Tuesday, April 18, 2006

It's X-Men week at Dave's Longbox!

If you never heard of the X-Men until the movies came out, this won't be for you. Or, if you think Gambit is the coolest part of X-Men (a) you suck, and (b) this might not be for you, fake X-Fan.

Few items will make me geek out like 80's era X-Men. Uncanny X-Men was THE comic which made me a comic geek (thanks Uncanny X-Men #210), taught me about hunting for back issues, gave me some colorful ideas about race, class and gender in my formative years and taught me Steanso would probably make a better member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants than the X-Men.

Dizzam. Those were comics. Shaped for, what, more than a decade? by a single writer... Chris Claremont. Damn, now that's how you do a run on a comic, Brian Michael Bendis. You make up new phrases, you give people ridiculous nicknames and you turn the ultimate villain into a good guy.

The best part of X-Men was always the completely bizarre dialogue which Claremont made his trademark. In fact, I had no idea as a kid that most of the cliches of Uncanny X-Men were coined by Claremont himself, exclusive to Claremont, and appeared nowehre else in the entire world in either conversational english or the written word. It took me years to realize I should quit trying to use them in term papers and whatnot as it always ended with me having to explain my sentence structure to my teachers.

Anyway, if you were around for the Chris Claremont run (I'm talking to you now, Reed-o), you have to jump from the hyperlink. Then make sure you review the comments section. It's pure X-Men gold.

Oh, and making Psylocke a Japanese Assassin was, possibly, the most nonsensical moment in comics history. I don't care what Jim Lee felt like drawing.

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