‘Tis the season for retcons in X-Men Blue: Origins!

The Krakoan era draws closer to the end with a massive retcon in X-Men Blue: Origins by Si Spurrier, Marcus To, Wilton Santos, Oren Junior, Ceci De La Cruz, and Joe Caramagna!

Tony Thornley: Oh my goodness, I don’t think any of us quite knew what to expect with this. I think we can probably sum it up with one sentence though: it’s about damn time, but damn there’s some warts! Stephanie, welcome back to (X-)chat!

Stephanie Burt: It’s been way too long. Too many midnights.

Destiny’s Child 

Tony: So we could actually leave it at the intro and say all we need to, but we both feel it’s worth diving in deeper. After a recap of Raven’s fate at the Hellfire Gala — left in a puddle of blood on a rock after Xavier gave her a stroke to keep her from fighting Orchis — we get right into the meat of it. This is a 30ish page retcon of X-Men Unlimited #4, the Draco, and most everything else we know about Nightcrawler.

A lot of it is good, some of it is bad, and I absolutely do not understand one bit why this isn’t Uncanny Spider-Man #5.

Stephanie: I do. X-fans who care a bloody great deal about Mystique and Destiny and their couplehood and don’t buy Spider-titles need to read it. Conversely, Spider-fans who are buying Uncanny Spider-Man because it’s got “Spider-” in the title would feel duped. I imagine the Jeff Bezos space-shot resonance in the title is unintentional.

Tony: X-Men Blue: Origins is a huge exposition dump. It’s generally written pretty well from a craft standpoint, but there are two major moments that I think don’t land — a bigger one and a couple poorly written lines. It also includes some of Spurrier’s larger faults with his work on Nightcrawler. I think the first larger problem is how Spurrier has written Raven throughout all of Uncanny Spider-Man. I know it’s largely “Chuck broke her brain,” but dang, Spurrier has leaned pretty far into the hysterical woman trope. Am I wrong in that perception?

Stephanie: You’re not wrong, but pretend you’re Spurrier: your endgame is reconciliation between Kurt and Raven, and Raven’s been portrayed for decades (in our time) as a calculating killer who loves only Destiny and whose principles include “never apologize; never explain.” How else would you bring her to the point of asking forgiveness from Kurt? To a point where readers not only sympathize, but believe her?

Tony: I see that, but I think my problem is that this is how she’s been written through all of Uncanny Spider-Man. It’s kind of one of my major problems with Spurrier’s take on Kurt in general — even when the ideas are right, the execution is lacking.

Sexy Daddy

Tony: My second gripe we’ll get to in a few moments. So when Kurt and Raven really get talking, we first get a recap of what we know: Raven is Kurt’s mother, conceived in an affair with Azazel, and abandoned shortly after his birth.

I kind of thought this was necessary, but goodness it took a lot of page space.

Stephanie: Blame Chuck Austen! Everyone else does!

Seriously, the original Azazel nonsense is convoluted enough that it’s gonna take a while just to explain what’s gone wrong with canon so that Spurrier — and his entirely talented, if pretty conventional, art team — can fix it. Retcons aren’t brake jobs! Readers need to know just what the mechanic repairs.

On the other hand, Tony, do you think any reader new to X-continuity, any reader who doesn’t already know about the Azazel nonsense, is going to pick up this comic and read it? Or care what’s in it? Maybe someone who came to the whole continuity tangle of Mystique and Destiny and Nightcrawler and Rogue through the Jay Edidin-penned Mystique-loves-Destiny story?

Tony: You’re exactly right. I don’t think a lot of casuals are going to pick this up, but also it’s a lot even for fans. There’s details I’d forgotten — I had thought Azazel and Christian Wagner were one and the same, for example.

I do have to say, I like the vast majority of WHAT happens next. Revealing that what Kurt, and even Raven, thought was all wrong. That Raven truly is Kurt’s father (and genetically was a mix of a lot of desirable traits, explaining the Azazel link) and that Destiny is his mother. It also seems to confirm Raven and Irene as bi and poly, which is a great win for representation. Altering Raven’s powers (as elaborated in a Doctor Nemesis-penned data page) just a touch was good, too.

Stephanie: Honestly, I, as an individual with some pretty strong feelings and expectations around queer representation, the work of Chris Claremont, and nontraditional families, feel like this is a comic I’ve wanted to see since I got back into X-fandom. We know for a fact that Claremont wanted the story of Nightcrawler’s birth in the way that’s now canon, with Mystique as the small gamete producer and Destiny as the large gamete producer, pregnancy-haver and child-bearer. We know Mystique and Destiny are The Couple and should never have abandoned their child. We know that Jim Shooter’s Marvel would never allow anything but hints in that direction, and that the X-scripters of the 1990s and early 2000s created an unsatisfying, and heteronormative mess.

So yay to Spurrier for cleaning it up? 

Double yay for cleaning it up in a way that gives us something we haven’t seen often until 2023: Irene and Raven in bed, in love, beautifully.

And then a full-page, poster-worthy, tilted and off-center image of Nightcrawler and Mystique and Central Park and the moon, as Raven tells it like it was always meant to be. “We made a baby. Just her and me.” And that blissful recollected look on the momentarily un-tormented Raven’s face.

