The X-Axis – 18 July 2010
It’s a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check a couple of posts below for this week’s episode. As well as rounding up the news, Al and I are talking about the first issues of Scarlet, Royal Historian of Oz and Dr Solar, Man of the Atom.
It’s also a weekend with a deluge of comics and not much free time, so I still have a sizeable pile of books to be read (including pretty much all of my non-superhero purchases for the week). Still, with six X-books to talk about, there probably wouldn’t be much space for anything else anyway…
Oh, and yes, I know there’s a wrestling show tonight, but I’m not going to have time to write a preview for it. Just in case any of you were waiting.
Amazing Spider-Man #637 – The final part of “The Grim Hunt” and, er, as we were discussing on the podcast, did we miss the bit where Arana loses her powers? Didn’t Young Allies say that was supposed to be happening in this story? Or was it buried somewhere in all the cod mysticism? This arc really hasn’t worked for me, which is a shame – the occasional dud isn’t a major problem with a book that comes out on this frequency, but this story was supposed to be the pay-off for an extended build. Actually, there are some bits of this issue that I quite like, such as Kraven trying to get himself killed again. But there’s a lot of babbling nonsense about the web of life, as Joe Kelly struggles manfully to retrofit a bunch of knock-off Spider-Man characters into a profound metaphor; the Kraven family are impossible to relate to as villains; and there’s a whole “dark Spider-Man” thing going on which is never particularly interesting. Kelly seems to be trying a “Kraven clan versus Spider-Man clan” schtick, but to do it, he has to use a bunch of characters like Julia Carpenter and Alyosha Kraven who simply don’t belong in that story because their ties to their respective groups are superficial at best. Even without that, though, I’m not convinced that there’s a particularly interesting concept in here – it comes across as a story which is trying extremely hard to appear meaningful, without ever really getting its point across.
Avengers Academy #2 – After a strong debut, this is another very promising issue. From the look of it, Christos Gage is going to spend the first few issues focussing on different characters in turn. This month, it’s Finesse, whose gimmick is that she can pick up any skill instantly, but she can’t relate to other people at all. It looks like they’re going for an Aspergers-type route here, although she does make a point of saying that she doesn’t have all the usual symptoms. Since the idea of this book is that the student superheroes have really been enlisted because the Avengers suspect they might go nuts become villains (and the students know this, but the Avengers don’t know they know), it makes sense to have a character who could clearly go either way. Otherwise the Avengers just seem paranoid. Gage seems to be earmarking Finesse for that role, and this is a really good focus on the character – eccentrics are really hard to write convincingly, because they can so easily descend into one-note characters, but Gage manages to flesh her out persuasively in this story, and set up some suitably convoluted soap plotlines at the same time. Beautiful art from Mike McKone, too – someone who’s clearly right at home with Marvel’s current “Heroic Age” direction.
Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #2 – Blissfully ludicrous stuff. Jason Aaron is going about as far over the top here as it’s possible to imagine – this is bordering on stream of consciousness lunacy at times. Even so, it’s got enough of a central thread, and gets the voice of the characters well enough, that it never quite spins off the rails. And Aaron knows how to give one idea enough time to sink in before bringing on something even crazier. Insane time travel stories aren’t the obvious thing to do with Spider-Man or Wolverine, but they give Adam Kubert the chance to go nuts, and free up the story from having to worry about any inconvenient knock-on effects on the rest of the Marvel Universe. Tremendously silly, in a good way, and hugely enjoyable.
Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom #1 – We talk about this on the podcast, but suffice to say it’s not very good. Dark Horse are reviving several of the characters from the nineties Valiant imprint, starting here with Jim Shooter and Dennis Calero on Dr Solar. There’s a halfway interesting plot hook here, but the pacing is leaden, the technobabble is clumsy, and the story doesn’t play to Calero’s strengths at all – his brightly-coloured action sequences look awfully stiff. And heaven only knows what the title character’s powers are meant to be, since Shooter never actually gets around to explaining it. It’s really a bit of a clunker all round. A reprint of the 1962 original story does offer some historic interest, but it’s hardly a lost classic either.
