REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 27 December 1998
Paul O'Brien
The X Axis - 27 December 1998
www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/x-axis.html
=====================================
And so we come to the end of another year, a year which I'll be
reviewing in more detail in a series of special - yes, SPECIAL -
X-Axis posts that I may or may not ever get around to writing over
the course of the next week.
Thought for the week: The line "There won't be snow in Africa
this Christmas" in "Do They Know Its Christmas" is probably the
most inane sentence ever written. Aside from the fact that
there's never snow in Africa at Christmas, it's at best difficult
to see why the dispossessed, homeless and starving of Ethiopia
would have welcomed the chance to add hypothermia to their woes.
This week:
GAMBIT Vol. 3 #1 - "The Man of Steal"
by Fabian Nicieza, Steve Skroce and Rob Hunter
WOLVERINE #135 - "From Bad to Worse"
by Erik Larsen, Jeff Matsuda and Jonathan Sibal
CAPTAIN AMERICA #14 - "Turnabout"
by M--- W---, Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang
------------
The announcement of a new GAMBIT series got a mixed reaction for
several reasons. One pretty big one was that Marvel announced
the thing while openly admitting that they didn't have a clue
was going to write it. This kind of suggested that they didn't
have a clue what they were going to do with the thing other than
sell it.
The major reason, though, is the baggage that Gambit carries with
him for a lot of fans. He is a character who polarises fandom.
Many of the new wave of fans who came in in the early 1990s see
him as a wonderful, stylish and downright sexy kind of guy,
precisely the sort of person they want to read about. It helps
that many of them don't seem to be aware of the long line of
identikit characters Gambit is descended from - the regular
arguments about whether Pete Wisdom is a ripoff of him are nothing
short of hilarious if you have the faintest knowledge of the long
lineage of mysterious loners in trenchcoats that have filled up
comics since it became a shorthand for maturity some twenty years
ago. Not that this means he's a bad character, but let's not
pretend he's original.
That's the pros. The cons resent Gambit largely because he's
popular with the sort of fans they don't like. The X-books
underwent a massive change of direction around 1990 which
alienated a lot of fans from the Claremont era. As a character
who existed primarily under the new management, and who was very
popular with the new fans, older fans tend to see Gambit as a
symbol of the forces that took the X-Men away from them.
I, of course, couldn't really give a toss either way. He's an
okay character who hasn't really been used very well. He has
potential, though you could say that about virtually every
character ever created. And if you're going to do a solo series
for another X-Man, he is the obvious choice. The rest of the
current team are all basically team players; Gambit is much easier
to imagine as a solo hero. Marvel's motivation, of course, is to
try and cash in on Gambit's popularity. They're about four years
late for that - he's passed his peak. But the character's still
workable and whatever the reasons behind its creation, there's
absolutely no reason why it can't be made to work.
Fabian Nicieza inherits a less than ideal status quo for the
character. In Uncanny X-Men #350, he was exposed to the team
as a former agent of Mr Sinister and left to die in the Antarctic.
He showed up in a couple of subsequent stories looking extremely
depressed and doing his ruined man routine. And then he showed
up to rejoin the X-Men recently where he was accepted with
surprising enthusiasm by a bunch of people who had left him to die
only a few months previously. These recent depictions are hard
to reconcile into a coherent narrative, even if you allow for the
massive membership upheavals in the X-Men since.
And on top of this, there's the ghostly figure who's been haunting
Gambit in recent issues. Nobody seems to have much of a clue
what's going on there.
Surprisingly, despite banging on about her all the time in X-Men,
Gambit doesn't mention the ghosty woman at all in Gambit #1. This
seems odd, as it's a major part of his status quo which I would
have thought Nicieza would want to establish early on. There IS
another ghostly woman floating around in a subplot, though, who
may conceivably be the same character. Don't remember Chris
Bachalo drawing her to look like a middle aged drag queen, though.
