eXtras

What follows was taken out of a post from last month due to technical problems.



I paused at the above panel of Wolverine when reading along for the methodical
X-Men examinations done by Austin Gorton under the nom du blog Teebore. Source
is The Uncanny X-Men #147, whose battle between Doctor Doom and Marvel's merry mutants (or so Smilin' Stan Lee often called them; they're actually infamously angst-ridden) was underwhelming to many readers, as reflected in Teebore's assessment of that issue and the follow-up comments.

The nice panel composition and set dressing aside, I'm really keen on the way the character's face and smoldering chest are recessed in shadow, although I don't know how much to credit recently returned penciler Dave Cockrum. While pencilers tend to mark off areas of solid black even when they're only roughing out art for an inker to embellish, Josef Rubinstein could have a heavy hand in that role. More curious to me is how little the figure work resembles Cockrum's, because Wolverine is usually depicted in the comics as about a foot shorter than his silver-screen vessel Hugh Jackman — whereas in this panel and the preceding one, unlike the rest of the issue, he's clearly musclebound but lankier and longer-limbed than his usual stocky, compact self, akin
to how Brent Anderson drew him.



I noted last year in a post on the Phoenix saga that I've only read X-Men in small, intermittent batches since 1986, and mentioned frequently on this blog that I lacked easy, regular Web access during most of the previous decade when high-speed Internet really took off.

So not being in the habit of following online chatter in the comics world, I'd never
heard the phrase "lesbian incest" applied to the caption in the panel above stating that Kitty Pryde's adult consciousness from 2013 "impulsively ... gives her younger self a kiss" as it leaves her teenaged 1981 body at the end of the mini-epic "Days of Future Past" in Uncanny X-Men #142. We're talking about something that doesn't even happen physically, and which I've always taken to be a maternal, metaphorical peck on the cheek. Yet in Teebore's writeup of that issue he quotes co-plotter/penciler John Byrne repeating the phrase as an apparently known thing in fandom, as Byrne disparages writer Chris Claremont's inclusion of said caption and a line of dialogue on the next page — for the entirely separate concern of how they established that the X-Men's present-day actions likely didn't prevent Kate's dystopic future but merely branched off a new timeline.




Panels from The Uncanny X-Men #147 and The Uncanny X-Men #142 © 1981 Marvel Comics.
Script: Chris Claremont. Pencils: Dave Cockrum (#147); John Byrne (#142). Inks: Josef
Rubinstein (#147); Terry Austin (#142). Colors: Glynis Wein/Oliver. Letters: Tom
Orzechowski. Editing: Louise Jones/Simonson with Danny Fingeroth.

Related: X Libris • Nice Day for a Sprite Wedding • Five-Panel Draw