Friday, January 4, 2013

BAB Classic: X-Men, Ani-Men, and... Count Nefaria!


X-Men #94 (August 1975)
"The Doomsmith Scenario!"
Chris Claremont-Dave Cockrum/Bob McLeod


NOTE:  This post was originally published in March 2010.

Doug: OK, so you probably think we have some fixation with Maggia dude Count Nefaria. Well, no -- it just so happens that while Karen and I were discussing which arcs to analyze, the 3-part Avengers tale we just finished was on the list; shortly thereafter I was reading X-Men 94-95 and said "Why not?" She went along with it, so here we are!

Karen: This issue really brings back some memories. I had already read Giant-Size X-Men #1, so when I saw that these new characters were getting a regular title, I was excited. The only X-Men I had really known were the old team from the reprints that directly preceded the new team. This "all new, all different" group was -and still is- my X-Men team.

Doug: This is a fine issue, and a great follow-up to that classic Giant-Size X-Men #1. Chris Claremont takes over scripting from Len Wein, who serves as this book's editor (and receives a plot credit). The story begins with a gathering in Westchester, NY at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Professor Xavier wants to take inventory on the glut of X-Men now in his service. However, it's apparent right from the start that not everyone is feeling so chummy. Sunfire is the first to make an ass of himself, telling Prof. X and the X-Men to kiss off in no uncertain terms. Good riddance!, I say... Next, Banshee tries to get out of any commitment, but Xavier immediately twists his arm to stay. But it's what the Angel says next that creates the greatest uproar.

Doug: Warren steps forward to tell Xavier that the original team is leaving. It's a touching scene as Jean explains that when they came to the School, they were children with no control of their abilities, but under Xavier's tutelage they'd been molded into young men and women confident in who they were and what they could do. There's a nice couple of panels where Wolverine tells them to spare him the soap opera and Bobby takes exception. Good stuff -- really takes us back to Stan and Jack's FF of the early 1960's with the constant in-fighting.
Karen: Yes, I feel the same way. This was a good way to usher in the new era. While I am sure some of the older readers may have been annoyed to see their favorites leave, this passing of the torch seemed like a logical step. Of course now, the X-Men are more of a tribe than a school, so no one ever leaves. But back then, it made sense. The only thing that was hard to swallow was Jean leaving, but of course, she came back soon.


Doug: The next three pages are strong, showing Cyclops molding the six new X-Men into a team via relentless practice in the Danger Room. Text on these pages tells how Scott is driving them hard, seeking to mold this older team of loners, heroes used to being on their own, into a team. Claremont really hits some high notes on characterization, and we begin to see the characters that will grow over the next several years, even and especially after Dave Cockrum left the book.

Karen: I like that full page montage with Cycylops' head in the center.

Doug: And I'd like to comment on Cockrum's art here. While the pictures are unmistakeably his, Bob McLeod's inks seem at times to overpower the pencils. As we move into #95, see if you can pick up the differences in Sam Grainger's inks, which in my opinion give off more of a classic Cockrum look.

Karen: I'm torn on the artwork. I like both Grainger and McLeod. The styles are fairly different, with McLeod favoring much finer line work than Grainger. All in all I guess I would give a slight edge to Grainger, mostly because I see more of Cockrum in the art (as you say Doug).


Doug: Cut to Chapter Two, set inside the NORAD command center on Valhalla Mountain. An unwitting tech pushes a button on a gizmo he assumes is a prank from his co-workers and teleports the Ani-Men into the base. The Ani-Men had been seen in Marvel Comics off and on over the previous decade, usually in Daredevil. Here they are the henchmen for Maggia boss Count Nefaria. Of course the Ani-Men make short work of the outclassed soldiers. Nefaria shows up, takes the place over, and then announces to the world that he is holding the base ransom. There's a nice scene when the Beast is on the monitor talking to the Professor -- he tells that the Avengers cannot handle this crisis so it will have to be the X-Men.

