The X-Axis – 16 December 2012
And so on to this week’s reviews, plus some hanging around from the week before. You’ll forgive me if I take some of these quickly, it’s been a busy day…
Age of Apocalypse #10 – Age of Apocalypse sells abysmally, so even though it’s heading towards a crossover with the similarly audience-bereft X-Treme X-Men and the somewhat healthier Astonishing, it comes as no real surprise to see the book suddenly racing towards the conclusion. It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines when Prophet takes the opportunity to explain that he really wanted to train Jean Grey as his successor but “We’ve run out of time.” No kidding you have.
Still, at least Age of Apocalypse has shifted gears and started heading for the finish line with several months in hand, which means that if nothing else it gets a renewed sense of momentum and a realistic shot of achieving closure on its main storylines. While the book has always had a tendency to overdo the visual gloom, this issue has got some of Roberto de la Torre’s stronger visuals, with a bit more emphasis on the big gestures rather than the serious brooding.
All-New X-Men #3 – Oh, it’s that old trick of Bendis’ – the one where he sets up a cliffhanger at the end of one issue, and then spends the next issue building to exactly the same cliffhanger from a different direction. Still, this book’s schedule is rapid enough that it just about gets away with it.
Instead of delivering the confrontation between the two X-Men teams, this issue goes back a bit and explains what Cyclops’ team have been up to. The big revelation here is that Scott and Emma’s powers have been damaged by exposure to the Phoenix. And, uh, so have Magneto’s. For some reason. That naturally results in a hideously awkward scene in which Magneto flags up that he didn’t actually have the Phoenix Force during Avengers vs X-Men, and we’re told that getting blasted really hard in the final issue was good enough.
It’s the sort of explanation so thumpingly unconvincing that you can’t help wondering whether it’s just a massive cock-up that’s being awkwardly covered at the last minute. Then again, the whole idea doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense in logical terms, since no previous host of the Phoenix has had this sort of trouble. Still, I get where Bendis is going thematically, and I’ll give him a bit of slack on that point; it’s supposed to represent literally the way Scott’s team are trying to plough on even though they’ve wrecked everything (or had it wrecked for them). Nonetheless, a bit more in the “making sense” department wouldn’t hurt, hmm?
Cable & X-Force #1 – The first of two new X-Force titles launching as part of Marvel Now!, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the previous run. Instead, Dennis Hopeless and Salvador Larroca are basically doing a team book fronted by Cable.
Hopeless has two books out this week, the other being Avengers Arena. That’s the one getting most of the attention, but I’m steering well clear about it. Haven’t read it. Could be brilliant for all I know. But literally everything about the promotion of the book has made it look like derivative hackwork calculated to provoke online controversy, and I just can’t be arsed. Fairly or not, it makes me approach all involved with considerable scepticism.
Cable & X-Force, meanwhile, is simply a bit dull. It’s a first issue that doesn’t get as far as establishing the premise, which is always a warning sign that you’re dealing with a writer who can’t pace for serials. Cable’s assembling a new team for Some Reason Or Other. Hope wants to hook up with him. The team is going to do apparently evil things and the Avengers are going to chase them down. The reason for all this is Thoroughly Mysterious.
It’s not awful, but it never gets to the point of establishing any kind of hook. It doesn’t really introduce any of its characters, assuming that everyone knows and cares about them already. It attempts to set up mystery while giving us no real clues to work with and no particular reason to care. Hopeless really doesn’t have Dr Nemesis’ voice down at all, and the less said about that costume redesign, the better. It’s the sort of thing that might turn out, with the benefit of hindsight, to be a good opening twenty pages of a graphic novel, but as a first issue, there’s not enough to it.
Gambit #6 – Guest starring MI-13, not that that’s exactly going to send the sales soaring. Actually, they seem to be here mainly because James Asmus wants to use Pete Wisdom as an antagonist to hunt Gambit down, which isn’t such a bad role for him. He’s certainly a more interesting foil for Gambit than having him simply run rings around a beleaguered CIA agent or something.
