In the world of comic strips in recent years, there have been major series whose creators brought them to an end (Bill Watterston’s Calvin and Hobbes, Gary Larson’s The Far Side) or who went on lengthy sabbaticals (Berke Breathed’s Bloom County and its subsequent spinoffs). But traditionally the great comic strip artists have devoted lifelong careers to one or two series. In my childhood many of the titans were still active, working on strips they had been doing for decades: Milton Caniff (Steve Canyon), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie), Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), Al Capp (Li’l Abner), and my favorite, Walt Kelly (Pogo). In recent times there have been such examples of longevity as Charles Schulz, who only retired from Peanuts shortly before his death, and Garry Trudeau on Doonesbury. (Perhaps it is surprising that in many such cases, the creator did not actually own the strip, but was allowed by his corporate bosses to continue working on it.) Followers of such longrunning strips can watch them evolve over time as bodies of creative work. Especially when comic strips comment on real life events, as in Doonesbury and Pogo, or allow their characters to age, famously in Gasoline Alley and also in Lynn Johnston’s For Better or for Worse, we readers can see how the strip’s creators respond to changing times and the different phases of life itself. (There will be more on this subject in another of my future, long-gestating columns.)
But such long runs by a single creator are far less common in American comic books. Roy Thomas’s ten-year original stint as writer of Marvel’s Conan titles (now being reprinted by Dark Horse in recognition of their enduring, classic worth) is unusual and remarkable. In fact, I have been told that in some quarters in today’s comic book business it is believed that a creative team should only stay on a series for a year. Had this been the mindset in the 1960s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would never have gotten to do their Galactus trilogy.
The major exception to the rule is Chris Claremont, now approaching the thirtieth anniversary of his first writing the X-Men in 1975, scripting the first “regular” issue of the “new” X-Men, Claremont began his unbroken sixteen-year run on the series now known as Uncanny X-Men, while co-creating and writing related series like The New Mutants, Wolverine, and the original Excalibur on the side. His absences from the X-Men books have been due primarily to editorial and corporate decisions; were it up to him, I suspect he would never have left the X-Men. Even in this ever more fickle comics industry, Marvel has recognized that Claremont’s new X-Men work continues to find a large audience. Thus, in the course of Marvel’s current “X-Men Reload” marketing ploy, though Claremont’s X-Treme X-Men series has wound to an end (see Comics in Context #37), he is now back where he belongs, writing the original X-Men series, Uncanny X-Men, starting anew with issue 444 (cover-dated July 2004 and out right now), teamed up once more with artist Alan Davis, his collaborator on the first Excalibur series.
And, this same month, Claremont has launched a new Excalibur series as well, with a familiar title but a very different premise. (Those series is drawn not by Davis but by Aaron Lopresti.)
The very first page of Uncanny #444 presents a new and welcome variation on a familiar scene from Claremont’s X-Men work. “It’s been a long time since the X-Men have indulged in a game of baseball,” the narrator dryly observes. Indeed, it has. Like the ones he has done in X-Men books in the past, this new baseball sequence provides opportunities for humor that other X-Men writers neglect in order to concentrate on what conventional wisdom deems the X-Men‘s principal stock-in-trade: unrelieved angst. But Claremont, like Stan Lee before him, believes in balancing the dark with the light. Moreover, the baseball games provide a strong sense of the X-Men’s spirit of community. The fact that these outsiders, who feel out of place in a hostile society, find a sense of community, identity, and family within the X-Men is a major source of the concept’s appeal. I used to hear other comics professionals mock what they called Claremont’s “jeans and T-shirt” scenes in his books, but those scenes, with characters happily, affectionately interacting, supplied X-Men with an emotional warmth lacking in many other comics writers’ work.
This baseball scene set me thinking back to one of Claremont’s earliest Marvel stories, way back in Marvel Premiere #24 (August 1975), in which Danny Rand, who is secretly the martial artist Iron Fist, encounters a bearded guy named Chris (the author himself) in a park and joins him and his friends (other Marvel staffers, recognizable to those who know) in a softball game. Marvel’s summer softball games were an annual event in sunnier times, and perhaps Claremont is intentionally harking back to the spirit of the comics community back then in staging new baseball games for the X-Men.
