REVIEWS: The X Axis - 26 April 1998
Paul O'Brien
The X Axis - 26 April 1998
www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/x-axis.html
=====================================
It's an incredibly quiet week, and normally I'd consider
drafting in some other books to fill out the column. This
week, however, I'm just going to let it lie. One X-book
and a guest comic it is.
This week's music is "Philophobia" by Arab Strap, the band
of whom the NME said "Best of all, they work in Scotland,
miles away from the rest of us," confirming my suspicion
that the NME believes that intelligent life ends at the M25.
Your word of the week is something I've just realised I
can't type here because it'll stop everybody on AOL and
other sensitive Internet providers from seeing the column.
Take it from me, it's a type of thrush, and it's a great
word.
This week:
X-MEN #76 - "A Boykie and his Dinges"
by Joe Kelly, Mat Broome, Sean Parsons and Aaron Sowd
JINX: BURIED TREASURES #1 (or Jinx #19)
by Brian Michael Bendis and some other people.
------------
Just to start by filling in background, X-MEN #76 was
originally going to be written by Chris Claremont as a
fill-in issue while Joe Kelly caught up. Chris was
too busy, so Joe gets to write it after all. This is a
rush job, and so the mere fact that it doesn't read like
one is impressive enough.
This story is the origin of Maggott, as the book handily
trumpets on its cover, next to a frankly dreadful
Adam Pollina drawing. I've got a lot of time for
Pollina's distortions, but this is beyond artistic
licence and into the realms of crap.
It's good that we're getting to see the origin of Maggott
at all - when he was first introduced, it looked very much
as though he was going to be set up as a mystery man, and
we would have the usual six-year "who is Maggott" subplot
before the inevitable anticlimactic revelation. Mystery
characters are rarely a good idea unless you have a
peerlessly brilliant explanation at the end of the line,
and I can't recall the last time I read one of those.
The story itself is pretty straightforward - basically,
Maggott needed special food as a child because of his
mutant power. This was financially crippling his family,
who were (as we already knew) black South Africans. So
Maggott decides to do the decent thing and kill himself
by driving off into the desert to die. Where he's
rescued by Magneto. Cue emergence of mutant powers and
confrontation with the reality of discrimination.
Now, quite what Magneto's doing there, given that he's
never previously been sighted in South Africa, is far
from clear, and the story certainly doesn't explain it.
That's reasonable enough, since it's from Maggott's
perspective and there's no way he could possibly know.
The story may be leaving a few loose ends, but that's
not really a problem. What we get from this story is a
clear explanation of who Maggott is and where he
comes from. We only know the barest details of his
connection with Magneto, but at this stage we don't
need to. We've got what we needed, namely a clearly
comprehensible explanation of who this character is.
We also get a clearer explanation of how Maggott's
powers actually work, which should really have come
along several months ago. Granted, Kelly was trying
to do a subplot on the question of what exactly Maggott's
connection with the maggots was, but a little more
information wouldn't have gone amiss. What's still
missing is a clear line on why he turns blue - you
can make an educated guess, but I'd like it clarified.
Matt Broome's artwork is good for the most part - he
does particularly good bones for Marrow - but the limits
of the Comics Code give him problems with some of the
more gruesome aspects of Maggott's powers. What's
apparently supposed to be the twelve-year-old, emaciated
Maggott giving birth to two giant slugs doesn't really
match up to the description, and if it can't be done
properly within the Code, it's best to go for the
suggestive approach rather than water it down.
In any event, this issue gets the important work done -
we now know who Maggott is. The outstanding questions
are, comparatively, details. With the big mystery out
of the way, we can start exploring the character
properly.
Rating: A-.
------------
Before anybody asks me, yes I did buy JINX: BURIED
TREASURES because there was a Warren Ellis story in
it. Got a problem with that?
This is another compilation book of obscure stuff
from the past. Remember Strange Wink, John Bolton's
collection of frankly not that good material which I
reviewed a few weeks ago? Same thing, only with
a creator I've never heard of, and much better material.
The best stuff here is Bendis's own one-page strips
which were apparently commissioned by some newspaper
or other in Cleveland. This being the world of
alternative comics, there's the obligatory (but very
funny) confessional stuff, though Bendis is more in
the territory of observational comedy. In any event,
they're worth the price on their own.
As for actual stories, we start with Bendis's own
"Borderland", which is basically the artistic
equivalent of freeform improvisation. Admire the brilliant
artwork on display, but it boils down to a tribute to the
power of imagination. Great style, shaky on the substance.
James Hudnall's "The Kiss Off" is a twist-in-the-tail
crime story. I've never been particularly sold on the
ten-page format for short stories - by the time you've
introduced your characters and set up the plot, you've
damn near finished - but this is a good example of how
to do it right. Still, you can't help wanting it to
go on a bit longer and flesh things out more.
