REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 13 May 2007
Paul O'Brien
13 May 2007
===========
For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
------------
This week:
NEW X-MEN #38 - The Quest for Magik, part 1 of 4
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Skottie Young, Sean Parsons and
Jay Leisten
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #14 - Swift and Terrible, part 4 of 5
by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon
COUNTDOWN #51 - "Look to the Skies"
by Paul Dini, Jesus Saiz and Jimmy Palmiotti
------------
It's another quiet week for the X-books, with just two titles, both in
mid-storyline. Since we're not exactly overburdened with big news
releases, I might as well review them anyway.
NEW X-MEN #38 is, nominally, the first part of "Quest for Magik", a
four-part arc featuring the return of Illyana Rasputin. In reality,
it's part two of five - last issue was billed as a prologue but also
features vast, sweeping chunks of vital plot. Quite why they're billing
it in this way, I don't know. There hasn't been a noticeable trend for
sales to go up on the first issue of a new arc.
The story doesn't have to worry about the mechanics of bringing Illyana
back. That was all covered during the House of M crossover arc, where
Illyana was one of the characters brought back to life when the Earth
was transformed. She teleported away before it got turned back, so
that's the boring bit covered. Now they just have to work out what to
do with her.
Magik hasn't been a regular character in the X-books since the late
1980s. I'm a little sceptical about how many of today's readers
necessarily care about her one way or the other. Readers who remembered
used to lobby vociferously for her return, but that seemed to fade away
a good few years ago. Personally, I'm not at all convinced that there's
a need to bring her back.
It seems to me that the existing storyline worked just fine - she gets
corrupted by Belasco, she fights back to overcome the bad guys, but it's
ultimately too late to save herself, and so she dies a tragic death. To
my mind, that's a perfectly good pay-off to the story they were telling,
and I don't really want to see it re-opened. I'm keeping an open mind
here, though. So far, Craig Kyle and Chris Yost haven't really made
clear what they're going to do with the character, but at least they're
going back to the basics of the Belasco-corruption storyline, and they
don't seem to be too weighed down by nostalgia considerations.
Magik only shows up towards the end of the issue, and doesn't get to say
anything. The actual story has the X-Men's students trapped in Limbo,
while some of them run around wondering what to do. Others get
interrogated by Belasco, who wrongly believes that they know where Magik
is. In other words, it's an issue of building the threat, and
depressingly, Kyle and Yost are slipping back to their old ways. Yet
again, they resort to doing it by maiming and killing the cast.
Now, I suspect that this time they don't intend it to stick. When the
lizard-boy loses an arm, well, it's pretty safe to assume he's growing
it back. (Either that, or Elixir will fix it.) And it's Limbo, so you
can always undo deaths with some vague muttering about time running
strangely. But this is a book that has slaughtered so many of its
characters over the last year that it's ceased to mean anything on any
level. One of the title characters gets his heart ripped out on panel?
Yeah, well, whatever. Another day at the office.
I've made this point before, but this book went so far over the top last
year that it really needs an extended period to rebuild before it can
expect this sort of thing to matter again.
Limbo is a neat setting for artist Skottie Young, since he's an
exaggerated cartoonist, and in magical dimensions he can afford to go
nuts. He certainly does some good dramatic poses, but his action
sequences are a little shaky - the panel of X-23 on page 1 is almost
incomprehensible, and there's a later sequence with the second-tier
students where the panels seem to have no real relationship to one
another at all. Everyone's supposed to be standing on the edge of a
precipice, to judge from the previous page, but then we get two pages
where each panel seems to take place in a completely separate space.
Overall, it's an adequate build for Magik's return, let down more by the
book's previous overuse of shock violence than by anything in the issue
itself.
Rating: B
LINKS:
http://www.marvel.com
http://www.skottieyoung.com
------------
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS remains a baffling comic. Despite having gone to the
trouble of introducing Wolverine's long-lost son Daken, people still
seem to be politely ignoring it for the most part. Those who do read it
generally don't seem to be hugely impressed - aside from Marvel editors,
who invariably proclaim it a work of genius. Yet it sells very
respectably. So somebody outside Marvel's offices must like it.
This is the penultimate chapter of "Swift and Terrible", in which
Wolverine hunts down Daken and confronts him, only to be interrupted by
the unexpected return of his old villain Cyber. Cyber was killed off a
good few years back, when he was eaten alive by insects, but the idea is
that he's possessed a new body. Quite why that new body still has the
adamantium plating of the old one is a mystery, and I'm not altogether
convinced it's an intentional mystery.
Daken comes across as a terribly contrived attempt to create a cool
villain. There's a glimmer of interest in the idea that Daken defines
himself in opposition to his father, and so takes tremendous pride in
having the self-control that (in his view) Wolverine lacks. But
basically, he's a Kid Wolverine with a silly hairstyle and tattoos, and
modified claws that don't make a tremendous amount of sense. If two
claws bend one way and the third bends the other, how does he cut
anything? Steve Dillon at least has the sense only to use the
appropriate claw in each panel, but it seems terribly cumbersome, and
cover artists have consistently been going with all three at once.
We don't need a Wolverine Jr - we've already got X-23 in that role. If
you're going to introduce a character like Daken then you've got to make
a compelling case for why we need him. Craig Kyle and Chris Yost
achieved that with X-23 by making her a character in her own right
first, and a Wolverine knock-off second. Daniel Way hasn't done it with
Daken, who seems like nothing more than a character designed to generate
plots in a book about Wolverine's hidden past.
On the other hand, Way does make some moderately interesting use of
Cyber. Naturally, like everyone who passes through this book, he has to
be written in to the huge conspiracy that we're all supposed to care
about. But Way uses him in a way that increases the scope of that
conspiracy and presents Cyber as a genuinely dangerous maniac. It's not
especially original, but it's effectively done.
Steve Dillon still seems bizarrely miscast as the artist on this book.
His greatest strength is acting - small moments of facial expression and
body language. He doesn't do wild, crazy or over the top. And yet
here, he's asked to draw Daken and Cyber. Daken is a self-consciously
"cool" design that doesn't feel at home on Dillon's page. Cyber, worse
yet, was always a bland design that relied on the exaggerated style of
his creator, Sam Kieth, to make him interesting. When Adam Kubert had
to draw him, he could follow in the same spirit. Dillon can't do that -
even to attempt it would be totally at odds with his style. His Cyber
is a man in a boring costume.
This book has shaken off some of its worst tendencies, since at least
there's a discernible plot and some sense of movement. But it still
isn't working, or anything close to it.
Rating: C+
LINKS:
http://www.badpressonline.com (Daniel Way)
------------
COUNTDOWN is DC's new weekly series, following on from the enormous
success of 52. It's a countdown to, well, something - so it's starting
with issue #51, and working back from there.
DC have learned from some of their mistakes. This series will have
rotating creative teams rather than collaboration by committee. The
usually-reliable Paul Dini serves as head writer, with a group of
collaborators handling individual stories. The "real time" gimmick has
gone as well, partly because this book has to tie in with the whole DC
line, and partly because it created real pacing difficulties that
weren't worth the hassle.
Of course, doing it this way, DC open themselves to a different problem
- their key books have been so plagued by delayed over the last year
that to tie them all into a weekly series like Countdown seems a real
hostage to fortune. DC proved last year that they could deliver a
weekly book on time; they also proved that they couldn't do the same
with a monthly. To make this work, the whole line has to run to
schedule, and fill-ins won't help. I don't believe DC can do it - not
unless they've learned a ton of lessons from the fiasco of the last
twelve months. I'm willing to be proved wrong.
At first, I wasn't planning to bother with Countdown. I'd read 52 and I
didn't feel the urge to take it any further. But after reading some of
the early reviews, I was sufficiently baffled to give it a look.
Surely, DC couldn't really be doing what the reviews seemed to suggest?
But no, there it is on page three: "I see the time fast approaching when
existence itself shall be recreated, and Darkseid shall be its
architect..."
AGAIN?!?
Does this company have no other ideas? The DC Universe is starting to
feel like a world that gets re-created six times before breakfast. And
while that's all very well for these big, sweeping cosmic stories, it's
a disaster for the other titles that are just trying to get on with
telling their stories. Reboots need to be handled very, very carefully,
because they undermine the basic principle that What Happens Matters.
If you have a universe where the basic principle is that everything gets
rebooted all the time, nothing has any weight. It doesn't matter
because it won't stick. You can get away with it as a continuity
house-cleaning exercise at very infrequent intervals, but that's it.
Even if DC aren't really planning a further continuity reboot, it's
sheer folly even to tease one. They've only just had one. They need to
bed it down and make it work. If they want to bring back the
Multiverse, fine - do some stories with the Multiverse. Have some
characters go off and explore the other universes. But for heaven's
sake, steer clear of rewriting reality. It's the one story that they
shouldn't even be hinting at for the next four or five years, and here
they are putting it front and centre. I despair of this company.
The actual story involves the Joker's Daughter being attacked by a rogue
Monitor. Apparently she's now a character from a parallel universe,
which is presumably supposed to explain away her nightmarishly
convoluted continuity - except, of course, it's an explanation that only
became valid after the Multiverse was restored, and so it doesn't
explain the previous stories after all. Or does it?
Hanging around with her is a character who I gather is the Red Hood,
although helpfully, nobody actually names him or explains who he is.
(Duela addresses him, once, as "Little red robin hood", and that's as
close as it gets.) I don't know who the bloody Red Hood is, and this
book apparently can't be bothered telling me. Near the end, somebody
finally identifies him as Jason Todd, who I know used to be Robin, but
I've got no clue why he's wearing this costume or what it's supposed to
signify.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that, at around this point,
I throw my hands up in despair and give up. This is everything I'd
feared from Countdown. It's got a continuity obsession and, from the
look of it, little besides. I'd hoped for more from Paul Dini, who is a
gifted storyteller, but there's nothing here of any serious interest to
anyone who isn't already a devoted hardcore DC fan. The rest of us will
be alternately baffled and bored.
Rating: C
LINKS:
http://www.dccomics.com
http://kingofbreakfast.livejournal.com (Paul Dini)
------------
Also this week...
NOVA #2 - Nova has just come out of the Annihilation crossover, and he's
just going into the next one. The character's status quo roots him in
outer space, as does his primary agenda of saving the universe and
(eventually) rebuilding the Corps. So issue #2 is... an Initiative
crossover? This is a really shameless piece of sales-chasing. Abnett
and Lanning make the best of it, and take the opportunity to give the
New Warriors a bit of closure. But it didn't need to be done at this
stage, and it doesn't really fit with the way Nova was behaving last
issue. Shouldn't he be desperate to get back out to the stars and carry
on his mission? Within the limits of the remit, this is fine, but
whatever commercial arguments you can make for it, it's a creative
mistake. B-
http://www.danabnett.com
PHONOGRAM #6 - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie complete their six issue
Britpop miniseries. As they rightly stress, this isn't just a nostalgia
piece for those of us who were around during Britpop and who remember
the role that bands like Echobelly played in the movement. It's a story
about nostalgia, and pop culture and the role that it plays in our
individual and collective identities, and it simply happens to have
taken Britpop as its case study. Even so, I suspect it's not going to be
the most accessible series in the world if you're too young or too
foreign to know about Pulp. But everyone should know about Pulp, so go
and buy their records, and then buy the collected edition of this. Or
vice versa. That would work too. Accessibility issues aside, it's an
ambitious series that succeeds admirably in its exploration of what
music can mean. A
http://www.imagecomics.com
http://www.phonogramcomic.com
http://www.kierongillen.com
http://www.jamiemckelvie.com
STORMWATCH: PHD #7 - The recent WildStorm relaunch has been a bit of a
disaster, with low sales and massive delays. This is a shame, because
it means that nobody is buying Christos Gage and Doug Mahnke's
thoroughly enjoyable StormWatch: PhD, a book which cheerfully ignores
the proper StormWatch team to focus on the ramshackle, lower-budget
B-team. This is an action issue, with our heroes fighting off the
villains from their police station, but it's a great example of how to
make these things work with more than just random brawling for twenty
pages. A sadly overlooked book. A-
http://www.wildstorm.com
------------
There's more from me at If Destroyed, and if you're desperate for more
Article 10 columns, you can always hunt through the archives on Ninth
Art.
