Workshop: "Second Genesis: Writing Early Claremont X-Men" by Lady Mordecai

[jij]

Second Genesis: Writing Early Claremont X-Men

This is an essay on writing X-Men, but within a very specific time period--early Claremont, from 1975, when the “new” X-Men debuted, through 1982, specifically Logan and Mariko’s attempted wedding. The logic behind my cutoff date is mostly that I have to have a place to stop. There’s a lot of characters, and a lot of character evolution, in those eight years. I intend to deal separately with the characters as individuals and the team. I’ll also deal briefly with canon and fanon romantic relationships for this team. This essay is mostly about how I see Claremont’s early X-Men canon, and how I feel it’s best to treat it in fanfiction. I’ve discussed this team to death--this is the group that got me into comics, folks--but in the end, the opinions here are mine.

Before I dive into characters, I think I have a little bit of explaining to do about the title itself during this time period that makes good background to the rest of the essay. For those of you not up on your comic book history, the original Uncanny X-Men title of the 60s was pretty much a standard background title, obscure compared to Spider-Man or the FF. It fell in popularity and was canceled. In 1975, Marvel got Len Wein to restart the title with a combination of new and old characters. Banshee and Sunfire came from the old title. He pulled Wolverine from a recent issue of Hulk, and devised Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Thunderbird. Claremont took over the title with its second issue, and turned it in a very different direction--slowly. Initially, the title was just another fight-em title, and the “new” X-Men fought the likes of Count Nefaria (who killed Thunderbird), random demons, and in true X-Men style, several of their own number. Claremont carried on, and within this period perfected, the X-Men’s tradition of facing their greatest foes not from outside but from within their own ranks. Around the time that Jean first turns into Phoenix, personal team relationships have developed, mostly offscreen, and the new X-Men have established a style of teamwork all their own. By the time Scott begins to suspect his new girlfriend Madelyn Pryor is Phoenix resurrected, those relationships have become incredibly tight familial bonds and changed the dynamic of the team.

So, on to characters. People drop in and out of this title like flies, but I’m going to focus on the core of the team and move outward from there. Secondary and tertiary characters will be mentioned in relationship to the others, but for more info on them you’ll have to check out the comics--I don’t have the room here, though I have plenty of thoughts!

STORM

No one who has read this title should be surprised that I picked Storm as the center of this team. From the beginning she was one of the most alpha personalities on a team composed of alpha personalities, Cyclops’ trustworthy right hand and, later, the best leader in X-Men history. Even early on, Wolverine would obey her when he wouldn’t budge for Cyclops. Like all of the characters on this team, Storm is complicated, as is her evolution over these seven years. Ororo Munroe is inherently a kind person, a nurturer, and a woman who respects life in all its forms. She is also incredibly fierce, loyal, slow to anger but long to remember her grudges, and the strongest-willed of the X-Men.

She begins as a weather-goddess, young in age and old in experience and power. It’s incredibly easy to forget that Ororo is in her early twenties at the oldest. She is always calm, because the weather inevitably reflects her mood unless she keeps tight reign over her powers. It’s a burden that becomes more difficult for her to bear the longer she stays with the X-Men, along with her ever-present, waxing and waning doubt about being an X-Man.

Storm is the quintessential leader in a lot of ways. She’s always alone--every single one of her early romances seem to be with princes from alternate realities--and yet her most important relationships are those within the team. Pietr is her “little brother”, Kitty is her best friend and, for a short time, her daughter-figure. Kurt is a fellow emotional anchor for the team, Logan the friend of her fiercer side, and Scott an equal leader.

When writing this Ororo in fanfiction, a lot depends on where in canon you place your story. She’s much more remote earlier on, and remote in a different, confrontational way by the time Logan and Mariko try to tie the knot. You have to balance her sense of internal calm with the fact that she does get angry, and happy, and jealous. The easiest way to do it is in her internal monologue, or in her relationships with those around her. Her relationship with Kitty, for example, can be very revealing. If she and Kitty are getting along famously, and Ororo acts with maternal instincts around her, then it’s probably fairly early on in their relationship, and Ororo is a balanced, generally happy person. If they’ve ironed things out to be entirely friends, then it’s a little later, and Ororo has more doubts about this “X-Men” thing, while Kitty is becoming more of a, well, teenager. Once Ororo meets Yuriko in Japan, however, and trades her “silver mane” for a mohawk and leather, Kitty can’t deal with the new, harsher, Ororo.

