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Wednesday, October 29, 2014

X-amining Uncanny X-Men #247

"The Light That Failed"
August 1989

In a Nutshell 
Rogue and Master Mold enter the Siege Perilous

Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Marc Silvestri
Inker: Dan Green
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Bob Harras
Foreman: Tom DeFalco

Plot
Just as Master Mold is about to blast Rogue, the X-Men arrive, called by Psylocke and teleported to New York by Gateway. Though there is nothing they can do to save Senator Kelly's wife, mortally wounded helping Rogue, they're able to destroy Master Mold, aided by their invisibility to his sensors. Back in Australia, Jubilee explores the town but decides to stick close to her hiding spot for fear of getting caught. In New York, the seemingly-destroyed Master Mold re-constituents himself. His integration of Nimrod's programming complete, he's now able to detect the X-Men and hold his own against them. As Dazzler stumbles into a crater created by a reflected blast and discovers the Siege Perilous in her jacket pocket, Rogue absorbs Colossus' mutant power, transforming her flesh into steel. She flies into space, then comes racing back down, her speed aided by gravity, and crashes into Master Mold with the force of a meteor.


Rogue and the remains of Master Mold end up in the crater along with Dazzler, who realizes they can use the Siege Perilous to defeat the robot. As the portal opens, Rogue tries to force him through, but Master Mold resists and grabs Rogue so that neither can enter without the other. As Rogue pleads with Dazzler to blast them both into the portal, Nimrod asserts himself, telling Master Mold that their synthesis has resulted in a new life form, that they've essentially mutated. Just as Dazzler blasts the robot, Nimrod insists Master Mold fulfill his prime directive, and Master Mold explodes. The force of the explosion sends the remains of the robot, as well as Rogue, into the Siege Perilous, much to Dazzler's horror. In the aftermath, Senator Kelly tells Sebastian Shaw that Project: Nimrod will receive all the federal support it needs, and a new group of Reavers vow to destroy the X-Men. The Reavers, in turn, are being watched by Nanny, who promises Orphan Maker they're going to save the X-Men, whether they like it or not.

Firsts and Other Notables
Following Wolverine's leave of absence last issue, Rogue is the next member of the team to leave the X-Men in this issue, as she gets pulled into the Siege Perilous along with the Master Mold/Nimrod. The first X-Man to enter the Siege Perilous, Rogue will actually be the last to emerge, and this issue marks her final appearance in the series until issue #269 (and it'll be a while even after that before she rejoins the X-Men). This marks Rogue's first extended absence from the book (beyond a few issues here or there) since she joined the team in issue #171.


Jubilee pops up briefly in this issue, exploring the town while the X-Men are away and ransacking Dazzler's closet, which creates some chronological issues with the backup story in X-Men Annual #13, as that story very clearly showed Jubilee arriving in the Outback immediately after issue #244, but then proceeded to show her acclimating to life in the town beyond the state she's in this issue. I suppose these scenes could occur in and around the events of that backup story (she does reference here her "hidey hole", presumably the room she made for herself in the earlier story), but you have to squint a bit to make it all work.


The closing panels of this issue tease the return of the Reavers, in what will be a new incarnation of the cybernetic criminals than when they first appeared, comprised of the remnants of that group joining Lady Deathstrike and the three cybernetic Hellfire Club mercenaries that Wolverine nearly killed (last seen in issue #205) and being led by the recently-escaped Donald Pierce. This smaller group of Reavers will serve as the main villains of the "Dissolution and Rebirth" story arc and stand as the book's chief post-"Inferno" antagonists, though they'll be quickly dispatched after Claremont leaves the book.


Because apparently you just don't let go of as good an idea as a nursery rhyme-themed villain wearing egg-shaped armor, Nanny and the Orphan Maker, last seen in X-Factor #40, make a brief appearance at the end of this issue, setting up their larger involvement in the subsequent issue.


The final page of the issue, with Nanny watching the Reavers watching the aftermath of the X-Men's battles, is perhaps an intentional echo of the final panel of issue #97.

