Comixology has 45 old school Uncanny X-Men issues on sale for .99 each right now...

I can't help shilling for Comixology from time to time.  But sometimes I have to.  I really, really do.  I mean, I run a blog largely dedicated to old comics-- which I liberally define as "anything published prior to the year 2000"-- and a big part of that includes yakking at length about Uncanny X-Men back when Chris Claremont was writing it and Wolverine was but a hairy, beer-swilling pup.  Or whatever it is you call baby wolverines.  Right now they're selling 45 classic issues of Uncanny X-Men for .99 each.  I already bought them all for 1.99 apiece, and I considered that a bargain at the time.  If you haven't experienced the foundation of practically everything people love about Marvel Comics these days, this is your big chance to catch up.

The art is outstanding throughout, with Dave Cockrum and John Byrne pencilling most of the issues and a few guest art teams here and there.  And wow, beyond the visual treats, these are fun comics to read.  They're occasionally goofy, but they have all the theatrics and high drama you could possibly want in a superhero comic, with in-depth characterization of even the least-loved and lowliest of cast-offs.  You know, like Banshee.  Poor guy.  And the long-simmering "Dark Phoenix" storyline is one of those seminal comic book events, an era-defining tale, as is "Days of Future Past," which seems to have inspired a movie recently with a lot of familiar characters.  Where have we seen them before?

Anyway, Marvel can't seem to leave this stuff alone.  They must have retold all of Claremont's stories more times than DC has redone "Crisis on Infinite Earths."  Even Marvel movie guru Joss Whedon couldn't resist dipping into the Claremont well when he wrote his own much-lauded run not so long ago.

Uncanny X-Men #172 and #173: Bad News Mutants in Breaking Training So They Can Go To Japan... Yet Again!

As anyone who's read this blog knows, I live in Japan and I love American comics with this country as their setting.  Imagine my delight when Comixology delivered up Uncanny X-Men #172 (August 1983) and #173 (September 1983), a couple of thrill-filled Nihon-centric issues originally delivered right to the mailbox of my childhood home and featuring a glimpse of my current home, Marvel-style.

Come to think of it, Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont may be one of the reasons I moved here.  If so, I owe him a huge debt of thanks not just for the entertainment his writing provided me when I was kid about Dani Moonstar's age, but also because here in Japan, I live a life every bit as exciting as Wolverine's.  Okay, not really.  I'm boring.  I've only fought ninja or Yakuza thugs on rare occasions, and only once did I love and have my heart broken by someone as regal and unattainable as Lady Mariko.  I'd love to tell you all about it, but we have important things such as comics to discuss!

It's been years since I last read these two issues.  I plan to give them my full literary attention someday, but for now we're going to confine our discussion to Smith's images of Japan and bits of narration and dialogue in the pages I chose to illustrate this blog entry.  Just from looking at these very pretty pictures, I can tell this story is a direct sequel to 1982's four-issue Wolverine miniseries by Claremont and Frank Miller.  Wolverine Miller's influence runs all throughout their visuals, so much so the cover to #172 features the invitation Wolverine sent his friends at the end of Wolverine #4.  Paul Smith recreates Miller's original image, and even includes the cute handwritten little note from Wolverine to Nightcrawler about bringing beer.

"His Imperial Majesty Hirohito, Emperor of Japan."  He is now referred to as the Emperor Showa, and if you want to place this book within its era here in Japan it would be the Showa 58, the 58th year of the Showa Era.  Imagine receiving an invite from an emperor!  That is one heavy-duty invitation.  Lady Mariko, Wolverine's fiancée, is from a powerful family, apparently.  I love the fanciful Miller-designed attire the loving couple wear in the photo, too.

By the way, beer is readily available in Japan and has been for quite some time, so either Wolverine means bring any decent local brand Nightcrawler can pick up at a convenience store on the way to the ceremony or else pack in his suitcase some favored Canadian label he can't get there.

