...
Originally Published February 2002
We begin at a loss for words.
Banshee is pouring one out for his late, lamented accushla, Moira MacTaggert
What's he thinking? What's he doing? Where is he going? Well, that's a little personal, don't you think?
Elsewhere, Some Woman is hanging out with Scarlet Witch, Toad and Quicksilver. When Toad slips her some tongue, Magneto appears and kills her.
This is fairly shocking, since Magneto fairly obviously and famously died in Genosha. What could this mean?
It appears this is all a simulation. The mystery woman appears to be a prisoner, being put through torturous fantasy roleplay scenarios, until being freed by some identically-dressed chaps. They also seem to want to free Raven Darkholme -- Mystique -- from the same facility.
Our attention goes to Chappaqua, New York, where Wolverine is on the trail of... somebody.
He enters the grandiose home and finds secret service agents incapacitated, but smiling. Inside, he finds Chappaqua's most famous resident, and I don't mean Horace Greely.
Anyway, Stacy X pops out of nowhere, I guess upset that Wolverine is blowing up her spot, and they have a fight that won't make anyone forget Wolverine Vol 1 #4.
But Wolverine is not immune to Stacy's charms -- hell, with his heightened senses I think he would be super-susceptible to them -- so they end up on the couch having a beer and watching Law & Order or whatever.
Nightcrawler stops by to scold Wolverine and Stacy for (???) but Wolverine shushes him (and thank god, this comic was in danger of getting too loud) because he's obviously got an angle going. Which should be clear to anyone reading. Right?
Surely I don't need to explain to you what's going on. In fact, maybe you should explain it to me to prove that you get what is so obvious to the rest of us.
Anyway, Kurt is satisfied, so he dips.
Elsewhere, the Blob.
Freddy Dukes is being air-lifted to a building, which we know to be in France due to the presence of the Eiffel Tower. For some reason he is wearing ill-fitting clothes. None of his captors saw fit to at least get him a muumuu to keep him from looking like a weirdo.
One of his captors appears to be his former Evil Mutant Brother Avalanche, who is shockingly wearing a uniform with the trademark X on it.
I know what you're thinking- - the other guy is of course Banshee, famous redheaded mutant. But ah ah, not so fast.
Because they have brought Blob to see Banshee in his fabulous new office. So I couldn't even begin to guess who that other ginj is.
Anyway, Banshee unloads on Blob, who didn't do anything, except I guess be Blob.
Once Blob has succumbed, Sean is satisfied.
How could you possibly resist a cliffhanger like that??
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Further Thoughts:
January 2002 was Marvel's "Nuff Said" month, a landmark event so groundbreaking that when I asked social media for their memories, I got fond responses like, "What was that?" and "They did that?"
For one month, none of the regular Marvel universe titles featured any dialogue (except one, guess who!) The principle, I was suppose, to emphasize the important role art plays in comic book storytelling (which, duh), to give the writers a bit of a challenge, and to provide something different.
As everyone knows, having a directive dropped on you from the editorial level is the best way to get exemplary creative work. Sh'yeah.
Some writers took it easy on themselves and took detours into fantasyland, dreamworld, the psychic plane, or whatever. Others seemed to just kind of wrote a version of the comic they would have done that month anyway. In this case, Joe C has introduced a new offshoot of the X-Men project, some of whose members will be former villains like Blob. Which is not to say that Joe Casey did not intentionally write this comic as wordless. On the contrary, I think it is pretty clear that there is not meant to be any "audible" dialogue here, and that we are meant to interpret the story through the imagery. But I also think that Casey did not optimize the story for the milieu.
For starters, I think that having a story that is inherently going to be scrutinized, you should probably do something relatively self-contained and focused. It would have been really smart to spend the entire issue with Banshee, and to tie the silence in with his sound-based power. Casey himself draws the parallel in his Substack "RecolleXtion," so again, you can tell there's intentionality there. There isn't a reason everything is silent, and there doesn't need to be, but one does go looking for the missing thread that would connect it all.
So Banshee is putting together an outlaw team. I question the wisdom of pivoting to this whole other new concept when we haven't even really gotten the A-Team established with some really good adventures, but it's Joe Casey's book and this is the story he wants to tell.
What that has to do with Wolverine, Stacy, and the former President of the United States, I couldn't guess. It's just two things that happen to happen in this issue, more of Casey being a tittering schoolboy. (In the above linked article, Casey reveals it was intended to be Rudy Giuliani, but sadly 9/11 gave him such a PR boost it was gauche to mock him.)
When I say this comic isn't "optimized," I mean I do not think you are doing yourself any favors by using a silent issue to introduce an entire new concept, complete with characters we have not seen recently, or in some cases ever in this series. Comics often rely on distinct design elements, specifically to flaunt their artistic facet. You know when you are looking at Blob. You know Banshee when he uses his power. You know Avalanche's helmet. You have to use that iconography to your advantage and rely on what's already in your reader's brain when you can't use words to contextualize it. But who are some of these other people, and how do they figure into the proceedings?
Incidentally, every 'Nuff Said issue originally came with the script printed in the back of it; ostensibly to give you a look at how the process was done, but also I think as sort of a cheat sheet for what you've read. On Marvel Unlimited, the script is omitted, resulting in a pure, if beguiling, reading experience.
What an issue for a star like Ron Garney to come in on. I don't think he manages to shine on it, but if we can get the aesthetic of this series to start looking consistent -- and consistently like Ron Garney drew it -- so much the better. But this issue doesn't provide anything much in the way of visual distinctive for him to do. With a spotlight on him, he does his level best, but he doesn't get much to work with.
Comics are words and pictures. You can do a comic without any words (a picture is worth a large number of them, I'm told) but there's a reason why they marry so beautifully in this medium, especially since they frequently depict things for which the reader has no precedent.
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