S/D X-Men Runs

Hey, thanks! Sooner or later we'll swing back around and give Claremont more of a talking-to on gender stuff, but generally I think, as David said, he deserves more credit than he gets. Being a great draftsman apparently buys Byrne more wiggle room than Claremont being (in the last 15-20 years) a hack storyteller, and that seems sort of unfair. Especially when you read interviews...you get the sense of this guy who's maybe not THAT on the cusp of social revolution or whatever, but is at least TRYING to be a sensitive forward thinker, and he's just surrounded by an old boy's club. At least that's the vibe I get. It'd be really interesting to get some insight from say, Louise Jones and Ann Nocenti about working with him versus the rest of the office. It might not gibe with my reading at all, but I wonder.

(Next installment should be up tonight or tomorrow btw!)

awesome!!

byrne seems a total cock btw

claremont used to proudly show off at comic conventions a sketchbook he'd collected where he'd got just abt every comic book artist you can think of to draw him a nudey pic of storm, so his 'enlightenment' over byrne is v v relative, imho

here's a page from a recent xmen comic by new man chris and milo manara:

http://comiczine-fa.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/XGalsdisco1.jpg

o_0

but still, john byrne seems a truly unpleasant, reactionary, libertarian dickhole.

claremont used to proudly show off at comic conventions a sketchbook he'd collected where he'd got just abt every comic book artist you can think of to draw him a nudey pic of storm, so his 'enlightenment' over byrne is v v relative, imho

Regardless of anecdotes like this, I agree that when it comes to his writing, he really did do a lot to make female superheroes full-fledged rounded individuals, and not just supportive characters, the "ladies of the team". How many superhero writers did that before him? And you have to remember, even during the 80s you had stories like the East Coast/West Coast Avengers crossover, where various Avengers have to figh each other one-on-one, and in each fight the male character beats the female character - even when it's kinda ridiculous, like Captain America beating She-Hulk.

Also, in Marvel comics before Claremont's X-Men, the female superheroes were often relegated to the roles of wives and girlfriends for more prominent male superheroes. During Claremont's prime years with X-Men, only Kitty and Jean were dating a male team member, and both of them were more prominent than their boyfriends.

claremont also always treated racial matters with a lot of sensitivity

http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/44215_10150097347974199_602254198_7403031_5745209_n.jpg
http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/248719_10150318406954199_602254198_9873298_1074945_n.jpg
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/25773_435405234198_602254198_5589029_2836794_n.jpg

new men like nude women too

why is everyone orgy-dancing & Storm is getting arrested by evil Errol Flynn? it's her party is it not???

One last post before I skip town for a while! Enjoy!

manara really can only draw one woman's face, can't he?

have a good summer Doc! thx for the awesome blog!

xp tbf he draws faces?!

Thank YOU, DAM! Peace!

Doc -

is Kangarat Murder Society dead? We miss you! I know you've been super busy, but figured I'd call you out here instead of twitter.

^

x3

Yeah, loved reading those, give us some more!

Awwwwww, y'all are great! And yeah..this is better, I don't use twitter or know if anybody says anything about us on there(?).

It's NOT dead - this has just been a wacky, um... six months. Wow. Didn't really expect it would be that kind of hiatus (I guess all dormant bloggers say that)...

I have genuine, actual hopes of reviving it after the new year! For real! Keep the fire burning.

Thanks Doc! Can't wait for more to come.

The n-word stuff upthread is a bit of a headfuck.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/comics/article/49499-x-men-writer-chris-claremont-donates-archive-to-columbia-university.html

doc, damn, just saw this, sounds like the blog woulda been just what i wanna read but the link dont work, anywhere else to check out the stuff?

http://kangaratmurdersoc.wordpress.com/ is the direct link, not sure what's up with the domain. Hope you like!

Paging Doctor Casino:

http://daviduzumeri.tumblr.com/post/45140694544/any-chance-of-revisiting-the-uncanny-x-men-chats-with

hahah was that you? David sent me that earlier. I knowwwwww, I know!

It was me. :) I can't help it if I miss reading those posts.

I miss doing them! We talk about it every now and then, we're both game, it's just a matter of time - I'm in a PhD program now and it's just hard to commit to something like that. But I really did enjoy it. Maybe we could manage to do, like, one a month or something.

That would be awesome.

Yeah, please do some more!

would read. would read the fuck out of, in fact.

Yeah same here. Love those.

Y'all are the best. We're in talks. Maybe, just maybe!

Woohoo! Tentatively, of course.

start a kickstarter

yeah really I don't even like X-Men and found the blog v entertaining

help me out guys! a friend of mine was wearing this shirt, and i feel like i should've known instinctively which artist it was. my first guess was Art Adams, but not too sure. based on the team line-up it's '81-'83?
http://i.imgur.com/MUXNsmd.jpg

Art Adams, no doubt - he drew the covers for Classic X-Men, the reprint series of the Claremont era that begin in the mid-late 80s.

Is that Kitty between Nightcrawler and (I assume) Rogue?

yup!

As much as I love Art Adams, there's an unsettlingly Liefeldian quality to the character on the left there (Rachel?)

Liefeld is Art Adams without the whimsy or genius. I stopped reading comics before the Liefeld era but I can imagine his work would swiftly have cooled my teenaged ardour for Adams' work.

And yes, that's Rachel on the left in her early Phoenix outfit. Has to be 85-86ish because I don't think Rachel was on the team before then.

Yeah, I knew Adams was a big influence on Liefeld and I'd seen evidence of it in Liefeld's work before - this was the first time I'd seen it so clearly in Adams' own work. Rachel's mullet is spectacular!

When did Storm lose the 'mo?

Storm had a moustache?

Doesn't that image appear in the (Adams-drawn) X-Men/New Mutants crossover, where they travel to Asgard?

When did Storm lose the 'mo?

IIRC, it was just before the "Fall of the Mutants" storyline, when Storm and Forge were stranded on some alternate Earth with no humans for a year or so.

Damn, nice memory Tuomas - I was going to say it was done when Roma resurrected all the X-Men right after Fall of the Mutants, but you're dead on.