Nimrod's consciousness asserts itself within Master Mold this issue, and the resultant fusion of the two programs results in an evolved life form, which enables Master Mold to see the X-Men, but which also, Nimrod points out, makes them a mutant. The Nimrod/Master Mold amalgamation is then blasted into the Siege Perilous along with Rogue. A later story will establish that Bastion, the anti-mutant zealot and central antagonist of the 90s crossover "Operation: Zero Tolerance", is the new form of the Master Mold/Nimrod fusion which eventually emerges from the Siege Perilous.


Senator Kelly's wife Sharon, introduced last issue, dies this issue as a result of injuries sustained helping Rogue escape Master Mold, which simply reignites Kelly's anti-mutant prejudices. It's a pretty blatant bit of what we'd today call fridging, as Sharon was very clearly created only so her death could have an impact on Sentator Kelly, except neither character is, relatively speaking, all that important to the series at this point.


Sharon's death does motivate Kelly to change his stance on Sebastian Shaw's proposed Project:Nimrod from last issue, though nothing really comes of this (aside from the suggestion that Nimrod exists in a time loop whereby his actions in the past trigger his creation in the future) and we won't see Kelly or Shaw (in X-Men, at least) again until after Claremont has left the book.


Just in time for the team to get broken apart, a new corner box image appears on the cover, mimicking X-Factor's "characters in action" approach in lieu of the team's headshots.

The letters page includes a ballot for Comic Buyers Guide Fan awards, as well as a joke ballot for the Marvel Assistant Editors Awards (which were left of the main ballot, of course).

A Work in Progress
As the X-Men attack Master Mold, prior to Nimrod's programming asserting itself, they are fully invisible to the robot.


Havok is pleased to able to cut loose with his power against a robotic opponent.

Storm and Colossus perform a fastball special, with Colossus as the ball.


The rest of the X-Men learn about the Twelve this issue, though Dazzler casually dismisses the notion, thinking it's simply a reference to the X-Men.


Longshot is bummed out that he couldn't do much against a giant robot. Dazzler consoles him, telling him that's why they're a team, but he worries he doesn't fit in.


Storm notes that Morlock Healer's abilities only work on mutants, a detail I don't think had been previously established before.


Donald Pierce is referred to as the Hellfire Club's former White King; I believe he was actually it's former White Bishop.

I Love the 80s
I think that might be a joke at the expense of cross-dresser/transgenders in Jubilee's reaction to the women she followed from the mall being called X-Men, but if so, it certainly flew over my head as a kid.


It's established that aside from the property damage, the only casualty of the X-Men's battle with Nimrod is Sharon Kelly.

Teebore's Take
And with that, we say goodbye to Rogue, as the dissolution of the X-Men continues. Perhaps because the "Dissolution" story serves as a kind of last hurrah for the Oz X-Men, even though the bulk of this issue takes place in New York, it is jam packed with stuff specific to the X-Men's time in the Outback: the Siege Perilous is used for the first time since issue #229, the X-Men's invisibility to electronic scanners is a key element of the plot and of the Master Mold/Nimrod's development, and the return of the Reavers, the villains who facilitated their move down under in the first place, is teased.  

Claremont also continues his bit of narrative housecleaning, begun last issue, involving a subplot even older than the X-Men's Australian stint. After being co-opted by Master Mold, this issue reveals that Nimrod's consciousness hasn't been fully eradicated, and together, the two Sentinels have evolved into some kind of new life form. Of course, this leads to the amalgamated robot getting blasted into the Siege Perilous, and whether or not Claremont intended for that to be the end of Nimrod's story, it stands as his final word on the matter. Thus, we get an an unceremonious end to the long-simmering "Nimrod as protector of the disenfranchised" subplot, and that's a subplot that has to go down as a wasted opportunity, as both Claremont and other writers could easily have mined that material for some interesting stories. But the effort in at least tying it up, in a manner that can be read as conclusive (even if later writers add to it) is still appreciated. 

Next Issue
Tomorrow, the New Mutants battle Freedom Force in New Mutants #78. Friday, X-Factor heads into space in X-Factor #43. Next week, Daredevil gets a visit from Blob and Pyro in Daredevil #269.

