Re-reading the early issues of the revived, “All-New, All-Different” X-Men title for the first time in decades, your humble blogger has found himself struck not only by how quickly writer Chris Claremont — still a relative neophyte in 1975 — made the book his own, but also by how enduring many of the concepts and characters he introduced in the first half-dozen or so of the stories he wrote on his lonesome (the first two issues under his byline, #94 and #95, had of course been plotted by his predecessor, Len Wein) have ultimately proven to be. Half a century on, it’s hard to imagine what the X-books — or maybe even the Marvel Universe, period — would look like, had neither Moira MacTaggert nor the Shi’ar (to name two of the most prominent examples), ever existed.
Cover to X-Men #96 (Dec., 1975). Art by… let’s go with “various”.
That said, not everything that Claremont threw at the wall in the way of mutant mythos-building early on stuck — nor was every individual story a straight-up winner. As a case in point, let’s take Claremont’s first more-or-less solo flight as writer, X-Men #96, which features the done-in-one “Night of the Demon” (I say “more-or-less” based on a credit given on the splash page to Bill Mantlo for a “welcome plotting assist”). Produced in collaboration with artist Dave Cockrum (with Sam Grainger on inks), the story pits the titular heroes against the N’Garai — demonic “Elder Gods” whom Claremont had created for one of his earliest pro comics writing assignments (in Giant-Size Dracula #2 [Sep., 1974]) — but who frankly seemed rather superfluous in a Marvel Universe that already seemed to have the Lovecraftian angle pretty well covered via the Undying Ones, Shuma-Gorath, and so on. While I won’t try to convince you that the N’Garai had no juice whatsoever (a look at their page at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe would put the lie to such an assertion pretty quickly), I think it’s safe to say that as X-villains, they’ve never been more than “C”-list at best. And even if their later track record had proved more impressive, this particular outing still wouldn’t be all that memorable — at least, not for this reader.
On the other hand, there are other significant developments in this issue which are worth noting before we move on to the ostensible main topic of this post (i.e., X-Men #97) — beginning with the introduction of an important new supporting character whose name we’ve already dropped above…
Along with being both a good bit younger and easier on the eyes than Sean “Banshee” Cassidy was expecting, Moira MacTaggert offers yet another surprise to her fellow Gael, further on in the story, when she throws herself into the middle of the X-Men’s fight against a big, bad N’Garai named Kierrok and sprays the demon with machine-gun fire. “A nice widder-woman,” indeed.
Well before that happens, however, we have the following scene, which sets up a near-future storyline that’ll kick off properly in X-Men #98, and culminate in the book’s milestone 100th issue…
Gee, that big purple leg in the last panel above looks kind of familiar, doesn’t it? If Dr. Steven Lang’s references to Bolivar Trask and his son earlier on the page hadn’t already given the game away, this visual clue clinches it: the Sentinels are back.
We now turn to the story’s “A”-plot, if only briefly, for another couple of developments that will prove to have long-term significance. To set the scene: after having inadvertently released Kierrok of the N’Garai from a stone structure in the woods near Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the X-Men manage to hold the attacking demon-god at bay… but only just, and only for the moment. Along the way, we have this dramatic interaction between Kierrok and Wolverine:
Coming on the heels of a moment earlier in the issue where, while training in the Danger Room, Wolverine had almost disemboweled Nightcrawler, this scene establishes not only Wolvie’s tendency to occasionally lapse into berserker rages, but also his personal ambivalence as to whether that should be considered a bug or a feature.
Unfortunately, despite Wolverine’s very thorough shredding of Kierrok, the N’Garai gets better almost immediately, and the battle is rejoined. So Prof X sends Storm out to cut the demon’s power off at its source, by sealing up the very same stone structure (Claremont’s script calls it a “cairn”, but “obelisk” seems more appropriate to what Dave Cockrum has drawn) that Cyclops earlier shattered with his eyebeams while agonizing about the death of Thunderbird in the finale of X-Men #95 (that’s right, this whole mess is basically Cyke’s fault)…
Storm’s dramatic action takes care of the menace, sending Kierrok as well as the other demons back to their nether-dimension. But as to the meaning of her sudden, panicked feeling of entrapment, and its accompanying visions of her childhood, both the weather-worker and we readers would have to wait until issue #102 — which, thanks to X-Men‘s bimonthly publishing schedule, wouldn’t be out until September, 1976 (which of course means that this blog’s discussion of the Secret Origin of Storm That Was Never Intended by Her Co-Creators will have to wait until September of 2026, or thereabouts).
“Night of the Demon!” ends with another bit of foreshadowing…
Colonel Michael “Mickey” Rossi would seem to be the very model of a throwaway character — someone introduced briefly into a storyline to move the plot forward a tad, and then forgotten about by the writer as quickly as they are by the reader. For whatever reason, however, Chris Claremont didn’t forget Col. Rossi; a couple of years later, he’d use him in flashbacks in Ms. Marvel to build out the backstory of Carol Danvers, and then, sometime after that, bring him back into present-day X-continuity in the pages of New Mutants #2 (Apr., 1983), revealing along the way that he (obviously) hadn’t actually died in that crash in X-Men #96, after all. You never know, I guess.
We now come to X-Men #97, whose cover by Rich Buckler and Dave Cockrum (hey, thanks for signing your names, guys!) gives me strong Neal Adams vibes — and whose first-page credits box indicates that Chris Claremont is finally flying completely solo…
…though, having said that, I don’t want to understate the importance of Dave Cockrum’s contribution to these early Claremont X-Men stories, as the artist’s visual imagination made us want to see more of the new characters and other plot elements being introduced herein, whereas a less creative illustrator might not have piqued our curiosity quite as sharply. I mean, just look at these ships…!
