I agree. A real X-gem if you can find it is the X-Men Visionaries: Neal Adams volume, in which Neal and Roy Thomas introduce Sauron, the Savage Land, Havok and Polaris, make the Sentinels scary (this was the first time the Sentinels had a learning program and could think adaptively), show Mags as something other than a post-Doom bucketheaded egomaniac and draw X-Men with more proportions more human than superhuman.
Basically, the way Marvel was publishing books at the time, the Adams/Thomas X-Men was DOA before its first issue hit the shelves. What with being already cancelled and all they went ahead and pulled out some pretty neat issues. Plus, one of their stories is entitled "Do Or Die, Baby". You cannot go wrong.
My favourite X-artists would be Adams, Alan Davis and J.R.Jr (1st run - not the ugly squareboxy 2nd one). Oh, and Jackson Guice's work on 'The New Mutants' in the period between Sienkewicz and Brett Blevins was also very good - gave the characters a real complexity and humanity, kind of a low budget Barry Windsor Smith thing.
I think Claremont clearly made the X-books "sexy". Characters were always being forced into bondage, dressing up as hookers for disguises, mentally dominated and placed in increasingly risque costumes, having all their clothing blasted away, running around in the nude, being regressed to infancy and re-aged as someone else's slave and generally getting their kink on. Poor Rogue got stripped of her powers and fondled quite a bit, and the whole thing had an ongoing restraint/bondage/frustration/slavery motif running through it.
Despite all that, I'm not sure that Claremont's stuff qualifies as mysoginistic. He probably did more of interest with female characters during that period of comics than any other writer I can think of. The work that was done with Storm in the 'Lifedeath' stories, or the treatment of Kitty in her losing her relationship with Colossus, Danielle Moonstar facing down Death and realizing aspects of the lifecycle - there was some really excellent work going on and it was mostly the girls who got to be the protagonists. New Mutants was particularly the focus of this, where Mirage and Magik and Wolfsbane were the central characters with the boys popping in and out from time to time. And during the Lifedeath period there were whole X-arcs just focussed on Storm and Rogue.
In writing about Lancelot du Lac, T.H. White (himself somewhat of a sadist) says "He was probably something of a sadist, which is why he went out of his way to be very kind." That's a paraphrase, BTW, but it seems to me to be obvious that White is writing of himself here. I sometimes wonder if he isn't defining a type as well. By my lights, Mr Claremont would probably fit the bill.
Met him once. My question (aged 15): Is Rogue going to be dead forever? |
