User blog:Nausiated/X-Men Forever and X-Men Hidden Years

So I'm taking a break from my usual stuff because my laptop is currently in the process of getting its screen replaced, which is taking an irritatingly long time.. So I've been taking my time to read two particular series that I have been interested in reading for a while. The first being Chris Claremont's run of X-Men Forever and the other being John Byrne's X-Men: The Hidden Years.

X-Men Forever was Chris Claremont's attempt at telling the X-Men story he wanted to tell had he not left the series after. Was it what he had on his mind at the time, or was this just stuff he came up with when he was given the job back in 2009? Who can say for sure. The story was... Interesting... The X-Men being clashing with an organization called the Consortium that want to wipe out the mutant race. Wolverine getting killed in the first issue, and a new disease: Mutant Burn Out that threatened to destroy them all. The series went in a different direction of what was established cannon, and it appeared that Claremont cherry picked certain plot elements that he didn't want, such as Nathan Summers being sent into the future, Wolverine being the son of Sabertooth, and so on. The series was cancelled after some 42 issues.

X-Men the Hidden Years was Byrne's attempt to tell the stories of the original X-Men between and  while the series was (at the time of publication) in reprints and the X-Men were only briefly appearing in a smattering of other titles. It provided a broader continuity that was remiss of the Claremont run that started with and tried to explain some of the loose ends that were left in the X-Men at the time. It ran for 22 issues before being cancelled.

The profound thing that I noticed about both series was that both writers attempted to implement the long running continuity that was a trademark of the X-Men series from 1975 until Warren Ellis took over New X-Men in July 2001. Where there were long running story elements that were often the result of years upon years of storytelling. Of course the problem with this was the fact that by this time Marvel's storytelling mandate had changed to that of confined story-arcs that had an resolution of sorts by the end of the arc. Gone are the days where you had to wait years for a particular story arc to come full circle, creating a continuity heavy story telling that was driving away new readers, who under the new writing mandate, could pick up a book at the start of the story arc and be able to follow along without having to worry about some 40+ years of continuity.

Ultimately, it ended with series being cancelled prematurely before the full potential of the story could be realized. This was less obvious with Byrne's run on Hidden Years, at least that series was rooted in past continuity so ending up a series, while rushed, could easily be tied in a neat little bow so that there were no loose ends. Claremont's run on X-Men Forever however didn't have quite a neat little ending. Rushed to the finish line, he was forced to tie up his Perfect Storm story arch (which included three versions of Storm: a bio-synth, a young Storm with amnesia, and an energy version with all her memories) having to cram all the exposition in one issue ( to be exact) and quickly dispatch with a story about Wakanda going to war with Genosha. I wager that Claremont was going on to bigger things, such as an all out war between the two nations, but was forced to cut it short and had the crisis averted. However the series had a number of loose ends that probably will never be resolved: Such as the solution of Mutant Burn Out, the fate of the Wolverine clone, future clashes with Black Magik, and the culmination of Shadowcat aquiring Wolverine's powers, a claw, and seemingly his personality.

The series was also shoddy in that Claremont greatly limited his cast and cherry picked the X-Men to have members who were, at the time, active members of Excalibur, seemingly leaving the plot threads that Claremont himself and Alan Davis had begun in the 90s. There was also the need to explain who Cable was since he was -- apparently -- no longer Nathan Summers, and a host of other continuity glitches which were apparently untouched during the series run. Unlike Byrne who took the time to research continuity and weave a perfect tale that respected what was going cannon in the other books around that time (including a seamless addition of Magneto and Namor teaming up to conquer the world from through, Claremont's run on X-Men Forever completely ignored what was going on in all the other X-books at the time (let alone other Marvel titles) and went its own way, ignoring other implications as it went. I would think that the only reason was really that Claremont really didn't do his research that much and just went on and did the story he wanted to tell.

This was much like his run on New Exiles, which was another series which seemed to have been attempting to set up long running plot lines and it eventually got cut short when they decided to cancel New Exiles in favor of returning to a sort-of-basics with the relaunch of Exiles Volume 2, which basically dumped where Claremont was going -- which really seemed quite directionless -- and going back to basics to what made the series fun. That was the problem with his run of New Exiles, was that the series was so heavy with changing gears that it lost its fun, lost its appeal. It became more about solving the mystery of Roma transferring her memories into Sage, and more about the Exiles going to other worlds to recruit new members with no backstories, and clashing with the reality hopping Supreme Hydrak, with no rhyme or reason or explanation as to why things were going on, there were never any mission explanations and the teams leader Sabertooth was always off somewhere else being involved in a plot line that never got explained. Of course when Exiles Volume 2 came out the series was cancelled after about 5 issues, likely due to the debacle that Claremont made of the series before, thereby decreasing sales and resulting in the series being cancelled. Which is sad, since Exiles was a very popular series while it was going through its original run.

I recall Claremont saying in an interview at my local Comiccon that for the most part, Marvel no longer recognizes the work that you did before, while a writer may be known for works a, b, and, c, your future employment with them usually stems on how well you can write a tale in the present. While I have the utmost respect for Mr. Claremont for the work he has contributed to the Marvel Universe in the 70s through the 90s (great works indeed) I have to say reading his most recent works of late have been highly disappointing. I think really the big problem with that is a clash between Claremont's writing style -- which is very much rooted in the old school Marvel storytelling method -- and the current editorial directives of Marvel. Claremont wants to take his time to weave a tale, but editors want short and sweet story arc.

I've grown up reading both, and while I can say that some of the best stories I've read growing up as a child come from that bygone era where stories often took years to ferment and come full circle, I prefer the more current arc method. It keeps things less complicated, stories can be told more efficiently -- especially in a situation where a title isn't selling well and needs to be axed. Having the ability to wrap things up before the axe falls is far easier when you're tales are contained in small story arcs instead of massive plot threads that could take years to resolve. This is even something that happens to series that have not been cancelled, and ironically happened during Claremont's watch on Uncanny X-Men back in the 80s and stands as the best example of what I'm talking about.....

In Claremont started a plot thread where Havok finds a crashed Brood cruiser in the New Mexico desert. This plot thread started in June 1987. That plot didn't come into fruition until through  but ended in a plot twist where there were still Brood infected humans out on the loose in August and September of 1988. Claremont left this plot hanging while the X-Men got involved in all manner of other things, including Inferno, the X-Tinction Agenda and the Muir Island Saga on top of everything else until Claremont left the series in 1991. This plot threat was nearly forgotten until it was finally resolved in the two part X-Men vs the Brood series that wasn't published until 1996.

I think this is the best case to support my opinion that short story arcs are better than long running ones.