Wednesday, May 11, 2016

"My favorite issues of Chris Claremont’s THE UNCANNY X-MEN when I was a kid were the two issues in San Francisco where the X-Men fought the Marauders"

From an article about Michel Fiffe’s COPRA, Star wars, Indiana Jones, and more:
My favorite issues of Chris Claremont’s THE UNCANNY X-MEN when I was a kid were the two issues in San Francisco where the X-Men fought the Marauders– I talk about them all the goddamn time. I can still remember a good chunk of those comics– Dazzler cutting Rogue out from some underwater metal trap; Wolverine fighting Marauders on a bridge until he has to jump off the bridge to save himself; Rogue waking up on a beach next to a guy reading a Wildcards book; Havok trying to kill his wife Polaris at the end because she’d turned evil, been possessed by Malice (metaphor!). I read those comics to tatters, as a kid. To tatters.

...

COPRA, especially in its first year, in the ways that really matter, is about what comics felt like when I was a kid: superheros who can barely get along with one another on the run from a world that hates them, on the run from themselves; teen self-loathing covering up adolescent realizations that the world wasn’t actually built for us, doesn’t care about us, is apathetic to our existence; Havok shooting raybeams at a lady because he doesn’t know how to talk to girls.

Every superhero comic that mattered was on the run when I was a kid.

The Claremont-Silvestri X-Men were hiding in tunnels, hunted, under constant siege. Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America was fired, replaced by the government with a muscled-up emotionless psycho, lost in his own tunnels with D-Man. (A lot of tunnels).

...

Sure, these comics were “power fantasies for alienated kids” — but back then moreso than today, I think the people who made those comics realized that the key word in that phrase wasn’t “power“, but “alienated.”

Some part of me when I was a kid needed to hear that stuff. Some part of me figured out early that the world was a shitty and unfair place, and needed to hear outlaw mythologies, not realizing how fucking damaging those were to dumb, schlubby kids like I was back then. And given how much I salivate when COPRA rang that same bell, given all the stuff I still tend to like, I guess some part of me still likes to hear outlaw mythologies, even 100% fully realizing how fucking damaging they are to dumb, schlubby adults like I am right now. (Footnote: I’m not saying it’s healthy. I’m not saying I’m healthy.)