Bear Time Is My Favourite Time

The latest episode of Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men dropped yesterday. This week they discussed in some detail Bill Sienkiewicz's work on New Mutants. They make the claim that Sienkiewicz's work marks a turning point in comics generally (although here I think what they really mean to say is 'superhero comics generally')--a ripping open of the envelope with respect to what the pages of sci-fi inflected, action adventure dramas could do.

I wish that they were right. I wish that the page to the left was indeed a turning point. But it really wasn't. Sienkiewicz has been influential, yes, but the body-stocking- punch-em-up-will-they-or-won't-they-kiss-this-week crowd will always look to Jim Lee and the like before they even consider challenging either themselves or their audience with something evocative and expressive rather than naturalistic and classical.

At any rate: this Sienkiewicz kid has it goin' on!

Grim Soliloquies

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Nothing but wall-to-wall knives, guns, and tits. A dark triangle leading youth to ruin. This issue, an eleven year old boy will fall into a strange world of futuristic soldiers, masked villains, and blonde cavemen. He's never seen anything like these intimations of bondage and domination. And who are those faces in the top, left-hand box? None of it makes any sense. Except the promise of violence. Violence beckons like the perfumed scent of a submissive mistress.

Uncanny X-Men #274 (Marvel Comics, March, 1991)

Jean Grey

The tyrannical bald man, dressed so conspicuously normal, must have known about the fire that would soon burn and resurrect and burn and resurrect all heroes, splintering them like wood. He must have recognized the first spark in the most beautiful woman we had ever seen--red and black and fierce; so beautiful that her lover will beg to die alongside her in the cockpit. After this moment, only the unchanging fire would remain. Why not tear each other apart?                                   

    Classic X-Men #8 (Marvel Comics, April, 1987)