Sticking doggedly to its heist story format, this issue has Gambit stealing Excalibur and breaking into MI-13’s vaults. The fill-in art is a bit below usual standards, but it’s okay and largely sticks to the book’s established tone. And Asmus is continuing to come up with inventive ways to build a heist every issue, which is really quite impressive. Gambit is kind of lost in the line, but it’s a reliably enjoyable title.
Wolverine #317 – Final issue! (DISCLAIMER: Issue may not be final.)
Cullen Bunn’s short run concludes by wrapping up his “Covenant” storyline, and does little to dispel the impression of a writer who’s been asked if he wouldn’t mind filling time for four issues. The basic plot is clear enough by this point. A long time ago, the Covenant asked Wolverine to kill the “Dreaming Maiden”, whose dreams are apparently going to bring doom to the Earth (seemingly by attracting the Celestials, though it’s left vague). Instead, he hid her away and somehow convinced her to just stop dreaming. But that didn’t work out, so now the Covenant are after her again, quite possibly because she’s manipulated them into going after her.
The story doesn’t really work. For a start, this is not a Wolverine story. It’s a story about the Covenant, characters mostly created by Bunn for another series, which is being shoehorned in to a title it has no particular connection with. Okay, it plays vaguely off Wolverine’s long history, but magic and spiritualism is hardly something that fits well with him. Besides, the Dreaming Maiden is a glorified macguffin which thinks it’s something more profound. Not very good.
X-Factor #248 – Pip’s not dead, you’ll be pleased to hear. And hell is coming to earth, which you’ll be less pleased to hear, not least because the magical stories haven’t always been this book’s strongest suit. I assume we’re building to a big climax with issue #250, and I kind of hope so, since this isn’t a direction that especially grabs me. Then again, most of this issue is actually about Pip waking up in Monet’s body after saving himself from apparent death by shooting – and the character comedy there works pretty well, especially because Peter David gets the obvious gags out of the way and moves on to more inventive stuff.
X-Men #39 – Domino and Daredevil team up to fight an arms dealer who started off with good intentions but got sucked into a life of crime. The book is missing from the March solicitations, so this looks very much like a case of blatant filler as the title coasts to its conclusion. And much of the book is very much your standard team-up filler story, though it does have a genuinely interesting idea towards the end: that the morally flexible Domino is far more judgmental towards the bad guy than the supposedly upright Daredevil.
As this sort of thing goes, it’s perfectly well constructed and the art is better than usual. And readers of a certain bent can play “spot the old supervillain weapons”. But it’s still filler.
X-Treme X-Men #7 – 7.1 – Two issue in two weeks. The first wraps up Kurt’s return to his home world and brings Sage into the cast. I can’t for the life of me remember how she ended up as an interstellar ambassador, but there she is. It’s a strangely downbeat story in which the normally cheerful Kurt is given false hope that his parents have survived, Danger tries to torment him, and he tries to obliterate entire robot cities. Basically, if it’s impotent hate you like, this story’s got it in spades.
It’s a misfire, I think. Kurt’s appeal as a character lies (lay?) in his more innocent nature and in the idea that he’d come from a rather nice-sounding world where he was just an ordinary kid. This arc replaces all that with a back story of trauma and horror that just doesn’t seem particularly compelling.
The Point One issue is more fun, the central joke being that the team end up visiting the mainstream Marvel Universe, don’t realise it, and treat the whole plot of Avengers vs X-Men as one of those ridiculous disasters that usually sets up alternate worlds. Also, it has an alternate Xavier who’s a giant floating whale, which teeters on the verge of Just Plain Silly, but ultimately gets away with it. It’s a much more cheerful affair and one that plays far more to the book’s strengths.
I’m pretty sure the solicitations billed X-Men #41 as the “last” issue. It doesn’t seem like it’s been replaced by anything on the schedule (well, aside from Uncanny X-Men, I guess), so it looks like a genuine case of the most generic X-Men book ever being cancelled for good.
The “Hell on Earth” arc STARTS in X-Factor #250, not concludes. Apparently, it’s a story PAD intended to do in his (first) Hulk run but didn’t get to before being fired.
Pual, the fact that the Phoenix didn’t screw up Magik’s powers the way it allegedly did for Cyclops, Magneto and Emma, suggests to me that Bendis has a different explanation, and the Phoenix explanation is a red herring.
