Welcome to the fourth and last of our posts commemorating May, 1976 as “Marvel Milestone Month“. Our subject this time out is X-Men #100 — and like a couple of the earlier comics we’ve discussed in this special series, its “numerical milestone” status calls for a qualifying comment, though for a different reason than those others. In the case of both Captain America #200 and Thor #250, the books had reached their impressive issue counts only with the help of the earlier, originally superhero-free titles whose numbering they’d inherited (Tales of Suspense and Journey into Mystery, respectively). X-Men #100, on the other hand, was without question the hundredth sequential issue of a periodical that had never gone by another name, and had always been about a team of mutant heroes led by one Professor X; it’s just that every issue from #67 through #93 had featured a reprint of an earlier story. Technically, X-Men #100 presented only the 73rd actual X-Men story; but, hey, if Cap and Thor could get away with fudging their numbers, why shouldn’t Marvel’s merry mutants? (Though we should probably give the Avengers a Special Achievement Award, seeing as how theirs was the only one of this month’s milestones whose issue number didn’t call for an asterisk.)
But, enough about all that. After all, the main reason we’re here is to enjoy the conclusion of the three-parter pitting the All-New, All-Different X-Men against one of the OG team’s most dangerous adversaries, the Sentinels. Still, since we haven’t discussed X-Men here since January, when we took a look at the first chapter of the trilogy as published in issue #98, we’ll need to spend some time perusing the middle installment in #99 before proceeding to “The Spectacular 100th Issue”. You know how it goes.
Behind a cover by series artist Dave Cockrum, X-Men #99 begins just where the last one left off — with three of our heroes facing imminent death in the cold vacuum of outer space…
The series’ regular creative team of Cockrum and writer Chris Claremont are joined here by inker “Frank Chiara”, aka Frank Chiaramonte. Chiaramonte is something of a unique case for your humble blogger, as I tend to like his work quite a bit over one particular penciller (Mike Ploog), but not very much over anyone else. And that holds true here, I’m afraid, as Chiaramonte’s dark, heavy finishes give Cockrum’s art almost a “gloppy” look, at least to my eye.
Regarding the identity of TV newsman “Roger”, I must admit to being as stumped while re-reading this story in 2026 as I had been when my eighteen-year-old self first consumed it in 1976 — but a bit of online research has clued me in that he’s the late Roger Grimsby, longtime news anchor for WABC-TV in New York City. His colleague is of course, Geraldo Rivera — an ABC News personality in 1976, and still an active media presence today.
Judge Robert Chalmers had initially been a friend and ally of the inventor of the original Sentinels, Bolivar Trask, and the latter’s son, Larry; over the course of Roy Thomas and Neal Adams’ classic “Sentinels Trilogy” in X-Men #57–59, he’d had a change of heart and had ultimately come to the aid of the mutant heroes.
Roger Grimsby’s “Melba…?” is almost certainly a reference to Melba Tolliver, another broadcast journalist who worked at WABC-TV during this era.
When we first met Peter Rasputin back in Giant-Size X-Men #1, he appeared to be simply a young Russian man working with his family on a farm, with the only unusual thing about him being his mutant nature. Now, we learn that not only was his brother, Mikhail, one of the first Soviet cosmonauts, but that that brother died tragically in a launchpad explosion. That meant that, even if Peter hadn’t been a mutant, he’d still have had experiences common to only a very few of his fellow citizens of the USSR; in other words, he was now “special” in a way he hadn’t appeared to be upon his introduction.
For better or worse, this would prove to be a pattern in how Chris Claremont dealt with the characters he’d inherited from the series’ previous writer, Len Wein. None of the new X-Men’s original backstories seemed to be quite interesting enough for the young author, who’d ladle ever more personal history into their pre-GSXM #1 lives over the coming months and years. Without question, some of that “new” background led to good stories; on the other hand, for at least some readers (me included), every such add-on strained credulity just a little bit more, especially when taken in combination with all the others.
Liftoff is a success, but there’s other space-related news that’s not good at all. The U.N.-sponsored space station Starcore One (where Charles Xavier’s buddy Peter Corbeau has his regular gig) is picking up indications that Corbeau and his crew of X-Men are “flying straight into the worst solar storm in living memory…!” Uh-oh.
Starcore notifies Cobeau of what’s up; while he and the X-Men process the unwelcome information, our narrative takes a brief detour to the small (and fictional) village of Dal’roon, Ireland, the better to set up a new plotline that won’t take center stage for another couple of issues…
Back at the main storyline, the X-Men’s rocketship is now apporaching the orbital platform that was once operated by S.H.I.E.L.D. (as shown in Avengers #96), but is now obviously under new management. Corbeau tries to bluff his way aboard by requesting sanctuary from the growing solar storm, but is denied by the station’s commander, Dr. Steven Lang, in the name of U.S. national security. A moment later, Lang’s “mutant detector” equipment outs Corbeau’s crew. “That ship out there must be crammed with muties!” exclaims an alarmed underling.
Storm’s newly discovered ability to use her weather-based powers in outer space kind of comes out of nowhere, but boy, will it prove useful in future storylines. (Just as an aside — that sparkly contrail sure seems to be a nod to the one that writer/artist Jim Starlin had bestowed upon Captain Marvel in issue #29 of that hero’s title.)
