The X-Axis – w/c 28 October 2024
Well, at least I chose a quiet week to be away.
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #21. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Okay, I see what we’re going for here, but I’m not completely sold. The big idea here is that Lifeguard’s powers have started treating all of humanity as a threat and responding accordingly, leaving her unable to live among humans at all; the upshot is that her powers turn her into a literal island. It was fairly clear that that was where we were heading, though, so it doesn’t really work as a final issue reveal. And it feels a bit of a stretch from Lifeguard’s powers, which I don’t think ever turned on how she perceived things. The island thing feels a bit too literal, as well. Still, I like the way Steve is used as a more ordinary mutant who’s doing a little better at fitting back into normalcy.
NYX #4. (Annotations here.) This is David’s spotlight issue, and the basic idea is fine: he recognises that mutant history has been stuck in a lot of binary choices that he wants to escape from, but he has no terribly clear idea of how to do that. And of course, he ultimately does come out of retirement to save Kamala. Enid Balám makes him look good as a street artist, even if some of what he’s doing here stretches the boundaries of how his powers work. And I do appreciate the fact that Kamala sees straight through Sophie’s attempt to set her up. Kamala ought to be naive as regards some things – aspects of life as a visible mutant, say – but she’s not stupid, and it makes sense for the mutant-centric Cuckoos to underestimate her. (Or maybe Sophie is actually trying to be obvious.)
Other things don’t work as well. It’s never at all clear what the Krakoan and his allies were actually intending to achieve here – if it really was just “have a public fight with some mutants to damage their image” then I just don’t think that trope works in a world where large chunks of the public are meant to be histrionically paranoid about them already. I don’t think it was meant to be just that, but at the same time, I get the feeling that it was meant to be a lot clearer than it actually is. And if you want me to buy that David, who is a physically normal man with a very extensive skill set, can beat Hellion in a fight, then that’s going to take a bit more work than this gets. I can easily believe David outwitting him or outplanning him, or maybe even Hellion getting overconfident and letting his guard down, but this feels like David is meant to be simply beating him in a straight fight when he shouldn’t be able to lay a hand on the guy, and that doesn’t click.
WOLVERINE: REVENGE #3. By Jonathan Hickman, Greg Capullo, Tim Townsend, FCO Plascencia & Cory Petit. In which Wolverine hunts down Omega Red, Deadpool and Colossus and takes revenge on them. Which is surprisingly early, since there are still two issues to go. It’s an art showcase, really, but I’m enjoying it more than I would have expected. A mundane post-apocalyptic world is a pleasant change from the usual cliches, and the Wolverine/Deadpool scene is quite strong. I’m not at all convinced by the use of Colossus, though. The idea is meant to be that when the world goes to hell he sides with the Russian faction because that’s what’s in the interests of his family, which makes sense in theory, but just feels too far out of line with the character in practice.
Hickman seems to like the idea of Evil Colossus- he used him as a villain in Inferno, Wolverine:Revenge and the Ultimate Universe.
This week’s Spider-Man featured a backup story where Logan and Peter get together on Logan’s birthday,and the dialogue makes clear that they’ve been doing this for years. Which is weird, since we just had a major Wolverine birthday story just a few months ago in Sabretooth War. and the repercussions are still being felt in the X-books. And Spider-Man was nowhere to be seen in Sabretooth War. It’s odd that the X-office would let the Spider-Office do a backup story like that just a few months after a major Wolverine birthday story.
@Michael: That story seems to be Zeb Wells doing a sequel to his “Brand New Day” era backup wherein Logan drags Peter along on his solo birthday drinking-and-fighting binge. Peter’s willingness to see the best in Logan creates an odd friendship.
But as with his reuse of the Mayan god worshipper stuff, it’s Wells behaving as if his Brand New Day stories established well-remembered, well-worn continuity.
Pity that no one in the intervening years cared to reference any of it, partly because Wells didn’t write much more of that era.
If we have to have heel Peter, let him go back to being The Proletaiat.
@Omar I don’t mind going back to the Peter and Logan thing – they’ve had a friendship over the years in New Avengers, after all.
But having so much of his run hanging on Rabin, a one-time villain from Brand New Day, was just silly. And I’m in the apparently extreme minority who mostly enjoyed Wells’s just finished run.
