The X-Axis – 6 June 2010
It’s a podcast weekend, and the latest episode of House to Astonish will be up… ooh, any minute now, probably. We recorded it earlier today. This week, Al and I talk about Bulletproof Coffin, Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Justice League: Generation Lost.
Also this weekend, I have been wrestling with an HP Photosmart Premium C309g that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the existence of my wifi network, or indeed any other ones. This isn’t very interesting, I know, but it has taken up a disproportionate amount of my weekend, so I thought I’d share it with you anyway.
Avengers Prime #1 – Marvel seem to be slipping back into the habit of overexpanding their main franchises. As if three ongoing titles wasn’t enough, this is a miniseries about the three “prime” Avengers – Iron Man, Thor and the original Captain America. This one is set in the immediate aftermath of Siege, and I suppose it’s technically an epilogue. It seems to be basically the story that completes the reconciliation between the three founders, in order to get things in place for the relaunch. At one point, they’d have done this story as a bridge between Siege and the relaunch of Avengers, but instead it’s been hived off into a separate mini – one that’s shipping on an incredibly slow schedule, by the way.
Basically, our three heroes are helping out in the aftermath of the Siege when they get sucked through a stray portal and stranded in obscure parts of Asgard. So they’re separated at first, and presumably they’ll end up teaming up and… well, you know the drill. It’s quite good, actually. Brian Bendis has seemed a bit uncomfortable writing the Asgardians’ dialogue before – it really doesn’t fit with his naturalist style – but he’s getting the hang of it now, perhaps because he seems willing to let Asgard be somewhere that isn’t particularly realistic at all. Artist Alan Davis sounds like he ought to be a style clash with Bendis, but he turns out to fit quite well; he gives the story a sort of retro epic feel that balances out Bendis’ style, and he knows how to get the dramatic (and comic) timing right. Better than I was expecting.
Bulletproof Coffin #1 – See the podcast, but this is a six-issue mini by David Hine and Shaky Kane. The concept is hard to nail down, but basically, a guy discovers a bunch of Silver Age comics that shouldn’t exist, and which seem to be bleeding through into the real world. It’s part EC pastiche, part David Lynch framing story, and all thoroughly odd. Kane’s slightly awkward art isn’t exactly instant, but it builds a good atmosphere of nervy weirdness. Really odd, and the cover seems almost perversely calculated to drive off casual readers, but well worth your time.
Franken-Castle #17 – The comic formerly known as Punisher. I haven’t been buying this, but I’ve heard good things about it, and it’s about to do a two-month crossover with Dark Wolverine, so I thought I’d see what it’s up to. As you may be aware, the Punisher was cut to pieces by Daken a few months ago, and has been resurrected by the Legion of Monsters as, well, Frankenstein. It’s a gleefully ludicrous change of direction for the book, and naturally Rick Remender and Roland Boschi play it dead straight. I mean, it’s completely ridiculous, but it’s completely ridiculous in a good way. The art is fantastic, and there’s something quite endearing about the way the Punisher seems to be treating this as merely a mild inconvenience in his ongoing war against crime. Obviously there’s a shelf-life on this story (and you’ll note that the Punisher’s looking very healthy in the house ads for Shadowland), but it’s surprisingly fun.
The Great Ten #8 – Originally a ten-issue miniseries, now cut to nine – so either there’s a swerve where one of the characters gets killed, or that “each issue focusses on a different team member” structure is a bit screwed. It’s a shame that this book hasn’t done better, as Tony Bedard and Scott McDaniel, working within a fairly loose overall story, have basically been fleshing out the team into viable characters, many of whom have neat little origin stories of their own. This issue, it’s Shaolin Robot, a martial arts robot who speaks in I-Ching hexagrams. Obviously, as a character, he’s a bit elliptical – but Bedard uses him here as an excuse to do an entertaining short about a clockwork Terracotta Army, an endearingly crazy idea. I just hope Bedard has some plan to bring this series in at nine issues without compromising the structure too much, because the standard has generally been kept up well.
Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1 – Again, see the podcast, but we liked this. It’s not perfect, but its problems are largely a function of writer Jim McCann trying to work with the characters’ history, and running up against the fact that, for example, Hawkeye’s villains are a bit rubbish. But there are big-picture reasons why you might want to cover this territory straight away. I like McCann’s take on the characters; there’s a good central relationship between the two title characters, and Mockingbird’s defensiveness is being written well. David and Alvaro Lopez’ art is good, dynamic stuff with a nice clean feel to it. Oh, and Dominic Fortune’s in it, if you’re a fan. Goodness, I’m in a positive mood this week.