Meanwhile, on the space station itself, the X-Men are easily plowing through not just Lang’s human operatives, but the supposedly formidable Sentinels themselves…
A few moments later, Storm rejoins her teammates, and Colossus’ effusive reaction at seeing her alive and unharmed suggests that he’s a little sweet on her (an idea that, to the best of my recollection, never really goes anywhere).
The X-Men’s happy reunion is suddenly interrupted:
After instructing Peter Corbeau to stick close to him (“Can’t have you running into a stray Sentinel in the dark.”), Cyclops races on towards his destination, the “Main Mission” — where even now Steven Lang is grousing aloud to his captives about how “the Trask notes” he used to build his Sentinels must have been incomplete, given that his new models have proved to be “second-rate… not that it matters. I have all the data I need from you mutants, which makes you expendable…”
Now there’s a cliffhanger for you, and a swell set-up for a “cataclysmic” #100 — complete with a full-page splash featuring a fine take on the “two line-ups of superheroes charging each other” motif that’s been a classic at least since 1967’s Carmine Infantino-Murphy Anderson cover for Justice League of America #56.
And given that this is such a classic motif, as well as the fact that it’s usually employed on covers, it’s hard to fault Dave Cockrum for going to the well a second time for his cover for X-Men #100. Or even for a third, slightly less traditional go at capturing this iconic moment of Old vs. New, such as we find on #100’s opening splash page…
… a page which also brings the happy news that Cockrum has inked his own pencils for this one.
Another credit worth noting before we continue is the one for “Bonnie W.” as colorist; that’s Bonnie Wilford, who was married to writer Chris Claremont at this time, and who, with Claremont, had already made an on-panel cameo appearance in the first chapter of this three-parter.
Whether Dave Cockrum simply couldn’t squeeze Havok and Polaris — the “newest” members of the “old” X-Men — into any of his three “charge” tableaus, or simply decided that limiting the group’s lineup to the original five made for a stronger image, his knockout spread for pages 2 and 3 lets us know that Alex Summers and Lorna Dane (or at least very convincing simulacra thereof) are also in the house.
We’ve been tracking the first appearances of soon-to-be familiar story elements in the early issues of the revived X-Men (e.g., #98’s revelation that Wolverine’s claws are part of his body), and the last panel above brings us another, especially fun one — Colossus and Wolverine’s first “fastball special”.
So Jean Grey and Ororo have developed a strong, deep friendship over the past year, eh? That was certainly news to all of us readers back in 1976, who’d never seen the two women say more than a few words to each other in the seven issues’ worth of “All-New, All-Different X-Men” stories that had appeared to date. And given that Jean had physically moved out of the X-Mansion in the opening pages of just the second of those stories, one kind of wondered when and how they’d even had the opportunity to bond.
Asked about this bit in his interview for The X-Men Companion: I (1982), Chris Claremont replied:
…that was something that was intended to be established in #97 at the airport with Storm’s rescue of Jean, that whole interplay. Because… I was settling in and I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with it, I didn’t set it up and in hindsight I should have set it up. In hindsight if I had those first six issues to do over again, given the same plots even, I would do structurally different things: different emphases, different ways of doing the scene. It’s because the line in #100 does come out of left field. And yet why not: It’s impossible to show everything.
Well. Not to belabor a point that I’m sure someone else must have made decades ago, but: of course, you can’t show everything; still, if you’re going to hang a major story beat on a piece of characterization as has been done here, it really does behoove you to set it up properly in advance. (To his credit, when Claremont had the opportunity to add new sequences to the “New” X-Men’s early history in the Classic X-Men reprint series of the ’80s and ’90s, this was in fact one of the areas he addressed.)
Meanwhile, Wolverine finds himself going up against none other than Professor X, himself — and gets an unexpected surprise when the Prof suddenly stands up from his wheelchair and belts the feisty Canadian hard enough to put him on the floor…
Yeah, I doubt many (if any) readers believed for even a split-second that Wolverine had actually eviscerated Marvel Girl, but it was still a great set-up for the page-turn to the second double-page spread of the issue:
A big, dramatic reveal, and an expository montage, all in the same spread — now, there’s some fine graphic storytelling for you.
Regarding that exposition, we have a couple of continuity items to make note of here. The first concerns that fellow in the green costume we espy in the panel bordered by Steven Lang’s legs — for anyone who doesn’t recognize him, this is the Vanisher. One of the original X-Men’s oldest foes (he’d made his debut in issue #2), he’d last been seen in issue #60, mingling with the other mutants who’d just been freed from Larry Trask’s Sentinels; based on his appearance here, one might guess that the poor schmuck hadn’t made it all that far before being nabbed again.
Our second, and more significant note concerns “the Council of the Chosen“. This hooded cabal would remain a more or less complete mystery up until 1987, when the seventh issue of the aforementioned Classic X-Men would reveal that the Council was in fact an earlier iteration of the same group that readers had long since come to know as the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. Seeing as how the Hellfire Club itself didn’t show up under that name until X-Men #129 (Jan., 1980), it seems doubtful that this is what Chris Claremont had in mind all along; still, it all seems to have worked out OK in the end.
