Marvel Comics

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
I like when Xavier is an arrogant know it all. I prefer that kind of flaw to any of the weird creepy stuff they've done at times. I want him to be a good guy, but a good guy that it's sometimes hard to root for.


Yep, I like characters that are flawed with good intentions but are held back by personal weaknesses.

One of the reasons I liked Captain Britain so much - an alcoholic, self-absorbed Tory, who is not that bright, and tries to do good, but mostly ends up being a puppet for way more intelligent and unscrupulous otherdimensional women, while also frequently mistreating or just taking for granted the one woman who genuinely cares for him, if not being a jealous dick.
 
Batman’s origin is probably my favorite in all of comics. Is it still canon that while he was brooding about his war on crime in his father’s study, a bat flew in through an open window and landed on a bust of his father? I thought that was great stuff.

YEah, the one thing I never liked them adding was his father dressing up in a Batman costume for Halloween before he died. That was in the Secret Origin paperback, which is probably not cannon anymore. The only major addition t the origin I've liked in recent times (if the early 90's can still be considered recent) was young Bruce being a fan of the Grey Ghost serials, which inspired a lot of the Bat gadgets.
 
Also, you know, trying to place how old Xavier was supposed to be, like it seems like he is supposed to be like, 40s or so at the beginning in the 60s run, but paying attention to other stuff he talks about (like his parents job, etc), I feel like he was only in his 30s during the original run.
Although it later gets changed, I think it's at least implied early on that the reason he was in a wheelchair was due to being wounded when he served in the Korean War. So mid-30's, I would say.
 
He was in the Korean War with his half-brother Cain Marko. In fact, that’s where Marko found the gem to become Juggernaut. They are about the same age, I think five years apart at the most.
 
Although it later gets changed, I think it's at least implied early on that the reason he was in a wheelchair was due to being wounded when he served in the Korean War. So mid-30's, I would say.

In the original 60s run, he did serve in the Korean War, but his injury is from later at the hands of the alien "Lucifer".

And yeah, I would say he was mid 30s at the start.

And yeah, him and Juggernaut are around the same age from the flashbacks to when he was a kid.
 
And yes, well meaning but arrogant and self-important Xavier is probably my favorite.

I thought it was funny when he went to live with Lilandra in the Shi'ar Empire and got sulky because he was no longer one of the smartest and most important people in the room.
 
In the original 60s run, he did serve in the Korean War, but his injury is from later at the hands of the alien "Lucifer".

And yeah, I would say he was mid 30s at the start.

And yeah, him and Juggernaut are around the same age from the flashbacks to when he was a kid.

Yeah, that whole "Lucifer" thing just speaks to how all over the place the early X-Men comics were. There was like no defining theme....it was just random super hero stuff all slapped together.

Not that the aliens didn't stick around....
 
Although, If I got crippled 7 times in my lifetime, I'd probably be a bit cantankerous, too.....

Poor bastard doesn't even throw his wheelchair away anymore.
 
Yep, I like characters that are flawed with good intentions but are held back by personal weaknesses.

One of the reasons I liked Captain Britain so much - an alcoholic, self-absorbed Tory, who is not that bright, and tries to do good, but mostly ends up being a puppet for way more intelligent and unscrupulous otherdimensional women, while also frequently mistreating or just taking for granted the one woman who genuinely cares for him, if not being a jealous dick.


This is literally happening in a "weird" amalgamation MSH I'm in--I'm busy taking care of Meggan and Maggie, while we investigate why he dove back in the bottle and hurt her so much--my character, who is part me, adores Meggan (never a crush like some Marvel characters as a kid/ young teen, and yes I knew they were fictional but still.) She was just this joyful character that made me delighted, so I'm doing my best not to hunt him down and stick phased objects into him and let go....
 
I don't think Marvel has any characters specifically concerned with ghosts/putting to rest the spirits of the dead with unfinished business...

That's part of the point. A unique spin. Not as dark as John Constantine, but no ray of sunshine either. He's variable as the moon, but still steadfast.
 
Exactly.....it's arguably the early Marvel concept that has the strongest inherent theme....and they spent most of their time fighting rando aliens and shit.
 
Exactly.....it's arguably the early Marvel concept that has the strongest inherent theme....and they spent most of their time fighting rando aliens and shit.

Even Claremont's run started with a lot of silly random shit before getting to actual mutant stuff. Late 70s through early 90s are when shit got really good.

That said, I like the random stuff... as like an occasional thing. For instance I liked the Technarchy. It's just when they spend more time on that than you know, governments hunting them down or fighting against bad guy mutants.
 
Yeah, the alien stuff works at times. I liked the Shi’ar and Brood stuff from the early 80s. Sometimes though it’d be like “why do they even care what happens to the Shi’ar? How did it get to this?”

The movies have kind of pulled this into focus. They obviously shed all that stuff in favor of focusing on the central idea. A wise move. Didn’t always pay off, but still, wise move.

In the comics though, as part of the larger Marvel U, that stuff can be great.
 