And does anyone else feel like X-Factor 248 was written and drawn by a 14-year-old? Easily the worst art and writing I’ve seen in a long time.
Unless he specifically asked for the gig, putting a high-profile artist like Salvador Larroca on a book with a inexperienced writer, and one that will probably at best get middling sales, is a little strange.
If they are going to continue casually killing off characters in Avengers Arena like they did in the first issue, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marvel belated state that it is out-of-continuity, or it all turns out to be a ‘dream’ or some gibberish like that.
pip on x-factor keeps being vaguely rapey, with him using monets bodey without her consent and all. i dont know about this.
dropped gambit when i realized that hawkeye is doing the same thing kazillion times better.
they really want magneto to have been part of the phoenix five, dont they? first he is villanized (but storm isnt!), now his powers are ‘broken’, just like the phoenix fives.
anyway, i liked this issue of all-new x-men fine, but i just dont understand why scott is opening a school.
oh, and i too HATED the art on x-factor.
who died in arena?
So someone help me out here. How exactly were Scott’s powers changed? Was the intention that it was stronger than intended it to be or weaker? I just didn’t get it. Pretty sure Cyclops blasted some other mutants like Wolverine with lots of Phoenix force too.
As far as Magik is concerned they may have even forgotten she is a mutant.
Even reading the summary of All-New X-Men makes my head hurt. I mean, it’s one thing to miss a continuity beat from 20 years ago, but missing one for three months ago? That’s just inexcusable.
I read both ‘Cable & X-Force’ and ‘Avengers Arena’ #1s this week and Dennis Hopeless used ‘In Medias Res’ for both of them.
Cable & X-Force may catch up with the story within a couple of issues, but it looks like Avengers Arena won’t for a long time. (Based on the first issue I won’t be around to see it though.)
“who died in arena?”
Arcade killed Mettle in Arena #1 by snapping his fingers, which leads me to think it will eventually be revealed to all be a Virtual Reality simulation.
Mettle died at the end of Avengers Arena #1 for little to no reason. Don’t pick that one up; it’s disturbing and horrifying.
Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men may both have the same sales figures (roughly), but I’m enjoying X-Treme X-Men FAR more.
As for Sage? She and AoA Sabretooth were last seen in the stasis wall of Panoptichron in Exiles v2 #6 before landing in their respective series.
Well, the gaps between New Exiles and Exiles v2 and between Exiles v2 and now AREN’T really explained, hence why Psylocke is suddenly returned to 616 ASAP, Sabretooth is back in AoA, and Sage is an ambassador on Kid Nightcrawler’s world. You’re not missing an issue- that’s Marvel trying to cover up “New Exiles.”
In fairness to Bendis, the issue makes a point that Magik’s powers have been amplified (“The Phoenix gave you MORE power.”) so he’s not forgotten/ignored Magik’s posession. Although I agree that Magneto being affected seems to be a fudge.
I am less clear on what’s actually changed for the others, though. Emma’s lost her telepathy entirely, Cyclops has lost fine control over his powers, and Magneto’s have been weakened, I suppose, but it took me a couple of reads to pin that down.
As someone avoiding All-New due to Bendis, I wonder if it’s just a case of him wanting to set different characters’ powers to whatever he wants to work with, and making the reason just ‘that AvX stuff’.
What series were the Covenant created for?
“What series were the Covenant created for?”
Their only other appearance was in Bunn’s ‘Captain America and Namor’ #635.1.
Erm… Has Cyclops *ever* had fine control over his powers?
Hopeless lays enough “Well, isn’t that new and strange?” moments in Arena that I don’t doubt there’s some kind of gotcha in the works re: killing the kids. But, like Paul, I thought the marketing was blatantly manipulative and inflammatory (and, IMO, insulting). If this turns out to be the most brilliant thing ever (so far, giving how OOC everyone seemed, I’m thinking no), I might buy it used in trade. But I’m not rewarding Marvel for their advertising choices on this.
I may pick up the next couple issues of Gambit, because I do love Wisdom and the MI-13 and the reviews have been generally positive.