As the real X-Men begin to tear apart his “X-Sentinels”, Lang realizes he’s lost the day, but he remains defiant. Ranting about how he, being “a man“, is more than a “mutant swine” like Cyclops will ever be, he leaps into his “flying gunship” and prepares to do what damage he can. But Scott Summers is having none of it — and neither is Jean Grey…
Years later, someone — perhaps Claremont, perhaps somebody else — seems to have had second thoughts about the preceding sequence, evidently believing that it made it appear that Steven Lang had met his violent end as a direct result of Jean Grey’s actions. And so, when this story was reprinted in the eighth issue of (what else?) Classic X-Men, a whole page’s worth of new content was inserted between those last two panels to show that Lang had miraculously survived the gunship’s crash, thanks to a “telekinetic protective field” supplied by Jean — only to be blown up a few moments later by a second, separate explosion. Personally, I thought that the original dialogue in X-Men #100 made it pretty clear that Lang’s own gunning of his ship’s thrusters precipitated its crash at least as much as did Jean’s mental fiddling with its controls, but what do I know? In any event, Stephen Lang would later be revealed to have survived the second explosion as well (per X-Men #291 and #313), so all that fuss ultimately proved to have been fairly pointless.
Back in May, 1976, Peter Corbeau has some bad news for our heroes: the Starcore shuttle’s flight control computer has been damaged beyond repair, meaning that someone has to pilot it manually. And the solar storm (remember it?) has grown so violent in the last hour or so that everyone needs to be sheltering within the shuttle’s special “life-cell” or they won’t survive the trip home. Corbeau himself could pilot the ship, but he’d be fried by the solar flare mid-route. “One of you might survive the flare,” he tells the X-Men, “but you can’t pilot the shuttle. We need someone who can do both, and there’s no such animal.”
And so ends the first battle between the new X-Men and the Sentinels — though it’s obviously not the end of our story. Still, what a way to ring out the milestone 100th issue, huh? I wish I could remember just how my younger self expected this cliffhanger to be resolved, but I don’t. That said, I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t expecting Jean Grey to actually buy the farm… though just how things would ultimately turn out for the superheroine soon to be known as Phoenix would prove to be a surprise not only to me, but — at least in the long term — to Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum as well. In some ways, that’s a story whose final ending remains to be written, a whole five decades later… though, rest assured, we’ll be back in just two months to have a look at what, in 1976, was its very next chapter.
https://tombrevoort.com/2019/12/08/bhoc-x-men-100/
In the almost two years I faithfully read *The X-Men* in the 1980s (#207-27, with a return for the *Inferno* storyline), I felt very disappointed, coming to a clever (if glib) conclusion that Chris Claremont forgot plotlines and called that progress. (When there was a letters column, the letters were on an issue over a year old, as “X-Mail” didn’t appear regularly — preempted for a twenty-third page of story — and when Marvel tried to bring creation and reaction to the standard three/four months, it was still erratic and if we didn’t fall back to a fourteen month gap between comics and commentary, LOCers were more often than not still discussing an issue I hadn’t read when there was a letters column.)
Going through your excellent (as always) examination of *X-Men* #100, I feel like I’m dealing with Steve Gerber’s *Defenders.* There’s a lot going on here, some of it fine and some of it not-so-fine, and what leapt out at me was the fact that Peter Rasputin had a cosmonaut brother named Mikhail, who was apparently as dead as Marley (or should that be as dead as Bucky and Jason Todd?), but would turn up in *X-Men* #285, after the end of Claremont’s first run. Of course when we met Peter Rasputin for the first time, in *Giant-Size Men* #1, it was to see him transform to Colossus to save his sister Illyana, who would become prominent well before brother Mikhail.
Clearly Mikhail could not have been all Peter had, especially since his parents were alive in “Second Genesis,” and no mind-wiping of his abilities occurred with them. (Professor X learning from experience, clearly, even if he still had a lot more to grasp, as you’ll see in *X-Men* #129.)
I knew a man, his brain so small
He couldn’t think of nothing at all
Not the same as you and me
He doesn’t dig poetry, he’s so unhip when you say Dylan
He thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas, whoever he was
The man ain’t got no culture
But it’s alright, Ma! Everybody must get stoned
— Paul Simon, “A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission”)
My Mikhail in comics will always be Mikhail Arkadin from *Firestorm* (there’s a Rasputin there, too. And n *Hellboy.* Why do comics never have a Witte or a Stolypin?) and I fear the best I can manage with this series is a feeling that I’d have liked it a lot more if I’d read it at the time.
For people like me, to rewrite Albert Camus’s *Fall,* it will always be too late, unfortunately.
A spectacular, fantastic issue. Claremont/Cockrum was a great run.
You have a point about Claremont adding to the backstories though none of it bothered me at the time, or now. Storm’s ability to fly in space makes no sense and bugs me more now.
Equally significantly Lang is the first of the many hard core bigots we’d see populating his work. It’s easy to forget how much anti-mutant bigotry amped up under Claremont compared to the Silver Age series. Eventually heavy-handed, but it works well here.
And here we also see Claremont’s flair for seeding stories well ahead of writing them (I loved the Black Tom teaser) — which makes it more surprising he didn’t lay any groundwork for Jean and Ororo as buddies. As far as backstories go, that would eventually reveal Banshee as an aristocrat with his own castle, much as Moira McTaggart would.