Certainly the sense of community for X-Men readers would be enhanced by seeing the sheer number of characters that Claremont and Davis put into this scene, many of whom are Claremont co-creations, from the original New Mutants as well as the X-Men titles themselves.
The game not only allows for introducing various characters to new readers and, in some cases, establishing their powers (as with Nightcrawler’s teleporting), but also provides opportunities for nice characterization bits, and even subtle references on recent developments in the series. Up at bat, Emma Frost, the White Queen, who was once one of the X-Men’s leading enemies, finds catcher Nightcrawler’s characteristic humor irritating. “One more word, Kurt,” she sneers, “and I’ll banish you to your father’s dimension myself!” There’s a reference to the recent revelation (by another writer) that Nightcrawler’s father was a demon. (Apparently mutation was deemed insufficient to explain Nightcrawler’s appearance and powers, though it should have been enough. So Nightcrawler has been given an origin imitating Hellboy’s, or maybe even Rosemary’s Baby’s.)
The dominant figure in this sequence is Rachel Summers, the daughter of an alternate reality’s versions of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, who were members of the first “class” of X-Men as Cyclops and Marvel Girl. It would appear that the whole convoluted 1990s story line which dispatched Rachel to the far future to become the ancient Mother Askani is no longer relevant, since here she is back in the present, still young. (I assume this has something to do with the alteration of the timeline that originally led to Cable’s future era. This is fine with me: the whole future Cable/Rachel history had gotten too convoluted for the series’ own good. It’s bad enough that we need to have two sets of Scotts and Jeans to explain Rachel’s present-day existence.)
Rachel is not only now calling herself “Marvel Girl,” in honor of the Jeans of this timeline and her own, but she’s calling herself “Rachel Grey.” This is news to me, as it was to the folks at Manhattan’s Cosmic Comics, where I picked up this issue. But I assume that Rachel’s new last name is not only a salute to her mom but a sign of her disapproval of the behavior of this timeline’s version of Scott Summers. “Our” reality’s Jean is dead again, thanks to ex-X-Men-writer Grant Morrison, although with Jean’s talent for resurrection one might well wonder who actually thinks she’s “dead” for good. But even before Jean’s latest demise (collect ’em all!), Scott had inexplicably started a romance with Emma Frost. This is the sort of thing that exasperates longtime readers and makes them wonder what Scott was thinking, or, even better, what in heaven’s name the editors and writers were thinking.
So amidst the overall good spirits of the game, a sort of duel ensues between Rachel, the pitcher, and Frost, up at bat. Though Frost is hardly old, there’s still a generational edge to the conflict here, especially since Davis draws Rachel looking so youthful and sexy. Rachel needles Frost (“Made you flinch”) and, when Emma ignominiously strikes out, makes the point of the duel clear: “That one was for my Mom, Emma!” But though Emma gets genuinely angry, the tone of the duel remains comedic, in keeping with the high spirits of the game. Rachel maintains a sense of humor throughout, Frost ends up falling on her butt in a bit of slapstick comedy, and Rachel bursts into infectious laughter, complete with a thought balloon containing Davis’ caricature of the comically defeated Frost. There’s a more somber undercurrent here, too. Though Claremont doesn’t make this explicit, since Emma, like Rachel, is a telepath, she would “see” Rachel’s image of her; Davis has Emma look momentarily genuinely sad over her moment of humiliation, before she then forfeits any sympathy by bursting into rage at Rachel’s telepathic mention of Jean.
The mixture of tones in this baseball sequence – warmth and joy, vengefulness and sadness, comedy and pathos – is unusual in comics, but Claremont and Davis bring it off. I also am impressed by the subtlety with which they handle Wolverine’s reactions in the scene. Having been in unrequited love with Jean himself, it is no wonder he disapproves of Scott’s “betrayal” of her with Frost, as demonstrated by his subtle, pointed comments to Scott and Emma in this scene. Scott and Emma don’t seem to understand what he’s getting at, but the attentive reader will. A comics editor once explicitly directed me to write “purple” prose; I much prefer Claremont’s skillful use of understatement in delineating character.
Soon afterwards follows another familiar sort of scene from Claremont’s past X-Men work: the X-Men at leisure around the swimming pool. This too is one of Claremont’s means of showing the X-Men take pleasure in each other’s company, and affords more comedic opportunities: here the Beast’s dive splashes the onlookers.
