REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 20 July 2008
Paul O'Brien
20 July 2008
============
For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
------------
This week:
X-FORCE #5 - Angels and Demons, part 5 of 6
by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost and Clayton Crain
BATGIRL #1 - Redemption Road, part 1
by Adam Beechen, Jim Calafiore, Mark McKenna & Jonathan Glapion
THE HELM #1 (of 4)
by Jim Hardison, Bart Sears and Randy Elliott
------------
It's one of those weeks when there's lots of books out, but I haven't
had time to read most of them. Fortunately, only two of them are
X-books, and they're both in mid-storyline anyway. So let's start off
with X-FORCE, another recently-launched title still in its first
storyline.
X-Force, X-Force, X-Force. What a frustrating comic.
Craig Kyle and Chris Yost have written some good stories in the past. I
thought their X-23 miniseries were pretty successful, and an interesting
exploration of a character so thoroughly screwed up that there might not
be any "real" personality left beneath it all. On paper, X-Force goes
into similar territory.
They're a black ops team on the fringes of the X-Men, made up of
characters who are willing to do that sort of job, but have differing
attitudes towards it. Warpath's wary of being sucked in; Wolfsbane's
doing it for revenge; and Wolverine's trying to stop his young charges
from turning into somebody like him. None of this is spectacularly
original, but it's not a bad premise for a spin-off book. You can do
something with it.
But the resulting book isn't really working, and isn't much fun. The
opening six-issue arc is all about X-Force hunting down the Purifiers,
the religious maniacs who used to follow Reverend Stryker around. With
Stryker dead, his protege Matthew Risman has managed to replace him with
Bastion, only to find out that Bastion is too mad even for his tastes.
So, you've got a civil war within the Purifiers, X-Force trying to take
the organisation down, and a subplot about Risman's group cutting off
Warren's wings and triggering a change back to his Archangel look.
It's the sort of storyline they might have done in the 1990s. But in
the nineties, it would have been full of people in bright costumes
carrying stupidly enormous guns. It would have been melodramatic, over
the top, shiny, and a little bit aware of its own silliness.
Instead, we have everyone in muted clothes, a story that takes itself
desperately seriously, and a clumsy mismatch between the absurdity of
the plot and the earnestness of the delivery. The book carries itself
like a solemn drama - and it's a story about mad Christian zealots
breeding a gun-toting choir with metal wings, for heaven's sake.
Perhaps the writers were going for deadpan black comedy, but there's no
hint of it in Clayton Crain's sternly murky art. You couldn't even call
it atmospheric - there are too many cut-and-paste crowd scenes for that.
The story seems to want us to accept Matthew Risman as a noble but
misguided villain, who acts with the best of intentions and draws the
line at Bastion's scorched earth tactics. This doesn't work, because
the Purifiers have never been anything more than one-note crazies, and
we've never been given any reason to buy into Risman as anything more
than that. They have an agenda (kill every mutant in sight) coupled
with a motivation (religious belief), but that's not enough to make them
interesting characters.
But the main problem with this book is that it's so joyless. Ironically,
if the creators were willing to camp it up a bit more and embrace the
silliness of their story, I might come along for the ride, and actually
get into it enough to care about the character moments. As it is, I
just can't take it seriously.
Rating: C-
------------
I don't read many DC books, and I've generally avoided the sprawling
Batman line. But I did buy the first couple of years of the previous
BATGIRL series, and I thought the character had something.
Cassandra Cain is basically the Batman equivalent of X-23. She's a girl
raised from infancy to be an assassin, who was psychologically abused by
the bad guys, who did nasty things, and who eventually escaped and
switched sides. She used to have a rather over-the-top gimmick that she
could barely talk, which was psychologically fitting in a way, but
ultimately a bit silly and limiting. That's now been toned down to
making her merely taciturn, and it seems she's now even capable of doing
her own first person narration. Nice to see she's making progress.
Now, there's plenty that you can do with Batgirl. It doesn't take a
genius to figure out the standard angle for her stories: she's trying to
atone for her past, overcome her programming, and generally become more
normal. Since she's a teenager, you also throw in the "coming of age"
angle: should Batman keep her on a leash because she can't be trusted,
or should she be allowed to go out and make her own mistakes. There's
plenty of material here. She practically writes herself.
Her new creative team - writer Adam Beechen and penciller Jim Calafiore
- clearly understand all this just fine. What they've produced is a
perfectly serviceable first issue which spells out the above in greater
detail. And it's absolutely fine, but it doesn't take us much further
than that.
I've complained before about DC publishing first issues which are
incomprehensible to newcomers. Well, credit where it's due: this one
doesn't make that mistake. If anything, it goes too far in the opposite
direction, painstakingly explaining everything that's happened to
Batgirl in the last few years. And I mean everything. Two whole pages
are taken up with exposition as Batman, Robin and Nightwing literally
recap the plot, beat by beat, in massively excessive detail. ("While
Cain rounded up his other daughters and a team of scientists, Cassandra
first fought Supergirl, then went to work for Slade..." - and so on, and
so on.)
