The History of the X-Men in February

A couple days late, but here goes…

UNCANNY X-MEN #493 (2008)

We’re knee deep in the Messiah CompleX crossover here, and I’m also a few months into my tenure as a freshly minted Marvel employee, so this is a book I actually worked to promote. The plans for what was going on in X-Men were already pretty pat at this point (I knew the next year or so of stories even when I was back at Wizard) and I was still getting my sea legs as far as Marvel.com, so we didn’t do a whole lot on this—instead getting g ready for what was coming after, working a few months out—but it was cool to be involved. I was particularly enjoying this storyline both as a fan and somebody on the inside because it reminded me a lot of X-Cutioner’s Song and big crossovers of that ilk, where all the teams were involved, various masterminds were working at cross purposes—some villainous, some more shades of gray—and heavy emotional stuff was broken up by big fights, like the one in this issue where the Sentinels placed at the Xavier Institute by the government go haywire. Even though I don’t think any of the writers involved in Messiah CompleX were big X-Cutioner’s Song fans—I believe at the least Ed Brubaker and Mike Carey weren’t that familiar; I could see Chris Yost and Craig Kyle digging it; and of course Peter David actually worked on both stories—editors Nick Lowe and Will Panzo were (and are) big time. I really love David Finch’s cover here and also was a big fan of the New X-Men “kids” like Gentle getting a chance to shine against the Sentinels, as that was another thing I always liked about X-Men crossovers: the characters you didn’t expect to getting their moments.

UNCANNY X-MEN #416 (2003)

Another relatively standalone issue near the beginning of Chuck Austen’s run as Uncanny X-Men writer, and while I really dug both his opening arc and the Northstar story I discussed last time, I think this was the first time he overdosed a little on the soap opera (and this is coming from the world’s biggest Melrose Place fan). One piece of drama that seemed a bit forced was Nightcrawler asking Iceman if he wanted to go to the brothel Stacy X used to work at to help retrieve her belongings and then Bobby going off on Kurt kinda out of nowhere about how the original five X-Men were the only “real” X-Men, despite the fact I’m pretty sure Nightcrawler had logged as much if not more time than him on the various teams at that point. There are also several scenes in the school infirmary focusing on new character Annie, a nurse who has fallen in love with the comatose Havok, having gossipy conversations with Stacy, Northstar and others that come off as belonging somewhere else. There’s a nice subplot with Juggernaut and Sammy the Squid Boy where they bond over how crappy their childhoods were or something, but it wasn’t particularly memorable. I appreciated what Austen was trying to do, as he kind of had a lot of the same melodrama sensibilities I do, but it sometimes felt like he was trying to fit a lot of square pegs into round holes with his subplots and abrupt changes in characters’ personalities. Probably more interesting is seeing Manga artist Kia Asamiya’s take on the team, which was really unique and cool; I dug it even more when he got to open up with more action in the months to come.

UNCANNY X-MEN #352 (1998)

I picked this issue up on eBay sometime around 2004 when I was trying to fill in the holes in my collection, particularly the mid-90’s stuff. I love that it boasts right front and center on the cover “Featuring possibly the most artists ever on one title!” It’s a crazy awesome array of artists who would become big a couple years later like John Cassaday and Tommy Lee Edwards plus folks on the cusp like Terry Dodson and J.H. Williams III rounded out by the likes of Darryl Banks and Cully Hamner. The story is a bit of a throwaway, with Cyclops and Phoenix, who recently left the X-Men, flying back to Alaska and foiling a weird A.I.M. plot; meanwhile, back in Westchester, Archangel gets yelled at for not being around much and Cannonball gets a letter from Meltdown as he’s being budged off the team back to X-Force.

UNCANNY X-MEN #297 (1993)

One of my very favorite issues from when I was a kid that I think still holds up today as this is the epilogue to X-Cutioner’s Song—one of them at least—by Scott Lobdell and a young Brandon Peterson following three stories involving pairs of X-Men in the fallout of all the chaos. First up, Beast and Archangel fix the damages done by Caliban to Harry’s Hideaway, the local bar and restaurant the X-Men are always going to, and reminisce about their formative years at Xavier’s School, including a great bit where Warren remembers how he paid Hank to write one of his papers for him and got screwed when Professor X asked them to deliver the reports telepathically, then Hank admitting he tipped off Xavier—after he cashed the check—leading a stoic Warren to spray him with wood varnish. It’s a nice sentimental bit, and especially neat to see the at-this-time ansgty as all hell Archangel get razzed by his old buddy and smile a bit (they also get caught roughhousing by a cop and use their image inducers to pose as normal construction workers). Second there’s a short but sweet and crucial interlude with Rogue and Gambit where, for the first time, their flirting of the past couple years goes to the next level as she calls him out on the fact that he always teases her knowing they can’t touch, he walks away, then returns with a blanket to keep her warm and they share a tender moment. Last but not least, Jubilee encounters Professor X, who has regained his ability to walk temporarily, and convinces him he should try rollerblading, only to pull off a pier in a playful way (not a “trying to kill him”) way. They have a conversation about how he normally intimidates her but she’s seeing he’s actually pretty normal, which he takes as a compliment. At the end, he starts walking back toward his wheelchair, the lingering effects of the Techno-Organic virus cure wearing off, and when he starts to stumble, after initial reluctance, she helps him in the silent final panels. Since Jubilee came onboard during the period Professor X was away and never really had much of a bond with him, this was a neat idea. This issue was truly Lobdell at his best.

UNCANNY X-MEN #226 (1988)

The penultimate chapter to Fall of the Mutants; I picked it up during that same eBay X-Men run, but it’s back in Boston and just looking at the cover, I honestly can’t recall much about it. I remember more about the actual finale, where Forge screws everything up as usual and the X-Men fly up to where the Adversary is by using a combination of Storm’s winds with Longshot’s hollow bones and good luck powers (Longshot would end up being the big hero at the end of Inferno as well, so I guess Chris Claremont really liked him). Honestly, the thing that stands out most to me about this was that for some reason this issue was double-sized and the last chapter was not; I also liked the subplot with the reporters going into the war zone with the X-Men because they wanted to show the world mutants were ok.