And here we get our first glimpse of another new character who’ll ultimately loom at least as large in X-lore as Moira MacTaggert: the Shi’ar empress, Lilandra — albeit we only get to see her through a glass darkly, as it were. It’ll be another seven issues (or fourteen months) before we get a decent enough look through her spacesuit’s insectoid faceplate to guess that she’s (probably) female — and another two-month wait beyond that before Charles Xavier actually meets his future lady-love face-to-face. Chris Claremont was playing a long game… but if one was willing to wait, one’s patience would be rewarded. (Well, usually, anyway.)
“I had no right to ask you, not after…” Again, Claremont teases us with a mystery that won’t pay off for some time to come… years, in this case.
For the record, this is the first time that Lorna Dane (first introduced back in X-Men #49 [Oct., 1968]) has gone by the name “Polaris”. And — despite her obviously being mind-controlled at this particular moment — it’s one she’ll keep, long after the present storyline concludes.
Yep, even Charles Xavier was cracking Jaws jokes in late 1975.
Meanwhile, although Jean Grey had seemed to make a pretty big deal of kissing Scott “Cyclops” Summers goodbye when she moved out of the X-mansion back at the beginning of X-Men #94, it sure doesn’t seem like she’s gone very far, does it? It’s also interesting to note that the arrival of the former (?) Marvel Girl on the scene, coming on top of the return of Alex Summers and Lorna Dane to these pages, makes for the inclusion in this issue of every character who’s ever been a regular member of the X-Men team — with, of course, the notable exceptions of the three currently ensconced with other super-teams (i.e., the Beast with the Avengers, and Angel and Iceman with the Champions). It feels rather like Claremont and Cockrum didn’t want to let anyone go, if they could possibly help it.
This was the first appearance of “Tony Stark’s image inducer” — obviously a very handy gadget, although Kurt “Nightcrawler” Wagner ended up not using it all that much after a year or two. In the words of Dave Cockrum, “we just sort of went for a blue-is-beautiful-and-to-hell-with-you-guys attitude.” (See The X-Men Companion: I [1981], p. 55.)
Oh, and the “1930’s movie star” Kurt is intended to look like here is Errol Flynn.
For the record, poor Alex Summers’ long-established superhero moniker, “Havok”, gets misspelled as “Havoc” throughout this issue. Oh, well…
Knocked off his feet by Alec and Lorna’s combined powers, Scott tells his teammates to get after them before they can reach Professor X. The X-Men dutifully spring into action, but even as they do, Havok takes aim at the swiftly taxiing airplane carrying the mutants’ mentor…
Cover to X-Men #52 (Jan., 1969). Art by Marie Severin and Joe Sinnott.
Eric the Red — or, as it was originally spelled, Erik the Red (the letter “k” just couldn’t catch a break this issue, it seems) — was indeed a false identity briefly assumed by Cyclops back in X-Men #51 (Dec., 1968) and #52 (Jan., 1969), all for the purpose of hoodwinking two of the team’s foes, Magneto (actually just an android replica, but never mind that now) and Mesmero. So who is this new Erik, and why has he adopted this obscure old guise of Scott Summers? While the first of those questions will be answered several issues from now, the second never will be, as best as I can tell — at least not “in-story”. (The real-world answer may be assumed to have something to do with either Chris Claremont or Dave Cockrum, or maybe even both, thinking that the character’s name and costume were too cool to leave as a mere historical footnote.)
Dazed, Storm just barely manages to shake off the effects of Polaris’ blast in time to catch the unconscious Jean Grey; after depositing her charge safely on a rooftop, she changes into her costume before returning to the fray…
Havok quickly recovers and fires off a blast that hits the wall behind Cyclops, causing it to fall on top of him. Horrified, Alec rushes to his brother’s aid — but Scott, who’s unharmed, reluctantly takes advantage of the moment to punch Alec while he’s off-guard. Meanwhile, Colossus and Nightcrawler attempt to double-team Erik the Red…
Two issues earlier, in the climax of X-Men #95, the team had lost one of their number, John “Thunderbird” Proudstar, when the plane he was hanging onto exploded in midair. Colossus getting crushed by the wing of a grounded plane might not be exactly the same thing, but it’s surely close enough to justify the script’s reference to déjà vu.
In the next few moments, several things happen very quickly. Racing to the fallen Lorna’s side, Alec finds her dazed, but not, it seems, seriously hurt. Next, reinforcements for our heroes arrive, as an aircraft bearing Wolverine and Banshee descends to the tarmac. Guessing that Prof. X must have summoned the newcomers mentally, Erik the Red abruptly decides that this day is not going to go his way after all — and, gathering the still-enthralled Havok and Polaris in his arms, he takes to the skies.
And so concludes our narrative… if only for the moment (or, more accurately, for the next couple of months).
We’ll close with a couple of observations about this issue’s last panel. The first, and more general one, is that it’s another signifier of how Chris Claremont chose to play a long game in X-Men from the very beginning of his tenure as the series’ writer, as he interlaced seemingly disparate plot threads in a manner that suggested connections between them — connections that might, or might not, ultimately come to fruition. The second, more specific one has to do with the fact that, according to testimony offered by Claremont himself in The X-Men Companion: I, the writer didn’t actually come up with the idea of the screen-within-a-screen visual in the first place; rather, “for no reason whatsoever, Dave, at the end of #97, threw in that shot of the bug people monitoring Lang, who was monitoring the X-Men.”
And, perhaps for the very reason that it hadn’t been his own idea (but, also, perhaps not), Claremont never got around to officially confirming the identity of that red-clad, bug-insignia wearing hand in any later script; and so, while several later fan-compiled references will authoritatively tell you that X-Men #97 features the first, cameo appearance of D’ken Neramani, that’s based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence.
