These days, a month that goes by without more than a dozen
X-books weaving stories into each other is an anomaly. But 30 years ago, in
that strange time known as the 1980s, such a thing was a novel idea.
Back then, Chris Claremont was in charge of nearly all the
mutants and two ongoing series: Uncanny X-Men and the New Mutants. The original
five X-Men, however – Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman and Angel – were
under the purview of Louise Simonson in the earliest incarnation of X-Factor.
What brought these three teams (and also Thor and Power
Pack) back together in 1986? Genocide. A new group called the Marauders was
slaughtering the Morlocks, a community of mutants that lived in the sewers
below New York. The Mutant Massacre
was one of Claremont’s darkest, most violent stories to date, and had some of
the most lasting effects on the X-books. Angel’s wings were broken and later
amputated, leading him to become Apocalypse’s Horseman Death. Nightcrawler and
Shadowcat were injured and left the team to recuperate on Muir Island, which
led to them co-founding a new team, Excalibur. In their place would come
Psylocke and, later, Dazzler and Longshot. Sabretooth – a Claremont creation
ported over from his run on Iron Fist – would stake a claim as a major X-villain
and specifically an arch-nemesis of Wolverine. The Marauders’ employer would
later be revealed as Mr. Sinister, the mad geneticist obsessed with the Summers
bloodline. The Massacre would also later be tied in to the backstory of Gambit,
who would not appear in the comics for another four years.
Next, in 1988, came Fall
of the Mutants, which wasn’t so much a crossover as a label that appeared
on the three main X-books but was considered a major event nonetheless, not the
least so because the X-Men died … for about a minute.
The X-Men and Madelyne Pryor sacrificed themselves fighting
the Adversary, a Native American demon god linked to Forge, during a battle in
Dallas. Upon vanquishing their foe, Roma, the daughter of Merlin, resurrected
them, made them invisible to technology (a plot thread that, near as I can
tell, just sort of disappeared) and gave them access to the Siege Perilous, a
one-time transporter that, once a person passes through it, basically gives
them a new life somewhere else with no memories of their previous one until
such time as a writer finds that inconvenient. Meanwhile, in X-Factor, the team
fights Death, aka Archangel, and breaks him of Apocalypse’s control, and in New
Mutants, Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher, is shot and killed by The Right, an
anti-mutant group led by Cameron Hodge, whose name will pop up a few more times
in this post.
The following year brought an Inferno to the streets of New York in a convoluted plot involving,
in no particular order, the demons of Limbo, inanimate objects coming to life,
Pryor becoming the underboob-exposing Goblin Queen, Colossus’ sister Illyana
being reverted from a magic-wielding sorceress back to a child, Hodge making a
deal with demons for immortality, a number of babies – including the baby that
would grow up to be Cable – being stolen to complete a spell, Pryor being
revealed as a clone of Jean Grey created by Mr. Sinister, the Spider-Man
villain Hobgoblin becoming a demon, another demon getting infected with
Warlock’s Transmode Virus, the X-Men and X-Factor fighting each other, and the
X-Mansion being destroyed again. Inferno
cast
a wide net, stretching from the X-books to Spider-Man and Daredevil to,
quite sensibly, Damage Control, the Marvel Universe’s post-event cleanup crew.
And Power Pack. Those kids got a lot of hangtime in the ’80s.
Hodge surfaces again in 1990 as a creepy spider-robot with a
human face pulling the strings on the mutant-enslaving island of Genosha in The X-Tinction Agenda. By
this point, Jim Lee was drawing Uncanny
X-Men and Rob Liefeld had come aboard New
Mutants, so we’re starting to see some of the deck-clearing exercises that
will pave the way for X-Men #1 and X-Force #1 a few months down the line. Some
of the X-Men who went through the Siege Perilous are reunited. Cable has taken
over the New Mutants. Storm is restored from her de-aged self back to an adult
weather goddess, and she introduces everyone to the creepy Cajun friend she
made while evading the Shadow King. Havok is revealed to have been working as a
Genoshan magistrate. Wolfsbane of the New Mutants is turned into a Genoshan
mutate, or slave. Warlock is killed. A bunch of people see former British woman
Psylocke as an Asian ninja for the first time. And the Genoshan government is
toppled – literally; Rictor destroys their Citadel.
The Claremont age ends in summer 1991 with a mini-crossover
called the Muir Island Saga that
straddles Uncanny X-Men and X-Factor. The Saga served a few goals: It
wrapped up a long-running (there’s no other kind with Claremont) arc involving
the Shadow King; it re-crippled Xavier; it reunited the X-Men with their
original members to form an all-killer, no-filler superteam that would need two
books to hold them; and it transitioned X-Factor from a book about the original
five X-Men to a book about a government-sponsored mutant team written by Peter
David. If you have any affection for Jamie
Madrox, Strong Guy or Polaris, it starts in X-Factor #70.
Next week, Matt takes us into space for some cosmic
crossovers, so bring your favorite Infinity Gem and prepare to get Annihilated.
Dan Grote’s new novel,
Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing
for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days
when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.
