X-Men: Worst X-Man Ever
Max Bemis, the singer from Say Anything, has written a fair few comics down the years, but Worst X-Man Ever is his first miniseries to land in my remit. It’s weird. There are two very different ideas jostling for space in this series, and while they’re plainly meant to dovetail, they don’t quite make it. The result is ambitious and often entertaining, but in the end result it falls frustratingly short of hitting all its targets.
Fair warning, by the way: I’m going to give away the ending, because it’s kind of key to how the whole thing fits together (or is meant to, at any rate). And it is an interesting book, if nothing else, so there are certainly good reasons why you might want to read it first.
Let’s get a couple of other important points out of the way first. This is a good creative team. Bemis has decent pacing, a good eye for teen angst, and some clever lines of dialogue. So if this is a bit of a reach-exceeds-his-grasp review, that’s more a case of over-ambition than of any problem with the fundamentals. And Michael Walsh’s art is wonderful. He’s a strong storyteller, he’s good on the little acting details that add depth to his characters, and he keeps everyone firmly familiar even while working in his own style. And they have to be familiar for this to work, because the whole point is “normal kid drawn into the established world of the X-Men” – this is not the time to reinvent character designs. As far as I can see, his biggest previous assignment at Marvel was on Secret Avengers, and he certainly deserves higher profile work to come.
So, to the concept(s). And issue #1 quickly sketches out the premise. Bailey is the normal teenager who doesn’t stand out at school and wishes he did. This has been done a million times, of course, but that’s because it’s universal; he’s got his own voice, and he works as the lead. His parents break the news to him that they’re mutants, which means that he probably is too. Bailey is predictably delighted at the prospect of standing out from the crowd, and is whisked off to the X-Men’s school for testing.
Naturally, it turns out that Bailey is indeed a mutant. He can make himself explode. He can’t put himself back together afterwards or anything. He can just blow up. Once. Permanently. Which, for all practical purposes, is not really a power at all. But when his parents get wiped out by a passing Sentinel attack, Bailey winds up as the least impressive student at the X-Men mansion, as the team wonder vaguely what the hell they’re going to do with him. So he gets a suit of armour, which doesn’t work out well (in a “sued by a henchman” riff that’s been done better in She-Hulk), and he gets shopped around the satellite teams as an intern, to no great success. Around the same time, a pair of twins called Rags and Riches show up at the school, with Rags as the unrequited love interest, and Riches as her annoying brother. And of course some baddies have a go at trying to enlist him as an assassin, which is at least something his powers would be good for, but he dithers about that too.
Then things go a bit odd, as Bailey more or less randomly bumps into a teenage mutant called Miranda who turns out to be ludicrously powerful, with the ability to alter reality on a whim. When he enlists her as a student, he asks Beast why all the ultra-powerful mutants haven’t just wiped everyone out by now. It’s not an unreasonable question, but Beast’s answer takes the story on a weird lurch into metafiction, as he explains that the universe has “a mythical narrative with its own sense of self-preservation” which prevents people from straying too far from the predetermined cycles. The word “continuity” is used, and Joseph Campbell gets a mention for some reason.
The claim being made here, in other words, is that it’s simply built into the nature of the Marvel Universe that certain things can’t happen because they’d break the story, and that Hank and Miranda both know this. Miranda can do anything, but she won’t, because then the plot would derail. And it gets more meta from here, as issue #4 starts openly acknowledging that the Marvel Universe is built on the illusion of change, and that other characters are vaguely aware of it. The X-Men are not really the best example of this, since the idea of them running a mutant Hogwarts actually is a genuine change that came forty years into the franchise and stuck – but whatever. Xavier is given a really odd speech in which he obliquely acknowledges that the X-Men can never really achieve anything (because then the story would end), that their history is “all blurred into an amorphous semblance of time”, and that he keeps going because he’s “fighting for a collection of moments”. None of which is all that off the mark as a description of how X-Men history actually works, if we’re being honest.
The final issue then takes place in a dystopian future where Riches has killed Xavier and wound up as ruler of the world, which largely seems to mean indulging his ego in petty tormenting of the remaining X-Men, including Bailey, all of whom seem to have given up any pretence of actually resisting him. Miranda shows up after years away to explain that she skipped the intervening years (i.e., the ones we didn’t see, because she’s a meta-character), and then more or less claims to be the custodian of Marvel Universe continuity, using her reality-rewriting powers to bring about the sliding timeline and the revision of characters like Nick Fury. She claims that she can’t set things straight, without explaining why. As you’ve probably figured, the series ends with Bailey using his powers to kill Riches in a suicide bombing, after which Miranda apparently restores the timeline – though what we actually see on the final page isn’t the Marvel Universe, but a rejection of Bemis’s pitch for the series we’ve just been reading.