UNCANNY X-MEN #166 (1983)

Another extra-sized issue that was technically only the second to last chapter of a big story, although #167 was really more epilogue anyway. This was the finish proper to the awesome first real Brood epic by Claremont where Paul Smith has taken over on art at this point and is doing a stellar job (just look at that cover). Cyclops gets taken over by the Brood egg inside him, screwing the X-Men big time (and leading to a great Cyclops/Wolverine fight), but ultimately gains control long enough to help turn the tide along with the newly-repowered Binary and Storm riding a big ol’ space whale. Lockheed also makes his debut (I think) here, saving Kitty Pryde and helping her head back into battle. Overall it’s just a satisfying story to read, as Claremont had done a great job really making me hate the Brood because of the gross and horribly invasive way they had gone after the X-Men and because our heroes had been through so much over the past several issues, so their win feels earned and good. It’s also a story with consequences, as Kitty in particular does not feel like the same character who came in, very much scarred and battle hardened by the experience, but struggling to hang on to her innocence. Finally, there’s a great cliffhanger, as the X-Men realize that there’s one Brood egg left, and it’s incubating in Professor X back on Earth…

X-MEN #109 (1978)

The X-Men are freshly back from their first real space adventure with the Shi’ar, and while Jean Grey tells her parents about becoming Phoenix, Wolverine along with Storm, Colossus, Banshee and Moira MacTaggert get ambushed on a picnic by Weapon Alpha, aka James Hudson, Wolvie’s old boss in what would become Alpha Flight as well as the future Guardians of that same team’s fame. It’s the first real hints of Wolverine’s past beyond the scene where Xavier recruited him from Canadian intelligence back in Giant-Size X-Men #1, and also the doorway to a bunch of great characters, as Mac would return not long after with Northstar, Sasquatch, et al. in tow. To this day, Dave Cockrum’s design for Weapon Alpha/Guardians stands out as a really slick one that you don’t need to be Canadian to appreciate, I don’t think. This issue was more or less faithfully adapted by the 90’s animated series in the “Repo Man” episode (they probably had Rogue and Gambit doing all the Colossus and Banshee stuff, I don’t recall).

10 Reasons X-Cutioner's Song Still Rocks Pt. 2

Continued from last time…

Three’s Company

At the end of Uncanny X-Men #295, chapter five of X-Cutioner’s Song, Cable heads to the awesomely-named Canadian Intelligence group Department K because who-cares-why, where he runs into Wolverine and Bishop, also there for reasons I don’t remember, and super pissed because they think this dude shot Professor X. The next week in X-Factor #85, it’s a showdown for the ages, as the two X-Men throw fists, claws and energy blasts at Cable’s giant guns, with Jae Lee drawing all the gory details and black blood flowing freely. After Wolverine slices up multiple weapons, the two X-Men agree Cable didn’t do the dirty deed and head up to his space station where they spend the next couple chapters—both Wolverine and Cable pass the time through whittling while Bishop stares out the window and no I’m not joking—before getting bored and going after Stryfe. Years later, Bishop would forget all about this sitcom-ready set-up and spend decades trying to kill Cable and his daughter.

Killer Archangel Moments

There are three instances in X-Cutioner’s Song where Archangel—who I knew next to nothing about as a kid other than that he had an action figure—comes off awesome and totally won my young heart over. The first is when Mutant Liberation Front member Kamikaze tries to sneak up on him from behind, he extends his razor sharp wings to get ready to fly, and unknowingly decapitates the dude (then angsts about it for like three issues). The second is when Apocalypse, his “father,” shows up to cure Professor X, and when the other X-Men think the whole thing has gone bad, he raises up his wings to block them from interfering, making them all think he’s gone evil, until a few seconds later where Xavier is saved. Lastly, on the moon, in the final chapter, after Apocalypse has been beaten nearly but not quite to death by the Dark Riders, he asks his “son” to mercy kill him, and Archangel just walks away like a stone cold bad ass, not willing to give him the satisfaction—harsh!

Crying Havok

I wrote a more lengthy post that covered this already, but Alex Summers got to be a stone cold bad ass during X-Cutioner’s Song. Cyclops usually took command during most crossovers, whether his brother was leading X-Factor at the time or not, and in lieu of that, Storm got the reins, but with the X-Men besieged by so many enemies, some of their biggest guns captured and a personal stake involved for Havok, the reluctant hero had no choice but to step up. With the main teams still in disarray following Xavier’s shooting, Havok keeps a clear head and goes after X-Force, bringing them in and then getting Cannonball to cooperate in the search for Cable (and later Stryfe). His diplomatic skills proven, Alex then has his most rad moment on the moon, where that nasty force field barring anybody without Summers (or Grey) DNA prevents most of the good guys from doing any damage, and leaving Havok to play cavalry and help Cable save the day. Now that he’s leading an Avengers A-squad in Marvel NOW!, the time has never been better to check out Havok’s first major rodeo.

Stryfe

You can have your Magnetos, your Apocalypses, your Sinisters, your Mojos and your Empyreans (look it up!); there was NO X-Men villain more awesome—at least to me in the 90’s—that m’f’n Stryfe, baby. At the time of X-Cutioner’s Song, we didn’t know the guy’s motivation for sure, we just knew he had the most dangerous looking armor ever (how did he walk around without impaling every person he came close to?), the same face as Cable, and the ability to deliver Shakespearean soliloquies that would make Hamlet go “Damn, that’s good.” One of the coolest thing the brain trust behind the franchise at the time did was elevate him to the A-list almost out of nowhere, since he went straight from being a terrorist who gave X-Force a hard time to the guy who took out Professor X, kidnapped Cyclops and Jean Grey, beat down Apocalypse and outwitted Sinister in the course of 12 issues; something about the fact that he had been almost hiding in plain sight to that point just increased his coolness. I also dug that he was arrogant and clearly had a master plan, but no matter how much time he’d put into his scheming, the raw emotional hurt he felt towards Cyclops, Jean, Apocalypse, Cable, etc. could take over at any time and he’d rant away with tears flowing from his eyes; he had incredible power, but you always knew he was about two seconds away from self-destruction, and that kept things interesting. I wish Stryfe had a longer and more enduring shelf life, because I feel like too many people felt like once his full past and relationships were out there he lost his edge, but I disagree and think the intensity of his hatred and his penchant for chaos remain key components to a great villain. There’s a reason you can yell “Stab his eyes!” at any 90’s X-Men fan and get a knowing smirk and nod.

Lasting Consequences

In the final page of X-Cutioner’s Song chapter 12 (aka X-Force #18), Mr. Sinister has his assistant open a canister from Stryfe that purportedly contained DNA info on Scott Summers and Jean Grey, but it’s empty; Sinister stomps off annoyed, his assistant coughs. What was in the canister? The Legacy Virus. Sinister’s assistant would be the first to die, kicking off a subplot in the X-Men books that last nearly a decade, claimed the lives of many heroes and villains, and ultimately took a tremendous heroic sacrifice by Colossus to stop. More fallout from the story: X-Force breaks out on its own, Rogue and Gambit get together, Archangel starts moving past his depressed stage and Cable becomes an essential part of the franchise—just to name a few lasting consequences.

Also, I became a huge comic book fan and eventually start working in the business; so it was an important story.

10 Reasons X-Cutioner's Song Still Rocks Pt. 1

I certainly read comics before the fall of 1992, but it was those four months when I was 10 that I daresay transformed mere hobby into passion. As I detailed in a post a couple years back—and have spoken on more than once since—my buddy Matt Corley and I would feverishly ride our bikes to the local collectibles store every Wednesday for 12 weeks to grab the latest chapter of the X-Cutioner’s Song crossover unfolding through Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, X-Men and X-Force, tear off the polybags, scan the Stryfe’s Strike (was it Stryke?) File card and get engrossed in the sprawling mutant saga that encapsulated everything I came to love about comics as a kid (and still do today).

