The X-Axis – 18 December 2011
It’s been two weeks… there are eight X-books to cover… let’s get down to it.
Avengers: X-Sanction #1 – And so it begins: the four-month prologue to the Avengers/X-Men crossover that Marvel are going to be hyping the hell out of in 2012.
So, then… Avengers vs X-Men. On the one hand, I’m keeping an open mind. After all, it’s not like you’d expect Marvel to do anything more at this stage than trail the high concept. But on the other hand, Marvel are trying to hype this as if the Avengers versus the X-Men was a big deal in its own right, and it’s really not. It’s the sort of thing you’d get on the cover strap line on a fill-in issue in the mid-80s. And with Civil War still fresh in the memory, surely it stands to reason that Avengers vs X-Men is something smaller. The Phoenix angle – that’s maybe a bigger deal. But Avengers vs X-Men, in itself… I don’t think that’s much of a draw in itself. We’ll see how it develops.
This prologue miniseries is by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness. And let’s be blunt – in the last few years, Loeb’s name has graced some truly appalling comics. It’s not snark but common sense that makes me approach his work with trepidation. But lo! This comic does indeed reach the dizzy heights of coherence.
It’s not a great book by any stretch of the imagination. But it does set up a clear enough premise: Cable finds himself in the far future with hours to live, learns that the world has been destroyed because Hope wasn’t there to save it, learns that the Avengers were to blame, and travels back in time to try and change that in his remaining hours, by killing all the Avengers first. It’s not exactly War and Peace, but at least we know what’s supposed to be at stake. It’s decently paced. The expository flashbacks are interweaved nicely. Cable’s “one at a time” approach to taking out the Avengers makes reasonable sense. In short, it’s not the train wreck I’d feared.
This is not to say that it’s a great return to form either. The explanation for why Cable is still alive boils down to “he just is”, and that’s a particular difficulty when you then want us to immediately care about the prospect of him dying again. And the book still displays the haphazard approach to basic research that has plagued some of Loeb’s recent work. Since when is the Falcon a member of the Avengers again? (Though granted, there’s a plot reason for wanting to use him.) Why is the Radioactive Man suddenly a villain, after years as a title character in Thunderbolts? (No such excuse here.) And isn’t it incredibly convenient that Cable shows up at the precisely the point in the future where somebody can explain the plot to him?
But for all that, while my expectations were rock bottom, it’s actually a passable action story. It’s okay.
Magneto: Not a Hero #2 – I suppose I should have seen this coming when Skottie Young brought back Joseph last month, but now he’s moving on to Astra. Now, logically, this makes sense – she was in the story where Joseph died, after all. But she’s also a really obscure character who appeared in one storyline in the late nineties and was never seen again. My memory of her is rather hazy, but as best as I can recall, she was a bit of a cipher. She’s not the sort of character you’d expect anyone to revise in these days of relaxed continuity.
Quite what Young has in mind for her, I’m not sure. It’s obvious enough that part of this story is about using Joseph to explore how Magneto has changed. (He thinks he hasn’t; it’s Scott who’s come round to his way of thinking.) But Astra, if I’m remembering right, wasn’t a true believer so much as a career criminal who wanted revenge on Magneto for booting her out of the Brotherhood. She’s used strangely in this issue; an extended opening flashback presents her as an old-school villainous mastermind, while the main story has her fawning over Joseph in a rather over-the-top way that we’re presumably meant to take as an act. She remains rather hard to get a handle on, and I can’t say Young really does anything in this issue to sell me on her as a character rather than a relevant continuity footnote.
Still, I’m willing to give Young the benefit of the doubt that he’s heading somewhere with all this (though I’m slightly troubled by the one-dimensional secondary villain, a businessman exploiting anti-mutant sentiment). We’ll see how it all comes together.
Uncanny X-Force #18 – The conclusion of the “Dark Angel Saga”, and it’s a pleasure to say that Rick Remender and Jerome Opena have landed it perfectly. While parts of this storyline have risked cluttering the plot with too many characters, this issue gets the focus right. Wolverine, Deadpool and Deathlok are barely seen, leaving Archangel, Psylocke and an uncharacteristically serious Fantomex to carry the issue, bringing us in on the romantic triangle.