As readers who stuck with the “New X-Men” for the long haul would discover, this, too, would be a marker of Claremont’s tenure. In playing the long game, the writer generally seemed to have a pretty good idea where he was going — or, if he didn’t know at first, he figured it out along the way in a manner that would ultimately prove satisfying to his readers (most of them, anyway). That said, given his propensity for keeping a lot of balls in the air at once — often for an extended period of time — it was perhaps inevitable that he’d drop a few, here and there… as we’ll see in the months and years to come.
Great overview, Alan! I got this mag but missed #98, then got #99 but missed #100, and later 105. Anyhow, 50 years ago I was entirely unfamiliar with the prior story featuring Scott playing at being Erik the Red — and when I finally did read it many years later, the story didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but, hey, there was some great Steranko art involved! Meanwhile, Claremont & Cockrum are really heating things up for our merry mutants and with mysteries abounding. Clearly, at this point Claremont’s head was full of ideas, both playing with variations of prior storylines but also entirely new ideas. And Cockrum’s art provided a visual feast, IMO. Made me eager to see what would happen next!
Poor Lorna Dane. This issue marks the beginning of the miserable times she’ll have during the entirety of Claremont’s tenure. I don’t think she spends more than half an issue here or there not being mind-controlled, until towards the end of the run when Claremont decides to give her a bunch of random new powers for some reason that don’t stick. Peter David mostly treated her with respect in X-Factor but never quite got around to giving her a truly distinctive personality beyond stalwart, clever and brave. Then it was back to various writers mainly treating her like a weak-minded plot device when they remembered she was around. The revelation that “Hey, guess she was Magneto’s daughter after all” was more a result of Chuck Austen not being very good at his job than any long term plan for Lorna, but subsequent writers figured “Eh, guess we can work with this. Can’t retcon out everything the guy did” and went ahead and ran with it. I haven’t read X-comics for years, but I gather that recent writers have finally given the poor woman a somewhat developed personality of her very own and hopefully that’ll put an end to the mind control/losing her mind shenanigans she’d been subjected to for most of her existence.
Mind-control. By the time I finally stopped buying Claremont’s X-Men that trope had swallowed him whole
The character of Alex Summers would eventually suffer as much as Lorna. The loser, less capable brother of Cyclops thing didn’t occur for years but when it did, it seems nearly every writer embraced it. X-Force and Mutant X were pretty much the last hurrah of him as following successfully in Scott’s footsteps. I liked Claremont’s Alex. Ironically, I did also like one iteration of mind controlled Lorna. Her merger with Malice was one of the best uses of her and that Blevins designed costume was awesome. Except for the original Polaris costume she’s always dressed in a bleh shade of green.
A good example of what Claremont/Cockrum and later Claremont/Byrne could do. Lots of action, a story that feels like a satisfying issue in itself but also lots of seeding. Very similar to what Stan and Jack were doing in Thor and FF a decade earlier, despite the differences in their style.
Being able to make each issue satisfactory is a skill a lot of writers have lost.
I knew Erik the Red, having read part of that arc a friend had. Quite intrigued. And by the Sentinel foot. And the person watching Lang — I didn’t remember that Claremont never explained that.
The N’Garai, I agree, were forgettable. Claremont didn’t handle magic as well as he did superheroes. He still managed to squeeze in action and character so that it was readable.Too bad he’d reuse the N’Garai several times.
This issue was my introduction to the new X-Men. GS 1 and issues 94 & 95 weren’t distributed in the UK and I didn’t find issues 96 until a few weeks later. I was 17 In February 1976 when this issue appeared in the shops over here. I was in my final year in high school and had applied for and been accepted to study chemistry at the University of Aberdeen. I found out that they ran a bursary competition, where you had to sit four exams at the university and were awarded bursaries depending on how well you answered the questions compared to the other candidates. For the record I can 22nd and received the princely sum of £35 a year for the four years of my degree.
I hadn’t passed my driving test so my brother drove me into Aberdeen to sit the exams. After I had finished I quickly went to the newsagent to see if February’s Marvel comics had arrived yet. They had, and as I flicked through the pile picking out the titles that I bought regularly, I came across X-Men 97!
I hadn’t known that the title had been revived and I was delighted to see that it was Dave Cockrum who was drawing it. I had been a great fan of his when was the regular penciller on Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes, was disappointed when he left and hadn’t seen him anywhere since then. I loved the new costume that Dave had designed for Polaris, it reminded me of the one that he has created for Infectious Lass in issue 201 of S&LSH, much better than her original.
I remember reading the issue in the van as my brother drove us back home and like you picked up on all the seeds that were being sown for future storylines. I was hooked, and I’m sure like many others the X-Men became the comic that I most looked forward to finding and reading over the next few years. Hopefully you continued to buy the title and we can look forward to many more New X-Men posts in the years to come.
Cockrum’s costume design for Polaris also recalls his costume design for Shrinking Violet in the LSH.
You’re right, I hadn’t spotted that. I’ve just looked up the legion story in Superboy 193 (page 2, panel 3) which was the first appearance of Vi’s new costume and the similarities are clear to see. Subsequent artists dumbed it down, probably due to the intricacy of the design which would have taken longer to draw. Vi only appeared in 4 panels in the story and only two of those showed off her new costume.
I was thirteen going on fourteen when I read this issue and figure I got it from a newsagents in Congleton, Cheshire. I’d obtained No. 96 and thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was 97 that made me a fully devoted fan of the “new” X-Men… a condition that would prevail until my patience gave out with the series sometime in the “noughties”.
In 1976, though, this was ground breaking stuff for me and I was totally on-board.