Last year was the 20^th anniversary of X-Cutioner’s Song, and a group of Marvel-employed superfans including myself, Ryan Penagos, Arune Singh, James Viscardi and Nick Lowe were hell-bent on celebrating with all the bells and whistles, but got caught up doing stuff like “our jobs” so the window came and went. I still dream that we’ll do a belated bit of ballyhoo sooner rather than later (Scott Porter said he’d do a podcast retrospective with us and the band Bloc Party agreed to help us write the X-Cutioner’s Song song)…but until then, I’m going to do a bit of my own commemorating with just a small sampling of reasons why this story was the pinnacle of my comic book childhood and remains my high watermark for tales of glorious action and awesome.

Started with a Bang

In the very first installment of X-Cutioner’s Song—which to this day is the only one I don’t own and had to borrow Matt’s Scott Lobdell-signed copy any time I wanted reread the story in its entirety—Professor X gets shot; by Cable no less! It wasn’t like villains hadn’t gone after Xavier before, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been badly injured (or even “killed”) before, but the nature of the attack was so brazen—in public at a Lila Cheney concert for peace—and apparently from one of the X-Men’s own (sort of). It immediately threw things into disarray, complicated by the fact that Cyclops and Jean Grey were simultaneously kidnapped by the Horsemen and thus the X-Men had to function without their “mind, heart and soul,” with the likes of Havok and Storm having to step up while being behind the eight ball from the get-go. I never really thought Xavier was going to bite it, but the tender bedside scenes with everybody from Beast to Psylocke were a nice touch to the thrill-a-minute action.

More than just Magneto

When X-Cutioner’s Song kicked off, the X-Men cartoon had only just begun, so as far as I knew, the X-Men only fought Magneto, Sabretooth and the Sentinels on a loop. From what I’ve since read, much of the genesis of this story spun out of Magneto being temporarily “dead” and the writers asking “what if every other major X-Men villain attacked at once?” Hence you get a crash course on the other big bads of the X-Universe, particularly Apocalypse and Mr. Sinister (in addition to Stryfe, of course, who gets his own entry in a bit). As a kid who only knew Apocalypse as a weird action figure and Sinister as a dude who looked like Colossus, I dug getting thrown in the deep end with them, their scheming, and their impressive shows of ambiguous mutant powers. It all came full circle so that when they did show up on the animated series I was jazzed to see characters I actually cared about brought to life.

X-Force is Awesome

I’d have to say my favorite single installment of the story remains part four, X-Force #16, which if I recall I actually read first, catching up on the first three chapters later. In that issue, the combined X-Men and X-Factor teams track down X-Force, who has been largely on the outside of the story to this point—save for a quick clash with X-Factor—hoping they will lead them to Cable, but instead a kick ass fight breaks out where Cannonball and company are wildly outmatched, but tenaciously keep swinging Rocky Balboa-style and make it a ballgame way longer than it should have been by all rights (I honestly thought Shatterstar was going to at least take out Wolverine). I had been a casual X-Force fan before this, but thought they were kind of lame just because they were basically Cable’s support staff; this is where they broke out and became all kinds of awesome on their own, setting up the run of comics I love where they broke away from their mentor altogether to the degree that when he came back had to basically ask them permission to rejoin the team (as a weird aside, Greg Capullo draws all the X-Force members in this issue covered in splotches of mud because they were in a swamp, but 10-year-old me thought it was some form of villain mind control and that’s why they were fighting the X-Men).

Cannon Fodder

Any big bad worth their salt has the prerequisite group of henchmen, but the ones featured in X-Cutioner’s Song—and most of 80’s/90’s X-Men lore—were a cut above the rest, with cool designs and crazy powers. You had Apocalypse’s Horsemen, at this point consisting of Caliban, Pestilence and War; the Dark Riders, who initially served Apocalypse but after Stryfe kicks his ass they swap loyalties because their whole thing is survival of the fittest; and finally, my personal favorites, the Mutant Liberation Front, Stryfe’s flunkies for the couple years previous who he totally throws under the bus here to get busted while he’s up on the moon. The MLF puts up a helluva fight though, with Strobe blinding Rogue and putting her out of action while Reaper nearly takes out Gambit and Quicksilver (one of the issues ended with the cliffhanger of him standing over them with his scythe and the next issue blurb literally read “Will Reaper kill Gambit and Quicksilver?” to which my 10-year-old self responded “Seriously? No.”); alas poor Kamikaze, who got accidentally decapitated when Archangel literally turned the wrong way with his wings extended (more on that later). This story was only missing Sinister’s Nasty Boys for 90’s X-Men henchmen perfection (I would say the Nasty Boys and MLF were the cut-off, as the new look Acolytes in Fatal Attractions and beyond were the quintessential “complex sounding power that is really just an energy blast” team of 90’s).

Who is Jae Lee?

I had no clue who Jae Lee was in 1992, aside from the fact that he drew nothing like Andy Kubert, Brandon Peterson or Greg Capullo (or Jim Lee or Rob Liefeld) and seemed grossly out of place as guest artist of X-Factor during X-Cutioner’s Song. At the time, I did not care for his work at all and was baffled as to how he got the gig. Of course over the years I’ve come to appreciate Jae Lee as one of the most unique and talented draftsmen in comics capable of work that’s transcendentally beautiful, but also looking back, his X-Cutioner’s Song work kind of kicked ass. The darkness, the use of shadow, the harsh angles—it ratchets up the tension and emotion to take a super hero action story to a very emotional place. His depictions of Xavier puking up techno-organic virus, Wolverine slashing Cable to pieces or Archangel brooding are masterpieces. Needless to say, I’d like to give kid me a good smacking sometimes.

To be continued…

The History of the X-Men in December

UNCANNY X-MEN #491 (2007)

This was the conclusion to Ed Brubaker and Salvador Larroca’s “Extremists” storyline, the final issue of Uncanny before Messiah CompleX kicked off, and—to the best of my knowledge—the last really significant appearance by the Morlocks. There’s an interesting cameo from Magneto as we learn part of Masque’s whole plan in unearthing/fabricating ancient Morlock prophecies was to rile the Master of Magnetism up into being a mutant baddies again, but instead Skids turns out not to only be a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but also have loyalty to Mags, whom she reports on the whole event to as he plots his comeback (it would happen about a year later when the X-Men relocated to San Francisco); neat continuity nod by Brubaker, as Skids was a former Acolyte of Magneto. My favorite bit about this issue though was a conversation Hepzibah has with Cyclops asking his permission to basically have sex with Warpath, because she was dating Scott’s dad but he’s dead now; it’s awkward and weird and somehow made perfect sense because Hepzibah is a crazy alien humanoid skunk so why not. I greatly enjoyed the Hepzibah/Warpath pairing—and Hepzibah as an X-Man in general—so it’s a shame it got more or less cut off when the latter moved over to X-Force and they drifted apart; either or both character would make a great addition or additions to either current X-Force book. Where’s Sam Humphries’ number (speaking of which, in the Endangered Species back-up, Beast tries to get Spiral—of Uncanny X-Force by Sam Humphries fame—to help him with his mutant extinction problem, but it’s no dice, so off to Doctor Strange)…

