The X-Axis – 14 April 2013
It’s middle chapter week for the X-books!
Uncanny Avengers #6 – Well, except for this, which is more of a prologue. In fact, the Avengers don’t even appear in it. Instead, it’s an issue of set-up from the 11th century, with Kang (well, Rama-Tut, but it’s the same character) trying to alter the course of history by getting Apocalypse to kill Thor and a chap called Logan who is one of those conveniently recognisable ancestors that characters tend to have.
It’s basically Kang (in his various guises) manipulating assorted characters into doing things the significance of which will not doubt become clearer as we go on. At this stage, Remender is mainly going for the idea that Kang is outwitting and manipulating his opponents because, as a time traveller, he’s playing by different rules from everyone else. There’s nothing greatly new there, but it’s always worth taking the time to re-establish every now and then. Kang does, after all, suffer from the problem of being an A-list villain who’s been losing consistently for fifty years; his credibility needs a polish now and then.
I assume Remender is playing to some extent off Jason Aaron’s portrayal of the reckless medieval rookie Thor from the character’s solo series – I’m planning to read that in trade, but I recall the set-up is meant to involve taking advantage of the character’s immortality to do stories in past, present and future. Remender likewise takes advantage here of both Thor and Apocalypse being immortal characters; both behave very differently here, with Thor hopelessly immature and Apocalypse still apparently trying to carry out the Celestials’ mission, but they’re recognisable as much earlier versions of the characters.
Stories like this ultimately stand and fall on how well the manipulations hold up when the plot is fully revealed, but Remender’s doing enough here to buy goodwill while we wait to see where this is heading.
Uncanny X-Men #4 – Remarkable. Much of this issue is simply a repeat of Cyclops’ team’s visit to the Jean Grey School from All-New X-Men, but told from Emma Frost’s perspective. And that’s fine, because only the broad strokes get duplicated. The focus here is on Emma persuading the Stepford Cuckoos to come with her, which was entirely off-camera in the other story.
No, what’s baffling is that All-New X-Men built up to a big cliffhanger about which other character would go with Cyclops. But in this issue it’s just casually revealed to be Angel (the Silver Age version), in a way that seems to assume we already know from the other series. And these books share a writer and editor. The left hand, it seems, doesn’t even know what the left hand is doing.
What of Bendis’ treatment of the Cuckoos, then? Unusually, instead of playing up the original “scary identical girls who act in unison” angle, he’s going back to their origin story from the X-Warsong miniseries, and trying to do something with it. Warsong has largely been ignored by subsequent writers, probably because it was rubbish. But it did establish, for better or worse (mainly worse), that the Cuckoos are clones of Emma. So be it.
This wasn’t a very interesting idea when it was first introduced, but it has rather more potential now. Bendis is writing Emma as a surrogate mother figure for the girls. But of course her authority is now horribly compromised by having screwed up her life and lost control of her powers, while the girls now have the upper hand in the relationship. There’s something in that, and I can see it working.
The other major development in this issue is that Magik is having periodic seizures where loads of hellfire appears around her. Presumably this is the echo of what was originally solicited as a story about why Magik is the only character not to have her powers screwed up by the Phoenix Force, though it’s relegated here largely to the status of a subplot, albeit a nicely timed moment.
We return, of course, to the now familiar refrain in my commentary on Bendis’ X-Men comics. There are some worthwhile ideas here for character subplots, but man cannot live on subplot alone. We need a central driving story, and we need to get to it quickly.
Wolverine #2 – Before I start: the recap page really needs work. It dutifully summarises what actually happens in the previous issue, but completely fails to mention the clear implication that anyone who picked up the gun fell under mind control from some outside force. And that was the key story point. A weird thing to omit, to put it mildly.
Anyhow, yes, it’s mind control, a point which becomes clear pretty quickly. Much of this issue features Wolverine going after the kid with the blaster. The kid soon drops even the pretence of being anything other than an alien consciousness, and the story develops into the kid toying with Wolverine to try and figure him out. Quite what the aliens are after isn’t really suggested with any great clarity here – instead the story reverts to the old standby of wheeling out the Watcher to officially certify events as Tremendously Important, which admittedly hasn’t been done in a while, but could still use another few years in the deep freeze.