Hellbound #3 – The conclusion of a “Second Coming” tie-in miniseries. The plot of “Second Coming” requires all the X-Men’s teleporters to be taken out of commission early on; that means Magik has to be removed from the board; and that triggers this mini, where a bunch of lesser X-Men have to rescue her from Limbo. And that’s the “Second Coming” link – it takes a minor plot point from the crossover as its starting point, then goes off to tell its own story. Chris Yost treats this mainly as an opportunity to pick up on the stray plot threads from New X-Men, where Magik was first brought back into the cast. Issue #2 was a bit shapeless, but this is better, building to a fairly decent climax with Magik reconciling with the New X-Men. It’s all too heavily tied in to earlier storylines to work as a self-contained three-part miniseries, but it does help to take forward some dangling plot threads. I’m still not wild about the art, though – it’s all rather generic Hell imagery, and while it flows a bit better than the previous issue, the pages often feel cluttered.
The Royal Historian of Oz #1 – A one dollar debut issue from Slave Labor Graphics, launching a new series by Tommy Kovac and Andy Hirsch, this is well worth picking up. Despite the title, this isn’t a Wizard of Oz spin-off (though since Baum’s novels have been in the public domain for years, there wouldn’t be anything to stop it). It’s actually set in a near future when the Official Oz Society have captured the exclusive rights to the series, and aspiring writer Jasper Fizzle wants to become the new official Oz author. Unfortunately, he’s not very good, and the Society want nothing to do with him. But when he discovers a route to Oz itself… You get the idea. The Oz elements aren’t entirely the point; it’s more about the ownership of old stories and how they’re used. More to the point, it’s a clever, skilfully told story, which makes inventive use of its source material.
Uncanny X-Men: The Heroic Age #1 – A one-shot bridging the gap between “Second Coming” and “The Five Lights”. It’s basically a Matt Fraction issue of Uncanny X-Men, with Whilce Portacio, Steve Sanders and Jamie McKelvie splitting the pages depending on who’s in them. (Getting Sanders to draw the Beast’s pages, considering how off-model his version of the character is, seems a weird choice – especially when Portacio does a more conventional version only pages earlier. But whatever.) There are basically three strands here – Scott is persuaded that the X-Men should try and capitalise on their “saviours of San Francisco” status to be proper heroes again; Hank tries to explain the current state of mutantkind to Molly from the Runaways; and Hope decides that she’d like to go and find out who her parents were – something that, astonishingly, it turns out the X-Men still haven’t got around to investigating.
It’s a pretty good issue on the whole, though I can’t help thinking that it’s doing the Beast story about two years late. The idea here is that Hank, as the man of science, doesn’t buy into the idea that Hope’s important, because there’s no real evidence for it. So, by implication, Scott’s belief in her significance really is meant to be a leap of quasi-religious faith. In theory that’s an interesting idea – the problem is that the characters should have been having this conversation ages ago, when in fact Hank and Scott’s arguments have been about Scott straying into moral grey areas, and haven’t been about this topic at all. The idea that Hope is important hasn’t been portrayed as a leap of faith for the characters, but as a self-evident truth which didn’t require any evidence as long as the story asserted it confidently enough. And while it’s nice to get that cleared up, it’s faintly bizarre for Hank to be taking the point now, after Hope’s return demonstrably has achieved something. (You could, if you wanted, read this as a “how dare you not buy into my premise” scene… but I think Fraction seems to have too much affection for Hank for that to be the intention.) Still, the general direction seems promising.
X-Force: Sex and Violence #1 – X-Force were disbanded at the end of “Second Coming”, and the new series doesn’t launch until the autumn, so this is a filler miniseries. Kyle and Yost are still writing, Gabriele Dell’Otto is on art. It’s a simple story – Domino’s got herself into a bit of trouble with a mercenary job she should probably have thought twice about, now everyone’s after her for revenge, and the rest of the team have to bail her out. It’s basically an excuse to go completely over the top with a lunatic action story, and to give Dell’Otto a chance to show off. X-Force has always had a tendency to take itself far too seriously, but there’s none of that here; it’s a gleefully hyper action story with some great artwork and no pretensions to anything beyond that, and I liked it a lot more than I was expecting to.