UNCANNY X-MEN #414 (2002)

I remember this story well as Chuck Austen’s first standalone issue of Uncanny X-Men, and one I thought boded well for his future writing the book. Northstar is the focus as Professor X offers him a teaching position, which he turns down, but he does agree to transports a young boy with an uncontrollable mutant power causing his to explode from Canada to the U.S. for treatment (he can’t travel by plane because he might blow it up, but Northstar can move fast enough to escape the explosion—there are probably holes in the plot, but I liked it enough to ignore them). It’s a clever structure that allows Austen to introduce the various aspects of Northstar—he’s arrogant, he’s gay, he doesn’t have a lot of patience—to an audience that might now know him while also keeping a compelling story going with a literal ticking time bomb. Some of it comes off a bit heavy handed (the stuff about homosexuality), but not so much that it derails the rest of the story; by the end, I felt connected to Northstar, but his edgier qualities weren’t diminished. Sean Phillips provides art and turns in really strong work, demonstrating how good he is at conveying tension and making quiet moments dramatic.

UNCANNY X-MEN #350 (1997)

I picked this issue up of eBay or some other online dealer during my post-college attempt to acquire the full run of the series (I did not complete it, but did pretty well). It’s got a holo-foil-something cover and features the “Trial of Gambit,” revealing at long last Remy Lebeau’s secret past that had been touted as a huge deal for several years. The big revelation was that when he was a mercenary/thief, he took a job for Mister Sinister and recruited the Marauders, who then went on to perform the Mutant Massacre. I guess playing a fairly key role in such a big tragedy in X-Men history is significant, but I always felt like this was a letdown, in that Gambit didn’t actually do anything bad directly—arguably—he was just the guy who enable bad stuff to happen; it made him redeemable, but also lacked punch in my opinion. It certainly didn’t seem like enough for Rogue to leave him stranded in Antarctica, which she does at the conclusion of this issue. There were some nice touches, like Archangel—who lost his natural wings as a result of the Massacre—being forced to play the role of Gambit’s defense attorney and then freaking out on him midway through the trial when the truth is unveiled. There’s also Spat and Grovel and the end revelation that the guy conducting the trial is Magneto dressed as longtime X-Men in-joke Erik the Red, a pretty poorly kept secret. Great art by Joe Madureira, who was winding down his X-Men run, I believe.

UNCANNY X-MEN #295 (1992)

Now we’re talking—“X-Cutioner’s Song,” aka my favorite X-Men story of all time! When I was 10 years old I was racing to the card shop a few blocks from my house each week with my friend Matt to grab these and then tear the polybags off ASAP. The big draw in this installment was the full-fledged return of Apocalypse, and since I was still  newbie, this was my first real exposure to the character. It was only later when digging into back issues I’d learn Apocalypse was more of a behind the scenes schemer, because here he wipes the floor with Storm, Colossus, Beast and Iceman (I think) and looks darn impressive doing so. Brandon Peterson’s art style was completely different back then from what it’s evolved into today, but I thought he rendered a bad ass Apocalypse, particularly post-battle when he’s shifting back into his usual form, excess mass literally dripping back on as he stands all cool. This issue was also notable for one of the crossover’s many classic melodramatic soliloquies from Stryfe, Cable running into Wolverine and Bishop to set up a big fight the next week in X-Factor, and a fun scene in which Havok and Gambit good cop/bad cop Cannonball into helping them track down the Dark Riders. It’s also noteworthy as the Uncanny X-Men chapters of “X-Cutioner’s Song” had the Uncanny part of the logo running up and down to the left of X-Men as opposed to above, the only time I can ever recall that happening.

UNCANNY X-MEN #224 (1987)

I honestly have no idea what happened in this issue. I own it, but I can’t remember what happens in it. Something with Longshot and Havok, presumably. Marc Silvestri drew it and it’s the final issue before Fall of the Mutants—that’s all I’ve got.

UNCANNY X-MEN #164 (1982)

In the midst of the Brood saga, this is an issue of transformations, where Carol Danvers, the former Ms. Marvel, gets messed with by the aliens turning her into Binary, while back on Earth between pages Colossus’ little sister Illyana gets kidnapped to Limbo and returns as Magik. Obviously Magik remains a vital part of X-Men lore today—despite dying for a decade or two—while Binary went back to Ms. Marvel then to Warbird then back to Ms. Marvel and now she’s Captain Marvel. I’ve enjoyed Carol Danvers in all her incarnations, but Binary always get a bit of the shaft, I felt, joining the Starjammers then not being seen for years at a time. Dave Cockrum gave Binary a great design and the idea of the Earthborn hero exploring the cosmos is one I always feel has juice; her powers weren’t anything special, but there’s something very neat in her having not adjust merely to having them, but that they’re different from the Ms. Marvel abilities she’s used to. Indeed I think the fact that Carol had years of experience as a tenured but very different hero could have been the twist that accelerated her, but oh well, what we’ve got now is pretty great too. This issue also contains the crushing scene where Wolverine finally lets his teammates know they’ve got Brood eggs growing inside them, essentially delivering a death sentence and leading to some intense and emotional stuff to come, particularly from Colossus and Kitty Pryde.

X-MEN #108 (1977)

The conclusion to the original Phoenix Saga, written on a grand scale by Chris Claremont with Dave Cockrum really getting to show off with dozens of characters and the most exotic settings imaginable. The X-Men and Starjammers team up for the first time, we get introduced to the impish but nigh omnipotent Jahf—who punches Wolverine through space—and Phoenix prevents D’Ken from getting his hands on the M’Kraan Crystal, setting the table for years of cool stories featuring the Shi’ar. There’s also a nice quiet moment after the action where Corsair learns via Phoenix that Cyclops is in fact his long lost son, but requests she not tell him, feeling like the absence of a relationship where there could have been one will hurt more than thinking one another dead. This whole story was adapted pretty perfectly for the animated series in the 90’s, particularly a feat when considering any adult or violent themes had to be removed and the likes of Colossus and Nightcrawler got subbed out for Rogue and Gambit.

Cry Havok

So the day job (well, the only job, you jerks don’t pay me for this) has had me pretty well ensconced (great word) in Marvel NOW! of late, and that’s a good thing. No PR spin, I’m excited to be working at the company I wanted to work at since I was a kid particularly at a time when I’m on the ground level of a major new chapter in its history, where a lot of bold risks are being put on the table, and having the opportunity to reinvent my own approach to my job as I promote and unpack it all. I’m thrilled with the array of new voices I’ve been able to bring to Marvel.com to put a fresh spin on everything and really diversify our output. The best is still yet to come too.

