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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133571
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| Posted: 09 May 2015 at 10:07am | IP Logged | 1
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Roger Stern used to speculate that the reason the X-Men were so popular with what used to be the fringes of fandom -- this being back when X-MEN was the only title, and a "cult book" -- was that those marginalized fans saw themselves in the characters. They were "outsiders" who basically only hung out with people like themselves.Starting under Chris, this became more and more the case when, as noted, more and more characters were "revealed" to be mutants. (I even went so far as to parody this, in SHE-HULK, "revealing" that Razorback had the mutant ability to drive any vehicle. Not so long ago, I saw this mocked in a list of "stupid super powers," the author addressing the power as if it has always been there, and so revealing himself to be unaware of the source.)
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 09 May 2015 at 11:16am | IP Logged | 2
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I admit I originally liked UNCANNY X-MEN because it was the "weird book" in comparison to all the other Marvel superhero titles that I read in the early '80s.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133571
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| Posted: 09 May 2015 at 11:26am | IP Logged | 3
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By the early Eighties UNCANNY very much WAS a "weird book," and far removed from what Stan and Jack gave us in the Sixties.Chris had -- and perhaps still has -- a habit of wanting to do stories based on whatever book he had just read, or movie or TV show he had just seen. When we were doing IRON FIST together, he was determined to do a story based on I, CLAUDIUS, for instance. In X-MEN his stories very rarely had anything to do with mutants as such. And, if course, it was Chris who gave us Magneto as a noble (Jewish) "freedom fighter." A long, long way from Stan and Jack's Magneto, whose rants about the "Master Race" and fondness for Nazi paraphernalia clearly identified him as a Hitler wannabe. (Hey, I was not the brightest bulb in the box, but I got it!)
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Olav Bakken
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 June 2014
Posts: 241
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| Posted: 09 May 2015 at 11:28am | IP Logged | 4
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Considering that many of those who read the comics were teenagers, and mutant powers often shows up during puperty, it would be easier to imagine you could be a mutant yourself. Being exposed to radiation in a rocketship in space, from the explosion of a gamme bomb, or through some other special circumstances, was not very likely. But if it could be explained that you were not like everybody else on the planet simpley because you were born different, because you were a mutant, that could very well happen. Right here and now. At least in your imagination. And so you would belong to a very exclusive club/tribe of people like yourself.
Seeing which teams were popular in those days, like X-Men, The New Teen Titans and Fantastic Four, one thing they had in common was that they behaved like a family or very close friends. Not just colleagues who were superheroes because it was their job.
Later on mutants became so numerous that Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters started to remind about Hogwarts, mutant students isolating themselves form other mutants and forming their own clique. Also the present day tendencies to publish mega scale storylines that will redefine the whole comic book universe, with multiple crossovers breaks down the barriers between all the previously (more or less) isolated single superheroes, teams and organizations. Which could make it a little more difficult to feel a special connection to a certain team.
I don't know if Robin Dunbar's number is being reflected in the comics, but it could be why superhero teams tends to break up into two if there are too many members in a team.
From an article dealing with these numbers;
"There's a limit to how many close friends like this you can have and it's probably between six and 12, he says.
I think this idea that you can have virtually limitless numbers of friends does water down the concept of friendship. I think it's one of those things where less is more.
The number of friends usually consist of an inner circle of five "core" people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people - some will probably be family members - who are your central group and then outside that, there's another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. 150 in total. And that's one person's social world."
A little off topic, but it is also an upper limit of how many people you can have sitting around a table having a conversation. Once they becomes more than 6 (i think the number was five or six, but can't say for sure), it becomes difficult for everybody to take part in the same conversation.
And a parody or not, the ability to drive any vehicle is at least more interesting than a mutation that gives you nothing more than an exceptionally long spine and limbs, which was one of the mutants who were hiding underground in Britain in an X-Men issue I read some years ago.
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Olav Bakken
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 June 2014
Posts: 241
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| Posted: 09 May 2015 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | 5
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"In X-MEN his stories very rarely had anything to do with mutants as such." I think that defines the X-Men stories of the late 70s and early 80s very well.
They were about a team of mutants, but in general they were not stories about them being mutants (at least not when it comes to how society saw them).
The characters being mutants is what made them outsiders and created a bond between them, but the adventures themselves had mostly not much to do with their mutant origin.
Today, especially in the movies, the ever present plot is about the characters being mutants and how this fuels the story. The equivalent would be how a society full of luddites hated characters like Iron Man and Vision because of the technological origin of their powers, and then created long storylines based on these tendencies.
(Actually, robots could represent a much bigger threat to humans than mutants, and still Vision and other robotic heroes are accepted.)
