REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 4 February 2007
Paul O'Brien
4 February 2007
===============
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:
X-MEN #195 - Primary Infection, part 2 of 3
by Mike Carey, Humberto Ramos and Carlos Cuevas
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #1 (of 6)
by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows
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Thanks to Marvel's bemusing publishing schedule, there's just the one
X-book this week. X-MEN #195 is the middle chapter of "Primary
Infection", and so I wouldn't normally give it a full review... but
since it's the only one, I'll make an exception.
"Primary Infection" goes back to the story Mike Carey set up in part one
of "Supernovas", when the X-Men rescued Karima and Lady Mastermind from
a dodgy clinic which answered to somebody called Pan. That turned out
to have nothing to do with the rest of the arc. But with that story out
of the way, Rogue's team get to go after the villains.
Carey has generally impressed me as a writer, both in his Vertigo work
and his mainstream superhero output, and I'm rooting for him to succeed
here. Unlike many of the writers who've worked on the X-Men in recent
years, Carey seems to be looking to write straight, enjoyable superhero
stories rather than to re-make the series in his image. I have no
problem with this; by all means, let's have an X-Men book that just does
good X-Men stories instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. The angle
for this title is the oddball selection of characters in Rogue's roster,
rather than the writer's overpowering style. (If anything, it's artists
Chris Bachalo and Humberto Ramos who are imposing their identity on this
title.)
Now, all that having been said, I can't help feeling a little
underwhelmed by this story. Rogue has been captured; her team attempt
to rescue her. It's full of nice action sequences, entertaining stunts,
and clever uses of the characters' powers. But it doesn't really bring
out much of their personalities. Much the same could be said about
Pandemic himself. The idea, apparently, is that he's somehow managed to
copy Rogue's powers at some time in the past, and then he's steadily
acquired the powers of hundreds of other mutants. This is a good enough
gimmick, although I'm not entirely clear on how it's supposed to work.
Does he have to power up before each fight (in which case, it's a major
loss when the X-Men smash up his collection of samples)? Or does he
have these powers permanently?
Moreover, I don't get much sense of what Pandemic is really about as a
character. He's powerful, sure, but is he interesting? Basically,
there's a lot of running around and fighting in this issue, and it's all
perfectly well handled, but I don't see an especially strong idea at the
core.
Now, it's not bad by any means. It's still a good, straight action
story, and perfectly entertaining in its own right. Nonetheless, even
within the parameters of mainstream superhero books, Carey can do better
than this, and I'm hoping for something with a little more weight from
him as the series continues.
Rating: B
------------
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's series The Boys was doing rather well
for DC, but the book has still been cancelled over content issues.
Amusingly, DC apparently objected more strongly to the book's treatment
of superheroes than to its graphic sex and violence. Anal hamster jokes
are fine, it seems, but mock the Teen Titans and you can pack your bags.
Fortunately, The Boys is a creator-owned book, and Ennis and Robertson
now find themselves free to shop it around to other publishers - well,
other publishers not named Marvel, at least. There are a number of
credible destinations, but one possible destination would be Avatar.
The plucky little indie has carved out a curious niche in the market
over the last decade. They do licensed books like Stargate. They do
dreary soft porn like (dear lord, is this a real book?) Jungle Fantasy.
And they do pet projects from creators like Garth Ennis, Mark Millar and
Warren Ellis which the major publishers wouldn't touch - usually on
rather more conventional content ground.
By a happy coincidence, one such project is Ennis' six-issue miniseries
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD, which starts this week. In fact, if anything
this is a lot less puerile than The Boys, and yet it would be easier to
understand DC turning it down. It's a series about Danny Wormwood, who
is the Antichrist.
As the Antichrist, however, Danny is incarnated in human form and
doesn't seem to have much interest in the whole world-ending business.
Instead, while he's a bit of a bastard on a personal level, he's
basically just going about his business in a relatively harmless way.
