The Austin Run, Part 2 - Uncanny X-Men #411 (2002)

Uncanny X-Men #411 (October, 2002)

"Hope, Part 2 of 3"

Writer - Chuck Austen

Pencils - Ron Garney

Inks - Mark Morales

Colors - Hi-Fi

Letters - RS & Comicraft's Saida!

Edits - Mike's Raicht & Marts

... and of Course - Jemas and Quesada

Cover Price: $2.25

Welcome back to...

We're now at two weeks in a row... which is one week longer than I thought it'd go!

We've still got several weeks until this gets really good (is that the word for it?)... so for now, we've got a bit more Austenian World Building to commence with.  We've gotta establish our team, before we get to The Draco, the exploding Communion wafers, and the bangin' (oh Lord, the bangin')...

So, without further ado... 

--

We open in the Blackbird, with Professor X trying to psychically sooth Stacy-X long enough for her to perform CPR on Angel.  Sammy the Squid Boy is in such awe of this... that he breaks off into his own exposition-laden narration boxes.  Fair play though, this is something comics used to... and in many case, still probably should do.  Xavier loses contact with Stacy... and fears the worst.  Hank says he'll get them to Scotland STAT.  Speaking of Scotland... X-Stacy (which, I mean - why didn't they just call her that?) fears that the Juggernaut is about to kill them all.

See?  In fairness to her - the Juggernaut is charging right at them with a furrowed brow while bearing all of his teeth... so, yeah - stands to reason she'd think that.  Remember this, it's going to be very important.

Iceman wakes up and has some words of encouragement for Stacy...

Oh yeah, one of the hallmarks of this run is that very few of Austen's chosen characters are going to be portrayed in any way likeable.  They also talk like they're on The Howard Stern Show, and like to bang in public... but, we'll get there.  Anyway, Bobby blasts Juggernaut with an ice shaft, meaning he didn't get the memo that Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut*.  The baddie even mocks Iceman, claiming that the ice thing never works**.  Cain rushes over to Wolverine, who had been impaled on a wooden stake... and yanks the thing out of his chest.

Iceman then sends out another ice blast... and we learn that Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut... except an ice blast.  Meanwhile, Stacy-X wonders how she might keep the dyin' Angel's blood flowing.  Err, doesn't her mutant power sorta-kinda have something to do with controlling "blood flow"?  Maybe tap into that?

Just then, a bunch of Krakoan vines burst from the ground - grabbing poor Warren and nyoinking him to the down below.  Nightcrawler just stands there, dumbfounded... while Bobby and Logan continue to fight the Juggernaut.  If I'm not mistaken, Bobby even suggests that they retreat... which would mean leaving Warren (and Monet) behind.  I'm tellin' ya, Professor Xavier the X-Men are jerks.

Juggernaut has the sudden realization that Nothing Can Stop Him... and so, he begins punching his way through Bobby's drip-drip.  When he finally gets close enough to our heroes, he informs them that HE made the distress call to their "eight-hundred number".

Well, those of us who have already learned to be X-Tra Safe, know that Xavier's doesn't have an "eight-hundred number"... it's just a local call... well, international long-distance to those calling from Scotland, I suppose.  I wonder if Cain used 10-10-220?  Y'all remember having to dial that before making your long-distance call?  Yikes.

Anyhoo, Juggernaut and the X-Men spend a whole nother page discussing the misunderstanding that's eaten up the last several pages before that.  Each side is calling out the other for being jerks... which, well... valid points are being made.  This conversation is thankfully interrupted by more Krakoan vines!  Any guesses who are big-bad's going to be?  We're in Ireland Scotland, we're dealing with a plant-like threat, and our point of contact is Juggernaut.  Any guesses?  Oh by the way... always remember, Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut... except vines.  Is that me being unfair?  Probably.

We next shift scenes to Rosy Manor Convalescent Hospital in Upstate New York... not to be confused with the actual Rose Manor Hospital in Durham, North Carolina... which I only just found out about by Googling in attempt to appear more worldly and knowledgeable than I actually am.  It's here we meet Annie Gaz... Ghaz... Gharz... hold on, *ahem* it's here we meet Annie Ghazikhanian.  Ghazikhanian?  Welp, that's not going to be fun to type as often as we're probably going to have to.  Thank goodness this isn't an audio offering... yet.  If anyone out there wants to help coach me with this, I'm not too proud to beg!  Anyhoo, Annie Gh... Annie, is a Nurse here at Rosy Manor - and she's kind of fallen in love with a catatonic patient/resident... with a scar over his right eye.  The other Nurses are torn between feeling bad for her... and, in a way envying her.  We learn that Annie is a single-mother, which will hopefully not go on to be her sole defining characteristic***.

Annie wheels Al... err, her patient outside for some fresh air and natural light... and notices that anytime he's in the sun he "Nnnnhh..."s a bit.  It's here we meet Annie's son, Carter Gaz... a-hem, Carter, who is reading The Daily Bugle Newstrack, which is running an article on the "Mutant hideaway" the Xavier School.  There, as luck would have it, is a picture of... her catatonic boyfriend - he's one half**** of the amazing flying Summers Brothers, Alex Summers!

Back in Scotland, the X-Men (+Juggernaut, -Iceman & Nightcrawler) are all wrapped up in the vines.  Worth noting, there are also some humans and bones all strung up here as well.

Juggernaut finally reveals what we already figured out - the threat here is: Black Tom Cassidy.  Upon learning this, Wolverine takes the opportunity to make a gay joke (because Austen+2002).  Should we start keeping a running counter for all the lazy gay jokes we're going to hear during The Austen Run?  Remember, Northstar will eventually join the cast!  Let me know in the comments!

Now, Black Tom is gone quite mad... and has grown quite powerful.  Cain pleads with him to let the X-Men help... but Tom ain't havin' it.  Instead he rams his thorny barbs into Juggernaut's eye-holes and mouth.  Kinky.  So yeah, Nothing Can Stop the Jug... nevermind.

We shift down below, where Bobby and Kurt are walking through some catacombs.  It's here Bobby has an idea.  Seeing the vines and roots, and knowing that they likely belong to whoever the big bad is... he decides to use his ice powers in a very unique way.  He freezes the water in the green... which gives them a way to easily track them to their "trunk".  Ya know, this is actually pretty cool.  Back in the day, people really seemed to struggle coming up with unique ways to make Bobby's power appear to be useful... and to show that Bobby himself was something of a force to be reckoned with.  This sort of use of his abilities is quite inspired.

Scene shift, back to Annie the G making call to Xavier's.  Since she's upstate already, I don't think it'd be such a big deal to just make the local call.  Anyhoo, Xavier's is closed... but, she leaves a message for Scott Summers, claiming that she might've found his thought dead brother.  Scott is just shocked to learn that Alex was missing in the first place!

We wrap up back in Scotland, where Bobby and Kurt follow the icy vines to their source... ultimately discovering that they belong to Black Tom, and also that Tom's got the team all tied up and/or about to sing the chorus to "Twist and Shout".

Well, shake it up, baby, now...

--

Well, what we get here is another very traditional X-Men outing... with a standard "Marvel misunderstanding" between the heroes and who they believe to be the villain.  Nothing all that special here, in as far as our A-Plot is concerned.

I suppose I could comment on how stupid is was for the Juggernaut to come charging at the X-Men, even though it was he who summoned them for aid... but, that's more of a Marvel thing than an Austen thing, innit?  We need some action that doesn't involve botanical bondage... and, that was going to be it.

Our entire team here... actually, check that - our entire team x-cept Stacy (oddly enough), comes across as real a-holes here.  Just really snippy, sarcastic, and dismissive of one another.  Not a likeable bunch... which, I'll use my powers of projection to suggest that Uncanny was attempting to evoke the tone of the (at the time) wildly popular Ultimate X-Men?  It's been ages since I read that, but I seem to remember none of those characters being all that pleasant to be around either.

Let's talk Annie Gotzhergun and Havok.  This, I recall, was what I was most looking forward to seeing play out back in the long ago.  Havok, who "perished" in X-Factor #149, actually wound up suffering a far worse fate than death!  He was whisked away to another dimension to star in the Mutant X series!

And yes, yes, I know - Mutant X had a strong opening arc... but, after that completely fell off the cliff.  Mutant X was a constant threat I had made to Reggie for an episode of the Cosmic Treadmill... and, ooh boy, what an episode that would've been!