I wonder if the reveal Jean didn’t kill Lang was Shooter, who was also insistent Wolverine never killed anyone.
This happened to be the one part of the “anniversary issue” quartet of May 1976 that I missed. Alas, during the first two or so years of the All New, All Different X-Men, I missed several issues that I never saw on the racks of the NEX’s where I got my comics, although from 107 onwards until I stopped collecting altogether, I only missed one issue. I did get issues 99 & 101, at least. Anyhow, just for the pure drama and significance within X-Men history, this was the standout of the quartet. Also, of note, Avengers and X-Men made their debuts on the very same month in 1963, but due to the Avengers going monthly sooner, as well as the period of a few months when the X-Men weren’t being published at all before coming back in reprints, by this point 50 years ago, the X-Men’s numbering was 50 issues behind the Avengers, but within a few years the X-Men would eclipse the Avengers in popularity and sales, not due to the Avengers really stumbling but just the X-Men ascending in a way it never had before and this story exemplifying Claremont’s capacity for telling high-stakes, dramatic tales, even with his particular idiosyncrasies, including those amplifications of the characters’ backgrounds (shades of Lee revealing that Peter Parker’s parents had been spies accused of treason and slain while on duty with a cloud remaining over their reputations).
I wouldn’t have been aware of it in 1976, but X-Men #100 also echoes Avengers King-Size Annual #2 from 1968, wherein the then current line-up was forced into a confrontation with the “original” line-up – at least, as they appeared in Avengers #2 rather than their first issue, what with Iron Man having switched from his old all-gold armor to the first version of his crimson & gold armor and Ant-Man having morphed into Giant-Man during the gap between those issues. Of course, in that issue, the clash came about through taking a few steps into the Time Warp rather than robotic doppelgängers of the original X-Men plus 2.
Having read this 100th issue many years after its publication, that last page didn’t have the same powerful impact on me as it might have if I had read it at the time and had to wait at least another 60 days to find out what happened next. Still, re-reading those last few pages as Jean Grey makes firm determination to save her friends, even knowing that she very likely would not survive the attempt, I couldn’t help but nearly come to tears. Yeah, I’m a softy that way. Claremont and Cockrum were both in top form on this mag.
Looking forward to your overview of the follow-up to one of the most dramatic cliffhangers in comics history (perhaps ranking just behind that of ASM #121), Alan!
X-Men and Avengers debuting in the same month was because Bill Everett was taking too long to finish Daredevil — the original plan had been DD as The New Spider-Man alongside a team book as The New FF. The predominant assumption has been Avengers was whipped up to replace DD, but I’ve heard counter-arguments that the Assemblers were on the schedule and it was X-Men that pinch-hitted.
I’m fairly sure it was the Avengers that made the last minute emergency debut in place of Daredevil. Goodman’s orders to Lee were to create new mags in the “manner” of the FF and Spider-Man, and the X-Men and DD fit the bill and were planned, but Everett got far too behind in completing DD. Clues that the Avengers were the emergency fill in rather than the X-Men is that for the latter 7 entirely new prominent characters were created – the 5 X-Men, Professor X and Magneto, not something ordinarily done on the fly. Avengers # 1, on the other hand, didn’t feature any new characters, instead starring heroes and one baddy who had all been created within the previous year, the most recent addition being the Wasp. Even the supporting cast, Rick Jones and his teen brigade, had already shown up previously. Kirby just needed the flimsiest plot to bring them all together “for the first time” and have them decide to become a team on the last page. The X-Men were also much more like the FF with the matching uniforms and the youngest of them, IceMan, having pretty much a opposite power to the Human Torch, as well as the Beast initially having a personality much like that of the Thing. Even Magneto seemed a variation of Dr. Doom, so much purposely in “the manner of the Fabulous Fantastic Four”, as per Goodman’s orders. Goodman did not specifically order that Lee put all his available solo characters in one mag. If Goodman had that in mind, he might have demanded Lee include Spider-Man in the Avengers, and I believe it was a very good thing that Lee never did that. I think the only reason any one would insist that the Avengers were “planned” was that they are set on the idea that Goodman wanted a real variation of the JLA for his company and can’t believe that the Avengers were actually created on the spur of the moment emergency to fill a commitment with their printer, but the reality is very much that the Avengers fit that bill to far greater degree than the X-Men.
I agree the evidence from the stories indicates the Avengers; the argument involves some of Marvel’s internal paperwork showing the Avengers were already on the schedule. This is outside my expertise as far as having an opinion to its accuracy but I thought it worth mentioning.
Well, that was just about as good as it gets, isn’t it? At least, as good as it gets in 1976. As great a run as the Claremont/Cockrum run was, if you’d told me in ’76 that it was only going to lead into an even better run with Claremont/Byrne (and Austin), I’d have told you that you were crazy.
I don’t have a problem with Claremont trying to deepen backstories and make the new X-Men feel more real and three dimensional. The bit about Colossus’ brother might have been a tad inelegant in the way Clarement just dropped it into the story, but Claremont was taking characters he’d inherited and doing his best to make them his own and some allowances must be made. The gaffe with Jean and Ororo’s friendship was more telling because we’d been seeing both these ladies on a fairly regular basis and had seen no real evidence of them becoming anything more than team-mates, much less friends. Still, Claremont was able to correct many of these mistakes in the Classic X-Men run, so good for him.
