Reading Through 2021 68: X-Men Reload Volume 2, by Chris Claremont and Chris Bachalo

X-Men Reload Volume 2, by Chris Claremont and Chris Bachalo

2000s, collected in 2019

In February, I read the first collection of Chris Claremont's final Uncanny X-Men run and... it was alright. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. But I decided that if I was going to read that, I may as well finish off the run.

Has Chris Bachalo managed to work with more X-writers than anyone else?

This book, collecting issues 462-474 and, strangely, annual #1, ties up the mystery of Jamie Braddock, the mystery of Psylocke's resurrection, and ignores Sage's story and the blossoming romances of Nightcrawler. It also loses Wolverine for the most part, as he was in the concurrently published Astonishing X-Men.  And it's forced to deal with the crossover House of M and its aftermath. 

If it sounds like it's heaving along, it is. At this time, there was Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, and Astonishing X-Men, and X-Men Academy, and theoretically they were all in sync, but in reality, someone had to be making decisions that other writers were made to deal with. And Claremont had about two years on this book total before it was taken over by Ed Brubaker, so I have a feeling that Claremont was dealing with what he was given, not making the sweeping changes on his own.

Davis gets to draw gender swapped X-Men; that's good for a chuckle

With the House of M crossover, Claremont uses it as an opportunity to do more Excalibur comics. He started his run with the X-Men fighting Captain Britain villain The Fury at Braddock Manor, so maybe he was dying just to relaunch Excalibur. Alan Davis gets an opportunity to do wild variations of Marvel characters across realities, so that was alright. Ultimately, the arc was alternate reality filler.  How much one enjoys these sorts of inconsequential stories, on a scale of Age of Apocalypse to Age of X-Man, depends on the creative team and the twist it brings. The four-parter, drawn half by Davis and half by Chris Bachalo, reads well enough, but I found it to be unmemorable. I like Captain Britain and Meggan as side characters, but they have trouble carrying an X-Men story.

The Blob is depowered in a subplot that fizzles out. He gets his powers back with a hand wave somewhere in a few years

Then House of M ends, and a new status quo is thrust upon the series: 99% of the mutants have been depowered and the X-mansion is surrounded by sentinels for their protection. So much is made of the X-Men being at their weakest, and that the government is stepping up to protect them. In this time of vulnerability, who knows which villains will take their chance to deliver the final blow. The Reavers? Nimrod? Factor Three? 

So the next six issues is a fight with Shiar black ops that have zero connection to this new status quo. They're there to destroy the Phoenix. It's like he was handed this complicated mess of continuity and just decided to do the Shiar thing he was already going to do anyway, and add a few panels about Sentinels at the mansion.

When Claremont starts narrating the history of a human character, they are 100% guaranteed to die within a panel or two

I'm torn about whether this arc is good or not. I don't think it is. The one issue has a very good concept: The Shiar Death Commandoes attack and kill everyone they can in 24 seconds. That's the issue, 22 pages of a strategic attack, and the X-Men's reaction to it. If it were done in the 80s, it would probably have been a legendary issue.  Here, it's cool, and probably the most memorable part of the book, so it is a success.

I like the gray one

Where I'm torn is that the Shiar Death Commandoes are bland characters with hard to grasp powers, not the first time Claremont has made such characters. It's not helped by Bachalo's art, which can be confusing as it is, but on gray armored characters, I couldn't tell what was going on multiple times. I was squinting on lots of pages.

I like Bachalo's art a lot in general, but it wasn't always in the service of storytelling here.

That's a great Bachalo illustration of Storm

Bachalo's art elsewhere in the book is pretty fabulous. He's got a real sense of depth to his art, and a bold design sense.

The next arc also has nothing to do with the Sentinels stationed around the mansion and the X-Men's vulnerability, as if Claremont knew his days were numbered and wasn't going to waste them doing anything more than lip service to continuity. Instead, it has another problem that hurts his X-Men comics: power creep, that the dangers they face become of a scale way too big, too often. Look who appeared, the threat is so dire:

Maybe he shouldn't have played the Uatu card

This last arc is about the inverse of the Phoenix force. Rather than a force of destruction and creation, this is a force of stasis. It's a strange story where reality-shifter Jamie Braddock isn't invincible, and the X-Men are zapped to an Egyptian-looking place where their powers are neutralized and aliens live in peace. 

Roger Cruz does decent work; not my favorite, but pretty good

When you bring the Watcher in to announce a story, it should be epic, and this story isn't. It actually feels pretty small because not much power is displayed. 

The volume is closed with a story about Storm in Africa which might be a spiritual successor to  Life Death. Storm is stopping a child-kidnapping African warlord, and the X-Men come to offer backup. Storm is hurt and has multiple hallucinations of her experience with different people she cares for. Unfortunately, it has weak art. It's drawn competently, but lacks the flair or emotion to carry the story.

That looks like art from a DC book

If it sounds like I'm beating on the book, I guess I am. I read it quickly enough so I was enjoying it. But other than the story with compressed time in it, none of it really stuck in my memory.  It was a fizzle. If Claremont had been writing this same stuff in 1989, it would have sunk in a lot more, but in comparison with what else was going on in the era, these aren't exceptional comics.

As this was finishing at the time, Ed Brubaker was delivering Deadly Genesis, a comic which was certainly memorable, though more infamous than beloved. His X-Men run starts the issue after this book ends with a 12 part space adventure which I enjoyed a lot. It felt fresh because he was dipping into the X-Men for the first time. In comparison, Claremont was doing what came naturally to him with his run, but after a lifetime reading his original 17-year run repeatedly, it's almost like a new Rolling Stones song. It's them, it's alright, but it just isn't hitting as hard as the old stuff did.