Edited by Olav Bakken on 09 May 2015 at 9:26pm
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 2:23am | IP Logged | 6
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I think what I liked about the X-Men -- although I wouldn't have been able to put it this way when I was 13 -- was that they had a sort of dual burden: saving humans from evil mutants and saving mutants from bigoted humans.
Add in their outlaw status -- which further separated them from the FF or the Avengers, though it was similar to Spider-Man -- and you've got a team of super-heroes with bigger problems than any other team. I think this was what appealed to me.
(And I agree 100% with JB about "noble" Magneto. When Magneto isn't a villain -- one who's willing to commit mass murder, for that matter -- he becomes very, very boring.)
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 2:25am | IP Logged | 7
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And don't get me started about Rachel Summers! Characters whose backstories are convoluted from the beginning should not be created in the first place!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 5:11am | IP Logged | 8
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And don't get me started about Rachel Summers! Characters whose backstories are convoluted from the beginning should not be created in the first place! •• When Rachel was created, her backstory was not convoluted at all. She was the future daughter of Scott and Jean, clean and simple. Unfortunately, before "Days of Future Past" saw print, the original ending Chris and I did for the Dark Phoenix Saga got shredded, and it became impossible, at least at that time, for Rachel to still have those parents. So, references to her last name were left out of the script, and she became simply "Rachel." She was, of course, also supposed to be a resident of a Future that no longer existed -- not a parallel Future, but something the X-Men had succeeded in preventing. But then I left the book. And without me to say "No," Chris kept drifting back to that storyline, and things became more and more complicated. And, obviously, the X-Men had FAILED once again. A recurrent theme in Chris' scripting of the title, no matter what I drew!
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 9:06am | IP Logged | 9
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JB -- I was talking about Rachel once she was established as "Rachel Summers," going back in time to the mainstream Marvel Universe. Not "Rachel" as she appeared in "Days of Future Past," who, for the reasons you state, could've been anyone.
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Olav Bakken
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 11:14am | IP Logged | 10
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"I think what I liked about the X-Men -- although I wouldn't have been able to put it this way when I was 13 -- was that they had a sort of dual burden: saving humans from evil mutants and saving mutants from bigoted humans."
As someone has said; you often loves the most what you love first. Like already mentioned, when I grew up I did not have access to the Lee and Kirby X-Men stories, even if a couple of stories featuring the original team (but not Lee and Kirby) was published some years later (and I found an older pocket comic in a second hand store even later with a small handful of Lee and Kirby stories). The Hulk I grew up with was written by Len Wein, Bill Mantlo and Roger Stern, and drawn by Trimpe and Buscema. Fantastic Four was mostly drawn by George Perez. Spider-Man by Romita and others (Spider-Man as a character was at least pretty consistent before Secret Wars).
Those who grows up today will, unless they track down older issues and reprints, mostly be familiar with the run by Grant Morrison and those who came later, in addition to the movies, which have taken away much of what attracted me to them in the first place. For instance, I liked the idea of outsiders living amongst humans. But when mutants in modern comics becomes famous fashion designers with useless or practically non-existing powers, it does no longer feel quite that special.
"Unfortunately, before "Days of Future Past" saw print, the original ending Chris and I did for the Dark Phoenix Saga got shredded, and it became impossible, at least at that time, for Rachel to still have those parents. So, references to her last name were left out of the script, and she became simply "Rachel."
Always interesting to read the story behind the stories created back then.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 11:35am | IP Logged | 11
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I was talking about Rachel once she was established as "Rachel Summers," going back in time to the mainstream Marvel Universe. Not "Rachel" as she appeared in "Days of Future Past," who, for the reasons you state, could've been anyone. •• Then you shouldn't have said "Characters whose backstories are convoluted from the beginning should not be created in the first place!." (Italics yours.)
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Olav Bakken
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 10 May 2015 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | 12
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"Unfortunately, before "Days of Future Past" saw print, the original ending Chris and I did for the Dark Phoenix Saga got shredded."
Thinking about it, that part is a little confusing. Maybe it has been mentioned before, but from what I have heard, Jim Shooter insisted that Jean Grey had to die because the crimes she had committed as Dark Phoenix were simply too serious to let her get away with it.
But if he already knew she had to die when he read and approved the issue before it was published, wouldn't it be easier to just insist that the planets orbiting the sun she destroyed were lifeless in the first place, or at least did not show any signs of intelligent life? Or that the ship she destroyed was ignored by her because they simply observed her destructions?
Edited by Olav Bakken on 10 May 2015 at 2:13pm
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Topic Closed)