I’d have preferred to see a bit more development on that front – really, issue #2 ends up simply elaborating on the point that Cornell and Davis already made in issue #1. But at this stage, at least, the execution is strong enough for the book to get away with it. Davis remains one of the best superhero artists, who can sell a set-piece or an emotional beat perfectly. And Cornell has successfully taken the character back to basics by doing a story that gets him away from the awkward role of mainstay elder statesman that he seems to have grown into, and plays more to his strengths as a solo hero. If the series doesn’t yet seem to have any big ideas in mind, it does offer quality craftsmanship, which is more than enough for now.
X-Treme X-Men #13 – Continuing the “X-Termination” crossover, in which cosmic giants of no particular specification wander around threatening to destroy multiple universes or something. This is the crossover of the walking dead, with two of the three participating titles already scheduled for cancellation, and nobody particularly bothered about pairing up wildly discordant art styles on the same issue, from artists who are either very rushed or just not ready for prime time. (Not that X-Treme X-Men is prime time, though, if we’re being honest.)
Since the villains are just forces of nature, there’s not a great deal to the story beyond characters teaming up in unusual permutations and looking very worried. X-Termination, it seems, is from the Ultimatum model of finality – if you can’t have a dramatically satisfying resolution, at least you can kill everybody in sight and declare the story over. Greg Pak, on this issue, at least tries mightily to sell the idea that we’re witnessing a heroic sacrifice from young Kurt, but it’s more the affection generated for the character in earlier issues that lends it some weight. Frankly, at this stage, I’d have preferred Marvel to just cancel X-Treme and Age of Apocalypse rather than tack this clumsiness onto the end.
Yeah, the decision to run a cliffhanger ending in All-New X-Men #10 and then blow it in the most casual manner possible in Uncanny X-Men #4 is absolutely inexplicable.
In fact, both issues felt like they ended a beat too early. It would’ve made sense for All-New X-Men #10 to close on a page revealing that Angel is defecting to the Uncanny squad; meanwhile, Uncanny X-Men #4 ended a little abruptly – surely a closing page making it a little clearer what’s going on with Magik would’ve been a natural endpoint.
I’m finding it easy to overlook the flaws in the BendiX-books just because of the publishing schedule.
I’d probably be the first person to complain about the roster change reveal if the books were coming out every two months, but I don’t feel particularly cheated in this scenario.
X-termination is bizzare. It was a cute idea but what emerged on to the page is a mess.Too many characters, too few pages. It will be quickly forgotten and that’s for the best. I’ll look back on X-treme fondly and look forward to seeing Dazzler in Uncanny. Hopefully, Bendis won’t ignore her character development.
Magik displayed new powers immediately after the Phoenix thing. Seems to me that qualifies as having her powers screwed up
X-Termination couldn’t possibly seem like more of an afterthought. They haven’t even bothered naming the world-eating things, the art at the end of the most recent issue looks like something from an unlicensed superhero role-playing game handbook from the 80s, characters develop new powers whenever the plot (or art) needs them to, characters appear and vanish from scenes at random and if you’re lucky they remember to throw in a “Bamf” cloud to acknowledge that the character was in a different dimension the last time we saw them. The whole thing has an aura of “whatever” about it.
It’s kind of interesting to compare it to Age of Ultron, which has a lot of the same problems – taking multiple issues just to establish “things are bad,” so many characters they can’t keep track of them (AoU 5 actually shows Black Widow going on a mission then watching the mission team leave in panels on the same page) – but while making it clear that Marvel considers it the one that actually matters – it has tie ins, and good art, and a villian with a name!
Neither is especially successful at selling itself as the big deal the plot wants us to accept it as, but AoU at least feels like a real story while, to me at least, X-Tinction feels like a series of Web exclusives they decided to publish anyway or an unfinished abandoned project someone found lying around and decided to publish anyway, or … basically anything ending in a shrug and the phrase “decided to publish anyway.”
