Capital Crimes

“Capital Crimes”
Uncanny X-Men #272 (1990)
Written by Chris Claremont
Pencils by Jim Lee
Inks by Scott Williams

“Capital Crimes” is the seventh issue of the nine-part “X-Tinction Agenda” storyline that ran through Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants in the fall of 1990. It’s a very frustrating story in that the Uncanny X-Men issues, written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Jim Lee at the pinnacle of their talents, are as exciting and visually thrilling as superhero comics get, while the remainder of the story is largely incoherent and unattractive. Louise Simonson, who wrote the New Mutants and X-Factor issues, doesn’t seem especially inspired but is as at a massive disadvantage in that her artists are nowhere near as exciting as Jim Lee. Two of her three New Mutants issues are illustrated by a young Rob Liefeld who is obviously scrambling to meet deadlines while inkers like Joe Rubinstein wipe out nearly all traces of his ridiculous charm, leaving only messy, ugly pages. (The third is drawn by a total rando doing a fill-in issue.) Her X-Factor issues are illustrated by Jon Bogdanove, who would be fine enough in other contexts but whose lumpy linework looks extremely drab and old-fashioned in contrast with Lee’s dynamic and densely rendered pages. Flipping through a collection of “X-Tinction Agenda” today is jarring, but does adequately emphasize how original and exciting Lee’s art was at the time. It’s somewhat comparable to the roughly concurrent seismic impact that Mariah Carey, Garth Brooks, N.W.A., and Nirvana had on their respective genres in music. 

At the time of “X-Tinction Agenda,” Chris Claremont had been writing Uncanny X-Men and most of the spin-off titles for 16 years, and had worked with some of the best illustrators in the history of the medium – Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Paul Smith, John Romita Jr, Barry Windsor-Smith, Arthur Adams, Bill Sienkiewicz, Marc Silvestri, Alan Davis, John Buscema – and had learned how to write to make the most of their respective styles. Claremont very quickly learned how to best utilize Lee and capitalized on his skill for drawing sexy, idealized bodies and the sort of action scenes that made most blockbuster movies look bland by comparison. “Capital Crimes,” in which the reunited X-characters escape captivity in the fascist slave state of Genosha, is basically a string of “FUCK YEAH!!!” hero moments executed with precision and grace by Claremont and Lee. 

The story doesn’t just pay off on the events of the story thus far, but gives readers moments they’d been hoping to see for years, like Wolverine fighting the newly dark and blade-winged Archangel, or Cyclops reasserting his role as the leader of the X-Men. A lot of the most thrilling bits are character-defining moments for new members like Gambit and Cable, and in the case of the recently transformed Psylocke, character-redefining as she takes on a full-on action hero role as a psychic ninja with a machine gun. 

My favorite element of this story is the villain, Cameron Hodge. Hodge started off as a supporting character in X-Factor but was gradually revealed as a crazed anti-mutant maniac with a militia called The Right over the course of Simonson’s runs on X-Factor and New Mutants. At this point, he was barely human – just a head attached to an enormous grotesque mecha-scorpion with robotic tentacles, spikes, guns. As illustrated by Lee, it’s one of the most memorable and terrifying character designs of the era. There’s never any adequate explanation of how Hodge became attached to this vast killing machine, or even how he ended up in a position of great power in Genosha, but it hardly matters. Claremont essentially writes Hodge as a completely unhinged version of George H.W. Bush. He’s lost all connection to his humanity, and is little more than a gleefully sadistic maniac with a psychotic grudge against all X-people, but especially his old rival, Archangel. 

Claremont clearly loves writing Hodge’s over-the-top dialogue (“♫What a day, what a day for an auto-de-fé♫”), and Lee obviously delights in the creepy spectacle of his mechanical body. It makes no sense at all that while Hodge has appeared in subsequent stories, he’s only appeared once more in this form, basically as a mini-boss in the late-‘00s crossover “Second Coming.” This should be one of the definitive recurring X-Men villains, and yet. It’s hard to understand why many artists wouldn’t leap at the chance to draw this version of Hodge, but then again, attempting to compete with what Lee accomplished with the character in these issues seems very difficult and the other art in the crossover demonstrates just how badly you can look in comparison.