But look how Claremont and Davis mix the dramatic tones here, as well. Sage, formerly Tessa of the Hellfire Club, appealingly garbed in a bathrobe, sits amid the X-Men’s computer systems, surveying the estate, including the pool area. But initially she does so by tapping into the surveillance systems of various government agencies. On the previous page, Claremont refers to Morrison’s “outing” of the X-Men: the world now knows that Professor Charles Xavier’s school is their headquarters. Morrison presented the “outing” as primarily a good thing, enabling the X-Men to take a more public role in advocating mutant rights. Now Claremont and Davis are showing some of the negative results of the “outing.” The F.B.I. and even the Department of Homeland Security are spying on the Xavier estate; the latter department’s presence is another sign of how 9/11 and subsequent events have influenced comics.
The X-Men now have to cope not only with government surveillance but with intrusions by the news media. We next see a foolishly grinning TV reporter doing a report from what is presumably a helicopter flying over the estate. While on camera, Cannonball angrily orders her, demonstrating a lack of PR savvy comparable to that of the unseen government operative who swung the camera away from Secretary of State Colin Powell during his Meet the Press interview last Sunday (May 15).
Davis provides some interesting overhead shots of the rebuilt Xavier mansion: it’s been redesigned and expanded, presumably to account for where everybody is housed since Morrison radically expanded the size of the student body. (Back in 1963, there were only six people living in the entire mansion!)
In another nice touch, we are shown that the mansion now has a “memorial garden,” where flowers are placed before a photo of Jean, who is not shown alone, as one might expect, but with Scott. One gets the feeling that it is not just Rachel and Wolverine who disapprove of the Scott-and-Emma romance. Indeed, next Sage monitors Scott’s office, inside of which Scott and Emma are busily snogging away instead of being “in conference.”
Think about this scene some more, and it becomes ominous: Sage is spying on Scott’s love life, just as the government is spying on the outside of the mansion.
Here’s another nice bit: various X-Men trainees (all in the original uniforms) look on aghast as Wolverine and Storm undergo a violent session in the Danger Room, while senior X-Man Rogue breaks into a big smile, saying this workout was “mostly. . .just for fun.” Now there’s a way of dramatizing the contrast between newbies and veterans.
Next Storm takes a more serious approach to the theme, stating that “The first generation of mutants needs to take responsibility for their heirs.” We will see more of this generational theme when we look at Excalibur later in this piece. But for now, ask yourselves where else in the Marvel canon you have read a phrase about “responsibility.”
Claremont has the old school Marvel writer’s sense of duty about establishing characters and situations for new or infrequent readers, an especially important task for an issue Marvel is promoting has a “jumping on” point for newcomers. So next he shows us two scenes of X-Men in their new roles as government-sanctioned “marshals” battling mutant criminals. Again there’s a sign of the 9-11 influence: the first band of bad guys, the Weaponeers, are Arab raiders.
These scenes also showcase the fact that after several years of wearing relatively nondescript black uniforms, the X-Men are back in traditional, colorful superhero costumes. I dislike the too-short “horns” on Wolverine’s new outfit, but I quite like the new costume for Rachel. (Its green and yellow colors and boots are also reminiscent of the original Marvel Girl’s late 1960s costume.)
You may recall that around the time of the first X-Men movie, which put the team in black uniforms, Avi Arad and others at Marvel were busy badmouthing traditional superhero costumes as stupid. So the X-Men in the comics were put into black uniforms as well, which look drab and dull in the comics medium. Then out came the Spider-Man movie, a far greater financial success, and not an ill word was uttered about the fact that Spidey wore his usual colorful costume in the film. Now we learn from various sources that Avi Arad decreed that it was “time” for the costumes to return. I suppose this is yet another example of how when comics creators misguidedly try to drop an essential element from a major series, it usually makes its eventual return. I doubt that anyone really thought through the importance of costumes several years ago when they were dropped; we should breathe a sigh of relief that this corporate whim has reversed itself, and the costumes are back.
The ominous aspect of Sage returns towards the end. I wonder if, when Claremont wrote Sage’s dialogue here – “Leave their interrogation to me, Rachel. I have ways of making people. . .talk.” – it seemed as sinister as it does in the wake of the recent controversy over mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.