Fan theory Professor X is in a wheel chair for the same reason as Guy Cavilero on SCTV.
 




SCTV was the show that launched the careers of Rick Moranis, Guy Flaherty, John Candy, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, Martin Short and Catherine O'Hara. The premise was a fictionaql cable access network with a variety of shows by amateur performers from the "community". It was the creation of the Second City comedy troupe, the same group where Bill Murrey, Dan Ackroyd, Steve Carrell, Tiny Fey, Amy Poeller, etc all started their careers.

It's best known for the Great White North McKenzie Bros shorts, which were actually a tax dodge for the show (IRL) by meeting the requirements of a certain percentage of "Canadian Content"

 
The '87 to '91 Claremont X-Men are what I think of as "my" X-Men. I know Claremont started writing them earlier, but '87 is when I started reading them. Not saying there haven't been good X-Men comics post-'91, just that I haven't read enough of them to say much about them.

When I first got Marvel Unlimited, I was excited to read X-Men from the very beginning. I gave up after about 6 issues because those '60s X-Men comics are so bad.

Have you read the 70s X-Men? Leading up to Dark Phoenix and after up to the mid 80s are great comics.

In terms of Professor X, I loved his portrayal along with the Shadowking in the Legion TV show but then I loved almost everything about that show. The actor who played the Shadowking was terrific.
 
I think it's the episode where Deforest Kelly guest stars and the cabbage leaf aliens take over the station, where he admits he uses the wheel chair to get sympathy. Like Professor X, Guy Cabilaro is the worst kind of person.
 
Meh, Onslaught was amateur hour compared to the Xavier-related WTFness we got in the X-Men/Micronauts mini-series a decade earlier.
So, now that I have more time and can do this properly, let me tell you all about The X-Men and the Micronauts mini-series from the mid-80's...

It's been a few years since Michael Golden had left doing the art on The Micronauts, and sales were no longer what they had been. Back when X-Men crossovers weren't completely commonplace, a decision to do a crossover mini-series with the two teams to re-ignite interest in the toy tie-in characters wasn't inherently a bad one. Chris Claremont and Bill Mantlo co-wrote the four issue series. While Mantlo could occasionally be juvenile in his writing (such as when he had a female character in Micronauts hide a energy blaster in her vagina), the specific ickyness of this story has Claremont's fingerprints all over it.

Our story begins with a villain threatening the Microverse known only as the Entity, powerful enough that the Micronauts have to team up with their long-time foe Baron Karza to try to stop him.

X-nauts 1.jpg

Spoiler alert for a comic over a third of a century old - the Entity is actually Charles Xavier's repressed dark side. For anyone who remembers the psychic armor that Xavier created for himself while dueling on the psychic plane with Farouk in that one issue of X-Men, this is actually pretty obvious, even though they don't explicitly state it just yet.

The Micronauts confront the Entity while Karza traces a link in the Entity's energy signature to Earth (specifically, Xavier's mansion) and follows it. There is , of course, a fight - first with Karza trashing the New Mutants, then having a more difficult time rumbling with the X-Men. Because of shenanigans, Karza's consciousness gets put into the body of Ariel/Kitty Pryde, and vice versa.

Claremont Fetish #1: Unwanted Body-swap - Check!

Karza convinces the X-Men to go with him to the Microverse to help fight the Entity, while the New Mutants stay on Earth with Xavier. Meanwhile, the Entity, after defeating and capturing the Micronauts, has psychically broken and remolded them into his thralls. When the X-Men arrive, they fare no better. The two teams, then go forth and pretty much genocide an entire planet of people on behalf of the Entity.

Claremont Fetish #2: Mind-controlled into Committing Horrible Acts That Violate Your Beliefs And Ethics - Check!

Of course, because this is comic books, there is some part of our heroes which is deep down fighting, however futilely, against what is being done to them. Except, as it turns out, for Kitty, since it's actually Karza inside her body, who's getting off in participating hands-on in the carnage.

X-nauts 2.jpg

Because of her bloodthirstiness, Xavier's repressed dark side decides that means he should put the moves on a barely-teenage girl.

X-nauts 3.jpg

Yes, it's exactly as creepy as it sounds. And although the Entity's identity hasn't been made explicitly clear yet in-story, it's important to note that the Entity is not, in the literal sense, an evil twin or somesuch. Rather, the Entity is literally Xavier's dark desires acquiring psychic sentience and somehow becoming physically manifest in the Microverse.

Which means that, on some level, Xavier has apparently been thinking a lot about fucking teenage girls.

Xavier creepy.jpg

But it gets worse, because Claremont apparently felt he hadn't yet laid all of his fetishistic desires bare in this story. So after the Entity is able to travel to Earth and take over Charles' body, we get this sequence where yet another teenage girl is apparently psychically assaulted into having so many orgasms that she loses all free will and becomes his willing slave.

X-nauts 4.jpg

So, um... yeah.