Karen: I'd never seen the Ani-Men before (I didn't read much Daredevil) and at the time, as a ten year old, I thought they were cool. Now though, I just look at them and shake my head. These clowns were fighting the X-Men? Imagine if they'd brought the Ani-Men back say two years later. It
would have been seen as a joke. Storm all by her lonesome probably could have handled these C-listers.

Doug: Yeah, no doubt. I guess the main attraction was that they'd somewhat match up with the X-Men's powers. I guess...

Karen: Besides the scene with the Beast, I also enjoyed the scene between Cyclops and Nightcrawler, where they discuss an accident in the Danger Room that injured Thunderbird. Cyclops is doing what he does -brood about it. Here we see why Cyclops was -at one time -considered one of the best team leaders in the Marvel Universe. When Nightrawler asks him how he's doing afterwards, he says, "We were both careless, Kurt, except that I was responsible and Thunderbird ended up taking all the lumps." This guy was always thinking about his team, and that earlier scene where he is driving them h
ard in training ties into this - he wanted them to be able to take care of themselves. Claremont really got that, at least in these early issues.


Doug: As the X-Men swoop toward the mountain, Nefaria acts by firing missiles at the Blackbird. Our story ends with a whole bunch of ejected mutants and a lot of sky between themselves and the ground!

Karen: A typical goofy comics ploy occurs here, where after the missiles have blasted the Blackbird, the X-Men eject in a lifting body, and Nefaria blasts them with a disintegrator - which only destroys the ship and not the people inside! Oh come on! But what a suspenseful ending!



34 comments:

MaGnUs said...

I read the original team in reprints, and never got to reading this all-new, all-different one until much later (I started reading comics in 1985 or so, and by that time I was already here in Uruguay were comics were almost impossible to find until 1990, and hard to get even after that). "My" X-Men team is the one from the late 80s; which I would read about in the early 90s: Magneto, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Shadowcat. Like the Wheezer song goes "I've got Kitty Pryde, and Nightcrawler too..." Then there were the New Mutants, which is one of my all-time favorite comics.

Needless to say, the Chris Claremont/John Byrne team in X-Men, and the Claremont/McLeod (later Sienkiewicz) team in New Mutants now stand among my all-time favorite creative teams (along with John Byrne on his own in Superman, and Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen on the Legion).

J.A. Morris said...

Karen wrote:
"Imagine if they'd brought the Ani-Men back say two years later. It would have been seen as a joke."
Maybe, but Deathbird isn't much better than the Ani-Men, she's been a recurring villain for 30-odd years now.

MaGnUs said...

But Deathbird is rarely, if ever, a villain on her own, she usually has rogue Sh'iar troops or something like that with her.

Karen said...

My comment about the Ani-men was mostly to point out that very very soon, we would see just how incredibly powerful this team of X-Men were. I put them an order of magnitude above the originals, who would've been challenged by the Ani-Men for sure.

MaGnUs said...

Storm on her own is more powerful than most X-Men put together.

Doug said...

Excellent point, MaGnUs -- when you think of all of the awful weather-related tragedies that make the news, it's an incredible power that Ororo wields.

She would be a fantastic example, along with Phoenix, of Marvel's penchant for making the female characters helpless (in the face of even the most mundane threat) certainly going away during the Bronze Age. One could argue as we headed into the 1980's that the Invisible Girl, the Scarlet Witch, and Storm or Phoenix were easily the most powerful members of their respective teams.

Doug

MaGnUs said...

Hadn't seen it that way, but it's true; those three characters are very powerful. However, it wasn't until the 70s that Storm appeared that she was shown as independent... previously Marvel Girl and the Invisible Woman/Girl didn't have personalities to match their power levels.

MaGnUs said...

Spambots are getting smarter... this is scary.

Doug said...

MaGnUs --

I got your post in my regular mailbox first, and wondered what the heck you were referring to. Then I checked my spam folder and there it was.

Needless to say, comment deleted!

Thanks,

Doug

Anonymous said...