I can’t say I’m thrilled by the concluding action scenes in this issue: they seem the most conventional part of the book. No, for me what is interesting are the characterizations, the themes, the new look at the X-Men’s place in a changing world.
This is even more true of Claremont’s new Excalibur #1. This, by the way, is not to be confused with his first Excalibur #1, though from now on it surely will be. Claremont’s first Excalibur series began in 1988, but, to judge from the indicia, Marvel couldn’t be bothered to assign the new series a new volume number. This sort of thing has happened so often in the past, complicating the lives of collectors or anyone (surely including Marvel personnel) trying to keep accurate records of the company’s publishing history. And to think that when editor Julius Schwartz revived the Flash comic in the 1950s, he was told to pick up the numbering from where the original Flash comic had left off. Those were simpler and more sensible times.
Excalibur is the name of King Arthur’s sword, and that made an appropriate title for the original Claremont Excalibur, which was about a British-based team of superheroes, a kind of latter-day Round Table. The central figure, indeed, was Captain Britain (one of Claremont’s earliest co-creations), a patriotic icon for the United kingdom just as Captain America is for the United states. The first issue of the new series has nothing to do with Britain or any British characters, though the initial story arc is titled “Forging the Sword.” What connection this new Excalibur may have. literally or figuratively, to the Arthurian legend remains to be seen.
To judge from issue one, the new Excalibur is about Professor Charles Xavier, the founder of the X-Men, and Genosha, the island nation off the coast of Africa that Claremont co-created in the 1980s.
I look at the new Excalibur in terms of a question that must face many comics creators of the Baby Boom generation, who came into the business in the 1970s and 1980s. Can the superhero genre continue to serve as an effective means of personal expression for writers in middle age? (It was for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who created the Marvel Universe in their middle age.) So many people still think of superhero comics, indeed of comic books in general, as material for children; even the major comics companies seem to be targeting a demographic of teenagers and men in their early 20s. But can the genre be made relevant to middle-aged creators and readers who are seeking more than adolescent nostalgia?
This is a question that faces the world of rock music as well (and perhaps it is relevant that the rise of rock music paralleled the Silver Age in comics). Most of the audience is young, even juvenile, and yet there is an older audience as well, and middle-aged creators who do not simply rely on recycling oldies. Actually, this is a problem that seems prevalent throughout contemporary American culture. The youth culture advocated by the Baby Boomers in their own youth has now turned against them, as movie companies, television studios, and, indeed, businesses in general pursue a young demographic to the exclusion of the middle-aged and seniors.
Consider, then, how unusual and bold Claremont’s new Excalibur is: its central character is a middle-aged man. And he is no fantasy figure of steroid-style musculature and aggressive attitude like other middle-aged Marvel heroes, Cable or the Punisher. Charles Xavier is physically crippled; he’s bald; his strength lies in his mind. Yet he tells us at one point that “My telepathy’s grown too soft. . . .” He blames this on his overreliance on devices like Cerebra, but perhaps we can see it as a sign of aging, as well.
Moreover, this is a story about the dreams, hopes and ideals of youth, something the superhero concept embodies quite well, turning to disillusionment. This is a theme that has been powerfully dramatized in the superhero genre before, in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s original Dark Knight, Paul Jenkins’ Sentry, the final issue of Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s Marvels, and their predecessor, the recently republished novel Superfolks, not to mention Stan Lee’s “Spider-Man No More” in Amazing Spider-Man #50, which, as one can see from the trailer, is quoted in the second Spider-Man movie. In some of these cases the hero succumbs to disillusionment and gives up the world of superheroes; in others he finds a means to regain his faith and renew his career in that world. What will be Xavier’s choice in this story?
The issue opens with Xavier, eyes shut and jaw set in an expression that looks like mourning, telling us that “once upon a time, I had a dream” of a world in which mutants and “baseline humans” coexisted in peace. “Xavier’s dream” is a familiar phrase from past X-Men stories, and his phrasing, “I had a dream,” might evoke Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”: Xavier, as an non-violent advocate for mutant civil rights, has been compared to Dr. King before. The “once upon a time” phrase is the standard beginning of a fairy tale. Xavier may be suggesting not only that the days when he hoped he could turn his vision, his “dream,” into reality not only seem long past, but that his hopes now seem naive, perhaps even childlike to him, as a fairy tale might seem to an adult.
