In one fell swoop back in 1992, Marvel Comics lost 7 of their heaviest hitters in both art and sales. Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Rob Liefeld and Whilce Portacio were superstars of the X-titles and the driving force behind their recent surge in popularity and sales. Without them, Marvel moved to writers once again being the driving force and 3 writers tried to replace the Claremont/Simonson team and produce quality comics. I honestly think they made a good go of it.
The story’s title made no sense, with no real reference to music or executioners being part of the story and this never made sense. During the Mutant Massacre, there was a massacre, during Fall of the Mutants, some fell and during the Phalanx Covenant, the Phalanx were there. But there was no song and considering that the only person who suffered an assassination attempt survived, no real executioner either. But beyond that, this story really held together.
Since Fabian Nicieza was doing 2 of the 4 books and he and Scott Lobdell either co-ordinated over the X-Men books, or were writing along similar lines, the writing was consistent across the books. It was also an interesting time, 2 X-Men teams, a rough and more militant team and also Freedom Force was repurposed as X-Factor. The line ups were interesting, costumes were well designed and there was a sense that anything could happen.
So did it work? Well tying it to the loss of Cyclops’ son was an interesting choice and led to many years of continuity heavy stories, many of them were brilliant and it all stemmed from this. But on it’s own merit, it brought all the teams together, told an interesting story and held a strong and steady pace for 12 issues. It wasn’t overblown or oversized and there wasn’t a dozen ties in, it just was.12 well done issues telling a complete story.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was enjoyable and a nice reminder of the joy that comics brought me when I first got into collecting the properly.
So am heading out of the X-titles for a while now and looking across the road to WildStorm as they were doing some great stuff in the 90s.
Next Time: Things get Wild!
My Marvel Life 