Xbooks FAQ Part 3
David R. Henry
Version 2.1
Last Updated January 3, 1995.
Part 3
***CONTENTS***
A +++ indicates a change to the contents listed since the last FAQ update.
THE ACTUAL FAQS THEMSELVES (continued)
--How do you pronounce Rahne Sinclair's first name?
+++ --Is the Malice who worked with the Marauders the same one that
appears in Fantastic Four now and then?
+++ --Hey, is Cable really Nathan Summers? Or is Stryfe? Wait, is Stryfe
Cable? Is Ahab Stryfe? Is Nathan Ahab? Why am I so confused?
--Which X-Men haven't been mutants?
--What is the Siege Perilous?
--Was Rogue raped by the guards in the first Genosha storyline?
+++ --Why did the X-Men lose their invisibility to electronic scanners?
--What's this about an X-Traitor?
--There's an External at my door. What does that mean? Should I
be concerned? Is it contagious?
--I've had an idea! Why don't Rogue and Gambit just use Leech
so they can have sex?
--Why did Chris Claremont leave the X-titles? Why did Peter David
leave X-Factor?
--Rob Liefeld. Why?
--How do you pronounce Fabian Nicieza?
--Are any Marvel staff reading xbooks?
--Why do all those annoying dinos keep on complaining about the
X-titles here? If they don't like the books, why do they read
them?
+++ --I just saw an episode of X-Men: the Animated Series, and I was
wondering...
--Hey, the Marvel Super-Hero Role Playing Game says that this one
mutant can do this one really neat action, so they must be able
to do it, right?
--What is this Kid Dynamo thing? Where can I find it?
--Who is Richard Darwin anyway?
***THE ACTUAL FAQS THEMSELVES*** (continued)
NOTE: Once again, all FAQ answers dealing with the motivations and creative
impulses of actual Marvel staffers are based on well over a decade of
collected interviews and fan press releases from a wide variety of sources.
Now that Marvel representatives are actually on the net, the FAQ-keeper
would be more than happy to change such third-party reports to more
accurately represent what really went on behind the scenes in Marvel.
Q: How do you pronounce Rahne Sinclair's first name?
A: Like "Rain," as in the liquid from the sky. This is given in a
number of canonical sources.
Q: Is the Malice who worked with the Marauders the same one that
appears in the Fantastic Four now and then?
A: No. The Malice who worked in the Marauders was some sort of
pure psionic entity who could possess people and make them into
"dark versions" of themselves. She eventually got stuck in the
body of Lorna Dane by the machinations of Mr. Sinister, which led
to the Malice persona eventually being zapped out of Lorna by
Zaladane, the purported Queen of the Savage Land (I love it how
no Marvel Universe answers can possibly be straight and simple).
Mr. Sinister finally destroyed this Malice in a plot in X-Factor
because she had outlived her usefulness. Sounds like a dangerous
practice for Sinister to be getting into.
The Fantastic Four's Malice, who occasionally possesses Susan
Richards (the Invisible Woman), has nothing to do with Sinister's
Malice. This Malice was a mental creation by the fourth Hate-Monger
and the Psycho-Man, and it is merely the alternate personality
of Sue Richards as an "evil" person. Same idea, different approach.
The current status of the Richards' Malice is unknown to me.
However, the Vertigo that worked with the Marauders is the same
Vertigo that started out with the Savage Land Mutates. Just while
we're on the subject of Savage Land and Marauders.
Q: Hey, is Cable really Nathan Summers? Or is Stryfe? Wait, is Stryfe
Cable? Is Ahab Stryfe? Is Nathan Ahab? Why am I so confused?
A: Why you are so confused is something you should perhaps take up with
your friends and family. As for the rest, we'll do the best we can,
as usual...
It's important to remember two basic things about Cable: he was
created much later than his vastly rewritten history would make him
seem, and the person who "created" him (Rob Liefeld) didn't set out
to make him anything in particular other than a cyborg with a big gun
(history has shown how such a character is appealing to Liefeld).
When Liefeld landed the job as new penciler for the New Mutants, he
immediately sat down and started sketching out new characters. He
didn't have names for any of them, he didn't have backgrounds, they
were just pretty pictures with no personalities (jokes about Image
Comics will be strenuously avoided in this particular answer). On
the page he sent off to his editor, Bob Harras, he had a note much
to the effect "Hey, here's some new characters I just thought up.
Use 'em if you want to, toss 'em if you don't like 'em. But here
they are." Easily visible among the detritus are most of the Mutant
Liberation Front, and the two characters who would become Cable and
Stryfe.
