Between late 2000 and early 2001, there was a crossover event at Marvel called 'Dream's End" which shook the X-Family to its core. The events in "Dream's End" affected many characters in different ways, ending some teams, and putting together new ones in more realistic black uniforms akin to those in Brian Singer's first X-Men movie. In today's post, I'm writing about Joe Casey's time at the helm of Uncanny X-Men.
Back in 2001, I was a high schooler who had just seen the X-Men movie. In the past, I had seen the Saban TV show and read some comics here and there, but I started seeing the X-Men for having characters I could relate to in ways, and I've followed them since. Grant Morrison had his New X-Men Roster as a team based out of the school in Westchester. Chris Claremont and Salvador Larocca told the stories of Storm's team in search of Destiny's Diaries. Casey, put together a team that would travel the world trying to right wrongs and keep their now scattered family out of trouble. Nightcrawler was the moral compass of the team and held the role as leader. Wolverine was a mainstay here and on other books. Then you had two of the original X-men, Archangel and Iceman.
Be forewarned that I'm going to be giving a few spoilers. And before you ask, Yes, Wolverine and Jean had a moment together in the first issue of this collection, but I don't personally feel that the cover chosen for the trade is the best representation for the book as a whole.
Casey's Uncanny stories put a good amount of focus on the emotions of characters, touched on some subjects of extremism, and examined some subjects of the day. The enigmatic energy emitter Chamber would join the team after getting out of a high profile relationship. The woman he was with was a British pop singer and the tabloids couldn't get enough of what was seen as taboo. Beneath the streets of that London setting, the Uncanny team was dealing with a character named "Mister Clean" who was on a crusade to cleanse the sewers of mutant outcasts without anywhere else to go. Chamber would join the team, and they would meet another teammate at a mutant brothel of all places.
As a businessman and a mutant, it came to Archangel's attention that there was a small business where women were using their mutant abilities as sensual alternatives to intercourse. As the X-Men are looking into the business, it comes under siege by a group of militant religious zealots who disagreed with what this particular establishment stood for. The X-Men came out of this with not only a woman who was leaving that line of work, but a spiritually rattled Nightcrawler. He had earlier been ordained a Catholic priest, and the Church of Humanity challenged how a man with a demonic appearance could be a clergyman.
Stacy X, would appear in some of the stories later in Casey's run and pop up later written by other writers. During her Uncanny days, readers would see what had drawn her to the sex trade and how that reputation was hard to shake when building relationships with people.
This leaves me to just gush about my favorite story from Joe Casey's Uncanny run, and what gave the trade paperback its title when Marvel finally released it 11 years later. One of the tragedies in Dream's End was the murder of Moira MacTaggert. Sean Cassidy, her significant other was grieving and could no longer mentor the Generation X team. The whole story opens with an issue that was part of Marvel's 'Nuff Said program where the titles would produce an issue where the only text was in the title and credits. We see Cassidy (codenamed Banshee) mourning over Moira's grave before cutting to a paramilitary outfit he created to police mutant criminals. The program was called X-Corps as opposed to the X-Corp teams Xavier would soon start. X-Corps was a mixture of familiar faces. There were notorious villains which in good faith you would hope were reformed, Jamie Madrox lending helping hands to Cassidy's goal, and three young women from Generation X to see that Banshee doesn't go overboard.
I can be very sentimental so it was pretty sweet when Chamber (also a member of Generation X) reunited with Sean, Husk, Jubilee, and M. The X-Men were skeptical of what lengths Sean was going through to keep the peace, and it turns out some treacherous villains had been pulling the strings. Sean makes it out of the story with a debilitating gash to the throat, and we lose track of two X-men in an emergency exit attempt.
Nightcrawler and Chamber were trapped in an X-jet set to explode, and Nightcrawler was forced to bravely teleport them without being assured that the destination was safe. The X-Men find their lost friends through an ability of Chamber's that didn't seem to really be explored until that point. The psionic energy that Jonothon Starsmore emitted from his chest blew away the lower portion of his face when first manifested. Fortunately, his powerset included telepathy. Like a homing beacon, Jono's telepathic distress call reached a member of the Uncanny X-Men and the two were found in the care of a Bavarian friend Nightcrawler knew from his days as a circus performer.
In the Alps, Nightcrawler started dealing with an inner struggle regarding what he has chosen as his profession. The conflict isn't resolved even when he comes home to a church in New York. He finds that teens had been coming there to get high on designer drugs the Vanisher was selling. These could temporarily give humans mutant abilities. Worse yet, a cardinal Nightcrawler had looked up to had started using these drugs to try getting closer to God.
These personal demons would be addressed in the writings of Casey's successor, Chuck Austen. "X-Corps" is still one of my favorite story arcs from the X-Books. At the time of it's release, American culture had gotten much more serious. Tragedies had struck home, and we as a country took the fight to who we believed to be responsible. It was a point in history where nefarious acts and counterterrorism seen only in comics and movies became all the more a reality.
It's been said that comics reflect the world they're created from, and I found comfort in seeing heroes prevail in dire situations that became more relatable.
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