The X-Axis – 30 May 2010
It’s not just Eurovision Song Contest posts this weekend – we have the weekly reviews too! Am I not good to you?
Oh, and while I remember: next week’s podcast will probably be up on Sunday instead of Saturday. But don’t worry, we’re not skipping another week.
Lots of X-books this week, but otherwise it’s a pretty quiet week (save for a couple of new launches at Marvel). So…
Blind Science – Another one of those “Second Coming” tie-ins where Marvel can’t seem to make up their mind what the full title is (the indicia opts for X-Men: Blind Science), so I’ll just go with the short version. This is an X-Club one-shot, and if you’re not following Uncanny, the current line-up is down to Madison Jefferies who used to be in Alpha Flight, public domain Golden Age hero Dr Nemesis, and Joss Whedon’s character Kavita Rao. As with the Hellbound miniseries, this isn’t part of the central “Second Coming” storyline, so much as a separate story which springboards from the same events. They could have run it as a subplot in “Second Coming” and it would have worked, but in the interests of decluttering the main story, it’s probably a smart move to hive it off like this.
The X-Club have been lured off to investigate a complete red herring, and find themselves transported to yet another dystopian alternate future where Bastion turns out to have been basically right. Mutants have gone crazy, and only Kavita Rao can save the world by re-creating her “cure” for mutant powers from Astonishing X-Men. Now, this is a pretty solid idea. Kavita is one of many characters who’s been sucked into the X-Men’s ensemble cast and never seems to get much attention. But in theory, at least, she’s supposed to be trying to atone for trying to “cure” the mutant race, so putting her in a situation where she ends up atoning by doing exactly the same thing has some nice ironic possibilities.
Writer Si Spurrier has a good handle on Rao. The other two X-Club members aren’t really so important to the plot, but he uses them pretty well for snappy dialogue and comic relief. Dr Nemesis is usually written as having better judgment than this, but hey, it’s not his story – and his Batman tendencies are one of the reasons why Rao normally gets overshadowed. Paul Davidson and Francis Portela’s art is basically solid, though some of the scenes with weird energy creatures are a bit hard to follow on first reading. I’m not completely convinced about the ending, which teeters on the brink of being a cop-out. But on balance, I think it works, because it’s a story about Rao not falling into the trap of hearing what she wants to hear, and the ending fits with that. Pretty good, all told.
Dark Wolverine #86 / Wolverine: Origins #48 – The concluding two parts of “Reckoning”. There’s still two issues of Origins to go, but this seems to be the end of the Romulus plot – presumably, what remains is just epilogue. And… well. On the plus side, some of the stuff with Daken is quite good. He doesn’t get to switch sides outright, but he does get to reject the idea of following in the footsteps of Romulus, even if only because he doesn’t want his life to be defined by fulfilling a role in somebody else’s conspiracy. That’s fair enough, and in line with what they’ve been doing with Daken in his own title. And the final page throws in an interesting idea with Wolverine trying to force Daken to go his own way by removing his claws – presumably to make absolutely sure that he can’t be a second-rate Wolverine any more.
So Daken’s part of the story isn’t fantastic, but it’s solid. Romulus, on the other hand, remains as big a mess as ever. As it turns out, Wolverine doesn’t want to expose him after all. But what we actually get is a story where Cloak dumps Romulus into the Darkforce Dimension. Granted, at least Daniel Way made a point of using Cloak in earlier stories to set that up. But really, that’s it? He gets dumped in a prison dimension? It begs the question of why Cloak didn’t do it earlier in the story. But more to the point, it shows the weakness of Romulus as a concept. Way is trying to do a story here where Wolverine comes to terms with his past – but when his past is embodied by a character as feebly conceived as Romulus, it’s just never going to work.
Dazzler #1 – Another of 2010’s “Women of Marvel” one-shots featuring female characters. Surprisingly, this is also bannered as a “Necrosha-X” crossover. Yes, you remember how Dazzler’s sister Mortis was used in that story, apparently as the result of a long night trawling through the Official Handbook for characters vaguely related to death, even though she never got to do anything much, and barely interacted with her sister? Well, this issue is Jim McCann’s attempt to tie up those loose ends. The “Necrosha” tie-in is… that Mortis is in it. Mortis hires Arcade to kill Dazzler, and as you can probably imagine, that doesn’t go especially well for her.
McCann clearly loves Dazzler. Aside from tying up the Mortis threads, he’s also trying to do a story where Dazzler deals with the detritus of her past continuity and asserts herself as a proper, viable character instead of just an anachronistic throwback. The results are mixed. The story seems to assume an awful lot of knowledge about Dazzler’s relationship with her family, which comes from comics published over a quarter of a century ago, and really needed to be properly explained in flashback. And the story makes a bold but doomed attempt to convince us that the X-Men are reluctant to allow a comatose Mortis onto Utopia – even though the place is already swarming with asylum-seeking supervillains, and Mortis is surely too much of a D-lister to warrant an exception.