Remender and Opena’s Archangel has been a great villain, in large part because of his unflappable quasi-reasonableness. He may have a classic destroy-the-world masterplan, but the way he carries himself makes it all fresh – as well as keeping in mind the idea that this is supposed to be recognisably Warren. But at the same time that it zooms in on his core cast, the story also keeps ramping up the plot, first with Fantomex revealing what he’s done with the Apocalypse kid he was keeping in the tank, and then with a remarkable sequence at the end as Psylocke says goodbye to Warren – leading to another final twist on the last page.
That farewell sequence is the thing that will stick in most readers’ minds, though, as Psylocke guides Warren through a completely fictitious version of the life they would have had together, in the course of a three page montage. Not only is it beautifully done in its own right, but it’s got a sense of peace and stillness that contrasts brilliantly with the scenes around it. It’s truly excellent work, and it’s really great to see this sort of thing appearing in a book like X-Force where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find it.
Wolverine: The Best There Is #12 – Well, thank god that’s over.
Comics don’t get much more misconceived than Wolverine: The Best There Is. For one thing, if you really want to do a crazily violent and gory Wolverine comic, it should be in the Max imprint where it belongs. But more to the point, it’s painfully obvious that this series started with the remit that there should be ridiculous levels of gore and worked back from there, resulting in a villain who’s been contrived, not because he makes for an interesting story in any way, but because he allows for a plot that fulfils the pointless remit.
In this final issue, there is fighting, and then the baddie loses. There’s a vaguely clever idea about how to defeat him. But Contagion just isn’t an interesting character, and it’s impossible to care about any of this.
X-23 #18 – So X-23 is babysitting the Fantastic Four’s kids. They’ve accidentally summoned up a dragon. Hellion turns up to try and hang out with her, and ends up helping her against the dragon. And then a cosmic villain shows up at the end.
It’s academic, since the book is about to be cancelled, but I’m kind of confused by the direction Marjorie Liu is taking with this arc. I can see that X-23 works best when she’s contrasted with something that plays off her deliberately flat demeanour, and I can understand why the previous arc wanted to complete her world tour by letting her be a straightforward superhero. But the whole milieu of this story seems to drag X-23 away from her own stories towards something largely unrelated.
It’s okay. The art’s got a nice delicate feel to it, and I like the way it uses Hellion (though his personality is becoming wildly inconsistent between different titles). Yet with this and the previous arc, the book seems to be steering X-23 in a “high adventure” direction that just doesn’t seem to fit the character, and I can’t quite figure out why it’s doing that.
X-Club #1 – Another miniseries for the X-Men’s Science Team (they had one before during the Second Coming crossover). Cyclops’ X-Men are helping out with a Space Elevator project because they think it’ll be good PR. Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong, and crazed mutant thingies start coming out the water. Also, somebody takes control of Danger.
The thing about the Science Team is that they have a rather unbalanced group dynamic. It’s obvious that Dr Nemesis is the one that most writers enjoy scripting (who can blame them?), and he tends to dominate the Team’s appearances with his mad scientist rants. He does that here too, but it’s clear that Si Spurrier is at least trying to mitigate that, by splitting the group up. That puts a lot of the emphasis on Danger, and pairs Nemesis with Kavita Rao, who’s the one most likely to stand up to him.
That does go a long way to giving the book some balance, but it has to be said that these four characters don’t really feel like a team, or like they particularly want to be in the same story together. Individually, I quite like them; collectively, I’m not sure they really work. Nor, to be honest, am I all that interested in a story about weird things under the water. Still, there are some good moments in here, and the rest is solidly okay.
X-Factor #228 – Continuing the Bloodbath arc. Madrox is out of commission, but the rest of the team keeps on fighting, only for Bloodbath to draw their attention to the big plot point that he’s uniquely qualified to address: whether Guido actually has a soul any more. Quite what this actually means in practice, given that Guido’s personality hasn’t fundamentally changed, remains a little vague (no doubt deliberately). And the team’s reaction is pleasingly more equivocal than you might expect.
Also on the plus side, lovely art from Leonard Kirk, who really knows how to sell the story beats here. On the other hand, Bloodbath himself remains a decidedly one-dimensional villain, and while I assume that’s somewhat intentional, I’m not quite sure I see what Peter David’s going for there. Along similar lines, the Hangman’s arc feels a bit tacked on. But the good easily outweighs the slightly shaky.