Rather than picking up from the ongoing plot in X-Men, Nicieza
runs here with a completely new story tying in loosely with the
mystery of who rescued him from the Antarctic. A group called
Elysian Enterprises are raiding temples built by a man called
Garba-Hsien to try and get the spaceship he supposedly controlled.
The New Son, who rescued Gambit from the Antarctic but has never
been seen by anyone, hires Gambit to steal their findings from
them.
All of this provides the opportunity to introduce the regular
supporting cast for the new series - two people working for
Elysian (one of whom has "love interest" written all over her
in letters a mile high), Courier (who hasn't been seen since
Nicieza introduced him in the first Deadpool miniseries) and
the X-Cutioner. Quite what the X-Cutioner's doing here is a bit
of a mystery - there's some chat about how the US government has
been asked to guard the temple, but it's far from clear to me
whether this story is supposed to be taking place in the USA and,
if so, how nobody noticed the bloody big temple before.
(Best of luck to Nicieza in trying to make the X-Cutioner work -
god knows nobody else has. The character has never really come
across as the noble crusader he's supposed to see himself as,
and the whole schtick about his being armed with weapons from
the X-Men's old enemies has always fallen flat. I'm surprised
to see anybody digging him up at all, to be honest.)
It also provides the opportunity to play up the angle of Gambit
being a thief. It's noticeable that Nicieza isn't playing the
character as a thief coming out of retirement; he's just a thief.
Gambit doesn't seem to be learning from his mistakes. It's
strange that the X-Men know he's dealing with Courier, a man
they recognise as a underworld figure, but don't seem very
bothered. You couldn't exactly say he was keeping this secret
from the X-Men, but it seems very odd that they'd be happy to
have him take the job.
The tone of the book is surprising as well; Gambit is a character
who has tended to be played as a shadowy man of mystery in the
past, and although the new series doesn't dump any of this, it
chooses to play up the idea of him as a cavalier kind of guy
doing big impressive stunts in technicolour. There's even a
Tomb Raider pastiche at the beginning. It's a shinier, brighter
book, obviously trying to avoid the grim-n-gritty trap that the
character lends himself to.
Nicieza's script gets through all this as efficiently as we've
come to expect of him. It's a well structured story, which for
the most part manages to establish the major elements of the
series without slipping into overly obvious expository dialogue.
There are faults, admittedly, the most noticeable being a
glaringly obvious recap of Elysian's plans on page one, delivered
by one character to another who can't possibly not know this
already. But for the most part the economy with which Nicieza
gets the dull bits done is impressive, allowing him to focus
more on the fun stuff. The obligatory origin recap is handled
swiftly, including some new information for those who already
know it. The scene with the X-Men establishes his semi-detached
relationship perfectly without needing to waste time laying it
out. Show, don't tell, is a basic rule of writing fiction; many
of the best writers in comics are those who can manage the trick
of showing the stuff that's too boring to explain while at the
same time telling us something infinitely more interesting. And
that's more or less what Nicieza's doing here.
So far as art is concerned, Steve Skroce's artwork looks beautiful,
and has some absolutely wonderful moments, but remains plagued
by his difficulties in clearly conveying movement in some of the
more complicated stunts. On page 4, for example, we have a rare
example of the colour seperators using their computer blurring
techniques to great effect - the sense of movement in the big
crushing blocks doesn't come across well from the lines, not least
because the speed lines are ahead of the object. The 180 degree
change in perspective between panels 3 and 4 doesn't help either.
Or page 5 - no matter how many times I look at this, I can't
work out what's happening. Is he falling through that trap,
or vaulting through it? Which way is up? How can an artist use
so many speed lines while so comprehensively failing to make an
object look like it's moving? Well, drawing the speed lines in
the right place would help, again - and for the most part, the
lines here just look like shading.
Or page 11 panel 2 (I'm ignoring the adverts here, by the way).
The storytelling here is a mess - the woman being knocked off
the platform is buried as a background detail in the panel, even
though it's something we need to see for the next panel. The
vapour trail left by Gambit's flying thingy is going in some very
weird directions as well - not wrong, but not clear enough to
read easily.