Cable was introduced in Liefeld's first issue of the New Mutants, as
the not-yet-then tired character idea of a mysterious mutant
mastermind who has been behind the scenes for years, but who we, the
readers, have somehow just never managed to see yet. He takes over
the leadership of the New Mutants straight off, and we soon learn
that he has an archenemy, called Stryfe, who's face was always
concealed by a pointy helmet.
Now remember, at this time there's no background to either of these
characters. They had been in existance less than a year. Their
creator hadn't even thought up names for them, let alone backgrounds.
When the word came down that New Mutants was going to be turned into
X-Force, with Rob Liefeld as its plotter/penciller, it was decided
that a neat way to end the New Mutants would be to unmask Stryfe for
that dramatic final panel. The only trouble was, nobody knew who he
was really supposed to be, so they didn't know what his shocking
secret identity should be.
Then Fabian Nicieza walked by, and offered, as a joke, that Stryfe
should look just like Cable. And, bam!, they said, "Sure, great!",
and Made It So.
So, there they were. Stryfe and Cable were now twins. Nobody knew
why, but they were, so they started doing stories around that.
Around about this time Claremont was briefly writing X-Factor. The
son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, Nathan Summers, had by this time
become a sort of plot embarrasment (after all, it was tough to have
Cyclops mooning over Jean Grey again when he has a baby boy by his
previous marriage to worry about). Claremont had never really liked
the tot, so in a plot involving Apocalypse and the Moon, Nathan came
down with a techno-organic virus, and was only barely saved when a
visitor from the future, Askani, zapped him up the timestream to
save him with her futuristic medicine. The reason why? Because
Nathan would become important to saving a bunch of mutants in the
future, so she couldn't let him die in the present. One would think
that his existing in the future would prove that Askani should
probably have nothing to worry about, but, hey, time travelers, go
figure.
Around about here Cable was revealed to be from the future. Since
Nathan was now in the future, it wasn't too far to suggest that
Cable was really Nathan. Of course, since Stryfe was obviously
connected to Cable somehow, now the question became "Which of the
two was really Nathan?"
Now a neutral observer would probably point out at this time that
this whole mess could have been avoided if these lads had been
created with the usual backgrounds most writers give their
characters: you know, like who they are. But that wasn't the hand
that the X-writers had dealt themselves, and X-readers had no end of
fun watching a bunch of plotlines swirl and weave about whether Cable
was Stryfe's clone, or vice versa, or how maybe they were both
clones, or maybe they had nothing to do with Nathan at all.
Finally, in the Cable series, most of the answers were provided.
Cable is Nathan Summers, and the cyborg parts are actually the parts
of his body that are infected by that nasty technovirus, which he
holds in check with his amazing telekinetic powers. Stryfe is his
clone, last seen reduced to a mental presence in Cable's head.
This still leaves us with Ahab. Ahab is the Master of the Hounds
from the "Days of Future Past" future -- the one that Rachel Summers
is from. Hounds are mutants with powers useful for tracking other
mutants, who are controlled substances in that timeline. Back when
Cable still didn't have a past, Ahab was introduced in a series of
Annual crossovers, and during one fight scene Cable and Ahab get
close to one another, and Cable is shocked to see some similarity to
himself in Ahab. This is compounded by having Ahab say: "What's the
matter? See someone you know?"
Since Cable has since become Nathan instead of Ahab, a new past for
Ahab was needed. A new character has recently been introduced in
Excalibur, Rory Campbell, who is obviously intended to end up
becoming Ahab, thus freeing Cable from that unneeded bit of history.
Q: Which X-Men haven't been mutants?
A: Mimic, the original Phoenix, Longshot, and the Psylockii.
Mimic is/was (depending on his living/dead status in Marvel backup
stories) Calvin Rankin, the son of a scientist, who got caught in an
explosion in his father's lab, and gained the ability to copy the
superpower of every superhuman near him, and then kept all the
powers until the people he stole them from were over a mile away or
so. He's been killed a number of times in a variety of filler
stories, and brought back just as often to just die again. Scott
Lobdell has tried to retcon this in a backup story somewhere by
saying that Rankin was a latent mutant who just got his powers
started up by his father's explosion. While there have been other
latent mutants who have gained access to their powers in such
dramatic ways in Marvel history, Scott Lobdell is also responsible
for such continuity goofs as Storm declaring she resents and hates
her thieving heritage and all of X-Men Unlimited #4, while the
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe still has Rankin as a
non-mutant. This FAQ will go with the OHOTMU.
The original Phoenix (the one in Uncanny #101 - 137) was once Jean
Grey, who was a mutant, of course, but has since been retconned into
being the cosmic Phoenix Force itself, just pretending to be Jean
Grey. As a cosmic entity, Phoenix automatically is disqualified from
being a mutant; they have enough troubles as it is. See the entry on
the Jean Grey/Phoenix relationship in Part 2 of this FAQ for more
information.
