Readthrough: Uncanny X-Men 95
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x_men_classicLast week, we left the X-Men hurtling through the air towards certain doom! (More literally than usual, but otherwise, pretty normal for them.)
Cyclops flashes back to the events of last issue (for the benefit of fans who missed it, presumably). The narration helpfully informs us that he started with 100 seconds until impact and has lost ten of them reflecting on the past, so we better appreciate it!
Cyclops’s initial plan runs aground on the realities of how Nightcrawler’s powers work.
Colossus tells the others not to bother helping him; he’s tough enough to make it on his own. Storm is strong enough to take two people at once, but Banshee isn’t, so he has to come back for Cyclops.
Meanwhile, Colossus climbs out of the crater he made on impact (nice illustration of his toughness), asking the others what took them so long. Storm is very happy that he’s all right!
They’ve got a time limit to take back the base before the dead man’s switch Nefaria doesn’t know about unlocks and triggers nuclear devastation.
Nightcrawler teleports in. (In the original he does this blind; since it was later established that he needs a line of sight to avoid materializing inside of something, the Classic reprint adds a sequence where Banshee uses his power to find out how far away the hollow part of the base is.) Nightcrawler then has a brief scuffle with one of the Ani-Men, Croaker, who is a frog-man with vaguely froggish powers. Croaker calls him a mutie and Nightcrawler therefore refuses to stop calling him Herr Frog.
The X-Men face first gas weapons, then hypnotized soldiers. Incidentally, Thunderbird has experienced wooziness due to gas before. (I’d assumed that his background hadn’t been planned at this point, but maybe I was wrong?)
Cyclops doesn’t want to harm the soldiers, who are clearly not responsible for their actions; lucky for him, Storm is well able to handle the situation.
There’s another Classic add-on in here, a sad-in-retrospect page where Thunderbird first mouths off at Cyclops, then internally admits that it was stupid of him and (angrily, of course) angsts a bit about how he wants to contribute to the team but a) is not a team player, and b) can’t contribute anything that someone else, usually Wolverine, can’t do as well or better.
There is then a longer fight with the Ani-Men, Nefaria’s actual henchmen. Most of them have limited powers related to the animal they were turned into—Bird-Man can fly, Croaker can jump high, Gort the gorilla-man is super-strong, etc. The exception is Dragonfly, who has hypnotic powers as well as the obvious. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t understand how Cyclops’s powers work…
(Incidentally, if Cyclops’s visor responds to his eye motions, no wonder he’s so worried about control!)
Thunderbird and Banshee were knocked out in the fight, so the rest of the X-Men leave them behind while they go to deal with the doomsday device. (The doomsday device, for the record, turns out to have been destroyed during the fight, rendering this pointless; the reveal is a bit funny.)
Thus, Thunderbird and Banshee the only two present when Nefaria makes his escape, and Thunderbird makes the memorable decision to try to punch the escape plane to death. He ignores both Banshee’s argument that he could do the same thing more safely with his sonic scream and Professor X’s telepathic pleas to save himself, and he’s killed when the plane explodes. The Professor stays with him until the end. (It’s probably worth noting, given some darker interpretations of Xavier, that he doesn’t try to mind control Thunderbird into saving himself, only to plead with him to jump away.)
The word suicide is never used, but that’s pretty clearly what happened, and it’s definitely how the X-Men respond to it. Banshee, who was there and trying to get him to jump off, is also hit particularly hard.
Unlike most deaths in comics, this one is going to stick—Thunderbird has stayed dead. A few years later Claremont introduced a younger brother with the same powers (he’s since changed a bit), and arguably he recycled some of his backstory with Forge (both are Vietnam War veterans with resulting trauma, although those issues are different and their personalities aren’t similar aside from that). There have been a few flashback stories about him, but basically, after this story John Proudstar is the one reliably dead character in X-Men. It’s a rough job, but I guess somebody’s got to do it.
He’s alive in various alternate continuities, though, including Exiles a few years later and the recent TV show The Gifted. The latter even makes use of his comics backstory, updated a bit for the era. I’m glad that some versions of the character have gotten another chance.