These are the glitches in otherwise excellent work from Skroce,
but they're major glitches. The story relies heavily on its big
set piece action sequences. They're complicated and no doubt
difficult to draw, but nonetheless it does the story no favours
when every so often your reading has to slow to a crawl while
you decipher what's happening. All becomes clear on a second or
third glance, but you shouldn't need to reread these sequences
for comprehension any more than you should need to rewind a
Jackie Chan video to follow the fights.
It's probably this that drags an otherwise enjoyable little romp
down from being pretty good into the realms of the acceptably
pleasant. If Skroce could clear up his storytelling - and I
suspect the confusion in some pages is due to overambition
rather than inability to convey the plot - this could be a solid
little book.
Rating: B+.
------------
WOLVERINE #135 is titled "From Bad to Worse", which is a gift to
reviewers. Sadly it isn't true, but it would have been too much
to hope for the story to be called "From Alright to Alright."
Wolverine and the Zennan woman possessing him, who's apparently
called Aria, arrive at the Collector's prison planet. Aria, who
is evidently a moron, still hasn't explained the plan to him,
and doesn't bother now. This was straining credibility last issue,
but it's becoming absurd now. How long did it take to get back to
the ship and fly it to the prison planet? Wolverine didn't seem
that badly off at the end of last issue and it just doesn't ring
true that he slept the whole way. The hope that Aria will turn
out to have an ulterior motive for all this is pretty much the
only thing holding up my suspension of disbelief at the moment.
Inside the prison planet, naturally, Wolverine fights a selection
of aliens. What this boils down to is a selection of fight
scenes in front of generic or at times absent backgrounds where
Wolverine beats up some aliens while complaining about Aria's
refusal to tell him anything - and when characters are complaining
about the plot, you know something's wrong.
Larsen does still have a good handle on Wolverine as a character,
but the endless parade of fight scenes and slow advance of plot
points is becoming grating. Could do better.
Rating: C+.
------------
CAPTAIN AMERICA #14 bears the possibly unique distinction of
not being written by anyone. Mark Waid took his name off the
book due to editorial rewrites, and has been replaced by
nobody. This makes this a particularly interesting book to
review, since in addition to its being a damnably weird story,
we can also play Guess Which Bit Upset Mark.
By Captain America's usual standards, this is strange. Captain
America is a book not normally known for its challenging and
unconventional narrative techniques; after all, it's a
straight-down-the-line action book. What we have here is a
hallucination of the Red Skull, with a token framing sequence
to explain it away at the end. The Red Skull dreams about
himself being a bellboy at a hotel, just like in his origin
story. The hotel is being visited by Captain America, and
meanwhile the Skull grumbles about the terrible influx of
bagels in Berlin.
Told almost entirely in splash pages, coloured in monochrome
aside from the lead's symbolic red skull, it's an impressive
looking story and worth a look for the art alone. And it gets
off to a very good start with some excellent narration making
good use of repetition to convey the sheer tedium of the Skull's
civilian life.
And then it all goes wrong.
This story wants to be an insight into the Red Skull's personality,
something to convey precisely how evil and horrific he is. In
this, it fails completely and utterly.
It comes as such a disappointment to realise that an imaginative
narrative has been wedded to a boring, banal, seen-it-a-thousand
times cliched view of evil. The Skull as seen here is a cartoon
evil, which does not even begin to convey the depths of depravity
to which humanity can sink.
There are moments when it seems to be pointing in the right
directions - the suggestion that the Skull is a dispossessed
man taking refuge in Naziism, well, that isn't too unreasonable.
But then we have a downright confused section about him meeting
a woman called Eve whom he eventually rejects because Eve is the
Biblical mother of sin. Um... well, yes, kind of, but isn't the
Skull supposed to be PRO-evil? Why is he suddenly against it
here?
Then we go off into a deranged little bit about making the world
safe for tyranny and no longer tolerating the unending nightmare
of democracy. Oh deary me.
