Chris Claremont’s X-Men — and make no mistake, no matter who the artist was, I always thought of it as “Chris Claremont’s X-Men” — was the first comic book to which I became hopefully addicted. It wasn’t the first comic I bought, it wasn’t the first one I loved, but it was the first book that made me feverish at the thought of missing an issue. The first issue I bought was #137 — yes, the iconic final chapter in the Dark Phoenix saga. It was like no comic book I’d ever read. Claremont’s scenarios were imaginative parables, his dialogue was crisp and believable (despite a few peculiar dialect tics, such as Irish brogue, Wolverine’s “bub’s” and Sabretooth calling every woman “frail”), and his characters exhibited a realism and depth of relationships that read more like a novel than a comic. I maintained an unbroken string of Chris Claremont’s X-Men up until the first “arc” of the spin-off X-Men he did with Jim Lee — something like 12 years of comics without missing an issue. By that point, everything I had once loved about Claremont’s work felt hackneyed and over-exposed. No one was more disappointed with my dropping the book than me — Chris Claremont, more than any other author, was the voice of my early adolescence. He single-handedly made me a comic book junkie, and his influence is obvious in my more painfully overwrought sentences, or in Claremontese, “Claremont’s voice, whiskey-rich and familiar, rang silvery in the silent inner recess of his mind, ever present and comforting when the solitude threatened to overwhelm him.”

This could be condensed to, “I have strong feelings about Chris Claremont and his current do-over comic, X-Men Forever, recently dubbed X-Men Forever2.” But hey — Chris Claremont.

The set-up for this book, the 37th monthly X-title, is sort of a high-concept take on What If?, namely, “What if Claremont had been allowed to continue writing X-Men after 1991, and carry out his plans for Fabian Cortez, mutant burn-out and other things long since forgotten?”

For the record, I think it’s a bad idea. X-continuity is already fraught with more plot holes, worm holes, time slips, slip-ups and re-jiggering than any book this side of Legion of Superheroes. Asking readers to recall incidents from 19 years ago is a bit much — and I’m not quite clear if we’re to assume that all Marvel Universe continuity is set back in the same time for this book only. Are we gonna see the West Coast Avengers at some point? I don’t know. I buy it anyway, because hey — Chris Claremont. I feel like I owe him something.

And you know what? It’s starting to feel like a Claremont Classic at times, emphasis on “starting to” and “at times.” The first 15 or 16 issues were hampered by some dodgy art and a plot that was opaque at best, mainly due to the 19 year gap. Issue 18 and beyond have moved forward rather than asking the reader to look backward, allowing the reader (or me, at least) to stop worrying about continuity stuff and just focus on what’s happening on the page, and the results are much more positive. Wolverine’s dead (I honestly don’t know how — I missed three non-consecutive early issues, and he died in one of them), Sabretooth’s a reluctant and eyeless X-man, Nick Fury’s working with the team because S.H.I.E.L.D. has been corrupted by something and he feels like the X-Men are the last of the untainted good guys, Jean Grey and Scott aren’t an item anymore because Jean loves Beast — she only needs to hook up with Bobby Drake and Warren Worthington III and she’ll have a complete set of original X-Men on her bedpost — crappy Cajun character Gambit is around to provide Claremont a dialect with which to annoy me, Nightcrawler has switched powers with Rogue and is no longer furry (but she is, because blue fur is part of Nighty’s mutant power?), and in a development nobody saw coming, Kitty Pryde has one of Wolverine’s claws in her right hand and her left hand is Sabretooth’s (not sure how, another missing issue).

Yeah, that’s Claremontesque.

It all built up to a final confrontation between the virulently anti-mutant Trask family (creators of the Sentinels) and the X-Men in space, and Beast died to save the world. It was pretty awesome; it was no death of Phoenix (original flavor), but there were high notes and moments of mortal weakness, a couple of nice twists, it was entertaining and it felt good. Claremont has always been able to make all the tragedy and chest-beating that goes on in X-Men feel like it means something, that these characters matter. The first year of the book gradually built back up to a level worthy of the legend. It also had its fair share of low lights, most of them revolving around Sabretooth. I’ve never been on-board with the idea that he’d join the X-Men, nor have I ever bought into the idea that he’s a worthy foe for the team. This is a character who used to get thumped one-on-one by Iron Fist before the end of an issue — Wolverine should be able to wipe the floor with him. And, you know, Gambit’s doing his Gambit thing, saying “mon chere” and throwing explosive bid whist cards, and that’s never really done it for me.

If you’re in the market for another X-book, now would be a good time to hop aboard. The second year has just begun, complete with re-setting the issue counter back at 1 — marketing wins again — and the team has just fought the Avengers to a standstill and then disappeared complete with Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. I don’t know where this is leading, but my Claremontsense tells me we’re due for a visit with the Shi’ar, because hey — Chris Claremont. I’d gripe more about his reliance on his four pillars of plotting (tortured romance, mutant hatred as stand-in for racism, Shi’ar adventures, character powers being amplified/nullified/modified), but I’m actually pretty happy to have him back.

Yes, even though this happened.

-Paul

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