I, Zombie #2 – I’m still not quite sure what I make of this. It’s part a black comedy soap opera with “monster” characters who are quite normal really, and part a story about Gwen investigating the murder of the last guy whose brain she ate. There’s a slightly stilted feel to the whole thing, but there are also some lovely ideas, like the vampire paintballing company. I hate to say it, but I’m not quite sure Mike Allred is the right artist for this – maybe it’s just me, but while he’s an excellent artist, I find his style gives the story a slightly ironic sheen which it might be better without. It’s okay, but I’m not gripped.
Sweet Tooth #10 – Billed as an interlude in the “Captivity” storyline, this is the closest we’ve come yet to finding out where Gus actually came from. Gus gets hypnotised by the scientist, and tells us all what he remembers about his early life. This is a lovely series, and I think the reason it works is because, even though we don’t really know what’s going on, we certainly know a lot more than the heartbreakingly naive Gus, who is always one step behind even us, and is frequently doing the equivalent of standing in the path of an ongoing truck while the reader shouts “Move, you fool!” But at the same time, Gus doesn’t come across as stupid, simply excusably ignorant and out of his depth. It’s really hard to write a basically ineffective protagonist without the audience losing patience with them, but Jeff Lemire’s pulling it off wonderfully here.
Giant-Size X-Men Forever #1 – The only X-book this week! This is a sort of transitional issue between the first and second years of Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever. It’s priced at four dollars, but that gets you 32 pages of original story, plus a reprint of X-Men #108. That’s the first Claremont/Byrne issue and, by the way, the one where Claremont first tries to explain what Phoenix is – with a load of blather about the Kaballah that suggests Grant Morrison’s take on the character isn’t so wide of the original premise. Anyhow, the purpose of this story is to write out Charles Xavier, who gets hauled off to the Shi’ar Empire again. I’m fine with getting rid of him – he’s a character who often seems to get in the way of telling stories, partly because he’s so impractically powerful – but this isn’t a particularly good story. It’s another one where the Shi’ar Empire suddenly get it into their heads that they have to do something wholly unreasonable because the plot demands it. It’s got art by Mike Grell, but the heavy inking isn’t particularly attractive. On the other hand, it’s nice to see Claremont bringing in the early nineties X-Men whom he relegated to the background in the first year. And I’m strangely looking forward to the next story, guest starring the early nineties Avengers – Spider-Woman, Thunderstrike, the albino Vision…
Well, for the HP Photosmart you probably have to reinstall the network drivers. Go to the device manager, expand the network adapters and on the adapter right click and select uninstall. When you restart your computer, it will automatically detect it and install it properly. In case it doesn’t detect it or fails to install it(if you have an older version of windows), go to the manufacturer’s site and download the wifi drivers and install them manually
Thanks, but to be clear, it’s not that my computer can’t detect the printer. It’s the printer itself that can’t detect any wifi signals.
Sorry, i wrote before thinking.
Maybe there is an incompatibility with your router’s settings. Maybe here you might find more help http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02114394&tmp_task=solveCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3793676
Grrrrr I hate printers. They never, ever, ever, ever work as they should, and they inevitably eat up lots of time you’d wanted to use for something much more enjoyable.
Printers are the bane of my existence.. Nice reviews, I haven’t really been bothered with Punisher for a good while but that does sound like ridiculous fun
Whatever your wireless printer issues, they can’t be any worse than dealing with old dot matrix printer jams – what with the track of dotted paper getting out of line and ruining everything for everyone.
Also, when was the last time only one X-Book shipped? And a “non-616” one, to boot.
It’s hard to beat Cyclops PUNCHING GLADIATOR, the closest thing the Marvel U. has to a real Superman clone.
I was surprised by how much I liked Hawkeye & Mockingbird. I wasn’t too interested, but this was a pretty excellent first issue.
iZombie is definitely sort of a strange one. I’m hanging in though. It’s a charming book, and even if he is sort of miscast, I still always like to see Mike Allred.
I thought Avengers Prime was pretty dire actually (art aside of course). It doesn’t tie up with the timeline of Siege #4 (it can only happen before Steve sees the President, but everyone’s acting like he already has) and it pushes Steve out of character just to have him bickering with Tony.