But on the other hand, McCann’s evident love of the character comes through, and she does come across as an interesting, rounded hero here. It’s just that the story seems to involve resolving subplots about her family relationships from the backwaters of 1980 continuity. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing McCann do more with her. I like his basic take on her.
Oh, and as for the art, it’s variable. Kalman Andrasofszky and Ramon Perez, doing the bulk of the story, have a good sense of scale but are rough around the edges at times. Francesca Ciregia’s work, on the epilogue, is an odd combination of minimalism and melodrama, which more or less works, but really makes Alison look like she needs a hairdresser urgently.
Not a particularly great story in its own right, but there’s something in here.
Secret Avengers #1 – The second Avengers title, by Ed Brubaker and Mike Deodato, is the “shadow ops” squad – although that’s a concept which sits a little uneasily with the inclusion of characters like Valkyrie, Beast and Nova. But perhaps that’s the point, to do spy stories with superhero characters and play to some extent off the resulting incongruity. I’m not altogether convinced that it works here? Why on earth is Steve Rogers sending the Valkyrie on an undercover assignment? And, having smashed through a window in full costume with his face exposed in full sight of a load of enemy soldiers, none of whom he kills or arrests, why does he think that “we’re getting away with no one knowing who we are”? These are plot problems that trouble me.
The book might also benefit from explaining the back story. The plot involves people chasing after an artefact connected to the Serpent Crown. That’s fine; chasing after Marvel Universe macguffins is precisely the sort of thing this team should be doing. It’s just that nobody pauses to explain what the Serpent Crown actually is, which is surely an important plot point (particularly as it has past associations with Roxxon, who also feature in this story).
But on the other hand, I like the idea of plugging these characters into a slightly different genre, and I like some of the odder choices of characters. It’s good to see they’re still using Ant-Man (and I trust Ed Brubaker not to let him degenerate into just a generic character seeking redemption for his criminal past). Beast is an interesting choice precisely because he doesn’t seem to fit in here at all. And the closing twist is nicely executed. Mike Deodato’s art is also well suited for this sort of superhero/spy hybrid. A few glitches, but plenty of potential here.
Thunderbolts #144 – The first issue of the book’s new direction, with Luke Cage assembling a squad of imprisoned supervillains trying to earn their way out of jail. It’s the Suicide Squad, in other words, but that’s pretty much in keeping with the premise of the series, and it’s nice to see some of the older characters being brought back into the cast. Again, some of the new cast members are downright odd choices – you’d have to be very trusting to let the Juggernaut out on missions, for example – but Jeff Parker does a persuasive job of explaining, at least, why somebody might have thought these people were good candidates. Granted, that takes a lot of explaining, and it’s only really in the last couple of pages that the story gets properly underway. But it does introduce a potentially interesting team, and follow it up with a strong cliffhanger, so that’s a good first issue for the new direction in my book.
Wolverine: Weapon X #13 – Yes, three Wolverine comics in a single week – it’s another triumph for Marvel’s schedulers. Much as I like Jason Aaron’s take on Wolverine, I’m starting to wonder about this story, which is so packed with guest stars that it’s turning into Avengers vs Terminator. It’s a good enough Avengers story, and Aaron writes his guest stars quite well – though his version of the new Captain America has a rather odd passive-aggressive streak. It just doesn’t feel like a Wolverine story. Come to think of it, the same can be said of Aaron’s Dark Reign: The List – Wolverine one-shot, which turns out to be connected to the plot here. It’s enjoyable enough as a superhero action story, I just don’t quite get why it’s appearing in a Wolverine solo title.
X-Force #27 – Part 9 of “Second Coming” opens in curious style with the X-Men fighting the invading Nimrods over the course of nine (nearly ten) silent pages. It’s an odd device, and actually does lend the scene an air of being more significant than Just Another Fight Scene. But it isn’t entirely successful; thanks to the usual variations in artistic style, and the lack of a familiar costume, a scene where I’m clearly meant to think “Oh no, they maimed so-and-so!” actually prompted the reaction “Who’s that meant to be?” I mean, I do like Mike Choi and Sonia Oback’s art, but I really needed some dialogue there to identify the character.
Other than that… well, “Second Coming” is still basically an action story that continues to ratchet up the scale. But on a weekly schedule, I think it’s working. For all the running around and hitting things, there are two big ideas they’re trying to get across. First, Hope’s return from the far future has improved matters in no way whatsoever and is causing all manner of chaos and destruction – so maybe Bishop was right. And second, the X-Men are getting neatly boxed into a corner issue by issue, building a “last stand” feel. Those two ideas are coming across pretty strongly, and that’s why I think the story is still basically working. And it’s been put together better than a lot of recent X-Men stories – for example, they’ve laid the groundwork for Cable’s one last time-jump quite well in the past couple of issues, but they’ve done so by raising the possibility in a completely different context. If nothing else, it gives the impression that it’s all building to something important.
