REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 28 March 1998
Paul O'Brien
The X-Axis - 28 March 1998
www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/x-axis.html
=====================================
It's a mammoth week, what with annuals, novels and tons of
miscellaneous stuff. This could be a long one - anybody who
actually reads it all the way through should feel free to
e-mail me for their long service award.
This week's accompanying music is "Here We Go" by Arab Strap,
which will no doubt end long before I finish writing this
column, and the word of the week is "intermediate", which isn't
terribly obscure but which I've spent several hours pondering
at work.
This week:
CABLE/MACHINE MAN '98 - "Metamorphosis"
by Mike Higgins, Karl Bollers, Rick Leonardi and Dan Green
EXCALIBUR #120 - "Current Events"
by Ben Raab, Melvin Rubi and Scott Koblish
WOLVERINE #124 - "Invisible Destroyers!"
by Tom DeFalco, Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz
X-FORCE #77 - "City of Lost Children"
by Joseph Harris, Adam Pollina and Mark Morales
X-MEN/WILDCATS: THE DARK AGE
by Warren Ellis, Mat Broome and Sean Parsons
X-MEN: LAW OF THE JUNGLE
by Dave Smeds
NEVADA #1 - "Another Damn Suck-Egg Corpse"
by Steve Gerber, Phil Winslade and Steve Leialoha
------------
Marvel's editorial edict that all this year's annuals shall
be team-ups gets off to a feeble start with CABLE/MACHINE MAN
'98. This story, together with next month's Machine Man/Bastion
'98, is supposed to cover Bastion's origin story. Naturally,
despite Bastion being an X-Men villain, the story has been
grafted unnecessarily onto Cable's annual. And in an effort
to satisfy the team-up edict, Machine Man hangs around for
no reason whatsoever.
In fact, Machine Man's presence seems so utterly pointless
that I'm willing to predict that the second part of this story
will be a Cable annual by any other name as well. What we
have here is writers trying to shoehorn a story that plainly
wants to be a mini-series into an unsuitable format. A
Machine Man annual? What contrived nonsense is this?
Bastion has been imprisoned by SHIELD, who have discovered
that he's a robot. Now his full powers have been restored,
and he's escaped. Cable is called in to do something about
it. He investigates, finds a possessed Machine Man, and
Bastion turns into the character everybody had guessed he
was two years ago anyway.
There's the odd good idea floating around, largely to do with
Bastion's ambitions of living the American dream, but overall
there's a distinct feeling of going through the motions. Even
Rick Leonardi, usually such a reliable artist, turns in a rather
bland and static piece of work.
And god help us, there's another issue of this stuff to go.
I can't say I'm looking forward to it much.
Rating: C+.
------------
EXCALIBUR #120, and the cancellation edict has evidently
come down from on high. Ben Raab makes a start on resolving
the outstanding plotlines, as the newly dumped Pete Wisdom
responds entirely sensibly by leaving the book. Despite
the shaky dialogue he's been given, Wisdom has survived the
post-Ellis era fundamentally intact, and it's good that he's
being left out there in Limbo so that he can be used properly
in future, rather than being co-opted into the wider X-family
where he really doesn't belong. It's just a shame we never
got to see him meet Wolverine.
Over on the other side of the island, Douglock decides to
break Wolfsbane out of the vault whether she likes it or not.
His success is more than welcome, as this "sealed vault" thing
is far and away the least plausible idea to have surfaced in
Raab's run as writer. It didn't make sense on any level, and
its premature abandonment, even if caused by cancellation,
is a good thing. Raab also dredges up the long-forgotten
plot from forty-odd issues ago as Douglock finally gets
access to the information on Legacy that was downloaded into
him from Zero. Could it be that Raab actually intends to
resolve the Legacy plot in his remaining five issues?
Despite being weighted down with the horrible vault plot,
this is still a rather good issue. Wisdom's departure is
well handled, particularly his final conversation with
Meggan (though for some reason, the artist seems to have
him confused with Shinobi Shaw). There's some rather good
comic relief with Nightcrawler phoning the X-Men and getting
through to Marrow instead, and the decision to play Douglock
as a hopelessly naive teenager is starting to pay off.
