Uncanny X-Men #183 (July 1984)

Alright, here's a confession... I am NOT a fan of Chris Claremont's almost universally lauded Uncanny X-Men run... His dialogue never managed to grab me and he always seemed to need a plucky female(usually a teenager) to lean on in pretty much anything he wrote. Since I wanted to do a Retro Review on an issue of Uncanny X-Men, and I didn't want ALL of my Retro Reviews to be from the 90's or 2000's, I pretty much HAD to take on an issue from Claremont's Uncanny run. And as luck would have it? It was ALLLL about Kitty Pryde, my least favorite X-Men member, and Claremont's favorite crutch.

Uncanny X-Men #183:

Summary: This issue opens with Colossus telling Kitty Pryde that he had fallen in love with somebody else during the X-Men's time in Marvel's Secret Wars. Colossus is sad and gloomy, while Kitty realizes that it was finally over between her and Colossus since she couldn't compete with the memory of a dead woman. Kitty goes to her room and cries about things, while Wolverine(in the role of Chris Claremont himself I'd assume) decides he was going to take Colossus out to a bar to straighten him out for being insensitive to Kitty's feelings... Yes, really. Nightcrawler tags along since he doesn't want to see Wolvie do anything he may regret later. Back at X-Mansion, Storm goes to Kitty's room to speak to her about her troubles with Colossus, and discovers that Kitty was leaving the X-Men for a while, since she needed to get away from Colossus to clear her head. Good riddance, says I! Meanwhile, Wolvie gets Colossus good and drunk before he realizes that Juggernaut was also hanging out at the bar. Not wanting to make a scene, Wolvie tries to get Colossus to head outside with him, but Colossus is a nasty drunk and shoves Wolvie, which ultimately leads to Colossus's drink being spilled on Juggy's head. Juggy responds by shoving Colossus through a wall and that's all it takes for the two to tear into each other. Wolvie holds Nightcrawler back because he wants Colossus to get his ass kicked as retribution for hurting Kitty's feelings. Eventually, Juggy drops the entire building on Colossus, taking the fight out of him. Juggy climbs out of the wreckage and spots Wolvie and Nightcrawler, threatening to beat them up as well. Wolvie tells Juggy that he didn't want any trouble, which leads to Juggy tossing Wolvie a roll of money(?) to give to the owner of the bar so it could be repaired(?!?) before heading off. Colossus climbs out of the rubble and asks why Wolvie didn't lend a hand in the fight, which leads to Wolvie telling Colossus that since Colossus didn't care about Kitty's feelings, Wolvie didn't care about Colossus's feelings... Or something equally idiotic. With that, Wolvie and Nightcrawler leave Colossus sitting in the rubble, ending this issue.

Thoughts: There you go. This issue in a nutshell details my problems with Chris Claremont's run. It completely revolved around Kitty. Even when she wasn't on panel, it was understood that everything was about her. She was to the X-Men what Poochie was to Itchy and Scratchy! When she wasn't on the page everybody was wondering, where's Kitty? How's Kitty doing? What's going to happen to Kitty?? When Kitty wasn't around, Claremont would simply substitute Rachel Summers into the Kitty role. Or Magik. Or Sage. Or to a lesser extent, Rogue. It definitely got tiresome... But enough about that. There was one saving grace in this issue and that would be the bar fight between Colossus and Juggernaut. This comic was drawn by John Romita Jr and he did a great job with the battle of the behemoths here. Watching Juggy tear the bar from the ground and drop it on Colossus is an awesome sight! And to give some credit to Claremont, he wrote a very good Juggernaut. So there was definitely some good in this issue, unfortunately you had to dig through the soap opera that is Kitty Pryde to get to it.

Score: 6 out of 10.Poor Juggy just can't catch a break when it comes to Colossus...