I've given in and let myself hallucinate a "be sure to get the next issue of Elsewhen: Super-Villan Team-Up" blurb at the bottom of the current page. :^)
In the top middle panel of the August 17th page, this is the first time I can recall Xavier's legs looking like they didn't work. Usually, he looks like a guy who's sitting in a chair, not someone who's a paraplegic.
Working on ELSEWHEN I decided to eschew Xavier’s traditional FDR style blanket. This meant, of course, that I had to start paying attention to the position of his legs, keeping most in mind the oft-forgotten fact that he is not paralyzed in the usual sense of the word. His legs were crushed beyond repair—we probably wouldn’t want to see him in shorts!—and so cannot support his weight. He conceivably has some limited motility in terms of being able to shift himself around in his chair, but nothing that would be of great use.
I’ll confess, it was a little bit “unexpected” for me, too!
I knew Doom was going to show up sooner or later, and as I worked my way thru the alt-X story it began to seem more and more like that was where it was going to happen. Then, the page didn’t so much “fall out of my pencil” as FORCE it’s way out.
(One darkish cloud: despite my pleas that no one speculate, which includes asking questions about what might be coming, one poster did just that the other day, so what I’d planned as a “twist” will now be somewhat less so.)
the page didn’t so much “fall out of my pencil” as FORCE it’s way out.
I love this insight into the creative process. It's a bit mysterious, isn't it?
I toss my hat in the ring and join with the general consensus regarding this dramatic entrance of Doom. If ELSEWHEN were a television serial, that page would make for a strong season cliffhanger. Great story telling. Great execution. JB is a national treasure.
Edited by Steven Queen on 22 August 2021 at 6:58am
Don't they usually amputate the limbs under such a condition? I know that to be a common consideration from watching a documentary on Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
I don’t know if that was common policy in the early Sixties.
Wouldn’t have mattered much. Stan and Jack wanted an FDR figure to counterbalance Magneto’s Hitler.*
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* In later years Stan would say his “models” for Xavier and Magneto were Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, which is almost certainly something he was told at some point, but reading the early issues will quickly dispel such nonsense.
I defer to your point, though I might counter with a plethora of images of Civil War victims similarly amputated.
Regarding Stan, you've encapsulated in so few words what is so fascinating about this current scrutiny of his contributions. I never cared just how much he was exactly responsible for a particular character's creation, he had some hand in all of them. What I DID care about is what he definitely was responsible for: creating the culture of Marvel. Making the creators of the tales and the company itself characters as much as those in the stories were, which was half the fun, imagining a stable of creators working together bringing these tales to us every month and caring/responding to the audience's feedback. The impact of the Marvel Bullpen is evidenced by the self-deprecating placement of Stan in (almost) all of the Marvel movies (say what you want about them): you're not really acknowledging what reading Marvel comics back then was like without referring to the ecosystem he fostered.
That is why it has been so confounding as to why HE cared so much to tell some tall tales about what he did and didn't do. What he unquestionably WAS responsible itself was just remarkable and unparalleled. Too bad he seemed to not see it that way.
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