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When I started this project, I mentioned that I had never made it through The Silver Age X-Men books before. I'd tried several times but only ever made it four or five books in. Inferno is only two volumes, but I sturggled to get through them, too. As I will mention below, Chris Claremont saw Ghostbusters and Nightmare On Elm Street and decided to insert blatant, literal, homages to them as a magic New York Is Taken Over By Demons (instead of ghosts, see, it's different from Ghostbusters) storyline. It's an absolute mess of a story. It has several writers, and it's pretty clear that Claremont is the only excited to be working on the project. There are a couple of fun moments in many of these books but overall, none of them are even close to being in my Headcanon.   Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown by Walt Simonson, Louise Simonson, John J Muth, and Kent Williams Featuring: Havok, Wolverine, nobody else you need to rememeber A fascinating looking painted series about Wolverine & Havok taking a vacation missing during the days when the X-Men were believed dead and were somehow invisible to technology. All of the Not Havok or Wolverine characters are pretty standard issue background characters without any interesting powers or backgrounds. The trite and true trope of a villain obsessed with chess is used over and over and over and over. There's a questionable redhead who is somehow not Jean Grey, Madelyne Pryor, or Natasha Romanov. But by the end of the book you get the impression that these adventures and the villains will never be mentioned in any actual X-book. So, if you want to check out the art, go for it. But if you're looking for a cool story, this is totally skippable.  Excalibur Epic: The Sword Is Drawn by Chris Claremont, Alan Davis, Michael Higgins, Herb Trimpe, Ron Lim, Marshall Rogers, Arthur Adams, and Erik Larsen Excalibur: Captain Britain, Meggan, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Rachel Grey, Lockheed 1st Appearances: Widget, Kylun Also Featuring: Saturnyne, War Wolves, Juggernaut, Gatecrasher, Bodybag, Joyboy, Thug, Waxworks, Scatterbrain, Courtney Ross, Arcade, Miss Locke, Madelyne Pryor, Nastirh, Crotus, Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Sunspot, Warlock, Magik, Jean Grey, Moira Mactaggert, Callisto, the X-Babies, Major Domo, N'Astirh, This is a book to be read almost in halves. Something I don't want to recommend too often in this readalong. But.... The Sword Is Drawn special and issues #1-5 introduce the Excalibur Team, Widget, Gatecrasher, the War Wolves and more. It's a decent primer for the absolute weirdness that is going to be this title. Then we get a couple of issues that take place during Inferno, and then...well...then we get the beginning of Dimension Hopping Excalibur, and it begins with the team being all Nazis! So...*whew*...yea. Regarding the first portion: I don't know whether Chris Claremont intended Excalibur for a younger audience than X-Men but I've always felt Excalibur was the bottom of the barrel X-title. It's villains are silver age throwbacks, the dialog is more wooden than usual, Claremont relies on the absolute laziest of tropes in their stories (no comic writer should include Alice In Wonderland characters/references/storylines, it's been a stale cliche since the 1970s), and I just can't care about the magical world of Saturnyne or Merlyn or any of his other ideas of sorcery. My eyes glaze over almost immediately. I understand that the childlike wackiness of the title appeals to some people, and I don't begrudge them. There are plenty of people who don't like/understand the appeal of the superhero comics I love. If I'm allowed to like often satirical sci-fi and fantasy, people are certainly allowed to love this tedious doggerel.  X-Men Inferno Book 1 by Chris Claremont, Louise Simons, Jon Bogdanove, Sal Velluto, Walter Simonson, Terry Shoemaker, Marc Silvestri, and Bret Blevins X-Men: Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Rogue, Havok, Psylocke, Longshot, Dazzler, Madelyne Pryor X-Factor: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, Angel X-Terminators: Rusty, Skids, Artie, Leech, Rictor, Boom-Boom, Wiz-Kid New Mutants: Magneto, Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Sunspot, Magik, Warlock Power Pack: Destroyer, Molecula, Counterweight, Starstreak 1st Appearances Also featuring: Mr Sinister, N'astirh, Malice/Polaris, Gateway, Sabretooth, Scrambler, Vertigo, Arclight, Scalphunter, Riptide, Prism, Blockbuster, Harpoon, Trish Tilby, Candy Southern, Cameron Hodge, Nanny, Orphan Maker, Blob, Mystique, Pyro, Spiral, Avalanche, Crimson Commando, Ship, Frenzy, Tower, Stinger, Timeshadow, Cable (as a baby), Jim Power, Maggie Power, Bogeyman, J Jonah Jameson, Slug, Kofi, Yrik, Byrel, Friday, Shatterbox #1, Shatterbox #2, Speed Freak, Big Top, Monitor, Crotus, S'ym, Gosamyr, Emma Frost, Sebastian Shaw, Selene There's a lot of mediocre but not terrible story crammed into this volume. Compared to some of the 90s crossovers, it's positively coherent and streamlined, but compared to the crossovers that preceded it, it's a bit messy. The crux of the story is that New York has been turned into more of a hellscape than usual where inanimate objects come to life and eat people. Most of the scenes are silly, and you can tell that Chris Claremont had just seen Ghostbusters when