Longshot was a genetically-designed being from the dimension of the
Spineless Ones. As an artificial life form, he cannot, by
definition, be a mutant, although his "free will" could be described
as a design malfunction (actually, it was programmed into him by
Arize). Even if he shows up on a mutant detector, something which I
have yet to see any textual support for, he's still not a mutant,
because nothing in his genetic makeup happened by mutation. He was
built from the ground up.
The Psylockes are an unusual matter.
You have no idea how I'm tempted to just leave it like that. But,
the FAQ-compiler knows his duty and presses on:
The original Psylocke, Betsy Braddock, is the sister of Captain
Britain. Both she and her brother gain their powers from their
not-entirely human heritage (their father was from Otherworld). No
mutant detector or other form of in-comic evidence has been raised
to my knowledge that Betsy is a mutant telepath, as opposed to just
a partly-human telepath.
Now, after the fun with the Siege Perilous (see next question),
Betsy was caught by the Hand, a bunch of techno-demonic ninjas, and
apparently turned into an Oriental, for reasons too vague to go into
here. While odd, and apparently mainly an excuse to draw Betsy in a
bunch of tight-fitting quasi-Asian outfits, it was still accepted
that Psylocke was Psylocke. She just looked... different.
Then Revanche entered the scene, who looked just like Betsy's old
body, but had an Asian name (Kwannon). Confused yet? In another
retcon the unconscious Betsy apparently was discovered by the
original Kwannon after tumbling out of the Siege. Kwannon, who looks
just like the new Betsy's Asian form, touched her and got
psychically zapped by Betsy, somehow passing both Betsy's powers and
personalities to Kwannon, while passing Kwannon's personality to
Betsy.
Enter the Hand. The head of the Hand, Matsuo Tsurayaba, was in love
with Kwannon despite her belonging to a rival ninja gang (gang is
probably not the proper collective term for a bunch of ninja, but it
fits the image more than "gaggle"). Now, apparently the original
Betsy was _not_ turned into an Asian, but the Asian body of Kwannon
was brainwashed by the Hand into believing that she was Betsy. In
this they had help from the demonic dancer of Mojo, Spiral. Meanwhile
the original Betsy's body was programmed by Spiral, behind the
scenes, to still think it was Betsy but remember that it was Kwannon
once, just to bug Matsuo. Do you have _that_ clear?
In any case, Kwannon was never a mutant (although it was revealed
that she was a low-level empath, source of powers undetermined), and
Betsy wasn't one either, so however they both ended up being
telepaths, they still aren't mutants.
But wait!, you cry. What is it?, the FAQ-compiler answers, not
entirely trusting the feverous glint in your eye. Didn't Kwannon (in
Betsy's body) die of the Legacy Virus? You know, the disease that
only kills mutants too embarassing to otherwise include in plot
lines? Doesn't _that_ prove she was a mutant? Good point!, the
FAQ'er would have to admit, if it wasn't for the fact that Marvel's
revealed that the Legacy Virus will and/or already has mutated into
a form that would infect non-mutants as well. With that plot
loophole opened, death via Legacy Virus proves nothing as to mutant
status. Which means, ergo (you don't get to use ergo much in a X-Men
newsgroup), that until we get textual in-story support of Besty or
Kwannon being a mutant, they're going to remain non-mutants.
Q: What is the Siege Perilous?
A: The Siege Perilous is a large, brooch-like magical gemstone that
Roma, a powerful mystical entity, gave the X-Men at the end of the
Fall of the Mutants storyline. The whole idea of the Siege was that
they could send people through it, who would be "judged" by some
unknown, higher power (possibly Roma herself), and then be given
a second chance at life if found worthy, so they could try
and correct their evil deeds, so to speak.
This interesting way for heroes to rehabilitate their villains
lasted for about one storyline, the original encounter with the
Reavers in Australia, until the press of crossovers and editorial
interference kept Claremont from using it much more than he did.
Claremont was actually, believe it or not, reportedly planning on
spending well over a hundred issues of the X-Men based in Australia,
and thus his leaving during the X-Odus could be viewed as somewhat
of a relief, depending on what you thought of the Oz-Men. Indeed,
pretty soon the Siege became an escape route for the X-Men from
their enemies, as a series of vicious, horrible encounters ended up
with the X-Men believing themselves better off reincarnated through
the Siege than captured by their enemies. Having Psylocke control
their minds so they thought it was a good idea (it was mainly her's)
helped also.
So most of the X-Men popped through, and ended up, mostly with
amnesia, all over the world, mostly living lives they felt mostly
"better" in than superheroing -- for the most part. The Siege was
then captured by Donald Pierce, who destroyed it.