On another note, somebody in the comments here recommended the Avengers Academy Unlimited strip. I’ve just caught up and while it’s mostly lightweight fun with a surprising amount of romance and yearning subplots, the current arc is miles above. It’s actually x-pertinent – Emplate abducts Escapade to his realm. But the main accomplishment is the art by Karen S. Darboe. It’s stunning. I actually can’t believe an Unlimited exclusive is that well drawn – the best one can usually say about art on Unlimited strips is that it’s serviceable. This is something else entirely.
Yes, the Emplate story really is worth reading for the art alone. And the story is okay too, though I’m not sure exactly what Escapade did in the big climax.
The X-Men Unlimited story on the other hand, what was that about? The moral of the story is that humans are innately dangerous so go live in the sea? That Lifeguard probably killed a bunch of people, then abandoned her sick mother and mortally injured friend, and that’s good? I think this is the only story with Lifeguard in it that I’ve read, and it still feels like a disservice to the character. Two stories in a row where the mutant ends up living in isolation though, kind of weird.
@Krysziek- the problem is the idea that Peter always hangs out with Logan on his birthday, when we’ve seen Sabretooth-fights-Wolverine-on-his-birthday stories since then, and Peter is nowhere to be seen.
“Move under the sea. Move under the sea. That’s your solution to everything.”
I’m sure there’s an easy solution to the Wolverine birthday conundrum.
Logan: “Hey, Pete. Listen. Sabretooth tries to ruin my life every birthday. I gotta go deal with that. Wait for me at the bar. I’ll be back later. OK?”
Peter: “Sure thing, pal.”
As far as “evil Russian Piotr”, Hickman was only playing fair with the story Benjamin Percy was already telling with Colossus. It didn’t seem like Hickman had any wider point to using Colossus than to play off of Percy’s Colossus and to set up a potential storyline for the writers who’d be writing those books after him.
Heck, Logan should just bring Spider-Man along to the Sabretooth b-day fights.
“OK, Webs, yer birthday gift to me is to hit Creed as hard as you can.”
“I’m not going to kill a guy.”
“It’s fine, he’s got a healing factor. He’ll just wake up tomorrow with a bad headache.”
“I do have a lot of frustration related to crappy bosses and villains I have to hold back against. . .”
The real solution is that Logan just has several birthdays a year. One for friends, one for foes, one for family. So he hangs with Spider-Man on one, Sabretooth shows up for another…
Look, if my father-in-law can claim both January 8 and 10 as his birthdays because his mom wasn’t sure, Logan can have as many as needed to get through his obligations.
The Lifeguard story was particularly weird, and stretched the boundaries of what her power even -does- in a major way. I know, obscure character, no one cares, but it was weird to bring her up like this and have a whole “her power thinks humanity is the threat so she’s now generating an illness and mutating and now she’s an island.”
Avengers Academy just did something else I love, and that’s rectify one of the stupidest, most wasteful deaths of a character I liked and reunite a couple that deserved better, and I don’t care how handwavey and illogical a solution it was–I’ll allow it.
It’s Wolverine’s revenge on Sabretooth. “Heh, heh. He thinks he’s offin’ my lovers on each of my birthdays. The joke’s on him. That’s not my actual bday.”
Gosh, no.
We already see way too much of Wolverine, let alone of Wolverine with Spider-Man.
Spare Peter that burden.
I’m personally very suspicious that it might actually be Peter Parker dressing up as Sabretooth for Wolverine’s birthday every year.
This third issue is the second time that WOLVERINE: REVENGE has surprised me. I figured after #1 that we were getting a one-villain-hunted-down-per-issue structure for the rest of the series, but as Paul wrote, that’s all over now and we’ve got two issues to go. I’m curious to see where things go from here.
Fun comic.
Re: Lifeguard
“I’m not completely sold”
I am! That’s an appropriately silly way to dispose of a silly character.
I’m really enjoying NYX, but as an academic I’m having to actively tell myself to ignore nearly everything about Prodigy’s university context. Not everything works perfectly, but the vibes are great and I’m glad to see exploration of the non-metaphorical aspects of mutants as a cultural group in the Marvel universe.
@Krzysiek Ceran: I must admit I’ve been off the Spider-books for years at this point. My sense is that the character is a bit exhausted overall, and I’ve become really tired of dragging in magical and multiverse plot devices.
