappointing use of such a major foe. Equally weakly handled is Dracula, who shows up for a single issue when he tries to take Storm as a mate, but there's none of the awe and majesty from the character's own series.

The Shi’Ar epic brings the first appearance of the Sidri, a monstrous gestalt alien species, and the fearsome insect race the Brood, as well as Deathbird, previously seen in Ms. Marvel, the sister of Lilandra. She's not the only foe of Carol's to come over, with Rogue also appearing, following on from the Avengers annual. Meanwhile a flashback to the younger days of Professor X and Magneto shows their struggle with Baron von Strucker and a nascent Hydra, giving Magneto his first encounter with leftover Nazi villains. An adventure into a magical realm brings the team into conflict with Belasco, previous seen in Ka-Zar, and new demon S'ym. It's a dark place in which the X-Men find time does not function as normal, bringing them into conflict with older versions of themselves. At the end Colossus's sister Illyanna is briefly lost for what is only seconds for the X-Men but a whole seven years for her. Having gone from six to thirteen, losing much of her childhood in that realm, must be a horrific experience and will hopefully be explored further in later volumes.

One aspect of the series that is slightly stating to irritate are the long drawn out subplots, especially as some of them keep overlapping on multiple Essential volumes and so take an age. Cyclops spends half a year lost on a desert island and then later the conflict with the Brood is stretched out with Professor X mentally wounded for many months. He is cured in the final issue in the volume but then Deathbird and the Brood return in a cliffhanger, with the latter planning to use the mutants as hosts for breeding. Unfortunately the remaining space is then taken up with other, less consequential material.

Lurking at the back of the volume (at least in the original edition) are three annuals. With #1 & #2 having been all-reprint specials in the wilderness years, these are the first original specials for the X-Men and show a variety of foes and guest stars. Two of them feature Arkon, first as an enemy, albeit with noble motives seeking to restore his world, and later as an ally when the Badoon invade; the Fantastic Four also guest star in the latter story. Meanwhile the other one features a trip into what is supposedly Hell, resembling the depiction in Dante's Inferno, with Doctor Strange guest starring and a fight with Minos, a being from Dante's poem. Reading all three annuals back to back, as per the original edition's presentation, it's easy to see why the whole format is so often dismissed and/or overlooked, including sometimes by collected editions. (Not only had Essential X-Men volume 2 left out two annuals, but at about the same time that this volume was making up for this omission, Essential Spider-Man volume 3 was missing out another pair.) None is drawn by the regular series artist of the day and none of the events are mentioned in the regular title. The middle annual may explore some of Nightcrawler's past and reveal his current girlfriend to be his adoptive sister and childhood sweetheart in disguise but it's still easy to blink and miss it. Nor is there any connection with the hint in the previous volume that he and Mystique are related. Placed at the rear of this volume, like an obligatory appendix, they feel like they were almost forced upon it and are being sidelined as much as possible. None feels like a typical, if extended, adventure of the type seen in the contemporary regular series so the annuals don't even work as one-off introductory specials. Of course the same charge can be levelled at many, many annuals for many other series, but it's rare to get three all at once and so the problem stands out the more. Worse still having so many at once has restricted the number of regular issues contained in this volume and possibly increased the necessity of ending on a cliffhanger, one that would be left hanging for nearly three years before volume 4 came along.

Later editions of this volume have also included Avengers annual #10 and it's easy to see why given that both Carol Danvers and Rogue go on to make significant appearances in the regular issues in both this volume and later ones. I've never been too clear as to how much of the issue reflects Claremont's original plans for Ms. Marvel and just when he conceived his plans for Rogue, but here we get a conclusion to Carol's conflict with Mystique that had been building and building and building and building in her own series (Claremont's long-running subplots have not been confined to the X-Men titles). Ms. Marvel gets put through the wringer once more as her powers and mind are absorbed by Rogue; with Professor X's help she regains some of the latter but is left a broken woman trying to put her life back together. The epilogue allows both her and Claremont to confront the Avengers and their writers about how callous they were when she was kidnapped and raped, but otherwise the bulk of the annual is given over to introducing a new foe who takes down the most powerful Avengers quite quickly. Other than the epilogue wouldn't it perhaps have been better to tell this story with the X-Men in their own annual? It would certainly have made a far stronger and more memorable offering than that year's team-up with the Fantastic Four against the Badoon, and the subsequent use of both Carol and Rogue in the regular series would have given the annual a lasting significance. Still that error of placing has now been corrected with its inclusion here.