As for the story itself, Claremont really out-did himself here. The fanbase had been torn over the new X-Men vs old X-Men debate almost from the moment the new team appeared and this was a nice was for Claremont to give the old-timers what they wanted while sort of rubbing their noses in it as well. Unfrotunately, it took the new team FAR too long to recognize that their predecessors were fake. All you had to do was listen to their insistence on a past version of X-history to know that they were fake; either that, or brainwashed time travelers.
Oh, and as to the art, allow me to praise the always excellent Dave Cockrum, and to join the chorus of folks who recognize that his work looked best when he inked himself.
Regardless, this was by far the best of the four comics of Marvel Milestone Month and it was fun to read it again. Thanks, Alan!
It was a shame Dave Cockrum was not a faster artist.
I wonder if he would have had an even bigger career if (like his mentor, Murphy Anderson), they had used him mostly as an inker.
That is essentially how Bob Layton’s career developed mostly being an inker, co-plotter and designer. (Oddly, Layton was one of Cockrum’s better inkers and was supposed to become Cockrum’s regular inker on X-Men before Byrnes took over.)
I did not know that Bob Layton was slated to become the regular X-Men inker. His work on #105 worked very nicely with Cockrum. And while Layton’s inks can be overpowering, I believe that they would have allowed a slower artist more flexibility on their pencils, knowing that inker could address provide an overall consistency.
Any hey, I’m pretty happy how it all worked out with Byrne & Austin on this title while Layton found quite a home on Iron Man.
I agree that Bob Layton’s inks over Dave Cockrum’s pencils on X-Men #105 looked great. Layton was probably the best inker that Cockrum had on that first X-Men run of his. Bob McLeod also did really good work inking him on #94. Too bad McLeod and Layton only inked one issue apiece during this time, although McLeod did later ink Cockrum again on the X-Men story in Marvel Fanfare #3.
Smart move to save the best for last!
No disrespect to Cap, Thor or their teammates on the Avengers, but Don’s spot on in saying that in the year of our Bicentennial, this was a good as it gets! Ditto with his comment that the best was yet to come with John Byrne and Terry Austin’s ascension to the art.
This issue underscored why the X-Men was far and away my favorite title. Sure, that had largely been due to Dave Cockrum’s art. But by this time, Chris Claremont seemed more comfortable with the series, putting his mark on it. As noted, there were times, that later became problematic. But at that time, I was perfectly fine with it! More than anything, #100 seemed a hint of what was to come!
As an odd aside, I had this title as a subscription and my copy of #99 had several pages where the color plates had been mixed up. It was pretty jarring to me as a kid. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10235562076650780&set=pcb.3171994402952350
Just one request, Alan. Please stop doing such excellent reviews of classic issues like this. I say that because I pushed my pace on this morning’s run much more than I wanted just so I could brew that pot of coffee and read this. 😉
Somebody else on Facebook just mentioned those pages with the messed-up colors, which I don’t remember at all. Guess I need to go pull my copy out of its bag and check it out!
I recall something like that color switch, too, Rick. You’d get that every now and then back in the day.
I recall the color mix-up too.
As has been observed in the comments on previous blog posts by myself and others, Dave Cockrum was not the fastest artist in the world (one of the reasons why the revival of the X-Men series remained bi-monthly for so long) but I am certainly glad that he found the time to ink his own pencils for this spectacular 100th issue. Especially as I am in complete agreement with Alan regarding Frank Chiaramonte’s inks.
I was first exposed to Chiaramonte’s work via back issues of Superman and Action Comics that I picked up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where he inked Curt Swan. I found Chiaramonte’s inking of Swan to be “blotchy” (Alan’s description of “gloppy” also works) and I was distressed to discover just how often Chiaramonte was paired with Swan during the 1970s and early 1980s. He remains my absolute least favorite Swan inker of all time… well, okay, tied with Vince Colletta for that ignominious position. So, yeah, I certainly disliked Chiaramonte’s inks over Cockrum on X-Men #99… and unfortunately he will be back doing embellishments on issue #101, as well. But at least we got some pure, beautiful Cockrum artwork in issue #100.
I found X-Men #100 to be an enjoyable read. It has some great action sequences, with the new x-Men fighting against the X-Sentinel doppelgangers. Cockrum really did outstanding work on this one.
I do agree with Alan that Chris Claremont did tend to make his characters’ backstories overly complicated, as seen with Colossus mentioning his previously unrevealed deceased cosmonaut brother. And, of course, many years later someone else just had to actually bring Mikhail Rasputin back from the dead, and make him a mutant, as well. Hmmm, that writer would be Scott Lobdell, who was *also* the one to bring Steven Lang back at around the same time. Gee, where’s that eyeroll emoji when I need it?
Regarding the Council of the Chosen, when I first read this story in the Essential X-Men volume in the early 2000s, I had yet to get any of the early Classic X-Men issues that had come out in the mid-1980s, since I started following comic books regularly in 1989. I remember wondering if the Council was supposed to be the Secret Empire, since they both wore those sinister hoods. But then I think it was explained to me on some online forum or another that the Council was the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club, and I eventually picked up the Classic X-Men issue where Claremont explained this. Claremont actually mentioned the Council in a couple of other stories in the mid-1970s (Power Man Annual #1 and Ms. Marvel #9) so clearly he had some kind of plan for them, although as Alan notes it’s anyone’s guess if he actually intended at that point for them to turn into the Hellfire Club or not.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to Alan’s retrospective on the introduction of Jean Grey as the Phoenix in the next issue. Boy, these two-month long waits are murder!