Rubi does a generally sound job on the art, though as I
mentioned above, he can't do Wisdom. He has trouble with
Wolfsbane too, for that matter. But he does do good layouts,
and there's certainly something in there worth paying
attention to.
Of course, there's no point giving a good review to anything
Ben Raab does, since it'll get mutilated on Usenet anyway.
A shame, since his Excalibur continues to improve monthly.
Much of the criticism he gets would carry more weight if it
bore the slightest resemblance to the stories he's presently
writing, not the (weaker) ones he was doing this time last
year.
Rating: A-.
------------
Sometimes a book comes along that is just so devoid of anything
of interest that it hardly seems worth reviewing it, even to
give it a D. Such a book is WOLVERINE #124.
Wolverine is passing by one day when he discovers some people
about to try and kill Captain America. So he helps Cap beat
them up. The end.
No, really. That's it. DeFalco tries to tart it up a bit
by carrying on the self-doubt that was the main theme of his
previous story, but he overdoes it wildly, and none of that
can compensate for the total lack of anything interesting in
the plot. Cowan and Sienkiewicz continue to trample all over
one another as their two rather good individual styles merge
into a bit of a mess.
For completists only.
Rating: D+.
------------
Now if you want to see a fill-in issue done properly, go and
buy X-FORCE #77. In fact, just go and buy it.
This is a self-contained story that, unlike Wolverine #124,
deigns to include an actual plot and to continue with the
same character development that the regular writer was doing.
In fact, you can barely see the join - and given the quality
of X-Force at the moment, that's certainly a compliment.
The basic premise is something we've seen many times before.
Obscure government nuclear test base causes a local town to
have lots of mutant kids, most of whom die because their
powers are defective and go out of control. There's nothing
new to this, but Joseph Harris has an eye for the details that
make this sort of thing work.
Aside from a convincing backdrop, he makes it work by placing
the focus on the reaction of the team, particularly Tabitha,
to what's happening. Her horrifically unpleasant childhood
has been brushed with in the past, but it's rarely come
across as well as it does here. There's no new details, just
a wonderful sense of how the whole thing has affected her -
which is surely the point.
Adam Pollina continues to show that his true strengths lie
in drawing the real world and not the spandex-clad clowns
who filled up his earlier issues on this title. The art here
is just wonderful, and that cover is surely one of the best
of the year. There's too many drearily uninspired covers
out there, and even if the picture itself is a homage, the
redesign is what makes the whole thing work.
People still complain that there are too many X-books. For
the first time in ages, they're wrong. The books are getting
their own identity back, and are justifying their existence
on their own merits, not by clinging on to the coattails of
Uncanny X-Men. X-Force is by far the best example of this,
and it's a shame that so many people who would enjoy it are
still being put off by the X.
Rating: A.
------------
X-MEN: WILDC.A.T.S. - THE DARK AGE brings to a close the
most drawn-out intercompany crossover since the infamous
Deathmate. It's months late and it still features pages of
uncredited fill-in art (as if we're not going to notice,
for god's sake).
This is a homage to the Days of Futures Past story. The
X-books are littered with dreary alternate future stories
by writers who thought they had something else to say about
the Days of Futures Past and turned out to be wrong. Much
to my surprise, this is one of them. Sorry, Warren.
The Daemonites have merged themselves with Sentinel
technology and taken over the USA in an obvious DOFP analogue.
The remaining members of the X-Men and the WildCATS plot to
turn off their power suppressors and travel back in time to
stop all of this from ever having happened - sound familiar?
Well yes, it sounds very familiar, and despite the different
ending from the original, what we have here is a retread of
the original story with a few - but only a few - distinctive
Ellis touches added (the power suppressors are biological
implants, for example).
Matt Broome's art is good on the atmosphere but somewhat
weaker on the readability, and there's a subplot with
Wolverine and Grifter that really adds little apart from a
plot device.
While this version of the Days of Futures Past is well drawn,
there's no getting away from the fact that it's the same as
the one we know with a few WildCATS references added, a bit
more gore, and a curious predominance of S&M gear. It pains
me to say this about a Warren Ellis comic, but this quite
honestly isn't any good.
Rating: C-.
