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Uncanny X-Men # 428
"How Did I Get Here?"
The Draco, Prelude |
Rating:
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Writer:
Chuck Austen
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Penciller:
Sean Phillips
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Key Events
- The beginning of an arc telling Kurt's origin
- First appearance of Azazel, revealed to be Kurt's father
Questions Raised
- What is Azazel? A mutant or demon?
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Inker:
-
| Colours:
Dave McCaig |
Letterer:
Rus Wooten
| Editor:
Mike Marts |
EIC:
Joe Quesada
| Date:
October 2003 |
| Featuring:
Mystique |
| Versus:
A mob of stereotypicaly angry torch-wielding peasants |
Quick Synopsis:
The story of Kurt's origin begins with this prologue. Mystique's husband, Baron Wagner, is unable to give her the child that she so desperately wants. When she meets the charming and handsome Azazel, ruler of "La Isla des Demonas", she falls in love with him and becomes pregnant. Once Azazel finds out, he abandons her. Once the baby is born, looking as demonic as Azazel's true form, Mystique becomes hunted by the villagers of the town and she throws baby Kurt off of a cliff to save herself.
Full Synopsis:
As the issue opens, it declares that the story is set in Germany, "twenty years ago". Ignore the time frame, it's been publicly recanted as an editorial error. A maid named Katsche has made a surprise visit to another member of the staff, and while he's in shock that she's suddenly paying attention to him, he's not complaining. She invites him to come up to her room tonight after dark for more "attention" and returns to the main house. As soon as she's safely in the kitchen, she starts laughing almost uncontrollably, and we see that it's really Mystique. The real Katsche enters the room, and screams when she sees Raven's true form, but in the next instant Raven is back in her Lady Wagner persona and dismissing what Katsche saw as a trick of the light or something. She verifies that Katsche will be in her room tonight; "Just curious," she says with an evil smile.
Later that night, Baron Wagner tells Raven that the doctors have confirmed that Raven can have children, so their inability to do so must be his fault. In bed later, they are awoken by the sounds of the male servant from earlier coming into Katsche's room. She's obviously not pleased to see him, and Mystique laughs and laughs and laughs ...
The Wagners are moving to in vitro fertilization. The doctor says that it looks promising, but Raven is unwilling to leave it at that and is sleeping around town. We next see that the process didn't take, and they vow to keep trying.
Some indeterminate time later, the Wagners are hosting a party, and the Baron introduces his wife to Azazel, "the ruler of an island nation off the cost of Bermuda, La Isla des Demonas". The two hit it off at the party, and we next see them riding horses together, discussing her anability to conceive a child with the Baron. Azazel says that he will never be able to give her a child, claiming that "The Baron is the past. You are the future." She next meets him at a church and he convinces her to undress completely, including revealing her true form. She does so and they make love in the church.
More unspecified time passes, and Mystique, in her true form, stands on the edge of a cliff and shouts "I am in LOVE!" There is a familiar "Bamf!" sound, and Azazel appears, hidden in the shadow of a nearby tree. His appearance has also changed; his skin has a reddish tint, and he has a pointed tail and three-fingered hands. Raven tells him that she's pregnant, and Azazel asks what the Baron thinks, but she doesn't care because she doesn't love the Baron. She says that she had hoped he would be pleased, and he replies that he is, "but not for the reasons you want me to be." He tells her to go back to the Baron and raise the child as his before teleporting away.
Next, a now very pregnant Raven is lying In bed with the Baron, who nervously insists that they give the child a paternity test, just to be sure. Mystique's response is to pull dagger from under her pillow. On the next page, we see her unceremoniously dragging a body outside and burying it.
Some time later, Raven is in labour, Katsche assisting the doctor. Kurt is finally born, all blue and furry and pretty cute, really. Katsche freaks out, screaming "Child of Satan!" The doctor is quite rational, considering, although he does think to himself that it would probably be merciful to smother the child rather than allow him to receive that sort of reaction his entire life. Raven asks what's wrong with the baby, but her concentration has lapsed and she's shifted to her natural state. Katsche freaks out even more, and says that Mystique is a demoness.
At night, presumably the same day as Kurt's birth, Mystique flees with the baby from An Angry Mob™, cursing Azazel's name. She makes the decision to create a new identity, and drops Kurt over the cliff. She either doesn't notice or doesn't care when the baby is "Bamf!"ed away.
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Review:
At first glance, this looks to be a pretty good issue. And I suppose when compared to the last one, it is. But as soon as I step back and breathe a hearty sigh of relief that Mystique didn't lament on every other page about how she'd like to get naked with someone, I came to realize that she didn't need to because she was doing it for real.
Not that a certain ... promiscuity is necessarily out of character for Mystique. She's always been about her wants and needs above all else. But when you stop for a moment to consider the wants and needs being presented in this issue, things just don't add up. And when they stop adding up, the story begins to crumble around the edges.