X-Men #22 – We’ve already talked about the unfortunately botched naming of Puternicstan. But now that I’ve got that out of my system, I think I see where this story is going wrong. Not that it’s especially bad, mind you – but it’s certainly feeling like a rather flat arc.
The problem, I think, stems from shoehorning in a guest star, and then having to distort the story to give them a role. The basic story hook in this arc is that a small, put-upon country has got its hands on some second-hand Sentinels, and the X-Men go to investigate. In fact, that country doesn’t want the Sentinels for anti-mutant purposes at all – it wants them for regular old defence. It’s only one lunatic in their government who wants to cause trouble with them.
In theory, this could work. You have the X-Men show up looking for trouble and discovering that they’re not facing anti-mutant villains at all. How do they feel about the Sentinels being repurposed like that? Does this beleaguered nation actually have a fair reason for wanting to boost its defence? In fact, isn’t this beleaguered little nation a bit like Utopia? You can do a whole load of things with that before the inevitable maniac presses the “invade neighbouring country” button in the final act.
But this is a team-up book, so they’ve got to shoehorn War Machine into the plot, and to do that, they’ve got to invent a role for him. The result is that this becomes a story about the X-Men and War Machine squabbling over whether the X-Men should get involved in the politics of fictional countries, and then generally agreeing that giant killer robots are a bad thing and should be stopped. Which is all very flat.
There’s also a secondary problem, which is that this story requires us to take second hand Sentinels as a Very Big Deal Indeed, when only a couple of months ago, Schism was using them as comedy cannon fodder. That’s the sort of thing editors should be avoiding; it’s not about continuity, it’s simply about not requiring the audience to make mental U-turns between two stories coming out so close together. Oh, and the dialogue has a very samey quality to it as well – Storm and Warpath really shouldn’t sound interchangeable, but at times, they somehow manage it.
But mainly, this wants to be a story about the X-Men wondering how they feel about repurposed Sentinels – but it’s never got around to hitting those beats because it’s been too busy messing about with the guest star. And that’s why it doesn’t really work, I think.
I’ve got to hand it to Rick Remender – he’s taken a character who I once detested and made him someone I look forward to reading about every month. When Grant Morrison introduced Fantomex, he was just another “Oh, he’s bad ass, ain’t he cool?” character. But Remender has made him the breakout star of X-Force by rendering him as a complex and layered individual. Well done!
I’ve still never forgiven him for blowing away Darkstar – a character I’ve had a crush on since the mid-70s – but I blame Morrison for that and not Fantomex. But now that Laynia Petrovna has been resurrected, it would be interesting to see her come around looking to have a word with Fantomex.
I nearly bought X-Sanction, but I kept staring at that $4 price tag. From this review I’m glad I didn’t buy it. An ok story that doesn’t really go anywhere but sets up an interesting premise for later might be fine at $1, I might even spend $2 on it. But at $4, I’m just not that curious.
I am so bored with reading about Marvel heroes fighting eachother. I pretty much gave up on the whole line after Heroic Age turned out to be more of the same unfortunately.
Is the adjectiveless ‘X-Men’ a book that just sort of exists? How has the quality been overall? I know sales seem decent enough, but is there any actual point to the title?
Valhallahan, they have to fight each other. All the bad guys have reformed, so it’s that or go up against The Hood – which really must be like a renowned theatrical actor doing dogfood commercials to pay the bills.
If you thought Fantomex was just another “Oh, he’s bad ass, ain’t he cool?” character, then he worked. That’s exactly what Weapon Plus was going for when the created him.
Astra was mentioned ad being killed off panel by Apocalypse way back when. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
I don’t understand the widespread apathy about Avengers vs. X-Men. It’s not just the two teams fighting each other, it’s the two teams fighting each other over Hope getting the Phoenix Force. The X-Men see her as a religious figure who will save their species from extinction. The Avengers see her as an out-of-control teenager who will destroy the world like the Scarlet Witch did when they waited too long to kill her. This sounds to me like good drama.
Mory: The problem is the premise, as advertised, has just been the X-Men fighting the Avengers. We’ve just had X-Men fighting other X-Men in Schism and Civil War wasn’t that long ago. It’s kind of repetitive after that.
Plus it’s not like this is even all that new an idea. The 80’s saw Avengers v. Defenders, X-Men v. Fantastic Four, X-Men v. Alpha Flight….
Not exactly a fresh idea you know?
