In the course of my occasional perusals of the Official Index to the Marvel Universe, I came across the entry for issue 218 of the Avengers, co-written by J.M. DeMatteis and Jim Shooter, and I knew from the synopsis that this issue called for a more thorough, in-depth analysis!

Our story begins on an ordinary quiet day at Avengers Mansion, when Jarvis opens the door to greet a precocious young lad who demands to meet with the Avengers on a matter of grave importance.  Wasp happens by and offers to take the boy on a grand your, but sick of being patronized, he shoves his way past her and into the mansion to find the rest of the Avengers.  Which brings us to this panel.  I love this panel, I love everything about it.  It’s so simple, yet so expressive, in that it tells such a wonderful story about an off-day in the lives of the Avengers.  Thor, the immortal Norse god of thunder, son of All-Father Odin and wielder of the mighty Mjolnir, in full regalia, has been crouched down and holding up this doodad for the last, like, forty-five minutes, and e’en the vaunted patience of the Asgardians hath limitations, though verily it doth approach the edges of eternity itself.  The Thing holding up a giant mechanical framistat for hours on end on behalf of Mr. Fantastic?  Sure, of course, that’s what he’s there for.  But Thor?  Hilarious.  Meanwhile, Captain America is so eager to get their team meeting underway that he has spent the last three hours working out his frustrations in the gym.  This is fair enough for a guy like Captain America, but aside from the math not adding up here – perhaps we may safely assume that the inter-spatial monitor repair was but the last item on Iron Man’s extensive to-do list – but now, his patience at an end, he has resorted to leaning against the wall and staring at these two until their work is completed and they can finally get down to important Avengers business.  I suppose he could bring these guys up to speed while they work, but they haven’t yet called the meeting to order, and the by-laws are there for a reason, you guys.

So once Little Timmy Trouble successfully infiltrates Avengers Mansion, we get a couple truly wonderful moments, like this one: I’m not 100% sure what’s supposed to be happening in this panel, but truly, who among us could reasonably expect to survive being spanked by the Norse god of thunder?  (Of course, if Chris Hemsworth Thor was willing to participate in this study, I would report back to you, dear reader, with my findings.)  But the very next panel, oh my god you guys, this is the one that just sets me all a-giggle.  “Steeeeve… is this another one of your boys hanging around, getting underfoot?  Avengers Mansion simply isn’t equipped to accommodate all of the foundlings you insist on bringing home, and poor Jarvis is absolutely at his wit’s end!”  “No, no, I recognize all of my boys, Tony, and this little scamp isn’t one of them!”  I just love that Captain America uses the phrase brought around.  Sure, I suppose I could do some research on Captain America 267 as recommended by the footnote, but I don’t wanna.  (Well.  Maybe someday.)  And so, when Iron Man asks the boy’s name to see if they can contact his parents, the boy instead reaches into his wee little jacket with an air of “calm uncertainty”(?), straight-up pulls out a revolver, and before the Avengers can do anything to stop him, he shoots himself in the head.

Dear reader, at this point, I would like to show you the eye-catching cover of this issue:

This is the cover of Avengers 218, released in April 1982, and I can only imagine that it stood out among the other offerings displayed on newsstands!  I want you to think about how many adult professionals in the comic industry signed off on this issue, gave it their stamp of approval, and said, “Yeah okay, this looks good, let’s send it off to the printers.”  This issue includes a full-page ad for Bubble-Yum bubble gum, and when one turns the page, literally the very next page, we get a five-year-old boy shooting himself in the head.

Anyway!  Upon resurrecting from a wad of Silly-Putty — and thereby finally succeeding in grabbing the Avengers’ full attention — this child tells them his tragic tale.  Formerly some dumb minor Captain America villain, “billionaire/inventor” Morgan MacNeil Hardy, he was reborn after his apparent demise, but with full memory of all his many lives, going back thousands of years.  For lack of a better option, Captain America refers to him as “this… ‘Forever-Man,'” which, c’mon you guys, he’s from the ’40s, his name is Captain America, what does he know about cool super-names?  Good ol’ Thor basically says he doesn’t see the problem, since he knows from firsthand experience that immortality is awesome, but the Forever-Man replies that yeah, it’d be awesome if you were a thunder god instead of just an endless succession of regular boring jerks, which I think is a valid point.  (Though doesn’t it make this self-professed immortal’s earlier assertion that he wouldn’t “live through” Thor spanking him somewhat… peculiar?)  So the Avengers run some tests, after which Iron Man has no problem referring to this kid as “a freak of nature” while he’s in the same room, and in the space of two pages, dear sweet Wasp goes from “the Avengers will do everything in their power to help you!” to “But who are we to provide him with a means of suicide?”, even though that is what he is literally demanding!