------------
A return now for my occasional book review slot, and Dave
Smeds' new X-Men novel, LAW OF THE JUNGLE. (Thanks for
the review copy, Keith.)
I have to admit to approaching this novel with trepidation,
since not only is it a Savage Land story, but it's got Sauron
and the Savage Land Mutates in it. In the comics, this is
almost always a recipe for unbearable tedium as the artist
gets to have fun drawing stegosaurs for three months while
the writer spends so much time languishing in the Savage Land
gimmick that he forgets to include a plot.
So let's get one thing straight - this isn't one of those
stories. Smeds has certainly remembered to include a plot,
he pays some proper attention to the Fall People's culture,
he makes good use of Ka-Zar and Shanna which fits in with
their current depiction in their own book, and he generally
recognises that the Savage Land is at its best as a rich and
interesting backdrop rather than a gimmick.
The basic plot is that Sauron and the Mutates are terrorising
the Savage Land by abducting people for Sauron to drain, and
the X-Men get called in to investigate. Sauron, however, isn't
quite the way he usually is.
Smeds is certainly strong on the characterisation. As well
as making good use of Ka-Zar and Shanna, and having an original
take on the Mutates which I'll come to later (yes, I didn't
think it was possible to do something original with them either),
he does a strong Cannonball and the first remotely interesting
Psylocke I've seen in some time. The characterisation alone
sustains the novel through the first third or so, which is handy,
since the plot spends most of that time consisting of people
wandering around jungles hunting for villains. You've got to
be doing something right to make that work.
There are really only two problems with this book - one big,
one small. The small one is that in his determination to make
full use of the richness of Marvel continuity, Smeds subjects
us to some less than subtle infodumps as characters (or, from
time to time, the narrator) indulge in recaps of every story
Sauron's appeared in since the 1960s, all culminating in a
questionable interpretation of the death of Tanya Anderson,
which everyone seems to hold Sauron responsible for.
The big problem is something I can only really address by
blowing the ending, so read on only if you don't mind having
the ending ruined.
The big problem arises from the good, original idea with the
Savage Land Mutates. The idea is that the Mutates are basically
followers, and are essentially happy when they've got a leader -
any leader - to follow. So Brainchild has brainwashed Sauron
into being a good leader, rather than an unstable nutter with
multiple personality disorder. So far so good, but the problem
is that because this more stable Sauron is programmed by the
unimaginative Mutates, he doesn't really have an agenda. The
threat is simply Sauron's existence and feeding sprees. There's
no plan, no big idea, and when you finally realise that after
a couple of hundred pages of wondering what Sauron's big plan is,
that's a bit of an anticlimax.
Of course, the existence of Sauron in the Savage Land is
threat enough on its own, but it means that the story has
an awful lot of people hunting for giant humanoid pterodactyls
and the plot gets a bit linear (they hunt, some of them get
captured, they escape, they win). There's enough style here
to carry it off, but a couple more plot twists wouldn't have
gone amiss.
Rating: B.
------------
This week's guest book is NEVADA #1, Steve Gerber's follow-up
to a text piece he did in an issue of Howard the Duck twenty-odd
years ago.
It's hard to get a handle on this story. Basically, our heroine
is a dancer in Las Vegas who does an Egyptian routine with her
pet trained ostrich. Meanwhile, there's a murderer wandering
around who seems to fancy himself as Damian Hirst, and some
supernatural stuff hanging around in the backgroud. Oh, and
a stalker.
Is it a murder mystery? A supernatural story? Horror? Comedy?
Does it transcend genre or is it just an almighty mess? I'm
buggered if I know. Gerber says it's "peculiar", and he's not
kidding.
What makes it difficult to review at this stage is that either
all of these disparate elements are going to unite into a
fascinating and coherent whole, or alternatively it's going to
meander around for six months failing to come together in
any meaningful way. It's got the potential to be absolutely
wonderful. It's also got the potential to be unbearably dire.
And you can't review potential.
What it certainly has is an appealing central character, a
warped sense of humour without being a surrealist book, a nice
sense of the darker underside of Vegas, rather good art, and
excellent dialogue. It would have made a good film script,
though it would have been condemned to arthouse hell and might
have ended up as a cross between Hal Hartley and David Lynch.
Or it might not.
