Uncanny X-Men 137 (published in 1980) is the conclusion of one of the greatest comics runs in the history of the artform - but is marred by some of the stupidest plot devices in the history and prehistory of human writing. (I don't know, perhaps if ants were to do creative writing they could do something dumber; but so far as we are talking homini sapientes, this is about as bad as it gets.) Point one: Emperess Lilandra, ruler of a cosmic superpower, in command of a numerous and powerful super-powered "guard" several of whom are of Superman level, becomes aware that a super-powered woman friend of her own lover, Professor X, has gone mad and destroyed a planet, and that she is a threat to all life. Right. Suppose you or I, not to involve anyone really clever, were in the same position, what would we do? That's a no-brainer: we would obviously send a stealth squad to terminate this person with extreme prejudice, telling as few people as possible, and giving her no chance at all. She has to go down; everything else is secondary. So what does Lilandra do? Summon this person and all her friends - including her own fiance' - put on a parody of a trial that she intends to win no matter what (to embitter him further, isn't that clever?) and eventually puts on a kind of duel between her super-powered followers and his, which the opposition might conceivably win. And that would not even be the worst-case scenario: the worst-case scenario would be the Phoenix going mad again, which puncturally happens!
Lilandra and her people having proved to share the collective IQ of a four-slice toaster, the X-Men then go on to prove that theirs is two-slice. You are on alien, uncharted territory, one of your members under sentence of death, and being stalked by super-powered enemies who seek her life. What do you do? What the supposedly competent X-Men field leader Cyclops does is break the team in two and send them on the offensive, hunting for the hunters. Such an asinine strategy gets the exact reward it deserves - total humiliating disaster.
We should bear in mind that for the great Phoenix continuity to have its proper tragic ending, nothing is really necessary except her final suicide. That is rightly there (no thanks to writer Chris Claremont, who wanted to "redeem" the mass murderess Jean Grey and had to be ordered by editor Jim Shooter to change the ending) and means that, in spite of the idiocy of the previous few pages, the final impact of the story is tremendous. But the point is that, as a writer, you can get to that suicide any way you want. Chris Claremont chose the worst imaginable; whether this was a conscious or unconscious rebellion against Shooter's orders, or an ugly foreshadowing of the coming self-inflicted ruin of his talent, or both, I don't know, but it is a piece of self-inflicted damage that did not need to be there, at the climax of an immensely influential and rightly admired piece of work.
For a yet stupider ruination of a yet greater work of art, see Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet. Most of the film is interesting and beautiful to watch, but the final scenes are insane. Fortinbras is shown to be marching against Denmark - in the face of the actual script, and making nonsense of the whole struggle going on at the Danish court - and Branagh kills Claudius with a ridiculous Tarzan-swing across the dance floor, hanging, if I remember right, on a curtain. This is pure jealousy: Branagh filmed Hamlet because Lawrence Olivier had filmed Hamlet, and Olivier's beautiful movie had a terrifying climax when Olivier jumped at the Claudius character, sword in hand, from an upper walkway, and ran him through. Branagh tried to do something even more spectacular - and made a fool of himself and a mess of Shakespeare.
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Lilandra and her people having proved to share the collective IQ of a four-slice toaster, the X-Men then go on to prove that theirs is two-slice. You are on alien, uncharted territory, one of your members under sentence of death, and being stalked by super-powered enemies who seek her life. What do you do? What the supposedly competent X-Men field leader Cyclops does is break the team in two and send them on the offensive, hunting for the hunters. Such an asinine strategy gets the exact reward it deserves - total humiliating disaster.
We should bear in mind that for the great Phoenix continuity to have its proper tragic ending, nothing is really necessary except her final suicide. That is rightly there (no thanks to writer Chris Claremont, who wanted to "redeem" the mass murderess Jean Grey and had to be ordered by editor Jim Shooter to change the ending) and means that, in spite of the idiocy of the previous few pages, the final impact of the story is tremendous. But the point is that, as a writer, you can get to that suicide any way you want. Chris Claremont chose the worst imaginable; whether this was a conscious or unconscious rebellion against Shooter's orders, or an ugly foreshadowing of the coming self-inflicted ruin of his talent, or both, I don't know, but it is a piece of self-inflicted damage that did not need to be there, at the climax of an immensely influential and rightly admired piece of work.
For a yet stupider ruination of a yet greater work of art, see Kenneth Branagh's version of Hamlet. Most of the film is interesting and beautiful to watch, but the final scenes are insane. Fortinbras is shown to be marching against Denmark - in the face of the actual script, and making nonsense of the whole struggle going on at the Danish court - and Branagh kills Claudius with a ridiculous Tarzan-swing across the dance floor, hanging, if I remember right, on a curtain. This is pure jealousy: Branagh filmed Hamlet because Lawrence Olivier had filmed Hamlet, and Olivier's beautiful movie had a terrifying climax when Olivier jumped at the Claudius character, sword in hand, from an upper walkway, and ran him through. Branagh tried to do something even more spectacular - and made a fool of himself and a mess of Shakespeare.