Although more run of the mill than the two previous Essential X-Men volumes, and limited by the need to include the various annuals, this volume continues to show a series based strongly on character development and a distinct scenario. It takes in a diverse range of locations and threats but manages to stay consistent and true to its core characters, continuing to make them feel real and worth caring about. This is a series that has settled in a clear permanent role for the long run.

Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man volume 3

We come now to Essential Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man volume 3, containing Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #54-74 and Annual #3.

The writing is quite consistent with Roger Stern handling issues #54-60 and plotting #61, then Bill Mantlo scripts that issue and writes #62-74. The only other writer is David Anthony Kraft on the annual. However the art situation remains unstable, with Ed Hannigan handling nine issues between #60 and #72, and others being drawn by a mixture of Marie Severin, Luke McDonnell, Jim Shooter, John Byrne, Greg LaRocque, Bob Hall, Rick Leonardi and Al Milgrom, whilst Jim Sherman & Alan Weiss handle the annual. For those wondering, yes that’s the Jim Shooter who was Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief at the time. The art can be a little variable but the whole run is held together by some strong writing, with both Stern and Mantlo having a strong grasp on what makes Spider-Man work best.

Several themes run throughout this volume with a major one being Peter’s relationship with various women. The Black Cat reappears right at the very end but otherwise the focus is on Debra Whitman and Marcy Kane, both of whom are largely confined to this title as the focus remains primarily on Peter’s graduate school work (with perhaps a few too many raids on the campus but fortunately there are no more menaces being directly caused by lecturers), albeit with some notable appearances by the Daily Bugle side of affairs and the inevitable clashes of the two’s demands. It’s these clashes that are the main wedge between Marcy and Peter even as other barriers between them fall, especially after she is humiliatingly revealed to be a fake blond now forced to wear a wig because dye is destroying her natural hair. Peter’s sympathetic shoulder makes her start to reconsider her view of him as does his saving her life when the department is attacked by Moonstone, and she offers to help him study, leading to his attempts at a come on one evening with “Come here beautiful”! But it all comes to a crashing halt when he runs off to fight Electro and her harsh critical attitude returns. It’s hard to tell if there was ever that much potential for a proper relationship between the two without making major changes to Marcy’s character to what was originally shown. It’s true that many a real life ice-queen has melted and long term development could have shifted her over time, but at the core the basic conflict between them was Marcy’s single-minded focus on her academic career and Peter’s inability to commit in such a way because of all his other obligations and responsibilities. No amount of pleading about his financial circumstances could change that, and there would only have been one way that Marcy could have accepted he had higher purposes. But it would have been Catch 22 – a relationship could never have become serious enough for him to reveal his identity without him having already revealed it! (And remember he had proposed to Mary Jane without doing so.)

It’s not just any chance with Marcy that founders on this problem but also Peter’s teaching assistantship, with Dr Sloan sharing the view that Peter isn’t committed enough to devote the time required for his duties. Was this also an attempt to youthen Peter? His teaching duties hadn’t been that prominent but might there have been worries that by putting him on the far side of the lectern he was being made “inaccessible” to the perceived readership? It’s hard to say for sure and it would be wrong to assume that the recurrent belief amongst creators in the 1990s and 2000s that Spider-Man had “aged” and was “too inaccessible” was necessarily the prevailing concern of the early 1980s. But what this development definitely doesn’t share with the later decades is a sense of being suddenly forced upon the character. Instead it comes across as an entirely natural development of the problems that had been plaguing Peter for many issues.