I also really hated the whole “powers going whacky” plot of All New X-Men. Makes no sense, so I really hope blaming the Phoenix is a red herring. As Magneto points out, it can’t be due to possession. They blame Cylcops, but why the heck would he have messed with his own powers when he had it (and suped-up Magik’s?) Blaming Hope would’ve made more sense, but still doesn’t quite work. Felt like a waste of an issue.
Cable and X-Force… I feel similarly to Paul, it’s a bad sign when the book doesn’t even lay down the premise. The opening panels are so vague (COLOSSUS SMASH WALL, ROAR!) that we don’t even understand what they’ve really done that’s bad. And according to the solicits, apparently we won’t get to the “massacre” until issue FOUR. That’s terrible pacing (for what otherwise has me very interested, given the characters and potential plot).
“I wonder if it’s just a case of him wanting to set different characters’ powers to whatever he wants to work with, and making the reason just ‘that AvX stuff’.”
Sounds like Bendis is attempting what Morrison did for New X-Men, except not as successfully.
“Has Cyclops *ever* had fine control over his powers?”
IIRC, Cyclops’ powers once extended to a superhuman understanding of geometry and spatial relations so that he could bounce his beams around a room to hit an object or person quite precisely. Kind of the way Captain America uses his shield sometimes. I’m not sure if that was ever fully developed, but maybe that counts as “fine control.”
The main impression I’m getting for the way Cyclops’ powers are messed up is this: you know how if you break off a kitchen faucet, water sprays all over the room? Think of his visor as the faucet and his optic beams at water. Have you ever had the water department (or whoever deals with such things in your neck of the woods) working on the water mains in your neighborhood, and your water pressure gets all screwy, and sometimes you’ll turn on the tap and just a trickle will come out, and you turn it all the way up to get anything at all but then you get these random, sudden, stuttering blasts of full pressure that spray out unexpectedly? I think that’s what’s currently going on with him. The force of his blast keeps going up and down randomly, so he doen’t know how much to open his visor to get the effect he wants, which means he could barely tickle someone he’s trying to knock down or obliterate someone he’s only trying to knock out.
But there’s a line or two of dialogue in there that also makes me think he’s going with something from, I think, Whedon’s run on Astonishing where Scott got full control over his power but decided to keep wearing his visor for … I forget why. Symbolism or just in case he lost control or “to remind him” or something like that.
To be fair, it’s not just a plot point from three months ago, it’s a plot point from a book that had Bendis’ name on it (at least as a co-plotter, I can’t remember which issues he wrote specifically).
Also: the end of that Wolverine was a tie-in to the recently deceased Defenders relaunch that was here and gone in the space of twelve issues. I imagine if more people had read the Defenders that end-of-issue revelation wouldn’t have seemed quite as much out of left-field.
If it was getting blasted by Phoenix-force that screwed up Magneto’s powers, you’d think he would have noticed in AvX: Consequences. You know, that thing that happened after that?
On the other hand, I do like the new look Immonen came up with for Cyclops’s eye blasts. It’s a bit more interesting than straight lines or fuzzy straight lines.
“Hopeless really doesn’t have Dr Nemesis’ voice down at all”
Not nearly as bad as how Bendis does Emma’s voice:
“Yeah, I’m thinkin’maybe you & I shouldn’t be anywhere near each other anymore.”
“I appreciate the bust-out, fellas…”
And of course, the obligatory Bendis “&$%#”.
I guess since they made a point about Colossus being absent, we’re building up to a big reveal about what Phoenix did to his powers.
They also needed to depower the current X-Men so when they face off against the silver age versions there is a reasonable fight to be had. Otherwise Cyclops would probably be able to down the whole lot of them single handedly.
Can I honestly say that I have no clue what state Whedon intended Cyclops’ powers to be left in?
I too think Arcade has them all plugged into a VR simulation… seems obvious based on Arcade’s history, plus clues like his sudden power, the lack of a telepath among the contestants, etc…
Remember during Joe Kelly’s run when Cyclops talks about having the fine tuning to punch a small hole into the center of a potatoe chip without cracking it.
What if Magik is actually leeching power from the rest to simulate the idea of having more control over limbo’s energies… She’s a favorite, but I’ve gotten very comfortable with her being devious.