I always thought that the point of Ani-Men was to highlight that the new Xmen were really not a team in any respect (fastball special aside), and a good way to do that was to face them against a team that were indisputably and even visually a team: same kind of powers, trained unit tactics to how they used them, and directed closely by Nefaria. The fact that the Xmen are way more powerful and yet the Ani Men are still able to give them a run for their money is therefore kind of the point. We see it again in subsequent issues when they face off against the old team (twice) and against Magneto, and we don’t really see them work as a team properly until they storm Moses Magnum in his Bond villain style lair.

While we’re talking about art, can we please hear it for that Kane/Cockrum cover? I think Cockrum is underrated as an Xmen artist because the successive Byrne run was so definitive, but imagine if Kane & Cockrum and actually done the interior artwork and it all looked like that cover. Lordy Mama, that would be some entrance.

Richard

Edo Bosnar said...

I liked the Ani-Men as a kid, and I still kind of like them. Granted, they were usually kind of lame as depicted in their various appearances and it seems like they would have been more formidable opponents for the original X-men rather than this new team, but they're still kind of cool - I guess I always had a fondness for "animal" based characters. Also, they kind remind me of those Savage Land mutates.
Otherwise, I totally agree with Karen's observations about Cyclops. Claremont really did get him, or rather understood the potential the character had, and ran with it. This is why Cyclops is my favorite X-man, bar none.
And I agree with Richard about that cover art. I like Kane's art regardless, and it looks really nice combined with Cockrum. Did those two ever do any interior art together?

humanbelly said...

I distinctly remember being just the tiniest, tiniest bit annoyed that we weren't given any reference footnote on who the heck the Ani-men were-- "Last seen in Captain Octopus #364" or something similar. Somehow over the years I'd never come across them either, but it was clear that they were pre-existing foes of. . . someone. (Yeesh-- Daredevil? That's their level of threat?) I also don't recall if we were ever informed of how Nefaria managed to get ahold of them. And, of course, there was the question of the radio transceivers that seemed to have replaced all of their ears. . .

It was a fussy gripe,yes-- but I do still remember it.

But overall, I loved,loved, LOVED this well-considered re-boot of a dark-horse personal favorite team. The only true downside was that it was stuck on a bi-monthly schedule FOREVER, and that distribution wasn't consistent at that. It was really, really tough to maintain a sense of involvement in the storyline-- particularly w/ that long-ish arc at Black Tom's castle in Ireland (heh-- w/ the leprechans!).

HB

Anthony said...

My earliest comic actually featured the Ani-men. It was Daredevil Annual 2 in late 1970. It reprinted Daredevil 10 and 11. The people wearing the suits were probably different from those in X-Men.
I totally agree with Richard that they were more of a team than the X-Men and a good contrast to the new team. It was also a nod to the Silver Age. Gil and Dave definitely did interior art together Edo but the only thing that comes to mind right away is John Carter Warlord Of Mars # 1.

Edo Bosnar said...

Anthony, thanks for that tip! And for reminding me how behind on my reading I am: I bought the John Carter Omnibus almost a year ago, and have yet to crack it open. Wow, I had some relatively rare Kane/Cockrum art sitting on my shelf all this time...

Anonymous said...

Hi HB – are you implying that the Man Without Fear didn’t have much to be scared about anyway? I have to agree, he did have a habit of going up against criminal-masterminds-bent-on–terrorising-New York-with-an-unprecedented-crime wave on a fairly regular basis. You would have thought he could have just stepped back and watched a mass punch up to decide who got to organise the crime wave between the Kingpin, the Owl, the Maggia, the Enforcers, the Big Man, Silvermane, the Exterminator, the Masked Marauder and the Death Stalker. Did I forget anyone? Oh yeah, Crime Wave. Of course.

On the other hand, DD also went up against Doc Ock, the Hulk, the Purple Man, The Impossible Man, Doc Doom and The Beyonder with only his billy club to hide behind.

Also, is it my imagination or does he do a lot of filling in for Spidey? It's like 'Have YOU fought Spiderman? Well, why not try fighting Daredevil?'

Richard

humanbelly said...