Actually they just trotted out the tired Watcher thing last month in Nova #2.
Thank you, Paul, for providing this service and allowing me to sit out the Bendis years on the X-books. I hope his tenure there is much, much shorter than his time on the Avengers was, but no matter what the length I know I can skip the whole excruciating experience yet still keep tabs on what’s going on through your column.
Though I also realize that if Bendis stays there for a decade, he’ll only plod through the equivalent of 10 Lee & Kirby issues or 15 Claremont & Byrne issues, then hit the reset button as he leaves. So there won’t really be much catching up that needs to be done once he’s gone.
Still, words cannot express my gratitude for allowing me to skip the entire business.
Nova is written by Loeb, right? Did Nova punch him?
I’m reading Thor (and enjoying it immensely), and Remender’s take on the character definitely felt true to Jason Aaron’s rookie Thor. It’s nice to see this kind of co-ordination (which is what you’d hope for from a shared universe, admittedly, but it often doesn’t happen).
And I was very surprised to see the Watcher turn up at the end of Wolverine #2 – nothing about the first two issues up until that point screamed “significant events are occurring here.” Alas, at this point Uatu is almost always dragged out as a handy shortcut to selling the importance of events without actually conveying it through the writing. I expect better from Paul Cornell, so fingers crossed he’s got something up his sleeve.
If I were to write a Kang epic, I’d start in an Age of Apocalypse scenario. No, even better, a utopia. Then Kang starts messing with the time stream, and a team of heroes goes to stop him. Kang wins, and you see him standing over the New York skyine exclaiming that the world is now exactly as he wants it to be. The heroes forget their old world, as far as they know it’s always been this way. Really nothing at all has changed in the comics of course, but Kang still won.
Nothing has changed in the Marvel comics setting I mean. The idea being that the world as it is, is actually Kang’s design.
Always preferred rama tut and immortus to kang.
Not being particularly familiar with Kang, I was thoroughly confused by who the villain actually was in this issue. It started out being Rama Tut, then we switched scenes to Loki. Loki then turned into Kang. Then later in the issue Kang turns into Rama Tut, but that chess piece that sticks off his chin was somewhat obscured by shadow, so it looked kind-of like Loki (white face, green costume). I finally got it straightened out, but it was far from clear to me.
The only story I have ever read with Kang in it was Secret Wars.
The only story I have ever read with Baron Mordo was “What if the X-Men Lost Inferno.” So if a dead Mordo with an axe in his head was something important to the story, I’ll need help with that one too.
And speaking of villains I know nothing about: UXM is going into a Dorrammu plot with Illanya. THe only story I’ve read with Dorrammu was Nextwave (and that was Chad, not Darth). So there’s another one that will leave me behind.
“Frankly, at this stage, I’d have preferred Marvel to just cancel X-Treme and Age of Apocalypse rather than tack this clumsiness onto the end.”
Amen. But even a minor non-event like this generated a sales spike, so I suppose it’s served its purpose.
I mentioned this last week, but X-Termination is really the worst X-Men crossover ever.
I really wish there was policy in place about when Uatu can show up. It makes sense for huge stories like Secret Invasion, but it annoys me when he shows up at things like Black Panther’s wedding or in Wolverine #2. It just reeks of desperation on the part of the writer to show how IMPORTANT their story is.
I remember back in the day comics were returnable if the story inside didn’t match the story that was solicited in Previews. Does anyone know if this is still the case, because Bendis X-Titles have told us a lot of things would happen which have not. I’m still annoyed we haven’t seen the ‘Dr.Doom-level’ villain controlling the Sentinels that Bendis promised in interviews.
The best way to enjoy Bendis books is just read them. Don’t bother with any of his interviews or anything, they make you expect things.
So did I read Uncanny correctly and Bendis takes the stance the stepfords have never met Jean Grey?
We each owe a death; Brian Michael Bendis won’t be writing Marvel comics forever. But sometimes, oh god, the Green Mile is so long.
Actually they just trotted out the tired Watcher thing last month in Nova #2.