There’s more development of Debra Whitman, and again it shows one of Peter’s worse sides as he fails to realise what’s going on around him and comes out with sharp comments that hurt her far more than he realises or intends. Debra is nervous and insecure but also clearly full of affection and seeking someone to give it all to. Instead she winds up obsessing over a guy who seems out of her league, repeatedly rushes out on her and who can be rather dismissive at times, whilst her alternative suitor Biff Rifkin seems to care more for her than she does for him. But whilst Debra may have difficulty when she tries to understand a physics text book in the hope that she can pull herself up to Peter’s level, she does demonstrate herself to be one of the most intelligent people in Spider-Man’s entire world when she puts together all her observations of Peter’s running off and his incredible strength as she follows him up a staircase and sees Spider-Man swing away. It’s a bold step forward for one of the supporting cast to now be in the know and there were no end of story possibilities – to take just a few, Debra could have confided her discovery to Peter and it became the spark for their relationship to really take off, or Peter could have tried to convince her that she was mistaken as he’d done whenever other got close in the past, or Debra could have kept the secret to herself and provided Peter with support and cover without him realising it, (though the latter is a bit close to Pete Ross and Superboy). We do at least get the realistic scenario of Debra’s initial reaction being sheer worry that Peter is out there constantly risking his life and her confiding her fears in a therapist, but then the story takes a very silly and rushed turn in order to wrap everything up before the return of the Black Cat and issue #75.

I don’t know what standard operating practices and ethics in the field of therapy were back in 1982 but I seriously doubt they involved breaching patients’ confidentiality to the objects of perceived delusions, or having third parties listening in on sessions, let alone the deliberate engineering of treatment designed to shock a person out of their delusions. But this is precisely what happens as the therapist tries to get Peter to pretend to be Spider-Man in order to convince Debra she’s deluded. Peter to his credit wants nothing to do with the plan, even when the therapist arrogantly assumes that this means he doesn’t care, but does try to help in his own way. This leads up to issue #74 where we get the major revelations about Debra, namely that she is a battered wife who has run away from her husband with help from Biff. This could have led to some further significant developments such as Peter helping to coax Debra out of her fantasies and face up to her past, perhaps even a trip to the mid-west to settle things with her husband. But instead we get one of the most simplistic cures of mental problems imaginable. Peter, to his great credit, decides to reveal to Debra that she’s not deluded at all and that he really is Spider-Man, so he visits her at her flat and lets her unmask him. And suddenly in an instance, everything is made right again. Debra realises that Peter couldn’t possibly be Spidey and has only done this to help her, and suddenly her delusions, fantasies and insecurities fade away. The next day she boards a bus to head back to the mid-west to divorce her husband and start over, with a hint that she will eventually settle with Biff (who also gets a one issue turn around as we learn that he’s been devoted to Debra since they were undergraduates but her delusions prevented her from realising it). Debra wouldn’t be seen again for over two decades (although she appeared in the 1990s cartoon where she was turned into Peter’s lab partner and scientific equal, who took to dating Flash Thompson!) and the whole thing just feels like a long-term plot plan was suddenly rushed through in a few issues when big changes were looming and Debra had become surplus to requirements.

It’s not the only rapid change thrown on us. In another issue we learn that Peter has had limited contact with Flash Thompson of late – okay good friends do often drift apart when their life courses no longer bring them into regular contact – and that both have drifted away from Harry Osborn and Liz Allen, who’ve disappeared off to the suburbs and got married with neither Peter nor Flash present. It’s an astounding revelation considering how close all four had been for years even if Harry did want to sever his ties to the past. It’s hard to know who to blame for this one as Harry had basically drifted out of the titles with his last major storyline some four years earlier and only a handful of background appearances since then. But it would have been better to actually show the wedding as a sign of the character evolving and make that the happy ending moment. Instead we get a glimpse of married life in New Jersey suburbia, as Liz’s past catches up with them in the form of the Molten Man. The story itself is a straightforward tale of Spider-Man blundering into a difficult situation and causing the Molten Man to go on the rampage, but in the course of it we see Harry showing more strength than in a long time as he stands up to his step-brother-in-law and fights back. The Osborn home may be burnt down but the ending of the story shows Harry and Liz have found their happily ever after as the neighbours come to their aid. Spidey’s comments that it’s a paradise in which he and his villains don’t belong helps to underline the sense of final closure.