X-Men Origins: Emma Frost – I really have no idea any more what the official line is on the continuity status of these one-shots. Valerie d’Orazio’s story, for example, seems to be following the general ideas of the shortlived Emma Frost series rather than the details; but at the same time, the story ends by leading in to a specific scene from Uncanny #131. As an origin story, it goes up only as far as her villain phase. Perhaps inevitably, that makes it slightly unsatisfying, since we know the character long since moved on to something else. To be fair, the story tries to lay the groundwork for that, by playing up the idea that Emma was always genuinely keen on teaching, and giving her a conflicted attitude to her authoritarian father (whose approach to life, by the end of the story, she ends up embracing). Ultimately, though, as with many of the Origins one-shots that have to impose some sort of narrative structure on fragmented flashback material, it has a few interesting ideas about the character but isn’t really able to make them into a satisfying standalone story.
Why on earth is Steve Rogers sending the Valkyrie on an undercover assignment? And, having smashed through a window in full costume with his face exposed in full sight of a load of enemy soldiers, none of whom he kills or arrests, why does he think that “we’re getting away with no one knowing who we are”?
In all fairness, these are the exact same problems which plagued Secret War, with those absurd stealth costumes which did nothing to disguise the characters (hint: the guy in the black body stocking with Captain America’s shield is Captain America, the guy in the black body stocking with red and black webby bits who can climb walls is Spider-Man, etc), and I’m still baffled to this day that no one seemed to think this was a problem. Bendis Blindness, I suppose.
My one issue with X-Force was the inclusion of Elixir. Having him on the final pages being sent into the future with Cable and the rest of the team makes the first 9 pages of fight scene almost meaningless OR it infers that Cyclops is the dumbest leader ever.
The two biggest casualties of the battle were Iceman getting 3rd degree burns over 75% of his body and Hellion having his hands fried off. Elixir should have been able to heal the burns no problem and since he regrew Prodigy’s heart in the past, I’m sure he could have regrown Hellion’s hands/forearm.
Does anybody know if Jeph Loeb created Romulus for his arc in Wolverine and then Daniel Way shoehorned him into Origins or did Way always intended to use Romulus and Loeb just officially introduced the character in his arc?
I’ve been wondering this because, frankly, the whole succession of Romulus’ spot in the food chain idea seemed rather weak to me. I wonder if Way had another idea in mind, but had to scratch that with the addition of Romulus.
I did like the scenes with Wolverine in the Howlett estate after “beating” Romulus, but I thought Wolverine already got that closure beforehand (not necessarily in a specific issue or arc, but just b/c he hasn’t cared about it/seemed accepting of it before HoM)
@Dan Robinson
Wasn’t that Cypher, not Elixir?
@PPP
It was Cypher — as the issue stated, his power is integral to the whole mission. But it’s another strike against Choi/Oback’s smoothing over of heroes’ defining visual characteristics, as well as Craig/Kyle’s refusal to denote who’s who anywhere in the issue.
I’m having trouble being as excited about “Second Coming” as I was at the beginning because I feel like at 14 parts its begun floundering to cover that many pieces. It could’ve realistically been about six and still told a healthy story.
As far as SECRET AVENGERS, I liked that Brubaker tried to pack a lot of shit into one issue, but Paul’s right, it glosses over a whole lot. Bendis’s AVENGERS #1 was too much standing around and talking, but SECRET #1 might be too far the other way.
@PPP: I think Romulus was some sort of bastard offspring from both Loeb & Way (which would explain why he is so awful). I gather that Loeb mainly came up with the general character, and then Way gladly went along fleshing him out as his main overarching baddie.
Ahhh, trusty Marvel scheduling having both parts of the Romulus come out in the same week. Yeah it does seem a really weak way to get rid of Romulus and makes Logan look a bit of a moron for not thinking it before. And he’ll probably find some way of escaping even though 99.9999999% of people would be quite happy to let him rot away. Good news to hear that 10 issues have been chopped off Origins and that it’ll be done soon.
Definitely a lot of similarities in Secret Avengers & Thunderbolts – ragtag teams, great last page teases & most importantly both were very strong issues. Brubaker has built up more than enough good faith to give the title another look especially as he is using a few of his regular characters and the book feels in a similar vein as Captain America.
Jeff Parker just continues to impress. I’m not totally sold on the reasoning behind Crossbones, and you get the feeling that he is inevitably going to be a problem for the team (too obvious though?). Absolutely loved Luke Cage & Man-Thing shaking hands!
@thekelvingreen
Marvel did the same thing with the formation of the most recent X-Force series. Cyclops forms a team that he doesn’t want in any way to be associated with the X-Men. He makes one of the most recognizable mutants on the the planet the team leader (and who remains a visible member of the X-Men throughout as well). And their costumes look like black and red versions of regular X-Men costumes. I guess when you want to be super secret in the Marvel universe, you just need to change your color scheme.
