REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 17 August 2008

[Paul O'Brien]

THE X-AXIS
17 August 2008
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X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com

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This week:

SECRET INVASION: X-MEN #1
by Mike Carey and Cary Nord

X-MEN ORIGINS: JEAN GREY
by Sean McKeever and Mike Mayhew

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This is an unusually quiet week. Unless you like the Secret Invasion
crossover, in which case it's a stupidly busy week.

Not so long ago, I used to complain all the time about Marvel's erratic
scheduling of the X-books. Thankfully, they've largely brought that
under control. But this week sees the release of not only Secret
Invasion #5, but also five tie-in books - SECRET INVASION: X-MEN #1,
Secret Invasion: Inhumans #1, Secret Invasion: Thor #1, Secret Invasion:
Runaways / Young Avengers #2 and Captain Britain & MI-13 #4. If there's
a sensible reason for doing things this way, it eludes me.

The list also illustrates Marvel's current strategy with crossovers. As
with World War Hulk, the bigger titles aren't crossing over directly,
but contributing a spin-off mini. The Avengers titles are an exception,
but justifiably so, because the crossover is based on their storylines.
Otherwise, the participating titles tend to be second and third tier
books that could use the help.

The X-Men are way too important to have the crossover in their main
book, so instead we have Mike Carey and Cary Nord contributing a
four-issue miniseries. It's also billed as a "Manifest Destiny" title,
but like "Divided We Stand", this seems to mean little more than "It's
in continuity." I'm not quite sure what they're trying to achieve with
this half-hearted promotion; in another similarity to the previous arc,
"Manifest Destiny" has a little logo to put on covers, but it's small to
the point of invisibility. (It's that little smudge under X-23's elbow,
just above the bar code.)

Anyway. Can you guess what the plot is? That's right. The Skrulls are
invading San Francisco, and so they have to fight the X-Men, who are the
local heroes. Cue the punchy punchy.

Most Secret Invasion tie-ins have focussed on the paranoia angle. After
all, as the B-movie logo makes clear, this story is basically Invasion
of the Body Snatchers with Skrulls and superheroes. But there are an
awful lot of tie-ins to this storyline. And let's be honest: "one of
the cast might be a Skrull" is a good idea for a story, but it's not a
good idea for seventeen stories at once.

Perhaps anticipating that the paranoia angle will be oversubscribed,
Carey has taken a different line. There's no suggestion here that the
X-Men have been infiltrated. On the contrary, the Skrulls weren't even
expecting them to be in the city. Instead, Carey has opted to play up
the religion angle, with a subplot about a Skrull religious artefact
falling into Nightcrawler's hands.

Carey also takes the opportunity to reveal some of the characters who
end up in San Francisco. This is technically a spoiler, but it's
probably intentional. Merely throwing in cameos by Prodigy, Mercury and
the Stepford Cuckoos, all of whom seemed to have been written out, gives
fans something to speculate on (and suggests that the cast of Young
X-Men is likely to settle down to something more familiar, sooner rather
than later).

But basically, it's an extended fight scene with a bit of window
dressing to hold the interest of X-Men fans. It knows it's a summer
crossover and it's not trying to convince you of anything else. On the
face of it, it's completely peripheral to both the X-books and Secret
Invasion, but if you want another story about superheroes fighting alien
invaders, this is a perfectly fine version of the theme.

Rating: B

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The first X-MEN ORIGINS one-shot was a rather unnecessarily complication
of Colossus' back story, adding a story where none was really required.
For the second, Sean McKeever and Mike Mayhew take a crack at Jean Grey.

Unlike Colossus, Jean already has an established origin story, in the
form of a rather obscure story from Bizarre Adventures #27. McKeever has
opted simply to re-tell it, adding a coda for the sake of providing some
resolution. This is probably a better route for these one-shots to
take, rather than nailing extra detail onto characters who don't need
it. Mind you, at least Jean has a halfway dramatic back story to start
with. Many of the X-Men don't, and as characters from a team book, nor
do they require one. The next book in the series features the Beast,
whose existing 1960s origin story is utterly lousy. That's going to be
a challenge for any creator.