It seems that what Raven wants more than anything else is a child. She tries repeatedly with her husband, Baron Wagner, but he's unable to give her one. So she instead turns to just about anyone she can possibly find in order to conceive. Which brings us to the first fatal flaw: We are never told why Mystique wants this child so badly, and there's nothing in current canon that I can draw upon to fill in the blanks. We know that she gave birth to, and abandoned, Greydon. We know that she gave birth to, and abandoned, Kurt. We also know that she later came to adopt Rogue. Why discard her two natural children in favour of a runaway? This is certainly a large, looming grey area that could be explored, and perhaps will be within the course of this storyline, however there's no indication as such to be found in the pages of the prologue. Instead, when you do a little bit of digging, you find that the motivation for this issue reads much like the seven or so that have preceded it: characters are being forced into taking specific actions at metaphorical gunpoint to fulfill the needs of a story that doesn't want to be told in any sort of natural way.
I found Mystique's character in general to be very "off" in this issue though. Raven runs the gamut from sniggering troublemaker to full-blown raving psychotic to proclaiming her love to the world and a million places in between. While Raven is indeed many of these things (with the glaring exception of feeling the need to shout "I am in LOVE!" -- a ridiculous notion at best with someone she's only just met, even if you discount Destiny, which I find impossible to do), there is, at least, room to breath between them all. Unfortunately this singular issue simply doesn't have the room to show any one scene with any great depth, so we're left with a washed-out hyper-speed slide show that fails to convince me that what I'm seeing is either believable or interesting. I mean, we go from a page where Mystique brutally and almost impulsively kills her husband, the Baron of the castle, to the scene where she's giving birth to Kurt. Was there any repercussion for this act? How did Raven manage to explain it away? Did anybody even notice that the lord of the manor had up and vanished? We'll never know, because the entire idea of the Baron is dropped the second Mystique goes back to bed after burying him in the yard. This is, quite simply, a ludicrous notion, but we're expected to just forget about it like the entire cast of this issue.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple, but I do think that the presence, and subsequent exit of Baron Wagner is a perfect example of what I think are Austen's greatest shortcomings on this title. The Baron had a role to play. He gives Kurt his last name. We'll have to ignore the obvious question of how Kurt even gets that last name -- given that he was not sired by Herr Wagner, thus looks nothing like him, and that he was abandoned by his mother within hours of his birth, there's no apparently logical way for Kurt to even be associated with Wagner. Regardless, the Baron has a role to play, so there he is. But the Baron also stands in the way of Austen's true goal, which is to have Kurt's father be Azazel. So rather than work around the presence of the Baron, or weave it into the meat of the story, Austen takes the shortest path between two points and simply kills the poor bugger. And then, the Baron's purpose served, he's promptly forgotten about in the hopes that we won't ask too many questions.
I think this is Austen's biggest weakness on Uncanny (I don't read anything else by him, so I can't say if this is a universal problem or simply specific to the book). It's all about the shortest path to the goal. Austen wants Nightcrawler to not be a priest anymore, thus "Holy War" is born. Austen wants Alex and Annie to be a cemented couple, so he has them psychically date off-panel while Alex is in a coma. Austen's Uncanny isn't about the journey, it's about the destination. But unfortunately, good stories are about so much more than that. Yes, the destination is important, but it's the journey that makes it worthwhile. I have no idea if Austen's writing this way due to his own personal choices or editiorial pressure/influence, but whoever is responsible needs to be beaten severely with a stick and put in the corner until they learn their lesson.
Back to this specific issue, I have to say that I'm also exceedingly disappointed in Kurt's true father. Not the fact that it appears Kurt is really descended from demons (although note that I am, in fact, displeased by this), but the fact that Austen felt we were all a little too dumb to get a subtle inference to the fact. As a result, he makes damn sure that you don't miss what he's trying to say. The guy's name is Azazel, he's the ruler of "La Isla des Demonas", he's devilishly charming (pun intended), and his hair is styled to resemble horns. He even has the streotypical pointy goatee. And then, just in case you missed the satan tie-in, Azazel's true form has a reddish tint, complete with Kurt's pointy tail and three-fingered cloven-hoof-esque hands. You won't just get the symbolism, you'll be bludgeoned over the head with it until you scream for mercy. I have a tendency to resent an author dumbing things down for his audience. It's infuriatingly patronizing. But it's especially grating when this is the same man who has thus far shown that his deepest moments in Uncanny deal with remote control communion wafers and graveside booty calls.
So does this mean that Azazel is a demon? No, not necessarily. I concede that I'm jumping to conclusions, but frankly, Austen hasn't exactly built up a surplus of confidence in my eyes to the point where I'm willing to believe we're being given a red herring. If it looks like a looks like a demon and sounds like a demon, then it's probably a demon. This seems, to me, to be unnecessarily clouding Nightcrawler's past. Honestly though, my doubts aside, I'm holding out on making a decision about whether this was a revelation for the good or ill until I read more. I'd dearly love to be proven overly cynical and have this arc just blow me away.
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Quotes:
- Mystique: I love you.
Azazel: Fascinating. I wouldn't have thought you capable of such an emotion.
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