X-MEN #100 (May 2000)

End of Days

Credits: Chris Claremont (writer), Lenil Francis Yu (penciler), Mark Morales (inker), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters), Liquid! (colors)

Summary: Praying inside his church, Nightcrawler is ambushed by Rax, a member of a mysterious collective known as the Neo. Wounded, Nightcrawler locates Dr. Cecilia Reyes, unaware another Neo, Jaeger, is now hunting him. Reyes, panicked, shapes her forcefield into a spike and impales Jaeger. Elsewhere, a team of X-Men has joined Dr. Peter Corbeau’s crew in repairing the High Evolutionary’s orbital base. Seth, an undercover Neo, plants explosives and destroys the base. Combining their powers, Psylocke and Thunderbird rescue the crew inside a shuttle. Left behind, Shadowcat uses Seth’s spare space suit to return to Earth, certain it will take her to the Neo.

Continuity Notes:

·       Nothing in the comic explicitly states this, but the issue (and all X-titles released this month) takes place six months after the previous. This was made clear in every interview and promotional piece during the era.

·       The orbital base the X-Men are repairing previously appeared in Uncanny X-Men #379-380 and X-Men #99. High Evolutionary used its technology to erase the powers of every mutant on Earth in the previous storyline.

·       The team of X-Men on the orbital base include Shadowcat, Rogue, Colossus, Psylocke, (all in new costumes) and new member Thunderbird. Initially conceived as a male avatar for the Phoenix, he debuts here with “plasma fire” powers. (Apparently, Marvel editorial nixed any Phoenix connections.) We’re told he’s from a wealthy family in India, who’d disapprove of him doing manual labor.

·       Part of the “six month later” gimmick was to introduce radical changes to the characters and leave the story behind the alterations a mystery. Since their last appearance, Nightcrawler has left the X-Men to become a Catholic postulant priest, Psylocke has lost her telepathic powers and gained telekinesis, Shadowcat carries a bone claw broken off of Wolverine in a previous (unnamed) adventure, Gambit has taken leadership of the Thieves Guild (in response, Rogue refuses to even read his letters), an event in Genosha has greatly upset Shadowcat (and she’s irritated when Colossus attempts to broach the subject), and most important of all, Colossus has grown a ponytail.

·       Contrary to popular belief, this comic does not establish Nightcrawler as a priest. He is, however, in training to become one. (“I am not yet an anointed priest, merely a postulant.”) I recall Claremont stating he wasn’t entirely certain if he wanted Nightcrawler to officially join the priesthood. It was more of an idea he was playing with.

·       For the record, Nightcrawler’s church is St. Michael the Archangel, near the Brooklyn Navy yard.

·       Colossus discovers his armored skin can touch Rogue without triggering her powers. They share a kiss. Shortly after “Fall of the Mutants,” Claremont teased a Colossus/Rogue romance, but seemingly forgot the idea until this issue.

·       Other romances that have developed during the six month gap include Psylocke’s flirtation with Thunderbird, and Shadowcat’s involvement with Seth, the undercover Neo.

Continuity Notes - Special Neo Edition:

·       This marks the first full appearance of the Neo, following their cameo in X-Men #99, where we learned the erasure of mutant powers killed at least one Neo child.

·       As of this issue, the Neo consist of Kilmer, Rax, Domina (who appears to be their female leader), Jaeger, and two unnamed members.

·       When Jaeger is killed, the closing scene has a young boy declaring to Domina he’s Jaeger now, implying their names are actually titles.

·       Making this more confusing, Domina refers to this boy as Rax, even though we already saw a character called Rax (an adult male) nearly kill Nightcrawler in the opening. Both have blond hair, but clearly they can’t be the same character.

·       In Neo vernacular, mutants are “Spikes,” while humans are “Flats.”

·       While hunting Nightcrawler, Jaeger declares, “I’ve tasted your blood, Spike. I’ve made your power my own.” There’s an implication the Neo share one another’s powers, but nothing else that indicates they can adopt just any mutant’s abilities. In fact, Jaeger’s stunned only a few panels later to discover Nightcrawler can teleport.

·       While working undercover as a member of Corbeau’s crew, Seth developed genuine feelings for Shadowcat. His conversation with Domina indicates he wants to spare his girlfriend's life.

·       Seth is adamant that Shadowcat “is Neo, she is one of us!” One of many abandoned concepts from this run.

·       Seth’s ability to leap out of the collapsing station and survive space is explicitly cited as a demonstration of the Neo’s superior physiology.

Miscellaneous Notes: Just to be thorough, I’ll note the editorial staff consists of assistant Pete Franco, editor Mark Powers, and Bob Harras as the editor-in-chief. Powers already had a reputation online as an intense rewriter, as someone even more inclined to overrule his writers than Bob Harras (who had his own online nickname, “Bob Harass,” based on tales of his editorial interference.) Former assistant editor Jason Liebig has now taken over many of the spinoffs, relaunching them as “Counter-X,” with Warren Ellis as the “showrunner.”

Chris Claremont was employed as Marvel’s executive editor at this time, the person tasked with keeping consistency across the line and overseeing a larger vision of Marvel’s story technique. Fans believed Claremont’s position would prevent him from suffering the “editorial interference” previous X-writers complained about. His later comments indicated he had to endure shifting editorial directives as well, but didn’t provide too many details.

Marvel’s President at the time of the issue’s release is Peter Cuneo (once the president of Black & Decker Corporation and CEO of Remington Products). I know little of him at Marvel, aside from the fact that he served between Joey Calamari and Bill Jemas.

I Love the Early Aughts: A shirtless Moby stars in a Calvin Klein “Dirty Denim” ad. Try to restrain yourselves, ladies. Also, it’s hard not to believe The Matrix inspired the Neo’s name.

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture! : Even though expectations were low, everyone was aware of Fox’s upcoming X-Men film. Supposedly, Marvel itself was kept in the dark for most of the film’s production, although images of the actors in costume had leaked online. Per the X-Men Revolution Genesis Edition (a freebie sketchbook polybagged in the previous issue), Yu says editor Mark Powers suggested his designs should reflect the movie costumes, “rumored” to be inspired by The Matrix. Gambit was the first Yu designed, with a “paramilitary Matrix look” to it. (Really, he just looked like traditional Gambit, now with a scarf and jeans.) The rest, Yu leaned into his own influences.

Critics’ Corner: I thought it might be fun to see what reviews from this era I could find. Ultimately, it’s the arrival of Bill Jemas as president—and his reliance upon internet culture to shape Marvel’s direction—that killed this run, so I’d like to track the critics’ response to these issues.

One problem, though…not even archive.org has reliable snapshots of the major comics sites I recall visiting. (Excluding Paul O’Brien’s work, thankfully.) The big reviewer of this era I remember is Randy Lander, who worked at a comic shop that participated in Marvel’s “Sneak Peek” program, enabling him to post reviews before the books were even on sale. (I’m going from memory here.) His site snapshot from early 2000 redirects to the short-lived psycomic.com—hey, ’member that dot-com boom? Regardless, these reviews seem lost to time. But if anyone out there has some idea on how to find this stuff, please let me know.

“Huh?” Moment: Rax’s laser scope targets Nightcrawler squarely in the back of the head, yet his bolt pierces Nightcrawler’s left shoulder instead. On the next page, Jaeger somehow knows Nightcrawler “sensed Rax’s crossbow bolt a split-second before impact” and managed to save himself. This reads as Claremont covering for some muddy storytelling, and doesn’t really match Nightcrawler’s reaction from just a page earlier. (He states his disbelief he’s been shot after it happens, implying he wasn’t aware of the assassin’s presence until getting hit. And if he had enough time to shift his body, why not just teleport out of the way?)

Gimmicks: This issue featured six regular variant covers, one Dynamic Forces exclusive cover, and one chromium cover, many from famous X-Men artists of the past. The idea was that all of Claremont’s past collaborators were wishing him luck on this new run. Check them out on the Fandom page's entry.

Review: I should be clear that the anticipation for this comic was a very real thing. Even if a vocal portion of readers viewed Claremont’s run on Fantastic Four as unreadable, there was a sense fandom was willing to give this a chance. Only the most cynical of internet tastemakers opposed a Claremont return to X-Men. Everyone else was remembering those epic story arcs, relatable characters, and provocative hints for the future.

This is where I say “Joke was on them!” or something equally glib, right? Well, truthfully, this issue received largely positive reviews. No one was declaring it the finest X-story ever published, but it felt like an intriguing start of something new.

One immediate improvement over the concurrent issues of Fantastic Four is the lettering font. Still credited to Comicraft, their jagged, almost sloppy font from Fantastic Four is gone, replaced with a more restrained typeface. 

There’s an odd decision to have the narrative captions in lowercase, emphasizing words by TYPING THEM IN CAPS, but overall, it’s a clean font that suits Claremont’s verbosity. The Fantastic Four font was simply ugly; why anyone thought it suited Claremont’s longwinded speeches and multi-sentence narrative captions is mystifying.