Well, not really the same thing. Paul was talking about the “Watcher shows up to witness significant events” trope. Nova was an example of “hero shows up on Watcher’s doorstep” trope. I doubt the Watcher cared it Nova was there or not.
I expected that the defector in All-New X-Men would be Young Angel, and I assume it’s over Young Jean messing with his mind. And the fact that the adult X-Men did nothing about it except scold Young Jean.
Then again, this is a Bendis superhero book, so the ability to actually do something is a rare luxury reserved only for a character or two at a time. Talking about doing things for pages on end, on the other hand….
“Nothing has changed in the Marvel comics setting I mean. The idea being that the world as it is, is actually Kang’s design.”
I really like that idea; it makes Kang less of a sad loser.
I would take it a step farther and work out a story where Kang’s ultimate victory depends on a certain status quo being maintained, and thus he’s behind most unlikely resurrections, reversions of characters to original type/costume, and even universal reboots. In other words, align Kang’s interests with Marvel’s marketing department and fandom’s resistance to permanent change.
So Kang would be Marvel’s version of Superboy Prime’s Retcon Punch of Stupidity?
Yes, but with more style.
Or you could just give Kang better motivation than global domination. :-p
Sorry. That came across as snarkier than I wanted. Let’s try that again. :-p
Kang is a one-dimensional silver age villain who just wants to rule the world. His time travel shtick gives him a good twist on it, but there’s no reason why, in 2013, we take character like that seriously. By contrast, Dr. Doom has his very personal rivalry with Mr. Fantastic. Namor has his ecological agenda. Magneto stands for mutant rights. What does Kang actually want to do by messing wtih the time stream?
Letting him mess with continuity is a good start, but once you go that route he becomes a get out of jail free card as later writers can use him to justify whatever they want and I don’t trust Marvel’s writers and editors to not abuse that.
So then what do you do with him? He can’t keep losing to the Avengers if he’s supposed to be this unstoppable conqueror, but what’s left?
There’ve been a few efforts over the years to give Kang some more motivation, most notably Steve Engelhart suggesting he’d outgrow it all and settle down and later Kurt Busiek writing him as a man terrified of becoming his ostensibly complacent, bloodless future self Immortus.
Even in his original appearances, the idea seems to be that he’s not so much out to rule the world as he is trying to prove how manly and “alive” he is by conquering it. The idea in the Lee-Kirby stuff is that he’s a man of a peaceful future born with the temperament of a barbarian.
Uncharitably, that makes him a kind of wargamer writ large, a guy who treats history like an online session of Call of Duty. More charitably, Kang can be written as a general forever looking for one more war in which to matter, obsessed with the Avengers because they always provide him one.
The idea of Kang having quietly created the status quo is already there, too. The Citizen Kang story from 1992 revealed that he’d gone back to the 1900s and created a robotics factory, leading to pretty much all the contemporary androids and such in the MU, most of which he can override at will as a result.
The recent Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon portrayed him in a much more sympathetic light, trying to meddle in the past so he could save the space-time continuum– and by extension, his dying wife. This wouldn’t work in the main Marvel continuity, because by this point he’s behaved like a heartless warlord for too long.
A more complex interpretation, one that would fit better within what the comics have established, might be to establish Kang as motivated by a “white man’s burden” colonialist ethos, where he believes that he’s genuinely doing the people of the past good by conquering them, wether they like it or not. This is the kind of motivation that megalomaniacs consistently mistake for altruism, especially when you consider that Kang’s idea of an ideal society could be a Metal Gear Solid-style Warrior’s Heaven, where there’s always a war in which one can “prove their manliness”
Then again, maybe the best approach would be to just accept him as a cackling, silver age villain who messes with the time stream. There could be some fun in having three or four oddball teams of superheros working through interlocking stories, in different times (if not different timelines) to sort it all out. Start in media res so the fun isn’t figuring out how EVERYTHING CHANGES!!! but how the heroes escape from, essentially, a really elaborate trap and get things back to normal.
Problem is, unless Marvel can get Grant Morrison to write it, I’m not sure who I’d trust with this.