22 comments:

  1. I think that might be a joke at the expense of cross-dresser/transgenders in Jubilee's reaction to the women she followed from the mall being called X-Men, but if so, it certainly flew over my head as a kid.

    Not what I would call a joke but perhaps more a genuine bafflement of a youngster. The joke, if there is one, is more on the X-Men having been for a while consisting mostly of women I think.

    I love these anachronistic jokes though that sometimes appear in the Uncanny before their time, because that one would so totally work after 1994 and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Before Hugo Weaving was Agent Smith, Elrond, V and Red Scull...

    Also, "Nimrod consciousness" my ass, the one who saves the day and our heroes, with a full serving of irony attached, is none other than Nicholas Hunter, the Nimrod-gone-self-aware persona that owes its existence to the benevolent influence of Jaime Rodriguez. You'll notice how in "Nimrod's" last urging to push the Master Mold through Siege Perilous he has gone full human. "Damn straight, hombre. Go for broke, lady. Nail this walking junkpile!"

    Nimrod's first action after entering the X-world was to save Jaime from a backstabbing while he was watching a Watchman, and by that action ended up saving also himself, by having from then on Jaime watch over himself. Sentinels, watchmen, potato, potato. ;)

    There's no chance there's one bit of Nicholas in Bastion. He's out there somewhere, totally redeemed.

    Got me somehow wondering about that elusive "Huntsman" fellow later on by Claremont, last seen in Silvestri-drawn Cyberforce...

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  2. Except... I remember reading that Claremont's fame as a writer of woman characters started to get some backlash at some point in comic book fanzines and the sort of thing, where some people would praise any obscure comic for "having genuine believable woman characters and not men posing as women like Claremont writes them". Should that have been happening around this time, Jubilee's suspicions would serve as a fine example of Claremontian self-irony making it to the comics panels.

    Also, Bonebreaker is commenting about Sharon Kelly there, "Plenty more where she came from, Shaw'll see to that", right? And, fridging or not, for someone created essentially to die, Sharon gets a plenty of spotlight and characterization.

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  3. "a new corner box image appears on the cover, mimicking X-Factor's "characters in action" approach in lieu of the team's headshots"

    The X-factor one was original artwork, this one is just a few characters from the cover of the Evolutionary War annual. I still like it though.

    "As the X-Men attack Master Mold, prior to Nimrod's programming asserting itself, they are fully invisible to the robot."

    Also, gotta love the 8-bit look of Master Mold's POV. I love the 80s!

    "Longshot is bummed out that he couldn't do much against a giant robot. Dazzler consoles him, telling him that's why they're a team, but he worries he doesn't fit in."

    And that pep talk really had a lasting impact on him, no? ;)

    With this issue, you kind of feel like it's the beginning of the end for CC's run...or at least, the end of an era feel.

    Funny enough, since it's about to be featured around this era, here is a summary about the Siege Perilious for those interested...

    http://uncannyxmen.net/node/5080

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  4. Oh yes, the 8-bit view. Could be seen totally 'I love the 80's' style of nowadays-obvious faulty prediction of 21th century crude computerics, but to me it always was an Artistic Achievement portraying how the hiccuping merger of Master Mold and Nimrod starts flickeringly and failingly "see" the invisible-to-electronics X-Men. Perhaps it's the "human" Nick Hunter that still is (and ever was) the only thing capable of seeing them within the merged Sentinel.

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  5. As a child looking through the long boxes in the comic book store, the corner box on these issues always seemed so mysterious and strange. It didn't last very long I don't think-- maybe 10 or 12 issues? But it still makes me think of this run as kind of spooky and bizarre. Which it kind of is!

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  6. // you have to squint a bit to make it all work //

    I blame Sally Pashkow.

    // which also, Nimrod points out, makes them a mutant //

    Wasn't this also how Master Mold's "Conscience" got him to destroy himself in that Cyclops serial?