Now, if Marvel truly wished to revive memories of those good old days, Tom Orzechowski should’ve been hired to letter the book, preferably by hand. I know Claremont’s always stated his preference for Orzechowski as his letterer, and Marvel kept him for as long as they could afford him years later on X-Men Forever, so it’s odd he wasn’t hired on this high-profile assignment. Aside from having a personality to his letters that’s instantly associated with Claremont, Orzechowski would’ve improved the flow of a few scenes here, where the letterer obviously didn’t understand how to place Claremont’s script in its proper order.

Even if the flow is occasionally wonky, the feel of a Claremont X-comic is here. The opening splash (an ethereal rendering of Nightcrawler, apparently leading a church service) is enough to stun the reader, to motivate a quick flip to the next page. A dramatic image, similar to that of Wolverine and Marvel Girl’s “Inferno” kiss, or “Professor Xavier is a Jerk!” that trades on the audience’s existing relationship with the characters, enticing them to continue on with the story.

Drawing on the history of the franchise, placing the team in a predicament similar to the closing sequence in Uncanny X-Men #100 is a cute nod to the fans. (Most seemed to like it. A few accused Claremont of shamelessly repeating himself.) Disrupting the established romantic pairings is always risky, but the sense of discovery is kind of fun here. Above all, there’s a feeling that we are reading about the X-Men, and not the occasionally lifeless action figures who dutifully filled out their roles in the routine crossovers.

And credit to Claremont for bringing Cecilia Reyes into the story, and for tying his introductory arc into the last storyline before the big relaunch. It indicates a willingness on Claremont’s part to play fair, to acknowledge that a few fan favorite characters were created after he left, and that others have contributed to this canon, as well. Making the continuity so tight the arc acts as a sequel in a way to the previous one will be practically unthinkable at Marvel within a year, so it’s interesting now to encounter one of the final stories published to recognize the implicit value of this style of world-building.

By the standards of 2000, the book could be accused of being overwritten. The narrative prose is eloquent, however, with Claremont providing his typical lectures on the real world geography of the story (Nightcrawler’s church is in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood likely taken over by hipsters today), or the science surrounding the X-Men’s unusual space mission.

The dialogue, however, isn’t quite as sharp. Most of it’s fine, particularly the scenes with Nightcrawler, but a few lines do take you out of the story. Shadowcat declaring to herself “I’m Shadowcat!” during a clunky monologue, and then repeating this a few pages later is hard to overlook. Rogue’s declaration that Seth is an “Arrogant piece o’ yahoo!” is another line that shouldn’t have survived a first draft.

Regarding the Neo…well, the days of even caring enough about the Neo to mock them are long over. In this appearance, there’s just enough for the villains to be intriguing. And, just enough vague hints and possibly contradictory dialogue to irritate the reader. Visually, they feature some of Yu’s strongest designs. The facepaint stands out as perhaps silly, but matches the tribal quality Claremont’s trying to convey. Overall, they have a distinctive look—primitive, but still futuristic.

Not working nearly as well are Yu’s X-Men redesigns. Not one classic look in the bunch. Lots of needless accessories—dumb scarves, headbands, bizarre shoulder pads—but nothing that truly suits any of the characters. The only one that doesn’t deserve to be trashed immediately is Shadowcat’s, and that’s because it sticks the closest to the traditional X-look. Not that we’ll see a lot of Shadowcat, of course, thanks to the choppy storytelling of upcoming issues.

And, really, that’s going to be the problem. Decent ideas, a few promising character subplots, mangled by murky storytelling that makes following the plot from issue to issue impossible. How much of this can be laid on Claremont’s feet versus editorial is unknown.

What is clear, however, is Yu’s inconsistent visual storytelling. Some panels are gorgeous, others feel as if he barely brushed his pencil over the page. Even slightly intricate choreography, such as Corbeau’s staff giving a celebratory cheer, just looks off. Yu’s tendency to drop facial features, especially pupils, is on display. (Peter Corbeau inexplicably has black spaces where his eyes should be in one panel.)

Marvel had to realize a year earlier, during “Magneto War,” that Yu’s quality slipped greatly whenever more than a few figures are on the page. How he landed a team book, let alone this one, during the most important launch of the year, is hard to fathom. Ideally, he should’ve been handed a book like Iron Man, given the freedom to draw all the cool tech he wants while avoiding those pesky humans. Instead, he’s here, saddled with a cast of literally dozens and a story so complicated the editor’s already getting confused. Unfortunately, the hiccups we see this issue aren’t going to be getting any better…

This entry exists thanks to those who posted Amazon reviews of my new novel, Black Hat Blues. I’ll continue posting installments in this series—one for every review the book receives. So if you want this series to continue, please, leave a review!