And Marvel are perversely bent on continually writing Peter Parker as an unlucky ad frequently incompetent, and always with a new (and swiftly forgotten) love interest that seems to follow the same stock plot beats.
I think Spider-Man when he’s written more as an outsider, focusing on the kinds of crime and super-crime that the big-time heroes don’t, and one whose sense of humor and ingrained loner habits irritate the “establishment” heroes.
But from Brand New day forward, Marvel has generally brought on writers who scrip Spider-Man as a screw-up or a second-rater by the Fantastic Four and so forth. I didn’t like that when Dan Slott did it, either. But I guess that’s the only way you keep Spider-Man as an outsider after he’s been made an Avenger for so long and more and more characters adopt MCU-style quipster dialogue.
As a result, I haven’t read Wells’s run. I’ve liked his dialogue for Spider-Man in the past, but I think he has a lot of the (editorially mandated?) bad writing habits that pushed me away from the Spider-books in the past.
My impression from reviews and forums is that there’s a good Norman Osborn idea in this last Wells run, albeit based on a contrived plot point from the earlier Nick Spencer run.
But the actual Peter and Spider-Man stuff doesn’t sound that interesting or consistent, and the plot justifications for Ben Reilly, Paul, and the two(?) Hobgoblins just sound tiresome and convoluted. And I’ve never been a big fan of the Black Cat character.
That said, I know there’s a lot of “vocal minority” online fan toxicity around the Wells run because of editorial’s stance on Mary Jane. So I’m happy to get a differing perspective on any of this.
Wells’s run was for me really great when it focused on Tombstone and his gang wars (the resulting Gang War was fun as an arc of Amazing Spider-Man, the rest was typical event bloat). I don’t know how we got good Norman, I fell off Spencer’s run a long way before the end, but Wells runs with it and it’s pretty good. At least until the ‘Goblin Sins’ become a sentient thing that can possess others, that was a step too stupid for me.
As for Black Cat, she was nothing to me – a knockoff Catwoman without anything interesting going for her – until I read the recent Jed MacKay run he did (two Black Cat ongoings and a smattering of miniseries and oneshots). It’s nothing revolutionary, but it is very competent genre stuff that made me really like the character.
I really don’t think Spider-Man needs to be written as an incompetent to make him an outsider. Just give him a falling out with the Avengers. Say, the Avengers ignore the Vulture causing trouble in Queens because they’re off dealing with Kang or something, Spidey gets frustrated, and quits to focus on looking after his city.
@Omar Karindu & Krzysiek Ceran — Norman Osborn’s babyface turn did indeed begin during Nick Spencer’s run, and in particular the SINS RISING arc from 2020.
To summarize, the dead Sin-Eater, Stan Carter, was resurrected by Spencer’s main villain, Kindred. He was reworked into a morally ambiguous anti-hero who only targeted people who deserved it, which was not true to the original story (where Stan not only almost killed Betty Brant, but did kill a totally innocent random pedestrian trying to shoot Spidey). Stan was granted with a magical shotgun which could, LITERALLY, purge the sins of anyone shot with it. So he returned as Sin-Eater and shot a bunch of villains with it, working his way up to Norman. This became a tied “when should a hero kill” debate with Spidey and some of his distaff counterparts, who tried to capture Stan before he shot Norman. Along the way, Sin-Eater shoots the Lethal Legion, Mr. Negative, and frees the Juggernaut from Ravencroft. Those shot with the gun survive and become sin-free.
Despite all of Spidey’s efforts, Stan reaches Norman Osborn and shoots him with the magic shotgun. Norman is purged of sin. The other villains revert to normal once Stan is defeated, but Norman remains sin-free…from being shot by a magic shotgun by a resurrected C-List villain (who admittedly had one good story). This endures beyond Spencer’s run, and Norman eventually becomes a babyface hero as the Gold Goblin, for a little bit. He got to witness Ms. Marvel “die.”
Kindred, it is worth noting, was teased to be Harry Osborn for 2 years. “He” turned out to be the Stacy Twins, resurrected as demons by Mephisto, who shared the identity. Harry Osborn turned out to be a clone; the real one had been dead since the 90s. Mephisto’s interest in Spider-Man since ONE MORE DAY in 2007 is because he’s afraid of Mayday Parker, who is destined to defeat him when he eventually conquers the world. These are all real comics that professionals were paid real money to write. Not imaginary Fan-Fiction .net money.