The Siege Perilous probably ranks above all other plot devices in
.xbooks for general fan disdain, largely because of the deus ex
machina manner in which it was used, and the general low quality of
stories which the X-Men popping out of it then went through. It also
was the main cause of the horribly confusing Psylocke
nimboification, which is another mark against it in other fans'
eyes. Whatever Claremont wanted the Siege to have become, it ended
up being perhaps his single most visible icon of his drooping powers
near the end of his run.
The X-Men who went through the Siege were:
Dazzler, Colossus, Havok, Rogue, and Psylocke. Storm did not go
through, as she was captured by Nanny at the time, and Wolverine
was left to bleed to death in the Australian wilderness.
The original Siege Perilous, btw, where Claremont got the name, was
the seat at the Round Table of King Arthur which had letters on it
that prophecied that only the "purest and greatest" of all knights
would sit there, who turned out to be Galahad. See the appropriate
Malorian (and other) sources for more on King Arthur, Galahad, and
the Grail Quest. Siege Perilous means "the dangerous seat."
Q: Was Rogue raped by the guards in the first Genosha storyline?
A: No, she wasn't, and it says so right in the captions in the same
issue that the nitwits who keep insisting that it happened say it
happened in. Check the series of captions during the slow close-up
to Rogue's cell. The guards slapped her around some and made fun of
her, but nothing sexual happened.
Q: Why did the X-Men lose their invisibility to electronic scanners?
A: "When" is probably a better question, but that would give you the
enlightening answer of "Who knows?", so we'll work with this version
instead.
After the X-Men died in Fall of the Mutants, they were resurrected
by Roma, the celestial busybody we met a few questions ago. One of
the gifts Roma gave the X-Men was that they were invisible to
electronic scanners, television cameras, and so forth, to better
help cement their reputation as "legends" (Roma is obviously a
little behind the times as to how exactly media exposure works in
this day and age). This power served the X-Men well enough during
their Australian days (although, for no explained reason, the
computers at the Reavers base were capable of detecting them, and
the X-Men themselves wondered why), but soon after they went
tumbling through the Siege Perilous, it became apparent from the
storylines that the X-Men had obviously lost their electronic
invisibility. There being no other explanation for this power loss
in the first place, it's generally been assumed by the xbooks crowd
that Roma's spell just finally wore off.
Q: What's this about an X-Traitor?
A: Go away.
Q: Aw, come on! Let's hear about the X-Traitor!
A: OK. You asked for it. The X-Traitor is something from the Bishop
timeline of alternate X-histories. It comes from when Bishop, in his
future, was chasing a bunch of evil dudes through the sewers, when
he happens to activate an ancient recording device. What luck, eh?
The device plays a recording of Jean Grey, apparently making a
last-ditch "message in a bottle" sort of thing, to warn someone of
some X-Man who has gone traitor, and who is killing the X-Men even
as she speaks. Her main points of evidence are: they shouldn't have
trusted the mutant, because they didn't know much about them. That's
it. Then a nice big blast of energy takes Jean out from the side,
and the tape ends.
From this, the sort of circumstantial evidence that makes
prosecuting lawyers weep, Bishop became convinced that some
"X-Traitor" is responsible for the death of the X-Men, at some time
in his past. When he conveniently ends up in that past, he begins
wondering who it might be. For various reasons too silly to get
into, Gambit became his main suspect.
The whole X-Traitor thing, whatever it was going to become, is moot
now anyway, since the original ideas and plots for it left the
X-titles when Whilce Portacio, the creator who thought them up, left
for Image Comics. In short, it's become sort of a plot embarrasment.
The general concensus is that Gambit was originally intended to be
the X-Traitor, but that his huge popularity with the fans moved him
away from that, which is why this plot thread has been treading
water, until the writers can think of a suitable candidate to close
it up. There's some belief that the Bishop limited series will
answer this question.
Besides the above, other troubles with the X-Traitor storyline
involve the fact that Bishop never even doubted the veracity of the
tape. It could have been a forged tape, a pratical joke, or Jean
could have been mistaken when she made the tape. There was going to
be a section on how the X-Traitor business violates the basic rules
of Marvel time travel, but since the Alter-X storyline, there are
apparently no more basic rules of Marvel time travel, so this
FAQ-keeper will keep his big trap shut.
Q: There's an External at my door. What does that mean? Should I
be concerned? Is it contagious?
A: First off, don't be alarmed. Many Externals are simply poor excuses
for a supervillain, too innately lame to make a living any other
way, and they're probably only looking for a handout. Treat them
with kindness, patience, and respect, and they'll probably leave you
alone, although they may mutter a bit about impossible designs and
grand world-spanning plans before they leave.