Anyhoo, nobody in the 616 seemed to care that Alex was "dead"... it barely got a passing mention in any of the X-Books.  After thirty-something issues of Mutant X, and I believe being bitten by Dracula... Alex Summers was somehow returned to his proper Earth, with nothing more than a slight scar over his right eye (which comes and goes) to remember it by.

I remember being pretty jazzed that he was coming back... and actually joining a flagship team.  I'd missed Havok's first go-round with the X-Men Proper, only ever following the books while he was a member of X-Factor.  So yeah, I was excited to see this play out.  Boy, talk about a monkey's paw wish...

Iceman using his powers in unique ways seemed to be something that stumped a lot of writers.  Iceman, by all accounts, should be wildly powerful and versatile -- they've even written whole stories about him not living up to his mutant potential - and yet, during this era, not all that much was done to correct that.  Bobby was usually relegated to just being "An X-Man"... a dude who stood in the background, who was given the lines that could've been said by anybody.

That said, it was pretty neat seeing him realize he could use his powers to work with the vines.  Even though... I mean, he and Kurt would have eventually found Black Tom anyway... considering that the entire middle section of the wrecked castle was teeming with vines and hogtied mutants - but, points for the effort!

Overall - this doesn't really have many of the Austenian Hallmarks many of us fake-ass comics historians like to dismissively raise our enlightened eyebrows at... this is just a traditional outing with the Uncannies, setting up stories yet to come, while furthering the main plot long enough to hit a designated page count.  Not much to get excited nor angry about... just another issue!

--

*Most things seem to stop the Juggernaut

**X-Cept, ya know, on the very next page

***What do you think?

****I guess, technically, he's now one-fourth of the Summers Brothers

The Austen Run, Part 1 - Uncanny X-Men #410 (2002)

Uncanny X-Men #410 (October, 2002)

"Hope, One of Three"

Writer - Chuck Austen

Pencils - Ron Garney

Inks - Mark Morales

Colors - Hi-Fi

Letters - RS & Comicraft's Saida!

Edits - Mike Racht, Mike Marts, Joe Quesada

Pres - Bill Jemas

Cover Price: $2.25

One of the features I've long been considering for our little X-Lapsed Family of Content is -- retrials.  Revisiting older runs, that I'd already read -- to see how they've aged.  This idea came to me after receiving a bit of feedback about my dismissal of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men as rather lazy and unambitious.  I had to admit to myself that it'd been ages since I read it... and, in reading that particular run piecemeal (remember, issues of AXM only came out when Whedon felt like actually sitting down and doing the thing Marvel was paying him for), so perhaps I was being a bit hasty... or biased... or whatever.

So, I sez to myself - "Self... you've already got an audio Sunday Special Series.  Why not have a written one as well where you can revisit and retrial some old X-Stories?".  I then sez to myself, "Self, that's a fun idea... but, ya know what - I'm not in the mood to read any Whedon stuff right now."

So, we're not going to start with Astonishing X-Men.  We'll eventually get there... if I don't get hit by a bus or distracted by a butterfly in the interim... but, I wanted to start elsewhere.

With a run so reviled... a run that had claimed so many X-Fans back in the long ago.  Friends, today we're going to begin our revisit of...

Spanning from Uncanny X-Men #410 to #443, the Austen run ran for nearly two uninterrupted years.  If you're saying to yourself, that's a lot of issues crammed into less than two years... well, you'd be right.  Marvel was big on double-shipping back in those days (imagine that!), and they passed the savings (and quality) on to us!

Now, Austen would take over Uncanny from Joe Casey, who was supposed to be a breath of fresh air for our favorite mutants after years of baffling stagnation.  What Casey gave us instead was... Banshee in an SS Uniform, Stacy-X the Mutant Prostitute who sexually satisfied Bill Clinton during an unnecessary scene, and a twist on the Mutant Massacre... which replaced the Marauders with... some dude with a flamethrower calling himself Mr. Clean.

It wasn't great.  It wasn't necessarily bad -- but, the cockiness with which Casey entered the gig really caused many an X-Fan's x-pectations to soar.  The uninspired stories we wound up getting really didn't live up to the hype.  Having to be compared to cohort Grant Morrison's work on New X-Men only compounded the disappointment many of us felt.

