Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: X-Men
Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: X-Men is a truly misbegotten mess of a comic. It is tempting to call it “misconceived”, but that would actually be unfair; the central concept of these specials is potentially interesting in various ways, and this story even starts off by attempting to take one of the interesting approaches. But having done that, it steers vigorously into the first available ditch.
The high concept of these specials is supposedly to imagine what Marvel’s flagship titles might look like in 2061. Crucially, it is not meant to be projecting fifty years into the future of the characters; the assumption is that the sliding timeline remains in effect, so we’re rather less far advanced into the characters’ future. And the story here dutifully reflects the wonkiness of Marvel time: most characters are slightly and non-specifically order, while Shogo is now an adult.
Now there are several ways you could make this work. You could play it for laughs and do something about the way the characters will never truly be allowed to drift too far from their original concept – though the X-Men are not the best example of that, given their turnover of secondary characters and the way in which the format has been changed over the years.
Or you can go meta and try to imagine a style of superhero comic as drastically different from the present fashion as today’s comics are from the Silver Age. This comic doesn’t even attempt that; stylistically, it resembles nothing more than a competently rendered What If one-shot. Granted that it’s an approach that requires serious levels of ambition and formal inventiveness, the premise demands at least some superficial concessions, which the story doesn’t even attempt.
Or you could look at the way US society is progressing and ask how the X-Men’s central metaphor might be being played in 50 years time. That too is an interesting idea in theory, and according to promotional interviews, it’s the one that writer Robin Furth was trying to go for.
The end result of that is a set-up in which Cyclops, having redeemed himself and become a national hero at some point, has just been elected as the first mutant president of the United States, a result which the story presents as exceptionally divisive. Reading between the lines, Furth presumably thinks that in fifty years time we’ll potentially be doing the Marvel Universe version of the first gay President, which as a real world estimation doesn’t feel all that unreasonable.
That, roughly, is where the good ideas in this comic end, and where the problems begin. For starters, this doesn’t feel like a story sufficiently far removed from the set-up of the present day. Though there’s some cosmetic tinkering with background characters, and the trainees from Bendis’ Uncanny run are written as full and established X-Men, the story gives the impression that in fifty years of further stories, essentially three things have happened: the X-Men have reunited into a single faction, Scott has been redeemed by a big win over some baddies, and Scott has (in the previous issue) married Emma. The story makes heavy use of characters introduced in the last couple of years, but appears to assume that none will debut in the next 45. One wonders whether Furth is aware that the threshold for implausible comic presidents was crossed some time ago when DC put Lex Luthor in charge.
So this doesn’t feel like a story that Marvel might find themselves doing in 2061. On the contrary, it’s a storyline I can very easily imagine appearing in five years – maybe even two.
Problem number two: having decided that her story is about the fault lines over the acceptance of mutants (or whoever they stand for by that time) in 2061, Furth proceeds to do literally nothing with that. There are a bunch of one-note protesters outside the White House, but they’re plainly the extreme end of anti-Obama crackpots with the serial numbers filed off. That’s not a problem in itself; all stories about the future are in some sense about the present. But there’s no exploration of the theme; there’s just a bunch of nut jobs waving placards, as the story wanders off in a different direction entirely.
That direction is a mysterious cosmic thingy which erases Emma from history on page 3, leaving Scott as the only person who can remember that she ever existed. The rest of the comic consists of Scott insisting that he definitely had a wife, and the rest of the X-Men indulging him. Scott blames the protestors outside, despite there being no evidence that this was anything to do with them, as opposed to, say, a super villain. So he does what any poorly written nitwit would do: he goes outside to stand on an armoured car and yell at the protestors through a megaphone. One of them promptly shoots him, which in the circumstances feels like a reasonable and measured act of literary criticism. Scott fires back, which is presented as a PR disaster (even though he’s clearly shot and bleeding, and surely the bigger issue ought to be that the President appears to have had a psychotic breakdown and is spending his time yelling through a megaphone about his imaginary wife).
