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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 23 October 2020 at 7:51am | IP Logged | 1
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Scripting this story as a defeat not only defeated the X-Men but defeated the entire point of the story.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 23 October 2020 at 8:03am | IP Logged | 2
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Important to remember this was MY story, plotted almost entirely without Chris. (His contribution was Senator Kelly and setting some of the action in Washington.)So, perhaps unconsciously, he set about shaping the tale to his will, even tho that completely screwed up what I had in mind.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 23 October 2020 at 8:12am | IP Logged | 3
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JB, you basically created a story whereby the Holocaust could be undone. All the suffering, terror, violence, death -- not remedied, not altered, not paid-back... just... poof! Gone. It never existed.
It's a fantasy, yes, but it's an amazing fantasy: pun absolutely intended, because this is could've been the ultimate comicbook victory.
Even calling what happened to it a "complete screw-up" is an understatement. Damn. |
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 23 October 2020 at 8:20am | IP Logged | 4
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One of my smaller triumphs in the creation of this story happened at an after work dinner with Roger Stern, Ralph Macchio and Captain Multiverse himself, Mark Gruenwald. Mark, as many of you know, was totally in love with the multiverse concept, even tho most Marvel fans scoffed at DC for their multiple Earths. That distinction was already crumbling, as "alternate realities" crept into Marvel, but I was determined that my story would NOT create an alternate timeline, as Mark felt it should. I argued that Kate, having been sent back literally thru her own "mindstream," did not create a point at which a divergence could occur. When they beat the Sentinels, Kate was supposed to vanish from inside Kitty, as if she had never been there. That's what I convinced Mark of, and that's what I drew. Unfortunately, Chris was the last to have it, and wrote the key panel as what became known around the office as "the incestuous lesbian kiss"--something that would not have been possible had Kate simply vanished. (He'd also slipped in a suggestion that the whole adventure might create an "alternate timeline," precisely what he was NOT supposed to do.) All elements that piled more and more on the back of that poor camel. . .
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 23 October 2020 at 8:22am | IP Logged | 5
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Another aspect of this, which I have noted before, was that most readers assumed the script came first, so if Chris scripted something other than what I had drawn, it looked like I drew it wrong!!
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Peter Martin
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| Posted: 23 October 2020 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | 6
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I can see that Claremont slipped in ambiguities where no ambiguity had been intended, but I don't see the defeat. The story sets up that the X-Men have to save Senator Kelly. And they do. Angel asks the professor if they succeeded in changing the future. He says he doesn't know. There's your ambiguity, yet the return of Kitty's young psyche as soon she nudges Destiny and saves the Senator can only be interpreted one way: success.
Yes, subsequent stories would go on to show the alternate timeline existed, but subsequent is the key word. This two-part story by itself does not say that timeline continues to exist; all it has to say on the matter is that Professor X doesn't have knowledge of the future. Even with the carbuncle of the alternate dark future, at the very least the X-Men stop that future in their own timeline.
As for the 'incestuous lesbian kiss' label, those wags suggesting such needed to work on their reading comprehension. There is nothing sexual in the kiss, is there?
"An abyss opens within Kate Pryde. Reality twists inside-out and, suddenly, she comes face-to-face with herself as a child -- so innocent, so vulnerable , so young. Impulsively , she gives herself a kiss...
...and let's the winds of eternity sweep her home."
I don't know about you, but I think those words are pretty sweet. All sorts of poetic. And the poetry of those words didn't hold fast to the precision of the nuts and bolts of the story that the artist/plotter had intended. But isn't that what you get with the Marvel Method?
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Marc Baptiste
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| Posted: 24 October 2020 at 5:46am | IP Logged | 7
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Peter,
I disagree, "sweet, poetic?" - even way back then, I thought the self-kiss was a little weird.
Marc
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Doug Centers
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| Posted: 24 October 2020 at 6:11am | IP Logged | 8
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I always imagined the kiss as a peck on the forehead .
Nevertheless, I much prefer JB's original idea, which makes more sense to me.