At least X-Force tried to kill everyone that saw them, at least at first. Didn’t stop the bad guys from calling them X-Men during the encounters though, which was the whole point of trying to be a secret team…
I liked SECRET AVENGERS so much that I’m completely willing to pay $3.99 for it on a regular basis on two conditions:
1. Brubaker must deliver about that amount of plot and action every issue.
2. It never crosses over with any of the other Avengers books ever.
Unsurprisingly, it reminded me of the NEW DEFENDERS series that I loved so much in the ’80s, as well as Brubaker’s excellent work on CAPTAIN AMERICA.
I want to support more books that feature the characters I like, but are not part of the continuity porn parade that the big two have turned into recently.
I didn’t have any problems at all with Secret Avengers, I thought it was a good mix of characters and a nice set up. And I wasn’t confused because I remember everything about the Serpent Crown because it was previously reiterated in the Saga of the Serpent Crown backups that ran in the 1989 Marvel Annual crossover Atlantis Attacks. Don’t you remember? It was CRUCIAL.
Also: the problem with the issue of X-Force is that they make a point of saying that X-Force will never be able to make it back from the future – except, you know, for the fact that there’s a giant portal from the future on the Golden Gate Bridge. Hmmm, will that perhaps be RELEVANT?
Blind Science didn’t do it for me. It presented an interesting idea, then completely fuddled it away, making the whole issue pointless, in addition to being unenjoyable. I think it would have been much better if the X-Club was allowed to return to the X-men with their serum, and at the end of it all, Dr. Rao charges up to Hope and shanks her with a serum of her cure concoction.
Origins: Emma Frost was a lot of fun. The art showing a gawky young Emma, and just the whole over-the-top aspect, was quite hilarious. Certainly the most entertaining X-book of the week.
Secret Avengers was a little underwhelming. It did indeed cast into doubt the idea that “Secret” and “Avengers” can mix. The cast is also a little too large. War Machine needs to go. He only acted like a parrot to Steve Rogers in this. They just want token shots of him shooting things with his backpack to attract the Iron Man movie fans.
i dont really have problems with the not-so-secret costumes. superman never wore masks yet had a secret identity. some of the all-new, all different x-men didnt wear masks (storm, banshee). didnt angel keep his identity as an x-man hidden for a long time despite being a gosspi-magazine fixture, and not wearing a mask while super-heroing? my point is: its a convention of the super-hero genre that people wont recognize you if you wear a different costume. (which oddly fits the discussion about hellion, elixir, and cypher in x-force. we really dont recognize them if they change clothes.)
yeah! ho! wah!, the point is more that the Secret War costumes were more or less the same, just with black bits. And, you know, it’s Captain America. It’s one thing to not recognise Angel or bloody Banshee, but not Captain America.
I’m not sure about the art in Thunderbolts. Kev Walker seems to be trying to do his clear-line Mignola-esque style, then they’re chucking this textured colouring style over the top, when something flatter would be a better fit, as it has in the past. Are they afraid that flat colouring looks simplistic?
Is there any explanation as to why Juggernaut is imprisoned? I thought he was free after the recent Spider-Man arc?
About Elixir, I don’t see him appearing in Second Coming at all. Remember Second Coming: Prepare from 2-3 months ago? The team still had members down and one of the New Mutants was being operated on. At the time, we didn’t know what to make of it. Now, we can assume it’s Karma. We obviously know Wolverine and his team are coming back from that book + solicits + Marvel advertising upcoming storylines 3 months in advance… so whatever tension they were trying to build in this issue of X-force fell completely short. I also thought the silent pages needed dialogue because I wasn’t always sure what was going on.
On the Daken/Wolverine front… I really wish Daken wasn’t so one note. Marjorie/Way managed to make him somewhat interesting during the fan4 stuff… then he became stiff and boring again. And why, may I ask, is he always licking blood? If he doesn’t catch a disease from that, I will call shenanigans.
Oh, Juggernaut… Marvel doesn’t know what to do with him. He’s barely been a villain and they made a point to give him a “legit” reason to be one… to maintain his powers. They disrupted all the development he got in New Avengers to put him back in his original status quo… only to play him up as a heroic figure again. Make up your mind.
simmo, there’s a footnote referring to Juggernaut getting worked over by Captain Universe in Amazing Spider-Man #629, so I assume he was imprisoned as a result of events in that issue.
Nah, Archangel outed himself as a mutant in Champions #1.
Besides, even in the Marvel Universe, how many people could their possibly be with a 12′ wingspan?
As I understand it, Way created Romulus. The original plan was to introduce the character in Loeb’s “Evolution” but there was a miscommunication somewhere down the line, and Loeb didn’t do it, or more likely just got lazy.
I have a strong suspicion that the whole wolf fight with Sabretooth whateverthefuckitwas in “Evolution” was entirely Loeb’s concept, given that Way handwaves it away pretty easily.