The problem with this story is that it establishes the Skull
as being pro-tyranny - for its own sake - and anti-democracy,
again for its own sake. Why? What's his motivation for all
this? There are flashes of coherence here, but the story fails
once it gets caught up at the end in the Red Skull is just...
evil. He's not evil for any particular reason. He doesn't
have any particular purpose. He's just evil.
And if he's just evil, he's just boring. His evil is defined
here purely by his opposition to what Captain America stands
for. He's not for anything except a cartoon pro-tyranny stance.
And that's a means, not an end. This Red Skull, if you believe
in him at all, is just a boring little sociopath. That's not
chilling. That's not even real evil, it's just a banal mental
illness.
The Red Skull is only a truly frightening proposition if you
can believe in him as an extreme of real human behaviour. God
knows there's enough true horror in the world that it shouldn't
be hard to construct a plausible example of complete evil, even
within the limits of the Comics Code. This character is a
reassuring evil, because he portrays evil as something abnormal
and other. Somebody who isn't like us. The chilling thing
about true evil is all the ways in which it is exactly like us,
and that's why this story fails to work.
Rating: C.
------------
Also this week:
BLACK PANTHER #4 - The narrative begins to show distinct and
frightening signs of coherence. Mephisto's involvement in the
plot makes sense at last, but the final image of Hell suggests
that next issue will give Mark Texeira a real opportunity to
show what he can do. A-.
CLERKS HOLIDAY SPECIAL - Fifteen years ago Randall bet Dante
$100 he'd still be wearing his Motley Crue denim jacket today.
He has two days to find the thing and comply with the bet.
Fortunately, Santa wants to rent hardcore dwarf porn from him.
Silly, but very funny. A.
DEADPOOL #25 - The Dead Reckoning storyline concludes, and while
I could have lived with a different artist (or rather, different
inkers, as some pages are great), it's a great climax to the
storyline that Kelly's been working on for these last two years.
The book goes on, but if it had been cancelled here, it would
have felt complete. A-.
HELLBLAZER #134 - Warren Ellis brings real horror back to
Hellblazer in the form of a frankly nauseating three-page murder
description. John Higgins' art is looking much tighter than
in the Garth Ennis run, as well. Definitely worth buying. A.
HITMAN #34 - Tommy Monaghan meets Superman and gives him some
festive cheer with the well-worn "Superman as American immigrant"
routine. Brilliantly put together, though. God, I'm giving
out a lot of high marks this week. A.
KINGDOM ONE-SHOTS - A running theme of family runs through the
various Kingdom one-shots this week, as Waid takes the opportunity
provided by the storyline to explore future generations of DCU
heroes, something that can't be done with the mainstream versions
of most characters. It's very difficult to reconcile these
people with the psychos depicted in Kingdom Come, though - granted
that her motives (impressing her father) are questionable, Kid
Flash seems eminently decent, as do Nightstar and Offspring.
Even the Son of the Bat, basically a villain descendent, seems
nice enough. While nicely constructed character pieces in
their own right, it seems impossible that these are the same
loonies depicted in Kingdom Come. B.
------------
Next week: X-Force fight the new Hellions, and X-Men: Liberators
concludes.
Paul O'Brien
pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk, www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/
Ding dong, the witch is dead.
Samy Merchi
>A group called Elysian Enterprises are raiding temples built by a man
>called Garba-Hsien
Any relation to the External Saul, who was called Garbha-Hsien in X-FORCE
#37? And if so, does Fabian know Saul is (supposed to be) dead as of
X-FORCE #53?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| -- Samy Merchi 1998 / sam...@utu.fi / http://mash.yok.utu.fi/~samerc |
| "Better to learn to love | "When there is worldwide peace and all |
| with those you can't have, | join hands, singing happy-happy songs |
| than to learn to have | together -- what is there left to |
| with those you can't love." | separate the world from a particularly |
| -- me | annoying episode of Barney?" -- me |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan McEwen
>Paul O'Brien wrote:
>
>>A group called Elysian Enterprises are raiding temples built by a man
>>called Garba-Hsien
>
>Any relation to the External Saul, who was called Garbha-Hsien in X-FORCE
>#37? And if so, does Fabian know Saul is (supposed to be) dead as of
>X-FORCE #53?
