The X-Axis – 13 June 2010
Regular readers will be thrilled to learn that I finally got the printer working. Just a simple matter of taking it back to the shop and getting one that wasn’t broken. Shame it took two tries. I could have sworn Hewlett Packard used to be good for reliability. Still, their customer service helpline’s very good, so I’ll give them credit for that.
Anyway… it’s the first weekend of the World Cup, but for those of you who might not be interested, such as the North American readership – oh, some of you might think you care, but you should see the English – let’s run through this week’s comics.
Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #2 – Have we just given up on completing that last Astonishing X-Men arc, then? Apparently we have. Oh well. In this issue, after getting rid of some local soldiers, the X-Men investigate the weird births in Karere, and then at the end of the issue a bad guy shows up to explain the plot to them. And that’s pretty much it. You know a book’s going to be light on plot when it opens with six straight splash pages, but this one really is a throwback to the days before the backlash against decompression.
As tends to be the case with this sort of comic, it’s a book with some very good bits in it. I like the central idea of digging up another reason for weird births to take place and using that as the springboard for an X-Men story. The dialogue’s punchy. The art’s gorgeous, though it’s clear that Kaare Andrews doesn’t get Emma Frost at all (or regards the character as so stupid that he refuses to pretend to take her seriously, which is understandable, but doesn’t do the story any favours). Frank D’Armata’s colouring is beautiful. But there’s just not enough story to make it a satisfying comic – the pace would be languid even in a collected edition, and it’s way too slow to work in serial format.
Avengers Academy #1 – With this and Young Allies, Marvel are shipping the debut issues of two new teen team books in the same week. Doesn’t seem like the smartest move in the world to me, but Marvel’s scheduling decisions have always tended towards the mysterious. This is the “Heroic Age” replacement for Avengers: The Initiative, with the Avengers training a bunch of rookie superhumans as future superheroes. Much like the original set-up of Avengers: The Initiative, in other words, except that the people in charge are benign.
It’s written by Christos Gage, who has a good track record with off-kilter team books from his days at WildStorm. Artist Mike McKone’s clean superhero look works well for Marvel’s new direction, and strikes a good balance between giving the book a retro feel without making the new characters look generic. The first issue is your classic team book intro – it introduces the cast and sets up the big idea, with a twist on the premise at the end. To be honest, it’s a twist you’ll probably see coming a good twelve pages off, but that doesn’t matter, because it works as a shock for the characters. Juggling the cast of a team book is always tricky, but Gage solves that problem neatly by using the likeable Veil as his main character and giving the others enough panel time to interest us in how they’ll develop. A strong debut.
Daytripper #7 – It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned this one, but Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Vertigo series is one of the strongest books running at the moment. The high concept is that every issue is about a seminal moment in the life of lead character Bras de Oliva Domingos… and they all end with him dying. The stories are out of order, they’re slowly building up a picture of the guy’s life, and the unusual concept turns out to work remarkably well. It’s not so much about the shock value – by this point, there is no shock value. It’s more about “What would this man’s life mean if it stopped right there?” It’s a very clever way of making you look at each story both in isolation and as part of a whole, and the awkwardness of trying to sum up somebody’s life. This particular issue is almost more concerned with the subplot about Bras’ lifelong friend Jorge, but even the fact that the events in this issue aren’t altogether about him contributes to the book’s clever use of multiple perspectives. It veers towards sentimentality at times, but has the quality to pull it off.
Hellbound #2 – This is the Second Coming spin-off miniseries where Cannonball and co go to Limbo to try and rescue Magik. I liked the first issue of this, largely because of the way it used the newer, younger X-characters, who implicitly resented the way they were being pressganged into rescuing a more “important” character from a previous generation. This second issue doesn’t really follow through on that as well as I’d hoped. To be fair, the theme is still there – the “adult” members of the team are duly sidelined as the book picks up on the largely-forgotten Gambit-as-Death subplot from Peter Milligan’s X-Men run, leaving the kids to be our de facto protagonists. And Christopher Yost seems to be trying for a story in which those characters have to decide how hard they’re willing to try and help a character they neither like nor especially care about. The thing is, this second issue gets bogged down in characters wandering around Limbo fighting hordes of demons, and while the story is trying for a “reality shifting around us” horror vibe, the art just gives us a load of generic scenes of superheroes fighting demons. The overuse of letterbox panels doesn’t help either – I guess it might be a deliberate style choice to break up the flow of the action, but this story really does need some sort of flow.