Like I said, very meta.
So, there are two big ideas here: “background mutant with useless power feels overshadowed in the X-Men’s school” and “omni-powerful meta-character turns out to be the guardian of continuity”. Do they connect in any satisfying way? Not especially, no, and that’s where we get into trouble. The idea, I think, is supposed to be that Bailey and Miranda are soulmates, both being incongruously normal, and both being relegated to the sidelines because their powers are effectively unworkable as an element in any normal superhero story. But Miranda is a shadowy and underdeveloped character, who never really progresses beyond her meta gimmick. She’s probably the least rounded person in the book (though Riches isn’t that far behind). The parallel is dubious, since Bailey’s powers don’t really break the story in quite the same way that Miranda’s would.
And the plot mechanics of the final issue are obscure at best. Why doesn’t Miranda just put things back? Well, from what we’ve been told in earlier issues, the obvious explanation would be that she can’t use her powers on that scale because it breaks the story. Fair enough… but then, why can she do it after Bailey explodes? Because the rules are different after the big finale? That sort of makes sense in terms of her character, but it doesn’t feel like it has anything much to do with Bailey. Or is the idea supposed to be that she’s allowed this whole timeline to develop in order to indulge his desire for a world where he matters? That feels vaguely monstrous too. It just doesn’t seem to all fit together.
For that matter – and this is a lesser point – if you’re going to try and offer an in-story explanation for the sliding timeline, it feels like your book should probably take place at some broadly recognisable point in continuity. The status quo for most of this series is some sort of mash-up of 90s and 2000s X-Men, which is all well and good if you’re going for a generic X-Men set-up. But Miranda’s claim isn’t that she rewrites the Marvel Universe on a whim, it’s that she’s been responsible for the changes we’ve seen over the years – and parking the story in some sort of pocket universe feels like it plays against that.
This is frustrating, because the book was sailing along nicely until it didn’t stick the ending. The two threads were surely meant to come together in the finale, but they never quite do. Even so, there’s plenty of good material in here, and it’s certainly welcome to have something like this in the line. But it doesn’t manage to bring its ideas together in a way that fully satisfies.
I agree, the comic was interesting but ultimately unfulfilling.
I took the bit at the end as Miranda not changing anything until Bailey finally proves his worth and does something important. Which is horribly depressing to think his only worth wss as a suicide bomber, but there you go.
1) Kot and Walsh’s Secret Avengers was a really fun book, actually. The Derrida and Borges stuff kinda worked in that they weren’t taken too seriously.
2)Is it just me or did Bemis slip through some questionable use of language? I’d have to go back and check, but I seem to remember Hank misusing the word “infinitesimally” in a way that signaled to me that Bemis made a mistake rather than part of the ongoing riff on Hank making unnecessarily opaque statements.
3) I did, ultimately, enjoy this series and would check out future work by Bemis should it appear.
Joseph, Beast did say that. I remember because it got me thinking I must be wrong about what “infinitesimal” means. I’m smarter than Hank McCoy!
Well, I was thinking of giving this a read…but after this review, I think I’ll pass.
Paul, I haven’t read that many old issues of X-Men, so I’m confused and curious about what you said regarding the school. Wasn’t the school there from the first incarnation of the book? In what way was it introduced 40 years in?
Michael Walsh is terrific, but he’s definitely being pigeonholed as the “quirky comedic niche comic artist”. In between Secret Avengers and this, he also did the (fantastic, in my opinion) “Hank Johnson, Agent of Hydra” one-shot that they could really have done any time, but did in Secret Wars to get more attention. I’m not sure whether they’re right or not in their view of Walsh’s work. On the one hand, he proved in Secret Avengers he has serious chops when it comes to action scenes. On the other hand, he’s so hilarious that it does tend to make everything come off as comedy even when that’s not the intention.
Secret Avengers was a really really weird book, but I kept having the awkward feeling that some of what came off as stilted humor was actually Kot, totally serious, thinking he was being profound. Yes, the Derrida, but also the “love conquers all” ending, with its giant genetalia monsters. I don’t think that was a joke. I might have thought it was a joke, if not for Kot’s “Winter Soldier” having a nearly beat-for-beat identical “love conquers all” anticlimactic ending, complete with sentient penis. Michael Walsh covered the bizarre tonal shifts by making it all seem like comedy, when actually it was just bad writing. It sounds like something similar may have happened here with an inconsistent tone. (I read only the first issue of this miniseries and decided it wasn’t for me.)
So Walsh does make everything feel comedic, but as I’m writing this I’m realizing how much I would love for him to replace Adam Kubert on Mark Waid’s “All-New All-Different Avengers”, so yeah. He needs higher-profile work. I don’t know how likely it is that he’ll get it.