I’ve nothing to add about the Spider-commentary other than to paraphrase a line Paul typed ages ago on an old site: “Every time I think Spider-Man has jumped the shark, Marvel trucks out a new aquarium.” So long as Nick Lowe and Tom Brevoort are senior editors at Marvel, Spider-Man will never progress in his main titles again. Greg Weisman’s Spectacular Spider-Men is good, though I doubt it survives past a year.
Oh, and I am glad that you-know-who was resurrected in Avengers Academy Unlimited, too.
I don’t really like Peter Parker being part of a formal team. I don’t think he works well in a team dynamic… he’s best as an independent hero who just happens to be friends with everyone and has frequent team-ups. He feels like a specialist you call in when you have certain problems or needs–scientific, or it’s one of his villains running around, what have you. He’s on the Avengers and FF speed-dials, he can come lecture at Avengers Academy or the Xavier School, but he’s painfully out of place off-world. (Imagine Spider-Man fighting in the Kree-Shi’ar War or Operation Galactic Storm…) He doesn’t do monitor duty, or Sunday meetings or paperwork. But everyone who matters realizes that for all his jokes and occasional screw-ups, Peter Parker is one of the most experienced, versatile, trustworthy, and competent heroes around, and should be held up there as a seasoned veteran.
Leave the teams to some of the other Spiders like Miles.
@AMRG: My understanding from summaries I’ve read is that Kindred retcons the Stacy Twins themselves into some kind of genetic constructs, and that Sins Past — the infamous “Norman getting with Gwen Stacy” story — was some kind of fake memory thing.
More generally, isn’t the consensus that there was some degree of editorial interference with Spencer’s endgame? No that this redeems the magic evil-erasing shotgun….
@Omar- it was confusing. The finale was partially scripted by Gage and it was a mess. The twins are genetic constructs but at one point they seem to be controlled by a computer copy of Harry’s mind and at another point they seem to be independent entities. Harry’s a clone but it’s not clear who cloned him. Mephisto and Strange in the previous issue seem to be wagering over Peter’s soul but in the finale they’re wagering over Harry’s.
It’s not clear how much of this was what Spencer intended. Several people, including Slott, have suggested that the story mostly ended as Spencer intended- Spencer just ended it quicker than he wanted to. Spencer himself has stayed mum since his run ended. It does seem like Norman being turned good by the magic shotgun was originally intended to be temporary by Spencer but it was made permanent.
ASV “ I’m really enjoying NYX, but as an academic I’m having to actively tell myself to ignore nearly everything about Prodigy’s university context. Not everything works perfectly, but the vibes are great and I’m glad to see exploration of the non-metaphorical aspects of mutants as a cultural group in the Marvel universe.”
In the mid 90s, I pitched a Jesse Quick mini-series since, in the JSA book (the Parobeck one), Jesse was in graduate school writing her thesis about super heroes. I just happen to have just finished grad school studying metatext, so I thought it was a great companion to the just-launched Starman, itself full of metatext.
Needless to say, nothing even came of it.
One of the major problems with Wells’ run can be traced back to his love of the original Inferno. Maddie was turned from a relatively normal pilot and mother into a half-naked evil dominatrix by an artificial plot device- being tricked by a demon in a dream. And unlike every other X-person who was mind controlled. Maddie never got to go back to her original personality. Some of us never stopped complaining about it but Wells was one of the readers who like it.
And the problem is that almost every major character change in Wells’ run was based on artificial plot devices.Norman didn’t turn good on his own- it was the magic shotgun. Ben didn’t turn evil as a result of character development- he turned evil because he lost his memories.Kafka didn’t turn evil on her own- she was infected with Norman’s sins.
@Krysziek- even Gang War had its problems. For example. Hammerhead disappears midway through the story.
The ending of Wells’ run was just idiotic. Tombstone decides that he has to kill Janice- the person he loves the most in the world- to avoid going to jail. And in the end, he just bribes or threatens the judge. Then why didn’t he do that to start with instead of nearly killing his daughter?!?