He runs a thinly disguised HBO and commissions shows apparently because
he genuinely likes them. He regards Jesus - tragically sidelined after
a firm thwack to the head from the riot cops during an anti-war protest
- as a friend. Although selfish and cynical, he seems to have no
villainous agenda at all, and genuinely disapproves of the truly
gratuitous, supposedly issue-oriented controversy-baiting shows made by
his main rival. ("Like that one about juvie last year, where you
confronted quite a startling amount of anal rape?")
In short, while Danny is the Antichrist, he's not actually doing the
job. Dad is not happy. And therein lies the plot.
Frankly, this is a lot better than The Boys, which degenerated into a
fairly puerile and mean-spirited assault on a barn door target. This
series actually feels like it's got a story and a point. I know which
one I'd rather read.
He's joined here by Jacen Burrows, easily Avatar's most respected house
artist, perhaps because he actually draws people and stories rather than
tits and thongs. Now, he's not perfect by any means - read the TV
interview scene in this book and watch the chairs teleport around the
room - but he's certainly got something. Wormwood reads like something
that would be ideally suited to Ennis' regular collaborator Steve
Dillon, and Burrows has some of the same instincts for subtle
expressions and body language.
Now, it's easy to see why DC wouldn't touch this thing with a bargepole.
It's not actually violent in the slightest. It's only marginally more
sexually explicit than Vertigo books tend to be. It's got casual use of
controversial language, but in a satirically defensible context. And
it's got a sympathetic Antichrist who's mates with Brain Damaged Jesus.
I see that last bit as a dealbreaker for DC.
Books like this will always end up with the minor publishers, but at
least there's still an avenue for them to see the light of day.
Surprisingly, when you consider the sort of material Avatar regularly
produce, and the sort of thing Ennis has been writing recently, this
turn out not to be the gratuitous controversy-fest you might be
expecting.
Rating: A-
------------
Also this week...
DAREDEVIL #93 - What a strange issue. This is billed as the final part
of "The Devil Takes A Ride", but it's really more of an epilogue. Matt
Murdock finally returns to New York and, with the help of some plot
contrivances, finally manages to restore his secret identity to merely
"widely suspected" and not "publicly known." And then the wife comes
back, and Foggy Nelson comes back, and it's like we're racing at
breakneck speed to get this stuff out of the way. It's so obviously an
issue of the writer hammering the reset button for all he's worth that
perhaps it's best to just get it out of the way, but it still comes
across as terribly rushed and contrived. This, by the way, shall be the
fate of many of Marvel's more recent "shocking" developments - since
they leave the ongoing series with nowhere to go, they just have to be
undone by hook or by crook. If they haven't done the same story with
Spider-Man by 2009, I'll be very surprised. At least Brubaker has now
got the book back to a workable status quo, however awkwardly, and
perhaps we can finally, finally move on from "Let's tear Daredevil's
life apart - it worked for Frank Miller." This has been one of the
better efforts in that vein, mind you, but surely there are other
avenues to explore with this character. B-
JACK OF FABLES #7 - Here's something you don't see often. This was
meant to be the second half of the Snow Queen story, but, er, it's not
finished yet. So instead of waiting until it's ready, they've just
brought forward the next arc, "Viva Las Vegas", and begun it early. The
Snow Queen story will be tied up in issue #10 and, as an opening caption
shrugs, "It'll be more suspenseful that way. And anyway, they'll fix it
in the trade." DC did something similar with Batman recently, and
perhaps this is going to be their new approach to books with unreliable
schedules. It actually works out surprisingly well, although I'm sure
that's more of a happy accident with this particular book. "Viva Las
Vegas" finally gets Jack and some of his supporting cast out into the
real world and, I think, points to a better direction for this title.
We've already got Fables doing an all-Fable community; Jack of Fables
can get more of an identity by going for a different setting. This is a
fun little book, despite the curious scheduling decisions. A-
ULTIMATE CIVIL WAR SPIDER-HAM FEATURING WOLVERHAM #1 - I don't generally
review books that I read in the store, but then you don't generally see
books so devoid of content that I can finish them in the store. There's
a token and moderately promising set-up sequence, and then... it's a
poster book. A poster book of various Marvel characters as pigs. With
endless puns on the word ham. Repeat until funny. Except it never is.