Heya Richard--

The Mandrill-- you missed the Mandrill. Although I don't have a lot of Daredevil's pre-Miller canon, one arc I do have is a pretty unfortunate 3-issue (or so) arc w/ the Mandrill and a dirigible over New York (or San Fran?) and a lot of Mandrill's "power over women" schtick. It was interminable. . . and I'm pretty sure it was from one of DD's stretches at bi-monthly status. It was very unclear whether Mandy was an aspiring crime-lord or world-conqueror or bitter speed-dating washout or what.

Ha-- but you mistook my comparison. Nah, the fact that the Ani-Men were a Daredevil-level foe wasn't meant to cast any disrespect on DD at all. It's just that he had (to my memory) a fairly lame or oddball stable of foes that belonged to him in his early years, and putting the A-Men in that group certainly puts them at a perceived-threat disadvantage, y'know? (Hmm, I mean-- how many other titles has the UBER-lame Owl appeared in, eh? Heck, his henchmen probably got pantsed and wedgied regularly by other crimelords' henchmen down at the parole board and the unemployment line. . .)

(Wow-- amazingly- AMAZINGLY O.T. here, aren't we. . . !!)

HB

Doug said...

Ah, but organic off-topic is wonderful, isn't it? It's the thread hijacking for personal measures that most frown upon.

Carry on -- I'm enjoying it!

Doug

PS: I remarked to Karen yesterday that you all are seemingly enjoying this month-long opportunity to play in the BAB sandbox -- here's to looking forward to the rest of the month! Two chances coming over the weekend, so set your alarmns (or in our European friends' cases, check it out before you go to bed!).

Karen said...

You know, I never got into Daredevil (at least pre-Miller) and I think Richard hit it on the head: he sort of felt like Spider-Man-lite. Similar modus operandi, same city, similar villains, but not nearly as cool or fun. I'd pick up an issue here or there but I never could get interested in the guy.

I still enjoy seeing Thunderbird. I sort of wish we'd gotten more of him, but I do see how they hadn't done enough to distinguish his personality from Wolverine's at this point.

Doug said...

We said this the first time we went through these early issues of the All-New team -- what a ride! From G-S X-Men #1 through the Shi'ar 2-parter, Claremont and Cockrum (yeah, Byrne finished the Shi'ar story), this was just rapid fire action. I, too, wish Thunderbird had stuck around. I've always been glad, however, that Sunfire took a powder right away. Never warmed to him as hero, anti-hero, or villain.

Doug

humanbelly said...

I'm pretty sure I've read an interview at some point (maybe even a letters page?) where Thunderbird's quick demise was discussed and explained. My takeaway on it was that writer, editor and artist weren't quite up to the challenge of making him inherently interesting and unique, and realized it very quickly. His power set was rather vague (kinda "stronger & faster" in general), and replicated or exceeded by other team members. More importantly, though, he was a prickly, chip-on-shoulder loner in a team that already had Sunfire (for about 20 minutes) and the much more intriguing and interesting Wolverine. And even back in the somewhat less enlightened late 70's, I thought his uniform design was 'way too rooted in visual cliche'. (Feathers on his headband? Really?? And buckskin fringe on his boots?) They needed a much better hook for the character other than Angry Young Indian Warrior, and I guess they just kind of hit the creative wall and decided to move on without him.

As an aside-- the perfect actor to play him? The late Clint Walker. Geeze, that guy was impossibly big, strong, and handsome. . . esp. in his youth.

HB

Karen said...

Picking up on Doug's comments about Sunfire, it's interesting what a thin line there is sometimes between 'loveable jerk' and 'a-hole'. Sunfire just always seemed insufferable, opposed to someone like Hawkeye, who also had an over-sized personality, yet somehow seemed likeable (at least most of the time).

As for Thunderbird, his death really was due to the creators not knowing what to do with him. HB, you might be thinking of interviews published in two books called The X-Men Companions I and II, from Fantagraphic Books in 1982.Dave Cockrum said that Thunderbird basically was too much like Wolverine and Colossus (power-wise) and they couldn't figure out what to do with him, so they killed him off. Claremont said he was scripting over Len Wein's plot and wouldn't have killed Thunderbird off if he'd had more time to work on it. So who knows, given time, maybe they could've found a way to distinguish him from Wolverine. But you really don't need two angry guys on a team.