For Ororo, the tone of her relationships and her opinions about being an X-Men are the two things that will date and characterize her most during this time period. Her body language and thoughts are also likely to be more telling than her dialogue--Ororo rarely speaks without a point. She isn’t, by any means, silent, but she also isn’t likely to go off half-cocked or say something she instantly wants to take back. She is in all things deliberate.

WOLVERINE

Just who was this feisty creature before he became the uber-popular media character we all know? Like Storm, he begins as something simple: a berserker soldier, argumentative regardless of the situation. Over time, he develops deep relationships with all the X-Men, and as they get to know him better and he settles into a life with friends for the first time, Claremont peels back the layers to reveal the complex character who would eventually catch everyone’s attention. He also has a more obvious separateness from the team: the first character to whom he tells his real name is not a teammate, but Mariko Yashida, his one true love. The first X-Man to discover it is his best friend, Kurt Wagner, years after their debut issue. Wolverine is easily angered and long to cool, wise when he wants to be, a good leader, an alpha personality, and grounded like a tree.

Whatever else, Logan is rooted firmly to the physical world. It’s a huge advantage because he can nearly always be counted on to root out false from true, but it can also be used against him, as Proteus did. Mess with reality, and you screw up Logan’s advanced senses, which can make him go a little buggy. That means that sensory detail is important when writing from his point of view--smell, especially, but also touch, hearing and taste. He’s also very minimalistic in thought. Not simplistic, mind, but minimalistic. Logan lives in the now in this time period. While in later arcs he will become obsessed with his past, he hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Toward the end of this time period, he goes to Japan and finds the culture and its ancient warrior code fit him very well. Though he must strive to meet it, he is determined that his days of being called “animal” will be past, though his enemies never cease to taunt him with his occasionally animalistic nature.

His most important relationships are with Kurt, who is his best friend, and with Mariko, his love. He backs Storm heavily as their leader, backing down when she confronts him, and in the second half of this time period especially, steps in whenever he can to help his friends. While a rebellious soul, he is loyal to the grave, and simple in his tastes. He likes to pretend he doesn’t have ideals, and while evil rarely surprises him, he admires ideals in others and manifests them himself.

Sensory detail and the various levels of intimacy in his various relationships--which mainly consists of how much the other knows about him, rather than the other way around--are the important things to consider when writing this Logan. Don’t let him have a deep and meaningful talk with Scott--that’s for Kurt, or perhaps Ororo. Wolverine’s a fractious personality, and not nearly as predictable in this time period as he will become later. As long as you keep in mind that his character has all the nuance and little of the history, you should be able to keep him well in line.

NIGHTCRAWLER

If Storm is superego, and Wolverine id, Kurt Wagner is ego. He is fun-loving, jovial, romantic, serious, reliable, and feeling. The world affects Kurt deeply, from the mob out for his blood in the very first issue to his faith in the face of the Brood. His contradiction is that no matter what horrors the world throws at him, he remains ever a steady, sure personality. I’m not saying he doesn’t lose his temper, he does, but overall he’s a very stable person. He is not one of the alphas on this team, but he is an individual power who tends to, and excels at, improvising within the plan.

Kurt does not go through the kind of convoluted and involved character evolution that Logan and Ororo do. He grows more than he changes. Early on, he had an image-inducer that he wore in public, generally in the image of his swash-buckling hero, Errol Flynn. It’s not too terribly long before he decides that showing a false face to the world isn’t worth it. In spite of, or more likely, because of, his looks, Kurt knows throughout the series exactly who and what he is, and demands to be treated as such. He has his moments of doubt, and his occasional sadness over another mutant, or fellow X-Man, frightened by his appearance, but his determination to be judged as a person is a defining characteristic. It also makes him very accepting, and one who judges people based on their actions, as he would like to be judged.

He can be a tangle to write, if only because he feels everything so much. Emotional responses, with reasoning behind them, are probably your best bet. Kurt talks a lot, banter as well as philosophizing. If any of the X-Men of this period were to philosophize, it’s most likely him. His ability to do so without judgment is very important. That makes the fact that his most important relationship is with Logan more understandable.

Dialogue and body language are the keys to Kurt Wagner. His body language has a much wider range than most characters’, because his body is different, and that should never be forgotten. Not just because he looks different, that’s almost irrelevant, but because he’s simply built different. He has a prehensile tail that can give away his moods, he’s an acrobat with mutant flexibility, he can stick to walls and blend into shadows, and he can grip with his two-toed feet. He hunches, he uses all four limbs when he runs, he perches on all and every available surface, and he is as likely to teleport in upside-down as rightside-up. His entire demeanor should reflect whatever he is feeling at the moment. Even if he is trying to hide it, he’ll most likely do so by perching on something and curling in on himself, which is its own signal.