What do you think of this issue, and of Thunderbird’s brief X-career? Relatedly, does the flexible nature of death in comics annoy you or do you like it?
(And finally: if anyone wants to stick up for Count Nefaria and/or the Ani-Men in the comments, please feel free to do so! They will not be appearing in X-Men again, so this post is the place to do so if you so desire.)
Next Sunday, the X-Men and Thunderbird's family mourn in Classic X-Men 3. And next week, in Uncanny X-Men 96, Cyclops angsts so hard about Thunderbird's death that he accidentally unleashes a demon. (Professor X should really put up warning notices around that cairn...)
Cyclops flashes back to the events of last issue (for the benefit of fans who missed it, presumably). The narration helpfully informs us that he started with 100 seconds until impact and has lost ten of them reflecting on the past, so we better appreciate it!
Cyclops’s initial plan runs aground on the realities of how Nightcrawler’s powers work.
Colossus tells the others not to bother helping him; he’s tough enough to make it on his own. Storm is strong enough to take two people at once, but Banshee isn’t, so he has to come back for Cyclops.
Meanwhile, Colossus climbs out of the crater he made on impact (nice illustration of his toughness), asking the others what took them so long. Storm is very happy that he’s all right!
They’ve got a time limit to take back the base before the dead man’s switch Nefaria doesn’t know about unlocks and triggers nuclear devastation.
Nightcrawler teleports in. (In the original he does this blind; since it was later established that he needs a line of sight to avoid materializing inside of something, the Classic reprint adds a sequence where Banshee uses his power to find out how far away the hollow part of the base is.) Nightcrawler then has a brief scuffle with one of the Ani-Men, Croaker, who is a frog-man with vaguely froggish powers. Croaker calls him a mutie and Nightcrawler therefore refuses to stop calling him Herr Frog.
The X-Men face first gas weapons, then hypnotized soldiers. Incidentally, Thunderbird has experienced wooziness due to gas before. (I’d assumed that his background hadn’t been planned at this point, but maybe I was wrong?)
Cyclops doesn’t want to harm the soldiers, who are clearly not responsible for their actions; lucky for him, Storm is well able to handle the situation.
There’s another Classic add-on in here, a sad-in-retrospect page where Thunderbird first mouths off at Cyclops, then internally admits that it was stupid of him and (angrily, of course) angsts a bit about how he wants to contribute to the team but a) is not a team player, and b) can’t contribute anything that someone else, usually Wolverine, can’t do as well or better.
There is then a longer fight with the Ani-Men, Nefaria’s actual henchmen. Most of them have limited powers related to the animal they were turned into—Bird-Man can fly, Croaker can jump high, Gort the gorilla-man is super-strong, etc. The exception is Dragonfly, who has hypnotic powers as well as the obvious. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t understand how Cyclops’s powers work…
(Incidentally, if Cyclops’s visor responds to his eye motions, no wonder he’s so worried about control!)
Thunderbird and Banshee were knocked out in the fight, so the rest of the X-Men leave them behind while they go to deal with the doomsday device. (The doomsday device, for the record, turns out to have been destroyed during the fight, rendering this pointless; the reveal is a bit funny.)
Thus, Thunderbird and Banshee the only two present when Nefaria makes his escape, and Thunderbird makes the memorable decision to try to punch the escape plane to death. He ignores both Banshee’s argument that he could do the same thing more safely with his sonic scream and Professor X’s telepathic pleas to save himself, and he’s killed when the plane explodes. The Professor stays with him until the end. (It’s probably worth noting, given some darker interpretations of Xavier, that he doesn’t try to mind control Thunderbird into saving himself, only to plead with him to jump away.)
The word suicide is never used, but that’s pretty clearly what happened, and it’s definitely how the X-Men respond to it. Banshee, who was there and trying to get him to jump off, is also hit particularly hard.