Clint Walker is a good casting choice; he also is one quarter Cherokee.

Edo Bosnar said...

Loving these tangents; first, re: the Owl. As far as I know, HB, besides an issue of Spidey Super Stories, he also fought the Cat in her short-lived series. I think neither of those examples really do anything to remove that label of UBER-lame you affixed to him, though.
As for Thunderbird, I totally love the character and really regret that they killed him off so soon (in fact, there were times when I thought it would have been better if Wolvie had got the axe instead). Even so, I agree with HB's points about cliches and Angry Young Indian Warriors - it was, after all, the '70s, and I'm afraid if he had stuck around, he would have become some kind of noble savage caricature.
As for casting choices, hmmm, I always thought Sonny Landham would have been a perfect T-bird. Or maybe a younger Wes Studi. And since we're on this tangent, I've said it before and I'll say it again: the perfect casting choice for Wolverine is Fred Ward (when he was a bit younger, of course). I mean, look at any picture of him (esp. from the 1980s) - excepting the hair, he looks almost exactly the way Byrne drew Logan without his mask. And needless to say, he excels at playing surly tough guys.

Karen said...

Fred Ward would've been a great Wolverine. I've always thought Hugh Jackman is a little too 'pretty'. And too tall, but it's hard to find 5'3" actors.

I read somewhere that Stan Lee had told artists he pictured Anthony Quinn as Tony Stark and I never got it until I saw part of Guns of Navarone over the holidays. Sure enough, it featured Quinn and he had a mustache and was leaner than I was used to seeing him, and I could really picture him as Stark circa the Tales of Suspense era.

J.A. Morris said...

I don't know if I've mentioned this here before, but this issue turned me into a huge fan of the Ani-men.

A friend of mine picked this up at a convention(Summer 1980!) and I thought they were the coolest villain team, especially Gort & Croaker.

I learned they were in a bunch of Daredevil issues and bought most of them right after that. Only to find that they were nothing but generic thugs in ape & catsuits before Nefaria mutated them. At least some of those silly DD stories had great art by Wood and Colan.

Edo Bosnar said...

That's an interesting point about Anthony Quinn; of course, since I consider the Michelinie/Layton era of Iron Man the absolutely definitive version of the character, I still think Tom Selleck - so popular in Magnum P.I. at the time - would have been the perfect Tony Stark.
You're right about Jackman on both counts (and that's another point for Ward: he's pretty short as well). In fact, Jackman should have been cast as Cyclops - that might have forced them to do the character right in the movies.

Karen said...

I don't know if I can see Jackman as Cyclops, but it does irk me that the character was given such short shrift in the films. The films were so focused on Wolverine, Cyclops never came across as a leader or a strong character. The actor playing him was pretty forgettable too. Too old but I think he was the right type: Scott Glenn.

Doug said...

I wonder if, given that the "second Wounded Knee" had only been about two years earlier, the creative team could have gotten some real mileage out of Thunderbird/Native American issues of the day. Marvel might have perceived that as too political for the time, in the four color comics. Not sure...

Doug

Karen said...

Wow, hard to believe the whole Wounded Knee -Pine Ridge showdown occurred only a couple years before the premiere of Giant-Size X-Men #1. When you start connecting the temporal dots it's kind of mind-blowing!

I don't recall Marvel saying too much about Native American issues -the only thing that springs immediately to mind are Avengers 80 and 81 with Red Wolf, but those are pretty pedestrian. Certainly they never commented on AIM or any of the other radical groups out there. It might have been interesting if John Proudstar had been involved with an AIM-like group (I mean the American Indian Movement, not Advanced Idea Mechanics!).

humanbelly said...