It's the first part of a serial and it can't sensibly be reviewed
as anything else. Though all the elements for greatness are
there, it's not so dazzling in and of itself to avoid it being a
leap of faith that the remainder of the series will fulfil that
potential. Somehow, though, I think it will. I can't put my
finger on why, and for all I know I'll be here in August reviewing
the last issue in a footnote and bemoaning why it all went so
wrong, but it's certainly worth investigating.
Now there's an unhelpful review. But really, this feels like
trying to review the first chapter of a novel. You can say
what it's like, but you can't really say whether it's any good
or not.
Rating: I don't know. Ask me in five months time. For the
moment, I'll hedge my bets and call it B+.
------------
Also out this week:
AVENGERS #4 - The new team line-up is formed, and it's a rather
conservative choice. Still, now that the preliminaries are out
of the way, we can get on to some storylines. B+.
BABYLON 5: IN VALEN'S NAME #3 - Identify the characters and
win a prize. The basic idea of a renegade sect influenced by
Valen is strong, but the execution has been rather unsatisfying.
C+.
BLIP #1 - A giveaway which Bardic Press are putting out to
plug the small press, and which I frankly haven't had time to
read. Just so you know it's out there.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #5 - The Sensational Hydra's identity is
revealed (though we're still wondering why he would choose to
disguise himself as a rambling loony) and it looks like we're
being set up for a "villain impersonates hero to gain trust
and take over the world" plot. The execution is flawless, but
the proliferation of stock plot elements is worrying. B.
DEADPOOL #16 - Basically a breathing space between stories as
Deadpool goes off on a trial mission for Landau Luckman & Lake
accompanied by Bullseye. It's the best thing Marvel are
producing and you all know it. A+.
HITMAN #26 - More SAS-dominated antics, as everything builds up
to the big climax next issue and the SAS man with a conscience
gets more attention. Strong writing, but perhaps five parts
was stretching it for this story. A-.
JLA #18 - Mark Waid begins his fill-in run with a story so
Silver Age it should have a hallmark. (Characters called Julian
September? In 1998?) Downright silly at times, but good
imaginative stuff for all that. I await the inevitable e-mail
from somebody telling me this was done before in a back-up
strip in a 1963 issue of Brave & The Bold... A-.
QUICKSILVER #7 - Dane Whitman comes to fight over Crystal, in
an uncharacteristically arrogant and pushy way, and she responds
by writing herself out of the series. Characters seem to be
being bent in the direction of the plot here. B.
------------
Next week: Domino and Blaquesmith resurface in Cable #55.
Maverick's limping on. And the original X-Men are reunited in
Uncanny X-Men #356. (Um, haven't they been in the team together
since 1991?) I've also got a copy of the Ultimate X-Men short
story collection to review, though whether I'll have finished it
by next week I'm not sure.
Paul O'Brien
pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk, www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~prob/
Section 148 - Scots law at its finest.
Bigbear
Paul O'Brien wrote in message <6fk2ip$b...@nntp02.primenet.com>...
>
<snip>
>EXCALIBUR #120, and the cancellation edict has evidently
>come down from on high. Ben Raab makes a start on resolving
>the outstanding plotlines, as the newly dumped Pete Wisdom
>responds entirely sensibly by leaving the book. Despite
>the shaky dialogue he's been given, Wisdom has survived the
>post-Ellis era fundamentally intact, and it's good that he's
>being left out there in Limbo so that he can be used properly
>in future, rather than being co-opted into the wider X-family
>where he really doesn't belong. It's just a shame we never
>got to see him meet Wolverine.
That is something I would've liked to have seen. Imagine Logan's react to
the man who deflowered Kitty? Look out, you're in for a butt whuppin'!
Hopefully, Ellis or someone of similar style, will pick Wisdom back up again
and give us some solo adventures.
>Over on the other side of the island, Douglock decides to
>break Wolfsbane out of the vault whether she likes it or not.
>His success is more than welcome, as this "sealed vault" thing
>is far and away the least plausible idea to have surfaced in
>Raab's run as writer. It didn't make sense on any level, and
>its premature abandonment, even if caused by cancellation,
>is a good thing. Raab also dredges up the long-forgotten
>plot from forty-odd issues ago as Douglock finally gets
>access to the information on Legacy that was downloaded into
>him from Zero. Could it be that Raab actually intends to
>resolve the Legacy plot in his remaining five issues?