    Silvestri was really Liefelding the feet in this issue. That aside, I think his work looks strongly influenced by Mignola in certain spots (while utterly different in others) — or maybe not that aside, since the whole deal of feet disappearing into mist or smoke or debris cloud represented by scratchy lines is something Mignola used to do too. In particular I'm looking at some of the figures in the top tier of the opening DPS of the X-Men against Master Mold, then again the first panel on the next page, and the closeup of the grieving Senator Kelly talking to Shaw that you posted.

    I'm confused about whether the cyborged Hellfire Club mercs Wolverine had torn up and the Reavers headquartered in the Outback and this group convened by Pierce are supposed to always have been part of the same overall thing, not even necessarily all along as published but at this point in retrospect.

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  7. @Teemu: // Nimrod's first action after entering the X-world was to save Jaime from a backstabbing while he was watching a Watchman, and by that action ended up saving also himself //

    I was aware of how his adopted human identity was clearly becoming dominant, if somewhat baffled by it since I don't recall Nimrod speaking to himself with that reg'lar-Joe dialect in our last brief glimpse of him, but I hadn't explicitly put together the way that saving Jaime led to his becoming Nick Hunter and thus to his own salvation, be that body or just soul. Well done. Also, I have only the vaguest recollection of the Huntsman from his debut during that period in the '90s when companies were letting creator-owned property into their established universes, but I like the idea of Claremont getting to continue Nimrod's story somehow just as, much earlier, Steve Englehart did in a way turning his Madame Xanadu stuff into Scorpio Rose or, later and more similarly, Peter David continuing with his version of Linda Danvers as Fallen Angel.

    Jason Powell's insights into this issue included the neat symmetry of Nimrod, the ultimate Sentinel (certainly the "latest" that we've seen so far, as he's from Rachel Summers' era or beyond), merging with Master Mold, the first Sentinel. The comments there also have a neat discussion of the Reavers as possible stand-in for Marvel Editorial's interference with Claremont.

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  8. Can this amount of symmetry and closing of full circles even be intentional, or is there just so much stuff from Claremont around at this point that everything just looks like it? There's the first/last Sentinel, the Nimrod arc, and most of all the Shaw/Kelly arc: Kelly was there to approve the Sentinel programme in DPS after the perceived assault of the X-Men on the Hellfire Club, and now he's greenlighting Project Nimrod. It's almost hilarious to remember him in his first (?) appearance being sorry for Harry Leland to Shaw, who's quick to use the short-lived death of his "friend" to promote Shaw Industries' Sentinel line of business, and then see Leland return, only for to... you really should be sorry, Kelly.

    I also just got a recollection from DPS of a Hellfire Club's servants' foreman mentioning senator Kelly being there in the house to a blonde waitress, who prompts "The presidential candidate?"... Sharon's first appearance, could it be?

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  9. Nope, she was Mary. The scene was in #133, the one were Wolverine alone has a go at a part of the Marvel editoriate of '89. Nice that they too got a cameo here. (totally should have been Sharon)

    The Reavers-as-editor-stand-ins thingy opens up a lot of fun-or-not-so notions. The Hellfire commandos were mandated to have been survived by Shooter, which they did through cyborgization. Loosing organic for mechanical could be seen as a metaphor for the lack of control Claremont is more and more dealing with at this point, and threat of cyborgization makes it exceedingly to the text towards the end, with Storm and Forge eagles, Betsy's upcoming premonition, Nathan Christopher's techno-organic infection... and then one day there will be Cable.

    No wonder they made them get hastily rid of the Reavers the minute they got Claremont out.

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  10. "I'm confused about whether the cyborged Hellfire Club mercs Wolverine had torn up and the Reavers headquartered in the Outback and this group convened by Pierce are supposed to always have been part of the same overall thing, not even necessarily all along as published but at this point in retrospect."
    In X-Men 251, Pierce refers to Bonebreaker, Pretty Boy and Skullbuster as the "last of my original Reavers". I'm not sure if that's supposed to mean Pierce created the original Reavers. Further complicating this is that Claremont has said in interviews that Pierce was supposed to be controlled by the Shadow King.

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  11. @Teemu: The joke, if there is one, is more on the X-Men having been for a while consisting mostly of women I think.