I always figured the special uniforms in things like Secret War and X-Force had nothing to do with keeping people from recognizing their wearers, and were just about helping them be stealthy up until the point they needed to start smashing things. Like, “as soon as you start shooting webs, they’re going to know you’re Spider-Man, but maybe if you wear a slightly more subdued shade of red, they might not spot you at 100 yards.” The uniforms might even have some black-ops bells and whistles, like radar-proof material, sound-proofed boots (you know S.H.I.E.L.D. can make those) or night-vision lenses (the red eyes in X-Force).
For that matter, anyone can paint a round piece of metal and pretend to be Captain America or strap claws to their arms and pretend to be Wolverine; have the actual heroes put on slightly “off” version of their uniforms and they can claim “it was an impostor – look at the security footage: they couldn’t even get the details right!” Hell, Spider-Man alone has been impersonated at least four times that I know of.
This was the first issue of Second Coming that I wasn’t that thrilled with. My problem is that the cliffhanger in this issue is the exact same cliffhanger as the last issue: a bunch of Nimrods coming out of the portal.
I had managed to erase Loeb’s “Evolution” story from memory and you guys just had to mention it again. Goddamn you.
Juggernaut was taken into custody during the Amazing Spider-Man three-parter, so presumably there are outstanding warrants against him of some sort. (Though this does beg the question of why he was allowed to wander freely around the United Kingdom as a member of Excalibur, given the UK/USA’s notoriously one-sided extradition treaty.) Presumably he returned to custody voluntarily at the end – which might explain why the authorities are prepared to take their chances on letting him out for missions with the Thunderbolts, as they obviously don’t have any easy way of restraining him if he wanders off.
ZZZ, in Secret War it’s all about being, well, secret. That’s why they do the mindwipe from which the entire series spins out in the first place. No one is supposed to know it was them, so having them wear recognisable costumes just seems dim.
@thekelvingreen
First of all, you’re absolutely right. I honeslty don’t believe any of what I’m about to write passed through Bendis’s mind when he wrote Secret War (though for all I know he wanted the outfits to look less distinctive and the artist screwed up), and it’s far more “coming up with the best explanation I can as intellectual exercise” than “what I think Bendis was getting at.” But that being said (activate BS mode):
If you go with the premise that Fury didn’t have much choice in which superhumans to use (if memory serves the idea was that he couldn’t use actual S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel for deniability reasons so he press-ganged every superhero he could get into the mission) he has the problem that several of them have very distinctive powers. There’s literally nothing you could have them wear that would make people seeing them wonder “who the heck were those people?” If you have a guy in a turtleneck, cargo pants, and ski-mask bouncing around, crawling on walls, and slinging webs, people will assume he’s Spider-Man trying to go incogneto (poorly).
If “don’t bring Spider-Man, Cap, or Wolverine” isn’t an option because you need everyone you can muster, and “tell them not to use their powers and equipment” is only barely better than not bringing them, then Plan A has to be “Don’t be seen at all.” So you need to put them in dark clothes with all the counter-detection gear you can muster. And, yeah, you’d think it would be more cost-effective to make a bunch of identical, solid black bodysuits rather than personalizing the stupid things, but if they do that and get spotted, it won’t even occur to the Latverians that they might not be American superheroes in stealth suits. If you wear the ridiculous “off-brand” uniforms, there’s the remotest of chances they bad guys will think “why are they wearing those things? They serve no purpose … unless they WANT to be recognized, which means maybe it isn’t them!”
It’s flimsy, but what it boils down to is that if your choices are (1) their usual uniforms, (2) nondescript stealth suits, and (3) distinctive stealth suits (we’ll assume “frame supervillains with similar powers” isn’t an option for obvious reasons) then the distinctive suits aren’t WORSE than either alternative, and offer a significant advantage over option (1) and a negligible-but-not-nonexistant advantage over option (2).
RE: Distinctive “stealth” uniforms. It’s called suspension of disbelief, folks. Most artists are not talented enough to have two blond haired, 30-something, physically fit men standing side-by-side in identical clothing and ensure that the reader can tell them apart sans dialogue. The colorful costumes and/or trademark motifs are critical to make the comic intelligible and keep the characters distinguishable. As has already been noted, characters like Cypher and Elixer are easily mistaken for one another.
Once upon a time casts of characters were small enough that each character could look unique. Remember Cockrum’s All-New X-Men? Banshee with the mop of reddish blond hair, always wore a turtle neck and one of those “Irish” caps and had a pipe. Storm was the black woman with white hair. Jean was the white woman with red hair. Cyclops always wore shades. Colossus was bigger with short black hair. Etc. These days there appear to be too many characters to pull this off.
Indeed, it used to be an (infrequent) problem in NMU with Cannonball and Cypher.
As mentioned above, you have three choices: (1) the usual costumes, (2) “stealth variants” of the usual costumes, and (3) something eschewing the iconic identifiers of each character. Artists choose #2 because the “stealth” component is code that the reader is supposed to recognize, and they are relying on a little suspension of disbelief to get them through. After all, if you’re going to have to take it with a grain of salt that the public, or a supervillian, won’t recognize the trademark behaviors and powers of a character like Cap or Spidey, a bit of the trademark colors is no bigger pill to swallow.