Meta 4 #1 – Ted McKeever’s new book, cheerfully billing itself as “A 5-issue Allegorical Series in Black & White.” And he’s not kidding. In this issue, a man dressed as an astronaut wakes up at an abandoned funfair and wanders around encountering strange people. Taken literally, it’s completely off the deep end; taken metaphorically, it’s hard to know at this stage quite what McKeever’s getting at, other than a vague sense of alienation. But it does have plenty of unsettling atmosphere, and the art is consistently excellent. The device of having characters speak in symbols to reflect the lead character vaguely understanding what they mean is a brilliantly effective one. The ultimate question, though, is whether you have faith that it’ll fall into some sort of shape by the end of the five issues (as it’s presumably meant to) or whether it’ll end up as effectively an extended dream scene. A lot of McKeever’s stories end up falling into the latter category for me, but there’s indisputably something memorable about this issue.
S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 – This year’s internet darling, it seems. Leonardo da Vinci shows up with Renaissance Kirbytech to confront the people now running his Illuminati-themed SHIELD organisation, who are apparently not futurist enough for his tastes. Looks like there’s something about Kaballah in there as well. It’s… If I’m being honest, it’s a book I respect rather than actually enjoy. It’s ambitious, it’s boldly oblivious to commercial considerations, and it’s seemingly trying to combine the Illuminati conspiracy with the mind-expanding weirdness of Silver Age superhero comics. If I’m pushed as to why it doesn’t particularly grab me, I suppose it comes down to a lack of clearly defined characters; it’s a book of ideas rather than people, which would normally be fine for me, except that they’re rather New Age-y ideas. It’s certainly not a bad comic and I’m glad to see something like this getting a shot from Marvel at all, but it doesn’t actually entertain me very much.
Uncanny X-Men #525 – Chapter 10 of “Second Coming” follows the established pattern: rack up the tension a bit more, and chuck in one or two extra plot points. So this issue, something odd happens with Hope’s eyes, X-Force actually arrive in the future, and Legion and Rogue are given roles near the end… and otherwise, it reiterates what we already knew and gives us more fighting. All of which is fine. On a weekly schedule, I think this is working very well, carefully boxing the characters into a corner and doing everything possible to build the sense of “How do they get out of that”? On a monthly schedule this would drag intolerably, but shipping weekly, it’s got real momentum and building the sense that something big must, surely, be coming.
X-Men Forever 2 #1 – Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever enters its second year proper – and yes, the title is officially X-Men Forever 2, it’s in the logo and everything. Back in 1991, by all accounts, Claremont never particularly wanted to hit the reset button and get the X-Men back to the Mansion. It’s often forgotten these days that the previous couple of years had seen some of his most freeform X-Men stories, disbanding the team entirely and more or less reinventing the series as an anthology title. And it looks as though, having served out a year at the Mansion, Claremont is setting out to dismantle that set-up and do something else with the characters instead. The springboard for that, unfortunately, is a rather undermotivated fight with the 1991 line-up of the Avengers, who seem to have been wheeled out mainly so that their battle can provide cover for a necessary plot point at the end of the issue. Still, if Claremont is going off in some completely different direction with his version of the X-Men, and that’s how it looks, then that’s certainly of interest.
Young Allies #1 – Marvel’s other team book launch, by Sean McKeever and David Baldeon, seems to be a sort of twenty-first century New Warriors – a team made up of (mostly) established characters with nothing much in common other than age and relatively obscurity. True, Nomad’s got a back-up strip in Captain America, but the likes of Firestar, Gravity and Arana have been languishing for a while now. Come to think of it, Firestar and Gravity are in the particularly odd position of having respectable in-continuity CVs, which aren’t matched by their following in the real world.
This is, of course, another introducing-the-cast issue. McKeever’s always been a good character writer, and the individual cast members are set up well. What doesn’t come across so strongly is a premise for the book itself, as the first issue basically falls back on the “they team up because they all happened to be passing” schtick. Perhaps we’ll get something stronger next issue. Balancing that, though, is McKeever’s gloriously named villains – a group claiming to be children of established Marvel villains, and billing themselves as the Bastards of Evil. And these guys do seem to have something interesting in their agenda; they seem to be just nihilist wreckers, but the story goes out of its way to give the impression that there’s more to them. That’s a good hook, and I’ll stick around to see where McKeever’s going with that. Plus, they’re called the Bastards of Evil, and how can you not love a team called that?
I was sold on The Young Allies solely on the name ‘Bastards of Evil.’
