REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 27 July 2008
Paul O'Brien
27 July 2008
============
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:
UNCANNY X-MEN #500 - SFX, part 1
by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Greg Land, Terry Dodson,
Jay Leisten and Rachel Dodson
WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS #5 - "Citadel"
by Fred Van Lente and Clayton Henry
X-MEN: LEGACY #214 - Sins of the Father, part 4 of 4
by Mike Carey, Scot Eaton, Ken Lashley, Andrew Hennessy and
Paul Neary
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So, five hundred issues of UNCANNY X-MEN. Okay, in many ways it's a
pretty meaningless number. It counts the reprint issues; it doesn't
count X-Men. But still, five hundred issues. It feels quite
satisfying, doesn't it? And Marvel have chosen to use this anniversary
to kick off the San Francisco era.
Now, pretty much since M-Day, I've been complaining that the X-books'
biggest problem is a lack of direction. The titles have been wandering
around in circles, without giving much impression of having a long term
plan. Well, that issue is finally being taken in hand. True, we've had
a bit of wheel-spinning over the last few months, as the titles seemed
to be killing time between "Messiah Complex" and this anniversary issue.
But now we're in San Francisco, with a new setting, a new sense of
purpose for the team, and a new co-writer in Matt Fraction. All this is
extremely promising. Not only does it allow the series to strike out in
a new direction at last, but putting the team in a more sympathetic
location should allow for a change of pace from the X-Men's usual
angst-ridden ways. And Fraction has written some consistently excellent
stories for Marvel, particularly his collaboration with Brubaker on Iron
Fist.
In fact, I've seen some mixed reactions to this issue. And I can kind
of understand why. There's a big shift of tone from what came before -
and in many ways that's a good thing. But it's a new sensibility, and a
somewhat quirkier one. Aside from that, though, it's not the best thing
that Brubaker and Fraction have written. It shows plenty of promise for
the new direction, but it isn't an especially great issue in its own
right.
It's a straightforward story. The X-Men have moved into their new base
in San Francisco, and a local artist is putting on an exhibition of
"mutant kitsch" with three decommissioned Sentinels. The X-Men show up
at the opening night (whether to object or simply to make sure that the
Sentinels are safe isn't altogether clear)... and then Magneto shows up
to activate the Sentinels for a big fight. As you'd imagine, this being
the start of a new direction, the whole thing turns out to be a scheme
to allow a bigger story to kick off in the background.
Fine in principle, but with a flotilla of subplots taking up space, and
a chunk of the book devoted to a tour of the new facility, it ends up
feeling a bit rushed. Even though the arch-enemy is there, and
unexpectedly back in action, it doesn't quite have the sense of scale
you'd expect. The pacing is a bit choppy - we have random X-Men showing
up during the fight without warning.
And there's a central plot point that doesn't work. Be warned, I'm
about to spoil the ending. Magneto is apparently causing a distraction
so that the High Evolutionary can mess about with the Dreaming Celestial
for some reason. But he doesn't seem to cause the X-Men any delay at
all, making the story rather pointless. Besides, the Dreaming Celestial
is primarily an Eternals character - so if you're going to distract
anyone, shouldn't it be those guys?
Mind you, I like the idea here. In Magneto's eyes, the X-Men are
flouncing around as shiny popular superheroes, but doing nothing of
value to address this whole M-Day thing. They're just complacently
assuming it'll all work out. And Magneto is finally doing what somebody
should have done years ago: taking steps to sort it all out. Excellent.
This is where we needed to go.
Art comes from Greg Land and Terry Dodson, each of whom seems to have
been assigned pages more or less randomly. They're a slightly awkward
combination; Dodson is basically a cartoonist with a sideline in
cheesecake, while Land goes in for a sort of airbrushed hyperrealism.
They're both shiny and bright, and Justin Ponsor's colouring helps to
provide consistency, but not quite sure about having them work on the
same story.
More to the point, while Dodson is as good as you'd expect, Land has
more issues. Now, a lot of people really can't stand Greg Land, and
object strenuously to his perceived overuse of photo-reference. So far
as it goes, that doesn't particularly bother me. It's all in how you
arrange it. Yes, his work is overly prettified, but from a certain
angle, I can see the appeal of that.
