I guess back in 2001, there was a Fabian Nicieza/Kevin Maguire book with this title, which was maybe the attempt to do Avengers Forever, but for the X-Men? I had basically never heard of it, so I'm going out on a limb it didn't succeed. Anyway, this is not that book.
Released in 2009-2010, X-Men Forever and its sequel series (which we'll get to next week), were allegedly what Chris Claremont intended to do with the X-Men if Marvel hadn't shown him the door because they wanted to hand the reins to the franchise over to Jim Lee. Who, of course, bolted within a couple of months to help found Image, leaving this X-Men in the hands of Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell. Whoops.
Do I believe this is what Claremont had planned going forward? Maybe? I mean, Claremont was known for setting up plot threads that ran for long stretches in the background, only to eventually be dropped when the larger story progressed to some point they'd no longer fit, or he just forgot them. So, yeah, he might have had this stuff in mind, but there's no telling if he'd have gotten to it. That's without getting into the question of whether Marvel would have let him do some of it. Killing off Wolverine, as he does in the second issue? Yeah, probably not.
Divorced from that and taken as just an alternate universe, a sort of extended What If?, it's got a bonkers energy to it. There is your typical shadowy group, called the Consortium, which has infiltrated SHIELD and the government and is out to get rid of mutants. Mr. Sinister is running around in the body of a child, trying to get his hands on Nate Summers (aged up to maybe 5 years old). That stuff is pretty bog-standard for the X-Men. What Claremont adds is the notion of "burnout". Essentially, a mutant using their powers gradually eats away at them, degrading their bodies, killing them. This is why there are so few old mutants. Why Xavier is back in his wheelchair when this starts. This revelation then lurks in the background of everything that follows. Every time the X-Men use their powers to protect a world that hates and fears them, they accelerate they end of their own lives.
(You can actually see glimpses of this in Claremont's original X-Men run, at least with Wolverine. After that whole bit where Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers crucified him in the Outback, Logan still hadn't fully recovered over 20 issues later, and the fact he wasn't what he used to be was being noticed by multiple characters. Whether Claremont intended that to be something specific to Wolverine, or to eventually encompass all mutants, I don't know.)
Beyond that, it's just, as I said, a bonkers run. Kitty ends up with one of Logan's claws in her arm (in a process involving Fabian Cortez), and starts mutating from there. There are 2 Storms running around, the one in the picture above, and the teen one that Gambit first encountered. Sabretooth joins the X-Men, and there is possibly something between him and Dum Dum Dugan's daughter. Nick Fury's around, a lot, and actually trying to be helpful. Claremont's version is an essentially decent guy, not the shifty manipulative bastard all the Nick Furys have been since Ultimates came out. Gambit decides to fight wearing a classy-looking suit, scarf and sunglasses. Instead of Jean Grey dying for people she loves, all the people she loves die on her. Ha, see how you like it!
Perhaps most remarkable, the Shadow King does not show up. I didn't think it was possible for Claremont to write more than five consecutive issues without that guy making an appearance.
Tom Grummett draws half of the 24 issues, in fits and starts after the first 5. Probably wasn't helped by Marvel pulling their typical rushed shipping schedule. He provides his usual solid superhero artwork. Everything's clean, easy to follow. Characters are easy to recognize, the action flows naturally, emotion is conveyed. Nothing that reinvents the wheel, but it works for what Claremont's trying to tell. Even if this seems like an especially grim timeline, Claremont's still doing a X-Men superhero soap opera, with the drama and big feelings interspersed with punching and explosions.
Other than Grummett, there's a host of other artists, though they at least try to keep them on specific stories. Paul Smith shows up for a couple of issues, including Logan's funeral. Graham Nolan draws a two-parter about Rogue, Nightcrawler and Mystique. Steve Scott and Al Vey handle a 3-part involving a Sentinel factory in South America.
The book was canceled #24, with the Consortium seemingly wrapped up, but it was really just so they could restart the book with a new #1 immediately, and we'll get to that next week.
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