Chuck Austen’s X-Men: The Trial of the Juggernaut

Need some time to calm down after the Draco?  So do the X-Men – so this edition we’ll be focusing on just one member as he goes on trial.  You’ll never guess which one.

Took Place In
Uncanny X-Men #435-436

Team Line-Up
Juggernaut – No other X-Men have any role in this story.

Others You Should Be Aware Of
Professor X, Sammy the Fish Boy, Sammy the Fish Boy’s Mum, She-Hulk (Attorney at Law)

In a Nutshell
Juggernaut is being put on trial, gets sent home with She-Hulk for the purpose of sex, then fights another Juggernaut.

Before we begin, allow me a moment for a brief word.  Turning longtime villains into heroes (or “heroes” as the case may be) may be somewhat popular with fans for a bit, but runs itself into the problem of the villain having to make up for all the crimes committed while being a villain.  The longer a villain has been around, the more crimes have to be accounted for before a true redeeming can be done.  And if those crimes are not dealt with, the heroes running with the former villain reflects badly.

So to Chuck Austen’s credit, he did realize that he would need to clear Juggernaut’s name to get full distance out of using him as a member of the team.  It’s just the execution that falls apart.

Chuck Austen’s X-Men: The Draco, Part 2

And we’re back.  You might recall hellfire, fish beatings, magnetic lovings, sure.  Picking up where we left off:

Took Place In
Uncanny X-Men #432-434

Team Line-Up
Archangel (Leader), Havok (Leader?), Nightcrawler, Iceman(‘s head), Wolverine, Husk, Jubilee, Juggernaut, Northstar

Others You Should Be Aware Of
Polaris, Nurse Annie, Professor X, Sammy the Fish Boy, Carter Ghazikhanian

In a Nutshell
Azazel’s plan is launched, Alpha Flight attacks the Juggernaut, and the story collapses into a hole of suck.

So let’s finish this.

Chuck Austen’s X-Men: The Draco, Part 1

Ah, the Draco.  This is the story you think of when you think “Chuck Austen’s X-Men”.  Now that Nightcrawler’s father has been revealed (via flashback), we now get to the story where Nightcrawler and his X-Men buddies interact with dear old dad.  This is good stuff, people.  And by good stuff, I mean bad.  Very, very bad.

Took Place In
Uncanny X-Men #429-431

Team Line-Up
Archangel (Leader), Havok (Leader, I think), Nightcrawler, Iceman, Wolverine, Husk, Jubilee, Juggernaut, Northstar

Others You Should Be Aware Of
Polaris, Nurse Annie, Professor X, Sammy the Fish Boy, Carter Ghazikhanian

In a Nutshell
Nightcrawler meets his maker (well, half of his maker, I guess), Juggernaut misses his goldfish and Polaris needs therapy.

eXaminations

We’re right into the SUPER MEGA EVENT now.  Are you excited?  YOU SHOULD BE EXCITED!

This time, we’ll be looking at:

• Astonishing X-Men #49 in which we get more Northstar.
• Avengers vs. X-Men #2 in which the Avengers fight the X-Men.
• New Mutants #41 in which the team gets blinked off to a festival.
• Uncanny X-Force #24 in which the team goes after AoA Iceman.
• Uncanny X-Men #11 in which the Avengers fight the X-Men.
• Vs. #1 (of 6) in which the Avengers fight the X-Men.
• Wolverine and the X-Men #9 in which Wolverine prepares his school for the Avengers fighting the X-Men.
• X-Factor #234 in which the team finds out Madrox is alive.
• X-Men #27 in which Jubilee makes a decision.
• X-Men Legacy #265 in which Weapon Omega has issues.

Holy crap, that’s a lot.  Anyway, the fun begins after the break and there will be SPOILERS.

eXaminations

Playing catch up yet again.  Let’s get straight to it.  You’ll find:

• Astonishing X-Men #48 in which Northstar gets a little play.
• Avengers vs. X-Men #0in which we learn about two featured characters.
• Avengers vs. X-Men #1 in which the Mega Event begins.
• Generation Hope #17 in which the series concludes.
• New Mutants #39 & 40 in which Cypher and Warlock team up.
• Uncanny X-Force #23 in which the Otherworld story concludes.
• Uncanny X-Men #9 in which Team Cyclops teams up with the Avengers.
• Wolverine & the X-Men #8 in which we deal with the fallout of the casino story.
• Wolverine & the X-Men: Alpha & Omega #4 (of 5) in which Kid Omega is in too deep.
• X-Factor #233 in which the team is under new leadership.
• X-Men Legacy #264 in which the Dark X-Men come back into the picture.

You know the drill.  SPOILERS beyond the jump.