    Or, at least, a joke on the inherent sexism built into calling them X-*Men* even though there was a woman on the team even at the very beginning. Either way, that's definitely there.

    I was thinking more along the lines of Jubilee's "oh YUCK!" comment, which could be read as her thinking "men who dress up as women, that's gross!", which is the kind of casual joke that wouldn't be given a second thought back in 1989 but would nowadays (I like to hope) not be used by as conscientious a writer as Claremont usually seems to be, at least not quite so casually and via a newer character who know so little about.

    Also, "Nimrod consciousness" my ass, the one who saves the day and our heroes, with a full serving of irony attached, is none other than Nicholas Hunter, the Nimrod-gone-self-aware persona that owes its existence to the benevolent influence of Jaime Rodriguez.

    I was just using his codename. :)

    But your point stands, he definitely is full-on human at the end there.

    @wwk5d: The X-factor one was original artwork, this one is just a few characters from the cover of the Evolutionary War annual. I still like it though.

    Good point. I do like it as well.

    Also, gotta love the 8-bit look of Master Mold's POV.

    Yeah, it wasn't the most descriptive panel of the X-Men being invisible to Master Mold, but I had to post it, just cuz it's so fun.

    Funny enough, since it's about to be featured around this era, here is a summary about the Siege Perilious for those interested...

    Heh. I tweeted out a link to that page about a week or two ago (whenever Uncanny X-Men.net tweeted their link), basically saying the same thing. Great minds!

    @Ben: It didn't last very long I don't think-- maybe 10 or 12 issues?

    I think it sticks around into the early 260s, but that includes some bi-weekly issues, so a year is about right.

    @Blam: I blame Sally Pashkow.

    Heh. :)

    Wasn't this also how Master Mold's "Conscience" got him to destroy himself in that Cyclops serial?

    Pretty much, yeah. And, of course, as Jason pointed out in his post on this issue (or one of his commenters? I can't remember), the whole "Sentinel defeated by logic" thing is a callback to the Thomas/Adams Sentinel story, in which Claremont provided the "defeated by logic" idea.

    That aside, I think his work looks strongly influenced by Mignola in certain spots

    I can see, particularly in some of the depictions of Master Mold.

    I'm confused about whether the cyborged Hellfire Club mercs Wolverine had torn up and the Reavers headquartered in the Outback and this group convened by Pierce are supposed to always have been part of the same overall thing

    Me too. We know that the three Hellfire Club mercs were made into cyborgs circa issue #151, then pumped up further when Lady Deathstrike got cyborgized by Spiral and her Body Shoppe in #205, but we don't know who made Pierce a cyborg or who made all the Reavers in the first place.

    As Anonymous pointed out, Pierce at one point will imply *he* created the Reavers, at least originally (in #229, Pretty Boy was trying to make Jessan Hoan evil, so presumably they were capable of adding new members to their ranks themselves), but that's never elevated beyond the level of implication.

    The comments there also have a neat discussion of the Reavers as possible stand-in for Marvel Editorial's interference with Claremont.

    I really like that idea, and may touch on it myself in a future post.


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  12. Teebore: I was just using his codename. :)

    But your point stands, he definitely is full-on human at the end there.


    Thinking it over, I was almost overdoing it though myself. I was wanting to see Nick Hunter as a somewhat independent persona rising inside and separated from Nimrod against all evidence, for to have him insulated from having anything to do with Bastion, but obviously he is Nimrod and only Nimrod.

    I just feel that his character development between his two fights with the X-Men is an/the unsung homerun of Claremont's run. May have plenty to do with me personally tagging along the X-world at that very time, but there's just something so... perfect in how Nimrod contemplates how he enjoys teaching young Thomas Rodriguez just before taking off to give a totally other kind of lesson to the Lords Cardinal and the X-Men. And in the contrast between how laid back he is with the Rodriguezes one moment, and the next he's hovering over Central Park not doing really anything except being insanely threatening like he was mocking them and just occasionally blasting someone with an energy beam.

    About Pierce, the genius behind making him a cyborg was Pierce himself, and circumstantial evidence would point him being behind the original Reavers too, though why they would be robbing banks fits poorly in the picture. Nathan Adler has interesting points about the whole deal in his Magnum Opus of Origin of Gateway on his How Would You Fix... blog.