While I’ve overall enjoyed X-Men Forever, the same Claremont tics that bothered me oh so many a year ago, are starting to eat at me again. Kitty’s changed her look AGAIN and now has Japanese instincts? Rogue and Nightcrawler have switched powers why exactly? Gambit’s walking around in sunglasses and suit and trench coat because …? Am I really supposed to be interested in Kiddy Storm? There’s all this randomness that makes me want to pull my hair out.
“Leonardo da Vinci shows up with Renaissance Kirbytech”
And with that, a’m oot.
I only care enough about Araña to Google her name in order to get the tilde (which my arachnOCD finds as irresistible as Spider-Man’s hyphen), but I wonder how that jibes with the Gauntlet story? I know Mattie Franklin is…off the board, but I’m sure I remem…ber…ah. Yes: she got stuck on public transport during that boss Eric Canete story. CRISIS AVERTED.
And finally: I hadn’t realised that was the format in Daytripper. Bought #1 and made a note to wait for the trade. Iiiinteresting.
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The current schedule has that other Astonishing arc being wrapped up by the end of summer. My respiration is not willfully interrupted.
I’ve ditched ‘X-Men Forever’. When it first started it seemed to have a few interesting plot points that promised to provide stepping stones to a different but worthwhile X-Men continuity. Umpteen issues later and I’ve finally realised that it’s just Claremont changing details for the sake of it while reeling out tired plot scenarios.
On a more positive note, I’ve REALLY been enjoying Second Coming, although I can’t shake off the feeling that the plot isn’t going to be actually resolved come the end of the event. Can’t fathom why I think marvel might do this…
Young Allies duly notes in a footnote that it is set after the “Grim Hunt” arc of Amazing Spider-Man #634-637… which has yet to start and won’t be over for a month. Oops.
You’ve summed up my feelings on SHIELD #2 better than I could. I think I might like it more if I wasn’t constantly being told I should like it more. Speaking of questionable Marvel moves, making Avengers Academy Reptil’s first appearance in the mainstream MU seems a bit odd–seeing that he comes from the light-hearted Super Heroes Squad cartoon, you’d think that putting his debut in a team marked out for their potential to slide into evil would be a bad idea.
Reptil first showed up in an Initiative one-shot last year, but yeah.
I still maintain that Marvel’s scheduling logic is based around the principle that:
1) a hell of a lot of comic readers don’t live close to a store, and can’t make a trip every week. Not all of us can pop into Forbidden Planet on the weekend, Edinburgh-based Paul O’Brien.
2) the kind of people who carefully budget their weekly expenses probably aren’t interested in spending £2-3 for 22 brightly coloured pages with some funny words on them.
Therefore it makes more sense to schedule Young Allies and Avengers Academy on the same week, so that the kind of people who liked Avengers: the Initiative will come in for Avengers Academy, and go “oh, Young Allies”, could be good too.” I know this, because it’s exactly what I did this Saturday.
It’s not like either of those books are going to be impulse buys for the World War Hulks audience.
Bastards of Evil
Bastards of Evil
oh yeah, the illegitimate children of villains.
That is clever for about two minutes.
Personally, I was sold on “Young Allies” based on Al and Paul’s enthusiasm for the name “Bastards of Evil”.
It looks to me as if the principle thing that ties the Young Allies together is that they’re all a bit “walking wounded”. Nomad’s lost her world, Firestar keeps trying to put her superhero life behind her, Arana’s lost her powers, and Toro’s backstory speaks for itself. Granted, this has meant giving Gravity this whole “disillusioned” schtick which wasn’t really there the last time we saw him, when he stitched Eternity back together and saved the universe, but it’s sort of part and parcel of the whole “Spider-Man”/”Nova”/”Darkhawk” lineage.
On people’s view of SHIELD 2, I’d like to quote Hansel:
“Sting would be another person who’s a hero. The music he’s created over the years, I don’t really listen to it, but the fact that he’s making it, I respect that.”
I just bought the second TPB of X-Men Forever. It was fine. I’m really disappointed that Claremont didn’t follow through on the premise of picking up *exactly* where he left off. There are to many random unexplained differences that makes it feel as though he’s just doing whatever captures his fancy. I don’t feel as though there’s any way to become invested in the story, because there are no ground rules; anything can be different just on Claremont’s whim. I wouldn’t care if he wanted to restart back at UXM #275, UXM #269 or whatever; I just wish there was some sense of continuity.
I honestly think that’s the first time I’ve heard that argument for block-shipping by similarity. Kudos!