So, what's Marvel to do?  Why -- they call in their favorite pinch-hitter of the day to swoop in and stop the bleeding!  Chuck Austen had been something of a utility player for Marvel since the Jemas/Quesada regime took over -- and seemed to be getting gigs left and right -- some fill-ins, some ongoing.  That's a very Marvel thing to do... even to this day!  Just hand over a percentage of the line to a single writer, and -- as we know, that never leads to things like stagnation, all of the characters having the same "voice", or overall phoned-in efforts, right?

Ahem.

Anyhoo... enough pre-ramble - Let's get into it -- the can't miss debut of Chuck Austen on Uncanny X-Men!

--

I almost used a cropped version of this for our "The Austen Run" banner...

In perhaps a sign of things to come, the Austen run begins in the only way it can -- with someone taking a gob of viscous white fluid to the face.  Soon enough we might just be able to relate to this poor fella.  Anyhoo, this is Sammy the Fish Boy... or Squid-Boy.  He's being "hated and feared" by a group of bullies, who surmise that he was the product of his mother "doin' the nasty" with a bottle of Mr. Bubble.  I hope she managed to get a t-shirt out of the deal.

I wonder if Sammy's mom thought it was as much fun to get dirty with Mr. Bubble as it was to get clean?

Anyhoo, they "fear and hate" Sammy for a bit before shoving him into a mud puddle and leaving him to writhe around a bit.  Sammy pulls himself up, declares that he's the biggest loser who ever done lost.  Also, a turd.  He arrives home shortly after, and is informed by his mother that he's gotta get himself cleaned up -- they've got company tonight.  Sammy says he'll be right there... but first, he's gotta go out to the field.

Despite the fact that Mom says no... he does anyway.  This "field", by the way, is basically a junkyard right in the middle of their suburban Vancouver neighborhood.  Sammy laments the fact that he looks the way he does... and wishes he wasn't a Mutant.  Nothing we haven't seen or heard before.  This is almost too traditional an X-Men story, innit?

Sammy climbs into his secret clubhouse... which, doesn't seem like the most secure location to hide what he's about to show us.  In addition to a swimsuit poster of "Brie!", a poster of the cover of Uncanny X-Men #402 (March, 2002), those puppets from the N'Sync album cover, and some cans with the Ghost Writer thingie on it... Sammy's got a gun!

Whodathunk this guy would be that up on pop culture?  Well, I mean... bygone pop culture -- I dunno.  Whatever.  The important part is the gun of course.  Worth noting, Vancouver gets the Daily Bugle -- that's a heck of a circulation, innit?

So, Sammy's got a gun... and he heads back home where he plans on ending his life.  Instead, he's met with tonight's dinner guest: Charles Xavier!  And he comes with an opportunity.  Sammy smiles and begins to cry... and, all joking aside, we get to see that this visit saved his life.  And again, all jokes aside, it's actually quite well done.

Elsewhere, the Blackbird is headed toward Scotland for a mission.  Our team includes Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Angel, Monet, Iceman, and Stacy X.  Stacy is complaining that Chamber just upped and left the team to go off to college.  Perhaps it's worth noting that Chamber was a (relatively speaking) high-profile "get" for the earlier Joe Casey run.  It felt as though Jono was being positioned as the (non Emma Frost) "breakout" star of the recently-cancelled Generation X.  That... didn't quite work out.  Anyhoo, Stacy's kvetchin'... and Monet shushes her by calling her a "mutant prostitute", which would be like calling me an "idiot blogger".  Sometimes things just are what they are.

Stacy claps back because, lest we forget... women be snippy at one another.

From here we get our ROLL CALL page, which gives us the run-down on our cast, including a reference to Stacy-X being "slutty yet fun", as if to suggest that the two must be mutually x-clusive.  I hate being the guy who points out things from back in the long ago that "haven't aged well", but... yeah.  Anyhoo, not near as important as Stacy's promiscuity... the Blackbird is coming under fire, and our heroes are very likely to die here.

We see in the distance that the Blackbird is being bombarded by flaming balls of fear and hate.  The X-Men attempt to eject from the 'bird before it takes the brunt of it... Nightcrawler manages to make landfall, crashing into a castle... because this is Scotland, and everyone there lives in castles.

