The Red Coronation

“I’m On A Boat” / “The Red Coronation” / “The Bishop In Black” / 
“The Red Bishop” / “A Time to Sow” / “A Time to Reap” / “From Emma, With Love”
Marauders #1-7
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Matteo Lolli, Lucas Wernick, Michele Bandini, and Stefano Caselli
Color art by Federico Blee with Erick Arciniega and Edgar Delgado

Marauders is a peculiar series, both the most radical of the new Dawn of X series in concept and the most traditional in its storytelling. Gerry Duggan is enthusiastically exploring the possibilities of the new ideas Jonathan Hickman introduced in House of X/Powers of X – the issues of trade and diplomacy that come from both Krakoan sovereignty and the miracle drugs that drive its economy, the rebranding of the Hellfire Club as the Hellfire Trading Company, the quirks of Krakoan gates, the utility of the resurrection protocols – and is doing it, in of all things, a pirate comic. I was initially wary of the clean, direct “house style” art and emphasis on humor and action/adventure, but seven issues into the series it’s clear to me that Duggan is playing to his strengths as a writer while taking Hickman’s concepts very seriously. 

This is an ensemble series, but the star is clearly Kitty Pryde. Pryde, who now wishes to be called Kate rather than Kitty, is mysteriously unable to pass through the Krakoan gates and can only get to the living island by boat. In the first issue Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, offers Pryde a seat on the Quiet Council of Krakoa in exchange for becoming the Red Queen of the Hellfire Club and heading up both the distribution of Krakoan drugs and missions to rescue mutants around the world who cannot find a way to Krakoa. Pryde is accompanied by her close friends Iceman and Storm, the mutant cop Bishop, and the newly resurrected and reformed villain Pyro. Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club, is the book’s primary antagonist and is actively scheming against Frost and Pryde. 

Each lead character in Marauders gets some fun moments, but it’s pretty obvious that Duggan is invested in Pryde above all else, and is doing what he can to push the character forward after a few decades of stagnation. The usual problem with the depiction of Pryde is that she’s often written in an overtly nostalgic way by authors who grew up in the early 80s, and that she’s frequently presented as a moralist scold. The latter bit doesn’t have to be a bad thing – it is a legitimate personality flaw that’s been with her since the beginning and it can be genuinely interesting – but Duggan seems rather pointed in steering clear of all that and emphasizing the ways she’s become willing to make ethical compromises. Duggan’s Kate Pryde comes across as a young woman who is so sick of her usual goody-goody patterns that she’s becoming reckless in search of a new identity – she’s more ruthlessly violent, drinking heavily, getting tattoos, and leaning hard into the whole pirate aesthetic. She also seems very depressed and lonely, and I trust Duggan to dig deeper into that as he goes along. 

It doesn’t always work, particularly in the first few issues. There’s a text page in the debut issue in which Wolverine sends a message to Kate asking for a list of goods, foods, and beverages to bring to Krakoa that is both wildly unfunny and nonsensical given that he’s a person who can freely teleport anywhere he wants, and she’s a person who is stuck taking long boat rides everywhere. Duggan fumbles some early story beats by delivering things we’ve already accepted as the high concept of the series, such as Pryde becoming the Red Queen, as big issue-ending reveals. Storm, a Quiet Council member and second to only Cyclops in the chain of command of the X-Men, doesn’t quite make sense as a subordinate supporting character in this series despite her close relationship with Pryde and only seems to be in the book because Duggan called dibs on her very early. 

Duggan’s greatest strength in writing Marauders is that while the circumstances of the story are exploring new ground, the relationships and motives of the characters are firmly rooted in continuity without getting bogged down in rehashing old stories. Frost and Pryde, introduced in the same issue back in the Claremont/Byrne era, have a long and complicated history together, and Duggan pushes them into a new phase of mutual respect and collaboration after too often being written as petty rivals who cruelly condescend to one another. Storm and Iceman are two of Pryde’s closest friends in the X-Men, but are also two people who’ve had very painful histories with Emma Frost. When Callisto is reintroduced in the seventh issue, Duggan gracefully acknowledges her contentious relationship with Storm, her past with the Morlocks, and her brief career as a model. I particularly like when Callisto shows a grudging respect for Pryde taking the name of the Marauders, the kill crew who slaughtered the Morlocks and nearly ended Pryde’s life in the “Mutant Massacre.”

Marauders has been illustrated by four different artists in the span of seven issues, and while they’ve all been somewhat bland and functional, they’ve all matched up stylistically so the series at least has a consistent visual aesthetic. It feels somewhat churlish to complain about the strong draftsmanship of Matteo Lolli, Lucas Wernick, Michele Bandini, and Stefano Caselli, but I do wish they had a bit more flair. They’re not exactly miscast for the tone or subject matter of the book, and Lolli is particularly good at drawing some of Duggan’s most imaginative action sequences, but it looks like it could be any mid-list Marvel book as opposed to what is effectively one of the flagships of the newly ascendant X-Men franchise. I just wish it looked more fresh. 

All told, I’m glad I held off in writing about this series because it’s been better with each passing issue, with Duggan deepening his characterization and steadily heightening the stakes. He’s even managed to make Jason Aaron’s Hellfire Kids characters from his dreadfully goofy Wolverine and the X-Men run a worthwhile set of antagonists in this, which is borderline miraculous. (That said, why does he take these awful little kids more seriously than Donald Pierce, a character who was presented as one of the more unhinged and terrifying villains of Chris Claremont’s original run?) But despite minor quibbles, I feel like Duggan is headed in the right direction and am grateful for his efforts in evolving Kate Pryde as a character. 