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
http://www.ninthart.com
Next week is ridiculously heavy. It's hard to believe, I know, but
Uncanny X-Men #486 is the twelfth and final part of "Rise and Fall of
the Shi'ar Empire." Exiles #94 completes Chris Claremont's first arc,
and in X-Men: First Class Special, a range of guest artists contribute
to stories of the original, sixties team. Ultimate X-Men #82 sees
Bishop forming his own version of the team, Cable & Deadpool #40 begins
the three-part "Fractured" (which ties in with X-Men), and X-Factor #19
sees the ex-mutants take to the streets.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
Dan McEwen
news:gtMf8xAp...@esoterica.demon.co.uk:
> THE X-AXIS
> 13 May 2007
> ===========
>
> For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
> X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
>
> ------------
>
> This week:
>
> NEW X-MEN #38 - The Quest for Magik, part 1 of 4
> by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, Skottie Young, Sean Parsons and
> Jay Leisten
>
>
> WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #14 - Swift and Terrible, part 4 of 5
> by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon
>
> COUNTDOWN #51 - "Look to the Skies"
> by Paul Dini, Jesus Saiz and Jimmy Palmiotti
>
>
> ------------
>
> It's another quiet week for the X-books, with just two titles, both in
> mid-storyline. Since we're not exactly overburdened with big news
> releases, I might as well review them anyway.
>
> NEW X-MEN #38 is, nominally, the first part of "Quest for Magik", a
> four-part arc featuring the return of Illyana Rasputin. In reality,
> it's part two of five - last issue was billed as a prologue but also
> features vast, sweeping chunks of vital plot. Quite why they're
> billing it in this way, I don't know. There hasn't been a noticeable
> trend for sales to go up on the first issue of a new arc.
My assumption would be that the prologue was a total recap issue and
didn't really begin the story. Calling that "Part 1" would kind of like
being called every issue Teen Illyana was ever in "Part 1". At least,
that's the logic I see to it.
> The story doesn't have to worry about the mechanics of bringing
> Illyana back. That was all covered during the House of M crossover
> arc, where Illyana was one of the characters brought back to life when
> the Earth was transformed. She teleported away before it got turned
> back, so that's the boring bit covered. Now they just have to work
> out what to do with her.
They couldn't figure that out 20 years ago. What makes them think it'll
work this time? I know she's going to be in the Arcana mini, but that's
only one issue.
> Magik hasn't been a regular character in the X-books since the late
> 1980s. I'm a little sceptical about how many of today's readers
> necessarily care about her one way or the other. Readers who
> remembered used to lobby vociferously for her return, but that seemed
> to fade away a good few years ago. Personally, I'm not at all
> convinced that there's a need to bring her back.
Me, neither, and I still think there are massive loopholes back then.
The only way I can see this work at all is if Illyana gets real training
by a real sorcerer and is no longer bound to Limbo. Then she can be
another teleporter and not have to go through Limbo.
> It seems to me that the existing storyline worked just fine - she gets
> corrupted by Belasco, she fights back to overcome the bad guys, but
> it's ultimately too late to save herself, and so she dies a tragic
> death.
Actually, if Peter hadn't "sacrificed" himself in Dallas, it would never
have happened. Plus, Xavier abandoned her to follow his girlfriend into
space. (I never bought into the idea that no one could get him back.
How long did it take to clone him when he turned into a Brood Queen? I
think it was somewhere around a day to have cloned and aged the proper
number of years.) Of course, that's neither here nor there since those
things did happen.
To
> my mind, that's a perfectly good pay-off to the story they were
> telling, and I don't really want to see it re-opened. I'm keeping an
> open mind here, though. So far, Craig Kyle and Chris Yost haven't
> really made clear what they're going to do with the character, but at
> least they're going back to the basics of the Belasco-corruption
> storyline, and they don't seem to be too weighed down by nostalgia
> considerations.
Do we actually know that it will end with Illyana returning? Yes, the
potential is certainly there, but it might end up with her explaining
"My time has come and gone. Don't mourn for me, I'm in a better place."