I'm hoping we're nearing the end of the Legacy virus. Rahne did make a good
point though when she said that the info he had in him may not be of any
use. I still don't care for Douglocke though. I hope he get's left behind
when the series is ended.
>Despite being weighted down with the horrible vault plot,
>this is still a rather good issue. Wisdom's departure is
>well handled, particularly his final conversation with
>Meggan (though for some reason, the artist seems to have
>him confused with Shinobi Shaw). There's some rather good
>comic relief with Nightcrawler phoning the X-Men and getting
>through to Marrow instead, and the decision to play Douglock
>as a hopelessly naive teenager is starting to pay off.
The part with Kurt was one of the thing I really enjoyed. He was very good
friends with the gang back in the states. That's the first time I've seen
somebody from either team on either side of the pond actually thinking about
their old friends. I'm really looking forward to seeing these characters
bought back into the mix. I'm really looking forward to seeing Joe Kelly
write Kurt.
>Rubi does a generally sound job on the art, though as I
>mentioned above, he can't do Wisdom. He has trouble with
>Wolfsbane too, for that matter. But he does do good layouts,
>and there's certainly something in there worth paying
>attention to.
The art in this issue wasn't anything to excite me but it didn't turn me off
so I guess that's a good thing.
>Of course, there's no point giving a good review to anything
>Ben Raab does, since it'll get mutilated on Usenet anyway.
>A shame, since his Excalibur continues to improve monthly.
>Much of the criticism he gets would carry more weight if it
>bore the slightest resemblance to the stories he's presently
>writing, not the (weaker) ones he was doing this time last
>year.
Actually the thing that really made me a non-fan of him was the NM LS. His
run on Excalibur just hasn't excited me or made me eager to read the next
issue. There have also been some times when I just haven't cared for his
direction of the book.
>Rating: A-.
I'd give it a B and that is a huge complement for Excalibur from me lately.
>Sometimes a book comes along that is just so devoid of anything
>of interest that it hardly seems worth reviewing it, even to
>give it a D. Such a book is WOLVERINE #124.
>
>Wolverine is passing by one day when he discovers some people
>about to try and kill Captain America. So he helps Cap beat
>them up. The end.
>
>No, really. That's it. DeFalco tries to tart it up a bit
>by carrying on the self-doubt that was the main theme of his
>previous story, but he overdoes it wildly, and none of that
>can compensate for the total lack of anything interesting in
>the plot. Cowan and Sienkiewicz continue to trample all over
>one another as their two rather good individual styles merge
>into a bit of a mess.
>
>For completists only.
>
>Rating: D+.
I haven't read this one, didn't ever plan to read it, and now hearing your
views on it, reassures the fact that I won't. Wasn't Tom DeFalco the old
editor or EIC? I'm looking forward to the Claremont arc starting next month.
>Now if you want to see a fill-in issue done properly, go and
>buy X-FORCE #77. In fact, just go and buy it.
>
>This is a self-contained story that, unlike Wolverine #124,
>deigns to include an actual plot and to continue with the
>same character development that the regular writer was doing.
>In fact, you can barely see the join - and given the quality
>of X-Force at the moment, that's certainly a compliment.
That's a HUGE complement! To be able to continue what JF Moore has been
doing and not screw things up is amazing! I would like to see Harris get on
an xbook maybe as a permanent writer. Maybe they could use him over on GenX
or X-Factor?
>The basic premise is something we've seen many times before.
>Obscure government nuclear test base causes a local town to
>have lots of mutant kids, most of whom die because their
>powers are defective and go out of control. There's nothing
>new to this, but Joseph Harris has an eye for the details that
>make this sort of thing work.
>
>Aside from a convincing backdrop, he makes it work by placing
>the focus on the reaction of the team, particularly Tabitha,
>to what's happening. Her horrifically unpleasant childhood
>has been brushed with in the past, but it's rarely come
>across as well as it does here. There's no new details, just
>a wonderful sense of how the whole thing has affected her -
>which is surely the point.
