Wolverine and the X-Men #31-35 – “Hellfire Academy”
How stupid is too stupid?
It’s a question that’s come up a lot ever since Schism, where Jason Aaron introduced the current version of the Hellfire Club – a quartet of evil twelve-year-olds who seized control of the Hellfire Club and moved on to become the main villains of Wolverine and the X-Men. These characters don’t work. But why not?
Characters like the Hellfire brats are often defended with the logic that if you can accept superheroes, you ought to be able to accept pretty much anything else. This is a lousy argument. For one thing, X-Men is certainly based on an utterly absurd premise, namely that random mutation would throw up incredibly specific and workable superpowers. But the Hellfire brats are a different sort of implausible; they’re psychologically implausible, even by the operatic standards of the genre. And for another, “Could this logically exist in the Marvel Universe?” is a poor standard to apply. Pretty much anything can exist in the Marvel Universe; it doesn’t follow that they belong in any given story.
All that being said, there are certainly precedents for the X-Men taking a headlong diversion into the downright wacky – Arcade or the X-Babies, for example. But they were used for occasional comic relief in “change of pace” stories. The list of ludicrous major villains who actually worked pretty much starts and ends with Mojo, and even he was used mainly in comedy stories and given an undertone of being sinisterly Other.
The problem with the Hellfire brats, then, isn’t so much that they exist, as that they’ve been cast in the role of this title’s Big Bads, when really they’re only fit for comic relief. Thirty-five issues into this series, I still don’t see anything that makes them function as proper personalities, even by the exaggerated standards that go with the territory. Kade oscillates wildly between a generic evil schemer and a comedy young teenager, with occasional clumsy attempts to give him depth by having him whimper that daddy didn’t hug him. Wilhelmina is a one-note joke character. The other two are cyphers.
And the school they set up in this arc is much the same. It’s so absurdly over the top, even by the very generous standards of the genre, that it’s simply impossible to take it seriously as a school. It’s fine as a setting for a comedy story, and the first issue of the arc works just fine on that level. But when Jason Aaron tries to make the kids or their school function on any other level than as a gag, the whole thing falls apart. And it certainly seems like this is meant to function on some other level. A big chunk of part 3 is devoted to Idie’s narration comparing the worldview of the two schools. And that falls completely flat. The Hellfire Academy is surrealist nonsense; no recognisable human thought lies within.
We’re left with five issues of chaos, some of which is very funny, but it never comes together as a story. The Club has its own school; it seems to be tormenting pupils and eventually using the Siege Perilous to transform them into powered-up super villains. The X-Men spend a few issues tracking the school down, then find it, then show up and smash it up. The story’s designed to give Quentin Quire an opportunity to play hero by having him put himself in harm’s way to rescue Idie and Broo; it sort of works on that level, but the attempts to pair him with Idie run up against the problem that Idie long since left Planet Anything I Can Relate To and was last seen passing Pluto at high speed.
There are other odd and unsatisfying features in the final issue quite apart from all this. Kade seems to think that he’s won, but it’s never remotely clear why. Perhaps this is hinting at some even more byzantine master plan still to come, but god preserve me from another Kade Kilgore story. And Toad seems to reset Husk to her normal personality by just tearing off layers of skin until he reaches the real her – other than a throwaway line in chapter one where she wondered whether she could tear her way down to her soul, there’s been nothing to set this up as a possible resolution, and it seems a staggeringly weak way to pay off a subplot that’s been running since the series began.
I’m generally all in favour of Wolverine and the X-Men‘s embrace of wackiness, because it gives the book a unique voice, and because Aaron usually manages to balance it with some sort of emotional core that anchors the story amidst the nonsense. The Hellfire kids have always been the exception to that rule, and unfortunately a whole story arc about them turns out to be the same problem writ large. There’s certainly a lot going on in this arc, it’s just that beyond the gag level, not very much of it works.
The whole arc really was a great romp in the park, but you’re right: it just doesn’t hold water when actual story work is applied to the comedic elements.
At the same time, while I guess the premise of the book itself is that it should be lighthearted and wacky, in some ways the insanity and inanity of the Hellfire Academy added balance back into the book by grounding the Jean Grey School a bit more. If the school has a Danger Room in the bathroom and Bamfs running everywhere, something has to be crazier to give the school some credence and essentially make the book more believable in the context of the rest of the line.
It may be inadvertent or Aaron might really have realized that he was in danger of running the book off the rails, but I think that as flawed as the run was, at the same time it serves to iron out some of the kinks of the broader premise of the book. Or at least make them slightly more understandable and palatable to the reader.
