So he had to come up with a way to age her quickly - and so the incident that sparked this mini-series was conceived. So when Colossus's little sister was first introduced in Giant-Size X-Men #1 as not much more than a toddler, Claremont had a dilemma when he wanted to bring her as a new mutant and make her Kitty Pryde's best friend. ![]() Franklin Richards was born in 1968, he's now maybe pushing 10 years old when he should be pushing 50. But the real problem with this stagnation is that characters don't age. In these change, to a degree, was possible and might last - at least until the creative team changed. John Byrne's Fantastic Four, Frank Miller's Daredevil, Peter David's Hulk and Walter Simonson's Thor are good examples. Even under those early years of status quo stagnation, Marvel had some good runs. When Marvel first started publishing the Fantastic Four change was inherent in almost every issue, not so much in early issues of the X-Men, but sometime shortly after Lee and Kirby stopped producing material for the company everything stopped changing. But while it fills in the backstory, it's not essential reading in its own right. In the end, the story does mark Illyana's progression from an innocent to someone who's become dangerous and damaged both. She throws Illyana into "sink or swim" survival training, but it's nothing fantasy fans haven't seen a hundred times before, and it never quite shakes off the silly aura. The analogue X-men are pretty weak too, especially a Kitty Pryde who's been morphed into an actual cat (with a ridiculous, skin-baring costume), a transformation that's made her grim and murder-y. Even Illyana's eventual gaining of the upper hand (not much of a spoiler, right?) comes about just because her magic arbitrarily seems to get better than his. The magical nature of Limbo keeps the conflict from being too meaningful, as Belasco can change the rules at any time with his powers. On the other, a few remaining X-men from another dimension, aged and corrupted by the place, fight among themselves over the best way to save her. One one side, you have Belasco, the demonic ruler of Limbo, attempting to corrupt Illyana in the dark arts and thus use her as a gateway for some evil elder beings to destroy the universe (i.e., every Hellboy story ever). This series explores what really happened in those seven years. This four-issue miniseries fills the gaps left off-panel in previous X-men storyline where Colossus' little sister, Illyana, was rescued from the demon-ruled dimension Limbo, growing seven years in what seemed like an instant. Perhaps.Ī read for the completist X-men fan.and probably not anyone else. And even if you do, it may serve you better to hear about the happenings in Limbo more in passing than in full. Pretty much, don't bother to read this unless you really enjoy Illyana. I just experienced it a bit more backwards. In fact it came out just prior to her getting a major role in that book. My review is making it sound like this story was written after Claremont started developing Illyana in the pages of New Mutants. It gives you a scope of how hardened she had to become. It really plays up the duality of Illyana and to decent effect. I think it would have been better if Claremont had kept it a mystery thus keeping his options open for what happened to Illyana over those seven years in Limbo (in this case a demonic dimension). It is a story that I always figured was going to be better in my head than on paper, through the little tidbits that got dropped throughout Uncanny and New Mutants about Illyana, but you know they are going to tell it. Which also covers the passing of seven years. This is the telling of a story that takes place between a couple panels of Uncanny X-Men #160. These are the types of stories that are usually better left untold, but people always clamor for the telling. Claremont was also a contributor to the Wild Cards anthology series. In the 1980s, he also wrote a science fiction trilogy about female starship pilot Nicole Shea, consisting of First Flight (1987), Grounded! (1991), and Sundowner (1994). This trilogy continues the story of Elora Danan from the movie Willow. ![]() Outside of comics, Claremont co-wrote the Chronicles of the Shadow War trilogy, Shadow Moon (1995), Shadow Dawn (1996), and Shadow Star (1999), with George Lucas. ![]() He also wrote a few issues of the series WildC.A.T.s (volume 1, issues #10-13) at Image Comics, which introduced his creator-owned character, Huntsman. Chris Claremont is a writer of American comic books, best known for his 16-year (1975-1991) stint on Uncanny X-Men, during which the series became one of the comic book industry's most successful properties.Ĭlaremont has written many stories for other publishers including the Star Trek Debt of Honor graphic novel, his creator-owned Sovereign Seven for DC Comics and Aliens vs Predator for Dark Horse Comics.
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