Turn the page and you will find a double-page spread of Xavier, sitting in his wheelchair, alone amid a scene of devastation. Referring back to his “dream” of a world of racial peace, Xavier says simply, “This isn’t it. This is today’s reality.” It is as if he has awakened from a blissful, youthful dream to face up to a harsh reality in which hope seems naive.
In part, perhaps this scene is another conscious or subconscious evocation of the events of 9/11: it is reminiscent of Superman standing amid the debris of the demolished Daily Planet building in Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, a scene that was clearly a 9/11 reference (see Comics in Context #34).
These are the ruins of Hammer Bay, the capital city of Genosha, a nation of mutants that was obliterated by Sentinel robots dispatched by Xavier’s “evil twin,” Cassandra Nova, early in Grant Morrison’s stint as X-Men writer. So the destruction of Genosha is a testament to the genocidal hatred that Xavier has failed to overcome. It could also be seen as a contemporary, fictional counterpart to the Holocaust.
There is another level of meaning as well, since Genosha, as a fictional concept, was Claremont’s creation. Originally, Genosha seemed to be inspired by South Africa and Rhodesia in the days of apartheid: African nations that were dominated by whites, in which blacks were reduced to second class citizenship. In Genosha white “baseline” humans ruled over a population of mutants, whom they had effectively enslaved.
After Claremont left the X-Men books in the early 1990s, Genosha seemed to become a parallel for Bosnia, with the “baseline” humans and the mutants waging a bloody civil war against each other. Still later, the United Nations turned the nation over to Magneto, in a gesture of appeasement. As Claremont has Xavier tells us in this issue, “It had become the self-proclaimed mutant homeland, presenting itself to the world as a sanctuary and a place of hope.” That might make Genosha sound like the mutant race’s counterpart to Israel, but notice that, despite the Chamber of Commerce-style pictures he shows us of Genosha as a utopia, Claremont is careful to say that this is the image that Magneto’s Latveria sought to present to the world. In fact, under other writers, Magneto made the island nation a base from which he plotted world conquest: Genosha was not the mutants’ Israel but was to him what Latveria is to Doctor Doom.
Finally, Morrison wiped out the population of Genosha, an act that read to me as another example of the tiresome syndrome in which Writer A creates a concept, and his successor, Writer B, dislikes it and wrecks it, either not anticipating or caring that other writers might find the concept useful, or even that Writer A himself might someday return. In this case Claremont is Writer A, Morrison is Writer B, and Genosha was the victim. So Xavier sitting amidst the ruins of a society of mutants might even parallel Claremont finding himself faced with the destruction of one of his own fictional creations. The new Excalibur looks in part to be Claremont’s effort to rescue Genosha and revitalize it as a concept.
Most significantly, the visual image of Xavier amid the ruins of Genosha is a metaphor for Xavier confronting the ruination of his hopes. Looking at this scene of genocide, Xavier must wonder whether all his work on behalf of mutants has been in vain. Is his “dream” dead? Does it lie in ruins like Genosha? On page four artist Aaron Lopresti places Xavier within a panel shaped like a coffin, symbolically entombing him. Claremont has Xavier spend the issue carting a coffin behind his wheelchair. And what is that wrapped, human-sized bundle within the coffin? Here are symbols aplenty of the death of mutants, the death of ideals, and the death of hope.
Cassandra Nova could be dismissed as a single madwoman who does not represent the rest of humanity. But what Xavier tells us about the world’s reaction to the massacre does point to “baseline” humanity’s intolerance towards mutants, which he calls “almost as contemptible as the attack itself.” According to Xavier, the world’s great powers have virtually ignored the plight of Genosha, and are “far more worried about a terrorist response from any survivors.” That seems all too credible. (Consider the current fate of Afghanistan after its supposed liberation from the Taliban.)
What Xavier tells us next may well be inspired by current events in the real world. “I’ve been to war,” he says. “I know firsthand the cost. What matters here isn’t ideology or policies. What matters are people in desperate need. And those with the means – and more importantly the will – to help.” Like Storm’s line that I quoted from Uncanny X-Men #444, this is, at heart, a reworking of Stan Lee’s famous maxim from Spider-Man’s origin in Amazing Fantasy #15: “With great power must come great responsibility.” Often this line is misquoted, and the “must” is omitted. But “must” conveys the point: it is the moral duty for a person to take responsibility for helping those in need if he or she can. I suspect that Claremont, who has thus alluded to Stan Lee’s maxim in both of his initial “X-Men Reboot” issues, may see it as the prime moral principle underlying stories in the classic Marvel tradition.