On Onslaught…as a means for a tad bit more Liefeld bashing

Onslaught has certainly gotten a bad wrap in the years since the storyline went down, and for many good reasons.  For one, Marvel didn’t really know what Onslaught even was when Juggernaut whispered the name in the first post-Age of Apocalypse issue of Uncanny X-Men back in 1996.  The event itself was a horrid mish-mosh of heroes running around doing pretty much nothing until the final explosion wrapped everything up.  In fact, the only important things that happened in the entire event were:

• X-Men learn Onslaught’s identity.
• Franklin Richards gets pulled in to set up the follow-up.
• Thor rips Professor X out of Onslaught.
• Heroes explode.

Yet the event had a ton more to it, and most of it was slop.

But the build to Onslaught and the ultimate revelation that it was indeed the tainted psyche of Professor X was an excellent story in itself.  There was genuine threat for the X-Men, and you could feel the team unwinding because of the changes going on within Charles Xavier.  The tainting of his psyche was actually the one positive thing to come out of Fatal Attractions (god knows villain-Colossus wasn’t) and in its own weird way, the whole thing worked…until they tried to do something with it.

But Onslaught is a story that is best left in the past.  It’s okay to bring it up once in a while in the event that someone’s worried about Professor X (the same way Dark Phoenix would be mentioned if Jean Grey was acting weird), and as for Heroes Reborn?  F*ck that.  It ruined the epic Mark Waid/Ron Garney Captain America run by replacing it with Rob Liefeld and his stupid eagle head mask.

So it should come as little surprise to anyone that I did not read the anniversary book Onslaught Reborn.
And that’s even before I found out it was done by Jeph “I don’t care what anyone else is doing in their own comics” Loeb and Rob “I see women weird” Liefeld.

I will give kudos to Liefeld on one bit – he did a decent job on Captain America.  Unfortunately, he made Scarlet Witch’s hand look crazy-weird (though I suppose technically okay), and he gave Iron Man a wrinkly, cringed face and lips.  I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the Iron Man armor is a big metal suit.  It doesn’t have facial expressions, and it should never EVER have lips.  Never.

But then there’s cute, collectible keychain Onslaught standing there in the corner about as un-menacingly as possible.  When Onslaught debuted, he looked fantastically awesome.

Liefeld got all the pieces right, but managed to strip all the dynamics right away.  And to that I say well done?

Ah well.  If anyone read this book and liked it, feel free to give me the good ol’ wag of the finger.

eXaminations: 2/22/12 Part 1

Hello there.  It’s been about a month since I ventured to pick up my new comics (sorry – traffic issues in my hometown) but I made the trip today and picked up what I had missed.  I had thought it wouldn’t be too bad, since it’s only been a month and I only peruse the X-books.  Unfortunately for my pocket book, Marvel has decided that its titles should be released at a ludicrous bi-monthly pace, so I basically have two issues of every book I buy, with this trend continuing for the foreseeable future.

What that means for you, dear reader, is that I have a lot to cover in this edition of eXaminations.  For order sake, I’m going to be splitting it up into two parts, with nine issues a piece.  For part one, we’ll be looking at:

• Alpha Flight #8 (of 8) in which the limited series wraps up.
• Astonishing X-Men #46 in which Cyclops meetsCountdown: Arena.
• Generation Hope #16 in which the series gets to its penultimate issue.
• New Mutants #37 & 38 in which Magma dates the devil and Cypher explores his death.
• Uncanny X-Force #21 & 22 in which the team gets very British.
• Uncanny X-Men #6 & 7 in which the team get talked down to a lot.

There are, of course, SPOILERS within.  Let’s begin.

eXaminations: 1/18/12

I will hand this to Marvel – despite their inability to set any kind of solid schedule for the release of their books (unlike DC, Marvel tends to ship books on the “whenever they’re done” schedule) they have thus far managed to give the X-Men titles some kind of divide where the Wolverine books come out together, as do the Cyclops books.

Well, almost…but 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.  We’ll be checking out:

• Generation Hope #15 in which Sebastian Shaw isn’t exactly welcome on Utopia.
• New Mutants #36 in which the team finishes the Blink mission.
• Uncanny X-Force #20 in which Fantomex goes on trial.
• Uncanny X-Men #5 in which the team notices what’s been going on in other books.

We’ll begin after the jump.  Do be weary of SPOILERS within.

Chuck Austen’s X-Men: The Draco (Prologue)

Welcome back, fair adventurers!  It has been quite a while since last we waded into the murk that is Chuck Austen’s X-Men, but here we go with the big one.