I figure that Claremont had at least two reasons for building up the character backgrounds without a clear, immediate purpose: perception of depth and plot seeding.
Colossus’ cosmonaut brother was remembered by Claremont enough for a mention in the thoughts of Colossus during the final fight against Proteus just over three years later in #128, even if it took a far longer time for us to learn any more about him. And of course they went entirely overboard with Wolverine – IMO to not very good results even as soon as of his first limited series in 1982. Plenty of other potential plot seeds simply did not go anywhere, as we will see when the Black Tom plot develops in a few months time.
But it sure helped in making the characters feel real, as well as in rooting some exciting stories.
Sometimes it’s better to let a side just lie fallow than give it a really bad resolution (“Look, AuntMay inherited the world’s most powerful fusion reactor!”).
Knowing which comic was going to be featured in this post, I snuck in and re-read the issue to refresh
my memory. All I can say is ‘Wow!’ – Alan, you anticipated most of what I was going to raise.
• The Havok and Polaris X-Sentinels appear out of nowhere after three splash pages/covers which conspicuously ignore them
• Dave Cockrum was always far and away his own best inker, and pretty damn good over other artists like Jim Starlin, as well
• I didn’t read much of the Classic X-Men title, so I was going to ask if the ‘Council of the Chosen’ had ever even been mentioned again, but you covered that as well
The one thing I would have queried was how in the world the Council of the Chosen/Hellfire Club/Lang were capable of duplicating powers at the level of Havok, Cyclops or Marvel Girl. Colossus reacts to the (fake) Havok’s blasts with “Such power.. I have never dreamed!”. And, if they were capable of duplicating power at that level, how did they ever get beat, or need powers of their own? More importantly than how, why would they bother to create duplicates of the OG X-Men? A few seconds of confusion amongst their first targets/enemies, and then they’re pretty much redundant?
I say one thing, but maybe there is a couple more.
There is a bit of a disconnect between the celebrated first display if the Fastball Special and the outcome. Pete throws Wolvie at the (fake) Angel, and the next time Wolvie is seen, he’s attacking the fake Professor X (with possibly the fake Angel’s boots in the background of the picture). Shouldn’t we have seen what benefit was derived from this manoeuvre?
And finally, the last page…
So to save the whole team from death by radiation, one of them cuts themselves off from the rest, while the one who cares for them most is prevented from going to them and left anguishing just outside.
1976 version:
NIGHTCRAWLER: Scott, no! if you open the life-cell, you’ll kill us all!
CYCLOPS: Let me go, blast you! let me go to her before it’s too late!
NIGHTCRAWLER: it’s… already too late, my friend.
1982 version:
McCOY: No! You’ll flood the whole compartment!
KIRK: He’ll die!
SCOTT: Sir! He’s dead already.
McCOY: It’s too late, Jim.
Is it possible that some writer/producer or whoever involved with ST II: TWOK was a closet X-Men/comic book geek? I know we could probably find similar scenes elsewhere, but do you think this feels a bit too close to be coincidental?
SPOILER ALERT: Just like Jean would (eventually), Spock didn’t die – he got better.
Well damn, no point to my streaming Star Trek III now!
I don’t find the scenes too close for comfort, no.
I always assumed the appeal of Corbeau creating his X-Men Of Doom was the irony of using the OG mutant team to kill their own kind. In fact I remembered him saying exactly that … which obviously didn’t happen.
I seem to recall that 42 years ago there was some fuss that calling the film ‘The Search for Spock’ kind of telegraphed the plot, but I humbly apologise if my thoughtless reveal spoiled your enjoyment 😊
Yeah, I did note that Lang (not Corbeau) referred to the irony of “..using mutantkind’s strongest defenders as their executioners!”, but it still feels a bit off that the Council of the Chosen would agree to investing god-knows-what resources just to indulge his sense of dramatic irony. It’s almost as though they knew they were going to appear in a special anniversary 100th issue that would address the fannish debate over the old team versus the new.
I’d still agree, as much as I’m a fan of Jack Kirby, that this was the best of the bunch that Alan reviewed. Thanks, Alan!
A fair point. Then again, the leaders of the Hellfire Club are stinking rich and may have been able to drop $5 billion into R&D without it spoiling their lifestyle. Given Lang is both brilliant and a mutie-hating bigot, they may have been confident they’d get lethal Sentinels and not worried about it beyond that.
This, of course, is a very widely discussed and referenced story. I am second-guessing myself quite a lot here trying to decide what to say about it. Somehow I am still surprised by how ambivalent I am about Claremont’s X-Men.
On the positive side, Claremont was clearly in the top tier of comics team writing at this time. Few professionals besides him and (somewhat later) Paul Levitz are quite this skilled at juggling plots and characters in a large cast. The lampshading of plots to come works very well here.
I also like that he is doing a lot of legwork in giving the characters some characterization, although ultimately I praise him more for the effort and trailblazing than for the results. All of a sudden I feel that I may have been unfair to him, given the constraints of working with inherited characters under what must have been a considerable level of corporate pressure.
