RecolleXtions 002

It begins (for real this time)...

So with the preamble out of the way (see last week’s installment of “RecolleXtions”) maybe now I can shed a little light on some of the creative choices I made in the actual issues that I wrote, #394-#409 plus the 2001 Annual. Bear in mind, we're talking over twenty years ago (!). In many ways, I was a completely different person then. Certainly, I was a different writer. But there it all is... in print forever... and there's not much else I can do but resign myself to reality and simply stand by the work I did at a very young age on a very high-profile franchise.

UNCANNY X-MEN #394

This one was odd for several reasons. The first being, it was the "launch book" of this new creative initiative -- when it clearly should've been the first Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely issue -- so I must've felt compelled to deal with the more "commercial" characters (mainly from the first movie): Cyclops, Jean Grey and Wolverine (although I threw Archangel in there, too) as opposed to my own, more "misfit" cast that I’d chosen for the duration of my run. In other words, there’s no way I could’ve started with Part 1 of Poptopia. At the time, I felt that really would've been suicide. So I came up with this weird, one-off story -- featuring a brand-new villain named “Warp Savant” that would never be seen again -- which we all hoped would reintroduce the basic X-Men concept to a wider, possibly newer audience and at least set the proper tone for this new X-era. Go figure.

But, for the most part, I made those choices and everyone else went along with it. So if anyone wants to lay any blame for a comicbook that didn’t live up to their expectations, it’s all on me. I think the imagery I was conjuring up in my mind when it came to the "virtual space" where victims of Warp's power would find themselves was 1) bizarrely misguided creatively and 2) asking Ian Churchill to draw something that didn't quite come naturally to him (although there's no question that Ian was/is a fantastic comicbook artist and a great guy). The fault was mine. It's a writer's job to both describe your vision and inspire an artist to execute those ideas and, hopefully, give them the opportunity to exceed expectations. I do think Ian absolutely nailed the big panel of Archangel arriving on the scene. An epic moment for that character.

Otherwise, I have to be honest… the rest of the issue was pretty much a wash. Not my finest moment as a comicbook writer. And it all went down under the brightest, harshest spotlight I’d ever found myself standing under up to that point. The buildup to this release was huge (for the times and the general state of the industry). Even Grant admitted to me later that the pressure got to them, too! That genuinely surprised me, but I suppose none of us are immune.

I would say its most lasting legacy is probably… the cover. I really put my shameless marketing hat on for that one. Ironic, in a way, in so far as it leaned into the more interpersonal, “soap opera” aspects of the X-Men, which I had little to no interest in at that time. Then again, I know what sells. The Wolverine-Jean Grey kiss -- again, my goofy concept -- was executed by Ian Churchill in such a way that it left a fairly indelible mark on the mainstream comicbook landscape circa 2001.

C’mon… once you see Wolverine’s “penis-arm”, you can never unsee it.

UNCANNY X-MEN #395-398

Ahhhh, Poptopia... I remember being more jazzed about the story titles than I was about the actual story, as it ultimately played out. In retrospect, I think it's obvious that I was much more interested in the “Chamber dates Britney Spears”-storyline than I was in the second-rate Morlocks we created that resided in the underground sewers of London (btw, anything in the dialogue that was meant to be UK-specific -- from the references to the vernacular -- came mainly from X-letterer and Comicraft head guru, Richard Starkings, who was himself a Brit who'd moved to the US in the previous decade). I was still getting used to the team dynamic, learning how to write these particular characters right there on the page in front of 100K plus readers. Yikes.

I’d picked the “freaks” for my UNCANNY X-MEN cast. Visually speaking, these were the mutants that couldn’t possibly pass as human (like, for instance, Jean Grey could). Lots of blue skinned guys. Characters missing the lower half of their faces. Snake-skinned women. I thought that, in itself, made some sort of statement. Especially considering they were meant to be, for lack of a better term, the “away team” (in deference to Grant Morrison’s more commercially-minded “home team” cast in NEW X-MEN), out in the world, on the front lines.

And then there was “Mister Clean”. Another brainchild of mine (he said, sarcastically). This loser was a "genetic cleanser" (back when ethnic cleansing was a thing in the news the previous decade in Bosnia and Herzegovina). My memory of his creation is that I told Ian Churchill that he was a fascist jarhead, wore more of a military/mercenary uniform and that he used a "flamethrower"-style weapon to burn up mutants. The rest, I left up to him. Considering the character’s name, he probably should’ve been straight up bald.

In retrospect, I was undoubtedly -- albeit subconsciously -- recalling a one-off DC Comics villain created by one of my favorite writers growing up, Mike Baron, and artist, Jackson Guice, for a two-issue Hawk story in TEEN TITANS SPOTLIGHT from 1987. He was called the Toxicator.

Needless to say, both villains sat somewhere on the lame scale. Ours, much more deeply. Sometimes I think, had we really put more thought into the design of ol’ Mister Clean -- or had I put more thought into the character itself -- he might've been more of a contender. Probably not, though. Some ideas can't be salvaged.