One of the longest untold stories of the X-Men was the parentage of Nightcrawler.  From the early days of Chris Claremont’s historic run on Uncanny X-Men, hints were dropped here and there about the origin of the fuzzy elf.  As legend has it, Mystique was not meant to be Nightcrawler’s mother, but rather his father, due to her shape shifting abilities.  His mother was to be Destiny, Mystique’s best friend and implied life partner.  However, much like the Colossus/(13 year-old) Kitty Pryde romantic relationship, Marvel axed the idea thinking that readers weren’t ready for a woman/woman childbirth in their flagship title.

Claremont apparently lost interest in Nightcrawler’s parentage and the tie between Nightcrawler and Mystique was not touched upon again during Claremont’s run.  Nightcrawler was shipped off to Europe for the launch of Excalibur, and like the book’s other members, fell out of importance in the X-Men world as the title lost any kind of purpose for most of its life (save for the Alan Davis then Warren Ellis runs on the book).  Eventually an issue of X-Men Unlimited confirmed that Mystique was indeed Nightcrawler’s mother, but the identity of his father remained one of the biggest unanswered questions in the X-Men line.

Enter Chuck Austen.

You might recall that one of Austen’s main goals was to get Nightcrawler away from the priesthood that had defined his character since mid 2000.  Now that Holy War had solved that predicament, it was now time for Austen to get the real story of Nightcrawler’s heritage finally solved.  The Draco is what many fans remember when it comes to Austen’s run with the X-Men, and I have to say that it’s a mess.  Due to the number of issues involved in the story and the amount of moments worth covering, my coverage of them will be split into three parts.

The first is only the prologue issue which sets out the answer to Nightcrawler’s parentage.  We see Mystique, we see the father, and we see a lot of mess made.  Click the jump and we’ll get started.  You know you want to.

(A quick note before we begin – if you’re reading this as soon as it’s posted, I have not yet added images from the issue to it.  I wanted to get the entry posted and I’m running short on time.  I will put out a notice when the images have been added.)

Adventures in order and continuity

My big project that I’ve been spending way more time than I’d care to admit on is making an ultimate reading guide to the X-Men line.  In theory, once complete, I will have a reading order completed that allows an X-Men reader with the time (and resources) to read straight through most of the X-Men story.  I say most because I’m leaving out solo series/minis that move away from the teams (Wolverine, Cable, Gambit, etc).  Trying to fit them in would be an effort of maddening futility (like trying to enjoy Chuck Austen’s X-Men).

Or justifying the merits of Psylocke's identity crisis.

It was quite simple at first – there was only one X-Men title.  The only thing that had to be determined was at what point the annuals should be tossed in to not break up an ongoing storyline with the usually unimportant story.  Upon the launch of New Mutants and further down X-Factor, the titles had to be more carefully organized for better reading.  To do so, I follow three main guidelines in determining the order:

1. Characters – The X-Books have characters showing up in each other’s books all the time.  Finding openings for these appearances are the most helpful aspect in figuring out where stories relate to one another.  For example, if Wolverine pops in to visit the younger team in an issue of New Mutants, then the story would fall between issues that would allow Wolverine an opening to do so.  If an issue of Uncanny ended on a cliffhanger with Wolverine laying bloody before a villain, chances are that he’s not going to get up and visit the junior team back home before coming back for the start of the next issue.
   
2. Events - Characters’ dialogue often references events that happen in other titles and thus shows relation in timescale.  If Cannonball mentions that Magneto has been acting weird since the X-Men returned from a certain mission, then that appearance falls after the issue in which that mission took place.  Crossover events are especially helpful, as they serve as starting/stopping points for different titles.  The Mutant Massacre wrapped up in issues 214, 46 and 11, respectively, of Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants and X-Factor.  Fall of the Mutants began in issues 229, 59 and 24.  Thus, even if the exact number of issues don’t match up for each title, all of the issues between the three books must have played out between the two events (in this case, 15 for Uncanny and 13 for both New Mutants and X-Factor).
   
3. Readability – The biggest point of this entire project is that I want the whole experience to be enjoyable (or at least as enjoyable as the story allows).  Thus, I try to switch between the various titles at story breaks.  If a story goes for three issues in Uncanny then wraps, I will then switch over to one of the other titles for its next story before getting back to Uncanny.  This attempts to keep the stories fresh, as you don’t get overloaded with any one title before switching to another, and keeping the stints short prevents forgetting what happened in another title by the time the reader gets back to it.
   

With just three X-Books to deal with, the operation has thus far gone smoothly.  I’m two issues away from kicking off the Mutant Massacre (one issue each of New Mutants and X-Factor) and so far I’ve only had to make one correction (X-Factor has a two-part story that leads directly into the Massacre that I had initially split up).

But there is one issue that breaks two of the rules on its own and there’s simply no good way of getting around it.  And it frustrates the hell out of me.