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I wish Claremont had just picked up at issues #279 or whenever it was he left Uncanny instead of continuing, then reversing, the X-Men vol2 #1-3 setup that he wasn’t really interested in then or now. I really loved that era of Uncanny where the team had fallen apart and were wandering the world and were slowly being brought back together leading up to the Shadow King thing on Muir Isle (which he didn’t even get to complete). I’ve got the first 3 trades of Forever and I’m enjoying it. However, if he’d continued the stories he was telling when he left (the first time on Uncanny and not the X-Men vol 2 post-script), in the style he was using at the time, I’d be much happier. Continue with the team he had (well, make it Storm, Wolvering, Coloossus, Rogue, Psylocke, Gambit and add Kurt & Kitty back in while ditching Banshee, Forge, Jubilee) Everything seems so completely schizo at the moment and characters and plot points and relationships have jumped at a speed and frequency that’s causing whiplash. Looking forward to getting the rest of the trades, and if he is moving the book in a different direction with the second volume, I’m interested in seeing where it goes. I think Claremont has been so shell-shocked with the ever-changing status quo, editorial mandates, and fear of being yanked off a book or cancelled at any given moment that he feels like he’s got to spill every idea into a book just to get them out and keep them action-packed before the plug is pulled. I’d really like to see him settle down into the groove he was mining back in the late 80’s before he left.
I’m not sure I read the same X-Men: Xenogenesis issue as Paul… Leaving aside the matter of individual taste, I’m not sure how Hulkverine, five-fingered-Beast and eighties fetish-haired Storm got by editorial, and that’s before you mention Emma’s tertiary mutation into a super-deformed and overly tactile dwarf prostitute. Why exactly, come to think of it, was she kissing people to pass on English like it was an acute case of herpes? Even if these Astonishing books are meant to be somewhat stand-alone, which doesn’t make sense if you’re tying them into the ghost boxes morass, then making one of the main characters more unlikable than she’s been in years seems an odd choice. It just irritated me, more than it probably deserved, but I really couldn’t see point in that comic at all.
As far as art goes, I keep finding myself wondering when Storm and Emma decided to switch hair length. Emma’s hair hasn’t been that long in years, and now she has uber huge boobs and apparently had her butt enhanced and keeps shoving it in our faces. Is this soft-core porn? Also, there was one panel during the early part of the issue where I thought Beast was a gorilla. This art is really hit and miss for me. Character wise… this Emma seems grossly out of character for what she now is… and I’m not talking about her Jean-lite incarnation. I’m really starting to miss the sarcastic and brash, yet ultimately smart and useful incarnation.
I liked Young Allies, but I wish more was done to make them more unique. They’re falling into Young Avenger territory as it stands, so if that continues, we’ll have another canceled book on our hands.
As for the Emma kiss… she wanted to be a bit promiscuous again, so she made up a convenient reason to “Starfire out.” That sounds cooler than sexy filler panel, right? 😛
I think Gravity was last seen being shipped off to lead the Great Lakes Initiative team, much to his horror, so I can buy him being disillusioned.
My main problem with Young Allies was that the art was quite hard to follow at times, which meant that the Bastards got incredibly short changed. In the fight scene, they all just start popping up out of nowhere when they get a line and you don’t get a clear look at most of them.
Count me as the one person here who’s actually liking S.H.I.E.L.D., then.
No, I haven’t a clue what’s going on, but I’m intrigued enough that I want to find out. In particular, I was intrigued by the line “Your father hammers on the Shield” (emphasis mine).
And Rennaissance Kirbytech. There is nothing cooler than Rennaissance Kirbytech.
I have been seriously underwhelmed by the Bastards of Evil. A name like that screams out for over-the-top camp; McKeever and Baldeon, however, are playing it tortuously straight and delivering a set of super-powered spree killers with daddy issues. It’s basically Carnage as a bunch of teenagers.
I’m slow. moose n squirrel calling the Bastards of Evil “super-powered spree killers with daddy issues” made me realize Sean McKeever created the same team at DC. They’re the Terror Titans with Marvel supervillain parentage.
Gravity? Didn’t Kirkman kill him off in Marvel Team-Up?
glad you solved the printer problem. and sorry for giving you completelly irrelevant advice last time
Gravity was killed in Beyond! then came back in Fantastic Four. After that he got shuffled round some Initiative teams, ending up with the GLI, he should probably be quite perky that he is back in New York.
One thing I missed at first in Uncanny was that Nimrods come from the future in fives, while the X-Force team is made up of six, presumably leading to a dramatic sacrifice when Cable has to stay behind to shut down the portal while the rest go home.