Reading today’s article brings back so many memories… particularly the fact that I completely missed the big purple leg and, at that time, had no idea whatsoever as to the whole “But you can’t be Eric the Red… I was Eric the Red” thing.
There was, however, something that I took away from the issue and which stood me in good stead in an English lesson a few weeks later when I threw in a reference to the Bard of Avon and Hamlet’s “To be or Not to Be” soliloquy.
Whoever said comics weren’t educational?
Comics have always been educational. I attribute the larger words in my vocabulary, certain parts of my scientific knowledge, my feelings about politics and social justice, not to mention my ability to answer a riddle in large part to comics. Comics made a huge difference in my life and I’m thankful for it.
I often looked up words in comics that were new to me. It’s how I found out Destiny and Mystique were a couple. After Irene’s death she was referred to as Raven’s leman and when I looked it up discovered Claremont had use that word to slip the revelation past Shooter and the staff.
It was both aggravating and intriguing that Chris Claremont had several plots and sub-plots going at sametime. Newer readers have hard time understanding what is going on and I got confused at times. He does character building well and people are 3-D. He writes women characters well. A gay friend pointed out that you can imagine allegories for gays struggling for their rights in the stories.
Being Bi myself, I’ll agree that you can certainly read them that way!
Themes of persecution and a desire to ‘find your tribe/build a new family’ really align with so many teenagers and minority or marginalised readers too. He really gave hope to a lot of people that out there were people that shared your experiences and one day you’ll find them. I follow Chris on IG and he posts photos from his Comic Convention appearances – readers just adore him and I think it’s a very emotional connection for some of them; the man that provided a ray of hope in dark times.
It’s always been a pleasure meeting Chris Claremont at conventions. He’s one of those creators who, despite the fact that he almost always has long lines, is very warm and takes the time to talk to everyone who comes up to his table. He radiates enthusiasm.
Has anyone ever explained why Alexander Summers is “Havok” rather than “Havoc”?
Latest proof that I read too much:
When Grace Metalious’s *Peyton Place* came out in 1956, the original name of the new high school principal for Peyton Place was Tomas Makris.
As it turned out, there was a real-life Tomas Makris in Laconia, New Hampshire, who’d worked with Metalious’s husband George and he sued. He won damages and in later printings, the character received a new name, which carried over to the 1957 movie and to the 1964 television series.
It was “Michael Rossi.”
Given the soap opera qualities common to *Peyton Place* and Marvel Comics, I wonder whether Chris Claremont was making a comment that this was going to be his title from now on.
Not yours, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Nor yours, Roy Thomas and Neal Adams.
Nor even yours, Len Wein and Dave Cockrum.
After all, “Peyton Place” became synonymous with the notion of the small-town where underneath the place surface, a great many dark things were actually taking place …taking over the previously established trope name for such a community (“this is just a little Peyton Place, and you’re all Harper Valley hypocrites,” to quote Jeannie C. Riley’s song), which had been “Kings Row,” from Henry Bellamann’s novel, now basically known for the fact that in the 1942 movie Drake McHugh (played by Ronald Reagan) asked the immortal question:
“Where’s the rest of me?”
Storm speaks of “my fellow X-Men” on the cover. Could this be foreshadowing for the weather witch succeeding Cyclops as field leader and besting him in the “Duel” in #201?
I could quote Louise Simonson on that battle, but I’ll exit, not pursued by a bear (or Anne Rice’s Amazon review for Bellamann’s book), but with the opening lines from *Peyton Place*:
“Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.”
Stay and keep knocking out great commentary, Alan, not just for the Harper Valley P.T.A., for for everyone!
These early days of the Claremont X-Men sure were exciting. I was surprised at how quickly I took to a whole batch of new characters, but Claremont knew how to make them intriguing. I was actually pleased to see both Jean and Lorna reappear in the title, as it was at that time awfully male heavy (that would certainly shift over time). But as Wire154 mentions above, Lorna has a pretty tough time of it over the years, from all that mind-control to mental instability. It’s great to see her finally come into her own in the last decade or so.
In addition to the appearances of Moira McTaggart and the Shi’ar in this issue, one of the highights I recall being excited about is the way Claremont was establishing Storm’s authoritative personality. Her speech when she blows Lorna out of the sky, and her counter threat to Wolverine certainly hinted toward an eventual leadership role for Ororo.
And yeah, it sure is amazing how stuffed with foreshadowing these early issues were. I wonder if Claremont had a huge spreadsheet or graph to keep track of them all.
I missed this one. I dunno why, but I got the Giant-Size XMEN #1 that introduced the new team, and bought the next few issues here and there, sporadically, but didn’t really join the party on a regular basis (at least, I don’t think–those days are hazy) until the arrival of John Byrne. Not sure why. I was a huge Cockrum fan and loved his work. It’s possible that, as a new college freshman, I just didn’t have time to buy comics regularly for that period. I guess we’ll never know.
In the meanwhile, I had no idea that Claremont introduced Lilandra and the Shi’ar so early in his run. Partly because I missed this issue, I suppose, and partly because the intro of the character was such a slow roll-out. Was their any reason why Polaris’ costume looked like one of Clea’s Steve Ditko-designed cast-offs from Doctor Strange? The costume is pretty obviously an homage, I’m just wondering if it was for any particular reason or just because Cockrum was a Ditko fan.
Also, Moira McTaggart started out as a housekeeper? She certainly went through some changes, didn’t she? Using real-world logic, how in the blue blazes did Xavier talk a world-class genetisist into working for him as a housekeeper? Could it be…mind control? Probably not, but hey, if all the cool kids are doing it…
I agree that Claremont used not only Polaris, but also Havok as a mutant whipping boy (and girl) for a long time. Those two could never catch a break.