X-Men Forever 2 #3 – I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that the title characters aren’t really dead after all, but have merely faked their death. But the mechanics are quite neat, with the X-Men hiding in plain sight. Claremont does indeed seem to be going back to the “everyone thinks the X-Men are dead” set-up from the late-eighties Australian period, which he was required to cut short. Fair enough, that’s very much in the spirit of this series, which is supposed to revisit story ideas that he might have used in 1991 given the chance. Mind you, the plot of this issue requires a fair amount of charity from the reader. Not only do we have to accept Rogue jeopardising the whole plan for absolutely no good reason, but suddenly it turns out that the Australia-era X-Men are still invisible to cameras (a set-up from the late eighties which was quietly dropped towards the end of the Claremont run). Now, am I imagining it, or didn’t the X-Men fight a bunch of robots earlier in this series without anyone raising the point that they were supposed to be invisible?
X-Men: Second Coming #2 – The end of “Second Coming” is effectively an epilogue, and a transition into the next batch of stories. Bastion was defeated in chapter 13, and this is more a set of short stories as everyone gets back to normal afterwards. I’m still unconvinced that the story benefitted from the casual killing of Nightcrawler or from maiming the likes of Karma or Hellion – that’s a cheap way of making your story seem important. But Cable’s death does work, and he gets a nice funeral here, with lovely art by Esad Ribic. Elsewhere, we have a hazy attempt to explain Hope – which is fine, because the characters themselves are a bit hazy about her. She’s clearly linked to Phoenix, but the idea – which I have to say didn’t come across at all well in part 13 – seems to be that she’s got a whole load of unrelated mutant powers, and might be some sort of embodiment of the mutant race. There’s a clumsy sequence setting up the relaunch of X-Force, as Cyclops quite arbitrarily decides to change direction – it doesn’t help that much of this is drawn by Greg Land, who can’t even manage a recognisable X-23, but this really does seem like a completely random and out of place addition to the story.
Most importantly, though, we’ve got the ending, with five new mutants showing up on the scanners, as the first sign that things are at least on their way back to normal with the return of Hope – though quite why remains a mystery. It’s taken forever to get here, and it’s given us several years of a set-up that didn’t work very well at all, but we finally seem to be back on track. Second Coming #2 isn’t really a story so much as a collection of segues into upcoming storylines, but we’re clearly heading in the right direction.
I thought about the whole “invisible to computers” thing for a moment too after reading Forever #3 and it occurred to me – of the current team, isn’t Rogue actually the only one that would apply to?
As someone who didn’t read much of the Australia-era X-Men (but nonetheless is really loving Forever), I have to ask what exactly is the deal with the ‘invisible to all forms of electronic detection’ thing? The TV cameras apparently don’t pick Rogue up in this issue, but the photograph Mystique took of her in an earlier issue features in this one too…
That said, if it’s only the Rogue/Colossus/Havok/Psylocke/Wolverine/Dazzler/Storm lineup who get to be ghosts, I don’t think you can point to any moment in Forever when Rogue is definitely identified by cameras or computers. Colossus, on the other hand…
“Claremont does indeed seem to be going back to the “everyone thinks the X-Men are dead” set-up from the late-eighties Australian period, which he was required to cut short.”
Well, it lasted 50 issues, so “short” may not be entirely fair.
With regard to the in-continuity books, the way they’re running the X-Men right now is by putting 20 people in a room and waiting until the lowest common denominator has been identified, evidently, so I’m not expecting anything that’s worth reading until the next franchise implosion rolls around, to be honest.
Which is a bloody shame, given they’ve got somebody like Matt Fraction; I’d love to see him do an X-Men story.
