The X-Axis – 29 November 2009
Less than a month to go before Christmas! I really must get a tree.
Anyway, it’s been a busy few days, so this is going to be a fairly rushed round-up of the week’s releases – or rather, those of them I’ve actually read so far.
Beasts of Burden #3 – An issue for the cat lovers, as the group’s token feline the Orphan ventures into the sewers in search of the missing Dymphna (from… some earlier story or other). And naturally, that means rats. Hordes of them. What’s really impressive about this series is the way that it’s taken a potentially cutesy concept and made it work. On paper, a comic about talking pets fighting mystic evil in smalltown America sounds awfully twee. But the book strikes a perfect balance between anthropomorphising the characters on the one hand, and on the other depicting them as regular animals, and steers clear of the obvious jokes that could be done with the concept – the human owners, for example, are more or less absent from the series. The result is a truly charming modern fairy tale.
Chew #6 – The start of a second arc. And now that we’ve firmly established the high concept – every time Tony Chu eats something, he learns about its entire history – the book smartly widens its focus rather than tryint to make that the centrepiece of this story. The gross-out stuff is teased, only for the book to head off in a different direction. Instead, this story sees Chu reunited with his former partner John Colby, the guy who took a knife to the head in issue #1. Now he’s a mad cyborg. Well, a cyborg, at any rate. He might be joking about the mad bit. Or he might not. This issue is really about introducing Colby to the cast and throwing something new into the mix, with a couple of pages spent on a new long-term plot about very odd fruit. Good start to the new arc, and it’s reassuring to see that the book isn’t going to be a one-trick pony doing variations on the same gimmick.
Dark Avengers: Ares #2 – In which Ares goes looking for his missing son Phobos, which is a plot from his other books. But he ends up finding his other son Kyknos, the one you’ve probably never heard of. This is a wonderfully over-the-top romp. And it’s nice to see that, aside from acknowledging the fact that Ares works for the government right now, it doesn’t get caught up in all the Dark Reign stuff. You might even say it’s more of a character piece for Ares, that character being mainly “if it moves, hit it harder until it stops.” Actually, there’s a couple of nice moments which give him a bit more depth – Ares may be insane and have completely wonky priorities, but he isn’t completely oblivous to the interests of his troops. Kieron Gillen does a nice job of making Ares as stark raving mad as usual while still allowing him the occasional glimmer of humanity, and Manuel Garcia is just having a great time drawing big mad guys smashing skeletons with axes. Fun.
Dark Wolverine #80 – Concluding a three-parter, which I’ll try and do a full review for in due course. Norman Osborn is trying to sort out his image problem by making Daken/Wolverine look appropriately heroic, and so he lines up some Z-list villains to beat. And by Z-list, we’re talking Emmy Doolin, of all people. (She’s an obscure Larry Hama character from Wolverine #45-46, back in 1991.) And as seems to be the norm with this series, Daken ends up doing something which might be genuine heroism, or might just be cynical playing to the cameras. This isn’t as strong as the previous arc, not least because there’s a major problem at the heart of the story: the supposedly incriminating footage of Daken/Wolverine beating up prisoners is utterly trivial compared to the sort of thing that we have to accept Norman could overcome in order for the “Dark Reign” storyline to happen in the first place. There’s also a terribly vague ending sequence, which doesn’t work at all, mainly because I honestly can’t figure out what’s happening. What the hell am I supposed to make of a splash page of a bullet lying in a bloodstained sink that hasn’t even appeared before in the scene? If the idea is supposed to be that Emmy shot herself then they could hardly have done a worse job of making that clear. If the idea is supposed to be anything else, then it didn’t even get within a mile of making the point.
Gotham City Sirens #6 – Hmm, I’m starting to lose patience with this book. There’s a vaguely promising idea in here somewhere – confronting Harley Quinn with another rejected Joker sidekick, albeit one from a staggeringly obscure Silver Age story. But the story feels a bit mechanical – trap, escape, trap, escape – and the rest of the cast don’t get much to do. And what we’re left with is a story that’s trying to make some kind of point about the hang-ups of Harley Quinn, which are almost impossible to relate to. So really, it comes down to making a point about the character, without that point actually having much wider interest…
New Mutants #7 – Because you demanded it – the return of Bevatron! Yes, the X-Necrosha crossover continues as the New Mutants gets to fight the zombie Hellions. Younger readers may not recall that the Hellions were the New Mutants’ opposite numbers back in the 1980s. I always liked them – we never saw that much of them, but they were given enough individual identity to suggest that they would probably have made for a reasonably entertaining series in their own right. And they had great team uniforms. So yes, I’m quite happy to spend an issue seeing the New Mutants and the Hellions again – even if the zombie versions don’t seem to have much in the way of personality. But the whole thing leaves me again with the nagging worry – who is this book actually aimed at, other than readers who well remember the original New Mutants stories from a quarter century ago? And is that really enough to justify a whole ongoing series?