For this story, Claremont and Smith don't waste any time with flights or airports.  They immediately open with a "widescreen" cityscape and tell us it's Tokyo.  Certainly looks like Tokyo to this ex-pat.  Smith appears to have used a high-contrast photo paste-up to create this image, so what we have is a very convincing night view of the huge concrete and steel electrified wonderland we call Tokyo.

Then we zoom in for a closer view to establish exactly where in...

Uncanny X-Men #172 (August 1983), script: Chris Claremont, pencils: Paul Smith, inks: Bob Wiacek

And there it is!  That telephone-topped building again!  Frank Miller used it in Wolverine, Jim Aparo followed suit in Batman and the Outsiders.  Al Milgrom would also draw it in Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, yet another sequel to or continuation of this storyline.  In this issue, we get to see Smith's super-clean rendering of same. 

Was this telephone an actual Tokyo landmark?  I've been researching this online, but either it wasn't so special people have memorialized it or else it's a figment of Miller's imagination.  Even if this is the case, I think a Tokyo building with a big telephone on top is much more plausible than the existence of a Frank Miller movie that doesn't make Ed Wood weep the tears of artistic validation.  Tokyo is the place for all kinds of outdoor advertisement.  I don't know of any building currently topped with an old-fashioned telephone, but I do know of one topped with what the locals refer to as the "Golden Shit."  It's supposed to be a droplet of beer.  I have to agree with its more scatological nickname.

Anyway, you know you're in 1980s comic book Tokyo if you see the giant telephone.  You know you're in today's real Tokyo if you see a big, gilded turd.

Meguro, as Claremont informs us here, in the voice of his character Wolverine, is indeed an upper class district.  Celebrities and the like live there in expensive high-rise apartments.  It's just the place Mariko's family, the Yashidas, might maintain in Tokyo for their visits there.

Since this is an adventure comic, most of the outdoor scenes take place on the rooftops of those apartments, at night.  That's where the ninja sneak around so they can disrupt wedding plans when they take a notion to do so.  Wolverine and his pal Nightcrawler are pretty good at sneaking around up there, too.  As is Wolverine's erstwhile lover, the thrill-crazed Yukio.

Well, kind of...

Uncanny X-Men #172, Claremont, Smith, Wiacek

"I slipped!"  That would have been a pretty stupid way for Yukio to die, huh?  Lucky for her, Storm was out flying around.

As you can see from this page, Smith constructs his buildings very simply.  Even so, he and inker Bob Wiacek toss enough katakana or hiragana up and down their sides to make things convincing.  His kimono-clad women are the real visual draw in this story.  There's something about the Smith-Wiacek clean-line look, with things pared down to sleek minimalism that goes well with traditional Japanese clothing.  It also helps that Smith and Wiacek draw amazingly beautiful women.  Unfortunately, they also tend to draw them so they resemble each other, except for Yukio and her punk-rock hair.  Smith and Wiacek give her a face with more sharply defined cheekbones and it individualizes her.

The fun extends to the next issue where Wolverine reluctantly teams up with new team member Rogue to fight the villains.  As I've said, I haven't re-read these in detail, so all I know about the plot is the Silver Samurai and Viper want to stop Lady Mariko from marrying Wolverine.  And Storm debuts her Mohawk after hanging out with Yukio.  No doubt spending any amount of time with someone as uninhibited as Yukio would inspire you to drastic style changes.  We'll get into all of this in the future, but for now you don't really need to know the specifics to enjoy our Claremont-Smith travelogue.

Uncanny X-Men #173, the story starts in "the Ginza."  Claremont has Wolverine tell us guide books recommend "the Ginza" for a "good time."  Wolverine's idea of a good time is getting drunk and into a bar fight.  So that's where we find him. 