Thank you.
The tone is off. And clunky. And not as clever as it thinks it is. And in the context of the large MU, the stories are forcing characters to do things they normally wouldn’t for a cheap laugh, continuity by damned.
i finally gave up on the book after the frankenstein arc.
I’m in the minority, but I really like this book. It’s silly and all over the place, but it’s harmless fun that’s occasionally poignant like when Logan opened Dog’s box and found the boats. It would never work as the flag ship X-Men book, but it’s self contained and has it’s own voice, which is rare in comics anymore. That being said, I am absolutely shocked by how much I have enjoyed Bendis’ X-Men books. He really gets Cyclops, and the art on each book has been fantastic.
Come on. It’s a comedy book. You’re not supposed to “take it seriously”, and if it works at the gag level, it works. God knows there are more than enough po-faced X-Men books, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I will say I do enjoy this comic, but it’s easy to see why people wouldn’t. I’ve long said the best way to do a “young x-men” book is to round out the cast with established heroes. This book has Wolverine, Beast, Kitty, Iceman, Storm and Rachel. That’s a solid x-line up on its own, but then they’ve got the younger characters as well. For me that’s the best way to introduce the next generation. (Note: I’m well aware that none of these characters ever make it into circulation once Jason Aaron leaves)
If we’re not supposed to take it seriously, why would it be part of things like Battle of the Atom? It obviously is meant to set the parameters of some things, which we are meant to take seriously. Nightcrawler’s return, for one. It’s fine for it to be a comedy book, but it was set as the core book of Wolverine’s camp post schism, so it leaves a reader overwhelmed in the crazy. I kept waiting for a revelation of the school being a hallucination of that new winged guy. Everything is soooo over the top. It hurts. Idie was such an original voice in the start, she’s just a passive psycho now, it seems.
“Come on. It’s a comedy book. You’re not supposed to “take it seriously”, and if it works at the gag level, it works.”
I think you missed the main criticism in the review:
“The problem with the Hellfire brats, then, isn’t so much that they exist, as that they’ve been cast in the role of this title’s Big Bads, when really they’re only fit for comic relief. “
^^this.
To the “it’s just comic books” crowd: We get that it’s “comedy.” Is just that it’s not funny (subjective I know) and the canonical tone doesn’t work in the context of the mainstream MU. (see: Mystique, Sauron)
Thing is, I actually do think you can have a “funny” mainstream X-Men and have it work. But Aaron has characters broadly doing things just cause he’d think it would be funny. But it’s not.
It may only be a small point of continuity, but I have never bought that Husk would have run off to the Hellfire Club for any period of time (I think it’s been about 10 issues or so) without big brother Cannonball showing up asking questions.
To each their own, I suppose. I think “Wolverine and the X-Men” is hilarious and if the mainstream Marvel Universe can’t handle that kind of material, the hell with the mainstream Marvel Universe! I get more entertainment from it than I’d get if I read all the other deadly serious continuity-oriented X-books.
There is too much emphasis on a story fitting into established continuity. I prefer a general sense of continuity, but not down to every minute detail. I’ve no problem if the story bends the rules, and is later ignored in other stories it does not ‘fit’ with.
That said, I agree the Hellfire Kids are terrible as the nemesis of this series. They’ve no credibility as a threat AND are humourless comedy characters.
Let me join the PRO WATXM camp and say that a book like this is needed in the current Marvel U, where everything else is grim and gritty. Nowadays everything has taken a turn for the darker, and this is refreshingly fun, while maintaining some dark undertones. I enjoy the current MU, with this book, more than I would without it
I’m all for comedy books, but i’d think it would work better as something as its own thing with guest stars (Damage Control, for example) than being one of the two or big three big X-books.
But what I’m saying is it’s fine to be an over the top comedy book, but it’s laid out to be a big continuity setter. You can read it as over the top, hilarious fun, but it’s not meant to be that from the way it’s set in the MU.
Here’s how I read this book, and why I think the kids work.
The theme of the story is how you raise a new generation that is prepared to deal with the challenges of the future. The Jean Grey School (JGS) and the Hellfire Academy (HA) represent contrasting approaches.
JGS is built on a foundation of the past (literally, as it is built on a Krakoa) with an eye to the future (new name, time capsule, etc.). The mutant students learn from experienced teachers. Being kids, they are very energetic, they think they know everything, and they aren’t always receptive. The teachers are used to being the ones making all the decisions and are reluctant to embrace what the new students have to offer. Ultimately, they have to learn to strike a balance.