I’ve also had the chance to get in the trenches myself, in particular speaking with Rick Remender about NOW!’s flagship title, Uncanny Avengers. Besides being immensely talented, Rick is an extremely quick-witted and sharply intelligent fellow who knows exactly what he’s doing and can captivate you like crazy in an hour long phone conversation. One of the things we discussed at length is just how cool he thinks Havok is and why Alex Summers of all people is going to be leading a big time Avengers team in a couple months, which got me thinking about my own history with and thoughts on the character…

Alex Summers is the kind of character I don’t think anybody—at least not me—feels like is one of the greats from the outset, but when you think about it, he’s got all the potential in the world. The obvious starting point is that he’s the younger brother of the guy everybody sees as the greatest X-Man of all time and thus the one who gets constantly overlooked; in wrestling terms, he’s Owen Hart just waiting for his heel turn. In talking to Rick though, as he rattled off all the non “Scott Summers’ kid brother” attributes of Havok, I found myself realizing none of this was as revelatory to me as it seemed at the outset, I’d just been guilty of the same thing as countless characters: never giving Alex Summers the time he deserved.

When I imply Havok didn’t make a huge first impression on me, that’s in large part because I started really reading comics in the 90’s when he was leading X-Factor and wearing his big jacket/Gambit style face cowl costume, which was cool, but not definitive. Had I picked up X-Men earlier than that on a regular basis, I would have been privy more to one of the all-time great super hero costume designs by Neal Adams. Back in 1969, Adams bucked every trend I know of by giving Havok a stark all-black bodysuit that contrasted against the bright colors worn by everybody else and incorporated his “logo”—the rings of energy on his chest—into his power set, having them morph and shift as he charged up or unleashed his plasma bolts. Throw in his funky headdress and you’ve got the kind of look that leaves a mark.

The most interesting thing to me about Havok in his formative years as a super hero is that it’s the last thing he wanted to be, another point Rick made. He meets his long lost brother and is initially excited to be part of his world, but at every opportunity following, attempts to get the heck out. When the All-New All-Different X-Men come in, Alex grabs his lady love Lorna Dane and they high tail it off to a normal life. Erik the Red screws that up, brainwashing them into attacking Cyclops and company, but once that passes, again, they head back into relative normalcy as Alex pursues his dream of being an archaeologist. That period ends thanks to Polaris getting mind-jacked by Malice of the Marauders and from there it’s been decades of nonstop craziness from the Australian Outback to X-Factor to another dimension to outer space and back to X-Factor, but the thread that this isn’t what Alex was born to do never gets lost.

And it’s not that Alex is a bad person who doesn’t want to help the world, he just wants to do it as a normal dude. This isn’t a Spider-Man situation where he needs his uncle to die to wise him up to his obligations; he’s an adult who recognizes he has the power to make a positive difference and will absolutely do so when called upon, but would also like to carve out a nice for himself that doesn’t involve fighting demons and monsters. This motivation makes him complex if not relatable—some people may understand not desiring to be in constant peril, but I wager a lot of comic book readers may not get why you wouldn’t want to be on the X-Men front lines if you can harness the power of a star, which makes Havok even more interesting to me—and the tragic circumstances that time and again won’t let him have that gives him a sense of pathos on a somewhat recognizable level (yeah, he loses loved ones and crazy stuff, but he also has more mundane problems like not being able to ever finish his post-grad degree).

Like all good things X-Men, Havok really first came to my attention during X-Cutioner’s Song. With Cyclops and Jean Grey captured by Stryfe early in the story, Alex has to step up and assume in large part leadership over not just X-Factor, but the X-Men as well—Storm is there, so it’s not total control, but we see him chafe a bit under the pressure, yet ultimately come through because it needs to be done. His brother is in trouble and the day needs saving, so Havok rises to the challenge.

At Comic-Con last month, I got to chat with Scott Porter—who voiced Cyclops for the X-Men Anime and upcoming Marvel MMO, but whose favorite Marvel character is Havok in a nice bit of irony—who echoed one of my favorite moments in all of X-Cutioner’s Song in the penultimate chapter and then into the finale, where Havok, Cable, Polaris and Cannonball attempt to enter a force field on the moon where Stryfe is holding Cyclops and Jean captive. The field is set for the Summer/Grey genetic matrix, so though we didn’t know Cable was Scott and a Jean clone’s son at the time, he’s able to pass no problem, whereas Polaris and Cannonball get rebuffed and knocked out. After Cable gets kicked around for a bit, out of nowhere Stryfe gets nailed by a Havok power blast, as Alex reveals that he also got through, with the great line “It knocked me around for not being Scott, but I’ve always done a pretty good job of that myself.” Then he turns the tide long enough for everybody else to rally.

It was an awesome moment and quintessential Havok to me: He’s not generally the center of the story, but he knows it, he deals with it, and he does what needs to be done.

I’m not saying there aren’t dozens of stories about how Alex does have a problem living in Scott’s shadow (Inferno leaps to mind), but I dig more the ones where he rises above it and shows it doesn’t define him.

Now Havok is going to be on arguably the biggest stage ever for the character (his underrated solo series, Mutant X, could be brought up for discussion, but I think leading an Avengers team in 2012 is likely more prominent) with a writer eager to make him the start he’s always had the potential to be. He’s got a great artist to noodle that classic look in John Cassaday. He’s being handed a huge amount of that responsibility he’s always shirked slightly from as far as not only heading up the world’s most prominent super hero team, but being asked by no less than Captain America to be the poster boy for mutant-human relations.

It would be interesting to see any character act as Cap’s handpicked delegate for peace, but a dude who’s never quite risen above the B-list and has frankly always seemed comfortable there?

I’m excited.

Cruel Summer: Mister Sinister

My history with Mister Sinister begins, as so many of my comics-related tales do, with “The X-Cutioner’s Song.” He was the tertiary villain at best, showing up near the beginning to kidnap Cyclops and Jean Grey, then again at the conclusion, getting bamboozled into released the Legacy Virus on the world. He looked kind of like an evil Colossus and didn’t impress me much; in a crossover where Stryfe was at the top of his game and Apocalypse was also running wild, Mister Sinister seemed like an afterthought with a goofy name.

Then I saw the cliffhanger finale to season one of “X-Men: The Animated Series”—and the version of Sinister intended to fly on a cartoon aimed at a Saturday morning audience comprised primarily of children scared the crap out of me and left a lasting impression.

Following the big battle against the Sentinels, Scott Summers and Jean Grey are chilling on a beach when the visual framing of the scene shifts and we’re now viewing them through a camera lens. The perspective flips and we see a silhouetted figure seated upon a creepy throne of tentacles or something; he leans forward to reveal a pasty-faced ghoul with sunken eyes and a grinning mouthful of yellow, fanged teeth. And then the kicker: a fiendish laugh that sent chills through my young soul and had me cringing through the summer months awaiting new episodes.
Mister Sinister as the foreboding, undefeatable, supremely confident overarching villain of season two, voiced spot-on with hollow menace by Christopher Britton, became my template for the character, and also intrigued me as far as looking into his comic book history more in-depth.