I really think Wolverine has read the wrong guide books, because Ginza (minus the definite article) is more a shopping area.  And not just any shopping area.  Ginza is where the rich go to drop the big money on Rolex watches, Chanel and Louis Vuitton couture and bags and other luxury goods, many of which cost more each than I make in a month.  There may have been dive bars there in the 1980s.  There may be now.  But I doubt it.  I rather think Wolverine's destination of choice would be the wilder, woolier environs of Golden Gai in Shinjuku's Kabuki-cho neighborhood.

That's where I went when I wanted to pretend to be Wolverine and act all tough.  Whenever I told people I hung out in Kabuki-cho, they'd smile and shake their heads and tell me, "Don't go there!  It's dangerous!"  Dangerous to the tune of the thousands of yen you blow in the kinds of bars Wolverine would more than likely spend his nights. 

No one has ever said anything like that to me about Ginza.  They just told me to go to this famous chocolate shop, which I could never find the one time I tried, way back in 2008.  I did find a toney toy store selling Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull actions figures, the ones with amblyopia.  Some Wolverine, huh?

If you take a closer look at that first vertical panel, notice how Smith includes a puddle in the gutter.  Nice work on the reflections there.  It rains a lot in Japan, so that's a little detail that goes a long way to establishing the setting's bona fides as well.  That image has an impressive sense of place.  That's the Tokyo I've seen with my own eyes.

Uncanny X-Men #173 (September 1983), Claremont, Smith, Wiacek

I'm not too certain about those guys Wolverine's launched through the window.  He does a lot of stuff like that whenever he's in Japan.  Things like this may or may not happen here.  I have a feeling if a foreigner started tossing locals through bar windows, we'd hear about it on the NHK news.  Even more so in the early 80s when we were a rarer breed.  If I had to guess, I'd say this is a more likely to happen in Okinawa where the US military always seems to be stirring things up and causing trouble.  But then, as I've already proven, I'm not Wolverine. 

The worst incident I've ever been involved with was having a guy repeatedly scream, "Pearl Harbor say 'Fuck you!'" at our little drinking group until the bar-owner kicked us out for causing trouble.  I don't blame her.  He was a regular and we were just passing through.  I still wonder what set him off, though.  He approached us in what we thought was a friendly way.  We made small talk in Japanese and tried to use the little abdomen exercise wheel when he asked.  Maybe he felt patronized, or someone said something to offend him when I wasn't paying attention to the conversation.  Perhaps he just hated whitey.  I still don't know what was in his heart.  But I do know he was drunk.

You might read worse stories from other ex-pats here and there around Japan.  Some people attract negativity and bad scenes.  I suppose I've been very lucky in all my years here.  Despite the occasional run-in with Sunfire, mine has been a smooth, laid-back kind of life.  But once again, I don't have adamantium-coated bones or a mutant healing factor.

Marvel Japan is a pretty fun place to visit, isn't it?

Uncanny X-Men #168 (April 1983): My first subscription comic!

Did you ever love a comic so much you subscribed to it?  Sure, people have "pull lists" these days.  We had those back in the antediluvian days of comic book fandom, too.  I mean, my antediluvian days, which were the early 1980s.  I had a pull list at two different comic book shops, but both of them went out of business fast.  There were not enough people like me to support them in our small southern town.  So to primitive me, subscribing to a comic for a year and getting issues in the mail was the sign of true love.  Like offering a sweater or a ring to that special someone.  My special someone was Uncanny X-Men.  And Uncanny X-Men #168 (April 1983) was the first issue that came straight from Marvel to my mailbox.  What a day that was!  I was always the first person home, so my responsibilities included running out and checking the mail.  And there was a brown wrapper with a battle-damaged Kitty Pryde inside.

"PROFESSOR XAVIER IS A JERK!" Kitty exclaims in the splash panel, pointing accusingly back at the readers as if we don't believe her. 

I remember this as a shocking moment, a new, upstart character badmouthing an old school stalwart.  Apparently, others felt the same about it because Joss Whedon and John Cassaday would recreate it as a Kitty memory when she returns to the mansion during the first moments of their initial Astonishing X-Men story arc.  What had Xavier done to piss off Kitty?  He refused to let her be an X-Man because it was too dangerous.  To add insult to injury, he also forced her to join the New Mutants trainee team, which is like being demoted from the Majors to low A ball in the middle of the season.

