Mmm... dead burnt baby cow flesh. I was also thinking of a more PETA-friendly title, ARMAGEDDY LEE NOW! But as much as I love Canadian prog rock, I love that sweet sweet baby cow meat even more.
The cover to X-Rags one oh eight depicts are heroes being cast hither and thither all willy nilly by a giant ten foot tall robotic fist slamming down on top of them. That's a pretty good fuggin start if you ask me. And once inside we're treated to the visual stylings of John Byrne's penciling and Terry Austin's ink job. Two mastercraftsmen mastering their craft. If I had to describe their technique in one pithy slogan, it would be: An economy of strokes, a wealth of detail.
This marks the start of an 3 year run of Claremont and Byrne that nerds the world over recognize as giving them very nicely sized boners. What do I think about this run? Does this achingly taut pitched tent answer your question? Or to quote the inimitable youth savant, Beavis, "Boooioioioioioiong!"
So what actually happens in this finely composed comic showpiece? Glad you asked, I was getting a little tired of stroking off John Byrne.
So the X-Nips had their bacon saved by the Starjammrods and the Imperial Guardsmen are strewn about the battlefield like so many turds in at the bottom of a port-o-potty. Unfortunately, D'Ken, the evil bird alien king, has already activated the 9 Deathstars and the M'Krann Crystal so all of existence is being literally blinked into oblivion. Oh noes!!!1
X-Man butt buddy Dr. Corbeau is up in a spacelab named Starcore and is able to explain all of this to the Avengers, the Fantastic Fourskin, the President Jimmy Cahtah (really! hicck accent and all!) and to the confused readers.
But the M'Krann crystal has it's own built in safety mechanism, which manifests itself in the form of a little purple dude named Jahf. Jahf does not fuck around. Observe:
That little sumbitch knocks Wolverine literally IN TO OUTER FUCKING SPACE. Whappo, indeed.
Luckily the Assjammer's space ship is near by, which is promptly dispatched to collect the errant berserker.
Jahf pummels the X-Muffs around for a bit until Banshee lets loose 'strongest, tightest-beamed scream I've ever tried,' which probably sounded a lot like Loyd Christmas' most annoying sound in the world from Dumb and Dumber.
Banshee is wiped out but his gambit paid off and Jahf is KO'd. But then the big rowbit fist comes KTHOOMing out of nowhere and the X-Men find themselves totally fucked by MODT, the second guardian of the M'Krann crystal and one THOUSAND times more powerful then buttlick Jahf, the first guardian.
Raza, the orange skinned space pirate is pissed as shit that he has to deal with all this god damn bullshit, so he picks D'Ken, the evil space bird alien king responsible for this whole clusterfuck, and chucks him into the god damn crystal.
Then theres like trippy, cosmic, existential battling as Phoenix, who is at this point the most powerful entity in the universe, flexes her psychic muscles and basically wills the universe back together. Lots of over-wrought gnashing of galactic teeth if you ask me. Here is a typical passage of what we're dealing with: "POWER FLARES FROM THE PHOENIX TO THE LATTICE, AND WHERE HER BEAMS TOUCH, THE SILVERY ENERGY STRANDS GLOW A FRACTION BRIGHTER."
You get the idea. Anyway, Phoenix is successful because Cosair and Storm offer their life forces as anchor's so Jean Grey doesn't get too fucked up while she repairs the vision of the harmony of things, or whatever the fuck Claremont is talking about.
But it all in good fun and its a fitting wrap up to whats essentially been one long storyline, 16 issues and two and a half years in the making. Though you could say that this story arc didn't techinically start until issue 96, after the title is rebooted in Giant Size X-Men 1 and Thunderbird is killed off in X-Men 94 and 95, it's an impressive run no matter how you slice it. And it all looks like a bunch of dumb ass kids shit when looking through the rose tinted sci-fi goggles of the present, what with stuff like Battlestar Galactica and the Dark Knight Returns, but remember what comics where back in the 70s. Newspaper print stapled together, marketed to kids tagging along with the moms at the grocery store, read a few times and kept around in piles until parents get sick of stepping on them, at which point they're launched into a dumpster with old copies of TV Guide and Reader's Digest. Claremont, and his editors, where taking a big chance letting some new talent take what was basically a canceled title and letting him run with it for as long as he did. Now theyre teaming him up with a hot new talent (although I think these two actually worked with each other previous in a 3rd tier spider-man comic prior to their run on X-Men).
What I'm saying is HOLY SHIT DO NERDS LOVE OLD CLAREMONT AND BYRNE X-MEN COMICS.
Allright, like I said, that enough handjobs for these guys. Shit'll get even better in the next issues and crap that actually shows up in the movies and what not finally materializes. Gooooooo X-DONGS!
No comments:
Post a Comment