Xavier now informs us that in combat he was nicknamed “the Good Shepherd,” because :if you were lost, I’d find you and bring you home safe.” The Good Shepherd, of course, is a character in perhaps Christ’s most celebrated parable, and the character has been regarded as a metaphor for Christ himself. Claremont may be casting Xavier as a Christ figure, though I doubt that Xavier, who seems humbled in this story, is egotistically thinking of himself that way. Instead, Xavier is making the point that he puts his money where his mouth is: he carries out his responsibility to aid those in need, who are metaphorically “lost.” “After a lifetime,” he tells us, acknowledging his age, “that hasn’t really changed.”
Here hope and moral ideals begin to reemerge in the story. The world around Xavier may have changed for the worst, but he remains steadfast: he will not give up. He is a rock solidly fixed amid the chaotic maelstrom.
From there, logically enough, Xavier goes on to describe his role as a teacher, who instructs young mutants in “both the practical and ethical use of their abilities.” This has been Xavier’s role from Lee and Kirby’s X-Men #1 onward. But usually in X-Men stories it is Xavier’s students who take center stage. In fact, through his long run on the X-Men, Claremont repeatedly wrote Xavier out of the series, as if he were not essential to it. Maybe this was even ageism. Now, perhaps because Claremont and Xavier are closer in age, he puts the spotlight on Xavier himself in Excalibur. Through what Storm said in Uncanny #444 and what Xavier says here, Claremont is focusing on the responsibility of a generation that has gained wisdom and experience to aid the younger generation rising up.
As if marking a transition from one act of the story to another, Xavier literally falls and then rises to see the spirit of his deceased lover and colleague, Moira MacTaggart. Xavier does not know if she is “real” – a ghost – or not; Moira guesses she is a “figment of your imagination.” This reminds me of the story’s opening, with its contrast between Xavier’s dream and the reality in which he finds himself.
Moira’s ghost is an interesting dramatic device, and a familiar one: the ghost who may or may not be real. This reminds me of the ambiguity with which John Byrne initially treated Alfred’s ghost in Generations before finally making clear he was real in the sequel. There’s the meeting between President Bartlet and his recently deceased secretary, Mrs. Landingham, in the Season 2 finale of The West Wing. Going further back, to more literary sources, there’s Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and there are even those who think that Hamlet may have imagined his father’s ghost.
If the ghost is not real, this should raise questions about the living person’s sanity. It is one thing for Xavier to consciously decide to imagine what Moira might say to him. For Xavier to hallucinate Moira’s presence, without knowing if she is real or not, is worrisome.
Still, this is a good scene, and perhaps the heart of the story. Moira is a reminder of the theme of aging, death, and loss, and also of the way past memories provide inspiration for the present and future. Moira’s ghost first appears as a middle-aged woman, in glasses and suit, but then reverts to the appearance of her earlier self, wearing considerably less.
“The way you see me is the way you remember me best,” she tells Xavier: “From when we were young an’ in love. . .an’ our world was rich wi’ possibilities.”
Actually, from her earliest appearances in the1970s, Moira has always represented lost love, lost youth, and lost possibilities She was the woman whom Xavier loved in his university days, but whom he lost to a man she married but did not love. Though Xavier and Moira remained close friends and colleagues, it seemed as if they could not return to the relationship they once had.
Now Claremont has sharpened the tragic aspect of their relationship, having killed Moira off a few years ago, but perhaps seems more willing to explore the themes she represents. That last line, about “when we were young an’ in love. . .an’ our world was rich wi’ possibilities” seems particularly meaningful. Claremont gives us the space of a panel to mull this over before Xavier replies, with understatement, “This isn’t how I thought things would turn out.”
Think again back to that double-page spread of Xavier amid the ruins. Perhaps those ruins also represent his concept of the world, and his plans of how he could help the world, both destroyed by events he did not foresee. Now there’s something that one should learn as he or she ages: that the world will change in ways that you cannot expect. How many people fifty years ago foresaw the coming of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay liberation, the end of the Soviet Union, the coming of AIDS, the rise of the Internet, gay marriage, the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, or so much more? How many people in their 20s correctly foresee what their lives will be like in a quarter century?
