UNCANNY X-MEN #398: The Clash (Poptopia Part 4 of 4)

London's burning while Chamber wonders should he stay or should he go

Originally Published November 2001

All across the British tabloids, in the papers and on the "telly," people want to know, "wot's oll this then?" about Sugar Kane possibly having a baby.

For Sugar, it was all fun and games having Chamber on her arm as an accessory, but the idea of having his mutant baby? I mean, it's not like he's someone respectable like a back-up dancer.

Speaking of babies, we check in on our favourite Sewer Fam: there's Harmony (the one who looks like Savage Dragon) and her as yet unnamed newborn girl, Double Helix (two heads, one name,) Miss Saccharine, Carla, and the Burning Puddle. Be sure to hold onto your early Burning Puddle appearances, they'll be worth a lot someday when he becomes the breakout star of the MCU.

Harmony is apologetic that her colleague Cyclops (Tunnel Dweller) tried to kill them immediately after they helped her give birth. Kurt shrugs it all off as water under the bridge. Or into the storm drain, or whatever.

He's also kind of a little passive aggressive, like "Maybe if you hadn't scared us off, all your friends wouldn't be dead right now. Who knows."

Meanwhile, at the Regency Hotel (which is somewhat nicer than a sewer) Sugar Kane and Chamber (whom I hear the tabloids are calling Kane-ber) arrive amidst ferocious paparazzi attention.

Before they can discuss next steps, the room is invaded by some heavily-armed commandos who abduct Sugar.

Too bad there isn't, like, a mutant superhero with telepathic powers on hand  to help mitigate the situation.

Jono's really just here to be a pretty face, you know?

Instead, it's Sim, the Manager, who pledges to "take care of this."

Down in the tunnel, this comic, which is 22 pages long but frustratingly short on character, action or plot, finds time for Double Helix to ask about their favourite soaps. Unfortunately, Bobby doesn't have any answer.

Alas, TV Talk is interrupted by the arrival of the deadly Mr. Clean.

Iceman barricades him off with an ice wall, which probably won't be too big of an obstacle for a guy with a massive flamethrower, but you've got to work with what you've got.

Luckily, Wolverine has finally caught up to the group.

So, you know, they fight.

But it's going to take more than immolation to stall Wolverine.

They square off. Mr. Clean brags that he's been "chemically treated," so Wolverine won't be able to cut him with his claws. I don't know what having a perm has to do with this, but whatever. 

They exchange blows. It's fine, but it's not exactly Wolverine Vol 1 #4, you know? Wolverine kicks him in the dick at one point.

Clean holds his own, bragging again about his inability to be cut (guess we know what religion he is, then.) Unfortunately, the fuel canister for his flamethrower is leaking.

I wrote in my notes "Crispy Clean." Can we come up with a better joke than that or should we just move on?

At the hotel room. Chamber discovers that what Sim meant by "take care of it," he meant go on TV and talk about Sugar Kane's potential abortion. Jono soon finds out that Sugar is no longer paying for this hotel room -- what with having been mysteriously kidnapped and all -- and he is to vacate the premises.

Actually, I requested a late checkout

Down in the sewer, the Tunnel People elect not to come to the Xavier Institute. They'd rather find a nice place in the sewers under the suburbs. They part ways with their rescuers.

A little on-the-nose, don't you think?

In an underground car park, Jono meets one last time with Sugar. As it turns out, Sim faked the whole kidnapping thing as a publicity ploy to get sympathy back on her side... somehow.

She expresses some slight remorse about using Chamber to bolster her career and extend her fame into a 16th minute. He got something out of it too, but it just wasn't something he wanted. All he wants is to belong somewhere. Hm, where or where could that be?

Coincidentally, the X-Men are getting ready to board their private jet at Heathrow, lamenting the fact that, yeah, they saved like five or six lives (depending how you count Double Helix) but they didn't get what they really wanted, which was Chamber.

Chamber's all like "Yeah, I got played, guess I'll come home with you guys." The end!

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Further Thoughts:

I do not think you could have done a worse job making me hyped for Chamber to join the X-Men than to have him spend several issues rebuffing their attempts to recruit him, only to come limping back with his tail between his legs like a sap. Usually, when someone is meant to be introduced as a hero, they are portrayed in some way that is heroic.

It's not totally misguided to portray him as someone who is disappointed in life, who can't seem to win -- sure, there's something there -- but he has a chance to be heroic, and doesn't, then gets punked out by a bellboy. Why would we want to keep reading about this guy?

The comic is more interested in Poor Little Pop Princess Sugar Kane. and yeah, she's the villain (inasmuch as she's anything) but at least Casey has given some thought as to who and what she's about.

He really, really wants to say something about the nature of fame and celebrity culture in the 2000's, and he does, but then he keeps hammering at it like he's got this brilliant point to make. There's not really a story welded to it that has anything to do with the X-Men or mutantdom or the ostensible reasons why we read this comic.

And did you buy Mr. Clean and his kung fu moves as a threat to Wolverine? Under the right circumstances -- with careful control over tone and content -- you could have something fairly mundane come across as a real compelling threat. That's not really what happens here, though.

What about Sim, who seemed to have something shady going on at the fringes of the story? Well, he was that, but in a fairly ordinary, unexciting entertainment industry level of shady. 

Feel whatever you feel about Sean Phillips' and Ashley Wood's Sam Kieth-esque renderings. I don't dislike it for its own sake but it's not how I would choose to cast the art of Uncanny X-Men. It's extremely outre, which is evocative but potentially distracting in an unnecessary way. Chamber's chest fire thing is coming all the way down to the floor, and his hair is sticking up like a porcupine. It's very distracting considering the story started with the characters looking like Ian Churchill's drawings.

Around this time, writers were learning that, with a bit of runway, they could often take kind of a relaxed approach to every issue. Let moments breathe, gather material and build for later. Which is fine if you've got some good stuff to get through. Unfortunately, it forsakes the virtue of getting down to business. All of this feels preliminary to something that never happens. A long build to nowhere. There's an okay fight scene, a send-off for the Tunnel Mutants after a brief and shallow exchange of ideas, and the expected betrayal of Chamber after way, way, way too much preliminary.

Every comic has roughly the same 22-or-so pages of real estate to develop. Think how much better Grant Morrison or Chris Claremont is at using their monthly allotment.

Poptopia was four issues of nothing. It was conflict-light, character-light, plot-light, with a feeble attempt at social commentary wedged in there. There were a couple of not-quite-promising-but-passable ideas in there, and there was clearly an attempt to bring next-level execution that Casey simply wasn't prepared to pull off. You could have done all of this in two issues and it would stand a chance of being okay, but this was a dramatic waste of everyone's time.