The turning point comes in the Savage Land arc, when the students accept what they have been taught, but also take on the mantle of having to solve the problems in their own way while applying their lessons. The previous generation, represented by Wolverine, embrace their new mentoring roles.
Meanwhile, the HA inverts all of those roles. The kids are in charge, and they have no interest in learning from their elders. The previous generation of X-villains winds up working for them.
Consequently, the HA kids wind up getting tripped up by mistakes of the past, rather than learning from them. If they had allowed their new idea (fomenting anti-mutant sentiment to drive up Sentinel sales) to be shaped by some sound mentoring, they might have succeeded. But instead Kade got mired in the trappings of the past without really understanding them or appreciating that they were ultimately associated with failure.
I have a feeling this book will no longer be considered one of the “flagship” X-books after “Amazing X-Men” launches. It’ll give Aaron an opportunity to keep playing around with this over-the-top nonsense in this book, and give Aaron another book to do some real X-Men stories in. Marvel probably realizes what an embarrassment it is to have this book as one of its core X-Men titles, when it’s some completely ridiculous and stretches the credibility of their line, and also that it’s written by one of their “architects” and trails the other core X-Men books by quite some distance on the sales charts.
I wonder if the “surreal, young, next generation” villains of the Hellfire Club Kids could develop better if paired temporarily against a similar “surreal, young, next generation” group other than WATXM, even outside of the X-office. I’d be curious how a miniseries or storyline pairing them against the Future Foundation kids would go, giving both sides a chance at grandiose plans and ridiculous super-science with less real expectation of “these are how children are *expected* to behave.”
Finally an evaluation of Aaron’s work in X verse that I totally agree with. Also not a big fan of his whole Wolverine goes to hell run and its aftermath.
Hnh. I’m reminded of the Giffen/DeMatteis run on Justice League. And the played-for-laughs Injustice League. And all of the other ridiculousness that went on. Except I don’t recall the reactions to how that series was handled to be as polarized as the reactions to WATX. Seemed to be largely well received if memory serves. I haven’t read any WATX myself. Is it all that different?
Agree that the Hellfire kids just do not gel as villains, for a variety of reasons.
The Husk/Toad payoff seems a little underwhelming, given the length its been sown. But Husk has been fairly abused as a character in this run. I have warmed to the pair though (Husk has liked quite a few freakish guys), and it does bring out the Uncanny/creepy side of mutantdom which can be often overlooked. I just would like to see a bit of the overreaching, overbearing “old” Husk…
Also agree with Mackenzie about Idie: started off as one of the most interesting/conflicted of the 5 lights and has devolved into something way more one note. I think the problem is for all the fun characters running around, it is just way, way too overcrowded. Characters get a line or two at best. I get that the chaos is a selling point, but it is to the detriment of the overarching narrative. (what IS the overarching narrative here anyway??).
Hmm, I do wish we had the sales analysis every so often. I always found that very interesting.
Let me put it this way.
I’m a huge fan of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. It’s silly and fun and I love it. But if it was set in the DCU proper, I’d think “Hang on a minute…” If it was one of the two core Batman titles, and the other was Scott Snyder’s, I’d be more than slightly perplexed.
On the other hand, I’m also a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, so I don’t see that “comedy book” and “actually making sense and having a point” need to be dichotomous.
@halapeno
The thing about the Giffen/DeMattheis Justice League is that the Injustice League were, in fact, just comic relief. They were loser villains who never troubled our heroes for a moment. If Giffen and DeMattheis wanted to actually tell a story with a bit of punch to it (which they often did), they wouldn’t use the Injustice League. They’d use someone who had humorous qualities but was also recognisable as a geniune threat, like Lord Magna Khan, or they’d just forsake comedy altogether and use Despero or Dreamslayer.
I think the Justice League comparison helps to illustrate the problem with WatX — Justice League was a comedy book, while WatX is a gag book. Look at things like the list of course offerings from the back of #1, which is of a piece with subsequent mentions of the school’s courses. It’s pretty clear that everything about the school is just something that Aaron thought was funny, without any sense that it needs to cohere into a story. Justice League was a comedy, but it still worked as a story that wasn’t just edifice.
I totally get everyone’s complaints and I totally agree that the Hellfire Kids Club don’t work the way they’ve been used (and how do you have a series whose entire foundation is Wolverine trying to keep kids from getting hurt and make the main villains evil kids and not even try to link those two ideas together?) but the weird thing is that this arc actually worked better for me than some of the previous ones.
The Jean Grey School has always seemed as untenable and ridiculous as the Hellfire Academy, and I have a much easier time accepting the Pee-Wee Herman Wackiness Factory as a place run by spoiled kids that falls down around them before it really gets going than as a place run by seasoned adults and presented as a legitimate school and setting for a series that just happens to be a bit quirky.