A whole bunch of other mutants are then randomly removed in the same way Emma was, and finally Scott himself is vanished. The disappearances turn out to be the work of Phoenix, who tells Scott that the world is not ready for him to lead it, that “your Presidency will bring about war and disaster”, and that in order to avoid this future he must “undo the past”. Everything fades to white and the final two panels show Scott and Jean celebrating their wedding anniversary.
Where do we begin?
Even on the surface level, as a piece of plotting, this borders on incoherent. It barely connects with the protestor story. The story gives Scott (and the others) no choice in being “disappeared” yet still wants to present its final page as if Scott had made some sort of choice. The only evidence in the story to support Phoenix’s claims that Scott will be a disastrous President come from his response to the sudden disappearance of his wife – which was Phoenix’s fault in the first place. Leave that out of account, and the implication here seems to be that even a mutant who can actually win a presidential election would be so divisive that he’d better not bother. What is Furth suggesting that he should have done instead? Stay at home and not make trouble until America is a better place (something that will have to be brought about by the non-mutant majority, since the mutants should be quietly waiting for conditions to improve)? The story seems to be heading in that direction, but it’s so unlikely that Furth would intend something so ridiculous that I can only conclude she just hasn’t thought it through.
And in what way does bringing Jean back solve the problem? Is the suggestion meant to be that Scott somehow goes on to become a better or more broadly acceptable President? How, for god’s sake? Or is the idea that he never becomes President at all? In which case, again, what does Jean have to do with that? Is the moral here simply supposed to be that the X-Men franchise took an irreparable wrong turn by killing off Jean Grey? If so, again, why? Is there a point to any of this besides blind nostalgia for Scott and Jean as a couple?
Why did Phoenix remove Emma before everyone else anyway, aside from the obvious fact that if she hadn’t, there wouldn’t be a story? Is Scott’s response supposed to be demonstrating some sort of point? If so, (a) it doesn’t, and (b) why is Phoenix trying to make that point, when she apparently doesn’t require Scott’s consent to do what she wants?
Why does Phoenix even care about a war on Earth anyway? This is a cosmic entity that casually destroys planets, for god’s sake. Even ignoring that, isn’t destruction and rebirth precisely her thing? When has she ever shown the slightest concern for human geopolitics? And since when does she have precognitive powers? And since when can she alter history at will?
The ending doesn’t even work within the logic of the “100th anniversary” conceit. Furth appears to be positing that by 2061, Marvel still won’t have brought back Jean Grey. So she’s proposing a story in which Marvel resets history to at least the end of the Grant Morrison run, in order to bring back a character that the readers of the day won’t care about in the slightest, because she hasn’t been used in over half a century. Why would anyone in 2061 want to see that? John Byrne will be dead by then! Even if this were a remotely good idea on some other level, it’s a story for a notional final issue, not a notional anniversary special.
From a reasonably promising high concept, this comic ends up with a story that doesn’t work on a plot level, doesn’t work on a thematic level, and doesn’t even work on a gimmick level. It’s truly, truly bad.
The US probably already has had a gay president: James Buchanan. Elected in 1856.
The best thing to come from this issue is that I indirectly learned that James Buchanan was very likely the US’s first gay President.
You neglected to mention that the art was repulsive.
It bears saying twice: the art was repulsive.
A shame, since a couple of the 100th Anniversary issues have been OK, and at least one – the Avengers one by James Stokoe – promises to be very good indeed.
Yyyyeah. The Spider-Man one of these was similarly odd. The last part of a storyline – actually, in its defence, one was able to quite easily divine what had gone before, both in terms of plot and broad-strokes continuity, (but on the other hand, perhaps that was because they were repeated memes) – in which Our -Man has appeared to learn nothing, and in which surface changes are all. I really hope they weren’t _meant_ to be making a self-defeating point about the immutability of the Marvel Universe. Although now I’m thinking they am. Are. Were. Maybe they _are_ going to reboot next year. Maybe this is the propaganda that’s meant to make us glad of it.
Comics about Comics. Eugh.
//\Oo/\\
It’s possible, of course, that the answer to all the “since when…”? questions about the Phoenix are “Since X-Men vol 30 #23, ‘Abandon Hope: Part Six of The Even Darker Phoenix Saga‘, published 2033″. But in the absence of evidence to support that, it’s not a very satisfying answer.