> Magik only shows up towards the end of the issue, and doesn't get to
> say anything. The actual story has the X-Men's students trapped in
> Limbo, while some of them run around wondering what to do. Others get
> interrogated by Belasco, who wrongly believes that they know where
> Magik is. In other words, it's an issue of building the threat, and
> depressingly, Kyle and Yost are slipping back to their old ways. Yet
> again, they resort to doing it by maiming and killing the cast.
What I don't get is why the X-Men didn't retaliate full-force to let the
mutant-haters to understand just how lucky they've been all along that
mutants never struck back. But, no, they have to defend humans over
their own.
> Now, I suspect that this time they don't intend it to stick. When the
> lizard-boy loses an arm, well, it's pretty safe to assume he's growing
> it back. (Either that, or Elixir will fix it.) And it's Limbo, so
> you can always undo deaths with some vague muttering about time
> running strangely. But this is a book that has slaughtered so many of
> its characters over the last year that it's ceased to mean anything on
> any level. One of the title characters gets his heart ripped out on
> panel? Yeah, well, whatever. Another day at the office.
Actually, which mutants died besides Wallflower and Icarus? As for
ex-mutants, there was no reason to not just, y'know, write them out by
losing their powers. The only reason I can think of is that M-Day is
eventually going to be undone and they don't want too many ex-mutants
hanging around who'll get their powers back. That would defeat the
whole purpose of M-Day.
------------
>
> WOLVERINE: ORIGINS remains a baffling comic. Despite having gone to
> the trouble of introducing Wolverine's long-lost son Daken, people
> still seem to be politely ignoring it for the most part. Those who do
> read it generally don't seem to be hugely impressed - aside from
> Marvel editors, who invariably proclaim it a work of genius. Yet it
> sells very respectably. So somebody outside Marvel's offices must
> like it.
It's got Wolverine. Do most people need any other hook? I do, but I
don't read either of the Wolverine books.
> We don't need a Wolverine Jr - we've already got X-23 in that role.
And she's better. She's prettier and less stupid. Well, I assume Daken
is stupid based on what you wrote.
~consul
> by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon
> villain. There's a glimmer of interest in the idea that Daken defines
> himself in opposition to his father, and so takes tremendous pride in
> having the self-control that (in his view) Wolverine lacks. But
> basically, he's a Kid Wolverine with a silly hairstyle and tattoos, and
> modified claws that don't make a tremendous amount of sense. If two
I don't know why ... but his mohawk just rubs me the wrong way ... seems too much like ... I guess Gladiator, and I associate that same smugness and monomania.
And what is a Daken anyways?
> claws bend one way and the third bends the other, how does he cut
> anything? Steve Dillon at least has the sense only to use the
> appropriate claw in each panel, but it seems terribly cumbersome, and
> cover artists have consistently been going with all three at once.
I like how X23 has one claw in each foot ... makes sense. Daken just seems like he ... is screwed up. It's funny how his claws overlap on the page.
> At first, I wasn't planning to bother with Countdown. I'd read 52 and I
> didn't feel the urge to take it any further. But after reading some of
> the early reviews, I was sufficiently baffled to give it a look. Surely,
> DC couldn't really be doing what the reviews seemed to suggest?
I didn't read 52, at least not consistently. I think I will get the tpb, given how it does focus on the 2nd and 3rd tier characters. I just hope that it plays out well by itself w/o the main universe direct reference from the mainstream comic books.
> Hanging around with her is a character who I gather is the Red Hood,
> although helpfully, nobody actually names him or explains who he is.
> (Duela addresses him, once, as "Little red robin hood", and that's as
> close as it gets.) I don't know who the bloody Red Hood is, and this
> book apparently can't be bothered telling me. Near the end, somebody
> finally identifies him as Jason Todd, who I know used to be Robin, but
> I've got no clue why he's wearing this costume or what it's supposed to
> signify.
He's the dead Robin. I wonder why DC feels the need to make the former sidekicks be such a stick in the mud with a mad-on for revenge.
--
"... respect, all good works are not done by only good folk. For here, at the end of all things, we shall do what needs to be done."
--till next time, Jameson Stalanthas Yu -x- <<poetry.dolphins-cove.com>>