Hell's Squeaky Spinner Rack

Read the Chris Claremont X-MEN FOREVER, first five issues or however long it is so far...I haven't read any kind of X-Men comic since John Romita Jr. drew the thing in the twilight of the 1980s. Because in general the X-Men represented the worst developments in superhero comics and comics in general. Because the art was godawful. Because I can't take pretentious Grant Morrison. And whatever else. You'd sooner have found me rolling in broken beer bottles before I'd read an X-Men book of any kind.

That is, at least for now, until X-MEN FOREVER.

The experiment is that Claremont, the writer so associated with the success of the X-Men today, picks up his long run on the title exactly where it left off (sometime in the 1990s?) As if no time had passed, and no changes had been made over all this time. Interesting, I thought, if you really want to go back to the 1990s. Which I don't.

But throw Tom Grummett into this mix?


Grummett is an artist who has been around for some time. His style reflects his views, a straight-forward, dynamic and most importantly clean art. And Grummett flat-out knows how to draw everything from an incredulous look to a towering superpowered uppercut.

The other aspect of Tom Grummett is that he's worked on two of the most entertaining recent runs of books I've had the pleasure to read, one being the criminally-short POWER COMPANY (2002) with Astro City's own Kurt Busiek (a series created by Grummett), and the other NEW THUNDERBOLTS (2005) with Fabian Nicieza and the beginning of 2006's plain THUNDERBOLTS before giving way to Marvel's plan to have all of their titles become one overarchingly tepid melodrama via "Civil War." But that wasn't Grummett's fault, thankfully.

Throw in Grummett's SECTION ZERO (2000), with Karl Kesel (another Grummett-created series painfully short), and I can say I actually had to swallow my pride and read X-MEN FOREVER. Unnerving prospect, obviously.


In comparison to other superhero comics released today, and maybe as a response to "decompressed" story-telling (stretching out a plot and ladling exposition while de-emphasizing physical action and development...soap opera plotting in other words), writer Chris Claremont kicks off with the death of the biggest X-Men star in the world and doesn't stop to breathe as he unleashes one crazy event after another. It looks like Claremont said "F*ck it, you want change? You want character development? You want your socks knocked off?"

I can't say I'm an X-Men fan, but Claremont and Grummett are doing some cool new stuff, and it's worth seeking out. Hard to believe, but there you go.