Eventually, Xavier is able to reassert control of his body by destroying the Entity via mind-trickery. So all's well that ends well, right? Well, except for the planet of murdered sophonts on that one planet in the Microverse. And of course, the knowledge that that were used to do this, however unwillingly, should be the sort of thing to haunt our two teams of heroes to their dying days. Xavier no doubt wiped the memories of their actions from the X-Men so they wouldn't remember, probably about the same time he made Dani forget that he had mind-raped her.

None of which would have happened if Charles had anything resembling a healthy way to confront and deal with his darker id instead of just repressing the shit out of it.
 
Yeah, that whole ordeal was WAY worse than anything from the Onslaught storyline.

Also, man, I remember reading it now, but I had to have just blocked all of that out of my memory because I'm amazed I've never referenced it for peak "wtf Xavier" stuff.
 
Also, also, talking about favorite storylines, I was really annoyed that MHRP got ended when it did, because the next campaign book was supposed to be Age of Apocalypse, and I LOVED AoA.
 
You know what’s a good modern run on X-Men comics is actually the Uncanny X-Force by Remender. Takes a lot of the 90s stuff and repurposes it in a cool way. The cast is solid, and the bad guys are really good.

Some of it then carried over into Uncanny Avengers, which was a bit uneven, but when they get to the Apocalypse Twins stuff, it’s a nice follow up to the X-Force run.
 
Have you read the 70s X-Men? Leading up to Dark Phoenix and after up to the mid 80s are great comics.

Yeah, at the time that I was super into Uncanny X-Men, I was hungry for all things X-Men, and Classic X-Men was reprinting the '70s and early '80s X-Men, so I read them too. I enjoyed the stories, and really loved the Classic X-Men covers that Mignola drew. Between Classic X-Men and Excalibur, Kitty Pryde became my favorite, and still is. Since I was a kid and she was the youngest X-Man, I found her the most relatable.
 
But it gets worse, because Claremont apparently felt he hadn't yet laid all of his fetishistic desires bare in this story. So after the Entity is able to travel to Earth and take over Charles' body, we get this sequence where yet another teenage girl is apparently psychically assaulted into having so many orgasms that she loses all free will and becomes his willing slave.

View attachment 26925

So, um... yeah.

Wow, Dani's post-O-face is super creepy. I mean, the whole thing is super creepy, but the art really drives it home.

BTW, the podcast episode of Jay & Miles Xplain the X-Men about this miniseries is quite entertaining.
 
An interesting analysis of John Buscema's approach to drawing women (or "broads" as he called them...I always wondered where that term originated from as as slang for girls)

 
Because hope springs eternal, I'm going to be getting the forthcoming Heroes Reborn mini, which covers a Marvel earth where the Avengers were never formed, and some of the spinoff minis that will be tied into it. I'm a bit of a sucker for superhero alternate reality stories, as well as the classic Squadron Supreme setup, and this looks to play into both of those elements, as the main hero group is the Squadron Supreme of America.
 
I remember the last Heroes Reborn, in the 90's, when Marvel tried to lure back the talent from Image by letting them reboot all the main characters that weren't selling for crap. And then they kicked Liefeld off of his rebooted Captain America and he went off and did a reboot of that Kirby Cap clone, Fighting Eagle? or something. Crazy times
 
Yeah, other than this is another alternate Marvel earth, this new mini thankfully doesn't appear to have any connection to the original Heroes Reborn.
 
Yeah, other than this is another alternate Marvel earth, this new mini thankfully doesn't appear to have any connection to the original Heroes Reborn.

So it's not taking place in the Franklinverse? lol
 
An interesting analysis of John Buscema's approach to drawing women (or "broads" as he called them...I always wondered where that term originated from as as slang for girls)



Nevermind the use of the term "broad", I took exception to the presenter referring to people who draw as "drawers"! Anyway John Buscema's artwork, not just his women, always brings me joy.
 
I remember Heroes Reborn and not because it was good.

The one good thing about Heroes Reborn is that Liefield botched Cap and Avengers so bad that he hired some longtime quality Marvel folks to take over....and as a result, Walt Simonson wound up writing Thor again. I remember being a bit giddy about that at the time.

The resulting issues were not great by any stretch, but they were a clear improvement over what they had been under Liefield.
 
I remember actually liking the Iron Man issues. The run of FF wasn't spectacular, but was okay (and if nothing else benefited by contrast to Liefeld's Avengers and Cap run).
 
The Buscema Youtube post got watching this review of his "How to Draw the Marvel Way" book.

Tons of nostalgia but also fair criticism.
 
I remember actually liking the Iron Man issues. The run of FF wasn't spectacular, but was okay (and if nothing else benefited by contrast to Liefeld's Avengers and Cap run).

Yeah I think Jim Lee and his studio did a better job with Iron Man and FF than Liefield did with Cap and Avengers.

It also probably helped that at the time, Tony Stark was a murderer and got killed off and replaced with his teenage self from an alternate past. Soooo just about anything would have been an improvement.

I remember how in that world, Richards, Stark, and Pym all met in college, which was a pretty cool idea. Little things like that which would have been cool and would have made sense if Stan and the others had thought to do it in the early days.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top