These were ancient temples, Sami. If they were built by Saul, it
doesn't really matter. But, since I'm sure you know Fabian wrote
X-FORCE #37 and GAMBIT #1, it's probably not a coincidence.
Randy Lander
>
> Thought for the week: The line "There won't be snow in Africa
> this Christmas" in "Do They Know Its Christmas" is probably the
> most inane sentence ever written. Aside from the fact that
> there's never snow in Africa at Christmas, it's at best difficult
> to see why the dispossessed, homeless and starving of Ethiopia
> would have welcomed the chance to add hypothermia to their woes.
*snort* Hee hee hee.
spoilers, maybe
> As a character
> who existed primarily under the new management, and who was very
> popular with the new fans, older fans tend to see Gambit as a
> symbol of the forces that took the X-Men away from them.
*blink* This is F*%^! brilliant! I never noticed this before, at least
not in these terms, but you're right.
Btw, I hate you, Paul. ;) I thought I had a shot at the Gambit script,
but your review was easily the best one I've seen.
> Surprisingly, despite banging on about her all the time in X-Men,
> Gambit doesn't mention the ghosty woman at all in Gambit #1.
I wasn't all that surprised by this, actually. Fabian's given the
impression that he'll deal with her, but it wasn't his idea. So it's not
surprising to me that he didn't play up this aspect of Gambit's current
status quo.
> (Best of luck to Nicieza in trying to make the X-Cutioner work -
> god knows nobody else has. The character has never really come
> across as the noble crusader he's supposed to see himself as,
> and the whole schtick about his being armed with weapons from
> the X-Men's old enemies has always fallen flat. I'm surprised
> to see anybody digging him up at all, to be honest.)
I wish they'd do a little more with him using weapons from the X-Men's
old enemies. This guy could be a walking history lesson *and* a villain!
> Wolverine and the Zennan woman possessing him, who's apparently
> called Aria, arrive at the Collector's prison planet. Aria, who
> is evidently a moron, still hasn't explained the plan to him,
> and doesn't bother now.
Because that would ruin the "surprise" when we learn Aria's true plan.
If anyone still cares by that point.
> CAPTAIN AMERICA #14 bears the possibly unique distinction of
> not being written by anyone.
Hell, that's not unique. The Maximum Press/Extreme books did that for
*years* ;)
> HITMAN #34 - Tommy Monaghan meets Superman and gives him some
> festive cheer with the well-worn "Superman as American immigrant"
> routine. Brilliantly put together, though. God, I'm giving
> out a lot of high marks this week. A.
Yep. Me too. But there was a lot of really good stuff this week. Hitman
was in the second-to-last week of the year, but for me, it was probably
the second best thing I read all year.
--
Snap Judgments are available as a weekly e-mail digest by request to
rwla...@snapjudgments.com and are archived at www.snapjudgments.com
-------------------------------------------------------
This review is copyright 1998 Randy Lander, although permission is
granted to reprint it in whole or in part for letter columns.
gladi...@yahoo.com
> Any relation to the External Saul, who was called Garbha-Hsien in X-FORCE
> #37? And if so, does Fabian know Saul is (supposed to be) dead as of
> X-FORCE #53?
Well.. these are ollllldddd temples so his recent "death" matters not. And
yes, it is that garba-hsien.... x-force #27 is even footnoted.
--
Kevin "Ramiel" Schmidt
sph...@bright.net *** gladi...@yahoo.com
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Paul O'Brien
writes
SPOILERS
>
>Any relation to the External Saul, who was called Garbha-Hsien in X-FORCE
>#37?
Bingo.
Congratulations on recognising a piece of continuity so obscure I'd
totally forgotten about it. But yes, this point is dredged up at the
end of the story when Gambit finally realises who everyone's talking
about.