@ Paul C
X-Men is ok but at $3.99 I really can not recommend it. It is basically an X-Men team-up book. No offense to the creators involved but you’re basically getting a continuity light book by b-list creators at an a-list price. The book hasn’t been bad but it’s not great either.
I think that the editors sell the book as being the place where the X-Men interact with the rest of the Marvel Universe which for me seems a bit silly. If readers want to see the X-Men interacting with the wider Marvel Universe it should occasionally happen in Uncanny X-Men or one of the other established x-books, there is no reason to create a new book solely for that purpose.
@ Mory
For me the problem is that virtually no ground work was laid for the event to matter. Why do the Avengers care about Hope and if she is such a major problem why has she never been referenced in any of the Avengers titles? Supposedly Marvel plan these events a year in advance, it seems to me that the stories would have much more impact if they did a better job of building them up.
On the X-Men side I’m kind of tired of Hope. After Second Coming I was really expecting to have at least some of my questions about her answered but that never really happened. Marvel have stretched her arc well past the point of maintaining my interest so I am just hoping the whole thing will be over soon and they can move on to something more interesting.
While not technically the same thing, it’s been less than 10 years since the Ultimate War, featuring the Ultimates vs the X-men.
With Bendis leaving perhaps it is time for Avengers to be rested somewhat after nearly a decade of heavy attention.
Mark Millar’s The Ultimates was probably the last time I felt Marvel had what could be desrcibed as a true “event book” in that the release of every issues was a big deal.
I don’t have a problem with Hope not featuring much with anyone besides X-Men before. The idea seems to be that this story, and the phoenix, make her a threat the Avengers have to deal with. Why would they have seen her that way before? Only Bishop did, and he tried to deal with it solo.
To me it was Schism that needed better build-up. Just any kind of hinting that Wolverine didn’t like where things were headed.
Is X-Men particularly light on continuity? It’s set up the vampire status for the whole MU, added a bit of new back-history to the early years with the Evolutionaries, and brought back some obscure minor characters in the Bermuda Triangle arc.
Anyone notice that Loeb’s MO the last few years is “let’s gather everybody up and have them fight – especially if it’s hero v hero”.
Kind of like Claremont can’t seem to write a story without mind control (or someone discovering new powers that conveniently helps them out of the plot corner they are in), Loeb can’t seem to structure a story that doesn’t involve some reason that the good guys have to beat the tar out of the other good guys.
Obviously the Falcon is on the Avengers now so that the black guy can die first.
Seriously, when they started running the preview pages for X-Sanction in the back of Marvel books, all I could think reading it was “how tone deaf do you have to be to add a black hero to the Avengers out of nowhere for an event* and then immediately have him be the first one taken out?” (Well, that and “are we seriously not supposed to realize the guy in the cloak is Cable?” Fortunately it turns out the cloak is just to keep us from realizing how messed up he is).
In addition to the issues Paul mentioned, I had a couple of other problems with X-Sanction, the largest being that I really hope Cable got more information out of Blaquesmith** than we saw, because if Cable’s going after everyone who ever has been (or will be, seeing as he got his information in the distant future) an Avenger, that’s a pretty long list, which includes several X-Men. Even if he’s narrowed it down to people who are Avengers at the exact point in time the “present day” parts of the story take place, that’s, like, closing in on 30 people.
Also, did Cap just ditch the rest of the Avengers in the middle of a fight because he lost track of the Falcon (towards whom he was being uncharacteriscially protective/patronizing) or did he wrap up the fight and then tell the others to just head home while he searches for their missing teammate?
And is anyone really buying that a near-death Cable can take Captain America in a fist fight?
*(I know Falcon’s been an Avenger before, but not for ages)
**(It showed uncharacteristic restraint for 90s Marvel to not name him “Blaquesmythe”)
@ Dave
I see your point but I still believe that if Marvel are going to make X-Men vs. Avengers a huge event that it would help a lot if they laid some ground work for it. As a reader it just feels a bit hollow if it all comes from nowhere. The thing that sets it off doesn’t even need to have anything to do with Hope, there are any number of conflicts that could have been introduced and slowly built up over the course of a year. I may well be in the minority but for me I think that it would make these big events feel more realistic if there was more thought and development put into them.
I do agree with you about Schism.