Tony, what did you think about the Santos/ Junior/ To/ de la Cruz art? I started out wanting to compare it to Todd Nauck’s work in Nightcrawler (2014), but ended up liking the current art a bit more: so many shadows, so much depth, so much angst when Mystique finally reveals herself. We get to see her facial expressions as a woman in love (with Irene), as a woman who’s faking it for comfort and pleasure and for the sake of her lover, as a satisfied parent — once! — and then as an angry mess. I’d be angry too. I like where this issue took me. But, again, I’m me.

Tony: That landed for me really well, and Santos illustrated it incredibly well. And my goodness — you said it a couple paragraphs ago but yes, even though this creative team is very house style, they drew the hell out of it. To and Santos are remarkably complimentary of each other (though I kind of wish they’d separated who drew what a little better — whether it was by chapters, or one drew the present while the other did the flashbacks, etc.).

They both conveyed so much emotion throughout. Made me miss To’s regular contributions to the line (though his presence on Star Trek is more than welcome), and makes me hope to see Santos on something in the near future.

I do think Raven and Irene were slightly too sexualized in a few places, but overall, the art was far and away the best part of the issue.

Stephanie: That said, this comic book doesn’t feel like a superhero comic book very often: it does just one thing to move a plot forward, resolving Mystique’s hysterical quest and engineering a big hug between her and her once lost, now re-found son Kurt. Almost everything else in the issue gets narrated, shown in flashbacks, told as a fait accompli. After the big reveal — Kurt is Raven and Destiny’s bio-child, because Raven’s both his mom and his bio-dad! — there’s almost no dramatic tension. Tony, what happens if somebody reads this comic who hasn’t spent her whole life half-starved for trans representation? Is it any fun?

Tony: Yeah, you’re exactly right. It seems to be almost editorially dictated — we need this to do one thing and one thing only. And because you’re the Nightcrawler guy right now, Si, you’re it.

(I’m a) Survivor

Stephanie: The last time I read a Spurrier Nightcrawler comic that Took Big Positions on Sex and Gender I wanted to throw the dang thing out the window. So did our resident Kurt expert. I’m not going to say that all is forgiven, but I will say that Spurrier’s Raven Darkhölme goes out of her way to generate panels and speech balloons that you can take to the bank, or put on a poster.

Kurt, perhaps improbably, has some trouble believing Mystique could produce small gametes. My dude, you’ve already seen that Raven can biologically generate claws. Mystique responds — it’s my favorite page here, by far, just full of small character-moment panels — not just with “of course I can make sperm, I’m Raven” but with a global claim about identity: “The only true binary division lies not between genders or sexes or sexualities. It lies between those who are allowed to be as they wish and those denied that right.” That sound coming from the balcony? That’s applause.

Tony: See, this is my second item I was bugged about, and it’s entirely about what ended up on the page. Kurt has seen everything, done everything. His confusion here where he mutters “but you’re both women!” doesn’t ring true. I loved Raven’s response, but the Kurt I know wouldn’t respond like that. He’s got his mother standing there telling him that she’s literally genderfluid in the most literal sense. Kurt Wagner should simply say “oh, that makes sense, but…”

If his shock had been about her powers not about her gender, it would have landed much better for me. “But your changes… I thought they were skin deep” or something along those lines. Again — Raven’s dialogue: perfect. Kurt’s dialogue is grossly out of character for the most loving, open minded and accepting mutant out there. And that continues to illustrate why Spurrier is just the wrong choice for Kurt in general. That goes back to what I said about the “what” of the issue: love the end result, but some of the journey just did not land.

Stephanie: I agree. As a Mystique comic with a talky gray Bamf this one works; as a Kurt comic not so much. And Kurt himself doesn’t get much development here: he’s already a beacon of moral clarity, the bearer of the Hopesword, ready to give his long-estranged mom the hug she has so desperately needed since before Krakoa fell.

The Bamf who accompanies him through his story, here and in Uncanny Spider-Man, though? Love that guy. Who is also a throwback to Todd Nauck’s visuals, and to Chris Claremont’s Kurt plot. He is to the older and bluer plush Bamfs what IKEA’s grahaj is to IKEA’s blåhaj. And we all know by now about blåhaj. “We have never had a simple love.”

I’ve been seriously alienated from current X-storylines since the fall of Krakoa. A few more comics like this one, and I can promise I’ll be back. But I’m an old fan. Let’s bring in some new ones too — which this particular retcon (retcomic) doesn’t even try to do.

BLUETS:

• The gray or white Bamf is absolutely Legion, right? And he’s the reason the Sentinels aren’t detecting Kurt over in the main series?
• Raven mentioned other children and pregnancies — we know about Graydon Creed and Blindfold’s family… Are there others that we haven’t met?
• Mystique asking Destiny, in their old-fashioned bed, “What does tomorrow hold?” is now one of my favorite pictures of a long-term, long-troubled, adorable couple. Albeit one with a very high body count.
• Has anyone ever attempted to count how many people Mystique has killed on page? The number might approach Punisher levels.
• Considering her lifespan, probably would be exponentially higher.
• You know what makes a complex retcon easier? The presence of a precog. Something doesn’t make sense? Just say that the precog knew she had to do it, because she knew how time would unfold.

Stephanie Burt

Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids.  Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate. 

Tony Thornley

Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.