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  13. There is also a hidden backstory for #205 implied only in the cover of the book, Wolverine being tied up very Weapon-X-like. Apparently he was supposed to be captured and tortured by Reese, Cole and Macon and Lady Deathstrike until he escaped, all off-panel. That's why he's so out there during the issue. There would probably be an answer at least to how they found each other and if Pierce had anything to do with it then.

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  14. Blam: Peter David continuing with his version of Linda Danvers as Fallen Angel.

    Oh, rats. We have let it fly past for weeks, but in last issue there was Betsy and Carol berating Carol's classic Cockrum uniform (Teeb threw in the panels and all): "In its day it was considered the height of super-hero haute couture." "So were midi-skirts." The Danvers girls, distaff counterparts, Pun with Peter. Circles, I tell ya!

    Appropriate and symbolic that Rogue should be wearing the uniform here and now, btw. I don't really know what I should make of the uniform discussion in last issue, seeing that Claremont and Silvestri saw it fit to dress Storm into arms and thighs covering version of it. I wonder if there was any conscious effort to avoid placing Rogue and Storm next to each other on the panels...

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  15. Oh, of course I noted only afterwards that Storm has changed her uniform for now. She returns to the Ms. Marvelesque one after X-Tinction Agenda, at least in Silvestri-drawn Wolverine #38. And she still had it on the Uncanny 244 cover, though, and will again in #248...

    I'm dropping these piece by piece now, but I also don't want to not mention that Rogue seems to be legally obligated to absorb Colossus' organic steel every time the team fights Nimrod. Whether there is something in the Editorial Reavers thingy or not, Claremont really must like to see metal being punished by the combined X-Men powers. Good thinking too from Rogue to hit the Sentinel with the force of meteor, not unlike Shaw did the last time.

    Also, the panel where Rogue turns back to Earth at the edge of atmosphere should oh so much have been done a more obvious homage to the one in #171 after Binary Carol punches her there. There's elements, but...

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  16. I was thinking more along the lines of Jubilee's "oh YUCK!" comment, which could be read as her thinking "men who dress up as women, that's gross!", which is the kind of casual joke that wouldn't be given a second thought back in 1989 but would nowadays (I like to hope) not be used by as conscientious a writer as Claremont usually seems to be, at least not quite so casually and via a newer character who know so little about.

    I dunno about that. Keep in mind that Jubilee is designed with a rather androgynous appearance (to the point where Claremont has her disguised as a boy in a few future issues. And even later on will have Claremont experiment with transgender subplots (Masque inexplicably becoming a woman, for instance.)

    Also I didn't read this set of issues in real time, but did people at the time REALLY believe Rogue was " dead?" I know it some of the letter pages they did, but even mi us the modern-day cynicism about these things, these "deaths" seem like underwhelming fake-outs to me.

    Apparently in between menacing mutants, Master Mold was programming the NES X-Men game in his spare time.

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  17. Jonathan, I did read them as they were published (two years later for me of course but anyway). Can't say "dead" would've been the correct term, because Roma's lecture on how the Siege Perilous was supposed to work was still in fresh memory, but at that point no one had yet returned from there so for gullible, not-quite-understanding-the-intellectual-property-values me, it was to some extent plausible that we would perhaps not see what became of Rogue.

    Alex crossing off people en masse in couple of issues of course stretches the believability. But, I was 12 and the rules of the superhero comics as commercial medium in pre-internet era were vague to me, and the "illusion of change" and people wanting to read the same characters angles unknown, and Claremont had been quite free-minded in revamping the team roster, and there still were some no-touchie deaths like Bucky's and Jason Todd's back in those times, so...

    Hilarious in hindsight, Claremont's friend George R. R. "permanently kills everyone you love" Martin had been making it into the book just around now.

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  18. @Jonathan: Also I didn't read this set of issues in real time, but did people at the time REALLY believe Rogue was " dead?"