And then nothing of any importance can really happen because the three of them are pretty much still all acting the same in Avengers #1, which comes afterwards.
@Martin,
I agree. That’s actually the thought that went across my mind, and it doesn’t help that this thing is bi-monthly and by the time it’s done, those three “prime” avengers will have a completely different dynamic because of all the books they’re already in. This should have just been a one-shot to get it all out the way. Sending them on a random adventure before even “starting” the main goal of this mini seems… odd. I also wondered about the timing because Steve is in his new costume and not his cap gear, Clint is in his Hawkeye gear and not his Ronin stuff (Where’s Echo, btw?), and it just didn’t fit the shift from Siege #4 to Avengers #1. Ironically, just like the Sentry errors, this is all written by Bendis, who apparently isn’t keeping track of his own continuity… or maybe it’s just an artist error or a combo of both? Does Marvel still have editors?
Where’s Echo, btw?
Do we care? In an Avengers context, at least?
Ironically, just like the Sentry errors, this is all written by Bendis, who apparently isn’t keeping track of his own continuity
Usually he is a stickler for his own continuity and ignores everyone else’s, so this is new for him.
THUNDERSTRIKE???
Even if it’s just in one of the Forever books, this made my day. It’s been, what, a decade since he was even mentioned?
Considering his previous event series, Bendis isn’t a stickler for any continuity, even his own. He’s been quite willing to change things at any moment, randomly throws out stuff, and in general gives the appearance of making everything up as he goes along.
Admittedly, it doesn’t help the overall appearance when other writers come along and try to make some kind of sense of Bendis’ stories, as while it might make some specific things a bit more logical, it makes the whole even more chaotic.
You’d think that an editor would be involved at some point, to provide some manner of consistency…
I’m still confused by the last scene of Bulletproof Coffin: Is he seeing himself on the screen or is he actually experiencing it, or maybe both (I think I’ll go for the last option). I liked the book, but don’t really care for the art. At $4 an issue I guess I’ll just wait for the collection (if it’ll be collected).
Are you going to check out Meta 4 (Ted McKeever)?
Let’s see..
Steve leaves Asgard and goes see the President the day Siege ends. He becomes the new SHIELD director. (New Avengers Finale)
[Steve, Thor, Iron-Man and the whole gang goes back to Asgard (the same day, probably the day after ?) to evaluate the damage.]
Steve, Thor, Iron-Man start arguing like children. (Avengers Prime)
Day or days after, reunion of a new Avengers team in the Stark/Avengers/Sentry/Asgard tower. (Avengers v4 #1)
I can definitely see Avengers Prime happening the day after Siege. Every-one goes back to see if they can help.
Delpire: the last scene has Newman’s boys watching their father discover the Coffin Fly’s costume via the old man’s telly, which Newman had moved to the family attic (the Sanctum Sanctorum) earlier in the story.
Don’t know why they’re wearing Wolfman/Frankenstein masks, though.
Funnily enough, the buzzing that I so predictably connected with You-Hyphen-Know-Hyphen-Who is probably more like the near-hypersonic buzzing of a camera or other surveillance device.
//\Oo/\\
@Matthew Craig
Thanks, I missed the t-shirts and presumed the kids were supposed to be action figures, they seem rather small compared to the comics and the bottle.
Avengers Prime looked like it picked up moments after Siege was done (and that’s how most people reviewed it). Also, are we counting in Captain America: Reborn? I assumed the Cap/president scene in Siege (?) was the pared down version of that conversation.
This’d be easier to keep track of if Marvel were still rigorous with keeping their character timelines in check.
@wanderer
That scene in Cap Reborn was just the president giving Steve a pardon for what happened in Civil War. It happened before Siege.
Jeff: The trouble is, everyone’s acting as if Asgard’s only just fallen. The background characters are only just making a list of who’s missing, the emergency relief helicopters are only just bringing stuff in. It’s a bit of a stretch that they couldn’t have gotten all that done within a day (or put the fires out, given, you know, superheroes).
The main problem is Heimdall, who Thor says is gravely injured, but who turns up ok at the Avengers Tower party (which happens the same day as Steve meeting the President, as Thor says so in Siege #4). So AP has to take place before Steve sees the President the next morning.
The continuity of Prime doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that it was like, £3.50 and I read it in about 2 minutes.
I loved Sweet Tooth though.