REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 3 August 2008
Paul O'Brien
3 August 2008
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For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
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This week:
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #27 - Son of X, part 2 of 2
by Daniel Way and Stephen Segovia
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #14
(Untitled) by Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz
"Missing Angel" by Jeff Parker and Colleen Coover
X-MEN: ODD MEN OUT
"Odd Men Out" by Roger Stern, Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein
"Think Again" by Michael Higgins, Dave Cockrum and
Joe Rubinstein"
VICIOUS CIRCLE
by Mike Carey
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As regular readers will know, I'm not a big fan of Daniel Way's
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS, for a whole load of reasons. I don't much care for
the pace. I think the conspiracy story is inherently absurd and only
serves to restrict the character. I've yet to see even a glimmer of
potential in the villain, Romulus. And I can think of so many things
that I'd rather see Steve Dillon working on.
The "Son of X" arc hasn't exactly changed my views on the book, but it's
focussed them somewhat. It's basically the origin story of Wolverine's
son Daken, with a framing sequence that leads into the upcoming
crossover with X-Men: Legacy. And it's an unusual story for this book,
in two ways.
First, it's a two-parter, when the series has tended to favour
stretching its stories to trade length. As you'd expect, this results
in Daniel Way picking up the pace, and it's an improvement.
Second, it's not drawn by Steve Dillon, who has moved on to other
projects. Instead, it's drawn by Stephen Segovia, a name that doesn't
ring a bell. Google tells me that he's previously done some work for
Top Cow, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest, based on his work
here. It's your standard grim and gritty superhero style, with a bit of
flair, and a tendency towards hyperactive panel layouts. Actually,
looking at his web page, he's got a bit more range than that, but this
seems to be his favoured style for superhero work.
And in some ways, this too is an improvement. Don't get me wrong - I'm
not saying Segovia is a better artist than Steve Dillon. But he's
perfectly okay, and more to the point, he's a better match for this sort
of plot. Great as Dillon is, he's a character artist, good with subtle
emotions and comic timing. But this is a story about a globe-spanning
conspiracy of evil run by a demented wolf-man. Humanising it only
emphasises its silliness. This is an angst-drenched melodrama; it
doesn't want to be understated, it wants to be over the top. Maybe, if
you're going to do this story at all, you're better off with somebody
like Segovia, working in the Top Cow house style. It's better casting.
It's a bit like my reaction to the current X-Force series. Part of my
problem with Wolverine: Origins, I think, is that the series has
appeared to take itself far too seriously. But slash the story length
in half, and give it a house style artist, and a lot of that evaporates.
It becomes a nineties-style superhero book with a tortuously convoluted
plot, and suddenly, instead of seeming like the stupidest idea ever,
Daken almost starts to make sense. This is where he belongs.
It's curious, really. I'm left unsure whether the change of art is
puncturing Way's pretensions, or whether this is the sort of tone he was
going for all along (and missing). But it does work better than some
previous arcs. It's not that I'm taking the book seriously all of a
sudden - rather, I just don't feel like I'm being expected to any more.
Rating: B
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X-MEN: FIRST CLASS continues its tour of Marvel Universe guest stars,
with a two-part Machine Man story. And before any of you ask: yes, they
know Machine Man wasn't around in the sixties. Yes, that's covered.
Like a lot of Jeff Parker's guest star stories, this isn't really an
X-Men story - it's Parker's defining Machine Man story. He's a robot
who thinks he's a man, but at the same time, knows he isn't. So he has
identity issues about his humanity. There's a token attempt to tie it
in with the X-Men's own outsider feelings, but that's really just
throwing a bone to the fact that it's their title.
And... you know, it's fine. Machine Man teams up with the X-Men to
fight the Lava Men. Pick heroes from columns A and B and villains from
column C... I wish I felt more enthusiastic about it, because it's a
fine entry-level book for younger readers. And it's done with obvious
enthusiasm, but it can't quite get away from the sense that Parker is
working his way through a checklist of characters he'd like to use, no
matter how tenuous the justification for including them in an X-Men
story. This has always been an issue with First Class, which is at its
best telling stories about the teenage title characters, and much more
erratic when it's shoehorning in the guest stars.
The back-up strip is a silent Colleen Coover story with the X-Men
reminiscing about the absent Angel (who quit in issue #12, in this
book's first long-term subplot). There's something a little odd about a
highlight reel of early X-Men stories made up entirely of First Class
stories, but that's probably just me. Coover's a great artist, and
makes it work.
Alright, the fact that Angel's on the cover of next issue with the rest
of the team kind of gives the game away... but did anyone really think
he wasn't coming back?
Overall, one of the weaker issues. Not keen on the random guest star
stories. But it's still a competent effort with a sense that the
creators are having fun, and that's something.
Rating: B-
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Chances are you know who Dave Cockrum is and why he's important to the
X-Men. If you don't... well, Dave Cockrum was the artist who helped
revive the X-Men in 1975 and worked with Chris Claremont in the first
few years. He's responsible for designing most of the new X-Men, and he
generally deserves more credit for the X-Men's success than he tends to
get.
X-MEN: ODD MEN OUT is a one-shot collecting two previously unpublished
stories which Cockrum completed before his death in 2004. Long, long
before his death in 2004.
Look, let's be blunt about what we're dealing with here. These are
fill-in stories which have been lying in a drawer for the better part of
twenty years. They are everything you would expect from un-used fill-in
stories. They're frankly a waste of Dave Cockrum. Unfortunately,
Cockrum is one of those great 1970s artists whose style drifted out of
fashion in later decades. So, at one point in his career, he was
drawing stuff like this.
"Odd Men Out", written by Roger Stern, is a reunion between Professor X
and Fred Duncan, his FBI liaison from the very early Silver Age.
There's some token chat about standing up for your civil rights, but
basically it's just a framing sequence of a recap of the X-Men's
history, from 1963 all the way up to... well, to the end of Chris
Claremont's run, which is a pretty good clue about when it was put
together. There's not much more to it than that. It would have been a
lacklustre fill-in in 1991, and time has done it no favours.
"Think Again" appears to be an unused New Mutants fill-in. It's from
the period where they were living with X-Factor, circa 1989 or so. The
roster is a bit screwy: Rusty Collins and Skids are there (so it's
before the Asgard storyline), but Mirage is missing (so it's after she
was written out in... oops). This might explain why it never saw print
- it could be a fill-in that was overtaken by events.
Anyway, the Mad Thinker sends an old Apocalypse robot after them, and
there's a fight, and it's inconclusive. Weirdly for a fill-in, the
story ends by leaving a dangling subplot and hinting at a sequel. It's
the sort of story that was on its way out of fashion even at the time -
the type where Rusty Collins stops in mid-fight to think "Never again
will I let someone who's innocent be hurt because of my carelessness"
(because, you see, that was meant to be his big character point from way
back in X-Factor #2 when he burned some bit part character). At the
time, it would just about have passed muster as a competent fill-in, and
that's largely thanks to Cockrum polishing it up.
Quite frankly, it's easy to see why these stories remained unpublished
for so long. Other than Cockrum's involvement, they don't have much
going for them.
Now, if you're a Dave Cockrum fan, it goes without saying that you'll
want this book. As a showcase for Cockrum's art, it does the job. He
was always good, even when changing fashions meant that he was
underappreciated by the fans. True enough, these stories look more like
products of 1980 than 1990. But that's no bad thing; nobody wanted to
see the likes of Cockrum trying to mimic fashion. So if that's what
you're after, buy this.
But for the rest of us... look, there's tons of Dave Cockrum stories in
print, and most of them are infinitely better than these. If you want
to explore Cockrum's work, go and buy some of them. (And really, do.)
This book, judged by conventional criteria, can't really overcome the
weakness of the stories.
Rating: C
------------
And now, something a little different, but still kind of X-related.
Mike Carey also writes novels. In the UK, he's written a series of
books about freelance exorcist Felix Castor. Over in the USA, they've
just released book two, VICIOUS CIRCLE, which came out a couple of years
ago. I haven't actually read any of the Castor books before, but the
American publishers have sent me a review copy, which seems as good a
reason as any to change that.
Living in the comics bubble, it's easy to think of Carey as a guy who
started out doing Vertigo books and then made an unexpected jump to
superheroes. And you might well imagine that a series of novels about a
freelance exorcist in London is likely to have more in common with his
Vertigo work. In fact, you could be forgiven for expecting a prose
version of Hellblazer.
Well, it's not much like that. Aside from the fact that Castor's
supporting cast have a much higher life expectancy than John
Constantine's, Carey has a neat premise for this series.
There's a common problem that plagues a lot of modern day fantasy
stories. The writer wants the mystical world to be strange and
underground, and so you end up with a world where, despite
incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, "rational" characters persist
in denying the obvious and all look like idiots. Castor's world takes
the other approach: the supernatural is more of a subculture than a
secret, and everyone accepts that it exists. The scientists are getting
stuck in to an exciting new area of study. The lawyers are figuring out
what rights the ambulatory dead have. And so forth. The rational
characters aren't particularly in tune with the supernatural, and need
somebody like Castor as an expert to guide them through it, but they
accept it exists.
So, although he's billed as a "freelance exorcist", Castor is a more of
a private eye specialising in the supernatural, and his book is a hybrid
detective/fantasy novel. What Carey gives us is the plot of a
hard-boiled detective story, adapted to a world with ghosts and the
like.
And he's very good at this. It's a strong idea for a series, and Carey
populates it with clever variations on the usual supporting characters,
such as a femme fatale more literal than most. He plays with the
weirdness of his hybrid world while keeping it grounded and believable.
And he writes a great old-style detective story, the type where
everything is carefully planted in the first act so that it can come
together at the end. I spent the first few chapters figuring that I
knew where the obvious twist would take us. Then the story did
something else instead.
Like I said earlier, coming at this from the comics bubble, it's
tempting to draw analogies with Carey's Vertigo work. In fact, this is
a very good genre novel, and in some ways closer to what he does for
Marvel. But he does it very well, and it's a great example of what a
good storyteller Carey is. I think I'll go and read the rest of the
series now.
Rating: A
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Also this week...
FANTASTIC FOUR: TRUE STORY #1 - Paul Cornell writes, as the Fantastic
Four venture into the world of fiction. It's a homage to Jasper
Fforde's Thursday Next novels, which are great, by the way. And it
couldn't be much more explicit about it. Some cute use of the medium,
and Cornell's script is everything you'd expect. ("To look into this,
I'll need to create a new field of human endeavour. Give me a couple of
days.") Fun stuff, and the art grew on me by the end of the issue.
Worth a look, although to be honest, if it's a straight choice, I'd go
for the Jasper Fforde books first. B+
WOLVERINE #67 - Part two of the "Old Man Logan" arc, and it's still
set-up time. Basically, whatever view you had of the first issue, this
probably won't change it much. It's still a bit contrived. It's still
got Wolverine being beaten up by run-down dystopian versions of Marvel
heroes (but a different one, this time). But the art's great, and there
are some good ideas in there. If you're going to do a world where the
superheroes got wiped out then it makes some sense to have Thor's
immoveable hammer as the centre of a shrine. Overall, it's trying a bit
too hard, but it has its strengths, and at least it's attempting
something different for one of the core titles. B
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There's more from me at If Destroyed, and apparently the Ninth Art
archive is going back online at some point...
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
Next week, Cable #6 guest stars the X-Men, as the series seems to tie
back into the wider franchise after all. New Exiles #9 continues the
Napoleonic Empire story. Because nobody demanded it, NYX: No Way Home
#1! And another collection of random Wolverine stories in Wolverine:
Killing Made Simple.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
~consul
> 3 August 2008
> "Odd Men Out" by Roger Stern, Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein
> "Think Again" by Michael Higgins, Dave Cockrum and
> Joe Rubinstein"
> and Fred Duncan, his FBI liaison from the very early Silver Age. There's
> some token chat about standing up for your civil rights, but basically
> it's just a framing sequence of a recap of the X-Men's history, from
> 1963 all the way up to... well, to the end of Chris Claremont's run,
> which is a pretty good clue about when it was put together. There's not
> much more to it than that. It would have been a lacklustre fill-in in
> 1991, and time has done it no favours.
You know, I had never realized that Stryfe's uniform was from Xavier when he was shacking up with Liliandra. Did it have some significance back then, like ceremonial or military?
--
"... 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, consul -x- <<poetry.dolphins-cove.com>>