How the hell do you compete with that? It's a dead book, has been ever since... Even he was adrift for another fifty or so issues, aware that he couldn't go back, but unable to pull anything forward.
i disagree here. i thought that the overall concept of the Australian-era X-Men was really strong, and in a sense it was the best expression of the whole "outlaw heroes fighting for a world that fears and hates them" idea.
i mean, they were dead, for God's sake, and living in the middle of the wilderness, fighting battles in the shadows against the spectre of an onrushing dystopian future like the one they glimpsed in Days of Future Past (or one that looked like Genosha, for that matter). they had ruthless, truly murderous enemies like the Marauders and the Reavers who were clearly not fucking around (which was proved quite graphically in Mutant Massacre).
no mentor. no mansion. no safety net. the world had seen them die. they didn't show up on cameras. computer files that mentioned them mysteriously erased themselves. the whole thing was so cool, and it (not their death in Dallas) was the culmination of the very deconstruction of the superhero genre that you're talking about. everything up to Fall of the Mutants was the death of the old superhero genre, and what followed was a new kind of superhero. they were well past the point now where they could do the normal superhero gig. no real possibility of having secret identities and civilian lives - their continued existence was the secret. a small band of outlaws, banded together to fight for the vision of a long-departed mentor in a world where everything was getting uglier by the minute. the death wasn't the end of the arc, but just the necessary clearing of the way for the next phase, which was a new kind of superhero group entirely.
i mean, wow.
the execution, sadly, didn't always live up to the potential, but i think some of the high points are among the best in Claremont's whole run.
what killed Uncanny and the X-Men in general (or, rather, until NXM) wasn't the death of the X-Men, but rather the relaunch circa X-Men #1, and everything leading up to it. the return of Xavier, the return of Magneto to full-on villain status, the reunion of the original five with everyone else, the return to the mansion, etc etc etc. just completely wasted everything that had been accomplished up to that point, and changed what was, overall, a really unique post-superhero superhero comic back into something much more traditional. plus, once Claremont left, Storm got completely neutered as a character, when she and Logan had been the glue that held the team together through the worst times. then a nicely-polished version of Jean and Scott became the X-Men supercouple, crap characters like Bishop and Gambit basked in the limelight while characters like Colossus suffered, etc etc etc.
but i don't think the X-Men's death in Dallas wasn't the conclusion you're arguing it is, but rather the beginning of a new phase which was aborted after failing (or being prevented) from living up to its potential. |