Lifedeath

“Lifedeath”
Uncanny X-Men #186 (1984)
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Barry Windsor-Smith

It’s pretty obvious that Storm was Chris Claremont’s favorite character. She, along with Wolverine, is the consistent center of the cast through his original 17-year run, and the character he gives the richest and most complex inner life. Claremont’s Storm is a woman of many contradictions – goddess and street urchin, compassionate idealist and ruthless revolutionary, leader and rebel. She’s proud and has an incredibly strong will, and most stories that focus on her are about an antagonist attempting – an ultimately failing – to dominate and control her. 

Storm’s original role in the X-Men leaned mostly on her “goddess” role. She was mostly a noble and serene presence – more emotional and instinctive in her leadership than the more cerebral and meticulously strategic Cyclops, more exotic and unknowable than her “girl next door” best friend Jean Grey, and connected to the natural world in a far more beautiful and spiritual way than the brutal and bestial Wolverine. Storm’s story becomes more complicated and interesting during Paul Smith’s run as artist in 1982 starting with her taking control of the underground society of mutant outcasts called the Morlocks after defeating their butch Patti Smith-esque punk leader Callisto in a knife fight, and having a brief lesbian fling with the Japanese thief Yukio while the X-Men are in Tokyo. (That’s not explicitly stated in the text, by the way, but come on.) She debuts her classic mohawk look at the end of that story, giving herself a punk makeover to reflect her emerging wild side. 

Storm was directly inspired to embrace the new look by interacting with Yukio and realizing how much she wanted to be like her. “I envy you your madness, Yukio,” she says in Uncanny #172. “It is a luxury denied me ever since my powers first appeared. My safety, and that of those around me, requires an inner serenity – an absolute harmony with the world itself – I have lost lately.” At this point in the story, Storm is learning to embrace her emotions and trust that her instincts will keep her from unleashing major ecological collateral damage. 

Over the next dozen or so issues, Storm struggles with this and with how other characters respond to her emotional growth. Kitty Pryde, always a harshly judgmental figure in X-lore, is particularly hard on Storm for having the nerve to be something other than the calm maternal figure she had come to love. In Uncanny #180, Storm confronts Kitty and addresses this conflict, with the adolescent Kitty countering Storm’s need to grow and change by petulantly declaring “Some things shouldn’t change, they should be constant!” Kitty comes around to accepting Storm’s tearful explanation of her adult need to find her true self and in doing so learn things about herself she might not like. Storm’s speech to Kitty in this issue reads a lot like someone explaining why they had to come out of the closet. 

All of this is setting the table for Uncanny #186, a special issue illustrated by guest artist Barry Windsor-Smith in which Storm deals with the immediate aftermath of losing her elemental powers and sense of sense of self. After making progress in her quest to balance her emotions and powers, the rug is pulled out from under her when she’s accidentally hit with a shot from a gun that neutralizes mutant powers that was intended for the fugitive Rogue. In this story, “Lifedeath,” she’s recovering in the home of the mutant inventor Forge, who she does not realize is the man who, on behalf of the U.S. government, created the weapon that robbed her of her gifts. 

“Lifedeath” is subtitled “a love story” on the cover of the issue, and is a very peculiar sort of romance. The majority of the issue is about Storm and Forge getting to know each other while she processes her trauma and is forced to reassess everything she thought she understood about herself. Forge is extremely attracted to her from the start, and she develops a crush on him over the course of the issue. He’s presented as intelligent, philosophical, and somewhat debonair, and lives in an elaborate high rise tricked out with incredible inventions – the most remarkable being a sort of holographic imaging that the can make structural elements appear invisible so furniture and bodies resting on them look as if they’re floating mid-air. 

The two begin to bond when Storm learns that Forge has endured serious trauma in his life and that he lost his right leg in an explosion while serving as a soldier in Vietnam. Over the course of a romantic dinner, she reveals to him that her severe claustrophobia is a result of having to watch her mother die while they were both trapped under rubble from a bomb that leveled their home when she was a small child in Cairo. Neither of them is used to this sort of intimacy, so the intensity of the situation is especially strong. They come close to consummating their attraction to one another, but are interrupted by a call – an in listening in, Storm learns of Forge’s complicity in her loss. Windsor-Smith, one of comics’ greatest draftsmen, nails every emotional beat with exquisite nuance.

Forge attempts to explain himself. He was just following orders and doing his job, of course! When he reveals to Storm that he is also a mutant, it only makes her more disgusted, as it’s clear just how much of a sell-out he is. Storm tells him off in rather brutal terms at the climax of the issue – “You live in your high tower – untouched, untouchable – surrounded by illusion, so terrified of the real, living world you cannot bear to violate the sanctity of your space with something as small as a flower. Your home is a true reflection of its creator: Cold, cruel, sterile, and ultimately, a deception.” Forge gets defensive, but it’s a waste of his time. Storm has, at least for now, made up her mind about him.

This is only the beginning of the Storm and Forge story, which would carry on and off through the next few years of Claremont’s run without ever coalescing into any sort of proper romantic partnership. Forge is Storm’s first major love interest, and for a very long time the only notable romantic pairing in her publication history. (She would eventually be in written into a brief and largely miserable marriage with Black Panther, another cold and emotionally stunted inventor/genius type.)

Forge is a very inspired romantic foil for Storm – it’s very easy to understand the reasons she would be attracted to him, but the intersection of his power and personality make him a potent metaphor for a particular sort of disappointing man. He has the power to create literally anything he can imagine, but he’s so damaged and lacking in imagination that he mostly squanders his gifts on flashy home decor and creating weapons. Storm is correct – his need to isolate himself makes him quite selfish, and that keeps him from doing real good for the world. He eventually becomes a member of the X-Men, but he never fulfills his potential in that capacity either. One way or another, he always reverts to form as an aloof government stooge who mostly just builds weapons that inflict the same sort of damage unto others as he experienced in Vietnam.