It's another in the recent string of jaw-dropping artefacts that make
you wonder just how badly off-centre Marvel's quality control has
become, and whether anyone in editorial is actually devoting critical
thought to the efforts of favoured creators. I mean, this is horrible -
it's not even "not funny" in the way that Christmas cracker jokes aren't
funny. It's not funny in the way that chairs and rocks aren't funny.
Absolutely ungodly dreadful, and in all seriousness, something is
terribly wrong when comics this bad are making the shelves. D
------------
There's more from me at If Destroyed - now updating more or less daily,
you know - and if you're desperate for more Article 10 columns, you can
always hunt through the archives on Ninth Art.
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
http://www.ninthart.com
Next week sees the launch of Dark Tower #1, which pretty much has to
sell in mind-quaking quantities and be greeted as an instant classic if
it's going to live up to the extraordinary amount of hype. Personally,
though, I'm not remotely interested in the book, so I won't be reading
it. Still, with my industry-watcher hat on, I'll be intrigued to see
how it goes down.
Meanwhile, in the quiet backwater of the X-books, X-Men: Phoenix -
Warsong finally wraps up, two weeks late. It's been a dire series so
far, and I'm not holding my breath for a last minute reversal. Also
running late, X-Men Annual #1 (yes, even the annuals are renumbering
from #1) checks in on Aurora and Northstar. Plus, "Rise and Fall of the
Shi'ar Empire" continues in Uncanny X-Men #483, while X-23's back story
continues in X-23: Target X #3.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
Ben P
> ULTIMATE CIVIL WAR SPIDER-HAM FEATURING WOLVERHAM #1 - I don't generally
> review books that I read in the store, but then you don't generally see
> books so devoid of content that I can finish them in the store. There's
> a token and moderately promising set-up sequence, and then... it's a
> poster book. A poster book of various Marvel characters as pigs. With
> endless puns on the word ham. Repeat until funny. Except it never is.
> It's another in the recent string of jaw-dropping artefacts that make
> you wonder just how badly off-centre Marvel's quality control has
> become, and whether anyone in editorial is actually devoting critical
> thought to the efforts of favoured creators. I mean, this is horrible -
> it's not even "not funny" in the way that Christmas cracker jokes aren't
> funny. It's not funny in the way that chairs and rocks aren't funny.
> Absolutely ungodly dreadful, and in all seriousness, something is
> terribly wrong when comics this bad are making the shelves. D
>
At least you didn't buy it on the strength of reading the first few
pages and figuring it would be worth buying, since there wasn't much
else on the shelves. Note to self: read up to half way through these
things in future...
Donnacha
"Paul O'Brien" <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:NfewCBBn...@esoterica.demon.co.uk...
> THE X-AXIS
> 4 February 2007
> ===============
>
> review books that I read in the store, but then you don't generally see
> books so devoid of content that I can finish them in the store.
You went further than I did, I picked it up, considered buying it and read a
few pages before putting it right back down.
> There's a token and moderately promising set-up sequence, and then... it's
> a poster book. A poster book of various Marvel characters as pigs. With
> endless puns on the word ham. Repeat until funny. Except it never is.
Even worse, it's a blatant rip-off of Rick Johnson's actually funny "Civil
Wardrobe" (http://www.civil-wardrobe.com/) - Scientologist Thor - now that's
funny!
> It's another in the recent string of jaw-dropping artefacts that make you
> wonder just how badly off-centre Marvel's quality control has become, and
> whether anyone in editorial is actually devoting critical thought to the
> efforts of favoured creators. I mean, this is horrible - it's not even
> "not funny" in the way that Christmas cracker jokes aren't funny. It's
> not funny in the way that chairs and rocks aren't funny. Absolutely
> ungodly dreadful, and in all seriousness, something is terribly wrong when
> comics this bad are making the shelves. D
>
And very pathetic that it comes out after a far better parody by an
independent publisher. Presumably, they saw Civil Wardrobe being something
of a success for the indies, but realised that they could get bigger sales
with a rip-off featuring a very tired old parody character of their own.
D.