I think it also applies to character deaths. For example Nightcrawler. Surely the writers and editors knew well in advance that they were going to kill him. For me the death was meaningless because for years he was pushed almost completely into the background. I think it would have been much more powerful if he was much more heavily featured and readers felt some connection to the character. The way it was handled I think a lot of readers were relieved that he was finally put out of his misery and that at least he would no longer be completely ignored.
I’ve been cheerleading UNCANNY X-FORCE almost since it came out and was excited as can be to read this conclusion, but I have to admit I wouldn’t give it QUITE the thumbs-up that Paul does.
First: because while it’s always nice to see honest-to-god sentimentality in comics that are all-too-often ruled by cynicism, the Psylocke/Angel dream is ANOTHER blatant pull from INCEPTION. Rick, dude: your readers are all geeks. We’ve all seen it, probably multiple times.
Second: because of the cop-out ‘cliffhanger’. You know of what I speak. It should’ve been the end for that particular character. This is as a big a letdown as the ending to ‘Get Mystique’.
(Third: This isn’t a problem with the issue in question, but the artist for the cover of the next issue… he won’t be drawing the whole book, will he? We can’t possibly be going from Opena to that?)
But don’t think these (in my opinion, not insignificant) faux pas ruined the book for me. There was good stuff here, the most exciting of which for me is the revival of the Genesis character concept in a much more interesting form than when it was introduced.
I’m very glad the kid doesn’t appear to be dead – my heart sunk for a moment when Archangel electrocuted him (or whatever) – because there’s lots of potential there. I really hope they don’t shunt him off into another book, though I’m sure he’d be a fine addition to Jean Grey’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
Wow. This run has kept me buying an X-Book now for 18 issues. That’s longer than any since I got back into comics, and some way before I last quit ’em. Here’s hoping Remender has something just as good planned for his next long-term story.
PS: Fair play, though – the survival of the character was telegraphed. Can’t deny Remender played fair with us.
When I was a kid, we had Inferno and Fall of the Mutants. Both were strongly foreshadowed. Inferno in particular, you could feel it slowly building up though various comics, starting small and working up to elevators full of blood before the storm finally broke, and boy was it effeective. We were champing at the bit to buy all the comics and see what happened next. And when Cypher died, it was after his character was slowly built up and pushed to the fore, with him falling in love and everything just so it would sting more when he bit it.
These days it is indeed, “Suddenly this happens. They fight. Character X dies. The fight ends. Roll aftermath.” If you’re lucky, Character X will stay dead for a whole trade’s worth of issues.
@Adam
Personally, I didn’t read the ending as a cop out for 2 reasons. First, we all know characters are rarely gone for good. Rather than try to milk fake drama out of a status quo we all know won’t last, why not just skip the nonsense and go straight to the next part of the character’s story? And second, from what we’ve seen so far, the character as we know it isn’t back; who knows where Remender will go from here?
I really, really, really hope that Marvel’s love affair with CHARLIE FUCKING HUSTON is finally over. His sensibilities and ideas are so addled, so over the top, so Meltzerian in its trying to impress you dumbness, that like Meltzer, he must have genius book editors, because I’m not even sure he understands the concept of basic coherence.
What seems really bad for the timing of Avengers vs X-Men is not just the last few years being hero vs hero events, but that the X-Men just split over Scott’s leadership, and particularly over whether or not Scott should be in charge of the kids.
Maybe the story itself deals with any issues. Maybe Cable provokes the Avengers, and other things happen so that all the X-Men pretty much have to band together. But Marvel is openly trying to promote the series as the X-Men united because they feel Scott is a better guardian for an already problematic young woman who may potentially be about to gain the Phoenix Force.
@Blair
“For me the problem is that virtually no ground work was laid for the event to matter. Why do the Avengers care about Hope and if she is such a major problem why has she never been referenced in any of the Avengers titles? Supposedly Marvel plan these events a year in advance, it seems to me that the stories would have much more impact if they did a better job of building them up.”
They’ve been building up to the crossover in Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, which is not to say I like that series but the groundwork is there. While it doesn’t deal with Hope as a character, it does very much show how the Avengers deal with individuals who are that dangerous, post-House of M. From the publicity, it sounds like they’re going to be pushing the “Hope = another Wanda” idea hard. If they write this thing properly, and they’ve got enough writers who know what they’re doing to manage it, the conflict here is ideological, and the two ideologies have been well established.
