X-Men Forever: Come to Mother…Russia! (2010)
Reprints X-Men Forever #11-15
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Tom Grummett
X-Men Forever: Devil in a White Dress (2010)
Reprints X-Men Forever #16-20 & X-Men Forever Annual #1
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Graham Nolan and Tom Grummett
Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever continues its fascinatingly weird alternate take on the 1990s X-Men. As discussed in the first review, Claremont was given this out-of-canon book to continue his X-Men run and started by shrinking the team to a smaller, more easily handled number. He instituted several other big changes – killing off Wolverine, revealing Storm is still a child, and showing that the adult Storm is some kind of imposter. Nathan Christopher Summers was never sent to the future and more. He’s not done and in Come to Mother…Russia, Claremont keeps providing new takes on familiar faces. One of these is a character who retired in Uncanny X-Men and even walked away from the book when Bob Harras pressured him to bring back Colossus.
The last time Claremont wrote Colossus, he stepped away halfway through the issue because he had given Peter Rasputin a happy ending and a way out of the business of being an X-Man. At some point off-panel, Colossus returns to action, but as a soldier for the Russian government. He’s also in a romantic relationship with Black Widow, which creates some awkward moments when Kitty Pryde shows up with Gambit and the young Storm in tow.
Their timing is perfect as Ilyana, Colossus’s sister, is targeted by a new villain, Cossack. I was confused at the reveal of Illyana back in her little kid form. I had forgotten that the Inferno event concluded not with her death but with reversion back to the age she was before being thrown into Limbo. I think it was stuck on her dying because the story makes it feel like that’s the case until a brief reveal at the end of that part of the narrative. Cossack can trigger Illyana’s dark side, and she becomes Black Magik. Not only does Kitty have to deal with watching Colossus with Black Widow, but she is also transformed by her old friend Magik into a cat-like creature, similar to what she played way back in the original Magik mini-series.
Cyclops and Jean Grey’s relationship seems to be over? She has certainly moved on, pining after Wolverine and regretting that she never pursued that relationship. In this arc, Claremont decides to pair her with Beast. That’s not completely left field. After reading the original Stan Lee X-Men issues, he wasn’t shying from making her the center of all the young men’s attention. It still reads strangely, and I feel like this Jean Grey is very different from Claremont’s original portrayal of her in the Phoenix era. It shouldn’t surprise us that a decade could change the writer. Also, he was given editorial freedom because nothing he writes here affects the mainline X-Men books, and Claremont is certainly going off the rails in some instances.
“Devil in White Dress” highlights Nightcrawler and Rogue while revealing something about the former Claremont had planned for years. That is the reveal that Nightcrawler is the son of Mystique, making him the brother of Rogue. When Claremont was nearing the Outback era of X-Men, he showed signs that he didn’t know what to do with Nightcrawler anymore. What happened is that the character became part of the UK-based Excalibur along with Kitty Pryde, and they had some interesting adventures over there that we might get to at some point.
With Nightcrawler back on the X-Men, Claremont changes things by taking advantage of Rogue’s powers. In a freak accident, Rogue absorbs more of Nightcrawler’s power than anticipated and becomes a female version of him. She has blue fur, three fingers/toes, and a prehensile tail. On the other hand, Nightcrawler looks like any regular person off the street. Through some convoluted circumstances, Nightcrawler has a new power set and costume, making him an entirely new character. The whole story reads like a one-off episode of the X-Men animated series turned into an ongoing plot point.
There’s some time spent with Sabretooth teaming with Daisy Dugan and Nick Fury, which isn’t what I’m looking for when I read an X-Men comic. There’s an attack on the Consortium, the shadowy villains behind all the bad stuff in the book. Fabian Cortez is rescued, and Claremont can bring closure to a character that many think he created as a dig at his replacement on Uncanny, Fabian Nicezia.
The stories here are about two issues, where Forever stops feeling like Claremont’s X-Men. One of the elements of his work was long soap operatic story arcs that would disappear and then pop back up again. I get the sense that criticism of Claremont’s loose ends may have gotten to him over the years, so he’s diligently focusing on trying to keep things tighter. I prefer the messy arcs from his initial run.
The annual here is truly dreadful, a piece of Jean Grey/Wolverine fan fiction that continues relegating a fascinating character to someone where relationships are the only plot she is allowed to have. After writing such strong women for nearly two decades on Uncanny, I am stunned at how rough Claremont’s writing with Jean has become. Kitty’s relationship with Colossus made sense in the context of her running into him. But when she’s back home, she’s not pining away. She is continually grieving over Wolverine, so perhaps she’s not as far off from Jean, as I think.
There is one more volume for us to look at, and in that book, Claremont will show one of his biggest breaks with continuity yet.
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