Truth be told, at first, I didn’t find much.

Chris Claremont’s original concept for Mister Sinister as he tells it is pretty cool: the idea was that he was a powerful mutant who had been around for some time but his physical development had stopped around age 11, so in order to be taken seriously as a super villain, he created the Sinister vessel modeled after what a kid would find scary then sent him out into the world. Certainly some potential there as a sort of evil Captain Marvel—the Fawcett/DC version—analog, but for whatever reason, it seems like the writer never got to play him that way.

Instead, Sinister gets kind of dropped into the X-Men mythos in the late 80’s seemingly just because the Marauders needed a boss and Inferno needed a mastermind, set up as an ambiguous and foreboding figure surrounded by mystery with vague ties to Cyclops. In his early appearances, Mister Sinister does seem when you look back on it with Claremont’s original intent in mind the embodiment of what a kid would think of as a scary bad guy, but since his creator only got to really tell one story with him and then departed the books a few years later, the payoff never took place. Instead, Claremont’s successors were left with a villain who almost seemed a parody—with good reason, since, again, he’s meant to be a kid’s conception—but without explanation.

That’s the comic book version of Mister Sinister I met, and not that surprisingly I wrote him off as a product of late 80’s/early 90’s excess where everybody was a shadowy mastermind with too many secrets and ill-defined powers; he worked as a boogeyman on Saturday mornings—again, Claremont’s intent used in a way he probably never conceived—but seemed unnecessary in comics.

However, writers like Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell saw something in Mister Sinister—and also good X-Men villains are kind of few and far between—so they kept bringing him back and giving him more and more connections to our heroes, without ever revealing much about the man himself. It was frustrating, but also admittedly tantalizing, as I would get annoyed that we never knew Sinister’s deal, yet of course this made me want to know his secrets more than ever and gasp whenever he appeared suddenly in an X-Men comics; the guy had presence, I have to say that.

In 1996, nearly a decade after his creation, Sinister—writers had largely dropped the “Mister”—had his origin told in the Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix limited series, written by Peter Milligan with art by John Paul Leon and Klaus Janson.

Interestingly enough, I never got around to reading the book and once again got my Sinister fix from “X-Men: The Animated Series,” the penultimate episode of which was “Descent,” adapting Further Adventures for Saturday morning consumption about a year after it came out in print form.

In both Further Adventures and “Descent,” we learn that Nathaniel Essex was a 19th century scientist obsessed with Darwinism and evolution who performed depraved experiments and eventually made a pact with Apocalypse to grant him power and immortality as Mister Sinister in order to continue his work beyond his natural lifetime. In subsequent years, it would be revealed that Sinister’s obsession with the Summers and Grey bloodlines were born out of twin desires to harvest incredible genetic potential while at the same time creating the ultimate failsafe against his former master—at some point he got on Apocalypse’s bad side—in the form of Nathan Christopher Summers, who would become Cable.

Probably not what Claremont had in mind, but finally this guy had motivation, and one with potential at that.

Sinister was the old Golden Age mad scientist who got lost in his work and exploited by crime bosses done up in a new way for a generation who expected more layers to their villains and for a franchise that thrived on shades of grey. That the unshakeable ego and calm of Sinister could be rattled be Essex’s gnawing and uncontrollable thirst for knowledge was a different paradigm for the X-Men antagonist of the day. You couldn’t bully or intimidate Sinister through physical force or emotional blackmail, but dangle the carrot of information in front of his diamond-adorned forehead and he becomes a junkie jonesing for a fix.

One of the very best Sinister stories I ever read was “Sinister’s List” from 2003’s Weapon X #14 by Frank Tieri and the guy who I suppose may well be the definitive Mister Sinister artist, John Paul Leon. Following up on the revelation that Doctor Windsor, the seemingly kindly scientist helping mutants to escape from Weapon X’s Neverland detention center is in fact Sinister, who is only abducting them from the prison to his lab for dissection, we get a flashback to Essex during World War II, where he worked alongside the Nazis, cloning Namor and observing the Invaders while attempting to glean knowledge for his own ends. It’s the perfect snapshot of Sinister as a man lost in his own pursuit of answers, completely unaware of the world around him save for the raw elements it can provide him. A pretty on-the-nose comparison between Sinister and Josef Mengele is drawn, but Tieri is quick to differentiate as well, with Essex musing on the “wastefulness” of the Nazi agenda and clearly not adhering to any sort of doctrine of racial superiority, instead viewing all people regardless of creed as nothing more than specimens for the “greater good” of scientific inquiry; true to his Darwinist roots, Sinister doesn’t care which race ultimately survives, he just wants to observe it all.

That was one of the very last times Mister Sinister was featured prominently before his demise in 2007’s Messiah Complex crossover. Truthfully, I think it’s impressive the character made it that far—20 years exactly—given the disparity between his creator’s intentions and where he ultimately ended up, but you have to be impressed at how he seemed to succeed in spite of those conflicting directions, thriving in several different roles and drawing impressive work out of multiple creators who at the end of the day really just seemed to want to solve the riddle of who he was and why he did what he did.

In the first issue of X-Men Forever 2, a comic written by none other than Chris Claremont, a mysterious boy appears in an orphanage alongside Cyclops’ son, speaking ominously with a familiar silhouette surrounding him, so two decades later, we may finally get to see where—to end on a fairly awful pun—this Sinister road leads.

Coulda Beens

Writing the other day about Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk’s various attempts to inject new blood into the Marvel Universe during their Web of Spider-Man run got me to thinking about the other various characters to debut in the 90’s (and earlier) heralded as “the next big thing” who either promptly went nowhere or settled comfortably into a role as the occasional guest star or reserve team member.

Comics is of course littered with literally thousands of concepts that never achieved the success their creators intended and you could probably sustain a blog for years on those alone (I’m sure somebody out there does). I can think of a few in particular though that I thought had squandered potential or came along either at the wrong time or wrong place to go all the way (and I’m not just talking about X-Treme); some of these characters have enjoyed a modicum of success, but certainly nowhere near what could have been.

BRONZE TIGER
I’ve spoken of my affection for Richard Dragon before, which runs alongside my thing before Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, and both mostly amount to this: there are guys out there in the DC and Marvel Universes who aren’t particularly well-known or “A-list” but who are better in hand-to-hand combat than their more well-known contemporaries. Same deal goes for Bronze Tiger, but he’s also got the added benefit of a far more interesting and conflicted back story as a former compatriot of Dragon who was captured and brainwashed by Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins, forced to become a killer, actually beat Batman, then broke free and sought redemption as a member of the Suicide Squad. Now there’s enough there for a solo series to run at least a couple arcs in my opinion, but if not, why would “guy who beat Batman” not be enough to at least get the Justice League to read your resume? Yeah, there’s the whole “former assassin” thing, but that just adds to the potential drama.