Probably isn’t good enough. Being off the closet is necessary.
Actually, doesn’t Bendis’ X-Men have Dazzler as president?
And the last X-Men film had JFK as a mutant.
The whole issue felt like a dream/nightmare. Cyclops seemed to be using some sort of confused dream logic.
Didn’t Phoenix alter history during Morrison’s run?
“Didn’t Phoenix alter history during Morrison’s run?”
Yeah, but not at this scale. She just influenced Scott into giving Emma a hug.
I can make up excuses for most of Paul’s questions regarding Phoenix and her motivations. E.g. Grant Morrison had Phoenix pruning failed timelines. Both the movement away from the burn it all down approach and the odd concern with Earth, the X-men, and Cyclops can all be attributed to the influence of Jean’s persona since their initial bonding. What’s strange is Phoenix is supposed to be the one who reset the timeline and pushed Scott and Emma to stay together, now she’s changing her mind, because?
I saw from the preview in Comixology [R.I.P.] that Emma still hasn’t lost her sexual issues or her delusional bravado. ‘Hey, Emma. Did Rachel ever tell you about the time she beat Galactus to a pulp, while she was in a coma?’
PS Lincoln might’ve been ‘gay’ too. Amusing to point out to Tea-party thugs the symmetry of the first Republican President being a gay man who freed the slaves and the last Republican* President being a black man who freed the gays. *Yes, I know Barrack Obama’s a Democrat. But his policies and temperament are very ‘moderate Republican’ from decades ago before they were all purged for being politically incorrect.
@ Matt Andersen and Niall
Rose went Phoenix, now Phoenix is manipulating individuals timelines like Rose.
Lincoln probably wasn’t gay considering he had a few female love interests, a few children, children, and there were even rumors that he slept with female slaves. There’s an argument that maybe he was bi-sexual because he shared beds with men and had close friendships with them, but that was a common practice back then, so it’s not exactly strong evidence of his sexuality. It sounds like Buchanan was openly suspected of being gay by many people at the time, though.
Err… back to the comic book. Do you guys think President Cyclops is gay? I mean… yeah, the art really did suck…
So what I’m getting is this is a story about how Robin Furth didn’t like how Grant Morrison’s run ended.
Cory
Well ‘gay’ as in certainly not openly and we don’t know if anything happened or what it meant to anyone involved if it did, but by the gay counterpart to the one drop doctrine, if two grown men did have consensual sexual contact and didn’t pretend they were too drunk to remember…
Now, about Emma. Poor thing.
Incidentally, doesn’t it seem like Emma has become more defined by her sexuality now that she’s Cyclops’s Girlfriend? Even more so than when she was a super villain dominatrix?
@Taibak,
I think Morrison started that before Emma and Scott became an item, but of course that was the direction he was headed from the beginning. OTOH, I haven’t read most of GenX; but I imagine Emma was less sexualized because it was more of an all ages title than GM’s New X-Men.
I think it’s simply that in Generation X, she was a supporting character, and her relationship to the stars was teacher-student. She had Sean as a potential love interest to divert any suggestion of potential relationship with the kids, and so sexuality just wasn’t a central feature of her relationship with the stars of the book.
Though not blatantly sexualized as in Morrison’s run, Emma has always embodied the principles of hardcore sex culture, in particular the dominate and submissive positions. Especially in Generation X.
Well, it’s more that when she was a super villain or in Generation X, she was a strong, independent character, despite being extremely sexualized.
Now, it just seems like she’s increasingly falling into the role of the Lead Character’s Girlfriend and that’s overshadowing everything else. ‘Defined by her sexuality’ may be the wrong way to put this, but it seems like a step backwards for her.
If the goal was really to look at what kind of stories the X-Men books would be telling in 2061, the story should have used mutants as a thinly-veiled allegory for the android rights movement.
Or, assuming that our robotic overlords are in place by then, human rights in general.
