Ok so I don't normally write epic stories about pieces of art I own. Mainly because I figure people are here to look at the art. This page (and 40) are an exception.
First let me say, I LOVE character pages. I love seeing characters develop, their back-stories, their relationships. I couldn't care less about the super-duper-action-packed-in-your-face action shot or cover- if it doesn't add to the story I have a hard time caring. I'll take a nice character page over a splash/ cover/ pin-up ANY day of the week and lucky for me it seems I am in the minority and so manage to get some (imho) true gems.
Enter Roger Clark and his update. He posted 4 pages from X-Men Unlimited 4 and they just put the hugest grin on my face. And then paranoia struck... what if the pages I want are already sold?! The page views were still low but you know how some people have extremely fast trigger fingers (I am looking at you Conny!). I know it's just art and I know there are more important things in life... but man I didn't sleep well at all that night.
Looking at these pages half of you are probably wondering what the heck the fuss is about. I'll tell you.
When I started reading comics at in the early 90's (I was around 12 or 13) I pretty much read X-Men and Excalibur because my favorite characters happened to be Nightcrawler and Rogue, with Mystique being my favorite villain (yeah back then she was actually still a villain and damn cool to boot). I was always fascinated by the relationship that Rogue and Mystique had. I ended up buying back issues of Rogue's first appearance, her joining the X-Men and all that for rather steep prices. You gotta remember this was the '90's. Millions of special editions and massive speculation on comics. Pocket money only goes so far. I also nearly bought Giant Sized X-Men 1 for the Nightcrawler first appearance but the prices were beyond me (and then they reprinted it!). Anyway, I also always wondered about the relationship between Nightcrawler and Mystique, both being blue and all. Stuff was always hinted at but never really established as far as I knew.
So one day in the comic shop, I saw the cover to X-Men Unlimited 4 (I loved that series btw) I was rather stoked. Rogue, Nightcrawler AND Mystique in the same book was just cool.
This issue, written by Scott Lobdell with art by Richard Bennett and Steve Moncuse, firmly established the relationship between the three characters. Nightcrawler was in fact Mystique's son, making Rogue his half sister (or step sister? whatever! family!). Which was just the coolest thing to me.
Now I stopped reading regular X-Men books in 2000 because I I got tired of millions of cross-overs. I only read Ultimate X-Men (which I loved) so I have no idea what happened to the whole Nightcrawler/ Rogue/ Mystique storyline. Plus Nightcrawler seems to be dead (getting a hand stuck through the chest is just a shitty and stupid way to die imho even if he saved someone) and Mystique isn't a villain anymore? I have no idea what Rogue is currently doing, leading an X-Team? No clue. My reading tasted changed but I do remember the characters fondly. Nightcrawler still rocks the world, dead or not.
Regardless, I am sure other people have fond memories of The Dark Knight or Watchmen or -insert cool comic here- but I am a 90's kid. So this story as silly as some of it is, is my personal Dark Knight. And I am extremely stoked that I own (one of) the Rogue origin pages and a page of Nightcrawler's back-story I can't stop grinning. There's a few more pages from this book that I would love to own but you know... if I never come across them, these two will work just perfectly!
Thanks a bunch to Roger Clark for these!
Oh and... dialog on the page! Yeeeesssss!! I am a sucker for dialog on pages.