COLOSSUS

Pietr (or Peter) Rasputin is all heart and farm-sense. He’s a simple person, with simple needs, and is often confused in the face of the complex cruelty of the world off his collective. He has a sure heart, very rarely gets angry, and is very loyal. Despite living and superheroing in America, it’s always clear that he’s a “ruskie” and loyal to his homeland--which is, remember, the communist USSR at this time. He forms an immediate attachment to Ororo, and becomes her “little brother.” He is slow, but don’t ever mistake that for stupid. He’s not a Ph.D., but don’t let that demean him.

Like Kurt, Pietr isn’t one of the alphas on this team, and is the youngest of them until Kitty comes along. More than all the others, he is a follower, though he wouldn’t follow if his heart told him the action would be wrong. Action is Pietr’s defining characteristic. He can be declarative in the midst of battle, but in everyday life he loses words. He’s a painter, and a farmer, someone who experiences the world in different ways than through words.

For all that he’s practically incapable of cruelty, Pietr is impulsive, quick to anger, shock, joy, and quick to recover from all of them. He forgets complexities when on a roll. He’s protective. Perhaps Pietr should be explained as the common sense of the team. His youth and protective instincts can make him do rash things, and like Ororo, he wouldn’t say anything he couldn’t take back--not because he must control himself, but because he simply isn’t good at words. He’s more likely to hit something.

SPRITE

The two things you must remember about Kitty Pryde are that she’s very, very smart, and thirteen and a half years old. Ororo remarks on it herself when they go to meet Kitty’s new dance teacher: “Kitty reasons as calmly, as sensibly, as Professor X--yet for all of that, she is still a child, struggling to hold onto her childhood.” Scott says she’s “13 ½ years old, cute, bright, spunky, and she walks through walls.” Kitty, it sometimes seems, has no ego--nothing mediates between her id and her superego. She can be intelligent and mature one moment and a whiny brat the next.

Perhaps because of her age, she is the one affected the most by the X-Men’s often horrifying adventures, in the shortest amount of time. Her introduction coincides with the Dark Phoenix arc, and she arrives at the School while the X-Men are at Jean’s funeral. Kitty tends to be cute, bright and spunky in her early issues. She is the source the infamous issue “Kitty’s Fairy Tale”, which is an often-parodied but never-matched tale of high medieval adventure where the Pirate Kitty and her One True, er, Friend Colossus aid a cast of fantasy X-Men to rescue Princess Jean from the Phoenix manifestation of the dark side of her soul.

The turning point for her character from more cheerful to more whiny is the Brood. The whole arc is very dark, and all the characters go through some deep soul-searching, but it terrifies Kitty, who is forced to come to terms with her own mortality and her mental, but not emotional, maturity, much to young. She has Pietr to balance her, and he becomes her anchor in a lot of ways, but it isn’t enough to stop Kitty from becoming a harder, more ruthless person. It will be years yet before she becomes the character we know from Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, but as is shown in the flashbacks of his first issue, this is where it begins. On this team, she is a beta personality trying to be an alpha and failing, especially in the later issues.

Kitty’s chatter, outbursts, and actions are the best way to deal with her overflowing personality. What she says matters less than how she says it. She doesn’t babble, but how she speaks is important. Too fast, too slow, violently or softly, that’s the way to get across how she feels. She can be as impulsive as any fourteen-year-old, but also as thorough as a rocket scientist planning NASA’s next launch, depending on her mood and circumstances.

CYCLOPS

He’s stuffy. Cyclops worked well as a leader for the original X-Men because he was the only real alpha on the team--much as Warren tried, he just didn’t make the cut. Now he finds himself in charge of a team of alpha and individual personalities, and has to find a new way to lead. To be fair to Scott as a leader, he does eventually work out how to lead the new X-Men, but in my opinion, he’s never as good at it as Ororo is. He is team leader through the end of the Dark Phoenix arc. This new team of individuals teaches Scott how to be an individual more than leading the old team ever did, and he becomes more sure of himself.

Scott is a born leader, a fantastic strategist, a world-class brooder, and way, waaaay too serious for his own good. The most revealing aspects of him as a character are his thoughts--he has a bad habit of not explaining himself to his team, which doesn’t always go over well, and would leave readers not in his head in the dark. But his head is not a funny place to visit.