Okay, so regarding Hope’s “powers”, I’m not the only one who was extremely confused after the penultimate chapter…perhaps the art wasn’t good, or the script itself, most likely we’ll not find out any time soon, but at least now I have a more definite idea of what her deal is.
And yeah…I had to read those first couple X-23 panels again to figure out who she was. And once the dialogue identified her, I voiced this: “That’s supposed to be X-23?????”
No joke.
Also, regarding Arana’s power loss, I wasn’t even clear on the fact that she was supposed to have experienced that in this arc of ASM, and even-so, I don’t see how/why that could be done without getting somewhat deep into the mythology which was created to support her as a character. Especially with her being, at best, an ancillary character in that book. What, a panel here, a page here? That’s not enough space to make the concept work, nor does it give the impact that they may have been trying to achieve. Because, honestly, look at her in Young Allies…she’s doing the exact same things she was before the power loss, just now she wears a Venom costume. Or something. And can die. Or something. Yeah, on second thought, this TOTALLY doesn’t work as a character direction.
Hellbound #3 had some good points — if nothing else, it was definitely a “Hell yeah!” issue for Cannonball fans. At the same time, though, it felt as if there wasn’t really a need for about a third of the cast. The story probably could have been told just as effectively as a double-sized one-shot with only Cannonball, Gambit, Pixie, Magik, and Trance actually taking the jaunt to Limbo. While I can get why Dazzler and Northstar would have been brought along in the context of team-building, I didn’t think the writer did a good job of justifying why they should be there taking up pages (I say that as a Northstar fan!), and I still have no idea at all why anyone thought it was a good idea for Anole to tag along. “Well, they weren’t doing anything else, so why not?” seems to be the only reason they were put into the mix. As for the art, I thought it was serviceable, and that’s about it. Not a bad little tie-in, but it could have used some trimming and tightening up, IMO.
She couldn’t die?
Reading the story again, it’s funny how this is a story about Spider-Man, whose personal philosophy is pretty straightforward (Do your best, do what you can), being held hostage by the more complicated philosophies of others (e.g.: the Kravens and their aristocratic entitlement/predatorial worldview).
I mean, in its own way, Spider-Man has always been a little bit about personal philosophy, right? Just a little?
Hey, so Jodi Picoult’s Wonder Woman, right? Refreshingly unpompous.
//\oo/\\
As I recall, Hope manifested Cyclops’ powers, then Armor’s, and then Colossus’, before finally manifesting a (partial) raptor. As I understood it, she possesses the Phoenix force, and she’s also able to manifest the powers of any other mutant.
I also didn’t think the X-Force part of Second Coming #2 felt out of place. Cyclops felt that the X-Men are moving forward into a new era where the X-Men don’t need to be locked into survival mode and can just act as heroes. It does sort of make sense- Bastion and his forces (which were a pretty massive group) are no longer active, Norman Osborn is no longer in power, Steve Rogers- who is in power- fully supports the X-Men, and they’re welcome in San Francisco and the United States again. Plus, mutants are starting to manifest again.
In other words, Cyclops no longer feels that the drastic measure that was X-Force is necessary. I can buy that. I can also see why Wolverine would choose to press forward anyway.
And I actually think the X-23 scene was probably long overdue (and obviously meant to set up the X-23 ongoing). I think an X-Force squad consisting of Wolverine, Fantomex, Deadpool and Psylocke is a lot less disturbing than one that includes X-23, Wolfsbane and Elixir. (Although I think Domino would make sense as a part of this lineup too.)
Psylocke with a friggin’ machine gun sure seemed odd.
I was a much bigger fan of Psylocke back in the outback days when she was kind of scary and mysterious. Early ’90s Psylocke was a mess, and following that, her personality’s generally been totally vanilla. I’m personally a lot more interested in a Psylocke who’s cool with covertly murdering bad guys with Deadpool and Fantomex.