Unlike most deaths in comics, this one is going to stick—Thunderbird has stayed dead. A few years later Claremont introduced a younger brother with the same powers (he’s since changed a bit), and arguably he recycled some of his backstory with Forge (both are Vietnam War veterans with resulting trauma, although those issues are different and their personalities aren’t similar aside from that). There have been a few flashback stories about him, but basically, after this story John Proudstar is the one reliably dead character in X-Men. It’s a rough job, but I guess somebody’s got to do it.
He’s alive in various alternate continuities, though, including Exiles a few years later and the recent TV show The Gifted. The latter even makes use of his comics backstory, updated a bit for the era. I’m glad that some versions of the character have gotten another chance.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6
Should Thunderbird continue to stay dead, or is it past time for a resurrection?
View Answers
Yes. Someone should stay dead in comics.
2 (33.3%)
No. Everyone else seems to get to come back eventually; why not him?
1 (16.7%)
The 616/main universe version can stay dead, but I'd like to see more alternate versions.
3 (50.0%)
What do you think of this issue, and of Thunderbird’s brief X-career? Relatedly, does the flexible nature of death in comics annoy you or do you like it?
(And finally: if anyone wants to stick up for Count Nefaria and/or the Ani-Men in the comments, please feel free to do so! They will not be appearing in X-Men again, so this post is the place to do so if you so desire.)
Next Sunday, the X-Men and Thunderbird's family mourn in Classic X-Men 3. And next week, in Uncanny X-Men 96, Cyclops angsts so hard about Thunderbird's death that he accidentally unleashes a demon. (Professor X should really put up warning notices around that cairn...)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 06:51 am (UTC)From the days of primarily newsstand comics! It was incredibly easy to miss an issue, or only find it some months later, so it was actually really great when I was trying to piece together all these stories without access to a comics shop some years later. I think we don't see it as much in some collected versions because a lot did it with the editorial boxes which are easy to edit out, but Claremont was always into FULL NARRATIVE AT LENGTH, so they can't really cut it easily! Good old verbose Claremont.
I don't mind the revolving door of death in comics as long as it's reasonably consistent. Thunderbird killed himself (it was surprisingly clear, I think!) and had no reason to come back narratively, but if he did get brought back for some reason I would expect the writer to address that. I like it when they have people coming back from the dead and the status quo is to grieve but move on, like your friend has suffered something horrible but will eventually be back in your life; I am also fine if the status quo is that people don't come back and it's strange and scary when someone does. What I don't like is when they mix the two: you can't have Jean and Logan coming back every five minutes then expect everyone to 100% believe Scott or Kurt are never, never, ever coming back for real this time.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 09:49 am (UTC)And yeah, I can definitely see the use of it! (I discovered the X-Men through collections, but even so, I found the issue where Scott summarizes the X-Men's entire history to date, Silver Age included, very handy.)
I guess they could do something with the uncertainty—knowing that there's a chance someone will come back and a chance they won't, and what that does to grief. But yeah, the inconsistency is weird and distracting.
And yeah, if Thunderbird ever were to come back I'd want them to acknowledge his suicide and deal with it.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 11:13 pm (UTC)(Although really, I wish people would update that saying—the only people who stay dead in comics are Uncle Ben and Thunderbird. Assuming Uncle Ben is still dead; I haven't been keeping up with Spider-Man for a while...)
But I really liked that Exiles and even Age of Apocalypse did more with him, and even though I don't really watch TV I'm delighted that The Gifted gave him a major role. So that's my answer: more alternate continuities doing things with this character!
(Next Sunday I'll get to the story that made me care about him. You know those memes that go 'Who's the character you never expected to love?' Thunderbird. I care a lot and I never thought I would.)
As a bit of trivia, I've heard that for a while it was up in the air whether Thunderbird would die—or Wolverine. I don't know how plausible that is—John dies awfully fast—but they did kind of fill the same niche early on, and it's interesting to imagine how the X-Men might've looked if things had gone the other way. (John Byrne also claims credit for "saving" Logan, despite not working on the book at the time—although he did work at the company and already knew everyone involved, so he could've put in his oar.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-19 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 09:34 pm (UTC)