However, there are some very odd visual choice in this issue: when the
characters are standing around for three panels discussing the awesome
view, why doesn't the art show it? Granted, that could have been in the
script, but I can't imagine why. But most fundamentally, Land's
characters can't act. There's something almost disturbing about the
clumsy facial expressions. Just look at the Mayor of San Francisco,
sporting the same inane rictus grin for four straight pages. It's
frankly weird and makes everyone look vaguely inhuman.
So, this is a flawed issue. All involved have done better, and will no
doubt do better again. But the important bits - the general direction,
the long-term plots - those are all in place. On balance, I'm still
optimistic about this. These guys have a vision for the X-Men which
actually involves doing something different with them, and generally
cheering up. And I thoroughly approve of that.
Rating: B+
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WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS confuses me a little. At first glance, you might
assume that it was intended to bring in younger casual readers, like the
various Marvel Adventures books. And it's certainly rated for younger
audiences than the other X-books.
But at the same time, it's more of a traditional superhero book for
people who liked the style of the 1980s. Of course, that makes it a
relatively accessible title - everything's neatly introduced, with Kitty
serving as the character who needs it all explained to her, and writer
Fred van Lente carefully and skilfully ties up the plot in the course of
22 pages. It's got the good old-fashioned, salt of the earth
storytelling values that you don't always see in superhero books today.
Yet at the same time, it runs stories like this one. "Citadel" is a
flashback story where Wolverine recounts an early adventure with Alpha
Flight, in which he fought another victim of the same government project
- Weapon Y - and hoped to get some clues as to his own background. It's
partly a vehicle to use the classic Alpha Flight as guest stars, but
mainly a rather depressing story speculating about Wolverine's mystery
origins. Curiously, it does so in a way that would have made perfect
sense in the context of early eighties comics (when this series is
supposed to take place) but more or less ignores all of the revelations
added more recently. It's pick and mix continuity.
The story handles all this very efficiently, and guest artist Clayton
Henry is well used on an all-ages title. His style is always
well-suited to superheroes in the classic mould. Still, the whole thing
just seems like a rather odd story if we're going after the younger
readers here. The main impression I get from the book is of a writer
who really enjoys playing with these toys, and is inviting us to join
him.
And there's nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes. I quite like
the book, and I share its affection for the period. It's got a lot
going for it. But this story, at least, feels a little bit like a
nostalgia book.
Rating: B
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Now that X-MEN: LEGACY has settled into its groove, we can see that it's
a very unusual book for the Marvel of 2008. The last decade or so has
seen a major shift of emphasis, away from viewing each title as an
ongoing saga, and de-emphasising continuity, at least in the sense of
references to old stories.
Legacy is an anomaly. Although Mike Carey is still writing it in a
relatively modern style, the book is overwhelmed with flashbacks, some
of them quite peripheral to the action. And the stories seem unusually
concerned with tying up loose ends, and bringing them together into a
coherent mythology.
"Sins of the Father", for example, sees Carey digging into the various
stories about Alamagordo. This mostly amounts to some passing
references in the mid-sixties, and some scattered stories by Fabian
Nicieza in the nineties, some of which appeared in the long-cancelled
Gambit solo title.
Now, Alamagordo does have a rather confused history. When Stan Lee
first mentioned that Xavier's father had worked at Alamagordo, he was
presumably thinking of the atomic bomb tests in 1945. By the 1990s,
that no longer worked for the timeline, but the name lingered on as a
curious anomaly, arbitrarily recast as a genetic research facility. In
this story, Carey is trying simultaneously to bring together the various
scattered threads of characters connected to Alamagordo (including
obscurities like Hazard and Black Womb), and to tell a story about Mr
Sinister trying to find a new host body to replace the one that just got
killed.
I'm all in favour of Carey's attempts to bring back an overall plan -
even if it's one that he's having to impose on the material after the
fact. Traditionally, this sort of thing has always been a major part of
the appeal of the superhero genre. It was one of the big selling points
of Chris Claremont's run in the 1980s, it drove the books through most
of the nineties, and it's rather been lost sight of in recent years -
partly because of a trade off with creative freedom. There's something
to be said for trying to recapture the sense of it all fitting together.