BANSHEE

The oldest member of the X-Men’s field team, Sean Cassidy’s an old hand at fighting of all kinds, and accepts with equanimity most of the crazy things that get thrown at them. He’s happy to turn over a new leaf, occasionally dismayed by the age of his teammates, a great mechanic, and thoughtful if not brooding or brilliant. He has long learned that only the important things--the people you love--are worth getting really angry over. He has a temper but can leash it in ways Wolverine doesn’t bother to. The best way to come at Sean as a character is probably through a combination of dialogue and action. He’s a little stiff, body-language-wise, but he’ll speak his mind often enough, and carry out his emotions or thoughts.

PROFESSOR XAVIER

He is incredibly fallible with this team. He might have been the original X-Men’s mentor and leader, but he is not to this team. His approach is entirely wrong, and he wants them to work together in ways their individualism simply won’t allow. He is also very blind about his own failings till far after the fact, if then, and arrogant in all situations. He can be a very good leader, and is emotionally attached to this team, but these are not his beloved students. They respect him, to a point, and agree that his dream is one worth fighting for.

During this time period, Xavier is also heavily distracted by Lilandra. This is when she arrives, with her soulmate calling her to Xavier and him to her, and he spends much of his time in space, as her consort. She is a fascinating character, and one with whom the X-Men tend to get along, attracted to her fierceness, her pride and her understanding.

Xavier never bonds well with this team. Not only are his methods impractical for this kind of group, they spend too much time apart. He or they are in space, they think the other is dead, however it happens, he tends not to know these X-Men deeper than their surface, which is a severe weakness for a telepath and supposed mentor figure. Thought and dialogue will categorize Xavier, and how well he knows these people will date him within this time frame.

PHOENIX

Jean Grey had not yet become the renowned woman-who-wouldn’t-die. The thing to remember about her in this time period is that she’s Phoenix for most of it--which means she isn’t really Jean Grey, according to canon, but the Phoenix entity masquerading as Jean by incorporating a little bit of Jean’s being into itself. It’s Jean’s human form, her physicality and emotion, that eventually drive the cosmic entity to become Dark Phoenix and revel in the worst impulses of mankind. She forms a deep and lasting friendship with Ororo, and a confusing one with Scott. Jean is very ragged in this time period, even before she became Phoenix, caught between her identity as a student and her drive to be more.

THE NEW X-MEN

Now that I’ve babbled on about individuals till you probably wanted to tear my keyboard from my hands, I’m going to talk about the team dynamic. I’ve already said that these X-Men were a team of individuals more than a working unit, and that’s true. But they’re also family, even if that family is argumentative and sarcastic.

The core of the team in this time period is composed of four characters: Ororo, Wolverine, Kurt and Pietr. Everyone else comes and goes, has other, more important commitments, or simply doesn’t mesh. These four carry the team throughout. They’re also very good friends out of costume, in any combination.

All of the new X-Men influence each other in subtle ways: formerly stoic members such as Ororo and Pietr start cracking jokes, Cyke relaxes his barking leadership style a little, that sort of thing. As the series went, we got to see more and more of the interior of the mansion--the X-Men in their off time.

In the beginning, they were all opposed to each other to the point where they didn’t get nearly enough done because they were fighting each other as much as the enemy, but their fights eventually evolve into something that both encompasses their ability to compromise and communicate. Nicknames are key--just about everyone has one, and they change. Kurt begins with “misfit” thrown in his face, and later the only time that name shows up is when one of their number has gone evil. Other nicknames start disparaging and become affectionate, like Pietr’s ruskie or Sean’s Irish. Ororo eventually becomes ‘Ro, Kurt Elf, and Kurt and Pietr both use their native languages for Kitty’s nickname: Katzchen and Katya, respectively.

They are also, to put it simply, funny. They crack jokes, they make fun of each other, their circumstances, the villains, anyone who will stand still long enough and a few people who don’t. With such disparate backgrounds, they overcome their arguments and separation through humor, bonding them as a family.

These X-Men, though they follow Cyke and Storm, also act as a democracy of sorts. Things tend to go badly if they don’t have a say in what they’re doing, and they don’t have the kind of unity in the field that tends to characterize teams in the DCU. They work together, and train together, but in the end, they tend to reassert their individuality given a chance.

That being said, off the battlefield, they really do love each other, as much for their differences--which are many, and rarely related to their mutations--as for their similarities.

RELATIONSHIPS

I’m going to keep this section as short as I can, given the already-ungodly length of this thing. I may have bitten off more than I can chew . . .

CANON ROMANCE

These would be Scott and Jean’s conflicted and loyal absolute love, as well as his steady but fractious love with Madelyn Pryor, Xavier and Lilandra’s slightly silly soulmating, Kurt and Amanda’s adorable dating, Wolverine’s one-sided lust for Jean, his later true love with Mariko, Pietr and Kitty’s youthful exploration, and Sean and Moira’s steady joyful love.