Emma in New X-Men is my main reason for hating the book. It’s a shame, because the premise sounded interesting and the art is *gorgeous.*
“X-Treme X-Men 7.1”: I’m still grinning ear to ear.
It was the perfect epilogue for these past many years. All these shenanigans, everything from House of M to AvX, finally make sense to me as one big storyline, which I guess we could call “Scott’s Craptacular Journey”. When Allison shook her head sadly and turned her back on 616, I got the closure I didn’t even know I needed.
Ironically for a point-one issue, this makes a perfect jumping *off* point. So long suckers!
“Avengers Arena”: I don’t usually mind edgy material — my username is a line from Miracleman #15, for example. So no, I really don’t mind.
However, I am also capable of enjoying *other* things. Therefore I must say, the appeal of Avengers Academy was *not* nihilistic grim-n-gritty darkness, but rather the opposite. So if Dennis Hopeless thinks he’s *blowing* the *lid* off something, well that’s kind of annoying.
Also annoying: Avengers Arena is just a shameless ripoff of Hunger Games/Battle Royale. In fact, the ripping off is so blatant and shameless that it harkens back to the House of Ideas’ golden age of stealing every idea that wasn’t nailed down.
It was a well written issue, for all that. The simplicity of the concept probably helped. Hopefully Hopeless’ll pull out of this edgy Geoff Johns style nosedive.
Joss Whedon meant for Scott to finally lose the glasses — kind of like how Rogue can have sex now without killing a guy. And that would have been nice.
I’ve said this on another board, but my biggest concern for Avengers Arena is as follows:
1) Hopeless’s plan is to kill off characters left and right and then, in a “surprise twist” reveal that it’s been a VR simulation all along and they’re actually all still alive. Because it’s all a simulation, he can kill off anyone he wants.
2) It will become increasingly obvious – or at least speculated upon – that the series is, in fact, all VR, to the point that it becomes accepted as fact by the readership, the way people talk about recently killed major characters as thought their return were an inevitability.
3) Hopeless (or some other writer if Hopless leaves the book before it’s cancelled, or some Marvel editor) will realize that the surprise twist isn’t a surprise anymore, and will pull a Monarch* on us and declare that, no, it’s not a VR sim, it all really happened, it’s in continuity, those characters – that were never supposed to die for real – are actually dead. Because “it’s the last thing we’d expect.” And we lose a bunch of good characters just to prove a point to the internet.
I know it sounds silly, but the annals of comic book editorial screw ups are littered with stories of characters who got benched for years because someone killed them with the intent of bringing them back right away but some behind-the-scenes nonsense got in the way. And darn it, I like some of the characters in Avengers Arena.
*(Monarch was the cornerstone of one of DC’s big crossover events back when near-constant big crossover events were just on the verge of becoming a thing. A superhero from the future travelled to the present because he knew one of the superheroes of our time would become the supervillain Monarch in his time, but didn’t know which one. It was supposed to be Captain Atom. This was heavily forshadowed, and was the only outcome that made sense. They basically had the same powers. It was so obvious that literally everyone figured it out, so they decided that if the whole event was based on the mystery of who Monarch was, it couldn’t be the guy everyone thought it was. So they scrapped all their well-laid plans and made it Hawk (of Hawk and Dove) instead, despite that making no sense whatsoever.)
caught up on x-force, and woah, its pretty bad. the dialogue is flat and exposition-tastic, the story is chaotic and overheated. the art is terrible as well, especially that atrocious redesign of dr. nemesis (and im pretty sure hes always had light blond hair until now.) i expect much better from larroca. this all feels like a throwback to the 90es in the worst way.
And does anyone else feel like X-Factor 248 was written and drawn by a 14-year-old? Easily the worst art and writing I’ve seen in a long time.
I thought the writing was OK but the art was fucking awful.
Anyone else notice that Scott, Emma and Magneto seemed to have little difficulty with their powers in issue #1? Bad enough to not have the book mesh up with Consequences, but you should be able to keep things straight for three issues of your own book.
Perhaps the next flashback in ANXM will show how they get some band-aid to get their powers somewhat working again.