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 24 October 2020 at 7:02am | IP Logged | 9
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Since Kitty has been "revealed" to be bi, and Chris has said that was what he always intended, I suppose the kiss will now be used by some as proof of this.
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Rebecca Jansen
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| Posted: 24 October 2020 at 11:51am | IP Logged | 10
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Later on, having future Rachel physically appear in the Claremont X-comics was initially intriguing but it didn't seem to ever really pay off (not that I ever got to anyway, I bailed where Wolverine appeared to have killed her circa #206-7-8-something), although they kept her story going into the 2000s. She became just another mutant to add to the growing crowd, daughter of Phoenix, refugee. Still, fine, although it pins down Scott and Jean/Phoenix having at least reproduced, whenever that would've been following the suicide of Jean/Phoenix in #137, or was this where the 'alternate' timeline comes in, not the saving of Senator Kelly?
Then other future Summers-Grey and Summer-Pryor and non-related mutants started coming back, in droves it seemed like... Cable, Nate Grey/X-Man, Bishop, a whole mess of them taking over bodies in the last days of X-Factor before Havok gets sent to an alternate universe.
I wonder how new readers could get interested in such a massive number of present and future mutant characters without reading some kind of lengthy intro (which indeed they started putting on an inside cover two page spread for awhile). Also by that time, the number of X titles you would have to buy into made it quite the monthly investment! I think they probably turned to Chris Claremont to come back just to try and clean up some of the excess it all had grown into through various writers (and maybe sometime I'll give those a chance as in X-Men #100, Uncanny #381, Wolverine #150 etc. onward)
Much easier, to the point, and logical to have just had Kate effectively erased because that 'everyone dies' future simply hasn't happened. I could live without Rachel; she had to be continuously explained (along with Ilyana aged to be Kitty's age seemed to as well). Over-explaining characters with repetitious and recycled plots is what characterized the worst of X comics that followed. Maybe Claremont was influenced not just by R. Heinlein's Friday, and Cat Who Walked Through Walls, but also 'his' Number Of The Beast tying all his characters together? I write 'his' as in fact it's an open secret Heinlein did not write that book that came out under his name. :^)
Back to 'at the time' impressions; who could have imagined this story being so central to endless variations on it over the coming years? It rivaled the rehashings of the Phoenix saga. Had the future shown even continued to exist it would be pretty darn barren. It was more of a 'what if' construction in that sense, not designed with thoughts of it ever coming up again.
If there was ever a resolution for Rachel I missed it, she was just a refugee from a self-erased timeline who could tell others how bad things could get while they were all clearly on another track beginning with either Jean/Phoenix's end or saving Senator Kelly. Kate had already done as much as she might have had as any sort of mission.
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 24 October 2020 at 11:58am
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Jim Burdo
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| Posted: 24 October 2020 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | 11
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QUOTE:
| Didn’t he have a big “M” on his jacket? |
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True, but I don't think the Sentinels running the camp would give him a customized uniform.
John Byrne wrote:
| Since Kitty has been "revealed" to be bi, and Chris has said that was what he always intended, I suppose the kiss will now be used by some as proof of this. |
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It is. Frederick Wertham was ahead of his time. They also claim Chris was her sole creator.
Rebecca Jansen wrote:
| If there was ever a resolution for Rachel I missed it, she was just a refugee from a self-erased timeline who could tell others how bad things could get while they were all clearly on another track beginning with either Jean/Phoenix's end or saving Senator Kelly. Kate had already done as much as she might have had as any sort of mission. |
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There was in Excalibur #67. Rachel and Excalibur went back to the Days of Future Past timeline, including Kate Pryde in a robot body called Widget. They reprogrammed the Sentinels to protect all life. |
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Brian Miller
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| Posted: 24 October 2020 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 12
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True, but I don't think the Sentinels running the camp would give him a
customized uniform.
********
Weren’t all the mutants identified by an “M” in the story, tho? I never
thought it was customized just for him.
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