As for the bad guys of the piece, I’m not particularly impressed with Erik the Red, but Stephen Lang certainly shows promise as a stand-in for Bolivar Trask, if nothing else. Thanks, Alan!
Yes, in hindsight that’s an odd decision for Moira, especially when she’s got her whole facility at Muir Island to watch over.
I wonder if Claremont actually intended for Moira to be “just” be a housekeeper to begin with but decided to give her a very different background later on.
Yes, just because he planned lots of stuff ahead of time doesn’t mean that everything was part of the plan.
The bit with the Assault Rifle made me think. she was more than she appeared to be but not perhaps what she became/
Yeah, I loved that – as an adult you read it and go ‘what the?’ – how does a Scottish housekeeper have assault rifle knowledge? When I initially read It I just put it down to she was written by an American, so the concept of everyone knowing rifles was a given!
Funny, I’ve never had a problem with that detail. Like a Transformer, there’s more to her than meets the eye.
In fairness, lots of comics writers have similar tics, though Claremont’s eventually swallowed him whole.
Yeah, that’s actually what I was thinking when I brought it up. Today, we know all about Muir Island and Moira’s scientific prowess, but in 1976, Claremont probably hadn’t progressed much farther than, “Hey, a mysterious housekeeper. Cool!”
Of course, a lot of my friends and family “have assault rifle knowledge.”
It is the circles you travel in and Charles was also depicted as a US Army Veteran who had done some things in various places, for various people in his early life.
Although like Ben and Reed being WW II vets, they didn’t make much out of it. Of course that was an age when “citizen soldiers” who did their hitch, then returned to civilian life were a common thing due to the draft. So not as big a deal (even Rob Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show did a hitch in the army).
. . . and Lee, Kirby, Ayers, Ditko; all had time in the Service during and after WWII as did Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke,
But, assault rifles were not commonly used by the US prior to 1957 with the M-14 (which was a lot to handle at full auto) . . . .
(I always assumed Moira being a “housekeeper” was Xavier’s cover story because he didn’t want his students to know her real role. You know how he’s always keeping things from his students.
Except she really was keeping house for them.
Scots tend to be obsessively cleanly 9if not always neat . . . .
You’ve tickled my nerd bone with this one. I dropped out of comic book continuity before the Dark Age, so this is right in my wheelhouse, although I didn’t really hop on board the X-Men train until #101.
This issue is the first back-issue where I paid considerably more than the cover price to finally have it in my collection. Even in 1981, it had a hefty price tag. One that I regretted not one damn bit after finally reading it. Even all these years later, I’m still impressed. Claremont throws in as many ideas into the story as Cockrum does with wonderous details in his art. As is repeatedly pointed out in the review, my greatest frustration with this series came because of its bi-monthly status. As a high school freshman, those sixty-days were a near unfathomable wait!
I also missed #96 – foolishly not snagging it when I saw it on the racks of an out-of-town store. That was another steep investment a few years later. Alan’s review of that issue aligned as well with my impressions – not bad, but it clearly wasn’t until #97 when this creative team took off running.
Let me add that #98 – which did arrive in my hometown – had me and my comic book buddies geeking out over for weeks – we’d always that Wolverine guy was cool and overdue to strut his stuff.
Thanks again for wonderful start to a snowy Saturday!
I have a copy of this issue that didn’t break the bank, because Marvel reissued it as “Marvel Legends” reprint, whatever that is, that is available for a lot less than what an original issue would command. The reprint does feature a Neal Adams-era cover, but the inside pages are the same as an original copy of issue 97.
Oh, I absolutely love this stuff! I first read The All-New, All-Different X-Men stories by Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum in black & white in the Essential X-Men Volume 1 collection in the early 2000s… and re-read it, and re-re-read it!
I was already a fan of both creators, but reading these issues, I developed an even greater appreciation for them. I don’t know if this was a case of them firing on all cylinders, probably it was more like them flying under the radar on what was at the time a relatively low-profile book and having the freedom to throw whatever they wanted against the wall to see if it stuck, but there’s just such a fantastic energy to these issues. And, of course, one benefit of the Essential format was that I did not have to wait two months between issues 🙂
Thanks for highlighting the contributions of Cockrum on this issue. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I’ve long been of the opinion that he was one of the greatest character & costume designers American comic books ever had, right up there with Kirby and Ditko. Having already designed most of the new X-Men, here he gives us our first fantastic glimpses of the Shi’ar, and designs a new costume of Lorna Dane. And his action & characterization work here is really solid. I’m not the biggest fan of Sam Grainger, but I feel he’s a decent inker, and he complements Cockrum’s penciling pretty well.
By the way, thanks for giving the background info on that final panel, with the screen-within-a-screen scene. I’ve always wondered about that. I long thought it was an early example of Claremont dropping a plot thread, but now I know it was Cockrum’s idea. I’ll just go with the consensus that the figure monitoring Lang monitoring the X-Men is the mad Emperor D’Ken.
With this issue (and the one that reintroduced Magneto). I always assumed Cockrum inked a bit of it as well.
Cockrum, like his mentor Anderson, was his own best inker.
Agreed that Cockrum was his own best inker. Unfortunately he was a very slow artist, so when he was working on a regular book, even a bi-monthly one like X-Men was at this point, he needed other people to ink his pencils. I believe that when he returned to X-Men in the early 1980s when it was now monthly he was only fast enough to do layouts.