So what happens afterwards?  Well, what else is a Forever-Man to do if Earth’s mightiest heroes cannot aid him in his plight?  He sneaks out from Avengers Mansion under the cover of night, stows away on board a south-bound freight train, and uses his trusty revolver to fend off a pair of hobos with untoward intentions towards this young boy traveling alone, who, by the way, are drawn to resemble Laurel and Hardy(??????????).  He then exploits his child-like appearance to bluff his way into a research base and on board a space probe headed toward the sun, in the hopes that he can take matters into his own hand and bring about his own demise… resulting in the following nightmarish ordeal.

You guys, let’s… let’s just take a moment here.  Can you even wrap your head around the fact that this guy, this tragic immortal, stowed away on board a solar probe with no life support, continuing to suffocate and die and resurrect and suffocate and die and resurrect over and over again, for as many weeks as it takes to reach the sun?  Oh and P.S. he’s in the body of a naked five-year-old boy???  That is DARK, sirs!  They just don’t make ’em like this anymore, and there is probably a valid reason for that.

As much as I hate to admit it, the latter half of this issue is comparatively dull (in that it does not actively portray the Avengers as helpless to stop the repeated suicidal demise of a child).  Once the Forever-Man reaches the sun, he is repeatedly obliterated and resurrected to the point where he becomes a deranged amnesiac giant sun-monster, then makes his way back to Earth to wreak vengeance upon the Avengers, even though he can’t remember why.  A by-the-numbers superhero battle follows ensues, after which Thor summons a vortex to hurl the Forever-Man into orbit before it goes nova and explodes.  The Avengers explore the resulting crater and find the young boy resurrected yet again, only this time, with no memory of who he is or how he came to be there.  As the issue draws to a close and Iron Man wonders if this amnesia, if legitimate, might be a bit convenient, he and Captain America ponder the ramifications of what they’ve learned from this adventure.  And I can only hope that they continue to wonder about it “for the rest of their days.”  To this day, while Steve Rogers is passing down the mantle of Captain America to his longtime friend the Falcon, or pursing fugitive Avengers suspected of annihilating entire parallel Earths, or even fighting in an alien gladiatorial arena alongside his pal Devil Dinosaur, I hope he sometimes takes a moment to pause, reflect, and wonder about this day in which the Avengers encountered a little naked boy who just wanted to shoot himself in front of them when he wasn’t rampaging through the city as a giant sun-monster.

Since I’ve been on a latter-day Chris Claremont kick lately, I thought I’d tell you all about The Arena, a four-issue arc of Claremont’s X-Treme X-Men series from 2004, with art by Igor Kordey.  What I believe was originally intended as a stand-alone graphic novel, these issues include some of the most unabashed, gratuitous examples of Chris Claremont’s weird S&M/mind-control fetish.  Now, I of course have no problems with S&M activities between two or more consenting adults, or artistic expressions thereof in and of themselves, but it’s… it’s just a bit weird when it shows up so overtly in an X-Men comic book.  And it’s this weirdness that I want to share with you, dear reader!

Let’s start with the main character of this four-issue arc, Storm, who leaves the X-Men to track down slaver Tullamore Voge while the rest of them confront Elias Bogan, a malevolent disembodied mind-controlling mutant, because what else would he be.  They make some halfhearted attempts to stop her from going solo, giving her a hard time about being “too cocky, too stubborn, too proud” to call for backup if she needs it.  She goes to visit her longtime friend Yukio, a freewheeling ninja-type who routinely demonstrates her reckless nature by jumping off Tokyo high-rise buildings, so secure is she in the knowledge that Storm will catch her, which makes Storm’s customary outrage (“You could have killed yourself!  What possessed you, woman?!”) a bit ludicrous considering she does this literally every time they meet.  So after sharing some godawful awkward dialogue, they do that thing where Yukio gets Storm to dress up so they can charm their way past the standard-issue bouncer at this exclusive high-end sexy sex-club, asking “What’re you afraid of, ‘Ro?  The clothes… or the woman they may set free?”  Because yeah, if anybody can draw “sexy,” you’d better believe it’s Igor Kordey!  (I mean, dat codpiece, amirite?)  More old-man-style narration follows:

“In my life, I have never met anyone so utterly fearless, so full of passion, so totally and fiercely alive [as Yukio].  With every breath, she dares death to claim her.  The closer he comes, the more she laughs.  I have never understood why she chose me for a friend, but it is a relationship I have come to cherish.  She is a wild, untamed soul.  And when I am with her, so am I.”

Yaawwwn.  Just reminding us that if there’s anything Chris Claremont loves, it’s [over-]writing the exact same relationships he wrote for these characters thirty-plus years ago, which, for the actual sincere Claremont fans out there, I can only imagine they love for his consistency.  In the club, they’re approached by foppish show-runner Masata Koga, who wants to recruit them to the Arena, which he figures they can’t resist as he describes them all as “predators.  That is the nature of our species.  It is bred into our genes, our blood, our bones, our very soul.  The urge to fight!  The need to win!”  Predictably enough, Storm breaks up the fight-to-the-death by entering the arena of her own free will, facing her opponent… ugh… Musclehead, and delivering her knockout punch with a SKARA-BOOM! along with her classic finishing line, “But you should remember, whenever you see lightning… there’s also thunder!”  And because nothing is sexier than underground mutant gladiatorial fights, and due to Storm’s apparent lobotomy, she is overcome by the “glorious” victory and wants more!

Anyway, Storm goes back to Yukio’s apartment where they gab at each other for pages and pages and pages, during which Storm presumably ruins Yukio’s laptop by melodramatically splashing wine all over a jpeg of Xavier’s face.  (Storm, what the @#$% is wrong with you?)  Some time later, Guido “Strong Guy” Carosella – who brought such joy to so many in Peter David’s X-Factor – is reduced to providing page after page after interminable page of expository dialogue in the most excruciating dumb-guy accent:

“Waitaminnit!  I t’ink I see where you’re goin’ wit’ dis, Storm.  Dis is not good.  Dis is so not good.  Dis is why I went after you before, ta keep you from doin’ somethin’ so unbelievably stoopid!  Dis ain’t no casual deal I’m talkin’ here. […] “Ev’ry time you walk out onto the sands of the Arena, it’s all or nuttin’.”

So for whatever reason, Storm decides to go back to the Arena and take on the role of Champion, at which point her longtime nemesis Callisto shows up.  I’d like to talk about Callisto for a minute.  For those of you who, for whatever reason, did not tune in to the X-Men Animated Series, Callisto is the on-again-off-again leader of the Morlocks, the community of mutant outcasts who live in the abandoned sewer tunnels beneath New York City because their disfigurements make them unable to live in human society.  She’s a huntress with superhumanly keen senses and a penchant for knife-fights.  But all too often, she’s portrayed as just an otherwise beautiful woman with an eyepatch, which she isn’t.  You wanna see Callisto?  You wanna see my Callisto?  Baby, feast your eye(s) on this terrifying she-monster from your nightmares!  That’s Callisto!

But instead, because we’re in Japan, and Chris Claremont wants to add another layer of fetish onto this series, we get [BONER ALERT]… tentacles!  And it’s at this point that I start to wonder at the confluence of events that led to this old, old man writing these X-Men characters to act out his bizarre BDSM fetishes, as drawn by someone like Igor Kordey, who, bless his heart, is clearly giving it his all, but the end result of which is less sexy than it is… discomfiting.  I can also only wonder at the hilarious conversation that must have occurred between issues where someone (perhaps assistant editors Stephanie Moore and Cory Sedlmeier, or editor Mike Marts, who I can only imagine must have been loving their jobs while all this was going on) suggested that Igor Kordey maaaybe consider adding electrical tape X’s over Callisto’s nipples underneath her fishnet top.  Because, yeah, we don’t want this to get weird or anything.

But as Storm wonders aloud to Callisto whether it was worth it to transform herself to this extent just to settle a score with her, we come to the most unfathomable, bizarre, what-the-@#$%iest part of these four issues: Masque.