But too much information is an improvement on too little, and there's a
reasonably interesting set-up in here somewhere. The bigger problem is
that this issue is mainly just set-up and recap, and that the plot only
starts to hit its stride in the last page. As a first issue, it could
have used a little less talking and a little more progress.
Still, it's fine. It's an entirely competent piece of work, it clearly
gets the character, it's got some concern for new readers, and it's got
the usual readable art from Calafiore. It's just a straight run at the
concept, on a character who's strong enough to sustain it.
Rating: B
------------
You sometimes hear it said of a miniseries that it reads more like a
movie pitch - by which people usually mean that it seems more interested
in sketching the outline of a licensable concept than in actually
telling the story.
Well, Dark Horse's THE HELM is something even more specific. It's a
miniseries that reads like a Jack Black movie pitch.
Given that reaction, I wasn't altogether shocked when I looked for the
website of writer Jim Hardison, and turned up a site called
CharacterWeb.com, for a business which gives advice on telling stories
about "brand characters." Now, I have no problem with creators who are
comfortable with viewing themselves as part of the entertainment
industry. But let's say that The Helm is the sort of book you would
expect from somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about how to
construct a potentially licensable character.
Mathew is an overweight thirty-year-old slob who works as a clerk in a
video store and still lives with his mum. After being understandably
dumped by his girlfriend, Mathew feels strangely drawn to a mysterious
yard sale. Here, he picks up a magical talking helmet which gives the
wearer superpowers, and which at first tells him that he must be the
chosen one. When Mathew puts it on, they're magically bonded for life,
and the helmet realises what a dork it's just saddled itself with. So -
and here's the high concept - the helmet is left with a choice: try and
turn this loser into a legendary hero, or get him killed so that it can
try again.
This is a perfectly good idea, albeit in a rather formulaic way.
Familiar character type, twist on the superhero genre, mismatched buddy
comedy... If I was a movie executive, and Jack Black wanted to do it,
I'd probably give it the go-ahead. Could be quite a good film.
But of course, there's a difference between being a good idea for a
story, and actually being a good story. The Helm #1 is nearly a good
story. It's well paced, and the helmet gets some good lines. ("I beg
thine pardon. You art not the one. Sorry.") The exaggerated art from
Bart Sears and Randy Elliott works fine for light comedy.
Unfortunately, none of this can quite compensate for a lead character
who is both a cliche and a whiner. Mathew is both unsubtle and
misjudged, and drags the whole book down. Yes, I know the whole point
of the story is that he's going to turn into an unlikely hero by the end
- it doesn't take a genius to see that this story is going to follow the
standard rules. But he needs to be at least a little bit sympathetic to
start with.
Of course, this is nothing you couldn't fix in a rewrite. It's still a
decent idea, and it has its moments. But it's not quite there yet.
Rating: B
------------
Also this week... lots of stuff that I haven't read yet. But they
include...
X-FACTOR #33 - Not only is this the first issue in the new Detroit
setting, it's also the first part of a Secret Invasion tie-in, and a
crossover with She-Hulk. That's an awful lot to cover in one issue, but
Peter David keeps his head and makes sure to focus on the important bit:
the direction of the ongoing title. X-Factor are still private
investigators, but now they're in a normal city, and unknown to most of
the team, they're also in the pocket of Valerie Cooper. (Um... isn't M
telepathic? Wouldn't she know?) Continuing his occasional programme of
dusting off underused characters, David then brings in Darwin from Ed
Brubaker's X-Men run - accompanied by the Skrull Longshot. Larry
Stroman takes over on art, thus reuniting the creative team from the
early nineties X-Factor. It's slightly rougher than his old work, and
there's a bit of random posing, but he's still an interesting artist for
the most part. As for the story - okay, there's slightly too much going
on here, and bits of have been shoehorned in. But once again, David
manages to get an entertaining comic out of a challenging remit. B+
------------
There's more from me at If Destroyed, and apparently the Ninth Art
archive is going to back online at some point...
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
Next week, Uncanny X-Men reaches its 500th issue. (Okay, some of them
were reprints. Shhh.) Ultimate X-Men #96 has the X-Men fighting each
other. Wolverine: First Class #5 guest stars Alpha Flight. Angel:
Revelations #3 continues Warren's new origin story. And X-Men: Legacy
#214 has Mr Sinister scheming as usual.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
Billy Bissette
$l5gI...@esoterica.demon.co.uk:
> THE X-AXIS
> 20 July 2008
> ============
> X-FACTOR #33
> unknown to most of the team, they're also in the pocket of Valerie
> Cooper. (Um... isn't M telepathic? Wouldn't she know?)