And if you can’t do the suspension of disbelief route, you should be reading Jane Austen, not Marvel Comics.
Matthew, that “defence” amounts to saying “They do it badly because they lack the talent to do it right.”
Well, just to play devil’s advocate, it might not be *completely* misguided. After a recent Israeli assassination attempt in Dubai, it came out that the agents involved were wearing obviously fake beards. There was an article – I think it was in Slate but I don’t remember exactly now – that said that wearing obviously fake beards or stupid hats is actually a legit technique for undercover agents. It’s based on the idea that anyone who sees them will be so distracted by the incongruous elements that they won’t pay attention to anything else: they might remember seeing someone wearing a Santa beard from a dollar store, but not the rest of the agent’s outfit or what he actually looked like.
The same could be responsible for the costumes here. Everyone knows what, say, Daredevil wears, but if you put him in a new costume, would you really be sure it was him? It breaks down, admittedly, with Spider-Man and the Thing, but it’d actually work REALLY well for Captain America: change his costume and it could be the USAgent or the Taskmaster.
Or it could just be the genre conventions breaking down. 🙂
“Also: the problem with the issue of X-Force is that they make a point of saying that X-Force will never be able to make it back from the future – except, you know, for the fact that there’s a giant portal from the future on the Golden Gate Bridge. Hmmm, will that perhaps be RELEVANT?”
That’s why they included the thing with Namor sticking his hand in, to show the portal was deadly to those not of the killer robot persuasion. I mean obviously we know as readers they’ll get back, but Cyclops has no reason to think so.
“Matthew, that “defence” amounts to saying “They do it badly because they lack the talent to do it right.””
I took it more like “they do it badly because of the limits of the medium.” Got to agree that if a comic had all the heroes in identical black uniforms it would be unreadable.
Blind Science seemed a bit unnecessary, given that it all took place between a timer ticking down and the rig exploding, but I liked the stuff with the cat.
IIRC, Bendis’s notes in Secret War #1 (which I do not have anymore) indicated that the stealth costumes were a compromise–they felt that a book with Spider-Man, Daredevil, Captain America and Luke Cage where none of them wore a recognizable costume would be unmarketable, so the stealth variants were indeed splitting the difference and relying on suspension of disbelief.
Well, I would perhaps argue that if you can’t make the story work without fudging it, then you don’t tell that story, but I’m biased. 😉
RE: Wolverine Origins.
It looks like Wolverine didn’t take all of Daken’s claws…just the underarm claws infused with the Muramasa blade.
Now he’s back to being X-23 with pheromones.
What is Elixir’s current status? He is fully conscious following Necrosha-X, so why hasn’t he healed Karma or Hellion or Iceman? I don’t really see how it can make sense for those characters to continue to live that way if Elixir has the ability to repair them. Perhaps having him regrow a human heart in an earlier storyline was a mistake.
@Lambnesio
Karma’s shown with a mechanical limb on the cover of a post-crossover New Mutants comic, so it seems like either they’re keeping Elixir down or she chooses not to have the leg regrown.
There was an issue of THUNDERBOLTS, back in the first Nicieza run, where they broke Hawkeye (I think it was Hawkeye) out of a maximum security prison, and all wore identical black outfits to do it.
I remember thinking the effect was logical but a little off-putting. Maybe SECRET WAR didn’t quite hit the mark between “OK, we’re disguised” and “We still look like the recognizable superheroes” (and by the way, why are we blaming Bendis for this? Surely it was more the artist’s choice?), but I’d say trying to walk that line wasn’t a bad instinct.
You know, back in the day, if ZZZ had some with an explanation for some dippy thing that happend in a comic book (stealth secret costumes that completely miss the point of making the wearers secret), Stan Lee would have singled him out in the letters page and would have given him a No-Prize.
I think the reaction of modern readers (i.e. the people complaining on this comment thread) says a lot more about the today’s comic book audiences than it does about comic books, which have been riddled with inconsistencies and nonsensical plot points since time began.
The thing I always liked about the No-Prizes was that they gave readers a way to point out mistakes to the creators without coming across as antagonistic, and they gave the creators a way to admit they made mistakes without damaging their pride, because the whole thing was treated as just friendly joking.
On the topic of characters looking similar: back in the late 80s or early 90s (I think), Marvel used to publish an annual magazine that was a parody of Time Magazine (kind of like the swimsuit issue parodies they used to do, but less embarassing to admit you owned) and one issue had a series of “head shots” of Avengers labelled “Hank Pym,” “Steve Rogers,” “Clint Barton,” “Wendell Vaughn,” “Jim Hammond,” and “John Walker” but the pictures were actually the exact same head shot of Hank Pym over and over, with a caption that read something like “The Master Race is alive and well and comprises the core of the Avengers.”