Perhaps Xavier has achieved a quiet epiphany here. Later in the story he tells a young mutant, “Life’s a work in progress. . .It doesn’t always work out the way we plan, or hope.”
Meanwhile, the compulsory action subplot begins stirring, with the appearance of longtime X-Men villain Unus the Untouchable and some anonymous mutant bad guys. How nice to see Unus, a Lee-Kirby creation, back, especially since for a long time Marvel considered him to be dead: in one story he had lost control of his force field and seemingly suffocated to death inside it. I suspect that in today’s Marvel no one who had anything to do with the current story even knew about Unus’s “demise.” But that’s okay: I’m glad to see he’s back.
The unforeseen development that most worries Xavier is the fact that there are now far more mutants on Marvel-Earth than he ever thought back in the X-Men comics of past decades, in which finding a mutant was a comparatively rare occurrence. This may also represent Claremont’s own reaction to another change that Morrison wreaked in the X-Men concept. Morrison clearly wanted to emphasize the idea of mutants as not rare anomalies but as a significant minority group by radically increasing their numbers. Xavier explicitly points to the devastation of Genosha as a symbol of the “backlash” by the “baseline human” majority against their race.
Xavier notes that “Not even cockroaches survived” the annihilation of Genosha, alluding to the conventional wisdom that these bugs would even survive a nuclear war (see Peter David’s Hulk: The End in Comics in Context #2 for an example). As if Moira’s ghost and the ruins of Genosha aren’t enough reminders of mortality, here’s another one.
The notion that cockroaches did not survive the attack on Genosha seems to induce Xavier to wonder if mutants really are the next phase of human evolution, which Morrison and Magneto both claim will outlive and supplant “normal” humanity. Xavier wonders, “Suppose we were wrong about other things? Suppose mutants aren’t the culmination if the evolutionary process, the crest of a coming norm. . .but some aberration? How then will nature deal with us?” Are mutants inevitably doomed? And hence, are Xavier’s efforts on behalf of the mutant race all in vain? This raises Xavier’s mid-life crisis to new philosophical dimensions.
This moment of despair seems to mark another act break, for now Xavier turns from Moira’s ghost to another Jungian anima figure, named “Wicked.” No, Broadway musical fans, this has nothing to do with Kristin Chenoweth. This “Wicked” is a young, female mutant who dresses in “bad girl” fashion and has the antagonistic attitude to match. But in context she comes off not so much as a Bill Jemas-style effort to pandering to the audience for “bad girl” comics, but more as a representation of the way that a person in the mid-life generation might view the rebellious younger generation. (Jack Kirby pictured the youth of 1970 as the peaceful, hippie-like Forever People; in 2004 Claremont gives us instead “wicked” and her 21st century variation on punk.) The name Wicked gave herself is an example of the role of angry rebel in which she casts herself. In Junging terms it also marks her as a “shadow” figure, which Xavier must cope with.
Wicked keeps calling Xavier “old man,” in another way the story emphasizes the theme of age and generational change. From what she says, she appears to represent the young Genoshan mutants’ anger that Xavier could not save them, and, perhaps beyond that, the anger of the younger generation at the failures of their elders. Interestingly, Wicked seems accompanied by real ghosts, presumably of deceased Genoshans. Perhaps this parallels Xavier with his mysterious coffin.
Xavier paraphrases Stan Lee’s maxim once more, “Having powers means assuming the obligation to use them responsibly,” but this time he says it to Wicked, thus demonstrating his goal of teaching his precepts to a new generation.
As they go to attack Xavier, Unus directs his underlings, “Leave him naked as the day he was born!” I wonder how long ago Claremont wrote that line. Had the stripping of Iraqi prisoners been revealed in the press?
Menaced by Unus and company, Xavier rises to the occasion, and interestingly does so by remaining in his chosen role as teacher. When Unus claims to be invulnerable to Xavier’s telepathy, Xavier says, :I could argue the point, or demonstrate it,” like a good academic.
Instead, Xavier has another young mutant, Freakshow, take care of Unus by turning into a giant monster and swallowing him! That’s a clever bit that Claremont came up with, though it wouldn’t have worked had Unus projected his field as far from his body as he did in the Stan Lee/Roy Thomas days.
