#Outback Era

[wwprice1]

We’ve lost inker Dan Green. An X-Men legend.

[vertigoartgore]

A Uncanny X-Men #225 panel by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green.

[brie-the-cheesey]

[valentinemichaelsmith]

Pryor.

[louiejoyce]

Outback eta Betsy Braddock commission! I love this era of X-Men comics so this was a treat to draw! ✏️🦋

Get in touch if you’re interested in getting a sketch commissions like this. 🤙😁

www.louiejoyce.com

[mutantdilf]

What is love? Emma K || The Uncanny X-Men

[kimodraw]

Thunder's getting louder and louder and louder

[comfortfoodcontent]

The Australian Outback Era X-Men by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green

From Comics Scene Vol. 2 #1 (My scan)

I have never seen this artwork anywhere. Never in a reprint, never even online anywhere. As far as I know this is exclusive to just this magazine. It is such an amazing piece. My favorite X-Men team by my favorite X-Men art team rather blatantly depicting them as the Wild West Outlaw team Chris Claremont envisioned them as when they went Down Under.

[ffverr]

I may not know the full story yet,,,, but the Star fam has the potential of being marvel's cuntiest family. Can I pitch a 54 issue run?

[curi0uscreature]

* Looking back at this now this leaves so many implications to me. all of them are positive 

[farsight-the-char]

I hope RWBY Vol10 dedicates an episode to feelings jams and the characters having a good time. I hope Team RWBY go to a Mall, like X-men

(Uncanny X-men 244)

Just having a good time, fashion, and Mall. Weiss as Alison, Ruby as Betsy, Blake as Storm, Yang as Rogue

....

Something something, this being the Outback Era of X-men, Vacuo being Remnant’s Australia (thus outback).....

[tonkysexist]

Prodigy deserves this more than almost anyone, but I would DIE to see Dazzler on the team again

[vertigoartgore]

2015's Uncanny X-Men #600 variant cover by Olivier Coipel (a big fan of the late 80's Outback era & Marc Silvestri's art style obviously).

[brie-the-cheesey]

I!!!! LOVE!!!! THEM!!!

[racefortheironthrone]

With how much focus she has received since the beginning of the Krakoa era, what are your thoughts on Storm ? And do you agree on the perception that she's becoming something of a Mary Sue?

I’m going to start with a mini-rant about the Mary Sue.

To the extent that there is any validity to the term at all, it is solely and exclusively within the realm of fanfiction. A Mary Sue is an OC (original character) whose supposed annoying omni-competence is really secondary to the main problem with the character, which is that they warp the narrative away from the main characters of the source material - Kirk and Spock or Picard and Data stop doing things that drive the plot, and instead just stand around asking "where's Poochie?"

Outside of fanfiction and in the realm of the media that gives rise to fanfiction, a prominent character who is incredibly talented and powerful and who makes the plot center around them is called a fucking protagonist - so no, Rey isn’t a Mary Sue, Carol Danvers isn’t a Mary Sue, Katniss Everdeen isn't a Mary Sue - none of them are Mary Sues and anyone who claims otherwise is showing that they have deep-seated Issues with female protagonists in their fiction.

Is Storm a Mary Sue?

Even if we weren't talking about the most prominent black woman character in fiction, I would consider this question pretty damn offensive, both because no one would ever ask this question about a male character and - in a franchise packed to the gills with hyper-powerful women who make the plots revolve around them and who even get the complementary Love Triangle - no one sends me asks about any of those (white) women.

But to answer your question: no, Storm is not a Mary Sue - she's the main character of the X-Men.

See, when Chris Claremont took over X-Men in 1975, he did so with a brand-new cast of characters, the so-called "All-New, All-Different X-Men." In no small part because they were far more diverse and more colorful than the O5 (suburban WASPs one and all), most of these characters would become break-out stars and the core of the X-Men from that day to this.

However, Claremont didn't vibe with all of the All-New X-Men equally: he had Sunfire quit the team (repeatedly), he killed off Thunderbird for shock value (a death that has only been reversed this last year), he would have killed off Wolverine if John Byrne hadn't stopped him (Claremont would later turn around on Logan once he worked out his voice), etc.

But one character that he vibed with right from the beginning was Ororo Monroe. From the very beginning, Claremont's Storm is the most powerful of the All-New X-Men, both in terms of her powers and in terms of her personality, being the only person who can face down Logan. At the same time, she's complicated by her struggles with crippling claustrophobia caused by the Suez Crisis-induced trauma of her childhood.

After a few years, Claremont tired of the African Nature Goddess routine and had Storm experience an almost total transformation that nonetheless was completely grounded in her character. Feeling overly limited by the total emotional control required of her powers, Ororo undergoes a subtextual lesbian awakening in Tokyo's underground punk scene and emerges out the other side a free spirit, leader of the X-Men, and Queen of the Morlocks.

In his most audacious move in LifeDeath I and II, Claremont had Storm lose her powers thanks to Forge's anti-mutant tech - and then defeat Cyclops in a duel for command of the X-Men without her powers - and then regain her powers in an epic cycle that saw the X-Men die and be reborn as outlaw heroes in the Australian Outback.

In sum, Storm was clearly Claremont's favorite character and, as a result had the most interesting character journey over his 16-year run on X-Men.

Storm in Krakoa

And then Storm basically lay fallow for almost thirty years. In no small part due to the pioneering work done by Claremont with this character, later writers were frankly too intimidated to touch the character and so starting in the 90s, Storm was increasingly sidelined in the comics in favor of the characters that were commercially "hot" at the time - Wolverine and Gambit, especially.

In the 2000s, the most significant thing to happen to Storm was her marriage to T'challa. While I think Reggie Hudlin had mostly good intentions with this decision - he wanted to create a black power couple at Marvel and thus put together Marvel's most prominent black man and black woman into a relationship - the result was to make Storm a supporting character in Black Panther comics, rather than a main character in X-Men comics.

I would argue that it is only recently with the advent of Al Ewing as a major writer in the X-office with S.W.O.R.D, X-Men Red, and Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants that we've gotten a writer who's not afraid to write Storm as she deserves to be written - as the most powerful of the X-Men, the Regent of Arrako and the Voice of Sol, the standard-bearer of Magneto's legacy, and a woman trying to balance the demands of two planets and her own desires.

[wolverineholic]

Wolverine Deep Cut Vol 1 #1 (2024)

cover by Philip Tan