Let me tell you about Masque – don’t worry, he’s a relatively simple character, it won’t take long.  Masque is actually one of the first Morlocks we meet, and one with the most reason to be there: he is a hideously disfigured old man with the unique mutant ability to re-shape the flesh of others with but a touch – able to make someone look exactly like someone else, or even mush up their face all horrible so they suffocate – but he is unable to use his powers on himself.  You see?  You see how neatly this works?  His internal bitterness and rage against the society that shuns him is reflected and reinforced by his grotesque appearance.  He has the ability to make everyone beautiful, but he doesn’t.  He’s a monster inside and out, but you can see where he’s coming from, and relatability leads to sympathy, and sympathy leads to tragedy.  At this point I am over-explaining his character.

So when someone that looks like Marilyn Monroe in a kimono saunters in with her leather-fetish entourage (Purge, PosterBoy, and Paradise, if you’re wondering)… and Storm immediately recognizes this individual as Masque… and thinks things like, “Masque’s presence explains why the agents who came before me disappeared.  She could have turned them into anyone — or anything!” [emphasis added]… it threw me, to say the least.  It continues to throw me.  Because that isn’t Masque.  He has always been a horrible old man, so there’s no reason Storm or anybody else should recognize him here (unless it’s a kind of Dr. Girlfriend scenario in which he still has the same voice to go along with his new appearance, which, in my imagination, is amazing).  Storm references Masque’s desire for vengeance against both herself and Callisto, so it’s not like I’m confusing this new character with somebody else.  There’s even a scene where s/he glibly wonders whose appearance s/he’ll take on next.

Please note that both these comics and Masque’s first appearance are written by the same writer.  Chris Claremont created Masque.  So to this day I am at a loss to explain his justification here; Masque is hardly what I would call an important figure in the X-Men mythos, but he was a solid character, and the thought of a character’s physical body being completely at the mercy of someone else’s whim is genuinely creepy.  Later issues of the X-Men, as well as the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe, credit this change to a good ol’ “secondary mutation,” but to give Masque the ability to change his own face as well as those of others basically reduces him to just another shape-shifter, and completely undercuts the foundation of this character for not a lot of gain.  I mean, why not just cut to the chase, skip the middleman, and highlight slaver Tullamore Voge as the mastermind behind the Arena, for whom Claremont has long sported an inexplicable boner?  Or why not just make Masque some horrible old man in a nice sharp suit to go along with his new role?  What was the point?  

So then we’re treated to a whole ‘nother issue in which Storm and Callisto compete against their will as slaves to this mutant-on-mutant gladiatorial combat for the entertainment of the masses, and because it’s Chris Claremont, you can’t have slavery without some seriously uncomfortable S&M scenes.  Like this one.  And this one.  And hoo-boy this one.  Not to mention more seeking, slithering tentacle action.  Have you forgotten we’re reading an X-Men comic yet?  Where we all managed to get here by successfully navigating past the wee small “PSR” next to the issue number on the cover that stands for “Parents Strongly Recommended?”  (I can only hope my mom is okay with my reading this stuff.)  Again, I’m as open to BDSM as anyone, but when it’s so blatantly non-consensual and happening to a character I care about, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.  Why is this happening to poor Storm?  Why did this story need to be told over four double-sized issues?  Why did this story happen in 2004, when we should all know better?  Is this what comes from allowing Chris Claremont free rein to just do whatever he wants?  Or was it all just for the sake of that one comic writer devoted X-Men fan where this story just ticks every box on his kink checklist, and if he thinks this comic is the hottest thing he’s ever seen, then by god, all the hard work will have been worth it?

But ehh, don’t worry about it, I guess.  Storm and Callisto go along with it until eventually Yukio, Strong Guy, and Masato Koga help them snap out of it (thanks to the power of friendship!) and overpower and defeat Masque, since needless to say, someone who can warp bodies upon physical contact and his/her cronies who can induce pain and pleasure upon physical contact are well-matched against a mutant who can wield the forces of nature.  Callisto declares she likes her new body, and they put Masque in the crate intended for Tullamore Voge, to which a completely in-character Storm declares, “I hope Voge likes his new prezzie” (AAAAUUUGGGGHHHH).  And since this is still an X-Men comic, Storm then delivers our moral about putting aside the challenge and danger of gladiatorial combat in favor of providing a safe haven for all mutants, and then our story concludes with our heroes enjoying a nice comradely victory soak in a hot tub.  With tentacles.