The Externals first showed up in the storylines of Rob Liefeld in
X-Force. The idea was that they are a type of mutant whose "full
potential" is not realized until they're killed. Yep. And then
they're reborn, and they become, well, immortal, except they could
only be killed by cutting off their heads, or something like that. I
never read those early X-Forces. In any case, any simularities
between Externals and the immortals from the movie Highlander are
obvious and often commented on.
Since then, the Externals have continued to be an annoying background
presence to the X-titles, with most of the complaints coming from
readers who can't understand how this society of all-powerful
immortal mutants from time immemorial have yet to get a clue on how
to properly run things from behind the scenes. Currently the term is
mainly used to refer to any mutant which enjoys immortality by
virtue of their mutant powers.
Q: I've had an idea! Why don't Rogue and Gambit just use Leech so they
can have sex?
A: You may not believe this, but you are not the first person to have
this brainstorm. As a matter of fact, you're nowhere near the first
person to think of this. You could have been meditating on this
particular solution to their troubles for centuries in a monestary
in Attilan and you'd still be nowhere near the first person to
suggest this. This is a suggestion which is offered so frequently by
newbies to xbooks that it's capable of infuriating the long-term
inhabitants of xbooks just from its frequent re-presenting, without
even considering its innate distatefulness.
Anyway, enough of its net.history. This question is a lot like the
one in Part 2 of this FAQ, wondering about why Rogue and Cyclops
don't use power nullifiers to make their day-to-day lives easier,
and much of the sage wisdom of that response applies here, as well.
We also have the interesting moral question of just how great an
idea it is using an elementary school kid as a sexual aid, as well
as pointing out to the newcomer that what makes you think that Rogue
and Gambit particularly do want to have sex?
Q: Why did Chris Claremont leave the X-titles? Why did Peter David
leave X-Factor? What caused the X-Odus? (And other such questions
dealing with the great rebuilding period in Bob Harras' tenure)
A: For this question, the FAQ-keeper is going to try and be as
objective as possible, which is tough on a question in which all of
his information has so far come in from interviews in fan press.
However, this is definitely a FAQ, and deserves being treated in
this FAQ. Here's hoping for objectivity.
Chris Claremont left the books he had worked on for almost half his
life because of one person, the X-titles group editor, Bob Harras.
Claremont had often stressed in interviews how important having
an editor who worked well with him on the stories was, and was
thankful that all the editors he had had (this was during Nocenti's
reign) had been wonderful and talented. Obviously, something went
wrong as Harras took over, although the eventual cause was due to
problems on both sides.
The problems have been revealed in a few interviews. Harras is in a
bit of a hot seat in the very competitive, corporate atmosphere of
Marvel. One slip of the titles, and he has to explain himself to his
superiors. He's therefore always interested in things that will keep
the books popular and selling well, a sensible attitude for any
editor.
Something that obviously caught his eye was the huge upswelling of
fan support for artists of the "Image" type (although they weren't
called that back then, since Image hadn't been created yet). Rob
Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, and Whilce
Portacio were at the forefront of a style in comics that was very
popular at the time. So popular that when McFarlane requested a
title to try out his burgeoning desire to write his own stories on,
he got one staring the Marvel flagship character, Spider-Man. The
Marvel Offices were so impressed with the sales figures coming from
these artists that they were willing to do almost anything to keep
them.
One thing they weren't, though, is give up some of the money they
were making out of selling licensed materials (t-shirts, pins,
posters, and etc.) done by those artists. For these as well as other
reasons, the above artists and a few more fled Marvel in what has
come to be called the X-Odus, since so many of them worked on mutant
titles at the time. They went and founded Image, of course, for more
information on which you should ask at rac.misc.
How this relates to Claremont leaving, as well as his good friend
and fellow X-writer Louise Simonson, is as follows: maybe on his
own, perhaps because of pressure from the offices above him, Harras
was extremely protective of the Image artists on his titles.
Somebody, somewhere, was convinced that they were why the titles
were selling, and wanted them made as comfortable as possible. The
trouble with the Image artists on monthly books, like the X-Men, has
been shown: they're all terribly slow, and usually were late. This
annoyed Claremont, who was accustomed to working with workhorses
like John Byrne and Dave Cockrum.