That’s the problem with the whole industry and I don’t think there is a simple way to fix it. Creators want to create. Englehart and Starlin and Gerber didn’t want to have to bring other writers in to help them stay on deadline, but they had to because there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to do the amount of work you needed to do to support your family. Same with Cockrum, BWS, Adams and many artists. Some folks back in the day could do work quickly and well (complain about Sal Buscema all you want, but he was one of them), even Kirby stayed on schedule most of the time (I think. At least I don’t remember hearing any stories). Nowadays, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. I don’t know if it’s all the graphics softwear or if they’ve changed the schedule enough for creators to get ahead of themselves. That was the advantage to the old ground-level and independent comics. They’d come out when the work was finished. It was frustrating, but the results were usually worth it.
I may have this one, I may not. Have a few around this early run. I keep postponing a sort and listing of my reduced UK distributed batch from back then . I wasn’t particularly attached to the run, and still am not but sensed some definite quality and Cockrum’s art did get better for me , probably finding another more suitable inker helped later.
I do like the subtle Sentinel hint though I hope Eric(k) the Red isn’t to be confused with Monty Python’s Terry Jones’ Erik the Viking.
I liked Dave Cockrum on Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes, but never bought Giant Size X-Men or any of his X-Men issues, though I remember leafing through the first few when they were new.
I do own the issues pencilled by Steranko and Neal Adams, however. I suppose writer Arnold Drake thought it would be amusing (in X-Men no. 49) to name a character after Lorna Doone, a West Country lass in a classic19th century British novel set in the 1600s. Though romance and adventure are prominent story elements, there is little else to be found in common with Lorna Dane of Marvel Comics…but who thought we’d be discussing character names in “throwaway literature” like comics fifty (and fifty-seven) years later?
And this X-Men logo of Cockrum’s and Byrne’s run (and beyond) is still the one Steranko designed (and was never paid a cent for).
Oh this is wonderful! I’d read some back issues and reprints of the original X-Men but I didn’t become a regular, rapt reader of the book until about three years later. I KNOW I saw some of this one in passing because I remember bits and pieces. I am incredibly impressed at the artwork and the writing. I will point out the narration of the story plays like what I would now fifty years on recognize as “hard-boiled” dialogue and it’s perfect! Oh, and speaking of the long game, doesn’t that panel with storm shouting “–and I shall be FREE!!” have vibes of the appearance of a certain X-Team Member emerging as Ph**nix several issues hence? Thanks again for this feature. Fifty years? Wow…
I was a fan of these X-Men because I was on board with GS 1, so technically I got on board on the ground floor. This (and Avengers) was really the first Marvel series that I was able to follow with consecutive issues and could keep up with plot lines. I was really invested in the characters and the story, knowing just enough about the previous team’s history. I had picked up the last few issues of Superboy with LSH drawn by Cockrum, so I was thrilled to see his work again.
Then, the store that carried comics in my town STOPPED carrying them right after X-Men #100. I lived 35-40 miles from the next closest distributor and, being a 12 year old in a decidedly less-mobile society, I was only able to pick up the occasional issue until Cockrum returned much later and I was able to pay for a subscription. I really loved all of these early issues though, and I particularly loved this issue because Havoc (or Havok) had intrigued me when I got GS-1, and later the reprint in GS-2, and Cockrum’s art was just dynamite. I understand everyone who preferred Byrne, but Cockrum was my favorite.
Yeah, I also prefer Cockrum to Byrne. I mean, I like Byrne’s work, but I love Cockrum’s art even more.
A few interesting historical notes: In an interview (may have been in the X-Men Companion), Claremont admitted that regarding X-Men 96, he didn’t think much of Kierrok and called him “Kierrok the creep” and called the villain “weak!” Which is interesting, since Claremont seemed to like the concept of N’Garai since he brought them back in an issue of Dr. Strange that he wrote, and also in X-Men 143. Claremont also noted that it was never his intention to write out Jean, that was in Len’s plot in issue 94 and he couldn’t change that, but he brought her back as soon as possible, which was issue 97. The introduction of Moira in XM 96 as a “housekeeper” is definitely puzzling. It is clear that Claremont intended her to be more than a housekeeper from the beginning and appeared to have her in mind to be involved with Banshee from the beginning. But the rest (preeminent geneticist with institute on Muir Island) seems to have been added later. Of course Moira suddenly attacking Kierrok with a gun led to the Claremont trope of the super aggressive female character that Claremont became known for.
With issue 97, it became apparent that Claremont was going to delve into every character in the series and that included Professor X. Xavier had usually been a background character in the original series but here we would see a lot and he would even get a love interest.
I don’t believe the Eric the Red business was ever explained. It was certainly confusing and it doesn’t appear that it was ever explained what kind of powers he had or how he was able to hypnotize Havok and Polaris. That seemed a bit convenient. It should be remembered that X-Men was a bi-monthly book for quite a while…3 years! So subplots would take a while to play out. This story that began in issue 97 took nearly 2 years to conclude. And the subplot regarding the Sentinels would not conclude until issue 100. But yes, Claremont and Cockrum did a lot of world building. It was exciting and interesting. Thanks for the great write up Alan!
I never had a problem with Erik regarding the mind-control — it’s not like super-hypnosis was ever an anomaly in the MU.
Looking back, he had Sh’ar tech that would explain it too.
WHSmith somewhere in London was where I found #96, but I didn’t come across #97 until many years later, in a second hand shop (Bits’n’Bobs) in Kingston upon Thames. Both had great covers, #96 by Sal B ( one of the last things I enjoyed from him) and #97 by Buckler in full Adams mode ( helped of course by those rich Cockrum brushstrokes).
Claremont certainly packed in a lot into a 17 page story, and as you pointed out Alan, kept adding in characters, both new and existing, often too much so, especially with the book bi-monthly, resulting in Havok and Polaris for example getting lost in the mix (they don’t really show up again until the 1978 team-up with Spidey in MTU???).