Uncanny X-Men #517 – It’s a fight scene. Everyone fights Predator Xs for a whole issue. Oh, and then, after a whole issue of telling us how awesomely powerful they are, it turns out that you can just shoot them. In fact, the Atlanteans seem to be holding up perfectly well against one with spears… So, it’s the sort of issue where the pay-off needs to be the heroes coming up with a really clever way of beating the invincible monsters. And while we do get that with Rogue’s scene, generally it turns out that conventional weaponry does the job quite passably. We have a problem here. There’s also a subplot about the Phoenix force which comes completely out of the blue and leads to people standing around telling us how important this is, without really showing us why. Not one of Matt Fraction’s better weeks.
Wolverine: First Class #21 – Once again, this is more of a Kitty Pryde story than a Wolverine one. Wolverine’s gone mad and chases Kitty through the mansion, and if you can’t figure out where this one is heading, then you haven’t been reading comics very long. Of course, in theory at least, the First Class books are aimed precisely at people who haven’t been reading comics very long, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a story you’ve probably seen many times before, but Peter David and Scott Koblish do a solid rendition of it here.
X-Men Forever #12 – You know the deal by now – it’s good old fashioned Chris Claremont, with a main story interspersed with cutaways to the subplots. The main point of this four-parter is evidently to get Magik back into circulation, as a guy called the Cossack kidnaps little Illyana and… well, turns her back into Magik, basically. Solid work, and it certainly benefits from the pace of a fortnightly schedule. Artist Tom Grummett is on particularly good form this issue. I’m not altogether sold on his new Magik costume (seriously, what’s holding it in place?), but I do like his redesigns for Colossus an Gambit, and the first few pages have some lovely scene-setting.
“But the whole thing leaves me again with the nagging worry – who is this book actually aimed at, other than readers who well remember the original New Mutants stories from a quarter century ago? And is that really enough to justify a whole ongoing series?”
No one, and no.
“Dark Avengers: Ares” really should be “Incredible Hercules: Ares”, because the whole plot that we’ve seen turns out to be based on events in that book. Kyknos’ death was shown in #116, and the various things he’s done that have pissed Hera off (such as refusing to join her in her evil scheme, and fighting her troops) were in #121 and #128.
I’ll buy the february issue of New Mutants (#10 I think it is). Marvel has solicited that the purpose of the team will be explained… and maybe I’ll also understand why they are in training outfits, I seem to remeber that they graduated from Xavier’s.
I loved the review of Uncanny.
I have a feeling that the Wolverine ending is supposed to be ambiguous… did she shoot herself, or stick one between Daken’s eyes and escape? Either way, it was poor execution by the creators.
You call the faults of Uncanny 517 “Not one of Matt Fraction’s better weeks”, but you’ve just described his entire run on Uncanny. The problem with Predator X? Pretty much everything he has written for Uncanny from day one has had such problems.
“And they had great team uniforms.”
Really? The Hellions, really? Just so we’re clear, you mean the fuschia jumpsuits with massive plunging v-necks and pointy gloves and boots?
The brilliant thing about the design of the Hellions uniforms was that both genders wore identical outfits, but they were much more flattering on the women, which made perfect sense considering who designed them. Every similar team who wore matching uniforms either all wore conservative uniforms designed to look bland across the board or suit the men better (reasonable for Xavier’s students, but not for Emma’s) or had the women wearing uniforms that were completely different from the men’s (or at least looked like the tops shrank in the wash).
“Not one of Matt Fraction’s better weeks”
Has he ever got one on this title ?
Seriously, you cherry picked two of the myraid problems of just this issue:
1) Magneto last issue: “I’ve been rejuvenated, like a man of twenty again”
Magneto this issue: overstrained, “I’m not a young man anymore”. GAAAAA!
2)Cyclops: “The cuckoos are down, and without a telepath to link us all, we’re useless. I’m going to seperate Emma from the void.”. Really? The team NEEDS a telepath to link them all to fight effectively? Since when? And you’re all on a rock! Within shouting distance! And what about Xavier? Or even Psylocke now? And wouldn’t you want to seperate Emma from the void anyway? Because you love her??!?! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
The Hellions’ uniforms were quite amazing, especially in light of what the New Mutants were wearing at the time, and what young superhero teams would then go on to wear throughout the ’90s (see: New Warriors, X-Force, Generation X).
“I’m not altogether sold on his new Magik costume (seriously, what’s holding it in place?)”