The school as a full-scale boarding school stems from the Morrison run and is very likely influenced by Harry Potter. Before that, the school was really just a cover identity for the X-Men’s HQ. The very early issues treat it as a tiny private school with five pupils, but drop that almost immediately by having them “graduate”. The New Mutants did attend regular classes, but again, there were only a handful of them and they only lasted about six years. But the current version of the school is a 21st century addition.
If Bailey was useless, and Miranda all-powerful, why didn’t she alter his power so it was more useful…or at least not a one-shot?
Because that would break the story by tanking its central premise, and the one limitation of her power is that she has to be subtle enough not to break the story.
“and is very likely influenced by Harry Potter”
They even had Houses…er, I mean, Squads for a while too, remember? New Mutants and Hellions and Corsairs and Paladins…I think that was in the period after Morrison left and before M-day…
The meta-idea of “I can undo a story that’s ben finished, but not affect one in progress” feels like it could be profound, but not in the way it’s executed here.
This was a digital mini, really right? Is it coming to print?
The first issue of the print series hits either this Wednesday or next for the US shops.
Just posting to say that I really liked Mory Buxner’s comment above. I hadn’t made the connection with the writer’s other work.
The school suggests to me that rather than being a civil rights metaphor, or something something sexuality, modern-day X-Men would actually work as a take on neurodiversity and the politics that have arisen around it.
For example, there’s a notion that high functioning people with ASD are presenting an idealised notion of what those disorders can actually involve and their self-actualisation is diverting funds away from low functioning people and their families who have huge struggles with mood regulation, severe comorbidities and self-injurious behaviour.
Luckily I’m not an X-writer so don’t have to worry about the thorny implications of publishing such a take.
In that vein, Jay Ediden wrote a really great post on Autism, the X-Men, and useful forms of representation: http://www.rachelandmiles.com/xmen/?p=4081
I’m gonna have to read the whole story to see if I agree with this review. It feels like there may be “artistic subtlety” involved here. Also, it sounds like fun.
Below are some links to arguments against the “X-Men ripped off Harry Potter” notion. When I was watching the X-Men cartoon in the 90’s, my understanding was two-fold. 1) there are probably SOME other mutant kids around, but they aren’t our focus. 2) there aren’t TONS of students, because mutants are kind of a rare thing.
The idea of having/focusing on large classes of mutants and having the traditional X-team teaching mundane science and history classes may be a newer thing, but it has always been the place where young mutants are taught to control their powers until they come of age to become active heros. That’s my understanding, anyway.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116401/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
View this TV movie / failed pilot at your own risk…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2woRmWMhm0
“The fourth generation of mutant teenagers, featured in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (2001–2004)…”
Quote taken from the wikipedia listing about the X-Mansion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Mansion
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Morrison ripped off Hogwarts. The X-Men had had small trainee teams going back to the early 80s. But I think the vast success of Harry Potter at the turn of the century had a lot to do with the decision to drastically scale up that side of the franchise – on Morrison’s side, because the boarding school story was a neat genre to play with, and on Marvel’s side, because Harry Potter had showed this was a safe direction.
Wasn’t it actually, of all things, the first Singer movie that first portrayed the school as a proper, full-blown school?
Actually, yes, fair point. But Harry Potter was already four books into the series by the time of that movie.
Harry Potter probably influenced the idea of the named Squads more than anything.
Yeah, but even then we’re talking about superhero squads. Even the New Mutants and Generation X had their own distinctive names, even though they were just X-Men training squads, just like the post-Morrison era kids.
I think that it really is just an influence from the movie. Singer needed a way to justify how a “School for Gifted Youngsters” could exist while most of the recognizable X-Men were adults.
Yes, they had names, but the teams themselves were never divided up into smaller squads with individual teachers, like we did with the students post-Morrison.
Didn’t the individual squads come in the “New Mutants/New X-Men” book? I seem to remember during Morrison’s run, they were all just students there. I thought it wasn’t until the launch of New Mutants in 2003(?) that they divided up into named squads.
And the big difference is that from Morrison onward there were a lot more students. Before that, there were, what, eight, tops in the New Mutants? Nine in Generation X, counting the St. Croix twins?
A better comparison might be the original New Mutants and the Hellions. They even directly referenced that with Emma’s squad.
“Didn’t the individual squads come in the “New Mutants/New X-Men” book?”
I know, that is why I said post-Morrison. It seems like Morrison could have been influenced by the movie, and later creators further influenced by Harry Potter.
“A better comparison might be the original New Mutants and the Hellions”
That is more of a Tri-Wizard tournament thing.