I like seeing Tabs having a little more depth than a Dixie Cup. I thought
Harris did a nice job of this. It seems to me like he actually read some fo
the better work on these characters before doing his fill-in.
>Adam Pollina continues to show that his true strengths lie
>in drawing the real world and not the spandex-clad clowns
>who filled up his earlier issues on this title. The art here
>is just wonderful, and that cover is surely one of the best
>of the year. There's too many drearily uninspired covers
>out there, and even if the picture itself is a homage, the
>redesign is what makes the whole thing work.
I wish the other xbooks or even comics in general would follow suit. I like
seeing characters in normal clothes and not loud spandex outfits. It makes
them feel real. Too bad Pollina is leaving X-Force soon. He'll be missed.
>People still complain that there are too many X-books. For
>the first time in ages, they're wrong. The books are getting
>their own identity back, and are justifying their existence
>on their own merits, not by clinging on to the coattails of
>Uncanny X-Men. X-Force is by far the best example of this,
>and it's a shame that so many people who would enjoy it are
>still being put off by the X.
>
>Rating: A.
I agree whole-heartedly with both your opinion on the xbooks and your grade
for this issue.
>DEADPOOL #16 - Basically a breathing space between stories as
>Deadpool goes off on a trial mission for Landau Luckman & Lake
>accompanied by Bullseye. It's the best thing Marvel are
>producing and you all know it. A+.
This book had me laughing so hard my eyes were watering! The sheep jokes
were hysterical in a Deadpool sort of humor way. It was also funny the way
he with singing Grease in Greece and it just so happens that Grease returned
to the theaters this past weekend. Joe Kelly throughs in loads of pop
culture references. Is he the Quentin Tarantino of comics? :) I enjoyed the
way Kelly had Deadpool telling Bullseye one thing and then had him flashing
back and showing how it really happened. This month followed suit with the
rest of Deadpool and was incredible. This is definatelly one of the best
books that Marvel puts out.
Bigbear
Joseph Harris
Once again, thanks for the kind words. The X-Factor guess spot has
been moved up to issue #147, if that interests you.
-jh
Joseph Harris
Joseph Harris wrote:
>>
>> >And not a bad story, either, for a filler by a guest writer. I'm
>> >starting to look forward to Harris' fill-in on X-Factor in June.
>
>> Thanks. Me too.
>Hey, nice to see you on the boards! Now we can grill you with
>questions... ;-)
>As someone mentioned in another thread, your handling of the young
>mutant children was very good -- it seems that many comic writers
>stumble where youngsters are concerned, but I felt you captured a
>fairly real spirit to them. From the preview, it looks like you'll be
>dealing with a child character again in X-Factor -- this issue of
>X-Force leaves me looking forward to it (though I must confess, I'm
>not thrilled about a Shard-focused story).
It's going to be issue #147, if you can overcome your aversion.
>I would also add that I liked the friction you wrote among the members
>of X-Force -- perfectly understandable, given the time they've spent
>in close quarters, on the road.
>I thought the story had heart, though once my sympathy and concern was
>built up for the children, I was unsatisfied when X-Force left them in
>potential danger.
>-- Rajiv
>---- End Forwarded Message
Paul O'Brien
In article <6fqnvh$r37$1...@winter.news.erols.com>, Bigbear <bill-
gcc@!badspam!erols.com> writes
>
>That is something I would've liked to have seen. Imagine Logan's react to
>the man who deflowered Kitty? Look out, you're in for a butt whuppin'!
Actually, I think they'd have got on quite well. Wolverine's
probably the X-Man who's got most in common with Pete.
The other scene I always wanted to see was Pete meeting Captain
America during a crossover. Strained conversation, and then as
the two head off in opposite directions we see Cap saying to one
of the other Avengers "You know, he's obnoxious but his heart's
in the right place..." And Pete saying to Kitty "My god, he's
the most boring man I've ever met in my life."
>I haven't read this one, didn't ever plan to read it, and now hearing your
>views on it, reassures the fact that I won't. Wasn't Tom DeFalco the old
>editor or EIC?
DeFalco was the EIC in the early nineties. He's been writing for
years, though, since way before he was EIC. His work varies from
the not bad down to the diabolical, and those poor souls who've
suffered through a wide range of his stories seem to say that
the further he gets from Spider-Man and the 1980s, the worse he gets.