Maybe it is like how Cyclops has been able to hide from Emma that
he is trying to hide from Emma the existance of X-Force. You know,
the woman that pretty much walks freely through his mind. And the
woman that finally took an interest in protecting X-23. And who
probably has few if any qualms about checking the minds of any of
the multiple people who know about or are directly involved in
X-Force if she ever felt she had reason to suspect, well, anything.
grinningdemon
<pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>X-FACTOR #33 - Not only is this the first issue in the new Detroit
>setting, it's also the first part of a Secret Invasion tie-in, and a
>crossover with She-Hulk. That's an awful lot to cover in one issue, but
>Peter David keeps his head and makes sure to focus on the important bit:
>the direction of the ongoing title. X-Factor are still private
>investigators, but now they're in a normal city, and unknown to most of
>the team, they're also in the pocket of Valerie Cooper. (Um... isn't M
>telepathic? Wouldn't she know?) Continuing his occasional programme of
>dusting off underused characters, David then brings in Darwin from Ed
>Brubaker's X-Men run - accompanied by the Skrull Longshot. Larry
>Stroman takes over on art, thus reuniting the creative team from the
>early nineties X-Factor. It's slightly rougher than his old work, and
>there's a bit of random posing, but he's still an interesting artist for
>the most part. As for the story - okay, there's slightly too much going
>on here, and bits of have been shoehorned in. But once again, David
>manages to get an entertaining comic out of a challenging remit. B+
I always thought Stroman's art was awful...and it's even worse this
time than it was the first time he was X-Factor...I really hope he's
just filling in.
Fallen
Yes, it's terrible. It's so bad it actively spoiled my enjoyment of this
normally excellent comic.
Everyone looks a little bit like a moleman. Or possibly like you are
seeing them in a concave mirror.
Fallen.
James Wyllie
>
> Yes, it's terrible. It's so bad it actively spoiled my enjoyment of this
> normally excellent comic.
>
> Everyone looks a little bit like a moleman. Or possibly like you are
> seeing them in a concave mirror.
>
> Fallen.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Stroman is
terrible! I thought it was permanent? I much prefer, well, almost
any other artist they have had previously. That said, I have dropped
the xbooks lately. Seriously, way to kill the point of the franchise
with M-day.
Also I can't understand why Kyle and Yost get so much work. They are
hacks. Killing off your characters and dark brooding does not a good
comic make. It's dull. I appreciate that the X-Men are often about
angst, and that the younger fans seem to lap this crap up, but still.
YKW (ad hoc)
a403-2d7...@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
It's not like they aren't capable of producing lighter-than-light stuff
in the genre, as witnessed in their FF cartoon. The problem is that they
aren't actually any good at =writing= it, as witnessed in the later
episodes that used writers who =were=, in fact, actually good at it.
They seem to be at their best with the death-and-darkness bit, and their
sales aren't exactly awful in that field. And, in the end, sales rather
than quality is/are what matter/s.
--
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"DC, currently, is run from the top down in a way that makes Jim
Shooter’s aegis at Marvel look like a hippie commune."
- Chuck Dixon, COMICS SHOULD BE GOOD, 14 June 2008.
<http://tinyurl.com/5rxsvp/#comment-665962>
grinningdemon
wrote:
I never thought of it that way but that's a pretty good description.
grinningdemon
<james....@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Jul 22, 9:21 am, Fallen <fal...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Yes, it's terrible. It's so bad it actively spoiled my enjoyment of this
>> normally excellent comic.
>>
>> Everyone looks a little bit like a moleman. Or possibly like you are
>> seeing them in a concave mirror.
>>
>> Fallen.- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
>Oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Stroman is
>terrible! I thought it was permanent? I much prefer, well, almost
>any other artist they have had previously. That said, I have dropped
>the xbooks lately. Seriously, way to kill the point of the franchise
>with M-day.
Actually, I get what they were going for with M-Day...they wanted
bring the number of mutants back down to a manageable number (from the
faceless millions Morrison brought into it)...it was just handled
horribly and that it has basically taken over the franchise makes it
even worse.
>
>Also I can't understand why Kyle and Yost get so much work. They are
>hacks. Killing off your characters and dark brooding does not a good
>comic make. It's dull. I appreciate that the X-Men are often about
>angst, and that the younger fans seem to lap this crap up, but still.
I hated all the pointless character-death in the early part of Kyle
and Yost's New X-Men run but, in spite of that, it was still a decent
run...considerably better than the Young X-Men book that has replaced
it...that one really is terrible...Guggenheim is the hack...he's yet
to write anything I thought was worth reading...and he's one of the
writers currently crapping all over Spiderman.
Billy Bissette
news:Xns9AE3D81D24D85...@69.16.185.250:
They aren't good at writing death-and-darkness X-Force either.
Well, they've got the death-and-darkness, but they don't have the
talent to go with it. The story is full of holes and stupidity.
James Wyllie
>
> They aren't good at writing death-and-darkness X-Force either.
> Well, they've got the death-and-darkness, but they don't have the
> talent to go with it. The story is full of holes and stupidity.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
From newsarama.com:
"How Chris Yost remembers reading Uncanny X-Men #300: I remember that
never in a billion years would they let Illyana die. I know, it didn't
happen in #300, but damn."
See, that's the complete opposite of the kind of deaths he seems to
love so much. Illyana's had a long build up; was (almost) unexpect;
and had such lasting repercussions for lots of characters. Plus, it
felt kind of permanent (at least until recently :-/ )