While Claremont left the series before unravelling his full plans for Meggan, we do get a sort of AU glimpse of the elemental nature of her powers and their symbolic potential in the background of Excalibur 17, presenting her as life/sex/joy/harmony incarnate. #xmen 1/10
The issue presents the aftermath of the legendary “Warlord” issue of the Cross-Time Caper. It’s essentially a denoument for that story mixed with an interesting new story about Rachel’s pursuit of identity. Meggan is barely in it, but there’s a lot happening for her still. 2/10
Centring all of this, however, is a jubilant, planet-wide party and in a couple brief pages of that, Meggan comes to life – quite suddenly – as a jubilant, confident and powerful woman in complete control over every aspect of her environment (contrary to her usual portrayal) 3/10
The story presents her as a subtle conduit for the collective celebration, bringing people together as if she were the personification of the planet itself. “And wherever the mood was most joyous, there you’d find Meggan. Almost as if she was somehow their inspiration.” 4/10
Brian, who rarely has a kind word for Meggan, takes notice. “That was magnificent – as are you. I’ve never seen you more lovely.” She responds “I’m but a reflection of this world, my Lionheart. All its beauty and passion and life so long enchained….” 5/10
“…desperately yearning for release through me.” And with that she embraces Brian signalling the sexual connotation of the scene. This is, of course, greatly enhanced by the sexual atmosphere of the party itself, which borders on a PG-13 orgy scene. 6/10
In these elements: sex, life, cohesion, joy, song and dance, and cosmic exchange, Meggan is very much connecting to the Phoenix mythology that C had originally built around Jean Grey. Dancing around the fire in ecstatic joy, she becomes a sort of Wicca-inspired Earth Goddess 7/10
She even brings the dead back to life shortly thereafter by pairing with the Phoenix. She also speaks in Shakespearean dialect as she undertakes this mission, which is a bit jarring but signals an enhanced intellectual capacity and wisdom. 8/10
The overall suggestion is that Meggan finds on this planet what had eluded her on Earth: complete elemental harmony - allowing her to unite the people in joy and to even repel the evils around them, up to and including death itself. 9/10
It’s a provocative glimpse into what she could be to Earth 616 if whatever barriers that surrounded her there were somehow lifted, thus creating a bit of foreshadowing for the character – a sort of “chekhov’s gun” that adds a sense of anticipation to her character. 10/10
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As a collaborative medium, comics are sometimes denigrated for their committee approach to character-building, but a closer look at the 'committee' behind Wolverine shows how a character like Logan offers a multifaceted connection to creative genius. #xmen #wolverine 1/10
As noted by Marvel historian Sean Howe, Wolverine was first “named and conceived by Roy Thomas, who detected a need to exploit the Canadian market” before being “developed further by Len Wein and John Romita” ahead of Logan’s debut in “The Incredible Hulk.” 2/10
Throw in Claremont, and the pedigree is quite impressive already. Thomas is perhaps best known as the greatest writer of Conan comics, a character that later artists would draw from quite directly in their interpretations of Wolverine. 3/10
In UXM #220, Claremont takes a moment away from a chaotic era to touch back upon the longstanding, well-evolved relationship between Storm and Wolverine, giving readers another character-revealing scene between this iconic X-Men duo. #xmen #wolverine #storm 1/9
The scene initiates a journey of self-discovery for Ororo, one of many throughout the series but this one will specifically create the rising action for the “Fall of the Mutants’’ event. She has to go alone, but someone has to lead the X-Men in her absence. She recruits Logan 2/9
The power dynamic is foreshadowed in the simple fact that Wolverine (an archetypal hunter) has literally scaled the highest mountain to be alone, but it doesn’t matter. Even without her powers, Ororo has tracked him down. 3/9
In an introductory essay penned in 1980, John Byrne recounts his personal perspective on Jean Grey and her transformation to Phoenix. His candid account paints a less grandiose view on the cultivation of the character within the series than we normally hear. #xmen #JeanGrey 1/7
“I’ve never liked Phoenix. There, I said it...It’s not that I don’t like Jean Grey. I have an abiding fondness for readheads, and have been in love with Jean since we first ‘met,’ about a millions years ago when I was 13.” 2/7
“Granted that her power were not nearly as spectacular as Cyclops’, or Angel’s, or even Iceman’s, but she looked real good in a tight uniform and could – and did – serve to get the X-Men out of tight places.” 3/7
Placing Kitty Pryde into the position of viewpoint character has to represent one of the most groundbreaking decisions within the entirety of the Claremont run – a move that ultimately impacted the series, comics as a whole, and even Western media in powerful ways. #xmen 1/10
The Claremont run begins with Cyclops as the main viewpoint character. Kitty joins the team right at his departure and soon enough takes over as a main viewpoint character for the rest of her tenure, as reflected in our data (noting that Kitty’s only on for 70ish issues). 2/10
At the time of her arrival, Claremont had already executed a turn toward more adult-oriented stories (something that becomes even more pronounced after the death of an X-Man in DPS). It’s therefore perhaps odd to bring on a teen protagonist. 3/10
Sharon Kelly is introduced to the readers in UXM #246 and is all-but killed in that same issue. She’s a character whose entire life and especially death exist in service to the plot, but, in spite of that, Claremont gives her story complexity, contradiction, and pathos. #xmen 1/9
We are first introduced to Sharon as she arrives at the Hellfire Club during a meeting between her husband (Senator Robert Kelly) and Sebastian Shaw. It’s revealed that Sharon was a Hellfire Club servant before marrying the senator. 2/9
Her brief interaction with her former colleagues showcases the kind of class exploration that one would see in a Bronte novel or, more recently, Downton Abbey. Hers is a story of rare class mobility and the perspective that comes with seeing both sides of the class divide. 3/9
In UXM #251, Wolverine is crucified by the Reavers and falls into a pair of fever dreams as a result. Claremont being Claremont, the dream sequences that unfold are not random, instead illuminating Logan’s character. Today we’ll talk about the first dream. #xmen #wolverine 1/14
Silvestri’s now iconic cover sets the tone with an homage to Buscema’s work from the 1970s Savage Sword of Conan, presumably, in illustration of a very famous scene from the Conan mythology, first published in 1934 in “A Witch Shall Be Born.” 2/14
Like Conan in that scene, Wolverine is left exposed to the desert climate as a form of torture. In the midst of his suffering from dehydration and exposure, Logan falls into hallucinatory dreaming. 3/14