When reconsidering the story told in #100 yet again, what strikes me the most is how transitory the tale is. Little wonder that Claremont felt the need to so many retroactive continuity implants in “Classic X-Men”, even if I don’t particularly like or approve of what he did there. Then again, I should try and write characters with mostly bland characterization in a bimonthly schedule while also creating some reader-attractive drama sometime. Odds are that I would take years to decide on who these people are – and no one would know, because Marvel certainly would not be paying me while I made up my mind.
Still, it is hard not to notice how incensed Scott is in this issue, particularly in contrast to the early Wolverine of the same time. They would essentially switch places in a couple of years or so. Similarly, this Jean Grey is no good match for what Claremont would eventually make of her – retroactively even. I wonder if at any point Claremont considered using this cliffhanger as the trigger of a considerable personality change. I wonder if he went on and did just that and I failed to grasp it until now.
I see some evidence that Claremont was still deciding about the environment that the X-Men operated under as well. He takes some paints to keep Xavier from having much voice in the story. If I am not mistaken, he is actually unconscious through the whole pair of issues, with Peter Corbeau working as something of a stand-in at times. Corbeau himself says that he “never dreamed” that Xavier had access clearance to Valhalla Mountain’s database, and I find that throwaway line to be very deliberate. A 1960s Marvel team could not literally operate outside the law, but we are moving away from that status quo already – no doubt to considerable concern from Jim Shooter, for good or worse.
It was established back in the Silver Age that Xavier worked with the FBI so having deeper contacts isn’t implausible
Oh, it is not that it is implausible. I know of Fred Duncan.
But it sure isn’t the direction Claremont will be taking things. Which is fair enough; he is establishing a direction and themes that he wants to use.
HI, Alan,
One of the first comic book conventions I ever attended was Phil Seuling’s con in NYC in 1976. Claremont and Cockrum held a panel, and it was PACKED. By that point (I think issue #99 had just come out), X-MEN was Marvel’s buzziest title, and even then anticipation for #100 was running really high. I do remember a cheer when Cockrum announced that he had inked the book himself.
Excuse me if I’ve mentioned this before, but I had hitherto considered Claremont a decent utility player, capable of decent scripts, but nothing too special. X-MEN changed my mind, especially issue #97, when it became clear he had some big plans in mind and wasn’t shy about seeding long-term plans. I know what you mean about retroactive backstories, and it makes me wonder if he was sorta thrust into the writing of this book (after Len Wein set things up with the GIANT-SIZE book and the plot for issues #94 and 95).
I agree with everyone that, of the anniversary books that hit the stands in May 1976, this was the most satisfying on multiple levels, working well as an exciting conclusion and teasing what was to come, with some top-notch art to boot..
Finally, this had one of my favorite bits of Claremont dialogue, between Nightcrawler and the ersatz Hank McCoy:
“I heard you got all hairy….”
“Anthropomorphic Elf! The bashful Beast has NEVER been hirsute!” (A line that would have done Roy Thomas proud.)
Hey, remember when Claremont actually had a sense of humor?
Happy Memorial Day weekend, gang!
That is indeed a wonderful bit of dialog.
More musings — between 1961 and the end of 1967, of the superhero mags, Marvel only started six entirely new titles named for the starring heroes: Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers and Daredevil and of those, the Hulk was cancelled after the 6th issue and X-Men after the 66th, but came back a few months later with reprints. So the FF, ASM, Avengers and DD were the first to get to 100th issues from the get-go in their own mags, but the X-Men became the fifth, just fortunate enough to get back to original stories with issue 94, so the fans had a bit of time to get used to the newbies and there could be some build up to the 100th issue milestone. Just as fortuitous that Kirby took over Captain America with issue 193 and could do a multi-issue epic ending with the 200th issue, which was actually the 101st issue since Strange Tales had been renamed for him. But then, aside from the 40 or so issues Cap shared that title with Iron Man, Cap also had about 77 issues from his Golden Age run and its brief revival in the 1950s, even if per later retcons none of those set past about April 1945 featured the ‘genuine” Captain America. And even die-hard Golden Age fanboy Roy Thomas strongly suggested that most of those Golden Age stories were fabrications within the Marvel Universe. The Invaders was his means to show us what really went down. But even later, Brubaker held that Thomas’ tales were also fabrications as Bucky had never really been a company mascot/kid sidekick but an adult soldier all along, engaged in very brutal fighting and killing of enemy combatants throughout the war. Anyhow, still fun to think about the characters and teams that last long enough to reach milestones, even those who get a boost in numbers from taking over mags that started well before they showed up in them.
One weakness in Brubaker’s retcon is that we’ve seen Bucky in action and there’s no way he’s the super-fighter of Brubaker’s version. However that’s common enough in retcons — the popularity of the Winter Soldier shows it was a good call.
As someone was saying over on Tom Brevoort’s blog recently, Marvel in the 1960s hadn’t yet figured out how much of the Golden Age they wanted to make canon, except for Cap of course.
It was *Tales of Suspense* which became *Captain America* with #100. *Strange Tales* became *Doctor Strange* with #169.