Jean's story involves her being traumatised when her psychic powers
emerge while a friend dies in a road accident. Xavier comes along and
helps her, and eventually recruits her into the X-Men. In Chris
Claremont's version, there were some tentative and rather unwieldy
suggestions that Xavier and Jean had some sort of hidden career as a duo
before the X-Men were formed (which didn't quite make sense, given that
she was the last to join the team). McKeever ignores that altogether,
and instead tacks on some new material with Jean joining the team, and
symbolically coming to terms with her past by saving another girl from a
road accident.

It's formula stuff, but McKeever does the best he can with the material.
Fortunately, as a character piece, it plays to his strengths. The real
selling point, though, is Mike Mayhew's painted art, which is beautiful
throughout, and really elevates the material. True, at the start of the
issue, Mayhew seems a bit confused about what decade this is supposed to
be. But that quickly settles down, and the story looks great.

There's a limit to what the creators can do with this material. After
all, Claremont conceived this as background detail for an existing
character, not as a full-blown origin story in its own right. It
doesn't quite lend itself to being a stand-alone story. But McKeever and
Mayhew have probably made it work as well as anyone could.

Rating: B+

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Also this week...

ASTONISHING X-MEN #26 - In which the X-Men head to the Indonesian
spaceship graveyard to chase a bad guy. This is fairly standard stuff,
and to be honest it verges on being a plug-in "heroes hunt villain" plot
that could have been done in any book. But it's early days, and Ellis
usually puts more thought into his relaunches than that, so I'll give
him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Simone Bianchi's art is
impressive - although there are a few rough moments, the oddball page
layouts seem to be used more effectively here. I'm not yet sold on this
as an X-Men story, but as an all-purpose Ellis superhero book, it's
doing fine so far. B+

GEN13 #21 - Another post-apocalyptic WildStorm relaunch. WildCATS and
Authority both took the line of "beleaguered superhero team mount rescue
effort", so it's reassuring to see this book take a different line.
Stuck in a teleport buffer while the world goes to hell, Gen13 emerge
blissfully oblivious to what's happened, and writer Scott Beatty neatly
builds the first issue around us waiting for the penny to drop. There's
some semi-gratuitous darkness with the blinding of a main character, but
for the most part the script stays fairly light, and Mike Huddleston
contributes some wonderful wrecked cityscapes. As an intended jumping
on point, it could probably have done a better job of explaining all the
casual references to I/O and so forth, but really, if you've got a vague
understanding of the Gen13 premise, you'll be fine. I'm not yet
convinced about the the post-apocalypse as a direction for the whole
line, but this seems promising. B+

GENEXT #4 - The kids run off to find No-Name, and end up just getting a
bit confused. Odd story, this. The characters are growing on me, and I
like the rapport between Olivier and Rico. But the plot is a bit of a
mess; Claremont still hasn't really done anything to persuade me that
the Shockwave Riders are a good idea, and some of the fight sequences
are thoroughly confusing. As a story, I don't think this really works,
but I can see some potential in the promise. C+

LAST DEFENDERS #6 - Um... right. After cycling through versions of the
Defenders for six issues, Joe Casey unveils his new team, basically
declaring that they're destined to be the Defenders for some reason or
other. It would make passable sense as the first arc of an ongoing
series, but as a free-standing mini it's just a bit odd and arbitrary -
especially as the new Defenders include the She-Hulk, who's already got
an ongoing title with a completely unrelated status quo. It's clear
that Casey had some plan or other in mind here, but quite honestly, I'm
just left a little confused about what he was going for. I don't get
it, I'm afraid. C

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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, Uncanny X-Men #501 continues the new San Francisco story.
X-Factor #34 is a Secret Invasion tie-in. X-Factor: Layla Miller is a
one-shot catching up on the know-it-all in the future. X-Men: First
Class #15 guest stars Medusa. And Young X-Men #5 wraps up the first
storyline.

--
Paul O'Brien

THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com