Chris Claremont and X-Treme X-Men part 3
Ah ladies and gents, I’m through issue #18 and that mean another update on my X-Treme X-Men reading.
As a reminder, I’m spoiling this series as I talk about my reaction, so watch out (even though the series is about 8 years old).
So far I’m having a lot of fun with this series in a sense that Chris Claremont seems to be batshit crazy when it comes to story arcs. Moving from Vargas killing Psylocke to Gambit becoming some tool of inter-dimensional imperialists (with some minor arcs in there — I’m not following the wikipedia page I’m reading in order of the comics I have #1-46) this series has been pretty good. I really do like Chris Claremont’s plots, but, as I’ve said, he just goes on and on with the narration.
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, and let me just say it right now: Warren Ellis pretty much summed up exactly how I feel about writers like Chris Claremont at Wizard World Chicago when he had his late night panel on Friday. He was explaining that sometimes writers don’t know when to shut the hell up and let the art tell the story. And it’s funny because someone in the crowd actually called out and said “Could you tell Chris Claremont?” I wish I could have been there.
Nevertheless, I am enjoying X-Treme X-Men so far because Chris Claremont knows how to write characters like Storm and Bishop very well. Especially Storm in the last 8 issues (#10-18). When reading this last arc that I just finished, you really feel how powerful and beautiful of a woman Storm is, which I think drives a whole reasoning behind the current Black Panther series (well, really the Black Panther series during Civil War) with Storm as the Black Panther’s bride and queen.
Yet, on top of that, Claremont writes a sappy fucking story, especially between Rogue and Gambit. And yes, I know the story is tragic: two lovers who can never touch but are bonded by this unseen and totally enormous love for each other. Yes, I know the story. It fucking sucks. My favorite character is plagued with love for a woman he can truely never be close to. Even still, Chris Claremont seems to over play this tragedy. It’s just small things that I notice in his wording of the dialogue that bothers me with Rogue and Gambit. Nothing too big for most people. haha
That aside, the sudden change in the character Lifeguard from being just a mutant to Shi’ar royalty almost seemed too out there. I’m not sure if Claremont is going with that (I assume he is) but it was just way to sudden and really fucking weird to actually be a good plot device. Instead, it feels like a cheap way to make Lifeguard and her brother Slipstream feel even shittier about life…
And that’s about it… as I said, it’s a good series overall so far, but the dialogue (especially for Rogue and Gambit is just way too over dramatic and there’s too much of an emphasis on their accents. I’ll update you once I get to issue #24 or so. It should be fun until then, I’m sure of it.
Damn Chris Claremont for being so easy to hate but so hard to not love.