As a kind of epilogue to this nonsense, Storm and Callisto both reconnect with the X-Men in the penultimate issue of Chris Claremont’s X-Treme X-Men series.  There are just so many things wrong with this page that I hardly know where to start.  First off, we have Kitty Pryde still in her “Coyote Ugly” phase.  (Seriously, she was a college bartender for a while.)  Secondly, while welcoming back Storm, she uncharacteristically describes Callisto’s new tentacle-monster look as “cute.”  Callisto replies with an equally uncharacteristic “Totally!” and I sometimes consider adding “Take a sip every time an adult character uses the phrase ‘so,’ ‘totally,’ or ‘so totally'” to the Chris Claremont drinking game, but that much alcohol would assuredly threaten the reader’s life.  Callisto not only glibly refers to Masque with the pronoun “her” as if anyone else in the room would know who the @#$% she was talking about, but she also precedes this with, “Making free with the ‘revenge’ thing,” which isn’t even an old-man-itis turn of phrase, it’s just plain baffling.  “Making free?”  That’s not a phrase among Earth humans, is it?

But that one panel… I have no idea, you guys.  I have no idea what the script called for, I have no idea what the writer or the artist intended to convey, and I have no idea why these two characters are engaging in these awkward and inexplicable homoerotic overtones.  I don’t know why Callisto is doing it and I definitely don’t know why Storm is going along with it, whatever it is.  Hey!  Hey, did you know that one time Storm stabbed Callisto through the heart with a switchblade in a one-on-one fight to the death?  This is a thing that happened!  “Oh, brother!” is right, Kitty Pryde!  Oh, brother to us all!

I’d like to bring up one of my favorite comic works for all the wrong reasons, X-Men: The End.

For those of you unfamiliar, Marvel has put out a few The End stories, theorizing what it might look like if the stories of some of Marvel’s more popular characters reached their natural conclusion.  Garth Ennis and Richard Corben’s Punisher: The End was a particularly good example of this, not least of which because, at a single taut issue, it didn’t outstay its welcome.  This issue asked, what is the Punisher about?  What would prompt Frank Castle to finally bring to an end his one-man war against crime?  But at the far opposite end of the spectrum, we have the X-Men’s opus in the form of three interconnected miniseries at six issues each, written by longtime X-Men writer Chris Claremont.  You’d think that if anyone would understand what the X-Men are about, to boil them down into their essential elements and craft a conclusion accordingly, it’d be Chris Claremont.  But these days, I like to think of him as the X-Men’s George Lucas: he did great work in turning the X-Men into a successful franchise, but then he returned to his creation after a significant hiatus, only to leave me aghast and wondering, “Does… does he really not get the X-Men?  To this extent?”

The idea behind these series was to craft the final X-Men story as an epic trilogy in the tradition of The Lord of the Rings.  I did not pick up or read them as they came out, but I view the collected edition as the comic equivalent of one’s favorite terrible movie, in that I can dip into just about any page and find something hilarious.  It features all of Chris Claremont’s usual tropes, from a spunky improbable future-daughter in the form of Deathbird and Bishop’s daughter (ugh) Aliyah Bishop, to his ubiquitous bondage/possession/mind-control fetish (Aliyah being possessed by the Brood, Tullamore Voge turning Nocturne into a spike-riddled Hound), to having these characters pair off and have children, dozens and dozens of children just ripe for the kidnapping.  To be fair, I have yet to check out Claremont’s GeNeXt books featuring the continued adventures of X-offspring Becka Munroe, Pavel Rasputin, (ugh) Olivier Raven, and lest we forget “No-Name” (not even kidding).  (Remember back in, like, middle-school, when you thought it’d be cool to have characters like “No-Name” in your X-Men fan-fiction? How young we were!)