Warren's "Better Living Through Chemistry" is a
paranoia piece, about a man who discovers his entire
city is being run as a psychological experiment by the
US government. The trick of these things, as always,
is in the detail, and while the plot is obviously
downright silly, it does work well as a personality
study.
Mark Rickett's "Nowheresville" story is an illustrated
conversation, really. Two people chat about a jazz
musician while Bendis provides a selection of collages
and doctored photos. Downright weird, but a nice story.
What's impressive about this book is that Bendis has
got range. Very few artists seem to these days. You
can pick up a Jim Lee book and recognise it instantly
because, bluntly, all his books look the same. Here
we have somebody who isn't satisfied with knocking out
one style and sticking to it, and who changes his
style to fit what he's drawing. This ought to be
basic, obvious stuff, but you'd never guess it from
most artists.
Like I said, worth buying for the comedy stuff
alone, but a good package all round.
Rating: A-.
------------
Also this week:
DEADPOOL #17 - The Mithras Project is "explained" in terms
that really don't advance things that much. Something's
coming and Deadpool's the messiah. Maybe. Or maybe not.
The point, of course, is Deadpool's reaction to all this -
the world saving bit isn't quite so interesting, somehow.
Oh, and the Ajax stuff builds up for its climax in this
year's annual. A.
HITMAN #27 - The "Who Dares Wins" storyline comes to a
conclusion let down by the fact that, frankly, it's
outstayed its welcome by roughly two months. Ironically,
this could be one time when a story could genuinely have
justified a big wrap-up in issue #25. It's a good issue,
but my god, Ennis is laying it on thick with the SAS. B+.
HOUSE OF SECRETS #20 - Foreshadowing time, as a psychic
comes to visit the house, gets most of her readings wrong
but right enough to suggest she has some real power, and
then makes some predictions which we're presumably meant
to take in the same light. Amusing enough, but possibly
stretching out the same idea for a bit too long. Still,
you've got to love the psychic telling the elderly neighbour
to destroy her ceramic dog. "Trust me, Edina, the world
will be a better place without this object." A-.
JLA #19 - Reality continues to break down in one of those
handy catastrophes that allows writers to cast logic to
the four winds with impunity. Waid raises some interesting
questions about whether the world should be restored even
though some people will be brought back to life if it's
left this way, though to my mind it's a bit clearcut to
be the dilemma it's portrayed as. B+.
ONI DOUBLE FEATURE #4 - A Bill Sienkiewicz story! Writing,
art and everything! Okay, so not much happens and there's
some gratuitous surrealism with talking cats and such forth,
and there's a frankly crap back-up story by somebody called
Troy Nixey. It's a Bill Sienkiewicz story! Look at the art
and marvel! After allowing for the back-up story, though...
B-.
SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL #80 - Already attacked by Golden
Age fans for not looking enough like a Golden Age comic,
but that's hardly fatal. After all, a tiny proportion of
readers will remember those stories anyway, and in any event
Bogdanove and Simonson seem more interested in telling a
story than sticking to the flashback format. This month,
our hero encounters a bunch of Nazis who are taken by the
Nietzchean connotations of his name. It's, well, it's OK. B.
YOUNG HEROES IN LOVE #13 - An object lesson in how a
good book can be killed stone dead by a sodding awful
name which should have been changed at the proposal stage
("Hey, let's make our book sound like a one-joke pisstake!").
But it's great, it really is. Even if they're all so angst-
ridden they make the X-Men look like motivational therapists.
A.
------------
Next week - aside from the stuff which was delayed this
week and which I can't be bothered to look up again -
the curse of the team-up annual strikes again as the
X-Men play sidekicks to Doctor Doom. Forgive my
scepticism, but the omens from the annuals so far this
year are poor.
Paul O'Brien
pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk, www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/
Other forms of content such as, for example, ideas.
Freshie
>
>
>The X Axis - 26 April 1998
>www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/x-axis.html
>=====================================
>
>
> ------------
>
>Just to start by filling in background, X-MEN #76 was
>originally going to be written by Chris Claremont as a
>fill-in issue while Joe Kelly caught up. Chris was
>too busy, so Joe gets to write it after all. This is a
>rush job, and so the mere fact that it doesn't read like
>one is impressive enough.
>
>This story is the origin of Maggott, as the book handily
>trumpets on its cover, next to a frankly dreadful
>Adam Pollina drawing. I've got a lot of time for
>Pollina's distortions, but this is beyond artistic
>licence and into the realms of crap.
disagreed. loved the cover. Matt Broome did OK in this issue. There
were some nice pencils, but also some stuff that seemed
rushed/distorted.