Also, as the Image team started recognizing how much strength they
had at Marvel, they started asking for more power. Jim Lee,
Claremont's penciler at the time on Uncanny, in particular wanted
more say in how the plot went. Claremont, usually more than happy to
coplot with his artists, didn't like the fact that Lee's idea of
coplotting was that he drew the issue any way he felt like, and then
shipped it off to Claremont, usually just under deadline, for him to
fill in the dialogue balloons with no say in what would appear in
the issue. While the usual practice at Marvel is to have the art
made before the dialogue is written (it's a practice that started
back when Stan Lee was writing every Marvel book in the 60s, and
it's even called the "Marvel way" of writing comics), usually
coplotting involves both the writer and the artist deciding what
will be in the issue together.
When Claremont complained about this, and the usual tardiness of
Lee, to Harras, he was told that his opinions were recognized, and
things were being worked on. However, nothing apparently was ever
done. Claremont also found whole sections of his dialogue and
plotting changed when the book came back from the printers into his
hand. Now, while it is the perogative of the editor to edit his
creative staff's material, most give them warning or at least tell
them why such and such a bit is unacceptable, or was changed.
Claremont wasn't even warned that his stuff was going to be changed,
and was never told why his stuff was changed in the first place.
All of this might seem a bit rude, and possibly Claremont felt that
after giving twenty years of his life to this one title, he was
entitled to a bit of info as to what, exactly, the editor of that
book wanted from his writer. Apparently Harras either never
answered, or else didn't answer to Claremont's satisfaction, so
after issue #3 of the new X-Men book, Chris Claremont left the
X-titles. A sign of the atmosphere he left in was that his departure
wasn't even mentioned in the letter columns of the books he had
written for sixteen years. Louise Simonson, who had much the same
experiences happen to her, left soon after. To this day, Claremont's
departure from the X-titles is still being described in the Marvel
trade press as merely a "sabbatical," and that he'll return when the
editorial staff have decided that he's regenerated his creative
batteries sufficiently. To support that measure, Claremont's
scripting, plotting, and dialogue had been slipping in his final
years, and a sabbatical would certainly have been helpful even in
more calm circumstances.
With the departure of what was once the most dependable writing corp
in the history of major comics, Harras was now free to fill the
titles with writers who wouldn't complain so much about the artists
who wanted to run the titles a bit more indepth. The first person he
got, though, perhaps in an attempt to reclaim some of the "Big Name"
marquee value he lost when Claremont left, was old X-Men penciller
and co-plotter John Byrne. Byrne was not going to even be given the
illusionary name of "writer" for Lee's plots, he was just there to
script them.
Byrne lasted less than three issues on the new X-Men, and, according
to Byrne, encounterd much the same troubles as Claremont as scripter
of the book. Lee was consistently late. Pages were faxed to Byrne
hours before deadline for him to write as they came in, often
without knowing how the book was going to end, because Lee hadn't
bothered informing him.
After a month or so of this, Byrne complained to Harras. Byrne
pointed out that in any other DC or Marvel comic, the writers
usually got three months to work on one issue (most are done far
before then, but that's the usual margin of safety). He didn't mind
working a few extra nights and burning the midnight oil, because he
liked the X-Men, but all he asked for was at least _one_ month to
actually think about the issue. Harras thanked him for his comments,
and said he would work on it. No further pages were ever faxed to
Byrne for him to script.
Having now annnoyed most of the major X-writers of the past to the
point that they won't work with him, Harras ended up with Scott
Lobdell (a stand-up comedian Harras offered the job to at a party)
and Fabian Niceiza (one of Marvel's editors) as his main writers on
the X-titles. All was looking good until the X-Odus occurred, and
suddenly Harras didn't have all the Big Name Artists that had to be
so carefully protected. The chances of Harras getting back
Claremont and Byrne to write now that the artists who were partially
to blame for driving them away was rather slim, so there was an
obvious period of scrambling at the X-offices to get creative teams
to cover the books.
With Claremont gone, the brightest bit of writing in the X-titles
had to be Peter David, the new writer on the "new" X-Factor. Easily
mixing his standard blend of top-notch humor with good
characterization, David was impressing people with how interesting a
bunch of once second-rate mutant characters could be. Not even this
relationship was a smooth one, however, because David quickly became
annoyed by another mainstay of the mutant titles: the crossover.
David didn't like the fact that the mutant titles invariably
crossovered once a year, often for three or so issues. A
self-proclaimed writer of conscience, he didn't feel he could just
dump a crossover into a title without working up to it in the main
storyline (something that Claremont also felt was true), but he
didn't like the fact that crossovers took up three issues of his
book that he then couldn't use for his own stories.
He also didn't like how he was always given fill-in artists because
the supposed "star" artist, Joe Quesada, was never on time with his
art (a common complaint apparently). He didn't think that a lot of
the fill-in artists were of decent enough quality to actually do a
book, and he felt that it was an insult to the reader to have to
make do with shoddy art that was rushed out because the regular
penciler couldn't be bothered to get his art out on time.
Meanwihle, he expressed disgust that the X-Office didn't even want
him continuing his main plot during the crossovers. He had to fight
and complain just to get one page per issue in of his normal,
supposedly ongoing, plot in his own book. Why? The editors said that
it was easier if there was no ongoing plot in the crossovers,
because then it would be easy to collect the whole thing in a trade
paperback for future resale value without having to edit out those
annoying exterior plotlines. When David asked if it wasn't annoying
to ongoing readers of the normal title to suddenly have the plot
they were following just vanish from the face of the title for three
months, he apparently got no answer.
David's other complaints (which were listed for the net.community
in a resignation-style letter) included the mangled rescripting
of a plot device that originally was supposed to detect whether
a woman's fetus was a mutant or not (thus possibly opening the
option of an abortion), as well as demands about what characters
he was supposed to feature in a given issue (he apparently
particularly disliked being forced to include more Random).
With that being what he had to live with, David resigned from
X-Factor. The usual bunch of scrambling, fill-in teams rushed to
fill his and Quesada's shoes (Quesada, like most of the "hot" new
artists, apparently cannot be bothered to keep to a monthly
standard).
As a final note, it's unsure just how much ill-will there still is
over the X-Odus fallout. Claremont and Lee, for instance, apparently
like each other enough that Claremont wrote three issues of Lee's
WildC.A.T.S. comic, hardly a major sign of dislike. Whether any of
them will be working with Harras in the future remains to be seen.
Q: Rob Liefeld. Why?
A: Succinct, isn't it? The philosophical ontologies of the meaning of
Rob Liefeld's existence are, alas, beyond the scope or intention of
this FAQ. However, I will take this time to remind everyone that
it's Lie-F-E-L-D, not Lie-F-I-E-L-D. Bitching about Rob Liefield is
completely worthless; Rob Liefield never worked on an X-Title.
Q: How do you pronounce Fabian Nicieza?
A: FABE-ee-an nee-see-AYZ-uh. It's a Brazilian name, or so I've
been told.
Q: Are any Marvel staff reading xbooks?
A: Some. Editor and colorist Marie Javins is usually about, and she
often brings friends and coworkers peeking in over her shoulder.
Mark Waid, occasional writer for the X-titles, has also shown up.
Peter David used to be a regular contributor, until he quit X-Factor
and didn't see any reason to hang around. Fabian Nicieza and Scott
Lobdell hang around America On-Line, but so far haven't shown up in
Usenet (Nicieza, at least, has kindly turned down requests to visit,
claiming that AOL takes up enough of his free time as it is). None
of this prevents unknown hordes of Marvel staffers from lurking
and chuckling at our antics, of course.
All this means, of course, that posters on xbooks should maybe think
twice before posting up personal attacks on the creative staff of
the X-titles, since, unlike for a long period of Usenet history,
they're finally around and a lot of xbookers would like them to
continue to contribute to the group. Not insulting people in general
is a good policy to aim for, of course.
Q: Why do all these annoying dinos keep on complaining about the
X-titles here? If they don't like the books, why do they read them?
A: The answer to this is as diverse as the fans it's asked to, and the
question usually comes up once every three months or so on the
newsgroup. Realizing that this answer is going to be hopelessly
generalized, most older X-fans still follow the book because of the
loyalty generated by Claremont during his run. Many of them grew to
care about the characters in the book during his run, and out of
some sort of perverse curiosity, care deeply when they are
mismanaged as they are currently perceived to be.
Dropping the book, of course, would send the "message" to Marvel
that they no longer agree with the direction the X-titles are
heading. On the other hand, a feeling like "If you don't vote, you
don't have the right to complain" also comes over some of them. And
every small bit of good comics that sneaks through fuels their
memories of how much they once loved it, and keeps them around for
more.
It may be that they're now grown up, and wouldn't have liked the
original Claremont stories if they were coming out now. It may be
that they're just following them out of curiosity, because a few
comic books aren't much to keep up on with a professional paycheck.
They may even prefer the stories as they are now. In any case, older
X-fans who are still reading the book should be assumed to be
getting some form of enjoyment from it, or else they would probably
have dropped it long ago.
It should also be noted that there is one particular breed of dino,
best exemplified by Mike Ellis and David Goldfarb on xbooks, who
don't read any of the books, but feel qualified to post on xbooks
because they were once big X-Men fans, and will happily fill in
information on the older comics and the characters that appeared in
them to the newer fans.
Finally, many of the dino population have good friends who post
regularly to xbooks, and hang around to share in their virtual
community.
Q: I just saw an episode of X-Men: the Animated Series, and I was
wondering...