I remember Gravity died in that Beyond mini where Hood wasn’t as villainous as he’s been since. Then he came back in Fantastic Four when Black Panther & Storm were members.
Yeah, he had some protector-of-the-Universe power that he used us to satisfy Galactus shortly thereafter. I’m not really sure why any of this happened, other than that somebody really wanted to kill Gravity and somebody else really wanted him not to be dead.
Personally, I like the character, so I want him around. Actually, I’m also a fan of Araña (in spite of almost everything she’s ever appeared in), and I like Nomad. And although I don’t care too much about Firestar either way, I really liked McKeever’s recent Firestar one-shot, which was good enough for me.
And I do sort of agree about the Bastards of Evil. I’m giving the book some time, but nothing about them has impressed so far, and the name is actually too ridiculous to take seriously. It feels more like a joke than an actual name for a team.
Also, in regards to Gravity dying in Marvel Team-Up- he may have, but that book wasn’t in-continuity, although it did keep pace with 616 continuity.
Marvel Team-Up wasn’t in continuity? Is there any reason why not? I know the Crusader went on to appear in Avengers: Initiative.
I don’t recall Gravity dying in the book (the Legion of Losers storyline, if I recall), but even if he did, that would have been in an alternate time-line.
I’m also a fan of Araña (in spite of almost everything she’s ever appeared in)
Yeah. Goodness, that series was dull. I kind of liked her appearances in Spider-Girl, though.
You know, actually, looking into it now, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I remember the owner of a comic book shop I used to go to recommending the series, and he told me that is wasn’t in continuity. But there’s nothing online to suggest that (or at least, there doesn’t seem to be much discussion either way, which suggests it is in continuity). Whoops.
Lambnesio: Both of those somebodies being Dwayne McDuffie. He wrote Beyond! and the Fantastic Four story that brought Gravity back. They came out within a couple months of each other so his death was likely always meant to be temporary.
Also, I pretty much grew to like Araña as a part of the larger Marvel fabric following some Civil War-era cameos she made. I liked her as Ms. Marvel’s trainee hero, and I liked her appearance in the Dr. Strange limited by BKV where she was chatting with Iron Fist in the Night Nurse’s waiting room.
Um, even then, that Ms. Marvel series was also not very good (at least not as long as I was reading it, which was more or less up to Civil War).
Marvel Team-Up *was* in continuity, but it did do an arc that ended in a self-cancelling time loop, and which “didn’t happen” as far as any of the characters were concerned. I think Gravity was in that one.
I always meant to read Beyond! Was it any good? It was sort of a secret Wars-y thing, right?
Beyond! was a good read, I thought. Yeah, it was kinda like Secret Wars and “Beyonder” was involved. As for whether Gravity was intended to die and return, I clearly remember a shot at the end of Beyond! #6 that stated Gravity’s story wasn’t over. I also think The Watcher hinted at his future return just before the Fantastic Four story came about (which is, more or less, a sequel to Beyond! although that story arc was nowhere near as good).
As for Gravity’s darker demeanor in Young Allies, it could be attributed to the fact that Siege had just ended and he also had a ton of bad experiences while in the initiative (Skrull Invasion), and he had died and was forced to be a guardian of a floating planet. All of that could have eventually added up in his head and made him consider alternatives.
Beyond! was good. I liked it mainly for Scott Kolins’ art, unfortunately not many people seem to share my opnion. It was fun seeing him get to play around with all those random Marvel characters, his interpretation of the Stranger is the only one I’ve seen that doesn’t make him look like a total doof.
I like Scott Kolins. I’m not sure I like the cel-style shading that they used to colour his Flash comics, though. I think it flattened the art out too much. I dunno, was that it? Maybe there wasn’t enough contrast in the shading.
…whatever happened to that Milleresque cop, anyway?
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I had a couple of Scott Kolins books beforehand, but thumbing through an issue of Flash and discovering the Marv-like grandeur of Chyre was what sold me on Kolins in an instant.
Beyond is one of my favorite books from 2000’s Marvel. Both Dwayne McDuffie and Scott Kolins are creators that, while in no way underused, really deserve a higher profile.
Re: Gravity…
I think he was supposed to die then be reborn as the new Quasar, but then somebody else decided to do some stories about the original Quasar, so Gravity’s storyline had to be rejiggered at the last minute and instead of his death leading to him becoming a new cosmic power-house, it rather anti-climactically led to him just going home and being exactly the same again.