X-Men Forever: Once More…Into the Breach (2010)
Reprints X-Men Forever #21-24 and Giant-Size X-Men Forever
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Tom Grummett, Rodney Buchemi, Wil Quintana, and Mike Grell
Chris Claremont’s strange & fascinating experiment X-Men Forever comes to the end of its first of two acts. The story thus far has revealed that mutants die younger than humans due to the intensity of their powers burning up their bodies. Wolverine was killed by a strange copy of Storm while the real Storm was revealed to still be a little girl. Rogue seems to have permanently absorbed Nightcrawler’s powers and appearance. Nathan Summers is still in the present and living with his grandparents in Alaska. Kitty Pryde accidentally absorbed one of Wolverine’s claws and part of his personality while phasing through him just before his death. Sabretooth has joined the team, and Nick Fury has embedded SHIELD agents in the school. Jean Grey seems to have struck up a romance with Beast. All the while, the Consortium plots in the background how to take down the X-Men.
This fifth volume brings the remnants of the Trask family together; they end up being the spine of the Consortium. Claremont also introduces what I find to be such a weak plot point, something akin to Superman v Batman’s “Martha” exchange. We have the shocking reveal that Tony Stark is a part of the Consortium because he’s distantly related to the Trasks. The only connection I can see Claremont making is Stark is an anagram of Trask. In his original, in-continuity Uncanny X-Men run, Claremont typically had very clever ideas and story beats. This one is rough, to say the least.
The Jean Grey/Beast romance also stretches things thin. There is some slight justification for this. Way back in the Stan Lee days, Jean was courted to one extent or another by the four boys on the team. I’m also not one of those who thinks Jean and Scott must be together. In the last decade, as I’ve read more back issues involving these characters, I think Scott is a fucking asshole. Many have brought it up before, but that’s because it’s a good point: He abandoned his wife (Madelyne Pryor) and newborn son to check in on his old flame that came back from the dead. Now that I’ve read most of the early X-Factor days, Louise Simonson regularly wrote Jean Grey encouraging Scott to check on his family. At one point, he believes his wife and son have been killed by the Marauders but doesn’t really do anything about it. I can’t see Beast behaving that way, so if Jean has to be with someone, he’s a better choice.
Another element of Claremont’s that would rear its head throughout his Uncanny run but is very prevalent here is the “bond retcon.” This occurred early in his Uncanny work, with Jean and Storm suddenly being the closest friends despite the latter having just joined the team a month or so before. Most of us forgive it, as we can say it happened off-panel. The bond between those characters is well-written and adds to the Phoenix arc. Claremont attempts this with one of Archangel’s ex-girlfriends and young Nathan Summers. Apparently, Nathan adores her, even though the only time readers see them meet is when he is a literal infant, and they barely interact. It also doesn’t make much sense that he’s looking around five years old, and the entire last arc of X-Factor feels like it was erased. The early story arcs in Uncanny felt like they built up, but as Claremont got deeper into his work, he would just throw things on the page as if they were established, and the readers would have to fill in the rest.
The main narrative here feels like well-trod territory. The threat of new Sentinels from the Trask family looms over the X-Men. They eventually go on a dangerous mission, and one dies, which doesn’t matter because this isn’t the main Marvel reality. They also kill off Tony Stark, and the final page teases a future showdown with the Avengers, who don’t have the full story. There’s a second batch cleverly titled X-Men Forever 2. I just can’t imagine I’ll ever want to sit down and read those. As a concept on paper, having Claremont return to continue his X-Men run as if he never left is excellent. How it was executed is another story entirely.
This isn’t Claremont’s only post-Uncanny work on the X-Men. He would come back to write Xtreme X-Men in the early 2000s (one day, we’ll get to that one) and even wrote the main book again in 2004 for an extended period. As recently as 2014, Claremont wrote Nightcrawler’s first ongoing solo series. I definitely think there was more to get out of his original Uncanny run, but whether he can pull it off later in his career is another matter. If you’re seeking to preserve the joy of reading that 16-year run, you might avoid these X-Men Forever books.
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