The X-Axis – 14 August 2011
It’s been a busy weekend on the blog, so just to remind you: the Summerslam preview is here, the chart post is here, and this week’s podcast is here.
Which leaves the X-Axis. And since it’s a pretty quite week for new releases, and I’ve already written quite a bit, and I’m rather short of time, I’m just going to stick to the X-books themselves this week. There’s five of them, after all.
Daken: Dark Wolverine #12 – We’re now three issues in to Rob Williams’ first storyline, and his new direction for the book seems to be working nicely. He’s kept the inherited concept of Daken as a scheming manipulator, and Daken’s plan in this issue is indeed a characteristically overelaborate piece of showmanship designed not so much to succeed as to succeed in impractically over-the-top style. Unlike some previous issues, it actually does feel like a properly pre-planned scheme, too.
But Williams’ main addition to the book – other than to generally steer it away from concepts associated with Wolverine – is to get Daken hooked on drugs that screw up his powers and his planning abilities. This makes sense for the character, who’s both bored enough to experiment and overconfident enough to think nothing can go wrong. It also plays on the established theme of Daken’s obsession with control. It gives the character a degree of vulnerability that makes him more interesting as an antihero protagonist – for the first time, instead of trying to convince us that Daken is unbelievably smart and outwitting everyone, the book is building the idea that he could be about to screw it all up. And it gives an excuse for Riley Rossmo to do a few pages of luridly scrawled art that get the hallucinations across nicely.
It’s not the strongest issue that regular artist Matteo Buffagni has done, but it’s fine. The Taskmaster, as guest star, doesn’t get a great deal to do beyond provide a recognisable opponent for the issue, but it’s an amusing change to see him depicted as a mercenary hero cheerfully accepting his applause after completing a job with no actual criminal content. The key thing, though, is that I’m actually intrigued to see where Daken’s story is going now; on that level, it’s a success.
New Mutants #29 – Time for a Fear Itself crossover arc! Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning start from a logical point: Fear Itself involves Asgardian bad guys, Dani Moonstar has a connection to Asgard from back in the day (plus an outstanding deal with Hela), so that’s the way in. So we have Dani being hauled off to Hel to assist with sorting out the troops, while the rest of the New Mutants try to give chase and, uh, botch it quite badly by ending up in the wrong afterlife.
Now that bit of the story is fine. It’s basically using Fear Itself as a springboard to send most of the team off on an unrelated story to kill a few months before Schism. As for the stuff with Dani, well, that’s rather more directly connected to the crossover and not inherently that gripping. I’m also a little thrown off to see that Hela apparently doesn’t know anything about the army invading her lands, which would suggest that she apparently hasn’t been reading the tie-in issues of Journey into Mystery. (Is it really too much to ask that Hela should retain knowledge from earlier parts of the same crossover?)
David Lafuente takes over on art, and I suspect his rather elongated, stylised figures won’t be to everyone’s taste. I’m not quite sure he’s got a handle on the characters yet, either – Cypher’s a lot more expressive than he’s been in a while, for example. But his layouts are strong, he does a good Warlock (which is rare), his background characters actually emote, and his alien worlds are pretty excellent; on the whole, I quite like it, though I suspect his version of the cast will take a bit of getting used to.
Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force #2 – This miniseries really is one of the looser Fear Itself tie-ins. The Serpent’s pretty much absent from this book. Instead, the plot involves an apocalyptic Christian cult who are convinced the crossover means that end of the world is nigh, and are helpfully trying to speed innocent souls on their way to heaven. Mass suicide having proved less popular than they’d hoped, they’re now moving on to plan B, in which they give said souls more of a nudge.
Given the difficulties of writing a self-contained story in the margins of a crossover, this is as good a concept as any. It’s basically a case of the heroes running around fighting maniac cyborgs in an attempt to track down the head bad guy, but hey, it’s a three issue X-Force/Fear Itself crossover, it’s going to be an action story. And the story does make some effort to flesh out the concept instead of simply using it to justify the fight scenes. Simone Bianchi’s doing good work on this series too, keeping the delicacy of earlier work but greatly improving the clarity of storytelling. Not essential, but perfectly fine.
X-Men #15.1 – This, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess. In theory, the Point One issues are supposed to be jumping on points for new readers. So you might expect a story that set up the premise of the book. In fact, this title’s remit is to be the X-Men book that interacts with the rest of the Marvel Universe – X-Men Team-Up, in other words – so what this issue actually contains is a done-in-one story that guest stars the new Ghost Rider.
Does it explain the concept of the X-Men? No. Does it have anything much to do with the concept of the X-Men? No really, no – it’s about an old sorceress who Dani Moonstar used to know, and she isn’t even a regular character in this series. Does it even explain who the Ghost Rider is? No. Does it serve as an introductory issue in any way, shape or form? No. Not at all.
Leave that aside, and you’ve got a fairly stock story about somebody’s past catching up with them, which could have been fleshed out into a half-decent Ghost Rider or Dr Strange story, but ends up just being tacked onto a formulaic Ghost Rider/X-Men team-up. Weak.