Yes, sorry, as a guy who came on-board in the 90s, I had no idea that Psylocke was at some point an interesting character. Hopefully the gun will change things. It always does…
Considering that Archangel is holding a gun in that picture too (as are Fantomex and Deadpool, but that’s not out of character for them) it’s entirely possible that the new status quo isn’t so much “Psylocke usues guns now” as “everyone in X-Force uses guns for reasons that may or may not be explained in the first issue of the new series (possibly involving disguising their murders as the acts of random mercenaries by not using their powers to kill people, would also explain why Psylocke’s holding a regular katana instead of a psi-sword)” or “Greg Land really likes drawing guns and this picture is not necessarily representative of the actual direction of the book.”
I mean, it’s entirely possible the picture DOES mean that, yeah, both Psylocke and Archangel have decided that guns are cool now and, yeah, it’s just a stupid as it looks. But it’s also possible that it’s just a story choice or bad art as opposed to character derailment for Pyslocke.
Seeing Archangel and Psylocke with guns was a big LOL for me.
I gotta say though, it’s an X-Force lineup that actually interests me quite a bit. Especially if they get the proper read on Deadpool (unlike most of his ongoings). I like Archangel, don’t mind Psylocke (she’s hot and unoffensive if nothing else, and there’s always the possibility she’ll get some development) and Fantomex works great when the writers don’t take him too seriously.
I also laughed at that scene with the new X-forcers holding guns. It was so… 90s extreme to me. They were just missing the tons of pockets and shoulder pads.
I hated how Fraction made Hope completely cordial to Cyclops in one issue’s time. They had a much more interesting dynamic when she hated and blamed him for every little thing. I’m over Fraction’s Cyclops love and how he’s relegated Emma into a female yes-man that is OK with everything Scott does. It also struck me as odd that Scott was killing dinosaurs (extreme actions again) shirtless and then was the only one to get a medal when the majority of his plans failed. His scene with Rogue only reinforced that he was a jerk… but not a stupid one. I know that it was written to give Rogue repercussions, but… um… for that to work, she actually needs some stipulations, right? He punished her to the same fate she was already living over in Legacy except now… officially? OK, then. That probably would have worked better if there was even an illusion of Rogue being on any main X-team and not stuck in her teacher position where she now has to tutor and influence the confusing mess that is the mutant messiah (Hope). I’m just glad Second Coming is over and we don’t have to see Beast break up with Cyclops and the X-men over and over. Kinda odd that the Heroic Age tried to send him back into space. SWORD is canceled, silly Fraction. He’s an Avenger now. I would have liked a transition for that rather than him going back to space to see Brand… who he just left 9 or so issues ago.
Finally, Hellbound. That was OK. Didn’t really serve much of a purpose (kinda like X-factor in that regard), but at least it had quite a bit of character development. I’m curious to see how Pixie (who I dislike) and Magik advance their relationship from this point onwards.
You know, I was under the whacky impression that maybe, in the world of whacky comic continuity, that the beast scene was drawn by the Sword artist in order to imply that “this is when the beast goes into space for SWORD.” Of course, that could just be me.
Otherwise, I’ve never been a fan of cyclops as a character (if his specialty is leadership, why does he seem so God-awful at it?), and recent continuity has only increased my dislike. I suppose the whole nightcrawler mess may increase that, I’m unsure, but his new persona is certainly less amiable than your average pirhanna.
Joseph: I’m with you on the chronology of Beast.
also, Cyclops may be a douchebag now, but he’s far more interesting than he’s been in years. And I kind of like how Scott booted Charles out on his ass because he didn’t like some of Xavier’s past morally ambiguous actions, and now he’s catching shit from Kurt and Hank for the exact same thing.
And it would be more interesting still if we built to some kind of Moral Collapse of Scott Summers. And considering that he was just awarded a Presidential Medal of Awesomness at the end of a storyline that involved him secretly sending out Wolverine and an X-Men kill squad, maybe some seeds have been sewn. Fingers crossed.