Things which always puzzled me about the six features in the split books:
The lead feature tended not to be as much of a success as the back-up (The Hulk appeared regularly, but the Sub-Mariner was cancelled; Iron Man slipped occasionally into bi-monthly status, which Captain America never did; Stephen Strange got another shot well before Nick Fury);
Books with a similar approach did well (Iron Man and Cap are both Avengers; Sub-Mariner and the Hulk are anti-heroes), while the full-books for *S.H.I.E.L.D.* and *Doctor Strange* lasted fifteen issues. Clearly, super-spy fans wouldn’t follow a master of the mystic arts separately, and vice versa; and
While Marvel’s single-feature titles were set at 20 pages with a two-page letter column, the split books had twenty-two pages of story and one-page letter columns. (*Tales of Asgard* and *The Inhumans* gave *The Mighty Thor* a single “Hammer Strikes!” page.)
*Strange Tales* #200, like Rule Number Six in Monty Python’s Australia, does not exist.
Re the split books with a “similar approach”: according to Mark Evanier in The Jack Kirby Collector #44 (and elsewhere), in 1966 Martin Goodman wanted to reconfigure the split books so that the more popular characters would be the lead features (and presumably “carry” the characters that were considered less popular back then). It would have been like this: Tales of Suspense with Captain America (lead feature) and Nick Fury (back-up feature); Tales of Astonish with the Hulk (lead) and Dr. Strange (back-up); and Strange Tales with Iron Man (lead) and Sub-Mariner (back-up).
These changes were part of a larger plan to launch new books and features, but Evanier says it all hinged on Goodman getting an early release from the restrictive distribution deal with Independent News. As we know, that didn’t come to pass in 1966, so the swaps among the split books were shelved.
Claremont and Cockrum were firing on all cylinders in #100, weren’t they? And those final three pages—perfection! Fortunately, I discovered this story at a later date so I didn’t have to wait 60 days for #101.
One last comment. If you look at the last three panels of the final page of this issue, as Jean Grey is flying the space shuttle through the solar storm, the sound effect of “TAC TAC TAC” appears. That was to signify that Jean was being exposed to the same sort of cosmic rays that gave the Fantastic Four their powers way back in FF #1. Chris Claremont’s original idea was that the cosmic rays would majorly enhance Jean’s mutant powers, resulting in her transformation into the Phoenix in the next issue. Of course, Claremont later retconned his own story, revealing instead that Jean had merged with the alien Phoenix Force… but I expect that Alan will be dealing with that honking big can of worms at a later date!
Oh, yes! I caught the TAC TAC TAC and I immediately thought “Fantastic Four!” I read bits of some of the issues leading up to the immediate aftermath of Phoenix as they were referenced but never read these two. What is knocking me over right now, even more than memories of where I would be reading the issues to follow when I started picking me up is how excellent the comic was here and how it would only get even better! And now it’s half a century later…wow…
Excellent summary. I read this post amusingly as at this point as in the UK at the time we used to get the issues as part of the cover date so all I knew of the New X-Men was from April’s dated #98 and I had not read #99 or #100 in May 1976. When I did get them I was blown away and #101 would be the last one I read until issue #115 due to how distribution worked here. I have since picked up the old issues and I have a full run from #94 until #161. I still think #98-101 are some of my most prized possessions. I always felt that Claremont left gaps like the one highlighted about Jean and Storm and felt I must have missed out on stories which was in fact just him changing what had “not” gone before.
As I recall, here in the UK, X Men was non-dist from 102 to 107. Most annoying back then, when I didn’t have the funds to get those issues from a dealer.
Whilst my memory is a wee bit foggy – it has been the best part of half a century – I don’t believe that I next saw another issue of New X-Men on a UK newsagent’s shelves until #108; #101 was the last one I had no trouble obtaining. I later “bought” #102 off a school chum; a C120 cassette copy of Yes’ “Tales from Topographic Oceans” “purchased” it for me, albeit with a paint flecked cover. I then had to wait until 1979 – and the fortuitous discovery of a tyro comic dealer in my own home town – before I could experience the joy of reading the missing issues.
Alan, I just want to finish by thanking you for the immense amount of pleasure I’ve experienced reading all your recent “Anniversary” reviews, but this one was special for me if only for the memories it brings back of that long hot Summer of ’76. The UK experienced record breaking temperatures (surpassed, however, this week) and I was fortunate to spend all of the Summer school break – a whole six weeks – on holiday with my parents (both teachers) in South-West Scotland. Once a week, we would drive to the nearest town, Stranraer, to replenish supplies and, in my case, haunt the two or three shops that carried comics. It was there that I was fortunate enough to find #100. I read and re-read it to the extent I can still recall whole sections of Claremont’s pithy dialogue. I even bought a sketch pad and tried, unsuccessfully, to copy the artwork. I know that I bought other comics and magazines that Summer including a Conan Treasury edition, but it is X-Men 100 that sticks out. Thanks again, for bringing the memories flooding back and, of course, doing what any good writer should hope to achieve: the amusement and edification of your readers.
Ah, yes, David – the Summer of ’76 – sunshine and lots of comics. Great memories. And 50 years later, here we are again in an actual British heatwave (but I can no longer take the heat as I could when I was 14). My X-Men 100 was purchased that August from Highgate News in Cleethorpes.
Well it’s a year out from Star Wars and we’ve already got a reference to a deathstar.
Wonder if it was a common theme in the 70s