Sorry, what? Wolverine’s school is supposed to be about kids not doing any fighting? Is this the same Wolverine who took Kitty’s side in the “Professor Xavier is a Jerk!” story? The same Wolverine who said:
“Not so long ago, boys of twelve went to sea as naval midshipmen, expected to conduct themselves as officers and adults.”
And…
“We’re at risk from the moment of conception. There are no guarantees for anyone, anywhere. She could be killed or injured just as easily leading a normal life.”
Hard to believe he pulled a 180 on what seemed to be a long held philosophy. What prompted that?
Schism. And editorial need to give Scott and Logan opposing philosophies to make Schism/Regenesis work.
Storm might have made more sense. But her name doesn’t headline book titles.
Oh.
So it was an editorially-mandated flip flop. But how did that put Wolverine at odds with just Scott and not Xavier as well? Didn’t Xavier used to hurl teenagers into harm’s way all the time? And is Wolverine’s mandate really to coddle his kiddies until they graduate, then send them out into the real world with no combat experience and faintly hope they don’t find themselves on the wrong side of a lynch mob? Sorry in advance for all the questions but I’m a bit out of the loop and this doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me.
The reason WatXM just doesn’t work for me is that, as mentioned above, it’s more a gag book than a comedy book, to the point that the humor often undermines the story. Additionally, the cast just has a hard time keeping my interest. Looking at the past classes of junior X-Men, we all know that the odds of the X-Kids ever graduating to X-Men are slim to none, but the cast in this one stretches suspension of disbelief to breaking point. Quire and Idie? Maybe. Broo? Slim chance. The kids that Aaron actually created, though, just have “disposable joke character” written all over them.
@halapeno – In his solo book, Wolverine was manipulated into fighting and killing (because Wolverine always kills everyone he fights when the plot requires that to be the case) a group that was then revealed to be composed entirely of his own bastard offspring (I don’t remember if this was ever specifically mentioned in a team book, but it’s usually brought up as part of the reason why he suddenly became philosophical about the ramifications of turning kids into soldiers).
While he was still reeling from that, the Hellfire Kids staged their first attack and Idie ended up killing a bunch of Hellfire guards to save her friends, and then went into her usual passive-aggressive broken bird act (“It’s okay, I’m a monster anyway. I should do monstrous things. Embracing my self loathing totally makes me not just a rehash of Wolfsbane’s character arc, right?”)
Then there was a really dodgily staged fight scene where a super Sentinel attacked Utopia and Wolverine tried to get Hope and her friends to stay out of the fight but Hope refused because Cable taught her to be a soldier … and the kids turned the tide and won the fight, but Wolverine was stilled pissed that he couldn’t convince the kids to run instead of fighting.
The weight of those three events in rapid succession is what’s supposed to have convinced Wolverine that they need to stop teaching kids to fight. Cyclops disagreed so Wolverine left for New York, took everyone he could convince to come with, and founded the Jean Grey School.
So yes, like any major development that results in a new book, it most likely the result of editorial mandate (although, honestly, I believe the mandate was “come up with a reason for Wolverine to form his own team so we can have a book called “Wolverine and the X-Men,” and that the exact nature of the dispute between him and Cyclops was left up to the writers) but at least they gave Wolverine a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day that they could point at to say “this is why he changed his attitude to radically.”
Okay, thanks for that, ZZZ.
“Marvel probably realizes what an embarrassment it is to have this book…trail the other core X-Men books by quite some distance on the sales charts.”
Why? This book launched at the same time as the previous iteration as Uncanny X-Men. That book was relaunched for Marvel NOW. This one wasn’t. Seems they knew exactly where they expected sales to be.
ive been enjoying W&tXM, and i think the hellfire saga works just fine as just another arc, the kind of story this book typically does. i dont think it has enough substance to work as the big epic where all the various subplots finally come together – and to be fair, thats what its clearly trying to be – but if you let that expectation go, i think its good fun.
and the art is GORGEOUS.
You have to judge a book on its own terms. My problem is that I have no idea what the terms of this book are supposed to be.
I enjoy it, but there is something less than satisfactory about it.
Quire and Idie are both characters I found interesting before this book, but I feel like WATXM has ignored much of what we know about these characters – often for the sake of laughs.
Can’t figure out why they haven’t given more attention to the likes of kid gladiator and kid apocalypse.