That could work… if he didn’t just come from SWORD during Second Coming… and if the Heroic Age didn’t start with him as a Secret Avenger. 😛
Though it’s entirely possibly that I got the timeline in this issue incorrect as it regards to Beast, considering every other portion was after Second Coming, right? Yes, the first few pages were in the past, but the book ended with Beast considering going into Space again, which I thought could be better served linking him to Secret Avengers.
Wait, that X Force picture was serious? I thought it was a parody. Or a toy advert, like that Toy Biz Cyclops figure that came with a little machine gun to compliment shooting lasers out of his face.
I can’t believe Atlas is being cancelled and Deadpool’s getting more pages. I’m officially entirely out-of-step with the comics buying public. Are Deadpoop titles actually selling?
So is Xavier still hanging around? Where are they going with this do you think? Are we heading back to a situation where he will fight to take back control of the X-men?
If recall the back up material from Messiax Complex, wasn’t that storyline originally planned to remove him permanently before the reset button got pulled on them near the end forcing them to merely write him out of the book, eventually leading to his return within 18 months?
S.W.O.R.D. had to come before Second Coming because they were still monitoring the space-bullet with Kitty inside.
Not to mention that a key point of S.W.O.R.D. was that it all came about by Norman Osborne, and was a fairly Dark Reign-y title.
I’m hoping to see Xavier rebuild the mansion and starts taking students again now that mutants are appearing again. The X-men can stay in San Francisco led by Cyclops (the school will be safer when the X-men aren’t based there and Cyclops and Prof X can always keep in touch).
I stand corrected. I suppose sword was just that forgettable that all details not involving donkey beast or that brits apparently love death’s head have slipped away.
actually, the S.W.O.R.D. stuff does fit in the timeline. Hank left the X-Men in a disillusioned snit just prior to ‘Second Coming’, then came back specifically for Kurt’s funeral. There’s plenty of time between him leaving and returning to have an adventure with Abigail Brand.
After ‘Second Coming’, he talks ambiguously about returning to space (i.e., S.W.O.R.D.), but before he can get back to The Peak, he is recruited by Steve Rogers for his new team.
It actually all fits nicely together.
We already knew what happened to Beast when he left the X-men several months ago(that he ended up in Sword), and then traveled back. All the space stuff in this issue was unnecessary, imo, and would have been better served connecting him with Steve or War Machine. At least give us some signs of how that transition occurred since he didn’t get a “recruitment scene” in said Avenger book. If the book is meant to be transitioning into the heroic age… probably would have been a good idea to put Beast into an appropriate place rather than replay the space stuff when the transition was already done and no longer needed or relevant. All it did is remind me that Beast walked out on his friends and not once had the gall to stand up to Scott or alert his other teammates about all of the information he knew. Instead, he lets Storm do the talking, which makes her come off as haughty. X-men’s Beast has become really… really annoying.
I like Sanders’ Beast, but his Molly looked too old/butch, especially on that first page…
I thought Beast thinking about space again was fine. When he first left it was pretty much ‘storming off’, but now he’s saying he can’t go back and looking for new direction (space, or whatever). And being open to that new direction leads into his Avengers recruitment well. Plus it would’ve been a bit weird to have Rogers — who we’ve seen recruits all the Avengers personally (including a panel with Beast in Avengers #1) — show up in Beast’s segment and Cyclops’ segment at the same time.
maxwell’s hammer said: “And it would be more interesting still if we built to some kind of Moral Collapse of Scott Summers. And considering that he was just awarded a Presidential Medal of Awesomness at the end of a storyline that involved him secretly sending out Wolverine and an X-Men kill squad, maybe some seeds have been sewn. Fingers crossed.”
Unfortunately, I could see Marvel doing it as a way to re-establish the old hatred of mutants status. Just think of the backlash that all mutants would have if it becomes public that the “great mutant hero” Cyclops, leader of the mutant movement and almost all mutant heroes, has been secretly running a death squad to kill those that he disagreed with.
I dimly remember a time when Uncanny X-Men read like an actual team book, rather than “Cyclops and his Interchangeable Hangers-on.”
“Yes, sorry, as a guy who came on-board in the 90s, I had no idea that Psylocke was at some point an interesting character.”
Hahaha. Yeah, it’s sort of sad, but the Psylocke that emerged from the Siege Perilous was a much, much less interesting character than the one who telepathically forced Havok into it.
“I’m over Fraction’s Cyclops love and how he’s relegated Emma into a female yes-man that is OK with everything Scott does.”
I actually disagree about Cyclops. I read this a lot here, and I think Cyclops is actually interesting now for the first time ever. Cyclops has always been the only superhero team leader who’s consistently been upstaged by a million other characters. At this point, he’s not only leading the X-Men, but the entire mutant race, and he’s making choices that are complicated at best and unethical at worst. I’m into a bold, passionate Cyclops, and I don’t feel like Fraction is necessarily elevating him either; characters like Beast, Hope and Storm are consistently around to undermine him.
But I agree completely about Emma. Before Fraction, she was Scott’s partner, and she was really interesting. Fraction’s essentially tried to undo her criminal past (which I don’t think is the way to go at all), and ultimately made her Scott’s lapdog, which is disappointing and inappropriate.
“I like Sanders’ Beast, but his Molly looked too old/butch, especially on that first page…”
I thought Molly looked weird, and I thought her voice was all wrong too. Also, the other Runaways made Molly write a book report about extinction?
“I dimly remember a time when Uncanny X-Men read like an actual team book, rather than ‘Cyclops and his Interchangeable Hangers-on.'”
Supposedly, following the end of Second Coming and the launch of X-Men, a more clear team is going to emerge. We’ll see, I guess.
Cyclops has always been the only superhero team leader who’s consistently been upstaged by a million other characters.
To be fair, this has usually been because Cyclops is the least interesting character in his book.
Scott’s actually had a good decade overall – Morrison made in quite interesting and Whedon gave him some good stuff to work with, while Fraction has made him the star of the book.
Well, yeah, exactly! Cyclops has always been a totally boring character, and while the cool characters want to go out and do crazy stuff, Cyke is always there to say “let’s think this through, you guys.”
Morrison’s troubled, adultering Cyclops, Whedon’s ultra-heroic Cyclops and Fraction’s Cyclops, who’s the somewhat reckless leader of the mutant race, are all far, far more interesting. And I think overall, it’s been invaluable to the character.
Ditto on this having been a great decade for Cyclops. He’s one of the few characters I think is in a far better place now than he was in the 90s. From Morrison to Whedon to Fraction, he’s become a star rather than just the morose, self-immolating stick in the mud.
Rogue would be another one, I think; they finally moved her past her usual subplots.
Haven’t some writers tried to move Rogue past her usual subplots, only for them to keep reappearing? (Sometimes by the same writer, no less.)
Definitely. I’ve always been a fan of Rogue, but she had a really bad several years prior to Messiah Complex, and I think it seemed a lot like she was beyond salvge. X-Treme X-Men, all the usual Gambit bullshit, the Sunfire powers thing… I think her position as counselor to the X-kids is great, and I’m definitely glad to see Rogue in control of her powers. That storyline has been milked to death.
(Incidentally, I also really don’t like Gambit.)
and quite frankly, I’m ready for “Second Coming” to be done so Carey can actually get back to exploring Rogue’s character. That guy’s a whiz at highlighting individual characters and re-centering them. His Xavier stuff was brilliant.
We should thank Mike Carey for making Rogue a much more viable character now than she was in the 90s despite not having flight and super strength anymore. Messiah Complex, in particular, did nothing for her except clear her demons and connect her with Hope… at the very end of the event. Her importance from being unconscious the whole time paid off later. She’s also much more tolerable without the Gambit love story… sorry, Rogue/Gambit fans. 😛
Cyclops did have a good decade, but I barely count Fraction’s take because he worships him, and it’s obvious from all the plots and interviews. The jet pack moments, the way he talks to every one now, how his shoddy plans usually pay off in the end (Let’s look at his Sisterhood plan again and see how little that made sense… that whole arc made no sense, so ignore that and look at his “efficient” planning in Second Coming and how Fraction made it seem like the event was all about “Cyclops” and his strategies that were keeping the team “alive.”), and how Fraction keeps trying to keep this aura of cool around him bothers me. I’d much rather take Ellis’s depiction where he is still efficient but remains a little more relatable. BTB, does he still have that void segment in his head? I was hoping that would be parlayed into a reason as to why his personality was so rapidly changing (see: Apocalypse influence).
I like the scare-quotes around “alive.”
Y’know, I was really waiting for everyone to totally blow up at Cyclops at the end of Second Coming. Bastion’s plan was only able to work as well as it did because of Cyclops’s insistence on gathering everyone together in one place where one lunatic could take them all out; that entire plotline is a testament to Scott Summers’s failings as a tactician and a leader. But no, at the end, all we get is some minor griping about Cable and Nightcrawler being dead, and that’s it. Nobody saying “I’m not taking orders from this idiot anymore,” or even questioning why this guy, without so much as a roll call vote at Utopia Town Hall, gets to appoint himself the spokesperson for an entire species and make decisions that endanger all of their lives.
I’m with Beast, by the way – if the future of the species is down to five new mutants, then consider me underwhelmed. I’m going to stick as far as the next arc, but if the stink of narrative flailing hasn’t left these books by then, I’m out.
I agree with you. Beast and Storm did kind of serve in that role, but it was definitely too small.
It’s entirely possible that it’s still coming though… Everybody might be too busy being relieved that they survived (or bummed that they were crippled in Shan and Julian’s cases).
It would seem The X-Axis is down.
The thing that rings false to me about Beast’s doomsaying about the future of mutants to Molly is that, if we assume Hope defeating Bastion was the moment that somehow made mutant births possible again, we have five SPONTANEOUSLY OCCURING mutant births within a day of that moment. Mutants don’t have to be born from other mutants. Once mutant births became possible again, the number of previously existing mutants was a non-issue.
If there are five mutant births a day every day from now on, there’ll be over 30,000 mutants by the time those first five turn 18, and that’s far more mutants than there were only a few decades ago Marvel time (and by “Marvel time” I mean using the time frame in which most of the X-Men are in their 20s and 30s, not “real world time” in which they’ve been superheroes since the 60s or 70s).
A big deal has always been made about how just in the time between when Professor X founded the team to the time when Genosha was destroyed, the world’s mutant population had gone from a few hundred to a few million. So why is five in one day not good enough for Hank?
Lonnrot: Yes, I didn’t renew the web hosting. The site gets virtually zero traffic these days. I was wondering how long it would take someone to notice.
Fortunately I did remember to download it all a while back, so I guess I can’t complain.
ZZZ- Well, actually, according to Matt Fraction (and some preview art from SDCC), the five new mutants aren’t infants. They’re adults who woke up having undergone violent physical transformations, apparently. Which, I guess, doesn’t necessarily signify that there will be new mutant births (although it’s been confirmed that mutant numbers will be increasing, regardless).
Fraction also said something kind of interesting about the relationship between Hope and Emma- “Have you ever seen a kid looking at a piranha? (…) There’s a mutual fascination between the two of them that may or may not develop into something totally catastrophic. ” (He also said he’s not saying which character is the piranha and which is the child.)
Lonnrot, is there a way I can get those downloaded reviews from you, in a big zipped file or something? I liked to still regularly peruse old X-Axis reviews (because they were often hilarious, plus nostalgia from having read them when they first appeared), but I wasn’t as smart to download them!
I’m assuming, about the Five Lights, that Hope undid what Wanda did and so the teenagers who were supposed to be mutants, will become mutants again, and after the first arc there’ll be an explosion of all the powers everywhere again.
And Emma is the kid. I hope 🙂 Go piranha-Hope!
No explosion. They’re saying it’s going to be a slow trickle.
I suppose Paul has no objections if I just throw this on some free uploader so that anyone can grab it.