Back to B.C.... Professor X is chatting up the Squid-Boy family about this opportunity.  He'd like to take Sammy back with him to have him learn more about his Mutant abilities and whatnot.  Sammy notices Charles' accent... and I have to remind myself that this issue isn't too far off the earliest X-Men movies - so, yeah.  This quick chat is all it takes, before the day is through - Sammy's on a jet to Xavier's.

Outside, there's a fella sorta rattling Charles' cage about parking his jet in the middle of a residential neighborhood... which, yeah - he's got a point.  Xavier promises it won't happen again... but, in the event that it does, he'll give the fella a tour of the rig.  Sammy is in awe of this, considering that Xavier, if he wanted to - could just use his "brain powers" to send this lookyloo away.  Charles says he'd never* do such a thing... which is absolutely adorable.  They board, and Sammy is introduced to Cat Beast.

Before they take off, Xavier uses his "brain powers" to deduce that Sammy's got a gun.  That, of course, is a big no-no.  Sammy hands it over, claiming he only brought it because he didn't want anyone else to find it and get hurt.  Hmm... shouldn't lie to a telepath, but whatever.

I'll credit Austen for his restraint in not having Charles ask "Is that a gun in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?"

Xavier then decides to check in on the Scotland-bound team... and finds that they're all kayoed!  All x-cept Stacy.  She's freaking out as none of the rest are breathing.  The Prof tries to calm her down and teach her C.P.R. - but she's still all shades of wacked.

She finally calms down enough to let Xavier "take over" so she can administer C.P.R.  Moments later, Nightcrawler wakes up with an "Ay carumba", which... I'm not even sure where to start with that.  He then spies Stacy blowing into Warren's mouth... and accuses her of kissing him.  Ya know, I thought Kurt was a pretty x-perienced guy, you'd figure he'd know the difference between making out and saving a life -- maybe all he knows of C.P.R. is what he's seen on 90's sitcoms where guys used it as a way to make out with unwitting and prone girls to great hilarity?

We wrap up the issue with the reveal that... the Juggernaut is here!

--

Well, there we have it - the first Chuck Austen issue of Uncanny X-Men... what'd we all think?

I think what struck me most was how, relatively speaking, "safe" this issue played things.  I mean, sure - there's a bit of turn of the century cringe here... but, at it's core, this is a pretty timeless sort of X-Men story.  The kind where, I'm sure we've already read something just like it... I just couldn't point you to where.

This was so traditional, that it's using tropes we still see today.  We're given a fish out of water (har!) Point of View character, through whom we meet the X-Men.  What's different in Sammy, however, is the way that he looks.  This isn't a POV character like Kitty Pryde, Jubilee... or even Nathaniel Carver from Generation X (vol.2) - this is a kid, who, I believe is only supposed to be 10 years old at this point, who has been driven to the point of... well, we all saw what he very nearly did.

It's almost hard to believe that such a by-the-numbers  (and mostly solid) X-Outing will eventually lead to things like the Draco, Lorna going nutty (because women be crazy, amirite guys?), Northstar showing up to repeatedly remind us of his sexuality, and all the banging (oh Lord, the banging).  There's plenty of reasons why folks point to this era as the time when they finally walked away from the X-Books... but, we're not to any of them just yet.

I suppose we could talk about some of the cringe and "haven't aged well" stuff, eh?  Monet and Stacy's snippiness was... ya know, I'm not even sure it's that it "didn't age well" - I'm not sure it was all that great back in 2002!  I'm sure there was a contingent of, in the immortal words of Bill Jemas, ahem "Fanboys who love Bad Girls" who dug them going back and forth -- it's as subtle as a kick to the crotch, and about half as fun.

We'll give Austen a bit of slack here for now... we'll be patient during this revisit, and allow him to establish a voice for his chosen characters.  So far, it's shallow-city, but -- again, there's only so much you can do with a story where your titular heroes are only given a handful of pages to show their stuff.  I mean, that's fair - right?

Anyhoo - I suppose this is the point in the discussion where I ought to begin my paragraph with the word "Overall"... and so...

Overall, this wasn't half bad.  I'm not sure it was "half good" either, but it was (mostly) inoffensive... and my biggest complaint (from a storytelling angle) is that it's probably a little too traditional.  I mean, it's not going to be Morrison's New X-Men... heck, it's not even going to be Claremont's X-Treme X-Men - but, we need an Uncanny, and here it be.

Please let me know your thoughts on this run... and this little side project!

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*Always