“Sounds like Bendis is attempting what Morrison did for New X-Men, except not as successfully.”
“The Phoenix Force messed up my powers!” is this decade’s Secondary Mutation.
“Avengers Arena is just a shameless ripoff of Hunger Games/Battle Royale.”
What? Not at all! This has nothing to do with *either* of those book/movie series 😉
So what if Avengers Arena is a “shameless ripoff” of Hunger Games/Battle Royale??? This is a story that goes back to Lord of the Flies, and still further to Theseus and the Athenian youths sent to Crete to feed the Minotaur!! Just because a story’s trappings aren’t purely original doesn’t mean there isn’t anything new to be explored within that framework.
After all, Avengers was just a shameless ripoff of Justice League, and that turned out okay…
“Can I honestly say that I have no clue what state Whedon intended Cyclops’ powers to be left in?”
Same here, can anyone elaborate? Astonishing was so slow and out of synch with everything that was going on at the time I honestly can’t remember what the outcome of this was. I wanna say he did gain the ability to control them, but other writers couldn’t pick up on it due to the scheduling issues. Or maybe Whedon did put the toys back in the box for other writers when he finished up, I have no idea. I have no desire to go back and read his run to know for sure. I remember at the time thinking it was WAY too big of a character development to be happening off in the corner somewhere.
“Can I honestly say that I have no clue what state Whedon intended Cyclops’ powers to be left in?”
It was undone in the last issue and the visor was put on again.
The explanation was that Cyclops just could not hold it in anymore or something like that.
D is right. Cyclops’ current team needs to be at a disadvantage if the young X-Men are to have any sort of chance.
Using the Phoenix force as an excuse to downgrade the X-Men’s powers isn’t a bad idea, but it’s crazy to use that explanation after we’ve seen them using their powers effectively post-Phoenix 5.
Cable and X-Force wasn’t a good issue, but the storyline might have something going for it.
I think that Avengers’ Arena #1 was fine. But the marketing has been terrible.
X-Treme X-Men has been pretty decent so far.
To be fair even Arcade admits he is ripping off the hunger games. The motivation of the villian knowing he has been a joke for twenty years was different.
However I think due to recent horrors here in the states this book is over real soon. Possibly before issue three.
Tdubs: Wouldn’t surprise me. I believe “Battle Royale” was effectively blacklisted from the U.S. for awhile due to the Columbine killings.
They could always just pull the book now and put out the trade in 6 months.
It really would surprise me if the Sandy Hook murders made a whit of difference to Marvel(though I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the audience loses their stomach for a book where the hook is kiddie death). There’s no way the numbers for Arena are worse than Academy’s were at the time of cancellation and the first few issues are double-shipped, so unless the orders absolutely tank after #4, I imagine we’re going to see at least a year of this.
Can’t believe there’s people defending avengers arena… oh, well.
Am I the only one who feels that Old Cyclops is being written somewhat out of characters in ANX? I mean, he’s one of the few marvel characters that I can think of that has mantained a somewhat “fixed” personality for the most of a decade, but in ANX he sounds… like a chump. Or maybe it’s me not being used to bendis-isms.
The premise of Avengers Arena is so over the top that I don’t see anyone drawing parallels between that and school shootings.
As for how long the book will last, it’s pretty obviously a short-run premise, just like Dark Avengers was. I can’t imagine that even in the best case scenario it’s planned to go more than two years (unless of course there’s a massive twist planned at the end of year one where they blow up the premise and take the book in a completely unexpected direction).
Hopeless has mentioned that he has several story arcs planned, which tends to give more weight to the idea that there’s an out built in someplace.
I wouldn’t say I was defending Arena just stating that the premise being a ripoff is a point brought up by the characters. The marketing for the book is bad. I picked it up for characters I liked in other books and found one of them dead and the others with no dialogue. I wasn’t a fan and that’s before addressing the plot hole of how no one will come looking for them.
Yes the premise is over the top for those of us that already know what it is. Outside of our culture it will be about how the media would treat it as fantasy or as a tale of kids being forced to kill each other and sold by a company owned by Disney. (the same criticism can be said of Hunger Games and coming sequels but they aren’t being published biweekly.)
