Claremont did bring him back (he was prosecutor at the trial of
Magneto) but Alan Moore put a stop to Claremont's plans before he
could go anywhere with the story.
The following was posted on the comics international egroup by Phil
Hall:
Oooh, big can of worms... Now as most people know, Alan fell out with
Marvel over the reprinting of Doctor Who strips in the US Doctor Who
editions. Marvel didn't have a reprint royalties set up and Alan
wasn't happy about this. With the rift there and widening, Chris
Claremont, who was unaware of the political problems brewing,
introduced Sir James Jaspers into Uncanny X-Men #200. His intention
was to slowly have the character infiltrate and eventually have a
Jaspers' Warp in this reality (wasn't it retconned out of regular
existence by Alan Davis? I can't remember) with the X-teams as the
main thrust in the line-spanning story. Alan went (so I've been told)
ballistic over the Jaspers appearance and effectively severed any
chance of a reconcilliation. Now, this is where I get a bit hazy for a
while because while I know what I was told, I'm not sure about the
legal implications: there is apparently a glaring difference between
US and UK copyright laws and Marvel's lawyers allegedly recommended to
Marvel that they basically ignore Moore's creations and story ideas.
The legalise would eventually cost Marvel a lot of money and wasted
time and the upshot was they dumped the X-Men: Jaspers' Warp idea.
An old acquaintance of mine interviewed John Romita Jr in FP
Birmingham back in 1985 or 6 for his fanzine KOOKS and JrJr said that
he was "really looking forward to playing with some of the cool
characters that Alans Moore and Davis had created for the Captain
Britain strip. Now quite amazingly, Claremont had intentions of not
only introducing Jaspers, but also the Fury (which at one point was
firmly on the cards as Alan Davis and Mike Collins had basically
resurrected the Fury in Sid's Story and there was more of a haze
around the characters ownership - Mr C might be able to offer more on
this) and the Special Executive. We all know that the SE became the
Technet, but what happened to the Fury? (More later)
Romita also said that there would be hints and beginnings of subplots
in many of the other Marvel comics, I was out of the loop at the time,
but perhaps others noticed odd things happening in their Marvels
during 1986. I have also heard that Marvel insisted on a reference to
the Jaspers Warp in a post Moore Captain Britain (I think this was
Mike Collins' Sid's Story) and there was also a mention (retconning?)
of the Jaspers' Warp in an early issue of Excalibur (Kylun?) - sorry
it's been ages since I read them and there all in the other loft.
Then Claremont became privy to all the politicking and immediately
rewrote his impending blockbuster and subsequently what Romita hinted
might have been the equivelant of a Marvel Crisis (hot on the heels of
the real one) was laid to rest.
Now, in 1990ish, while I was starting to put what was never my fourth
issue of Mutant Media together, I stumbled across a lot of stuff about
Claremont's and Marvel's plans. I was putting together a column called
something along the lines of Hypotheticals: What might have happened
in Alan Moore's Marvel Universe. Corrin probably has a better memory
than me, I haven't got an issue to hand, but we did toy with the
concept in issue #3 I think.
From what I can remember, the Marvel Jaspers' warp storyline was to
have begun in #200 of X-Men. Jim Jasper was introduced as a bad lad
(English, of course) and the only person on the face of the planet
capable of stopping him instantly, Charles Xavier is exiled back to
space because his cloned body is packing up. The issues went very much
the way they were planned to for six months, but then changes were
made, but originally, from what I gathered, Nimrod, the futuristic
sentinel, living as a Hispanic good bloke in the ghetto was to have
stumbled upon the remains of an entity that enters our reality through
a hole in the STC. Nimrod accidently merges with the Fury and becomes
not only indestructible, but very, very, very, smart and eloquent.
"Doc Doom times a googleplex" was one of the lines I read. Essentially
from this point on, you'll see what did happen in between the cracks
of what didn't:
Romita was leaving the book, so Alan Davis was asked to do it. He
declined because of the restrictions that were becoming apparent even
this early. He also didn't really want the gig at the time. The Mutant
Massacre was to have been commited solely by the Nimrod/Fury hybrid.
He is eventually only stopped by Kitty phasing through him and
disrupting his circuits. However, Kitty, Nightcrawler, Colossus AND a
new character Longshot, were to have been relocated to Muir Island to
work with Captain Britain and his team and for medical attention.
Kitty was always going to be critically injured, as was Nightcrawler.
Colossus was sent as protection and as a perfect foil for Brian
Braddock, who Kitty would develop a crush on.
Mutants, good bad or indifferent began flocking to Xavier's and with
Phoenix II conveniently out of the way and Kitty and Braddock in
Scotland, there were no members to see the parallels with Days of
Future Past or with the Jaspers' Warp. America was in the thralls
(throes
) of mutant hysteria and Magneto now in charge of the X-Men
has to make some decisions that effect the status quo. Allegiances are
formed with villains and new players, such as Mr Sinister and others
were becoming prominent mutants through their covert ways.
The UN decrees that mutants are a menace and Jaspers meets Nimrod and
subsequently becomes aware he too is a mutant and a pretty powerful
one. Unlike the Jaspers' Warp, these two become allies, or at least
that is what Jaspers' thinks. With reality falling apart and Nimrod
culling mutants, Forge is drawn into battle and what happened in Fall
of the Mutants is essentially what was written, except the big fight
scene was different and the denouement was different. Instead of being
impervious to detection, the mutants who ventured into the Seige
Perilous were returned but with the warps they had undergone (some of
this was used in Inferno as well, proving that writers who can't use
something here will use it there). The X-Men was going to be a much
darker comic and Excalibur the light side. X-Factor and New Mutants
would essentially begin to pick up the pieces and rebuild mutant/human
relations.
And that's all I can remember for those of you still awake now