Uncanny X-Men #168 (April 1983), Script: Chris Claremont, Pencils: Paul Smith, Inks: Bob Wiacek

Kitty does her best to prove Xavier wrong throughout the issue, but at first, her attitude is pretty much what you'd expect from a disappointed fourteen year old.  She flips.  Her calmer, cooler friend Illyana immediately calls her out for acting like the child Xavier already thinks she is.  And Illyana should be the one to show maturity.  She and Kitty are roughly the same age, but Illyana is also the demon queen of the Limbo dimension.  Being a demon queen gives one a more advanced perspective. 

Ah, the art!  There is some excellent acting throughout this book and it's all just so clean, so slick, so easy on the eyes.  Paul Smith took over Uncanny X-Men after Dave Cockrum left the book for a second time to write and draw his own property, The Futurians. While I really dug his return, Smith immediately piqued my interest with his ultra-sleek linear style.  With Bob Wiacek finishes, practically everything in the book seems made of polished metal.  Okay, I'm exaggerating, but Kitty's hair certainly has a metallic look.  And good portions of the story take place in the X-Mansion's lower levels where the walls actually are polished metal.  The Smith-Wiacek team is my third art team on this book and the last to capture my imagination.  I copied their Kitty-hair and style of drawing noses for months, but the Smith-Wiacek Storm is the character at her most goddess-like.  Absolutely beautiful.  Then they gave her a Mohawk.

Dubious fashion choices aside, the father-daughter dynamic Chris Claremont works in this issue is a lot of fun.  Professor Xavier has the dad role, of course, and Kitty is the typical teen who wants to prove to her parents she's grown up enough to make her own choices about risk taking.  For most of Kitty's contemporaries, this would mean going un-chaperoned to a Duran Duran or Michael Jackson concert.  Everyone else is going!  Why can't I?  Since Illyana is apparently Kitty's only age-appropriate friend and the rest of the people she hangs out with rarely attend pop concerts but instead have superpowers and enjoy dressing in colorful leotards to launch into space and fight insectoids, that's what she wants to do.

After she realizes throwing a tantrum isn't going to help, Kitty calms down and puts her intellect to work on the problem.  She tries various strategies to change the Professor's mind, from whipping him at chess while explaining her considerable advantages to shouting to shameless brown-nosing.  The progression Claremont presents is just so believable.  Who hasn't tried each of these with parents?

Then, unlike those of us who never got to see the Go-Gos or the Replacements until we were out of the house and in college, Kitty gets lucky, because some space cockroaches who shoot magenta ray beams from their eyes have infiltrated the mansion's creepy-crawly basement.  This is all very reminiscent of the time Kitty faced off against a N'Garai demon by herself, but provides another, very convenient way for Kitty to present her case.  And out of all the things Kitty's tried, it's the most effective, because she gets to showcase a number of her intrinsic capabilities and all those extra things she's learned so far from people like Xavier, Cyclops, Storm and even Wolverine.  Yeah, as if Wolverine knows anything about fighting.

Claremont, Smith, Wiacek

And that brings us back to the cover, because fighting these bugs is how Kitty ended up in the bruised, ripped and still defiant pose I first saw after slipping the comic out of the wrapper.  Colossus turns up just in time to save our gutsy Kitty, but she's finally made her point.  Professor X puts her back on the team, with a probationary proviso which Kitty sensibly agrees to.  She also gets a pet dragon, which is like the ultimate wish fulfillment fantasy.  Imagine for a moment what it's like to be Kitty Pryde.  You're young, you're a genius, you're spunky and heroic, you've got hair so shiny people in shampoo commercials turn weepy with envy, you get your fondest wish... and you get to have the coolest pet ever.