But in practice, the result is a very dense read, where the plot is
smothered under the weight of continuity references. It's really a bit
too much - X-Men: Legacy ought to use history as a springboard for new
stories, but instead it seems to use new stories as a device to explore
history. The book is rather dry. And the story feels like it's merely
exploring continuity for its own sake - an obscure backwater of
continuity, at that.
I still think this is a basically promising idea for a series; it's just
a matter of getting the balance right. I'm sure Carey will get there in
the end. This story, though... not quite right.
Rating: B-
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Also this week...
AMBUSH BUG #1 - I was going to review this in full, but I suspect it's
best left to people more familiar with DC's output. That's not to say
it's inaccessible; Ambush Bug is basically Keith Giffen and Robert Loren
Fleming making fun of the excessive seriousness of today's DC Universe,
just as it always was, and anyone with a passing familiarity with the
genre will get the thrust. But there's also a lot of throwaway jokes
for the DC faithful and I strongly suspect that if you don't have a
working knowledge of the plot of Identity Crisis, there's a fair amount
going over your head. Still quite good fun, though, even coming at it
without that knowledge. B+
ANGEL: REVELATIONS #3 - This is a mixed series. The story seems like a
merely serviceable boarding school affair, with a superhero origin
nailed onto the side. And Warren's apparent obliviousness to the
world's most obvious gay crush is hard to credit. But Adam Pollina's
remarkable artwork really lifts the book, especially now that he's able
to make full use of Warren's wings for some wonderfully exaggerated
compositions, and practically justifies a purchase by itself. Great to
look at, but the writing can't quite keep up. B+
DAN DARE #7 - The finale of Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine's miniseries,
coming soon to a collected edition near you. Ennis has always had a
romantic streak in amongst his viciousness and black comedy, but it's
unusual to see him playing it up quite so strongly as he has here. The
series is practically a love letter to Dan Dare and the traditional
qualities he stands for - and a lament that these are now seen as quaint
and outmoded, rather than eternal and essential. Quite a conservative
book in many ways, but it commits to a vaguely unfashionable ideology
and makes it work. The generic bad guys drag it down, I think, but
there's a lot to like in this series. B+
LIBERTY COMICS #1 - This is a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal
Defense Fund, which kind of makes it review-proof. But leaving that
aside, it's a generally decent mix. Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's
Boys piece is little more than a "give us the money" pitch, but Ed
Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal throws in a nice piece about
intimidating the press, and Darwyn Cooke takes the theme even more
loosely with his own story about a cursed book (i.e., something that
actually would need to be censored). Mark Millar and John Paul Leon seem
not to have noticed the theme, and produce an uncharacteristically
downbeat piece about a retired suburban Dracula, perfect for the
four-page length. Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier throw in some
lectures about the history of censorship (it's all bad), which is fairly
amusing if a little obvious. Overall, though, decent package. Give the
nice lawyers your money. A
SHE-HULK #31 - This is the crossover with X-Factor, and as you'd expect,
it's basically the build-up to the fight from She-Hulk's perspective.
Much of Peter David's run on She-Hulk has involved her sulking and
acting irrationally, and this is no exception. It's used as a device to
justify a fight scene which the story practically admits is gratuitous -
possibly a neat idea in theory, but it's a little too contrived to work,
and it doesn't make for a very sympathetic She-Hulk, who's required to
act unreasonably. This run hasn't quite clicked for me, so far, and
there's no change here. B-
ULTIMATE X-MEN #96 - The "Banshee" storyline continues, and predictably
enough, it's building to half the X-Men fighting the other half.
Somewhere along the line, the whole plot about Alpha Flight and
Northstar seems to have fallen by the wayside - so unless that bit was a
set-up for "Ultimatum", I'm just a bit confused about the way this
story's been put together. There's a more interesting subplot with Jean
Grey, with the idea that she refuses to face up to the implications of
being so powerful that the rest of the team are rendered superfluous.