    Like you, I didn't read these in real time first, but as Teemu suggested, I'm not even sure we're supposed to think of Rogue as dead - I mean, maybe we're supposed to think she was killed in the explosion, but it seems pretty clear she just got sucked into the Siege Perilous, and it's been established that doesn't kill you. So I think readers at the time were just supposed to be wondering when she'd come back, and in what form.

    Storms's "death" next issue, now that is clearly meant to be taken as a "Storm's dead" moment, though even there, by the time the larger story ends, we see a pretty obvious (albeit changed) version of Storm pop up again, so once again, I don't think readers were meant to think Storm was DEAD (for very long, at least), but rather, wonder what happened to her between when she "died" and returned as a little kid.

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  19. I don't think anyone believed Rogue was "dead".

    Storm, on the other hand, I think was sold a bit better and I'm sure more people did (I know I did). Of course, her resurrection does happen rather quickly, but there was at least a definite "WTF is happening here?!?!" during that era.

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  20. People DID believe Rogue was dead- apparently there were a lot of people that wrote in to Marvel to complain. The reason was Marvel promoted X-Men 247 heavily as the death of an X-Men- because the plan was to kill off Dazzler permanently. So when Rogue went through the Siege, people believed this must be the death they were promoting.

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  21. I wonder if what saved Dazzler had to do with her specific creative history and those connected to the creation and/or perceived importance/commerciality as once-holder of her own on-going series.

    Could have even looked bad if a rare female titular character would have yet again been cruesomely killed sometime after the cancellation of her own book. There was Spider-Woman completely offed in her last issue, can't remember how it went with the Cat (she became Tigra, right, and wasn't Hellcat who died, right?), Ms. Marvel is a story of her own... She-Hulk seem to be the only one to fare relatively well, though not not-cancelled well.

    Claremont at least obviously didn't have anything to do with her anymore barring the one story riffing an 80's movie.

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  22. Despite appearances in Uncanny X-Men #247, Chris Claremont revealed on the old racmx site that he had never intended for the Master Mold configuration to get sucked through the Siege Perilous with Rogue after it had merged with Nimrod.

    During the scene where Master Mold is holding Rogue and anchoring itself to the ground, Dazzler shoots them just as the Nimrod Memory Core convinces the Master Mold Memory Core that their merger is akin to being a mutant and that he "fulfil his Primary Directive" by not only killing Rogue but itself. Just as Nimrod says this, Dazzler fires her laser.

    The next panel shows the laser hitting Nimrod/Master Mold in the head. It doesn't appear to be doing any harm. Then, in the next panel, there is a HUGE explosion. Then, in the next panel, we can see Rogue being blasted through the Siege Perilous from a massive shockwave.

    Key Points:
    1) Dazzler, even at her best - which she wasn't at this point because of fatigue - couldn't have disintegrated the Nimrod/Master Mold Construct. Especially after Rogue had just done a sub-orbital dive bomb onto Nimrod/Master Mold while having absorbed Colossus' steel form and Nimrod/Master Mold recovered quickly.
    2)The panel with Rogue being blasted through the Siege Perilous via shockwave shows no hint of Nimrod/Master Mold being blasted through.
    3) Nimrod/Master Mold never reconstructed itself after it's destruction.
    This hints STRONGLY that Nimrod/Master Mold self-destructed as Alison hit it with her laser. That would also explain the massive shockwave that flung Rogue through the Siege Perilous.

    Master Mold anchors itself to the ground to prevent itself from going through the Siege Perilous, and restrains Rogue - after being convinced by the Nimrod Memory Core that their merger is akin to being a mutant - with the intention of fulfilling its "Primary Directive", and killing itself, since it now considers itself to be a mutant.

    Further, it would be totally intent on ensuring it does not go through the Siege if it suspects it has become a mutant, since it would fully realise that it may be reborn as a mutant, anathema to its "Primary Directive".

    In the meantime, Dazzler fires her laser at its head, which has no effect. It then self-destructs, and Rogue gets blasted into the Siege by the shockwave.

    The merged Master Mold/Nimrod does not attempt to reconstruct itself, since it would realise that doing so would continue its mutant existence, thus it ensured its own destruction was permanent.

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