he wrote this. He even tosses in a parody team of them. Most of the violence is corny and hard to get behind but there is a lovely two page spread at the very beginning of Uncanny X-Men #239 where a family is visiting the Empire State Building and, after some typical family bickering, they are eaten by the elevator, their blood seeps out, and is mopped up by a custodian wearing headphones who appears not to notice the horror that just occurred. Honestly, it's one of the smartest Claremont pages I can remember reading. It's legitimate horror. Most of this volume focuses on X-Factor, which has been broken up into two teams: X-Factor (the original X-Men) and the X-Terminators (their trainees). X-Factor tries to track down Cyclops's missing son, and runs into Nanny and Orphan Maker, two of the least interesting villains in the X-Men universe. They have the potential to be interesting: a mutant locked in a cybernetic suit of her own making who kidnaps children, and her partner, an armored mutant she kidnapped who now assists her in capturing other children. They were used extensively during the Krakoan era in the 2020s, and they were somehow boring in that series as well. While X-Factor tries to save babies from Nanny and Orphan Maker, the X-Terminators battle baby-kidnapping demons, and end up teaming up with The New Mutants, who have their own problems with the demons. Also, the Marauders and Mister Sinister are involved somehow with the babynapping, and helping and hindering Madelyne Pryor from ascending into The Goblin Queen who is kind of sort of maybe responsible for the demon infestation. While all of the pages and issues seem straight-forward while reading them, I felt like a lot of logic was missing in the connective tissue between the various very similar stories. I was delighted when X-Men '97 boiled this whole crossover to about three minutes in a larger episode. If you love big event crossovers, there are definitely worse X-crossovers than this one, but it's also probably the weakest crossover Claremont and Simonson were involved in.
 X-Men Inferno Book 2 by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Terry Austin, Julianna Jones, Mark Gruenwald, Marc Silvestri, Alan Davis, Walter Simonson, Bret Blevins, Mike Vosburg, June Brigman, Rob Liefeld, and Jim Fern X-Men: Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Rogue, Havok, Psylocke, Longshot, Dazzler, Madelyne Pryor X-Factor: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, Angel Excalibur: Captain Britain, Meggan, Nightcrawler, Rachel Grey, Kitty Pryde X-Terminators: Rusty, Skids, Artie, Leech, Rictor, Boom-Boom, Wiz-Kid New Mutants: Magneto, Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Sunspot, Magik, Warlock Power Pack: Destroyer, Molecula, Counterweight, Starstreak Also featuring: Mr Sinister, N'astirh, Malice/Polaris, Sabretooth, Blockbuster, Nanny, Orphan Maker, Ship, Cable (as a baby), Jim Power, Maggie Power, Bogeyman, J Jonah Jameson, Crotus, Cloak, Dagger Even less intriguing to me than volume one, this volume focuses mainly on Excalibur's trip to NYC for the Inferno event, as well as giving us a sort of After Dinner Mint X-Men/X-Factor story, as they have their final final battles with Sinister and what's left of The Marauders, even though Inferno technically ended for them in the last volume. The Power Pack/Bogeyman storyline is also resolved with the help of The New Mutants and The X-Terminators. We also see Cloak & Dagger's involvement in the event, which is confusing if you haven't read the Cloak & Dagger series leading up to this, as I haven't. Unlike many Giant Crossover Events in the Marvel 80s and 90s, there are major repercussions from this. Teams are rearranged, characters are altered. As far as resonance, this is an important event but it was so widespread and silly that I lost interest in most of the characters. There's a ton of expository dialogue that seems hacky, even for the late 80s. I don't blame the creators, apart from Chris "I Just Saw Ghostbusters And Nightmare On Elm Street" Claremont, I don't think any of the other writers wanted to be involved in this, and it shows.  Excalibur Epic: The Sword Is Drawn by Chris Claremont, Alan Davis, Michael Higgins, Herb Trimpe, Ron Lim, Marshall Rogers, Arthur Adams, and Erik Larsen
Excalibur: Captain Britain, Meggan, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Rachel Grey, Lockheed 1st Appearances: Widget, Kylun Also Featuring: Saturnyne, War Wolves, Juggernaut, Gatecrasher, Bodybag, Joyboy, Thug, Waxworks, Scatterbrain, Courtney Ross, Arcade, Miss Locke, Madelyne Pryor, Nastirh, Crotus, Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Sunspot, Warlock, Magik, Jean Grey, Moira Mactaggert, Callisto, the X-Babies, Major Domo, N'Astirh Now that Inferno is over, we can pick up the second half of this book. If you really want to. This is the beginning of Excalibur's Weird World Tour, where we learn about similar dimensions. In this one, a dimension where lizards are the primary human-like lifeform, shows up (I'm on board), and the dimension of evil Nazi versions of the main characters show up to create havoc because Claremont ran out of ideas long before this series started, and is basically just spewing TV tropes and movie cliches during this era. I wish I'd skipped it.
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January 2025
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