Scott Shupe
Paul O'Brien wrote:
>
> >I haven't read this one, didn't ever plan to read it, and now hearing your
> >views on it, reassures the fact that I won't. Wasn't Tom DeFalco the old
> >editor or EIC?
>
> years, though, since way before he was EIC. His work varies from
> the not bad down to the diabolical,
You must not have read his 1st run on ASM in the 80's.
Really great stuff. Possibly better than Stern's run on the
title. I agree that everything he's produced since (that I've
seen, anyway) has been utter crap, including his Spider-Man work.
A lot of people seem to think that DeFalco has never been and
never will be capable of writing anything good, and they're wrong.
> and those poor souls who've
> suffered through a wide range of his stories seem to say that
> the further he gets from Spider-Man and the 1980s, the worse he gets.
True. But his best is better than, "not bad."
Scott
shu...@mitre.org
Bigbear
Paul O'Brien wrote in message ...
>In article <6fqnvh$r37$1...@winter.news.erols.com>, Bigbear <bill-
>gcc@!badspam!erols.com> writes
>>
>>That is something I would've liked to have seen. Imagine Logan's react to
>>the man who deflowered Kitty? Look out, you're in for a butt whuppin'!
>
>Actually, I think they'd have got on quite well. Wolverine's
>probably the X-Man who's got most in common with Pete.
True, he would have the most in common with him and probably would get along
well with him. Of course, Logan would kick his butt before he had a chance
to find that out. :) Logan just seems very protective of "his girls".
>The other scene I always wanted to see was Pete meeting Captain
>America during a crossover. Strained conversation, and then as
>the two head off in opposite directions we see Cap saying to one
>of the other Avengers "You know, he's obnoxious but his heart's
>in the right place..." And Pete saying to Kitty "My god, he's
>the most boring man I've ever met in my life."
I can definately see this scene happening! I'd also like to see Pete's
reaction to Xavier. I see it like this, Chuck gives one of his trademark
"Dream" speeches and the room is quiet with all the X-people contemplating
what he said. Then Wisdom lights up a smoke and says something like "Is this
guy for real?".
>>I haven't read this one, didn't ever plan to read it, and now hearing your
>>views on it, reassures the fact that I won't. Wasn't Tom DeFalco the old
>>editor or EIC?
>
>DeFalco was the EIC in the early nineties. He's been writing for
>years, though, since way before he was EIC. His work varies from
>the not bad down to the diabolical, and those poor souls who've
>suffered through a wide range of his stories seem to say that
>the further he gets from Spider-Man and the 1980s, the worse he gets.
I thought he used to be EIC but I wasn't sure. I didn't know he used to
write Spidey though, I never got too caught up in that book. Thanks for the
info.
Bigbear
JMcgin1007
>
>Paul O'Brien wrote in message ...
>>In article <6fqnvh$r37$1...@winter.news.erols.com>, Bigbear <bill-
>>gcc@!badspam!erols.com> writes
>>>
>>>That is something I would've liked to have seen. Imagine Logan's react to
>>>the man who deflowered Kitty? Look out, you're in for a butt whuppin'!
>>
>>Actually, I think they'd have got on quite well. Wolverine's
>>probably the X-Man who's got most in common with Pete.
>
>
>True, he would have the most in common with him and probably would get along
>well with him. Of course, Logan would kick his butt before he had a chance
>to find that out. :) Logan just seems very protective of "his girls".
>
>
Very true, Logan would give him a working over but would never get the chance.
Storm ( in her present frame of mind) would fry Wisdom to a crisp ash pile
before Logan could reach him.
<snip>>
>I can definately see this scene happening! I'd also like to see Pete's
>reaction to Xavier. I see it like this, Chuck gives one of his trademark
>"Dream" speeches and the room is quiet with all the X-people contemplating
>what he said. Then Wisdom lights up a smoke and says something like "Is this
>guy for real?".
Didn't Pete tow the line (the dream). The X-man mind scanned him and Pete's
thinking was there was a job to do so do it.
Of course he might say that. But then the X-men would give him a blindfold to
go with his smoke than WHAM, lights out.