Isn’t it obvious? MAGIC of course ; )
Andrew, the first one’s not necessarily a problem. It just means Magneto was exaggerating last issue about how effective the treatment was. (That said, if this is the point Fraction was intending to make, he could have made it more obvious by at least having the two contradictory comments made in the same issue.)
Separating Emma from the Void: I think the logic is that they could always have separated Emma from the Void but thought that the downside of releasing the Void was too great. (But again, if that was the idea, it wasn’t made very clear.)
Generally speaking, I do get the vibe from a lot of Marvel comics these days that they’re written and edited by people who have spent so long thinking over these stories that they forget they need to explain them to the readers.
Shouldn’t Magneto’s physical (as opposed to chronological) age be within touching distance of Cyclops ANYWAY, given his deaging way back when?
I gave up on UNCANNY X-MEN months ago, even though I think Fraction is one of the most promising creators working at Marvel right now.
In THE ORDER and INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, Fraction’s shown that he’s perfectly capable of producing focused, character-driven work with a mainstream appeal. But he seems persistently unable to translate that to his X-Men work. I wonder what the problem is.
What was wrong with the Generation X team uniforms? To me, they achieved the goal of a unisex costume better than the Hellions or any of the Xavier School generic outfits.
@Justin
Uh, they were ugly? The clunky, oversized gauntlets and knee-high boots, the wretched thief mask motif, the forgettable red and yellow palette… there was nothing stylish or unique about them, nothing that stood out. And Chamber’s tendency to throw a horribly on-the-nose leather jacket over it all (because, y’know, he’s DARK and DEEP) meant he got the worst of it.
Wow, Emmy Doolin. Took me several minutes. But I KNEW I read those issues of Wolverine over and over when they came out.
She was the daughter of the guy from #34, and she tried to kill the Hunter in Darkness with a sniper rifle, hey? (Maybe she thought Wolverine WAS the Hunter, or something like that?)
(Sidebar: I hated the way that arc just trailed off after #46. Then Hama did the same thing with another, similarly large arc in Wolverine #’s 60-64. Issues 47 and 65 of Wolverine are both “breather” issues, but each one comes right after a cliffhanger! Curse you, 90s!!!)
Bryan; you’re thinking of the Dodson GX costumes (which were basically the orig XM/NM uniforms with red in place of blue/black) rather than the earlier Bachalo costumes which, I strongly suspect, are the ones being referenced.
“(Sidebar: I hated the way that arc just trailed off after #46”
That was odd, right. Wasn´t there also a story with Spiral which just stopped and never got resolved? I always thought that Marvel killed the story arcs because they were at odds with the overall X line.
The only X-verse uniforms – as in actual uniforms – that worked were the original ones. Because:
a. They looked like paramilitaries.
b. They looked like paramilitaries that did fingerpainting.
They were, in effect, the militant wing of Neil Buchanan. Which is ACE.
//\Oo/\\
Didn’t the Phoenix Force leave Rachel unexpectedly in one of those Starjammer/War of the King prequels?
I suppose it’s time for Jean to make her return,
Paul, the problem with Fraction on Uncanny is that his stories as written rely on things that just don’t make sense. It isn’t a matter of explaining or not explaining, because the core itself is broken. To “explain” them, you’d have to write different stories than what he is choosing to write.
Heck, from every indication, he can’t even keep track of more than two or three characters at any moment in Uncanny. He treats most scenes as if they were in a vacuum, even (or especially, to be more accurate) his big battle scenes. So nothing fits together and everything falls apart when you look at anything more than a few panels or think about anything off-page.
yup, the Phoenix Force left Rachel, as well as the fragment inside Korvus’ Blade of the Phoenix in the Kingbreaker miniseries. and now that the other fragments have left the Cuckoos, it’s quite possible they’re all going to one person: Hope Summers.
Seriously, Uncanny has till the end of this arc to prove to me it doesn’t suck. With the exception of Utopia x-over, the comic has sucked. Seriously. I would’ve dropped it after lovelorn except I knew the x-over was approaching. It’s generally a crappy comic.
Marc:
I think one of Fraction’s major impediments is cast size. Most other X-Writers have a fairly manageable collection of characters to work with: Carey has Rogue, Gambit, Danger and the kids in Legacy, Wells has the New Mutants, Kyle and Yost have Team Growl McStabby, etc. As the writer on the flagship book, Fraction has all of those characters to account for plus the core team, the X-Club, and another hundred or so named mutants, with more turning up with every arc, it seems. So he’s got all that to juggle and, on top of that, it’s his job to drive the most high-profile plots of the whole X-line, and I’m not sure how much freedom he’d have to do anything but advance those particular storylines. That he’s got an artist with sub-par storytelling skills on half of his arcs really doesn’t help get his ideas across clearly. Not disagreeing that his run’s been lacking in imagination and generally unimpressive so far — God knows I wouldn’t pay money for it, especially when Land’s on art duties — but I also don’t envy his position and I can’t think of many writers who would be turning out anything near their best work in his place.