The X-Men will let Hope do whatever the hell she likes, and have declared themselves through brute force to be the ultimate, unquestionable world authority when it comes to mutants. The Avengers, ever since House of M, have regularly been paying lip service to the idea of never letting that sort of thing happen again, and Captain America has declared himself the ruler of all superheroes, because he thinks anyone other than him will be too corrupt to have that much power. Everything about this story has been set up for years.
I mean, I get the burnout. You want something new, something different. It seems like we’ve already been seeing this story, unlike Civil War or even Fear Itself which (whatever you thought of those crossovers) started their entire plots in issue 1 instead of just continuing stories from elsewhere. But for me, the continuity is the whole appeal of the “shared universe” thing. The fact that this is a story that’s been building since House of M, in countless unrelated comics, and when it starts it won’t be coming out of nowhere, but will be a continuation and escalation of everything we’ve already read, makes it really exciting to me.
And also, AVENGERS: X-SANCTION is the build-up. The “so obvious it hurts” direction for this story would be that Cable fails to defeat the Avengers, but by his attempt, tips them off to Hope’s existence, thereby bringing about the very thing he was trying to stop.
@ Mory
I didn’t read House of M, I got back into comics shortly after it finished, so maybe you do have a point. I am reading Avengers: The Children’s Crusade and so far I am not seeing any connection between it and the upcoming crossover (although I am a couple of issues behind so I may not have gotten to that part yet). I am just assuming that Children’s Crusade, due to the delays and creative team, is going to be wholly unconnected to Avengers vs. X-Men, maybe I am wrong about that. Still, I maintain that if there is groundwork to be laid it should be done in the core books. I’m not sure what the numbers are but I suspect Uncanny X-Men and the Avengers sell roughly double what Children’s Crusade is selling. It makes sense to seed events in books that the most people are reading. All that it would take is one or two pages every few issues. That does not seem like too much to ask for.
I do hope that the issue of mutant power negating technology is at least touched on. In the Marvel Universe it seems like at one time or another just about everyone has had access to technology that negates mutant powers. I know that would make for a crappy story but it is so ubiquitous in the Marvel Universe that it seems silly not to use it as the solution.
Was it brought up at all in House of M? Magneto, Forge and the Genoshans are three characters that have prominently used mutant power negating devices in the past and I would hope that rather than deciding that Wanda must be killed that they would think to take her powers away.
“it seems to me that the stories would have much more impact if they did a better job of building them up.”
You are right, but this gets against the current “modern” approach of the product. To slowly build up a story to make an impact? Not possible. I also remember fondly those old crossovers where things were build up like the thundercloud on the horizon, but this kind of storytelling seems to need so much effort that editorial won´t or can´t.
The problem with this is – for some readers – that this appproach is so idiotic. Superheroes always were written with selective memories, but to read about Cap waking up one morning with the deep totally out of the blue conviction that people like Hope should be living in a high security prison – or whatever is the catch this week – is so stupid that it negates all credibility the plot may have. People don´t work this way.
Of course this is difficult for editorial. On the one hand readers complain about contuinity which they can´t follow any longer, but on the other they find tales without it empty and shallow.
Apart from the ridiculous high price for an issue this is what finally drove me away from 90% of the Marvel books. The overwhelming feeling that nothing sticks or is in any way important for the story any longer. Cable is dying – for the umpteenth time – he is dead, no, he´s not. Bucky – cue melodramatic memory of WWII – has died, no he lives, he dies again, big mourning scene, nah, just kidding. For me this kind of writing is killing any interest whatsoever.
I recently caught up with Uncanny X-Force, and holy damn, it’s like a love letter to the ’90s X-Men in the best way possible. It kind of answers the question, “What if Scott Lobdell had been a good writer and his editors let him tell a good story?”
The part that blew me away was depicting Ice-man as the omega-level mutant he was always described as and never shown to be.
And Archangel is probably the most threatening villain in a Marvel comic since . . . maybe Thanos in Infinity Gauntlet.
I love how this is basically a series about Apocalypse and everything Apocalypse stands for without ever featuring Apocalypse.
Thinking about it, you could argue the lack of subplots nowadays means there’s not really any such thing as ‘ongoing’ titles any more. Plus the distinct arcs/trades. And the constant shuffling of creative teams.
Classic Uncanny was built on the exact opposite of these things.
