The Truth about Fall of Mutants/Mutant Massacre/Alan Moore

[Frank]

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...comment-826220

...However, soon before Uncanny X-Men #200 came out, Marvel, in their American Doctor Who comic, did two issues that reprinted stories Alan Moore had written in England.

Marvel, at the time, did not have any deal in place where you would be paid royalties for foreign reprints.

Moore, as you might imagine, was outraged. Marvel had not asked him for permission and they had not paid him. So when he then found out that Chris Claremont was planning on doing a major X-Men storyline involving his characters from his Marvel UK work, well, he was even angrier, and any chance he had of reconciling with Marvel over the reprint issue (they stopped reprinting his stories when he complained) was pretty much dead.

Now, legally, could Marvel still have gone forward with using the characters Moore had either created or developed? UK copyright law is different from US copyright law, and things were a bit sketchy but honestly? Probably. But as we have seen many times over the years, comic book companies tend to lean towards the side of being conservative about this stuff. So Marvel’s lawyers recommended just dropping any plots involving Moore’s characters.

When Claremont found out about the controversy (obviously, he did not know that Moore was mad when he began using Jaspers, as obviously Claremont planned on using the characters as more or less a TRIBUTE to Moore) he quickly re-wrote the stories he had planned, which was going to be basically a two-year (or so) storyline. Everything happened as planned for the next few issues (which makes sense, as obviously by the time Claremont even LEARNED about the problem, the issues were already being produced), including Rachel Summers leaving the book.

But soon Claremont’s original plans diverged from what happened in the comic. The original plan involved Nimrod merging with the Fury to form an astonishingly powerful villain. This new villain would wipe out the Morlocks and most of the Hellfire Club. In the various battles with the X-Men, he would also severely wound Nightcrawler. Ultimately, Kitty Pryde would temporarily defeat him by phasing through him, messing with his circuits but the reaction would have left her injured, as well.

Nightcrawler, Kitty, Colossus and Longshot (hot off of his mini-series) would leave the X-Men to go to England where Colossus would serve as a bodyguard of sorts to the recuperating Kurt and Kitty. This, naturally, would lead into a new book called Excalibur.

Jaspers, meanwhile, would team up with Nimrod/Fury, and slowly turn the population of the world against the X-Men. Mutants all over the world would be forced to team up together. Eventually, Forge and Roma would get involved and the Siege Perilous would be used to defeat Jaspers and Nimrod/Fury, but the X-Men would be warped via Jaspers powers so that Claremont could make various changes with the team.

Now, obviously, once you have to remove the Fury and Jaspers, things has to change dramatically. Instead of Nimrod/Fury killing the Morlocks, it became Mister Sinister and the Marauders.

While I enjoyed the Mutant Massacre and the Fall of Mutants with the ultimate fight against The Adversary, I always felt this was disjoncted.

1. The MM, you have the Marauders showing up to kill the Morlocks and you are never given any reasons for it. It's cool to watch but there's no point.

2. In the Fall of Mutants, it's about the Mutant Registration Act yet the X-Men are killed in a battle against a supernatural force called The Adversary. Again it was powerful stuff but it doesn't mean anything.

While if the story based on Alan Moore's characters,

1. Sir James Jaspers, an anti-mutant bigot would have sent the Fury in the tunnels to slaughters the Morlocks. That becomes the Massacre.

2. The Mutant Registration act come into play because of Jaspers and it culmulates in him becoming reality-shaping Mad Jasper and him destroying the X-Men(where they would be reborn later on like it happened against the Adversary. Remember they were killed and reborn because that's what had happened to Captain Britain and Psylocke).

3. Since all these characters are British and were tied to Captain Britain, it leads directly into Excalibur. Hell you could have had Cap being part of these stories before Excalibur.

The whole thing would have felt much more organic, wouldn't you say?

[darknessatnoon]

I hate the Fury and all "Otherworld" characters. Thank goodness Alan Moore put his foot down. The more publicity given to his stories, he realized, the more quickly people would realize the emperor has no clothes.

[Michael P]

Given how tedious, convoluted, and downright lame Claremont's other Captain Britain/alternate reality work has been, it's probably just as well that this never came to pass.

[MartinRedmond]

I never got why all the "hippie" writers hated CC so much instead of hating some establishment, by the numbers, writer instead.

[MartinRedmond]

Given how tedious, convoluted, and downright lame Claremont's other Captain Britain/alternate reality work has been, it's probably just as well that this never came to pass.

Why? He didn't have Brian give his spouse as many black eyes as Moore would've?

[FanboyStranger]

The flip side of this coin is that this coupled with Marvel's threatened lawsuits over the Eclipse edition of Marvelman is what drove the wedge between Moore and Alan Davis.

[NewMutant]

I hate the Fury and all "Otherworld" characters. Thank goodness Alan Moore put his foot down. The more publicity given to his stories, he realized, the more quickly people would realize the emperor has no clothes.

Agreed. I don't even like CB and Meggan.

[darknessatnoon]

I'm pretty impressed with how Claremont improvised. To my mind, those stories were top notch as turned out.

[Shadowkurt]

I'm pretty impressed with how Claremont improvised. To my mind, those stories were top notch as turned out.

I agree. They were high points of his run. However, I do think that the whole thing might have played out even better if he could have gone with his original plan. Now, the Adversary is about as flat a villain as any, and the reason why Sinister had the Morlocks killed remained unclear - until it was explained via retcon ten years later.

By the way, James Jaspers did make an appearance in Claremont's Uncanny X-Men - as the accuser in Magneto's trial, issue #200.

[darknessatnoon]

I agree. They were high points of his run. However, I do think that the whole thing might have played out even better if he could have gone with his original plan. Now, the Adversary is about as flat a villain as any, and the reason why Sinister had the Morlocks killed remained unclear - until it was explained via retcon ten years later.

By the way, James Jaspers did make an appearance in Claremont's Uncanny X-Men - as the accuser in Magneto's trial, issue #200.

I liked the adversary He was an old man who made out with Storm.

Yeah, the article the OP links has scans of the Jasper scenes from 200. I thought they were good comic relief when the issue came out. I'd hate for them to have heavy "plot" attached to them.

[vagg3liz]

I hate the Fury and all "Otherworld" characters. Thank goodness Alan Moore put his foot down. The more publicity given to his stories, he realized, the more quickly people would realize the emperor has no clothes.

Amen to that!!!!!!!

[mattbib]

The actual stories that came out seem, to me at least, much stronger, with much longer-lasting effects on mutantdom and the MU, than what we would have seen if the original plots had made it to print.

[Lacuna]

Alan moore is childish and lame. He was acting like he created spiderman or superman or something. People need to stop puckering up to his ballon knot. Most of his stuff is deconstuctionist garbage. He's a cross between poochie and rob zombie.

WORD x 10.

[Grapeweasel]

When is Alan Moore not outraged?

[Brian "Vash" Ashby]

When is Alan Moore not outraged?

When he's attacking the medium that, somehow, made him famous, even though talented writers did all his stuff before him