Mutant Genesis

 

Chris Claremont & Jim Lee Mutant Genesis (1991)
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in…

Having finished a somewhat exhausting and extended bout of proofreading, I finally claw back some time in which to take a look at what books Santa brought. I begin with Will Self's memoir - which is absorbing and a joy to read - and then this turns up in the mail just as I come to the end of the first part, and suddenly I'm Principal Skinner admiring Ralph Wiggum's display of Star Wars action figures in that Simpsons episode. Look, I hear myself thinking as I gaze at the cover, it's the Beast, and there's Nightcrawler, and why - Psylocke is there too, because apparently I'm still twelve.

After seventeen years, Chris Claremont ceased writing the X-Men in 1991, having become massively disillusioned with what Marvel wanted to do to his characters. I recently discovered the existence of 2009's X-Men Forever, a title wherein Claremont continues the story he would have told had he stayed with the book, thus overwriting whatever the hired hands came up with in his absence; and specifically continuing the story from his final three issues, collected here and retroactively labelled Mutant Genesis for the sake of the sales pitch. These issues were actually the first three of 1991's X-Men, then the brand new collectible companion title to the long running Uncanny X-Men. I used to have them but it really felt like the whole thing had gone tits up, so I sold them and didn't bother restocking during my recent campaign of buying back all the stuff I've flogged on eBay. Anyway, I sort of can't not at least take a look at X-Men Forever, and I therefore bought this as a refresher.

I remember this thing as a complete dog's dinner, and so much so as to have bequeathed me no memory of what happens besides various angry looking mutants flying through the air, page after page after page. What happens is the death of Magneto. Claremont began the rehabilitation of Magneto, the previously somewhat generic supervillain, back in Uncanny X-Men #150, eventually transforming him into a sympathetic character on the grounds of it making for a more interesting, even more plausible story than the usual cycle of superpowered battles and evil cackling. Marvel sort of lost its mind around the beginning of the nineties, noticed how well all those X-books were selling and decided to cash in by upping the marketing campaign and turning the books into something which missed the whole point of why we'd bothered reading them in the first place. Thus was Claremont, the architect of the book's success, reduced to providing snappy dialogue for the story Jim Lee - a proven seller if ever there was - wanted to tell, and the story Jim Lee wanted to tell was mostly a resumption of superpowered battles and evil cackling with Magneto reverting to his nefarious ways so as to keep Rob Liefeld from feeling a bit gay when leafing through a copy in the store.

Amazingly, reading this thing three decades later, I realise it's not bad. It doubtless helps that I'm reading while curious to find out what happened, as distinct from praying it makes some fucking sense without my having to read ten other titles as part of the publisher's increasingly transparent attempts to empty out my wallet. I say not bad, although the story is standard caped stuff demonstrating little of the imagination or flair which had brought the X-books through the previous decade; but Claremont's dialogue carries the whole thing, lending even the most stupid plot twists a sense of gravity - maybe not quite turning a small boy smashing his action figures together into Shakespeare, but certainly something in that direction; and even the restoration of evil Magneto is somehow convincing.

Jim Lee's art is, just as I remember - more or less Rob Liefeld with more than just three facial expressions and without the wonky anatomy - but it doesn't really matter because Claremont's dialogue does all of the heavy lifting; and does it with astonishing grace given that he was effectively filling out his own P45 here. It's a tragedy of sorts in so much as that 1991's X-Men #1, reprinted here, remains the single biggest selling issue of a comic book of all time, and was written pretty much under protest by a man who had to wait another two decades before he was able to finish the story as he wanted it, but it's a testament to his ability that he was able to deliver this swan song in such fine voice.