The ending of this comic says that Scott and Jean are always meant to be together, never mind the distractions along the way. Furth is giving them their happily ever after. Yes, it is like reading fan-fiction…
I’ve been surprised by the number of fans, presumably younger fans, who really liked Scott and Emma. We got, what, a solid decade of them?
@Joseph – Presumably younger? Hmm… well, I’m 43 years old. I began reading X-Men in the late 1970s back when Byrne was on the book and I preferred Scott/Emma over Scott/Jean.
I find it hard to imagine someone *not* preferring Scott/Emma to Scott/Jean.
Oops! Earlier, when I said reading the comic is like reading fan-fic, I am referring to the quality of Furth’s writing.
As far as relationship goes, I prefer Scott/Jean. Written right, Scott/Jean feels more real, more natural. They are the X-Books’ equivalent of Reed Richards & Susan Storm. Sure, their relationship may have issues, but ultimately they fit each other perfectly.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Byrne era. Scott and Jean had a great love story back in the day that may have ended on a tragic note, but it was still an enjoyable read. And, IMO, it should have been left at that. I found their post-resurrection relationship to be thoroughly dull.
Emma and Scott were much more interesting to me. Having said that, I’d rather see them move on then get back together.
I think Scott and Kitty would make for an interesting relationship…
The Scott/Jean relationship seemed good for a first romance. It had all of the intensity and drama that those sometimes have. For instance, they could always tell what the other one was thinking because of their psychic bond or whatever. Isn’t that what every teenager/early 20s couple wants — total connection no matter what?
Scott and Emma seem like a more mature relationship. They’re very different, but they work(ed) to understand each other. Scott’s found someone he doesn’t have to put on a pedestal, and Emma’s found the acceptance of the ultimate good guy.
I guess what I’m saying is I prefer Scott/Emma. Don’t get me wrong — I really liked the Scott/Jean relationship, but it never seemed like it was going to last. It was always destined to end in heartache and drama.
I would be really disappointed to see Kitty in a relationship with Scott. Scott has a tendency to overshadow his women; they all end up being supporting characters for his neuroses. Kitty deserves better than that.
I grew up with Scott and Jean, and feel that Scott and Emma is a better relationship.
Like Thom H. said, Scott and Jean seemed like a first romance. One that happened to be stretched long past its breaking point, turned into half the defining element of both characters, and became one of the things that the X-universe revolved around.
Kate Pride as President in X-Men: The End made much more sense, and (similar to Bendis’ President Dazzler) makes the cute point about the future that a woman being president won’t be the issue.
Scott and Emma worked really well for a long time. They were equal partners but Emma got pushed to the side because of Scott’s rise and fall arc.
Even now that they are not dating, she seems to be taking a backseat to Scott. She’s not really being much of a leader or a teacher.
Unfortunately, both Uncanny and All-New are too busy to allow Emma to fit into her role as teacher, which has long been established as her true calling. Acerbic, sexually in-your-face, but still a teacher.
Well I think that both are pretty busy, but I also think that if they started having the Uncanny crew teach the younger members of the cast, it would show that the difference between the Cyclops and Wolverine camps was pretty minimal.
The thing I consider ridiculous is the idea that Jean’s going to stay dead and Scott’s going to stay with Emma for the next 50 YEARS and THEN someone’s going to want to split Scott and Emma up to get him back with Jean. Things like that backslide because of nostalgia. We’re talking about a comic book written by someone who probably wasn’t even born yet the last time Jean and Scott were together.
I prefer Scott/Jean to Scott/Emma, but if Jean came back to life, I think I’d actually rather see her with someone else (or just being single for a while, though I don’t see her as the type to declare “I don’t need anyone but me” in the long term) rather than splitting up Scott and Emma just to restore the old status quo. (Though not Wolverine. That pairing just bores me.)
There was a good stretch of time when Jean was a vibrant character in her own right and not just the tail end of “Scott and…” that seemed to end the time the cartoon made her the person who just faints every episode and was buried for good when Grant Morrison somehow convinced people she was actually the boring one in the relationship (right, Jean was the one keeping Scott from being a red hot sex machine, that tracks with everything we know about them). I’d like to see her go back to that (especially as an alternative to being dead or a teenager who constantly acts like her IBS is acting up).