That story also ends with the Molten Man seemingly transformed after being shoved into a swimming pool causes him to revert to his premolten form. It may be typical comic book science but it’s one of a number of cases in these issues of villains undergoing transformations of one sort or another. We also get a closure for the Man-Wolf as the moonstone is finally expelled from John Jameson’s system, whilst Will o’ the Wisp is restored to his form, the Smuggler and the Gibbon both seemingly go straight, the Beetle gets a new set of armour, the Robot Master is sort-of revived as a robotic duplicate, and Silvermane is transformed from an aged man in a broken body to a psychotic cyborg. For some villains there’s a sense of closure, for others their threat level is enhanced, particularly the Beetle whose previous costume always looked rather goofy. Silvermane’s transformation is the one I’m least comfortable with. Whilst the character when first introduced was initially seeking to revitalise his ageing body, his more recent appearances had shown him with a young enough body to be credible as a senior crime lord. And yes non-costumed crime lords are quite common in the Spider-Man stories, with the Kingpin standing at their apex, but Silvermane was the second most important one and didn’t really need to be transformed to maintain his threat level. The new cyborg body initially sees him as a rampaging creature, which could be a familiarisation factor, but it just feels like a new creation tacked onto an existing character when they could have been made an independent entity without drastically altering the story.

There aren’t many new villains introduced in these issues, but there are several brought in from other Marvel titles such as Moonstone, Nitro and the Ringer, whilst the Boomerang, Killer Shrike and the Owl had all  previously fought Spidey in Marvel Team-Up but now make it over to his headline titles for the first time. By far the most significant of these imports for the long run is the Jack O’Lantern, brought over from the pages of Machine Man (where he was co-created by Steve Ditko), who would later go on to assume the mantle of one of Spider-Man’s main foes. He gets but a single issue here though it establishes some of his key features including strategic thinking but also a willingness to turn tail and run when he realises he’s outclassed.

Some of Spider-Man’s more traditional foes make appearances, including Electro, Kraven and Doctor Octopus. The last comes at the end as part of the build-up for a major storyline that sees him in conflict with the Owl, which is best covered in the next Essential Spectacular volume, but we do get the touching story of Ollie Osnick, a lonely child who idolises Doc Ock to the point of getting his own tentacles and forming his own supervillains’ fan club. It makes for an interesting and comedic prelude to the main event as Spider-Man tracks down Ollie in a city nervous about the real Doc Ock being on the loose. It’s fortunate that Ollie abandons his worship of Doc Ock and never meets the real thing, who at the end passes a bin with the artificial arms and ripped up posters… and couldn’t care less. The Electro story is more conventional but shows Peter developing a special suit to tackle a particular foe. Whereas Iron Man or Batman can easily just have a new special costume manufactured to spec, Spider-Man has to take an old rubber mattress to create a special insulated suit that’s not 100% protection and is boiling hot to boot. Kraven’s story adds a bit to the character, showing how much honour means to him and that it is not enough to have Spider-Man dead but that he can only be satisfied if he does it rightly, a point that eludes his mistress Calypso.

