The Australian era began with the X-Men's deaths. Fall of the Mutants required them to give their lives in a mystical ritual performed by Forge to seal away a trickster god (sadly, not Loki). But Roma undid it, because chaos is necessary, but only after everyone believes the X-Men are dead.
So the team leans into the idea, as Storm figures they can more effectively strike at those who mean harm to mutants if those foes think the X-Men are no longer a factor. That this includes not telling any friends or loved ones the truth is a bit sketchier, but I wouldn't say the plan woks terribly well anyway, so it's mostly academic. As usual, "proactive" superheroics fail.
The Outback era seems to be a polarizing one. I see people who love it, and people who hate it (often, but not exclusively, related to the team letting their loved ones continue to grieve). While there are more lighthearted issues, including one drawn by Rob Liefeld that spoofs DC's Invasion! event, the team seems cursed. While taking command of the Reavers' base in the middle of the Australian desert does limit attacks against their home, their being presumed dead doesn't convey a ton of advantages. They still seem to be performing triage.
Stopping a Brood plot that involves specifically targeting mutants that's already in progress. This is the era when Genosha as a pretty thinly (if at all) veiled apartheid South Africa is introduced, with a mutant underclass treated as test subjects to be experimented on and altered at the will of the homo sapien overclass. The X-Men only get involved because Maddy Pryor takes a job flying someone Genosha wants back, and they go ahead and abduct Maddy to keep her quiet.
The isolation doesn't seem to do good things to the team. Maddy accepts a demon's offer, thinking it's a just dream she's having, which eventually leads to the whole mess where she recovers her infant son, only to try and sacrifice him so Scott and Jean can be portrayed as the "proper" parents or some shit. Havok gets romantically involved with Madelyne, and that whole circumstance does a number on him (Claremont seems to abandon Havok trying to recover Polaris from Malice's grasp.)
With her powers neutralized, Rogue gets assaulted by Genoshan guards used to taking what they please, prompting Carol Danvers' psyche to take control, something it starts doing more regularly. That Storm in particular is not sympathetic to Rogue's situation puts more stress. I feel like it's telling that Rogue and Dazzler's relationship actually seems to improve to one of at least mutual trust, but it isn't like Alison has a lot of options for girl friends at this point.
(It's a running notion that Nightcrawler does horribly as a team leader, but based on the 50 issues after she sends Cyclops packing, there's plenty of evidence Storm sucks at it, too. The Morlocks would no doubt agree, if they hadn't been mostly murdered at the time.)
Storm gets captured by Nanny and the Orphan-Maker, age regressed and eventually meets, ugh, Gambit. Logan has wandered off during all this to handle personal business, and by the time he comes back, the team is gone, because Psylocke has telepathically coerced them into giving up and retreating through the Siege Perilous. Logan gets shredded by Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers, and it's only Radical Teen Jubilee that manages to save him.
You could look at the whole stretch from 200 up to 255 or so as part of theme on how people react to constant high-levels of stress, with the answer apparently being, "badly". The X-Men are hurt and hounded and just trying to keep themselves together and find someplace safe for a while. So they hide away in the middle of nowhere, cut off all contact with anyone close to them, abandon any pretense of teaching or guiding the next generation of mutants (and I don't think X-Factor was doing much of that by this point, either), in favor of focusing on hitting back. The Australian era X-Men are almost a proto-X-Force, minus the pouches and firearms.
Marc Silvestri remains the primary series artist up to about the time the team falls apart entirely. His works gets a bit stronger as he goes along, cuts out some of the excess cross-hatching and shading. But he seems able to handle the quieter or lighter moments better. It helps Claremont is occasionally able to go silent and let the art tell the story.
After the team shatters, we're into the Jim Lee era, baby! Psylocke body-swapped into an Asian ninja lady to be an assassin for the Mandarin, plus Jubilee wearing an outfit deliberately reminiscent of Robin's, while Wolverine talks to psychic phantoms of Carol Danvers and Nick Fury (weird Acts of Vengeance tie-in, to be sure)! Rogue running around in the Savage Land in relatively little! Gambit! Er, well, you know, it's a mixed bag.
5 comments:
Who is that in the foreground? It looks like Carol's Warbird costume, but that's not her hairstyle, and the caption suggests it's Rogue.
I know the two characters are tied up in each other, because Carol's backstory isn't complicated enough, and I never really followed the X-Men so I'm sketchy on details, but did Rogue wear that costume or is it some sort of projection of Carol? Or did the costume originate with Rogue?
Or, as is more likely, have I just misread the image?
You're reading it right. The Carol psyche had taken control of Rogue's body again and gone to Boston with Psylocke to pick up some stuff from Carol's old apartment, including the costume. Master Mold reactivated, so Carol threw the costume on to try and fight it, although by that point up there, she'd already been hit hard enough for Rogue to re-emerge. Rogue was not a fan of the costume, but it's funny Claremont writes it as her simply thinking it looks ugly - she calls it a "rag" - rather than it bringing back ugly memories of how she ended up with Carol in her head or anything like that.
Crikey, what a mess Carol's backstory is. I was going to ask what was going on with Carol herself while "Carol" was stuck in Rogue's head, but I thought I'd save you the trouble and look it up myself, and well, I'm not sure I'm any more clear about what was happening there. Wow.
I know when Lilandra and the Starjammers took Xavier into space in UXM #200, Carol was hanging around them with the Binary powers, but I don't know if that was still the case by this point.
Although I definitely don't know what Claremont was going for when Rogue being sucked through the Siege Perilous somehow separated her and the Carol in her mind into separate bodies, but they shared life force and strength or something.
I'm only vaguely aware of what Carol's up to these days. Didn't they make it so one of her ancestors is Kree and that's part of why she got powers?
I haven't been following Marvel since somewhere just before Secret Invasion, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd added even more complication to her origin.
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