I daresay Avengers 80/81 did a rather commendable job of at least portraying the plight of the modern American Indian in society. They at least showed a bit of social consiousness, touching on the poverty, the beaten-down hopelessness, the racism & bigotry, and even the unusual niche they found as high-rise steel workers (sort of like the Ethiopian parking lot company niche that's well-ensconced here in the DC area). It carried emotional and societal weight, which poor John P-star's origin just didn't measure up to for me, I'm afraid. (John B's art, of course, made every aspect about 25%better all by itself).

Hey, as Wolverine? If we have all of historical Hollywood to choose from? James Cagney! 5'-5" tall, incredibly athletic, FIERCELY firey temper, and geeze, look at a photo of him-- add dark hair and mutton-chops-- and he LOOKS like Cockrum's Wolvie already!

Ah-- the role he never had. . .

HB

Doug said...

Or, Karen, if AIM was supplying AIM -- now that could have gotten really interesting!

Doug

humanbelly said...

Especially if they were supplying them with a particular cheap, stripey toothpaste. . .

HB

Edo Bosnar said...

Actually, at the time of the Pine Ridge events in the early 1970s, when that and a lot of other AIM activities were often making national headlines, Marvel did actually have a series with a Native American lead character: Red Wolf. I bought all whopping 9 issues of it on the cheap in around 1980. Most of the series took place in the late 1900s, i.e., it was basically like a Western series but with a Native American main character and told from that standpoint - none of it was insensitive, but it wasn't really ground-breaking in the political sense as I recall. For some reason, the last few issues jumped to the present day, i.e., early 1970s, but even here no references were made to any events of the day. In other words, Marvel played it safe.
So while I love Doug's (and Karen's) suggestion about an AIM connection for T-bird, I'm wondering if even Claremont had the chops to do that angle right, without falling back on "angry Indian" stereotypes or whatnot.

Fred W. Hill said...

I had been reading the reprint X-Men's, up to issue 93, a reprint of X-Men #45, featuring a clash between Cyclops and Quicksilver and ending on a cliffhanger with the Avengers showing up. I missed both the conclusion of that story and the Giant-Size X-Men issue, but I did get issue #94. I wasn't familiar at all with the Ani-Men and only knew Count Nefaria from a reprint of Avengers #13.
As to Thunderbird, he seemed to have potential as an interesting character but his mutant powers seemed rather nebulous -- super strength? endurance? nothing about his abilities was unique, not even within this particular group. The other new characters did all have unique powers but it does seem Thunderbird was created specifically to be killed off.

Anonymous said...

Guess I'll begin by saying that when this book hit the racks, I was still a diehard DC fan (though the bloom was off the rose as DC Comics quality continued to erode from the promise of the early Bronze Age changes). I was also one of the biggest Dave Cockrum fans this side of the Missippi (that would be the eastern side), due to his work on Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, so something about this cover immediately appealed to me. While Dave was typically a very good illustrator (especially in the 70s), it was his superb inking that really popped his art. And though his inks looked great on his own pencils, they looked just as good with Gil Kane's, John Buscema's and Jim Starlin's pencils. But this comic was packaged with 3 other comics (a means of selling books that were slightly older and unsold), and I couldn't page through it -- so I let it sit! Six issues later (a year in time as X-Men were bi-monthly then), and I was hooked with the purchase of X-Men 100 (remains my favorite comic book issue of all time).

Regarding the art, again, Cockrum was always his own best inker. Grainger was too heavy, and McCleod wasn't quite rite. Layton did a good job in 105, and I think 107 looked decent. I grew to like Byrne's artwork, but the one thing Cockrum really beat him on was the scope of power. Storm, Jean, Colossus -- never again appeared to command the raw power they did under Cockrum's pencils. I remember liking Austin's inks on the covers Dave drew during Byrne's run, but Austin left with Byrne when Dave returned -- and, again, Dave quite got teamed with the right inker -- though Rubenstein was pretty good.

It was many years later when I finally read the story above -- probably in Classic X-Men. I think using the Ani-Men was good choice -- because they were a fully-formed team -- juxtaposed against the a bunch of characters who hadn't yet become a well-oiled machine. And though Thunderbird never really impressed in terms of capabilities, I really dug that Cockrum-designed uniform.

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