Still not getting how this is all seen as completely out of the blue regarding Hope, though. She is known about in the MU (Avengers know she saved San Francisco, Reed Richards has run tests on her, Cap’s fought by her side in the negative zone), but hasn’t been shown to be a threat. Yet. If the crossover begins by introducing the reason she becomes a threat, that seems like the ideal starting point to the story. And if X-Sanction does reinforce this with Cable inadvertently aggravating things, even better.
I haven’t been too thrilled with most of Marvel’s crossovers lately. Sometimes we do end up with a nice status quo after (Civil War), others times we don’t (House of M/Decimation). But as for the series itself? Not looking forward to it much. Of course, since both teams now have 30+ members when you add all the different titles, it’ll be one big jumbled mash-up.
“If you thought Fantomex was just another “Oh, he’s bad ass, ain’t he cool?” character, then he worked. That’s exactly what Weapon Plus was going for when the created him.”
I doubt Weapon Plus/Morrison were expecting us to roll our eyes so much while thinking that.
“Wolverine: The Best There Is #12 – Well, thank god that’s over.”
Good riddance, I say, That, and some more fat needs to be trimmed from the line.
Who would have thought Uncanny X-Force would end up being one of the better X-titles out today? A great wrap-up to an entertaining story arc, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
“If you thought Fantomex was just another “Oh, he’s bad ass, ain’t he cool?” character, then he worked. That’s exactly what Weapon Plus was going for when the created him.”
I doubt Weapon Plus/Morrison were expecting us to roll our eyes so much while thinking that.
——
Well, you can roll your eyes all you want. Doesn’t change that you seem to have missed the original intent of the character.
I’m trying to remind you that it was a plot point in Morrison’s run that Weapon Plus designed Fantomex to be corny… but corn people could understand.
No, I got the point, just fine, thank you very much.
You were meant to roll your eyes that much. He was a character arch-type taken to extremes. Which was pretty much the point of the entire Morrison run.
Thank-you OG Matt. I’m not saying anybody is right or wrong to dislike Morrison’s X-Men. I’m saying taking an objective look at “Assualt on Weapon Plus” would show you an aspect of the character’s origin you have overlooked. I can see how people would miss it, what with Bachalo’s art on that arc lacking in the clarity department. No need to be standoffish.
To put it another way, criticising Fantomex for being another “Oh, he’s bad ass, ain’t he cool?” character is like criticising Slapstick for being too cartoonish.
x-sanction would be fine if only it wouldnt have been executed so gracelessly. 90es nostalgia can be done right… but this just feels tired and flat. still, schism had an atrocious prelude, and it turned out alright. generally, the big x-events have been not-great-but-solid for years now (messiah complex, utopia, 2nd coming), so i wont write this new event off until i see it.
not all that impressed by the x-club issue, but i like the team. i think nemesis, rao, and jeffrey have a fun dynamic. not entirely sure how danger fits in, but i think cypher and warlock might fit in nicely.
the dark angel saga has been tons of fun, and i loved the conclusion – especially because of the final twist, which sets up new story possibilities instead of trying to wring gravitas out of yet another superhero death that we all know is going to be reversed.
the one complaint i have is that there have been too many characters. it was a little confusing at times (im not even sure which minor characters survived) and some moments felt rushed, especially regarding the aoa characters. why bring them into the story if youre barely going to do anything with them?
but its really impressive what remender has done with a bunch of characters i couldnt care less about. its the most anybody has done with psylocke since forever.
I think there’s actually been plenty of build up to the X-Men/Avengers crossover – at least on the X-side of the equation. Conflict with the Avengers was always going to happen at some point. Both groups have different agendas. The Avengers protect the status quo and the X-Men seek to change it They don’t – with good reason – trust the Avengers to protect mutants or to treat them fairly.
For the Avengers, the Phoenix is no different from Galactus, but for the X-Men, the Phoenix is something that they have seen channelled into good causes.
The conflict makes much more sense than civil war.
I have to admit I thought the Dark Angel Saga in Uncanny X-Force was a little drawn out at 9 issues. Rereading it in one go, though, has made me appreciate how many little character moments (and character-changing moments) Remender packed into what seemed like an almost endless string of fight issues. I’m sure I’ll appreciate it even more now that we’re moving on to the aftermath of the big event. I’m especially eager to see what [minor spoiler] getting stabbed in the brain has done to Fantomex’s mind and powers.