Xavier even thinks of the fate meted out to Unus as a kind of lesson, though he doubts Unus will learn from it.
Through rising to and winning this battle, Xavier has reasserted himself as a leader, a fighter, and, indeed, as a mentor: he has reclaimed his belief in his life’s work. Again, speaking with powerful simplicity, Xavier says, “I’m a teacher, Freakshow,” and instructs him and Wicked to return tomorrow to begin their “lessons.”
Now, for those of you who need spoiler warnings, read no further.
After all of the symbols of mortality in this issue, it concludes with an act of resurrection. Symbolically, the mysterious coffin glows and rises into the air. And on the last page, out walks the supposedly deceased Magneto. But he is not in costume, not dressed for warfare. Instead he is unmasked, in civilian dress, and shakes hands with Xavier.
Perhaps you will recall that towards the end of his run, Grant Morrison had Wolverine apparently behead Magneto. I was going to say that was particularly unfortunate considering the subsequent, real-life beheading of an American prisoner by Muslim terrorists. But then I remembered the terrorist beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl took place before Morrison wrote that issue. Wolverine really shouldn’t be imitating Arab terrorists.
In any event, now we see that Magneto’s “death” didn’t even last a year. This is further proof that this kind of fake death is becoming meaningless as a dramatic device in comics. Morrison’s “deaths” for Magneto and Jean Grey are just exasperating annoyances.
Now, what does Claremont have in mind for Magneto? In the 1980s Claremont veered away from the traditional portrayal of Magneto as outright villain, and instead stated that he saw him as a former terrorist evolving into a statesman. This was an interesting development, though I think that Claremont took it too far, even turning Magneto into the New Mutants’ new headmaster. But as I have observed about the X-Men’s costumes, if comics creators try to dispose of or radically change an important element of a series, it will inevitably snap back to the way it was. So, in the 1990s editor Bob Harras had Magneto return to his more familiar villainous role. Over the last few years Grant Morrison (in the main continuity) and Mark Millar (in the alternate continuity of Ultimate X-Men) came up with the most evil versions of Magneto to date, ruthless, consumed with hatred for humanity, bent on mutant domination of the world. Millar’s Magneto even fantasized about mutants eating “normal” humans. Though Ian McKellen’s Magneto in the X-Men movies has a certain charm, he too is genocidal, and nearly exterminated the “normal” human race in X2.
Is Claremont changing course with Magneto? I think Magneto works best in the role of Xavier’s former friend turned into his ideological opposite and greatest enemy, the archvillain that the series needs. Neil Gaiman handled this duality well in his treatment of Magneto in 1602. I am nonetheless interested to see where Claremont takes Magneto now. I have no doubt he can explore Magneto’s personality with the same depth and insight he demonstrates with Xavier in this first issue.
So, here was Excalibur #1, a superhero comic book centering on a middle-aged man who faces middle-aged concerns – mortality, loss, adapting to changing times, disillusionment and doubt – and finding new resolve to continue his quest for his lifelong goals.
In one of the nice examples of synchronicity that occur when I write these columns, today’s New York Times (May 21, 2004) has an Op-Ed piece by Nick Hornby on the subject of middle-aged people creating and listening to rock music. “You’ve heard the argument a million times: most rock music is made by the young, for the young, about being young, and if you’re not young and you still listen to it, then you should be ashamed of yourself.” Hornby says he “mostly” agrees with that description, though it doesn’t take into account “recent, mainly excellent work” by a number of middle-aged rock veterans such as Dylan and Springsteen. But, he continues, he disagrees with the “conclusion” that the middle-aged shouldn’t listen to rock music.
“Youth is a quality not unlike health: it’s found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. . .I’m talking about the energy, the wistful yearning, the inexplicable exhilaration, the sporadic sense of invulnerability, the hope that stings like chlorine. When I was younger, rock music articulated those feelings, and now that I’m older, it stimulates them, but either way, rock ‘n’ roll was and remains necessary because: who doesn’t need exhilaration and a sense of invincibility, even if it’s only now and again?”
As far as I’m concerned, the same applies to the best superhero comics. Professor Charles Xavier is no longer young and his world is in ruins. But invincibly, exhilaratingly, he carries on, giving his readers of every age hope.
-Copyright 2004 Peter Sanderson
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