This was legitimately one of the worst comics I’ve read all year.
Luckily, the Stokoe Avengers one was pretty awesome
“…when Grant Morrison somehow convinced people she was actually the boring one in the relationship.”
Yeah, Morrison was controlling our minds.
I felt the Scott/Jean relationship had gotten boring, not Jean herself nor her role in their relationship. It takes two to make sparks not fly, after all.
And I’d felt that way about their relationship well before Morrison entered the picture.
@ZZZ
That was not my reading of Morrison’s take on the Scott/Jean relationship. Their relationship wasn’t boring because Jean was boring, it was because Scott was repressed. He was unable to see Jean as anything other than his perfect high school sweetheart. So instead of sharing his darker thoughts with his wife and trusting that she’d understand, he projected his self-hatred onto Jean.
He thought she’d hate him, or worse, understand him and then he’d have to start seeing her as a human being instead the one thing in his life that was “perfect.”
If/When Jean returns, I’d love it if her and Scott got back together for another go. But only after they re-established her as a solo character. Which I guess Bendis is kind of doing in All-New, but even in that she’s still mostly defined by her relationship with Cyclops.
Jean had gotten boring. Not because she was intrinsically boring, but because writers (as they do with many characters) don’t know what to write with her. Writers just rehash the same stories and ideas, and writers also have issues dealing with her power set in team stories.
To most writers, Jean was:
“The telepath”, one just shy of Xavier. An ability and power level high enough that she might have to be written around for stories to work.
“Scott’s wife”, though Scott was equally cast as just being “Jean’s husband”.
Phoenix.
“The love triangle”, though Jean was always stuck with Wolverine (and Wolverine stuck with Jean), while at least Scott could at least have his eyes wander to other characters.
A few decades of being only that, and she gets boring. It didn’t help that Scott was kind of boring from the start, and she was stuck at the hip with him for so long. It also didn’t help that her alternative possible relationship (which everyone new wasn’t possible anyway) ended up being stuck as Wolverine, who was so everywhere for so long that he ended up being Scott-level boring for entirely different reasons.
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More broadly, Jean seems to be an especially prominent example of a female character written almost entirely in terms of how everyone else perceives her, with her only real internal conflicts appearing in the rather exaggerated, somewhat externalized forms of Dark Phoenix and Maddie Pryor.
The problem is there from the beginning, where Stan and Jack mostly use her as someone the boys drool and then fight over before she’s shoved into the “Scott’s girlfriend” role for the duration of the Silver Age.
Even the Phoenix Saga, in retrospect, ends up being less a story about Jean as a person and more a story about power (and Mastermind’s headgames) overwhelming and corrupting her personality. We don’t really know much *about* Jean other than her love of Cyclops and the fact that she has a generic “dark” side.
Of the original five, thanks to character development over the years we know that Scott is the repressed but deeply loyal one, Warren is the superficially flippant one with some real trauma before and behind him, Bobby is the immature one who’s ambivalent about superheroing, and Hank’s the insecure brainiac. But Jean? She’s really just The Team Girl and then The Girlfriend.
Much as it has problems with plot, pacing, structure, and characterization, All-New X-Men is at least rectifying this by giving us a Jean who can react. Its Jean works well as a person trying to figure out her own identity and pushing back against the way everyone else expects her to be a legend, a love interest, or a potential threat to the cosmos. It’s quite nice to have Jean as the viewpoint character for once.
In fairness to past writers, the pre-Inferno issues of X-Factor did some good things with this angle using the resurrected/non-Phoenix Jean, but then Maddie turned evil and jean was quickly recast as a generically good love interest to contrast with Maddie, her “evil twin.”
It’s a shame that All-New achieves what it does by flattening out most of the other characters — Warren, Bobby, and even Hank have become pretty interchangeable Bendis Teenagers, and SCott, the other distinctive cast member, is gone now — but it’s a development that I hope sticks either for Teen Jean or some probably inevitable Resurrected Jean.
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