Uncanny X-Men 251
“Fever Dream”
Publisher: Marvel
Published: July 1989
Story: Chris Claremont
Pencils: Marc Silvestri
Inks: Dan Green
Letters: Tom Orzechowski
Colors: Glynis Oliver
Cover: Silvestri and Green

Synopsis

Wolverine is captured by the cyborg Donald Pierce’s Reavers in the Australian Outback, and attached to a cross, hallucinates about his past and possible future.

What’s going on here?

This comic falls in the X-Men’s “Outback Era,” when, following the events of the Fall of the Mutants, they abandoned Xavier’s school in Westchester and went off the grid in Australia. It was an odd period, when Dazzler and Longshot were members, and they traveled via teleportation provided by Gateway, an aboriginal Australian.

This issue, which features an iconic cover by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green, open with Wolverine essentially crucified, and only through confusing flashbacks do we learn that he was captured by the Reavers. The group features the return of a number of Wolverine’s past enemies, including Lady Deathstrike and the Hellfire thugs he ripped apart way back in issue 133 and who have been reassembled into cyborgs. Most of the issue is a series of flashbacks and / or hallucinations as past friends and foes of Wolverine parade past to taunt or console him. The issue ends as he frees himself and joins forces with Jubilee, in one of her earliest appearances.

(Edited to add: Upon reading some other bloggers reviews of this issue, it seems that the appearances of the X-Men, who travel through the Siege Perilous, is not in fact a hallucination but actually happened. As I’ve said, this stuff is confusing as f@ck).

What I liked

This issue features both the best and worst of Chris Claremont’s X-Men writing. On the positive side, he creates a fantastically gripping scenario for his (and most of the readers’) favorite character, and he launches into the story right away. Putting Wolverine in impossible situations and having him (literally) claw his way out is a Claremont specialty and this is a prime example. Silvestri isn’t my favorite X-artist, but he does a great job here. Oliver’s colors are noticeably atmospheric and moody, too.

What I didn’t like

The flip side of Claremont deep immersion into his characters is his relentless plumbing of their psyches, and his unraveling of their reality through mental manipulation, sorcery or in this case, hallucinations. It’s almost always confusing, over-the-top and tedious. It’s such a part of his legendary, 15-year run that it’s hard to imagine his X-Men without all the psychodrama, and yet as a reader it felt like it was the price we had to endure to get to all the cool stuff.

Another Claremont tic that appears in abundance in UXM 251 is his weird dialogue, where characters seem to be acting in a play instead of , you know, talking to each other. Here’s a classic example of Claremont-ese (featuring a pre-Asian-ninja Psylocke, and Havok):

Overall

A good reminder of what I loved, and couldn’t stand, about the late ’80s X-Men.