Remender recently said (on CBR: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35905) that in order to really follow-up on the Dark Angel Saga, readers should pick up not only X-Force #19, but Wolverine & the X-Men #4. Along with the promise of Remender’s Secret Avengers crossing over with X-Force as well, I’m a little sad. X-Force was a book that I could count on to be pretty solidly outside all the crossover hub-bub that Marvel’s been engaging in recently. I hope this isn’t the end of that insularity, or at least that the crossing over is worth it. Fingers crossed!
I thought it was more Fantomex himself who was desperate to appear as out and out cool once he escaped Weapon Plus, fabricating the whole french super agent thing?
I’d agree that anyone taking Fantomex to be Morrison saying ‘Here is this guy, he is super-cool’ is slightly missing the point.
Weapon Plus designed him to be the cool stealth guy, but there is some ambiguity to how much of that persona Fantomex came up with himself or went along with or what was just misdirection after escaping.
Here it is worth pointing out that Fantomex was almost a wholesale implanting of the Italian comic character Diabolik into Marvel. That’s where all the super-cool character stuff came from (the space ship and secret antimutant bioweaon agency, not so much). He’s a homage, not a Poochie.
And the name comes from a French comic book character, Fantomas.
But still, can’t an homage also be a Poochie? Especially if he was intentionally designed to be over the top kewl, even more so than the source material?
Well yeah, I suppose there’s no getting away from it. I’m not completely convinced myself, but there’s definitely a case to be made for it.
Again, some of “got” what Morrison was doing, didn’t find it clever, and still rolled our eyes…anyway, not that the dead horse has been beaten beyond death, I have to give credit to Remender for doing so much for the character, and making him very interesting. Hope they can keep the momentum going on this title…
I was really pleased with how the Dark Angel Saga wrapped up. I started buying Uncanny X-Force just because it looked like Remender was going to do something interesting with Warren who is one of my favorite comic characters. He did far more than I was expecting and I’m really grateful for such great comics.
Also, it sounds like the last two pages of Uncanny X-Force will be followed up in Wolverine & the X-Men starting with issue #4. This is based on Remender’s interview with CBR (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35905) and the solicits to #4 which states that two new students will join the Jean Grey school.
wwk5d, no one said you had to find it clever. Just that you missed part of the plost. Stop taking it so personal. When comic fans close their minds they really close their minds….
plost== plot. Oops. 😉
I have to agree with wwk5d. Morrison set out to intentionally create a really annoying character, and he succeed. Yeah for him.
Strangely though I’d rather read about a good character than an exaggerated mockery of what Morrison thinks is wrong about the nineties.
I’m just not a fan of deconstructions. I’d rather read stories than criticisms of older stories disguised as stories.
That’s a personal taste issue, though. I love the Morrison run for that exact reason. If you found Fantomex over the top cool as annoying, then the character (and Morrison) got it right. Whether you like it or not is chalked up to personal taste, you just can’t deny that it did what it set out to do.
Again, I still don’t see what your point is Max. I got your post, I got what Fantomex is all about, I got what Morrison was trying to say, and I still didn’t care for it, or the character. I prefer reading about the Fantomex that we got in Uncanny X-force. If you misinterpreted my opinion as taking it personal, then maybe you misread something in my post.
The problem I had with Fantomex as “generic cool guy” was that it really felt, to me, like that moment when you’re playing a role-playing game or reading a fanfic or a web comic (basically any work of non-professional writing the audience can communicate with the creator) and there’s a character or plot that’s very clearly based on a pre-existing work that the creator hopes is obscure enough that no one has heard of, and someone points it out so the creator starts pretending that you were supposed to notice that all along. Usually involving phrases like “I was hoping someone would notice that,” or “The similiarities are actually going to be a plot point in the next chapter” or “That’s meant to indicate that the villains are smart, but not very creative.”
Like, I obviously can’t say what Morrison’s plan was, but it always felt to me like no one would have ever mentioned Fantomex being based on Fantomas in the comics if no one ever noticed in real life.
Which isn’t to say that I think Morrison was “trying to get away with something” or “got caught and fessed up” or anything like that, just that it seems to me like the sort of thing that gets written into a character’s backstory after the fact when a writer realizes there are obstacles to taking something at face value. Like Superman telepathically clouding people’s perceptions so he only needs glasses to hide his identity.
I sort of liked that story of Superman as super-hypnotist.