The main creation in these issues are Cloak and Dagger. The two survivors of horrific experiments with drugs, they find their bodies transformed into powerful weapons and they now launch a war on drug dealers, showing a willingness to murder. This willingness brings them into conflict with Spider-Man in both their stories, but he isn’t always able to stop them in time. Wisely, the anti-drugs message isn’t overdone, nor is the debate over vigilante execution against criminal rights. However, another issue is less reserved on a controversial matter. Issue #71 focuses on the issue of hand gun control with Peter and Robbie as the voices of control – Robbie comes out with so many statistics that it’s not credible even for a newspaper editor to have off the top of his head – whilst Lance Bannon mutters the anti-control arguments of self-protection and Jonah is surprisingly balanced, ending the issue by asking what’s to be done about illegal guns in a city that already has one of the strongest control laws in the country. The presentation of the characters are rather one sided although the narrative aims at more balance by showing a number of gun deaths in breakout panels, including cleaning accidents, a father accidentally killing his son who is make a surprise visit, two parents gunned down in the street by a mugger whilst their child watches (a homage to Batman – wisely we don’t get a reminder of Uncle Ben’s death as it would have been the third time in a dozen issues) and a couple murdered in bed by a burglar. In the main story we get further killings, including a shopkeeper gunning down a robber (who had already been neutralised by Spider-Man) and a policeman dying taking on gun smugglers. Gun control is an awkward enough subject to write about at the best of times (and I’m merciful that the debate in the UK is tame compared to the US) but this issue feels rather preachy whilst at the same time trying to present itself as a more balanced take on the subject. There’s a credit of “Additional dialogue by Tom DeFalco” – was this a case of a writer and editor bringing different political perspectives to the issue? (Whilst I’ve heard that Mantlo’s politics were generally liberal and progressive I’ve no idea about DeFalco’s – or for that matter if he was adding on his own initiative or to orders from on high.)

As I mentioned, the gun control issue doesn’t touch on Uncle Ben’s death, probably because other issues do. Issue #68 sees Peter and Aunt May visiting the cemetery, with Nathan watching from a distance (a nice subtle sign that Nathan has been fully accepted into the family by Peter), whilst issue #60 is a double-sized issue celebrating five years of Spectacular and includes a seventeen page retelling of the original story from Amazing Fantasy #15 (including previous additions from Spectacular Spider-Man magazine #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #94). Much of the retelling matches the original story but there are some individual additions and enhancements to scenes. Amongst the most significant additions are an announcement that the demonstration is showing just how safely radiation can be controlled, hence the openness that allows the spider in; Peter actually killing the spider after it bites him (so there’s no possibility of anyone else having got powers at the same time); and there’s some more fleshing out what I feel is the most awkward part. Far too often in comics a special accident gives a character great power... and the ability to make costumes, to manufacture special equipment and to somehow obtain all the raw materials necessary without anyone noticing. Here we get the addition that the Spider-Man costume is adapted from a suit thrown away by a dance class whilst Peter now develops the web fluid in extra time in the school labs (and it’s credible the school über science geek would be allowed to do this) and has been studying polymers for two years. Whilst it’s still not perfect, it’s probably the best that can be done with the material available that has long established that Peter has no supporting help and uses artificial webs (with all the problems he’s had with weakened formulas, empty cartridges and badly maintained webshooters over the years). It’s easy to understand why so many latter day versions of Spider-Man, including the alien costume, Spider-Man 2099 and the Sam Raimi movies, have instead gone for built in organic webs but it’s impossible to retcon this in the original comics. Otherwise this retelling is pretty standard – maybe it’s a few pages too long but it shows that the original story can be retold without having to add too many layers (for instance there’s no mention of the Burglar’s motivations as this is primarily about the birth of Spider-Man). The only slight discontinuity is the same as in Amazing#94, namely that Peter is shown committing himself to use his powers to protect others immediately, when in the original comics it took a few more stories before that became his primary purpose.

In general, this is a solid run on the title but there isn’t anything that really leaps out as truly awesome. But sometimes spectacular highs are matched by equally spectacular lows and a solid consistently good run is overall more preferable. Both main writers have a strong grasp of both Spider-Man’s character and his past, and all the elements are respected to show the character at his classic best, fighting to help others despite the gruelling toll it takes on his alter-ego’s life.