If you want a worst-case-scenario of what can happen when characters don’t wear their costumes: in the most recent issue of Teen Titans, there’s a scene where the team is having a discussion and not only are Miss Martian and Wonder Girl out of uniform, but the artist drew them each with the same hairstyle AND the same style of tank top. The end result is that several panels have Wonder Girl pressing her fingers to her temples and talking about her telepathic powers while Miss Martian looks on sternly and issues orders about what the team is going to do next. It’s seriously like the colorist just flipped a coin to decide which one to color green with red hair and which to make white with blonde hair. (Though, to be fair to the artist, if the colorist couldn’t pick up on details like the fingers pressed to the temples or be consistent about which one was standing and which one was sitting, subtle variations in character design probably wouldn’t have helped.)
“Unsurprisingly, it reminded me of the NEW DEFENDERS series that I loved so much in the ’80s”
Hmm, not me (other than the fact that it’s got Beast and Valkyrie, which honestly didn’t even make me think of New Defenders until just now). I wish it did, because I loved that series, too. Sadly, it reminded me more of The Outsiders. Or X-Force. Pretty much any proactive, shadowy strike force superhero team, a concept which has somehow always bored and irritated me (partly because they’re always so damn serious and full of themselves). But it’s Ed Brubaker writing Nova and Moon Knight and Valkyrie, so how can I not keep reading it? Plus, as you say, it is kind of New Defenders-esque in the way it assembles random B- and C-listers into one team, which I like.
If you don’t want to be identified, but for out-of-world reasons you still have to be identifiable to readers, maybe writers should look at creating new identities. Don’t just change the color scheme. Change the way that the characters use their signature abilities.
For reader recognition (and basic logic), make these new identities derive from what the characters can do, but change up how they do it enough for the identities to (in a world over-populated with supers) look like new characters.
For an extreme, look at Morrison’s New X-Men run (at least until Marvel retconned it). Magneto creates a whole new persona, establishes it, and combines his abilities with a bit of BS in order to come off as a completely different character.
Taken to a lesser extreme, think about what you could do with other characters.
Take Wolverine. He’s still pretty solid without his claws. He knows how to use a sword, so give him one or two of those instead. Maybe a knife or two in his gloves as well. He’s only allowed to use his claws in the direst of circumstances, or when he knows the secret will be kept. You don’t really diminish what the character is capable of, but his claws are enough of his shtick that removing them can cause people seeing him to second-guess his identity more than giving him a black outfit and having him act the same as always will achieve.
For Cap, he’s had experience with different shield designs. Instead of one big round shield, give him a small shield on each arm. Maybe give him a bigger one on his back, but which he rarely uses. Consider making them something other than round. He still can fight like always, and he’ll still have shields to hit people with, but with a new costume he’ll seem more like some two-bit thug that would call himself “Shield Man” rather than Cap with a different costume.
“I think the reaction of modern readers (i.e. the people complaining on this comment thread) says a lot more about the today’s comic book audiences than it does about comic books, which have been riddled with inconsistencies and nonsensical plot points since time began.”
No, it’s more to do with the changes in tone of the stories themselves. The Silver Age was silly enough to start with that this sort of explanation kind of fit the aesthetic. It works with some modern stories as well – the likes of Dan Slott have a fair amount of leeway. But the sort of stories Brian Bendis is writing generally aspire (or at least affect) to take themselves seriously, and so you can’t just bolt on a non-explanation from a completely different aesthetic.
You know, this conversation touches on something I’ve been thinking about for a while. How much of what we see on a comics page is meant to be a literal representation of what goes on, and how much is meant to be a shorthand summary of the events?
I was rereading UXM 101-110 the other day, and there is a lot of clunky dialogue. There’s a scene where Xavier tries to send Cyclops off to Ireland to help the X-Men against Black Tom and Juggernaut. Cyclops refuses because he wants to stay by Jean’s bedside (she just became Phoenix, and is recovering in a hospital). The dialogue is two sentences. It sounds nothing like any real conversation would sound. “Scott, the X-Men need you. You must go!’ “No Professor, I shall not go. I love this moan more than anything else and cannot leave her!” *end*.
I have always read this dialogue, and similar dialogue, as a shorthand of the real conversation. I assume, based on a desire that these characters have real personalities, that the characters had a real conversation, and these are the cliff’s notes.
The very nature of sequential storytelling in a comic requires that you recognize these sporadic snapshots of the action are summaries. It’s not like you can take each panel and make a flip-book out of them. There is action between the panels, even in a tightly plotted fight scene, that we don’t see. The panels are summaries of the highlights.
I guess I’ve always assumed that the visuals were “literal” representations, while the text was more of a summary of the conversation, but there’s no reason for this to be universally true. As such, the visual representation of a character in a “stealth” costume need not be assumed to be a literal representation.
Now when the characters comment on something that we see in a panel, at that point it’s pretty hard to assume that it’s just a shorthand communication to the reader.
