Marvel comics of 1986. X-Men: The Mutant Massacre.
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On this episode we cover the following issues (all available via Marvel Unlimited):
| Mutant Massacre | See the reading order. |
My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Five: 1986 Pt. 4
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Up Next:
| Daredevil | Daredevil: Love and War graphic novel / #227 to #233 |
| Captain America | #320 to #323 |
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Hi, guys. Hope you won’t mind hearing from a new commenter. I’ve been listening for awhile now, but only now have I finally caught up enough to comment in real time! You promised that this episode would feature your biggest “fight” yet, and it did not disappoint. Of course, given the sort of fights that you often see in comic book discussions these days, I was glad that your disagreement was still calm and respectful. That’s one of the things that I appreciate about your take on comics, your ability to disagree without hating each other.
As far as the Mutant Massacre goes, I think I do fall more on Zack’s side of the discussion than Dave’s. I can remember reading these books as they came out. I think that I’m a bit older than you guys. I was in my first year of college when these issues were published, and had been an X-Men fan since the Byrne days. From what I remember, this was about the time that I began to lose my enthusiasm for the X-Men. I stuck with it for another couple of years, but I definitely wasn’t enjoying it as much as I used to.
I think it may have been, as you guys suggested in your discussion, simple fatigue with the series, and perhaps with Claremont’s writing style. From what I can remember, this was around the time that the series began to seem much bleaker to me, becoming less fun for me to read. It may be that I was just getting tired of the storylines, or that I thought Claremont was running out of new ideas. Perhaps that’s some of what Zack was feeling as well.
I’ll be honest that part of it for me was also the art. I’m not really a huge fan of Romita, Jr., at least not as an X-Man artist. In any case, listening to your discussion definitely took me back to that time in my life, and definitely brought back those feelings I had that X-Men was starting to slip out of my list of favorites. This was kind of sad for me at the time. As I said, I had loved the series for a long time by that point, and I really wanted to keep loving it. But this is the time that it started getting more difficult to do that for me.
I’m sure that, when the appropriate time comes, you guys will have a general discussion of Chris Claremont and his place in comic book history. I think he’s one of the most important writers ever to work in the industry, and the groundwork he laid with these characters is still being mined to this day. But I also think that he may well have stayed on the title a bit too long. Sadly, I think this period is when I started to feel that way.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion, and for the podcast. I’m looking forward hearing your discussion as we move toward the 90s. God knows there are some…let’s say, interesting…developments to deal with when you get there.
Hey Scott,
I’m just seeing this now; thanks for the response! Yeah, we’ll make sure to recognize the monumental achievement of what Claremont did for X-Men/Marvel/Superhero comics as we near the end of his run.
FYI, the comment section here isn’t as surefire of a place to get a response as emailing mymarvelousyear@gmail.com or joining the Slack channel, where we have tons of discussion daily.
Thanks again,
Zack