Of course, the whole thing is precipitated by the resurrection of Jean Grey as the Phoenix, so various factions across the Earth and the larger galaxy start quivering in planet-immolating fear.  Consequently, the X-Men spend… I’d say seventy-five percent of this eighteen-issue story fighting “War-Skrulls,” because that’s what the X-Men are about, right?  Clearly that is what the “final” X-Men epic should focus on: fighting shape-shifting space aliens.  From a strictly personal perspective, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the X-Men’s space adventures, because I don’t feel it’s what the X-Men are inherently about.  Removing them from Earth removes them from society and, to an extent, negates their status as outsiders.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Marvel characters enjoying the occasional trip into the vaster Marvel universe, X-Men included… I just don’t think it makes for the X-Men’s best stories. The whole affair culminates in a giant, overblown battle at the far end of the universe when Xavier’s genocidal twin sister Cassandra Nova usurps the power of the Phoenix Force.

But throughout this madness, back on Earth, a token effort is made to hearken back to Xavier and the X-Men’s dream of mutant/human coexistence, in the form of the subplot in which mutant activist and Claremont’s darling Kitty Pryde is running for mayor of Chicago against Alice Tremaine, the most straw-man anti-mutant bigot you ever did see. All her dialogue can basically be summed up with “Mutants are monsters and abominations!!!” to which Kitty replies, “Let me calmly rebut those points in the form of the following well-reasoned and rational appeals for tolerance and acceptance.”

And it can’t be overstated that there are so… many… characters.  Sean Chen’s terrible redesign on Wither’s costume is hilariously on-the-nose.  Following the events of Claremont’s Storm-centric storyline “The Arena” (the topic of a future Can We Talk About unto itself), Callisto is still being rendered as an otherwise beautiful woman with tentacles in place of arms and an eye-patch.  A significant amount of pages are devoted to Dani Moonstar once again taking on the role of an Asgardian Valkyrie, always a particularly bizarre niche of X-Men continuity.  Vargas’s stupidly-named sibling henchmen Thais and Thaiis are now the X-Men’s @#$%ing babysitters.  Madelyne Pryor infiltrates the X-Men by killing Dust and wearing her niqab.  In the most blatant example of nepotistic continuity, we even see the return of Doctor Doom’s generals from the Heroes Reborn universe, sorceress Shakti, amorphous Divinity, and techno-organic Technarx.  (Have these characters had anything to do with the X-Men to date?  Nope!  But hey, there’s room in this boat for everybody, right?  Hop on board!)  And as if all that wasn’t enough to contend with, there’s the non-canonical revelation that Gambit is the third Summers brother (whose identity has since, regrettably, been otherwise confirmed) and that furthermore, he, Gambit, is actually a clone of Mr. Sinister!  Clearly, this entire series could only have benefited from being reduced, in length and cast, by at least thirty percent.

But my favorite moment of this whole over-complicated sprawl features the late, unlamented Puffball.

During the events of the fourth issue, the X-Force team is ambushed, and their jet is blown up by a missile and crashes to earth!  Oh no!  Who could have survived this catastrophe?!  But what’s this?  Warpath smashes out of the jet to reveal X-Force has been saved by being individually encased in some featureless, giant white spheres, which they just kinda shove their way out of like Styrofoam!  (I would like to take a moment to give Chris Claremont props for going with “Miracles are what the X-Men do best,” instead of opting for the old-timey Claremontism, “Miracles are the X-Men’s stock-in-trade.”)  Is this some bizarre crash-protection system?  No, they’ve all been saved by heretofore unknown longtime valued member of X-Force, Puffball!  But then Irene Merryweather solemnly delivers the bad news: “Puffball – Laraine – didn’t make it.” We behold another white sphere with a piece of wreckage jammed through it, blood tricking from the cracks.  And for all her sacrifice and her well-timed rescue, poor unappreciated Puffball is never seen, thought about, or mentioned again!  It’s not even made clear whether she had a human body, or if she was just another featureless white sphere!  But she nonetheless holds the all-time record for shortest X-Men career by being introduced and killed off in less than one page.

This, class, is what we call the laziest possible writing.  While I am sure that this whole series was just Marvel tossing Chris Claremont a bone and letting him do whatever he wanted… every single thing about this decision baffles me.  Could none of the several dozen other established X-Men characters present in this series have contributed to this rescue?  Can you imagine any other story in which our heroes survive the catastrophe thanks to the actions of an unknown, unseen character who saves everybody and then immediately dies?