FANON ROMANCE

Common pairings from this era include Jean/Logan, Kurt/Logan, Scott/Ororo and Logan/Ororo.

FRIENDSHIPS

While the romantic relationships in X-Men are fairly evident from the characters, there are some odd and interesting friendships that define the cores of several characters.

The first I’d go into would be Ororo and Kitty, but Storm’s bio already has a crash-course in their relationship.

My second pair is Kurt and Logan. It’s a little amazing how quickly these two bond, especially given how different they are on the surface. Only a few issues into the series, Wolverine viciously attacks a demon that slaps Kurt around, declaring their friendship aloud. They make good straight men for each other’s humor, and enjoy the fighting--though in very different ways. Their acceptance of each other’s inner and outer natures plays a part in their relationship, and while that acceptance never falters, is never even questioned, they never cease to challenge each other. When Logan becomes too violent, too impulsive, or too rough, Kurt is there, gently questioning, both trying to understand and making Logan justify himself. When Kurt is depressed about his appearance, optimistic or religious, Logan questions and prods, pulling him out of his own head. Yet there is never any judgment passed on the other--each accepts who the other is. Kurt won’t kill, and doesn’t like that Logan does, and yet he is the one who must explain to Kitty, and back Logan, when Logan killed Mariko’s father. Logan doesn’t understand Kurt’s faith, or his hesitancy toward excessive violence, and yet never pushes Kurt to change. They back each other in every way, and are most likely to be found in each other’s presence unless on the battlefield.

Ororo and Pietr have a close relationship in the beginning of the series that doesn’t precisely disappear--it more gets lost amidst the team’s friendship. Xavier and Moira are also good friends, but their friendship is tainted by their failed romance, though that also makes it incredibly close. Jean and Ororo form a close bond, but the problem with that relationship is that it happened “offscreen”, in the early issues that were mostly about fighting, and then Jean became Phoenix became Dark Phoenix, and Ororo and Jean’s close friendship is expressed only in words in this era’s canon, rather than action. This leaves a lot of space for a writer to utilize, because their friendship was formed pre-Phoenix, but most of Jean’s time in this era is Phoenix.

SERIOUSLY, NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT

This bit is some notes on the canon series, things that are in the comics but need to be translated for fanfiction writing. The first, biggest, is the dialogue. IMHO, Claremont was born to write high fantasy, and what he was doing writing superhero comic books is beyond me. Mind you, we got fantastic comics out of it, but nobody in 1980 would have said “You--Earthquake! You claim to control the earth beneath our feet! Learn now, villain, that Storm controls the wind and rain--elements that grind the earth down to powder!” They also have a bad habit of speaking in third person, especially in battle. And using words like “slay” and “rogue.” I’m NOT saying that you should use 70s or 80s slang--that would read as weird to us now as the pseudo-fantasy dialogue--but these are things that should be adapted for the written word. Claremont also has a high fantasy narrative style, one that told far more often than it showed. Not terribly problematic in a visual medium, but death to a prose writer.

WISECRACKING AT A WORLD THAT HATES AND FEARS THEM

This team is the reason why the X-Men titles today could make up their own publishing company. Claremont’s introduction of the human side of these heroes, like Stan Lee’s treatment of Spider-Man, changed the title from second-rate to progenitor of its own family of titles. Before these years are up, Claremont designed and began The New Mutants, and several years later would jump-start X-Factor. It wasn’t the fight-‘em title that drew people in, it was the budding friendships, the banter, the heart-rending emotion of Dark Phoenix. It was Kurt’s derring-do, Logan’s ferocity, Ororo’s wise and loving heart, Pietr’s bashfulness, Scott’s quick thinking, and Kitty’s spunk. It was Claremont’s secondary characters, rendered with as much care as his primary characters, who made the title swim in deep water. Moira, Lilandra, Amanda, Mariko, Colleen, Misty Knight, the Greys, Jaime Madrox, Dazzler, Ilyana, Corsair, Carol Danvers, Aletys Forrester, Caliban, Callisto, Stevie--the list is endless, and many of them were in dozens of issues. It was the absurd things--like the fact that they couldn’t seem to get into a conveyance without it blowing up--as well as the serious.

Silly as it sounds, what makes this team are its people. They’re a family, a close-knit core with an extended family that reaches from their blood kin to the Imperial Guards of the Shi’ar Empire, the Yashida Clan, the Starjammers, the Morlocks and more. Complex, evolving relationships and characters make this era of X-Men a joy to read, and a wonderful challenge to write.