Short Box: The X-Men And The Micronauts

Creators

Writer	Bill Mantlo, Chris Claremont
Cover Penciller	Jackson ‘Butch’ Guice
Cover Inker	Bob Wiacek
Penciller	Jackson ‘Butch’ Guice
Inker	Bob Wiacek
Colorist	Bob Sharen
Letterer	Michael Higgins
Editor	Bob Budiansky
Editor in Chief	Jim Shooter

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While making my way through the final volume of the Micronauts Omnibus, I hit an issue that indicated it followed on the heels of the X-Men and the Micronauts limited series, which for whatever reason – I imagine it has something to do with the licensing deal – is not included in the omnibus.

Back when the limited series hit the stands, I picked up the first issue, but as was common then, I missed the remaining issues. However, a few years back – before Comics Unbagged and Mail Call posts existed – I picked up the whole thing online. (My original copy of the first issue was long ago lost to the ages.)

However, buying isn’t the same as reading – at the time I bought it, I’d been toying with the notion of picking up the original Micronauts run, but hadn’t gotten around to it by the time the omnibus collection was announced – so I finally busted it out of the long box for reading and now here I am writing a Short Box.

Yeah, it…uh…hm.

There was very little I remembered about that one issue I’d read, and the main thing was liking the way the late, great Butch Guice drew Kitty Pryde and Storm in swimsuits. (Get off my back, I was eleven.)

I remembered also that there was a fight between the X-Men and the villainous Baron Karza, as the latter blamed the former for destruction that was occurring in the Microverse. In the course of the battle, Kitty and Karza underwent a mindswap, but Karza was able to use his considerable mental might to keep Kitty’s mind asleep and pilot his body remotely while he did a piss poor job of pretending to be Kitty.

Ultimately, the X-Men – sans Professor X – agree to travel to the Microverse to help battle the strange entity known only as the Entity who is wrecking the place, as his power seems somehow connected to the Earth, and specifically to Xavier himself.

Now that I’ve read the whole thing…I’m thoroughly skeeved out by the psychosexual nature of several elements of the story.

It’s revealed that Professor X is having a sort of Dark Phoenix moment of his own and that the evil that exists in his heart – as it exists in every person’s heart – has somehow taken form in the Microverse where it can control material reality as easily as Xavier can control minds (though the entity can also do that).

But where it gets skeevy is that in the Microverse, the Entity puts the moves on Kitty – at the time, only 13 or 14 – and then later, once he possesses Xavier’s body in the macroverse, he puts the moves on Danielle Moonstar (16, at the time, I think).

I…I kind of feel like that says something about Charles Xavier, given the Entity is him. Sure, it’s all of his worst impulses and desires, so one could argue that it’s the opposite of who Charles is, but even so.

I’m also bothered by the way the X-Men didn’t really spend much time agonizing over all the genocide they committed while under the control of the Entity. Like, yeah, sure, you weren’t yourself, but you still did it. It should bother you a bit more. I mean, you’re X-Men, for god’s sake – you’re the best there is at what you do, and what you do is angst and recrimination.

Also, nobody seemed particularly bothered by the fact that it was an aspect of Xavier that caused all the destruction.

The other thing that stood out of for me is that Chris Claremont and Bill Mantlo are both credited as the writers, and man, does it show.

I don’t mean that there’s any sort of clash of styles or that it’s inconsistent. It’s mostly Claremont’s style that shows through – particularly with the weird psychosexual issues – though much of the dialogue seems less Claremontian.

It feels like it was written by two writers because there’s two writers’ worth of content in each issue. It legitimately seems like they each wrote a complete comic book and then one comic was overlaid on the other.

It’s just so densely packed with text. Every panel is filled to overflowing with word balloons, thought balloons, and captions. I don’t read as fast as I used to, but I’m by no means a slow reader, and it took forever to get through each issue. Yeesh.

In any case, 40+ years later, I’m glad that I finally got around to reading the whole thing, even if it’s not a particularly great story and it makes my skin crawl a bit, and there were elements of the story that had real consequences that should have been explored that weren’t.

And with as much text as there was, they certainly could have been.

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