THUNDERSTRIKE
Once he shed his persona as a substitute Thor and gained his own heroic identity, Eric Masterson had the misfortune of receiving a horribly dated 90’s costume complete with sleeveless leather jacket, pierced ear and pony tail—and I’m convinced this had far more to do with his lack of longevity than anything else. Because when you look at the idea behind Thunderstrike—a “street level” Thor who has the power of a god but walks among mortals and deals with legitimate issues—it’s a solid one that I think could have been made to work given more of a chance. Masterson was also already a pretty well-liked character during his time headlining the main Thor title, so he had something of a built-in fanbase; again, it was just bad timing. Thunderstrike came along at a time when the market was barely supporting one Thor title, let alone ready to propel another to success, and again, little things like the visuals just didn’t earmark the character for long-term success. Nowadays, with the Thor franchise more viable, I think Eric Masterson or Thunderstrike could fill a nice niche role bridging Asgard and Earth.

X-O MANOWAR
I never really followed any Valiant title too religiously, but if I had, I think it would have been X-O Manowar (or Harbinger, but probably X-O Manowar). When you take just a cursory glimpse at the character, he’s Iron Man but with the ultra cool twist of the dude in the armor being a freaking caveman who went into suspended animation for centuries and woke up in our time to become a businessman and super hero with his alien battle armor; he’s Captain America and Iron Man plus elements of Venom and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer all mixed together! The guy also just looked rad, so if his IP is lying around out there somewhere, somebody with some cash and motivation should give it a look.

SPIDER-WOMAN II
While original Spider-Woman Jessica Drew has been the recipient of a tremendous popularity resurgence in recent years, I always thought her successor, Julia Carpenter, had as much if not more going for her and it’s too bad she’s more or less in limbo now. During a period in Avengers lore when most of the female team members got short shrift in the 90’s, Julia was portrayed as professional and confident and I always felt it was a nice moment when the main team shut down the West Coast branch yet invited her to stay on (and then she turned them down). Her being a single mom who was committed to raising her daughter not fully divorced from her costumed career also made her unique in those halcyon days. She’s also got neat psychic web powers plus a dynamite costume, so surely there’s a place for her somewhere outside of Canada?

THE RAY
For years, the second character known as The Ray has coasted on the fact that Joe Quesada originally designed him with an awesome look both powered-up and just in costume to remain at least on the periphery of the DC Universe whether as part of the Justice League, Young Justice or the Freedom Fighters. However, those who followed Ray’s somewhat surprisingly long-lived solo series in the 90’s probably had higher hopes for him to become a breakout star on his own, much as I did. In addition to the great visuals Quesada gave him, Ray also had a nice stretch of character development by Christopher Priest that included major daddy issues with his Golden Age heroic father, a childhood that saw him raised in virtual isolation, and a doomed love life that somehow included a fling with Black Canary. Ray has that nice balance of legacy and uniqueness that I feel like should translate to another shot in the spotlight, or at least a prominent role in one of the two Justice Society books.

STRYFE
Now it may seem somewhat unfair to place Stryfe on this list due to the fact that he was a primary villain in a semi-major X-Men crossover less than a year ago, but nonetheless, the guy was a big-time personal favorite of mine—and many other—as a kid, and I think we all had bigger things mapped out for the Chaos Bringer in our heads. He made such a blockbuster debut in X-Cutioner’s Song (ok, technically he had been around a few years at that point, but just as an ancillary X-Force villain, not a real deal X-Men baddies) that I think we were all pretty sure we had the next Magneto or Apocalypse on our hands. Yeah, his name was a bit corny and he lacked the big picture motivation of the other villains I just mentioned, but Stryfe was a step above the generic schemers populating the X-books at the time based on his deeply personal connections to characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey and the motivation he derived from therein. He was hugely powerful, spoke like an over-the-top lost work of Shakespeare and when rendered right his thousand-angled costume looked bad ass. However, after his big crossover tour de force, he settled back into being just Cable’s personal nemesis, and then died a couple times without much fanfare before fading from collective memory. His return in Messiah War was much-welcomed from where I sat and he was handled perfectly by Duane Swierczynski, Chris Yost and Craig Kyle, but I hope there are more plans for him beyond sitting in an apocalyptic future somewhere, since even if his full potential may never be realized, Stryfe is too good a bad guy to let rot on the vine.

Comics Events That Stick the Landing

It ain’t easy being a comic book writer.

Now I’m not speaking to you as the acclaimed writer of Werewolf By Night: Werewolf By Eve here, but rather as a (I guess) longtime comics professional and longer time comics fan who has seen the process, the struggles and the results up close enough to know how hard these guys and gals work. And among the many mountains these scribes must climb, fewer are more difficult than not only spooling out a big-time event story, but bringing said epic to a satisfying conclusion.

The great challenge of ending an event, particularly in today’s era of everything needing to be bigger, higher stakes and more dangerous is that after spending years building the threat(s) in your tale to be nigh insurmountable, you need to find a way for the good guys to win that’s clever, rewarding and not too clichéd—way easier said than done.

Sure this is a hurdle that folks writing movies, television, novels, etc. also face, but no other medium but comics offers you quite so many tempting tools to fashion obstacles limited only by your own imagination that you will at some point need to put down in an issue or two.

A lot of complaints come flooding in when the solution to foiling the big bad turns out to be basically the equivalent of “fire a bigger energy beam” or “punch a little harder,” but the fact is that if those scenarios are played out with proper skill and drama by a writer in full cognizance of their own creative gifts, they can still kick some major ass.

Other popular go-to outs include the heroic sacrifice or the unexpected cavalry, both of which done right can be perfection and done wrong can bring down the wrath of a furious fanbase. And of course once every so often there’s that wonderful “How did he/she ever think of that?!” out of left field clever endgame that you need to just stand up and applaud.

Here are a few events that earned my standing or sitting ovation with their passion and/or ingenuity.

(And since I kinda need to summarize these endings to explain why I dig them…SPOILERS AHOY!)

THE INFINITY GAUNTLET
What Happened: Thanos unites the six Infinity Gems, becoming nigh omnipotent and defeating not only all of Earth’s heroes, but also the big gun cosmic entities of the Marvel Universe, from Galactus to Eternity. However, after being spurned by Death—the lover whose approval he sought through his actions—because he is now so far above her in station, Thanos becomes distracted enough for his granddaughter, Nebula, to steal the Infinity Gauntlet. In a 180, Thanos teams with longtime foe Adam Warlock and the other good guys to get the Gauntlet back from Nebula.

Why It Rocked: Nobody could defeat Thanos but himself. Literally every other would-be savior, from Captain America on up to Eternity, tried and failed. But as Warlock confronts Thanos about as they prepare to battle Nebula, he knows his enemy’s soul well enough to know that he allowed himself to lose, just as he always does, because deep down he knows he’s not worthy of ultimate power and fears possessing it. It was a pattern writer Jim Starlin had established in prior stories years earlier, so it didn’t come out of nowhere and was a character-building development rather than a complete Deus Ex Machina. I have also always dug the irony that the one thing Thanos always wants, the love of Death, was the one thing he couldn’t have no matter how powerful he was, and that played into his undoing.