But overall, this storyline feels like a bit of a mess, right now. 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, X-Men: Odd Men Out, a one-shot featuring two unpublished
stories by the late Dave Cockrum; Wolverine: Origins #27, with the
second part of Daken's origin story; X-Men: First Class #14, guest
starring Machine Man; and Wolverine #67, the second part of Mark Millar
and Steve McNiven's "Old Man Logan" arc. There's also a look back at
five hundred issues of Uncanny in this month's Marvel Spotlight.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
Billy Bissette
news:oaKtRcA5...@esoterica.demon.co.uk:
> THE X-AXIS
> 27 July 2008
> ============
>
> For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
> X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
>
> ------------
>
> This week:
>
> UNCANNY X-MEN #500 - SFX, part 1
> by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Greg Land, Terry Dodson,
> Jay Leisten and Rachel Dodson
> ------------
>
> So, five hundred issues of UNCANNY X-MEN.
> And there's a central plot point that doesn't work. Be warned, I'm
> about to spoil the ending. Magneto is apparently causing a
> distraction so that the High Evolutionary can mess about with the
> Dreaming Celestial for some reason. But he doesn't seem to cause
> the X-Men any delay at all, making the story rather pointless.
I think the distraction is meant to have worked, but that the way the
book is written makes it look like it didn't.
The book only switches to the High Evolutionary after the Dreaming
Celestial lights up. What it fails to inform is how long the High
Evolutionary has been at work on the Celestial. He might have been
at work for a while, unnoticed while the city was wrapped up first in
the display of the Sentinel "art" and then in the attack itself.
Things I question are:
Why does Emma not use her diamond form when chased by the Sentinel?
Yes, she is using her telepathy to talk to the others, but you'd think
she'd switch to her safer diamond form rather than staying flesh while
asking where her back-up is. Are Marvel or Brubaker & Fraction trying
to phase out her diamond form? Or did they just decide the whole
teamwork scene was more dramatic if Colossus and Wolverine rescued a
vulnerable Emma versus rescuing a nearly indestructable Emma? Or is
this supposed to be some kind of Secret Invasion "clue"? (Clue in
quotes because this is exactly the problem with Secret Invasion.) Or
did they just forget that she had the ability?
Why do the X-Men psychically blindfold the mayor when they fly
her to their base? The claim is for security purposes. But their
base is a highly visible building. It is also a highly recognizable
building, at least once you know what to look for. They haven't
hidden the general location, and she sees what it looks like as they
remove the "blindfold" when she's on the ground. And they are
retro-fitting an existing facility, so that should make it even
easier to find. Not to mention the base is full of construction
crews. And the surface building is meant to be open to the mutant
public as a community center, so it isn't even like the place is
apparently *meant* to be hidden.
Which raises another issue. They picked a place that is
intentionally hard to reach by conventional means. Then decide it
is going to be a mutant "community center"?
And when did Beast become all "mutants are the future" again?
Endangered Species was him trying desperately to find some way
to restore mutants, and failing. Messiah Complex was the supposed
birth of new hope, but honestly why would that be enough to turn
him around? One birth of a super magic baby? That isn't enough
to say that Decimation was undone, and they should still be worried
about being near extinct.
It is also a bit weird seeing how Morrison-like the San Francisco
set-up feels. X-Men in the open, and the new base has shades of
X-Corp. Mutants being the new chic for the city. Back to the idea
that "mutants are the future."
Taff...@gmail.com
I never, and still don't. like the idea of mutants as evolutionary.
Mutants are too random, and "children of the atom" makes more sense
than true natural evolution. How the Ultimate Universe is doing it is
better, mutants were created by Weapon X in an attempt to push human
evolution. Makes way more sense given how wildly different mutants
are. If they're smart they'll not undo M-Day ever but have mutants,
especially the X-Men army, try to make their way without any real
understanding of what place they have in the world, misguided as
always.
Wolverine: First Class was a good read, nice interaction and the story
made more sense than Weapon Plus ever did. A complete story in one
issue, who could've thunk it?
Weapon Plus and mutants as evolutionary necessities is why I dropped
reading all of the X-Men titles years ago. First Class had Fred Van
Lente, and he tells stories that make sense.