The final page of issue #396 is the arrival of Wolverine into the story. The big gun. The heavy hitter. Now, if you look at the last panel and you think Wolverine’s mouth looks… well, funny, you can chalk it up to the “no smoking/no cigar” mandate that had recently come down from on high. Originally, he was chomping away on a stogie, as usual, but the offending oral fixation device was “deleted” from the art at the last minute, but without redrawing the mouth. Although, you’ll notice they missed it on the title/credits page near the beginning of that same issue… which might just make it the final shot of Wolverine smoking. At least for awhile…

The artist scheduling -- on both of the main X-books -- seemed to be a nightmare from the get-go. It was bad enough to write scripts when you’re not sure who’s going to be drawing them, but it was probably just as bad for the editors, who were scrambling -- and occasionally failing -- to keep the books from shipping late. As much as I knew Ian Churchill and I weren't the best creative fit on this particular series (despite Ian’s considerable talent)… as much as I knew it made sense when he decided to move on… I also knew we'd be in trouble from that point on. Maybe I should've pushed harder for Sean Phillips -- who I’d been working with on Wildcats Volume 2 for the previous year and a half -- to draw my run from the beginning, but Ian had been hired for the gig before I was and there was no way I was going to try and muscle a fellow freelancer out of a job. Besides, I was young and it was a big, important platform and I was willing to play the good soldier (at least, on that front).

It should be noted... when the final issues of Poptopia were hitting the stands, the tragedy of 9/11 occurred. As you can imagine, the X-Men seemed much less important for a good little while there. So, for me, that has as much to do with revisiting these particular comicbooks as it does thinking about their creative aspects.

UNCANNY X-MEN #399

First of all, let me say how perversely proud I am of the story title of this issue: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Just picture it as an acronym. Gotta be a Marvel Comics first. Sometimes it's the little things in life...

Next up, Tom Raney. I was so unbelievably jazzed to work with Tom at the time, having been a huge fan of his STORMWATCH run with Warren Ellis. Truth be told, this was the first issue that actually looked like I'd always pictured the book to look when I first took on the gig. Tom just nailed it on so many levels. The reason he didn't end up drawing the entire issue, if I recall, was that he was also drawing fill-ins for ULTIMATE X-MEN at the same time and he had to jump over onto one of those before he was able to finish UNCANNY. I can't say I'm particularly crazy about the other pages in the issue... mainly because they were drawn in a rush and, visually, they simply couldn't hold a candle to what Raney had done. But that kind of shit can happen when you’re stuck in the grind of monthly comics.

And so we come to Stacy X.

Originally, she was called “XStacy”, but Marvel nixed that idea due to the overt drug reference (no kidding!). But once she officially became "Stacy X" at my suggestion, the potential significance of the name was not lost on me. In fact, it inspired me. I definitely had a long-term trajectory for her character that, unfortunately, didn’t happen. Without sounding too glib, she was going to follow a Malcolm X-inspired character arc. In other words, someone starting from a lowly position in mutant culture and slowly, steadily rising up to be an important voice, going through an extreme militant phase before settling into a role as someone who could legitimately inspire others. But that would've been a helluva long narrative journey and I can't honestly say I ever thought I'd stick around long enough to take it. But that was the idea.

Here’s the original character design sheet that I believe Tom Raney did -- with my added commentary -- that I faxed (yeah, that’s right… I said “faxed”) to Marvel to distribute as reference to the various artists that were going to draw issue #400 (and beyond)…

NEVER BEFORE REVEALED: The main inspiration for Stacy X’s mutant ability -- pheromone control/physiological manipulation in others, resulting in a wide range of physical reactions (from orgasmic to illness) -- was a little-known character named White Satin from one of the most underrated comicbook series of the last forty plus years: THRILLER by Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor Von Eeden, published by DC Comics in the early 1980’s. Considered groundbreaking by some (including teenage me), it was maybe a little too ahead of its time and didn’t last very long. But those early issues are still favorites of mine to this day.

Another quick aside here: I recently went back and cracked open the X-MEN: X-CORPS trade paperback (released a few years ago, collecting my entire run) to take a closer look at what I'd done. My memory of a lot of what I wrote had been clouded by time, but when I look at it now, I realize what I was trying to do with the characters. I was not interested in depicting them necessarily as “family”, nor as a group of oppressed sad sacks. I was trying to write them as -- for lack of a better term -- co-workers. I pretty much stayed away from any overly angsty histrionics (the kind of thing a writer like Claremont seemed to excel at) and doubled down on the idea that these people knew each other well, generally respected each other, could joke with each other without it becoming a thing. Especially the iconic characters like Archangel, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Iceman. I saw these guys as seasoned professionals who also honestly cared about each other and weren't at all insecure about their relationships. I wasn't interested in writing much interpersonal soap opera stuff. For the most part, I think I succeeded in that, even if it wasn't what most X-readers wanted to see from these characters. They wanted melodrama... and I just wasn't particularly interested in writing like that. My bad, I guess.

But at this point, I was firmly on a path that was a little riskier than even I could’ve imagined when I first took on the gig.

Joe Casey

USA