Paul O'Brien
<rwla...@snapjudgments.com> writes
>
>Btw, I hate you, Paul. ;) I thought I had a shot at the Gambit script,
>but your review was easily the best one I've seen.
The knack is to write longer reviews. If you say enough things, at
least two of them are guaranteed to appear insightful.
>> Surprisingly, despite banging on about her all the time in X-Men,
>> Gambit doesn't mention the ghosty woman at all in Gambit #1.
>
>I wasn't all that surprised by this, actually. Fabian's given the
>impression that he'll deal with her, but it wasn't his idea. So it's not
>surprising to me that he didn't play up this aspect of Gambit's current
>status quo.
I can understand his playing it down (you don't want to give the
impression that readers are coming in halfway through), but won't
it look a bit odd now when it comes in in future issues? Unless,
of course, Fontanelle IS the ghost and Fabian is approaching the
problem obliquely.
Samy Merchi
>On 28 Dec 1998 14:53:00 GMT, sam...@utu.fi (Samy Merchi) wrote:
>>Paul O'Brien wrote:
>>Any relation to the External Saul, who was called Garbha-Hsien in X-FORCE
>>#37? And if so, does Fabian know Saul is (supposed to be) dead as of
>>X-FORCE #53?
>
>These were ancient temples, Sami. If they were built by Saul, it
>doesn't really matter. But, since I'm sure you know Fabian wrote
>X-FORCE #37 and GAMBIT #1, it's probably not a coincidence.
Ah. Nevermind. For some odd reason, I was under the impression that
Saul/Garby was actually *appearing* in the book (other than flashbacks).
Samy Merchi
>In article <76860c$9of$1...@news.utu.fi>, Samy Merchi <sam...@utu.fi>
>writes
>
>SPOILERS
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>totally forgotten about it.
Hey, if it's X-FORCE, I da man. ;)
...then again, one might ask, "who cares?". ;)
Brian Fried
I understand your dislike of CAPTAIN AMERICA #14. This is like an
introduction of the Red Skull for those who've never read the book
with him in it: he is evil bordering on madness. He is a fanatic lost
in his own fanaticism. Still, the book deserves a better rating because
of its atypical story telling.
And CLERKS definitely deserves an A+. Smith's poking at his own reputation
(DAREDEMON vs. WATER CHICK) is something truly fun to watch.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Fried bfr...@chat.carleton.ca Carleton U., Ottawa, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"What do you say? Will the human race be run in a day?
Or will someone save this planet we're playing on?"
Paul McCartney, 'Pipes Of Peace', 1983
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul O'Brien
<bfr...@chat.carleton.ca> writes
>
>I understand your dislike of CAPTAIN AMERICA #14. This is like an
>introduction of the Red Skull for those who've never read the book
>with him in it: he is evil bordering on madness. He is a fanatic lost
>in his own fanaticism. Still, the book deserves a better rating because
>of its atypical story telling.
I am in favour of Marvel trying out experiments such as this. However,
that doesn't mean I feel obliged to rate all experiments as successful.
It is in the nature of experimental storytelling that sometimes it
won't work.
FabNic
>I can understand his playing it down (you don't want to give the
>impression that readers are coming in halfway through), but won't
>it look a bit odd now when it comes in in future issues? Unless,
>of course, Fontanelle IS the ghost and Fabian is approaching the
>problem obliquely.
NOOO!!!
phew
Actually, my original script did mention the green ghost lady, during the
Courier/Remy conversation. Courier mentions that when they found him, he was
"muttering something about green ghosts and eskimos."
It was changed because it was felt that might be too oblique. I don't disagree
that it would make no sense to a non-X-Men reader of the comic, and I had
another similar line -- Courier's line about the "fur bikini" chafing him
fordays which was reference to a story which hadn't even come out yet!
I'm only allowed one odd reference per page, so i chose the fur bikini.
;-)
Now where is Paul's review -- i haven't seen that one yet?
Happy New Year
-- fabian