In the end the comic is regarded pretty poorly by most I’ve seen read it so it isn’t of consequence and didn’t make a big splash and probably will go by without notice.
“Using the Phoenix force as an excuse to downgrade the X-Men’s powers isn’t a bad idea”
In what way is it not? There’s no previous history of it affecting powers besides amplifying psi-powers…is there? And why downgrade powers at all?
I haven’t actually seen any marketing for Avengers Arena – I only knew about it before seeing it on the shelf because a few podcasts I listen to ran down a list of all the upcoming Marvel Now titles when they were announced – and I’m afraid to google it now. I’m torn about people’s reactions because I hate when people judge a work based on outside matters (“This movie is objectively terrible and no one should like it because the director cheated on his wife!”) but I do see the point that, unfair as it may be to the creative team of the book to lambast it for its ad campaign, it’s perfectly fair to lambast Marvel’s advertising department, and there’s really no way to both buy the book AND register your distaste for the ads in a meaningful way. Basically, I guess, it would be nice to see less “I didn’t read it but I know this book is terrible because the ads were offensive” and more “I have no idea whether it’s good or bad because I won’t whose ads are this offensive.” (People who actually did read it and dislike it, of course, should feel free to fire away!)
As for ripping off the Hunger Games/Battle Royale: when has Arcade ever had an original idea? Hasn’t every plan he’s ever had been basically take a pinball machine/video game/B-movie/Colossus and weaponize it?
I know, I know, the complaint isn’t so much that Arcade’s ripping off Hunger Games but that MARVEL is ripping off Hunger Games and just happened to have a villian who’s MO it fit, but really you can make the same arguments about comics that I did about Arcade: Errol Flynn appears in the iconic Robin Hood movie and a few years later Green Arrow is created; Blaxsploitation and kung fu movies become popular and we get Power Man and Iron Fist; the Starjammers showed up for the first time five months after Star Wars came out; I’ve lost count of the number of “school for superhumans” books that have come out since Harry Potty became a phenomenon (sure, the concept had been done before, but not nearly as often and I can’t prove it wasn’t a coincidence but even Xavier’s school never went from “maybe a dozen students who never seem to take any classes” to “actual school” until after Harry Potter). Maybe Avengers Arena is more blatant about it, but I can’t help but feel that part of the issue is a combination of people forgetting that this is how comics have always been and the notion that Hunger Games is somehow “beneath us” in a way that Harry Potter and Blaxploitation and Star Wars somehow weren’t. Like, that’s what kids liked when WE were kids, so it’s okay; this is what kids like NOW so it’s lame.
Sorry, the hypothetical quote at the end of the second-to-last sentence in my first paragraph should read “I have no idea whether it’s good or bad because I won’t buy books whose ads are this offensive.” Just one of those editing things.
And I’m going to pretend I meant to type “Harry Potty” in the third paragraph.
@ZZZ – I agree with most of your points, but not entirely on the idea that it’s too bad that the creative team is going to take a beating over the advertising for Arena. Kev Walker is, so far as I know, an innocent bystander in all of this, but one of the things that got Academy readers’ hackles up was Hopeless making statements during interviews like how he couldn’t wait to start killing the kids, how the deaths would all be “real”, about how it was too bad the TPTB wouldn’t let him use the Academy X kids (who already put up with this kind of nonsense under Kyle and Yost) and Molly Hayes (the pre-teen from Runaways) for Arena. Maybe it was all tongue in cheek, but it’s easier to spin it that way once you see the guy having to do damage control via Twitter and either way, I think it was a big misstep. I certainly don’t blame Hopeless for taking the job, but his approach to it is likely responsible for as much of the negative perception as Marvel’s pro-Arcade blurbs and “homage” variants are.
“I can’t prove it wasn’t a coincidence but even Xavier’s school never went from “maybe a dozen students who never seem to take any classes” to “actual school” until after Harry Potter”
I think they’d have a hard time arguing the house – sorry, “squad” – structure in New X-Men: Academy X was a coincidence. All that was missing was Xavier deciding whether the kids belonged in the New Mutants (Gryffindor) or Hellions (Slytherin) using the Sorting Cerebro.