THE GOLDEN AGE
What Happened: Adolf Hitler gets his brain transferred into the uber-powerful body of Dynaman, and after the secret gets out, begins laying waste to Washington D.C., brutally murdering any hero who gets in his way. It’s a dog pile of Golden Age DC heroes against the greatest foe they’ve ever faced, but Hawkman, Johnny Quick, Hourman, Starman and even Green Lantern as well as dozens of others prove not-so-up to the task. In the end, a young Captain Comet surprises the exhausted Dynaman and gets kicked in the nuts for his trouble, but gives Liberty Belle an opening to stab the bad guy through the chest with Starman’s Cosmic Rod.

Why It Rocked: The whole “one hero after another takes a go at the unstoppable bad guy” is a timeless trope that James Robinson laid out perfectly in his script and that Paul Smith drew to perfection. The moment where Green Lantern finally shows up when it seems all hope is lost really gets your heart racing—but the fact that he fails is even better. I’m a suck for the folks you least expect being the ones to get the job done in the end, so Captain Comet, who had just debuted in the series a few pages earlier and is a barely known commodity besides, being the guy who makes the difference and then the barely-powered Liberty Belle getting the kill shot just gives you the warm and fuzzies (as much as anything can when you just witnessed a psycho Nazi superman butcher a bunch of beloved heroes).

X-CUTIONER’S SONG
What Happened: Stryfe frames Cable for an assassination attempt on Professor Xavier, kidnaps Cyclops and Jean Grey, and manipulates Apocalypse, Mister Sinister and various others to play them, the X-Men, X-Force and other factions against one another as he seeks mysterious revenge against all parties. Ultimately, Apocalypse saves Professor X’s life, and various members of the X-Men, X-Factor and X-Force head to the moon where Stryfe has Cyclops and Jean held captive and has opened a time portal for unrevealed reasons. Only Cable and Havok are able to breach Stryfe’s force field; after battling Stryfe to a standstill, Cable throws Cyclops a device that allows him to send both men into the portal then collapse it, seemingly killing them and ending the threat.

Why It Rocked: This was the kind of overblown soap opera-on-steroids stuff that was like my crack at age 10. Those climactic panels of Cyclops hesitating to condemn Cable and Stryfe to death as he has connected the dots we as readers had much earlier—that one of the two of them is Nathan, the son he sacrificed and sent to the future years before—while Cable screams at him to push the button is classic. In those days, I was too young to know that dead didn’t mean dead when it came to comics and really the industry had yet to prove that axiom, so this felt like a really big deal and appropriately huge price for the good guys to pay in order to get the win.

ZERO HOUR
What Happened: After Hal Jordan-as-Parallax attempts to recreate the DC Universe from scratch following his destruction of the original timeline, a motley crew of heroes that includes Superman, Kyle Rayner, Green Arrow, Donna Troy, Guy Gardner, The Ray, Damage and others stands as the last hope to stop him. Time guardian Waverider has an elaborate plan that involves getting as close to Parallax as possible to stop him and then feeding enough energy into Damage that he can create a huge explosion that will generate a new “Big Bang” and restore the prior universe as closely as possible. The heroes—along with an eleventh hour assist from The Spectre—are able to distract Hal and his henchman Extant for a period, but Parallax triggers his own endgame when he attempts to kill Damage and ends nailing an alternate reality Batgirl instead. This prompts Hal’s longtime best friend, Green Arrow, to let loose a shaft right into the chest of his weakened buddy, nearly killing him and tossing both he and Kyle Rayner into the timestream just as Waverider’s plan works.

Why It Rocked: As you can tell from the paragraph above, there was a lot of complicated shit going down in this climax, perhaps too much, but Dan Jurgens, who both wrote and drew it, had such a mastery of the important beats as well as the foresight to utilize the huge cast he had at his disposal that I felt it was a great and powerful conclusion to a series that had its ups and downs. I’m always a suck for The Spectre coming in at the last moment and Damage was a great wild card savior, but the tense stare down between Hal and Ollie as Green Arrow makes the hardest shot of his life—and sadly, an ultimately futile and unnecessary one—is just tremendous stuff.

UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED
What Happened: A DC Universe version of the devil himself, Neron, tempts various heroes and villains, empowering many of the latter group in a campaign designed to sow chaos and move different pieces into place so that he can make a power grab by seizing a pure soul and presumably expand his kingdom. Neron surrounds himself with several prominent baddies like Lex Luthor, The Joker, Circe, Doctor Polaris and Abra Kadabra as his inner circle, but also brings The Trickster under his wing, seeing great potential within him. Ultimately, it turns out the soul in question was Captain Marvel’s, and Trickster saves the day and the world by instructing Cap to offer it without asking for anything in return, realizing a completely unselfish deal was the only thing that could defeat Neron.

Why It Rocked: Kudos to Kiel for reminding me of this one. A C-rate Flash villain who had not been relevant in years, Trickster was an absolutely inspired choice to be the guy who brings Neron down, and Mark Waid’s handling of him during this story is nothing short of brilliant. That James Jesse didn’t go on to anywhere near the level of coolness this story demonstrated he had the potential for and ultimately backslid into being a villain again before dying a nearly anonymous death is one of comics’ saddest examples of squandered potential in my view. Not only was this an awesome expectations-defying wrap to a solid story featuring a truly grin-worthy hero turn, the path to victory was quite well-thought-out and layered, a true thinker’s conclusion.

ANNIHILATION
What Happened: Having destroyed the Nova Corps, captured Quasar’s Quantum Bands and conquered huge swaths of the universe with his Negative Zone army, Annihilus now turns his attention to destroying existence, planning to harness Galactus as a weapon after jailing him and utilizing Thanos’ technology. Realizing Annihilus’ plans, Thanos turns against him moments before his own death at the hands of Drax, allowing Moondragon to free the Silver Surfer, who in turn unleashes Galactus and destroys the base of the Annihilation Wave. Annihilus escapes only to find himself confronted by Nova; following a savage battle, Phyla-Vell tips the scales by swiping the Quantum Bands and Nova ends the universal threat by tearing Annihilus’ guts out through his throat.

Why It Rocked: I’m not doing the complexities of Keith Giffen’s ultimate cosmic war story and its twisting, turning plot justice with that write-up, but you get the idea. The various hoops the array of characters had to maneuver their way through in order to get things to a point where Nova could deliver a decisive deathblow made that moment all the more sweeter—and it was already pretty darn sweet. Granted I’m biased here, but Giffen and his cohorts did an incredible job building up Nova as a Luke Skywalker/Rocky Balboa underdog throughout all of Annihilation, so when he disembowels Annihilus from the outside, I dare you not to cheer at the very least on the inside.