At the time of his departure from the book, Claremont had spent years cultivating Forge into a dynamic leading character. This was quickly undone, however, with the soft reboot of the franchise leaving years of character work, essentially, on the cutting room floor. #xmen 1/9

In Lifedeath, Forge (Daniel Lone Eagle) was thrust very rapidly into the X-Men spotlight as Storm’s first canonical paramour (Yukio being her first subtextual love). Claremont presents Forge as a man isolated within his own privilege – he thereby has everything and nothing. 2/9

His backstory is complex. Forge is a rare example of a superhero with a disability, having lost his hand and leg in the Vietnam war. His scars serve as a potent metaphor for the sort of national scarring that the Vietnam war represented to a generation of Americans. 3/9

Reaching further back, Forge is Cheyenne, and holds a position of key prominence and importance within tribal culture. He has rejected this portion of his heritage, however, in large part due to a tragic misuse of tribal powers during the war. 4/9

This mystical component folds Forge into the “Magic Native American” trope, but other aspects of his character push against that, such as his wealth, success, position in the US military industry, and his technomancy powers. There are many ways by which he subverts stereotype 5/9

Toward the end of the Claremont run, C made a concentrated effort to cultivate Forge’s character, showcasing him as a flawed hero aspiring to be more by reviving Xavier’s dream at a point when the X-Men were disbanded altogether. 6/9

Later writers didn’t take up the character, relegating him (despite a clear trajectory toward centrality) into the role of the X-Men IT department. And so, Claremont’s most major character launch of the era, became ubiquitously minor in the X-Universe. 7/9

But in Forge we get rare and important forms of representation: disability, indigeneity, and, perhaps most significantly, an imperfect hero who makes bad choices as a result of being hurt in the past. He is a flawed human in a fictional world populated by gods. 8/9

Forge is still around, and has even been showcased a bit more recently in the ongoing Dawn of X Titles. He’s also currently listed as one of several mutants that fans can currently vote for to join the main X-Men team at https://www.marvel.com/characters/x-men-vote #teamforge 9/9

And if you'd like to learn more about Forge's relationship to his indigeneity, we made a video essay for that: