The X-Axis – 28 August 2011
Once again, I’m going to stick to reviewing the X-books this week. Because (a) there’s eight of them, which is far too many, and (b) there’s not a great deal else out that’s noteworthy, no doubt because everyone’s keeping their heads down and waiting for the DC relaunch to blow over.
I was interested to read Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso being interviewed at CBR this week, where he was reminded about how Quesada and Jemas, in their early days in charge, had reined in the size of the line, and more or less asked whether there were too many X-books. Obviously, he dodges the question (though the general thrust of his answer hints at what we all know, which is that Marvel commission as many X-Men books as they think the market will bear, and then it’s up to the editors and creators to try and find something to put in them).
But he does comment that he wants each book to have a “mission statement”. Which is fair enough – if you’re going to have multiple X-Men comics (as opposed to a single book which ships more frequently) there ought to be some point of distinction between them. What interests me is that he goes on to talk about that “mission statement” solely in terms of the two post-Schism core titles, which begs the question: what’s the point of X-Men, Astonishing X-Men and X-Men Legacy? Does anyone working on those books have a clear idea of why they exist, beyond the fact that the financial projection spreadsheets say they do?
The X-Men titles are about to embark on a direction which creatively justifies having two titles. But Marvel are publishing five. And it almost seems as though the editors can barely be bothered maintaining the pretence that the other three have a reason to exist. Perhaps that’s smart; better to run the Schism idea properly in two books and threat the others as filler, than to spread it artificially among five titles. Maybe it’s impossible to justify the existence of five titles, and writing some of them off as a lost cause allows the others a better chance. Is that how Marvel editorial are thinking these days? I wonder.
Astonishing X-Men #41 – This is the concluding part of Daniel Way and Nick Bradshaw’s “Monstrous”, the arc which has been running in alternate issues alongside “Meanwhile” for reasons that remain elusive. And let’s start with the good news: the art is wonderful, with Bradshaw bringing a sort of slightly deformed Art Adams look to the story. That works nicely for Monster Island, and for a slightly corny character design like Mentallo. I’m also quite fond of Daniel Way’s take on Mentallo himself, who has a plan that makes reasonable sense on paper, but ultimately remains a C-list villain who’s completely out of his depth when the X-Men finally reach him.
An odd feature of this story is that Mentallo happens to be one of the handful of surviving mutants not living on the X-Men’s island. You’d think that would be of interest to the X-Men, but in fact the story completely ignores it, which seems odd. Way seems more interested in a rather garbled idea about Monster Island being an isolated island for freaks which is somehow a bit like Utopia – a point which doesn’t come out in the story at all and veers in from left field near the end when Wolverine starts giving a speech about mutant separatism. As for the subplot about Armor’s family, it gets clumsily and abruptly wrapped up in the last couple of pages in a way that never really ties in with the A story – she doesn’t even play a part in the climax. There are some promising ideas in here, but they’re not properly developed; it’s a story that needed another couple of drafts.
Daken: Dark Wolverine #13 – Much to my surprise, since Rob Williams started writing this book, it’s become a title I really look forward to. The big difference, I think, is that previous writers have tried to shove Daken down our throats as the Coolest Thing Ever, while Williams treats that more as Daken’s self-image. He’s still got all the talent he had before, but now he’s also got a self-destructive streak a mile wide. It’s a good way of giving the character more depth without doing the obvious thing of turning him into a hero.
In his first arc, Williams established the new direction for the series, in which Daken goes to LA and tries to depose the local crimelord and take over – a scheme slightly hampered by his unwise decision to take up recreational drug use at the same time, leaving him prone to awkward blackouts and hallucinations. At the same time, there’s a clawed serial killer murdering people. Daken doesn’t know anything about it, but he’s worried that it might be him during his blackouts. Which would be, well, beneath him.
This direction naturally puts the book on a collision course with Moon Knight, which is also set in New York, and also involves the title character trying to find out who the mysterious new crimelord is. (It’s not Daken; it’s a villain common to both books.) So this arc brings in Moon Knight as a guest star in order to deal with that point. This turns out to be a rather good idea, quite aside from the purely mechanical continuity issues of how the two books fit together. Remember, the very strange current set-up in Moon Knight is that the title character is stark raving mad and thinks he’s Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine (sometimes all at the same time). So aside from their shared plot interest, Daken is also being confronted with a lunatic who thinks he’s Daken’s father – and, since that lunatic happens to have a claw weapon with him, he might be another candidate for the serial killer.
It all fits together rather nicely, and Williams is doing strong work here defining the characters of his relatively small central cast. The art by Mick Bertilorenzi isn’t quite as striking as Giuseppe Camuncoli’s work on the previous arc, but it’s still strong storytelling, and he gets Daken rather well – bearing in mind that he’s not supposed to be at his best here. All told, a very good issue.
New Mutants #30 – This is a “Fear Itself” crossover, but much of the issue is actually about the New Mutants having accidentally gone to Hell instead of Hel, and needing to bargain their way out. Magma is the one who finally strikes a deal with Mephisto to send them on their way, which is handy, because she’s had very little to do in this series so far, and she could use an excuse to raise her profile. This book goes for the angle of Mephisto as slick prankster, which is a nice change – though I like the way he turns into the John Romita Jr version of the character when he wants to be threatening.
Meanwhile, in the main story, Dani Moonstar makes her way to Hel in order to play a peripheral part in a megacrossover, because that’s how these things work. It’s okay as far as it goes. David LaFuente’s art is curious stuff; he’s got lovely expressive characters, but there are also some really weird storytelling choices scattered through this issue, such as two different images sharing the same panel border (so that the same character appears in the background and the foreground), to no discernible effect beyond confusion. And as for the last two pages, while I get the general idea, the mechanics are really garbled – which doesn’t do the cliffhanger any favours.
Uncanny X-Force #13 – Part 3 of “The Dark Angel Saga”, which is moving more quickly than I expected. This is scheduled as an eight issue storyline and I’d kind of figured that the trip to the Age of Apocalypse timeline would take us rather longer. But no, this issue the team collect the Magic Widget of Plot Advancement and return to their universe – where, in the way of such matters, things have gone a bit wrong in their absence.
With so many issues still to run and a number of dangling threads, I suspect we’ll be going back to the AoA characters later in the run, but it’s nice to be wrongfooted for a change by a story that’s racing forward far faster than I’d expect. The basic idea is that over in the AoA timeline, the local version of Wolverine is also in the process of turning into the new Apocalypse, just like Angel. This Wolverine doesn’t think he’s a villain, he just thinks he’s serving a higher goal of global advancement – which happens to involve mass slaughter. Only the aforementioned Magic Widget of Plot Advancement can stop the transformation, but the heroes have only got one.
It’s a very dense action issue, sometimes at the expense of clarity. The opening pages really are a bit of a jumble, and it doesn’t always flow as well as it needs to. But the bits with the other Wolverine come across well, the fill-in pages by Scot Eaton blend in nicely (and are actually easier to follow, on the whole), and the cliffhanger works, tying back to earlier storylines.
Wolverine #14 – So, if you guessed that the Mongrels are actually Wolverine’s long lost children and the Red Right Hand have been manipulating him into killing them, as some people did in earlier comments threads, well done – you have correctly predicted the twist. (Not that there isn’t plenty of scope to dismiss the whole thing as a mindgame by Daken, if you’re so inclined.)
I see what Jason Aaron was going for with this storyline, but I think it was drawn out for too long. We’ve had several issues in a row of Wolverine slicing his way through the Mongrels, who were never presented as anything more than novelty-villain cannon fodder, interspersed with flashbacks to wholly unsympathetic members of the Red Right Hand. With this issue, we get a member of the RRH whose grudge actually is legitimate, and the story reveals that the Mongrels aren’t just random bozos. So the RRH’s revenge on Wolverine is to make him one of them.
Which… well, it’s fine in theory. But by god, it’s taken forever and a day to get here, and preserving the surprise required some very repetitive issues of Wolverine fighting the bozo squad, none of which really becomes any more interesting in hindsight. The concept is fair enough, and if you didn’t see the twist coming, it probably works a lot better – but I can’t honestly say I expect the arc to hold up that well to re-reading.
Wolverine: The Best There Is #9 – Fifteen tedious pages of uninterrupted exposition followed a scattershot, largely silent, montage-style action sequence. It’s really trying to sell the idea that Paradox and Monark are a loveable odd-couple partnership, but it just doesn’t have the charm to pull it off.
X-Men #16 – Your random team-up for this story: the FF. Why? Well, because Dr Doom is hanging around with them in their own book, so we can do a story here with both Dr Doom and Magneto in it, and I guess there’s something vaguely interesting about that. But the actual story is about the X-Men answering a distress call from an old supporting character who got lost in the Bermuda Triangle, and ending up going to an alternate world where they meet yet another guest star. (Who I won’t identify, since it’s the cliffhanger, but suffice to say that if you know your mid-70s Marvel comics then the Bermuda Triangle thing is a bit of a clue.)
The art’s quite nice. Everyone’s in character. It’s a perfectly adequate team up story. There really isn’t anything more to be said about it.
X-Men Legacy #254 – Legacy may not have a particularly strong mission statement, but at least it retains some sort of identity by focussing on characters that the other books ignore. This is the first part of “Five Miles South of the Universe”, in which Rogue’s group of X-Men travel to the Shi’ar Empire to try and retrieve the Starjammers, and find themselves stuck in a backwater civil war between the Shi’ar and a bunch of insectoid aliens who are trying to get rid of the unwanted oppressor. By a happy coincidence, this also lets Mike Carey reuse that group of Shi’ar bounty hunters he created for the Rogue/Danger Room storyline a year or so back.
It’s fairly standard space opera territory so far, but then we haven’t actually found out what’s going on with the Starjammers themselves, who show up at the end of the issue. As usual with Carey, it makes decent use of its cast and it’s generally pretty entertaining; whether there turns out to be anything more to it beneath the surface, remains to be seen.
Daken sounds like it might be worth picking up. It seems the Pride and the Runaways are going to feature in upcoming issues, so it seems like it might be time to pay attention.
It sounds like the Moon Knight appearance worked well. Perhaps Marvel should make a serious attempt to move a bunch of characters to LA and give it a feel that’s distinct from New York. It worked, to an extent, for the X-Men.
I’m enjoying Legacy. Not really sure what you mean by “more to it beneath the surface”. Legacy, more than any other X-team book, is about the characters. Each character has an arc, but it’s not limited to a single storyline. The individual adventures don’t need to be metaphors for topical issues or the like, they just need to be entertaining and to show us how the characters are changing, or trying to change, step by step.
Did anyone read Batman Inc. #8? I thought that was some of the worst art I’ve ever seen in a major comic.
I quite liked it Jeff, but I don’t work an entire arc of that kind of art would float my boat.
I guess DC was going for a “digital world = digital art” thing, but each panel was so busy I had real trouble following what was going on even though the story seemed fairly straightforward by Grant Morrison standards.
I just went and looked at a few sample pages of Batman Inc. #8. It’s odd looking, but I’ve definitely seen worse from Marvel, especially the Z-list stuff they put out in the 90s, and some of the Marvel UK stuff.
Speaking of art, I was seriously bummed to see the fill-in on Uncanny X-Force this week. I may not have liked all of the artists they’ve chosen over the course of the last year, but at least they all finished their respective issues. I hate paying $4 for an issue that looks like it was slapped together at the last minute. And Mark Brooks was doing such good work the past couple of issues. Anyway, glad to know that Jerome Opena will be rejoining with next issue. I loved his work on the beginning of the series.
Last art-related side comment, I swear:
Has anybody seen the preview pages for the Alan Davis issue of Schism? It looks absolutely gorgeous. And since Paul mentioned Giuseppe Camuncoli, I will say I loved his arc on Amazing Spider-Man and am glad he’s in the rotation on that book now.
i think legacys ‘mission statement’ is ‘mike carey writes the x-men’, just like x-factors ‘mission statement’ is ‘peter david writes the x-men’. its good enough for me; both writers have a disctinctive voice and know what theyre doing, and the results are usually pretty good.
that being said, i didnt think the latest legacy issue worked all that well. checking in on the starjammers is exactly the kind of thing i want legacy to be about. but the salvage characters arent as charming as i remember them, the art is sub-mediocre, and ive kind of had it with x-men fighting aliens and monsters lately. ‘monstrous’ was completely throw-away, and ‘bermuda triangle’ and ‘meanwhile’ dont smell much better.
I don’t read X-Men Legacy, but decided to pick this storyline up because I’m genuinely curious about how Havok, Polaris and Rachel get back to Earth. I enjoyed Brubaker’s story in Uncanny, so I’d like a sense of “closure” regarding the characters left in space. It’s just annoying that I have to pick up THIS title to get it. I wonder if there are any other readers in the same boat.
Anyway, I didn’t find the issue to be very new-reader friendly. I had no good sense of who these Shi’ar bounty hunters are, and my confusion just increased now when you said they have something to do with the Danger Room??
@Jnuke
They aren’t really “connected” to the Danger Room. Their first appearance was an issue of Legacy in which Rogue went to Australia to visit the X-Men’s old headquarters and ran into Danger – the X-Men’s old Danger Room in rogue android form – and did a whole plotline about confronting her past (Legacy’s general theme at the time) in the form of holograms generated by Danger and a hallucinated Mystique (whose personality Rogue had absorbed too much of recently).
The bounty hunters were just a random plot complication that happened to show up at that exact same time. They detected Shi’ar technology on Earth (the Danger Room being Shi’ar tech, you’ll recall) and popped down to try to salvage it. They’re really not so much bounty hunters as scavengers.
I think Mike Carey’s remit is: “I’ll ignore all line-wide events and build plots around characters instead of organizing characters around plots.” And that’s fine by me.
The steady feeling out of characters like Legion and Frenzy is waaaay more satisfying than the sprawling high-concept stuff Fraction was attempting.
Only Legacy could give us such a brilliant moment as Magneto wiping the floor with a bunch of aliens while Frenzy looks on in amazement saying to the team, “That is why I became his acolyte.”
It seems a throw away moment, but it was a well-earned character moment that wouldn’t have rung as true if it popped up in Uncanny. I’m eager to see what Carey does with Lorna and Alex and Rachel and Giant-Sword Guy.
Does anyone know what cosmic mini-series Havok, Polaris and Rachel have turned up in since they went missing before Uncanny #490? And if so, are they worth tracking down the trades of?
> Does anyone know what cosmic mini-series Havok, Polaris and Rachel have turned up in since they went missing before Uncanny #490? And if so, are they worth tracking down the trades of?
X-Men: Emperor Vulcan (Yost)
X-Men: Kingbreaker (Yost, collected in “Road to War of Kings”)
War of Kings (DnA)
War of Kings is decent. Can’t speak to the Yost minis.
I believe Yost did a Starjammers mini that was not bad about the same as his other work. They then appeared in War of Kings mini as one note characters adding nothing to the larger story.
There was an interview with the editors of the X-books up on CBR a few weeks back. Someone did, in fact, ask the editors about the need for 5 X-Men titles post-Schism. Group editor Nick Lowe replied that adjectiveless X-MEN’s purpose was to be a “big action book” used to tie the X-Men into the greater Marvel Universe. ASTONISHING X-MEN is meant to be a “stand-alone” title where the casual reader can get X-Men stories without having to know what’s going on in the other books. To me, neither one of these seemed to be a particularly strong argument for justifying the existence of this many X-books.
And, yes, LEGACY’s remit seems to be “Mike Carey writes the X-Men”. However, that mission statement is nearing the end of it’s life as the solicitations have informed us that Carey’s final arc on the series will be starting in November. So I suppose it remains to be seen whether or not the title will have a future beyond that.
The finale to Bradshaw and Way’s Astonishing story is (what I assume to be) my last issue of Astonishing X-Men. I feel like I should give more of a shit about it.
Dave: Marvel gave Astonishing, their former alleged flagship title, to Daniel Way. They apparently give less a shit about it than you do.
Marvel really needs to trim the X-men line down. Though, as it is, I am enjoying the non-X-men titles more (X-factor, X-force, and New Mutants), save for Legacy. If they axed X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, X-Men Legacy (post Carey), and a Wolverine title or 2, it would make the line much, much stronger.
Aaron’s current direction on Wolverine is also leaving me very, very underwhelmed. The RRH never worked for me, and the whole Mongrels revelation was…*yawn*.
X’Men #14. Skull The Slayer. Now that’s a surprise….. Out of continuity, I’m afraid.
If it was for its first series, then it’s okay (http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/bermutri.htm), but explaining the rest (http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/blazskl2.htm) will be difficult.
Not sure who you’re responding to there, but Skull the Slayer was pretty clearly established as being in continuity when they wrapped up the series in an issue of Marvel Two-in-One.
RE: Skull the Slayer, he also showed up in Nicieza’s short-lived Hawkeye series from around 2003.
Am I the only one who’s enjoying “Best There Is”? It’s trippy and it doesn’t take itself very seriously, and the art’s nice to look at. I’ve found most issues to be pretty amusing.
“I thought that was some of the worst art I’ve ever seen in a major comic.”
Worse than your average IDW comic? Hard to believe 🙂
As far as X-Writers go, Carey is writing them a real long time now. I like his work, Lucifer was very good, but his superhero work always seemed more character-driven than flashy which seems so unMarvel today.
From a Joss Whedon star vehicle to Way, how can it get more unimportant?
Maxwell – I quite LIKE Daniel Way, and I quite liked Astonishing, until Marvel decided on a goofy gimmick with a wretched Chris Gage story, and now they’re putting the awful Greg Pak on a story. It’s me, done, cheers.
Dave: to each his own, mate.
Karl: I’m with you on “The Best There Is”. Its leaps and bounds beyond the regular title since its most recent relaunch, and the plots are so beyond ludicrous that you realy can’t help having fun with it. And not in a mindless dumb-fun kind of way, but more in a knowing, ’30s-’40s Looney Tunes kind of way. The last issue was a bit exposition heavy, but even the perverse backstory of Paradox and Monark was good for a few unexpected grins.
And I’m pretty keen on the art, too.
I didn’t mind Aaron’s reveal, because the Old Man was just so damn happy about it. And, that final scene with the Young Boy almost made this whole series worthwhile.
However, since that final scene required the audience to accept a literal Hell, it therefore depended on Wolverine Goes to Hell which itself went on way too long. So, I can agree there are serious pacing problems.
(Yes, I know Marvel 616 has an established Literal Hell, but that’s not what I mean.)
Prediction: when Wolverine pulls his shit together again, he’ll trade in his old cowboy hat for a tiny little fedora.
@Jeff: Batman Inc astonished me by having worse computer art than the Batman: Digital Justice hardcover from 1990 (which I assume Morrison is homaging here). Digital Justice‘s art was more limited, but the artist seemed to have a better idea of its limitations, so at least it wasn’t cluttered.
anyone else disagree re: the art in new mutants? though i concur that LaFuente hasn’t fully gotten the characters down yet, I think he sets the right tone for the book as it stands now. I love seeing Warlock shape shifting constantly, and I really enjoyed the Magik cross panel scene. The final page was a bit confusing, but still legible.
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