What really strikes me now is how Claremont ( and Cockrum?) had so early on defined and differentiated the team’s personalities and peculiarities. All were different ( no pun on the strap-line intended), intriguing and engaging. I didn’t spot the Errol Flynn reference, but once you pointed it out, it looks a good likeness ( but with 70s hair????). Cockrum also appears to have been looking at some of the old Monster reprints…his Steven Lang on the last panel of page ??? ( second page you show Alan) looks something that Maneely would have depicted. Larry Trask dead…did I miss that…or was it in Avengers#104? And you would have thought Lorna would be more careful opening the frond door given what happened to her in the opening pages of #57!
Just like Englehart, Claremont really hit the ground running for a newbie writer. His War is Hell title was a fine read, bringing out some top stuff from Trimpe and his Iron Fist was interesting. I may go and look what he was doing on Deadly Hands as I have never read those. I enjoyed Claremont’s work up until the split with Byrne; after that I found his stuff over-written with too much exposition; characters talking through their every move, thought and emotion just got boring for me. And as with Kirby, Claremont became a victim of his own success, with too much editorial oversight and commercial interference muddying the author’s vision.
Really looking to future posts on the X-Men.
Nice bit of early Claremont work: Daredevil # 102, one of Sid Shores’s last art jobs. It combined a modern (circa the early 1970s) sensibility with a sense of 1960s Marvel fun and mood.
Based on this issue, had he lived, Shores might have been a good replacement for Romita on Spider-Man.
War Is Hell was another excellent effort. It appeared that Claremont did some decent research (as did Isabella who created and plotted the first two).
Ah, yes, War is Hell was a great concept well executed. An undeservedly forgotten gem. Claremont clearly did his research for the book – something that was certainly not typical on Marvel war books. Some lovely Trimpe art, too!
. . . and Ayers and Perlin , , , , The one about Kowalski as a China Marine (war Is Hell # 12) was a favorite . . . .
Same here! And I recall one story set in Norway and drawn by George Evans also being excellent.
Iron Fist was a great Byrne/Claremont run – I’ve been upgrading a few copies over the past year and they’ve been a very good read…Byrne is in fantastic form!
Notice also an early appearance of another of Chris Claremont’s soon to be tiresome tropes: a character defined by a stereotypical bad accent. Moira MacT must be Scottish because she says “Ye” instead of “You”. All the time, in every single word balloon, except in her very first onscreen panel, where she asks Banshee “D’you want to make something of it, then?!” what she should have said, of course, was “Face it tiger… ye just hit the jackpot!”
Ah Chris “He’s the best there is at what he does… Body and soul… No quarter is asked and none given… Yum… I…hurt”, etc. Claremont.
Brilliant!!!!
It’s the sum total of Chris’s psionic essence.
Goddess! Yes, bub, it felt good to cut loose like that, tovarisch.
“… whose cover by Rich Buckler and Dave Cockrum … gives me strong Neal Adams vibes…” – I thought so too but I can’t identify a definite swipe, even though plagiarism usually jumps out at me. Maybe this is a case of ‘in the style of’ rather than a direct lift, unless anyone’s got a more informed opinion?
Also, Alan, in all of the extracts shown here, the lady’s name is ‘MacTaggert’, but throughout your excellent review you’ve pegged her as ‘MacTaggart’, which is how I would have spelt it. Did it change over time, or are we both mistook?
A minority opinion, but I was never wildly enthusiastic about the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne X-Men. Although Dave Cockrum was a favourite, and this was a much more accomplished product than a lot of contemporary comics, it never quite grabbed me the way it seemed to with the majority of readers (and a lot of you guys, apparently). Hard to explain, it just felt a bit like I’d seen it all before. That might be a case of ‘It’s not you, it’s me’, as I’d had a crash-course in Marvel mythology when I started reading in the early seventies, and had several years of Thomas, Englehart, Gerber et al, so as well done as this was it didn’t really strike me as anything new. I dunno. Just me, then?
No, I’d agree they weren’t really doing anything new in the way Warlock or Swamp Thing were new — but they were doing Marvel style superheroes at a very high level. High enough to stand out from the crowd.
Agreed. Claremont and Byrne didn’t innovate in the way that Gerber, Englehart, Starlin and McGregor did, but further refined the Marvel formula and added a glossiness that seemed fresh enough to be exciting at the time. This is clear in hindsight, but at the time I was swept along like many others by the X-Men phenomenon.
Oh, I still am. Much as I grew to hate Claremont’s later writing, the Cockrum and Byrne runs still work for me.
I suppose a comparable example would be Englehart/Rogers on Detective Comics. They didn’t reinterpret Batman, they just delivered an amazing run on the character.
I completely agree. I re-read the Englehart/Rogers Detective run just last week and while no one is reinventing the wheel, it’s just wonderful. And we shouldn’t discount the efforts of Terry Austin on both series. He added a polish to Byrne and Rogers that’s hard to beat.
You’re probably right but as I’ve mentioned before I have a tin eye when it comes to judging inking and it’s effect.
Byrne reined in Claremont’s worst excesses and flaws, and vice versa, and produced something bigger and better than either man could have created on his own, or with a more subservient collaborator. As with Lee and Kirby or Lennon and McCartney, that’s how these oil-and-water creative partnerships work, until they don’t.
I was just too young to have really gotten into what Gerber, Englehart, Starlin, and McGregor were doing as it happened, but, in hindsight, I agree: that mid-70’s era of Marvel where there were few rules and little adult supervision produced flawed masterpieces that were often more interesting than the slick-but-formulaic-and-derivative work that Claremont and Byrne did on the X-Men, but ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-old me was blown away by Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men run in real time, and I still have a soft spot for it to this day.