A: Stop right there. If your question has anything to do with how
the cartoon relates to the comic books, there's one simple answer
which you should repeat until you have either memorized it, or
achieved complete cosmic enlightenment (in which case there's really
no need to continue to read Usenet, I guess):
The Cartoon has Nothing to do with the Comics.
In particular: the cartoon is based on the comic books, but does
not share the same history, characters, or background. While you
can assume that most of the characters you see on the series have
been in the books, you shouldn't assume that they have the same
background. For instance: in the cartoon, Colossus has never been
an X-Man. In the comics, he's one of the most stalwart X-Men around.
Don't be fooled by the comic book X-Men Adventures, either; it's
just an adaptation of the cartoon series, and has nothing to do with
the events in the other comic books.
Q: Hey, the Marvel Super-Hero Role Playing Game says that this one
mutant can do this one really neat action, so they must be able
to do it, right?
A: Okay, let's repeat the theme from the last question:
The Role-Playing Game has Nothing to do with the Comics.
The terms of the Marvel Super-Hero Role Playing Game, from
TSR, Inc., are just used for the game. They're not considered
canonical for comic book appearances, powers, or relative power
ratings. Because somebody is capable of hurting somebody else,
according to their MSH stats, holds no weight in a discussion
whether the comic book character can do the same.
The reason for this is because the game stats are made up by the
game professionals, who aren't the people writing the comics. The
people writing the comics feel no constraint about keeping the
comics accurate to the game. The game writers have also made a
couple of obvious mistakes in their character descriptions (far too
many to list here), so the general accuracy of the rest of their
ratings is somewhat questionable.
None of this should be taken as a insult against a fast-moving and
workable game system. It's just that MSH isn't Marvel Comics, and
anything from the game can't and shouldn't be used to try and
support any argument in the comics. For gamers who _need_ some sort
of stats to have something to argue from, the Official Handbook of
the Marvel Universe, which somewhat inspired the game in the first
place, is highly recommended (especially the earlier,
pre-three-hole-punched, editions).
Q: What is this Kid Dynamo thing? Where can I find it?
A: Kid Dynamo is a bit of fanfiction written by once-netter Connie
Hirsch, which deals with the New Mutants in the days just after
Magneto took over the School (Uncanny #200). A really good story by
any standards, most people who have read it have granted it
automatic status in official Marvel history, vastly preferring it to
the eventual rise of Cable and the appearance of X-Force, or at
least delaying that inevitable occurance by including Kid Dynamo.
You can find Kid Dynamo via anonymous ftp from ocf.berkeley.edu, in
the directory pub/Comics/Kid_Dynamo. The files are gziped, so make
sure you have access to gunzip before you get them, and make sure to
get a "binary" ftp download. Those with gopher access can also
get it by tunnelling to the ocf.berkeley.edu gopher, and following
this path: 6. ocf.Berkeley.Edu Anonymous FTP archive -->
8. Comics --> 4. Kid Dynamo by Connie Hirsch. Gopher is slower
than ftp, but it handles most of the compression/decompression
stuff for you.
Q: Who is Richard Darwin anyway?
A: Richard Darwin is a rock musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Along
with his band, Forward Perspectives, he's best known for bringing
extreme physical action and an incredible stage presence to a
baffling array of back catalogue during his live performances.
Primarily known for his live performances, he has released a few
albums, none of which have ever had an official single. He has had
two gold albums ("Buddha Roadkill" and "Terminoodle") to his credit.
Q: No, really, who is Richard Darwin?
A: Richard Darwin is a character created by David R. Henry who appears
in a number of short stories (and one novella) by the same. Some
time ago, Mr. Henry got bored with a dull X-Men storyline, and
realized, with some shock, that introducing the ever-volitile
Richard Darwin to the story would greatly liven things up. So he
started writing the "Marvel Universe" Richard Darwin stories, which
had the unshakable musician encountering much of the Marvel Universe
face first, often to the great dismay of the standard Marvel
characters.
Very few Darwin-MU stories are available for public consumption over
the net, due to Mr. Henry's deep and profound recognition of the
relative weight of the Marvel legal department compared to himself.
However, quotes from the stories (and a few non-MU-Darwin stories)
do show up with some regularity in Mr. Henry's signature files.
Despite some claims of various wags on the net, the quotes actually
do come from the real stories, and are not thought up by Mr. Henry
on the spot just to be appropriate to the matter he is following up
from. Usually.
[end of part 3]
--
I'd Drive Her Van-Rogue Fan Club / Cthulhu! Cthulhu! Cthulhu! And Cthooky!
"All you of Earth are IDIOTS!"-P9fOS / What was the question? -- Kate Bush
dhe...@plains.nodak.edu * Evolution: Give it some time, it'll grow on ya.