We're going to give you a bit of a long winded metaphor here (and one that's not even that much of a stretch), but bear with us, because it'll all make sense in time. Readers of a certain age will no doubt remember the X-Men cartoons of the early nineties with fondness. They'll look back on it as both a quality show and one that came out just as the form was breaking out of the goofy shadow of Superfriends and into the seriousness (and serious accolades) of Batman: The Animated Series. Try watching it today, though, and your opinion might change. Even through the rose-tinted specs of nostalgia, the X-Men cartoon is hampered by poor production values, some dodgy voice acting and truly heinous writing at times. Still, to suggest such a thing to an avowed fan of the show, and you're not going to win yourself any friends. The same is true of Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men comics in the seventies, with artists Dave Cockrum and John Byrne, which served as the basis for much of the TV series. During his time on the book, Claremont introduced some of the most popular and enduring concepts, characters and storylines in X-Men history. He arguably hit his peak, creatively and commercially, with the epic Dark Phoenix Saga, a cosmic g(r)eek tragedy for the merry band of mutants that saw Jean Grey die tragically. And not even for the first time, believe it or not. The Dark Phoenix Saga's place in the pantheons of the X-Men and comics as a whole is certain. It was one of the most shocking and heartbreaking moments in a superhero comic to that point, and it continues to be drawn upon from comics produced today. That doesn't necessarily mean it's any good, though. Claremont was better perhaps as an ideas man than an actual writer, although his ideas were somewhat questionable at times too (remember when Wolverine met some honest-to-goodness leprechauns during a team trip to Ireland? Yeah). Reading the X-Men comics of the seventies with a modern eye is very, very difficult. There's a whole lot of ignoring the showing-not-telling rule, with dialogue and narration boxes often describing what the reader can plainly see from the artwork, all the more of an affront due to Claremont's histrionic purple prose. It's almost difficult to find Jean's death moving amongst all the exposition and soap opera-worthy speeches given around it, a comparison that robs the final moments of any real gravitas. Rather than an elegant, classical tragedy, it has more the air of an As Time Goes By cliffhanger, only with worse costumes. But don't just take our word for it, comics writing legend Kurt Busiek hated it at the time, too:
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