X-Men Legacy #253 – The final part of “Lost Legions”, in which, well, Legion’s final errant personalities are outwitted and defeated, and then most of the cast decamp to appear in the next storyline. And… uh, yeah. I’m going to re-read this arc to see if I’m missing something, but it does rather seem like Mike Carey is basically just been having fun with the idea of Legion as a factory for crazy powers, rather than telling a story that adds up to anything in particular. It’s a good final showdown, though, and I’ll grant that I didn’t see the twist coming even though Carey spent a whole issue foreshadowing it, so that certainly worked. I’m just not sure what it was all about.
I’m really loving Lafuente’s Warlock. He doesn’t do much this issue, but the strikingness of his design makes him steal every page he’s on.
I have to say, I think Victor Gischler would be better off writing an all-ages Marvel Adventures X-Men book, as his stories seem to have the emotional depth of an episode of the Get-a-Long Gang. That initial “Death of Dracula” one-shot showed some promise, but of his two X-Men arcs, “Curse of the Mutants” was only satisfying as it compared to the oversaturated sprawl of Fraction’s Uncanny experiment, and the Lizard story was only worthwhile for the Chris Bachalo art. The .1 issue has just crystalized all the things I don’t like about his style. I think I may be dropping this one.
I think the all ages books are, if anything, less forgiving of weak plotting.
I really enjoy Legacy as the book that gives us real change and finds use for previous creators cast off ideas. I think this arc may have been as simple as showing a fixed Legion in action.
On a different note from the post schism ads we have an absence of Cyclops anyone think he may end up a political prisoner?
I think if they need a new Adjective for Gischlers X-Title it would be “Pointless” X-Men. That was my last issue of the title, with Wolverine & The X-Men launching I can’t justify an X-Title with no impact on the main line (If it was the ‘interact with non-X parts of the Marvel Universe’ title, surely it would have been better suited for a Fear Itself tie-in?)
Nice burn, Mr. Morgan!
The premise behind the Point One Initiative should be a simple mission to achieve: write an accessible story that introduces the concept of the series to new readers and serves as a, convenient, jumping on point for those readers. Of the dozen-ish Point One issues I’ve read to date, I can’t even count on one hand the number of books that have actually succeeded in delivering on this premise. To me, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #500.1 is a fine example of the sort of book that this initiative ought to be producing. I can’t understand why the creators seem to be having such difficulty satisfying such a simple edict.
>>I can’t even count on one hand the number of books that have actually succeeded in delivering on this premise.
This implies that there have been more than five such books, but I don’t think that’s what you meant…
Anyway, the Avengers Academy .1 was truly excellent, and fulfilled all of the remits of the program.
The ASM issue was a good, stand-alone issue, but was more of a trailer for the Venom series.
Deadpool wasn’t bad. Actually, it was one of the better issues of the series.
Avengers wasn’t exactly stand-alone, but it was pretty representative of Bendis’ Avengers books.
Secret Avengers was stand-alone, but meh.
That’s all I remember reading, but that’s not an entirely horrible record.
i think the art on new mutants is very charming. i dont think id want the flagship x-men title drawn this way, but it helps giving this satellite title its own flavour.
the art on x-men, on the other hand… unremarkable and kinda ugly.
“‘I can’t even count on one hand the number of books that have actually succeeded in delivering on this premise.’
This implies that there have been more than five such books, but I don’t think that’s what you meant…”
Yeah, pretty sure I meant that I could BARELY count on one hand..(we really need to invent an “edit” button for these blogs) 🙂
I share your thoughts on the Avengers .1s. ASM wasn’t bad. However, for a book that was supposed to, theoretically, introduce a new reader to the current status quo of Spider-Man, it falls down due to Spidey not actually being in it (Peter Parker only made what amounts to a cameo appearance). They should’ve just called it VENOM #0 (VENOM # 0.1?), since that’s what it was.
But, yeah, I suppose my point in a roundabout way is that, yes, X-MEN #15.1 very much failed, in all the ways Paul mentioned, to fulfill the basic remit of what the initiative was intended to achieve.
You observed, “but it does rather seem like Mike Carey is basically just been having fun with the idea of Legion as a factory for crazy powers,” to which I ask, do you really need more from a comic in this day and age than it seeming like a writer is actually having fun for once? Matt Fraction seems to be miserable and dragging us down with him into a pit of despair for Fear Itself, and many writers seem to just be turning in scripts. At least Carey and perhaps Joe Casey on “Butcher Baker” seem to be enjoying themselves.
I like the idea of New Mutants as a playground for more eccentric artists. The Sienkiewicz pedigree adds a real sense of pliability to the cast.
The Captain America ‘1 issue was deeply forgettable. Unfortunately timed too as there was no Captain America at that point, thus it being yet another “unworthy person tries to be Captain America and fails” story.
It also had a completely random giant head apear from nowhere at one point.
The new issue one was great though, I thought.
I don’t read the adjective-less X-MEN title, I don’t even remember if I tried the first issue or not which shows just how forgettable a series it truly is, but I AM a huge Ghost Rider fan. From that stand-point, would X-MEN # 15.1 be worth picking up or is it just a terrible comic overall?
@Chris M…X-Men 15 was one of the few comics I’ve bought in my life I couldn’t even finish…
Judged as an issue of Ghost Rider, it’s an instantly forgettable fill-in. Not offensive if you’re a completist, but nothing you should go out of your way to see.
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