The Hellfire kids are annoying. There’s a book where you could have antagonists like them, but I don’t think it can be an x-book. How the hell is anyone supposed to take Beast seriously as a member of the illuminati when he is getting his ass handed to him by 10 year old idiots?
How the hell is anyone supposed to take the Illuminati seriously?
halapeno says:
“”Sorry, what? Wolverine’s school is supposed to be about kids not doing any fighting? Is this the same Wolverine who took Kitty’s side in the “Professor Xavier is a Jerk!” story?
.
.
.
Hard to believe he pulled a 180 on what seemed to be a long held philosophy. What prompted that?””
The point of Wolverine’s argument though was that Kitty wasn’t a kid, at least not in the same sense as the New Mutants were. They were at the school primarily to learn how to use their powers. Kitty was at the school to be one of the X-Men, and her being a student was secondary or tertiary to that role. His viewpoint can be envisioned as more of giving weight to the needs of the individual than necesarily wanting to keep people out of danger. Kitty was a lonely adrenaline junkie who needed the X-Men as an outlet and surrogate family. The kids at Wolverine’s school in WatXM are just kids that need a safe place to study and learn how to control their abilities. People like Kitty and Jubilee and Armor also made informed choices to become soldiers, and had a chance to back out, whereas the pre-schism kids like Idie were being forced into a more militant role by Scott’s paranoia whether they wanted to or not.
From what I remember, the New Mutants were at the school because Charles Xavier was possessed by an evil alien bug and he wanted to eat or impregnate them.
That’s why he subconsciously recruited them.
It also wasn’t particularly relevent to New Mutants itself, as a book. I dont think it was ever actually mentioned in NM itself–that was an uncanny x-men plot, and ended with the crossover issue where the teams first met each other. With the exception of Karma, they were all kids whose powers had put them in danger, and who had no control over them. They were also a group of teenagers who had no other access to secondary education, and who didn’t sign up to become superheroes.
“Idie long since left Planet Anything I Can Relate To and was last seen passing Pluto at high speed.”
Heh. So true.
I’ve decided I’m dropping this book after the Battle of the Atom crossover unless it looks like there will be a large shift to justify keeping it. It’s supposed to be the “comedic” book, but as Daibhid said, that’s not what you want in a “core” book. And unlike B:TBATB, it’s NOT FUNNY. Comedy is one of those things that’s different for everyone, but I rarely found myself enjoying the humor in this book. And it’s certainly not enough to overcome the ludicious villains and rampant mischaracterization (Quire, Husk). I like Warbird and would like to see her get used more, but none of the kids do anything for me.
It’s a shame because I loved issue #24 – Aaron clearly has the chops for writing more standard fare, but the wacky stuff has dropped far short for me.
The constant over-wackiness means WatX can never leave any space to either have proper plot or to say anything about any of the characters. What characterisation there is is consistently one-note: Quire hates everything. Idie hates herself. Wilhelmina kills puppies, because LOL. There aren’t any jokes, just the wacky. Having the very occasional moment where the characters break from their established personality substitutes isn’t anywhere near enough, and so far when that does happen they fall straight back into the routine anyway.
@Brendan:
Do you think WATXM allows such a general sense of continuity? I don’t think so.
Not to mention that the Hellfire Kids were only “credible” villains through raw power, being able to just throw out whatever phlebotnium seemed wackiest at the time– instead of coming up with genuinely clever schemes, they just threw out brain slugs or Wendigo potions or murder circus mind control or whatnot. In that sense, they didn’t actually challenge the X-Men, they just bent the universe’s rules to the fluidity of an Axe Cop comic. Except that Jason Aaron doesn’t have the excuse of being five years old.
A “surreal young generation” is going to and always should be slaughtered by a serious, logical older generation if you’re talking any sort of physical confrontation.
I dunno. I enjoy reading it, and the art is marvelous, but if I spend any time thinking about it, I like it less.
Question about the Siege Perilous: Is there any basis for its use here as (a) super-duper power-up machine or (b) mirror prison from Superman 2? I missed a lot of X during the 90s, but from what I recall, it was more of a personal retcon portal.
Axe Cop is actually a really good reference point for most of what WatX has been, particularly the Hellfire kids.
So is it Internet acceptable to like WatXM if I add a disclaimer that I also like axe cop?
Excalibur #42-50 by Alan Davis was a nice mixture of comedy, adventure, and drama. If Wolverine and the X-Men is anything like that, maybe I’ll give it a try.
@Mike Eidson – It’s really not, but that seems to be the tone Jason Aaron is going for with the upcoming Amazing X-Men kicking off in a month or two. You might want to hold off and just jump on that one once it’s out.