I can relate to what you’re saying, mike. In 1975, I definitely would have ranked X-Men well below my favorite super-team books of that era (Avengers and Defenders) — and even a few years later, in the book’s Claremont/Byrne heyday, I wasn’t quite as excited about it as a lot of other fans seemed to be. I certainly always enjoyed it, and would probably even have acknowledged it as being one of the top titles then being produced; but I never felt it was up to the level of my very favorite comics of those days. As I recall, my main issue was the writing, as I never felt that Claremont was in the same league as Englehart or Gerber in their prime.
Having said all that, I’ve been mildly but pleasantly surprised by how well the first couple of years’ worth of stories has held up on my first re-reading in a long. long time. Hmm… have I been failing to give X-Men its proper due all these years? I guess I’ll find out over the next decade or so of this blog. 🙂
Oh, and good catch on “MacTaggert” — I was simply misspelling the name. All fixed now.
Englehart’s writing on Cap and Avengers (as opposed to the strangeness of Dr. Strange) has a lot in common with Claremont (and like you I prefer him). It’s a shame he didn’t become as much of a brand name.
Eliot Borenstein’s 2023 “Marvel Comics in the 1970s: The World Inside Your Head” — a book-length study focused on Marvel’s writers of that decade and how they explored the inner lives of their characters — kicks off with a discussion of Stan Lee, then proceeds through chapters on Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, Marv Wolfman, Don McGregor, and Steve Gerber. It ends with a “coda” called “Claremont Rising”, in which the author posits that “Claremont represents both the apotheosis and the downfall of 1970s interiority. In his wordy soap operas, Claremont made the inner lives of his heroes of paramount importance. But he did so by reviving and retooling Stan Lee’s declarative mode, with his characters carefully laying out their motivations and angst in lengthy monologues that, more than his plots, required a superhuman suspension of disbelief.”
I don’t agree with every one of Borenstein’s conclusions in this book (though I highly recommend it overall to anyone interested in the art of comic-book writing), but this one strikes me as pretty spot on.
An early draft of the book is available online at https://www.eliotborenstein.net/marvel-in-the-1970s-1 , for anyone who’s curious enough to want a longer sample.
That was a problem for me last time I reread the X-Men (stopping at 200, the last one I still have): people have complicated, realistically messy reactions but they’re invariably able to analyze and understand themselves with crystal clarity.
It really isn’t a Neal Adams (almost more John Buscema looking) swipe, but it does have a Thomas/Adams X-Men feel to it.
A lot of what drove the initial enthusiasm for “All New, All Different” X-Men was missing what Adams had brought to Marvel just a few years before on the X-Man and The Avengers.
I almost wonder if Cockrum might not have been better served if he had primarily been an inker (like his contemporary Bob Layton or people like his mentor Murphy Anderson or Layton’s mentor Wally Wood).
Well, if he’d focused on being an inker, we would probably have never had the majority of his character and costume designs — and that would have been a real shame, IMHO.
Good point.
Possibly, he could have continued to do designs, almost like Layton plotted . . . .
Re Claremont-Byrne X-Men: they really made the characters ‘sing’, in a way that had never seen before. The two obviously felt deeply about the team and were very much in tune as a creative partnership, maybe the most in-tune since the days of Simon-Kirby.
I was excited by the work done by Claremont and Cockrum, but not in quite the same way, maybe due to the spotty distribution in the UK, or no distribution at all; it never picked up a real head of steam for me. By the time that Byrne’s first issue #108 rolled round (December ’78), I had found a venue that sold all the distributed Marvels in good quantities every month.
A view of the thought process behind the X-Men can be seen in Claremont’s interview in CMN 37 from 1978 ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-VsUjOG2SiY25NcWFfNnJhRUU/view?resourcekey=0-V-IDB_cXau4A–TWWHEtKw ).
Austin was super important to the package of course, as was Sinnott in the Lee-Kirby FF, and Palmer for the Thomas-Adams work at Marvel. There, I have just named my 3 favourite all-time inkers!! And well done to the wonderful Archie Goodwin for putting the Byrne-Austin art team together for the X-Men in the first place.
I think in the UK fandom cottoned on to the X title a lot earlier than in the US…look at all the Eagle Awards. Not quite sure why, as the popular UK features ( at least with my age group) were a lot more anarchic and cynical than what was being offered by the X-Men.
Cockrum was a child of the 70s with his art and designs: flowing, flamboyant, sexy. He did not fit into the 80s at all.
Probably true.
The Futurians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurians_(comics)) was probably his major 1980s contribution (perhaps along with his work with George Pere and Murphy Anderson on a Thunder Agents revival).
One of my clients knew David Cockrum well and said he was a good (and funny) man..
A quick clarification. X-Men 108 came out in Dec 1977 in the UK. 1977 was the year UK distribution of American comics was overhauled and became a lot more reliable. I remember having no difficulty obtaining my monthly fix from local newsagents all the way from early ’77 until I began mail ordering them from a dealer in 1980.
Thanks Chris. Can’t believe I was one year out! You had a better experience of newsagents than I did; even in 1977 those round me would not get consecutive numbers of titles and then only one copy of each. But X-Men after #101 until #108 was ND ( non-distributed) wasn’t it? Can you remember where you picked up #102 to #107? I found #105 on holiday in Europe, but otherwise did not come across the others until the 80s.
You are right about the non-dist issues of X-Men, Spirit. I picked those up from a mail order back issue dealer in’77 (already becoming more expensive). Issue 108 resumed UK distribution (as I recall, a couple of issues in 1979 were also non-dist).
I guess I was fortunate in those days. A local newsagent agreed to order two batches of US comics (15 Marvels per month were coming over at that time) – one lot to go on the racks and another stashed behind the counter just for me – thereby making sure I never missed an issue. Smug or what?