As an added bonus, you also get your own fan page:

Uncanny X-Men #168 (April 1983):  Alliteration sometimes leads to adverse accidental acronyms


Nobody did all that for me when I was 14!  Oh well, shoot, after all that, she deserves it.

Uncanny X-Men #118 (February 1979): Bad New Mutants Go To Japan!

Script: Chris Claremont; Art:  John Byrne and Ric Villamonte

Enjoy this spectacular double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #118 (February 1979), pencilled by John Byrne and inked by Ric Villamonte.  Maybe Terry Austin was off that month.  Agarashima, the city on fire here, is completely fictional but the visible architecture in Byrne's rendition is plausible enough.

Except for Mt. Fuji in the background.  An online source tells me Agarashima is in Miyagi prefecture, which is way up north along the eastern coast of Honshu.  Actually, that same source reports the city to be "300 kilometers north of Tokyo" and misspells the prefectural name as  "Miyago."  This may be a fictionalized flourish on Chris Claremont's part, freeing him to use his imagination and create a fanciful Marvelized Japan.

Fake Miyago or very real Miyagi, it's a likely location for a medium-sized port city, which is what Agarashima appears to be here.  Mt. Fuji is much farther west, so there's no way if this city resides 300 kilometers north of Tokyo you would see it looming that large in the background because it would be about 500 kilometers away.  I live in a city in the same prefecture as Mt. Fuji, about 116 kilometers away, and even when we can see it from here (it's visible from several vantage points on clear winter days when it's wearing its snow cap), it's only about the same size as my thumb.  So this is more than likely a little artistic license on Byrne's part as well.  We just need some cherry blossoms blown out to sea by the conflagration to achieve perfection.

So, with all that in mind (or better yet, out of it), let's just admire this glorious drawing, huh?  Unfortunately, after this image, there's not a lot of travelogue imagery in this story.  Much smaller panels, and a lot of the action confined to interiors.  By the next issue, the X-Men are on a volcanic island off the coast where they fight a pissed-off nutjob named Moses Magnum, who wants to sink Japan, so we're denied more John Byrne-drawn vistas of late 1970s Japan.  Think what he might have done with Tokyo.  I would love to have seen it.

You know, not on fire.

Early Uncanny X-Men finally available at Comixology

Comixology just added Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975) and Uncanny X-Men 94-100 this week.  Technically, the title isn't Uncanny X-Men.  Just X-Men.  Or, if you prefer, The All-New, All-Different X-Men.  The X-people didn't become uncanny on the cover until issue #114 (October 1978), but Comixology cleverly lumps them all together under one easy-to-find title.

Isn't it strange X-Men managed to go so long without an adjective?  It has precedents.  After all, the Avengers starred in The Avengers.  Daredevil settled for "Here Comes."  But with all the incredibles, amazings, mightys and invincibles, you'd think someone at Marvel would have already slapped some kind of descriptor on these kids before the middle 70s.  Exasperating, exaggerated, exacting.  Anything.  Right?

These issues join the already-available later ones comprising the "Dark Phoenix Saga."  Now you can check out the earliest days of the international X-Men, the characters who made this book one of Marvel's flagship franchises after the original version sickened and didn't exactly die, but entered a sort of zombie-state.  Reprints, we call them.

What does this mean?  It means I just bought a bunch of comics I've bought many times before (including the originals!) in various forms (including, once again, the originals!) and we're going to have some fun with them here sometime in the future after I read them yet again and decide just what the heck I want to point out.  Probably something obvious other people have pointed out about ten thousand times before, but I'll stupidly treat as if I'm the first because that's what I do.  This is my way.

It also means I'm missing Dave Cockrum right now.  That guy could draw.  The stories in these issues are your usual Marvel gang-warfare stuff with a few surprises and then-unique touches but the art was the main draw for me.  The character designs really dazzled my junior high self and I spent a lot of my free time copying Cockrum's splash pages and coolest panels-- there are many of them in these issues-- instead of studying and doing homework...

Now I DRIVE the school bus!