Further in support of my hypothesis: Comic panels are littered with visual cues that are not meant to be literal representations. Aside form the obvious “pow” and “bam,” there are action lines, and visual representations of invisible powers, and all sorts of other shorthand.
I know that stuff is out of style these days, but it’s part of the game and it’s hard for me to see why these stealth uniforms are any more problematic than dotted lines representing SUe Storm’s use of her “invisible” forcefield.
despite the contortions the plot may use to incoherently explain it, the entire point of the alternate but still distinctive stealth suits is that artists love coming up with new costumes for established characters, and fans often enjoy looking at them. at least it’s not a merchandise milking thing any more. mostly.
On Elixir, Iceman won’t need to be healed. He’s fine next issue. Like, quite literally, he’s up and fighting like nothing happened. And as I pointed out before, Karma was already shown being operated on in Second Coming: Prepare which came out before Second Coming but takes place AFTER Second Coming. Elixir is apparently having power issues, but no one has gone out of their way to explain what his issues are other than he’s an omega healer and there’s no walls around to smack him on the head.
As I recall, Prepare actually takes place 24 hours after Hope’s return- in other words, after Hope arrives at Utopia and Nightcrawler dies, but before the Nimrods appear.
And in any case, Karma may have been operated on, but she’s still missing her leg, which Elixir could regrow.
Also, unless you’re referring to a preview I haven’t seen, I’m not sure what you mean about Iceman, since that issue hasn’t been released.
Yes, the Uncanny preview has been out for almost a week now, and if solicits are to be believed, comes out “next” week, not this Wednesday.
Elixir won’t be in use for this event, I believe, just like he’s been absent or knocked out for the majority of Messiah Complex, Utopia (X-men vs. Dark Avengers), and Secret Invasion. Also, X-force more or less pointed out he was having problems staying gold [specifically pointing out Josh had problems coming out of his “black” form], which could be their way of keeping him out the field while also never mentioning him… ever… despite the fact he may be the only one who really knows what’s up with Hope [see: Messiah War].
Take Wolverine. He’s still pretty solid without his claws. He knows how to use a sword, so give him one or two of those instead.
Good point. To give him credit, this is what Bendis did with Ronin. Okay, he completely cocked it up, but the general idea of a hero being in disguise as a completely new hero is not a bad one.
The problem with Wolverine is that he’s been known to reflexively pop his claws under stress. That’s a “depending on the writer” thing, though, and I can but that he can keep it under wraps if the plot calls for it. Spider-Man’s just a lost cause though; really he’s the weak link in the whole thing. Aside from the fact that his entire schtick is that he has no discipline and historically actually gets less competent when he has to work with a group (“With great power comes great responsibility; with a power level comparable to the people around you comes a willingness to let someone else worry about it”) there’s the problem that between his spider-sense, super reflexes, and wallcrawling, the guy is literally hanging from the ceiling before he realizes he’s doing it.
But no matter how well you disguise the heroes, if they get spotted, all the bad guys have to do is bring Taskmaster in, hand him a wad of cash, show him the security camera footage (in Latveria, if you get spotted, you’re on camera, because a third of the population are robots), and let him say “That’s Spider-Man, that’s Daredevil, that guy hasn’t done anything yet … okay that’s Cap. Let’s see, Wolverine, Luke Cage, teenage girl I’ve never seen before, Black Widow. Is that all of them? Nice doing business with you.”
The idea of giving them completely new identities does have merit, but it seems like more of a long term thing. If I’m a superhero and Nick Fury twists my arm to go on a mission and hands me a uniform I’ve never seen before and tells me he’s concocted a new identity for me, my first thought is that this guy has just conscripted me into a reverse Thunderbolts. Letting them wear distinctive duds could just be a good faith gesture to prove Fury isn’t trying to turn them into S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
“there’s the problem that between his spider-sense, super reflexes, and wallcrawling, the guy is literally hanging from the ceiling before he realizes he’s doing it”
I’m not a big Spiderman reader, but didn’t he had, like, four different identities at one time (which he later passed on to The Slingers, or some such)?
I really enjoyed the Blind Science one-shot, although I wonder how many copies a book featuring three D-list X-Men will sell, despite the tie-in.
I was annoyed that it seemingly gave away the ending of Second Coming (especially after the exact same thing happened in Siege tie-ins), but this was ultimately a feint.
Good job from Spurrier, although his Dr Nemesis read like a Warren Ellis pastiche. Perhaps that was his intention.
didn’t he had, like, four different identities at one time
Yes: Dusk, Hornet, Ricochet and The Prodigy.
The story was called IDENTITY CRISIS, and DareDevil fans should note that this is where The Black Taranshlia made his dayboo.
Not that the current version of the character bears ANY RESEMBLANCE WHATSOEVER to his original conception, apart from, I think, a tangential involvement with a spin-off of The Hand.
Because, NATurally, there’s nothing more “South American spider-cultist druglord and hereditary supervillain” than “Japanese ninjicians.”
//\Oo/\\