Ditto on the cast size deal. I think the X-Men books have been greatly hampered for a long time by the grand idea of the ‘cast of thousands’ (well, hundreds) approach.
As a concept it appeals. The X-books have such a big universe in which to play now, as well as a fan base that is always interested in seeing this character or that character pop up. And writers love the freedom. In theory all you have to do is keep a certain core around to anchor it all.
But in practice I feel that it’s never resulted in anything more than a lack of focus, a general sense that new characters and plot developments come out of nowhere, and ironically less freedom instead of more to tell good stories, since the rest of the universe has to constantly be taken into account.
What we need are a stable and SMALL team of X-Men that just do their thing for a few years.
“Team Growl McStabby”
Awesome.
Is there still speculation that Kyle and Yost are taking over Uncanny when they leave X-Force after the end of this Messiah Trilogy business? Or has that been nipped in the bud?
I’d not heard anything about that; there’s been no indication that there’s any creative switch planned for the main title.
Might be a good idea, though; Fraction (and Brubaker before him) is overall a better writer than Kyle & Yost, but they seem to get the X-Men in a way they haven’t been able to.
Kyle and Yost on Uncanny will make me drop the title faster than Fraction staying on for another 50 issues. Why can’t a writer with brains, like say Paul Cornell take a shot at it?
Agreed. I liked their X-23 limiteds, but Kyle and Yost have twice taken concepts that were promising and produced x-books that I found to be unreadable. No question, I’d drop Uncanny if they took over.
…I wasn’t counting the Emperor Vulcan or Warsong limiteds because those concepts were not promising at all.
As a very casual X-reader, I’d rather see Fraction write an X-Club book and not the book with Cyclops and Wolvering and Emma Frost in it.
Paul, isn’t Uncanny what you’d call a “zombie title” by now?
When was the last time someone actually told a good story about the X-Men, which they really wanted to tell, in Uncanny, as opposed to it being there because it’s been published for over 400 issues and needs to keep going. Surely before Joe Casey.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of X-Men stories I’d like to read, and a lot of the teams that are spinning out of the X-Men are interesting. I enjoy Legacy and X-Factor immensely, think an X-Club ongoing would be nice, and understand why people are interested in things like X-Force, or New Mutants – which at least are about something, if just a decent superhero team book. Even enjoyed the X-Men Forever trade. There’s market for plenty of X-Books, but what creative reason is there to publish Uncanny? What is it about?
Uncanny has nothing and hasn’t for a very long time.
Suzene: I agree it’s probably a mix of factors (the terrible art, lack of editorial focus), but I also find that Fraction’s X-MEN lacks the solid characterization that’s present in IRON MAN or THE ORDER. I’m always reluctant to suggest someone’s phoning it in, but what’s clear is that Fraction knows how to do solid work and is doing solid work elsewhere — he’s just not doing it here, for some reason.
Johnny K: I think it’s safe to say that a most X-Men fans are probably mainly in it to see what’s happening to the characters and their world most of the time, at this stage, rather than because they necessarily expect a good story every month. And that’s perfectly fine — I can see the appeal of that.
And the last “good” issue of UNCANNY X-MEN? Good question. I thought the Joe Casey run was interesting, at least, even if it didn’t quite succeed. There was a strong authorial voice in there, and you could practically watch Casey wrestle with the concept and the franchise every month. (He lost, usually.)
The last “good” one, though? The Steven T. Seagle/Chris Bachalo christmas issue, maybe, or the Scott Lobdell/John Romita Jr. one with Xavier and Amelia Voght.
You mean (courtesy of Paul’s indexes) issues #365, cover dated February 1999 or #311, dated February 1994?
That’s about 150 and 200 issues ago, 10-15 years ago. I just checked: there’s about half a dozen issues of Uncanny Paul’s reviewed at A- since 1999, including the starts of a couple of Brubaker stories which fizzled out and nothing above that.
I started reading comics in 2005. I was born in 1986. I’m partway through a PhD and I was 7 and 12 when those issues came out. I’m not saying that Uncanny X-Men should necessarily be cancelled, just remembering Paul was talking on the podcast a while back about zombie titles which are published only to be published, and read through sheer momentum.
During this time, there have been good books, good X-Men stories. Just not in Uncanny. Even half-decent stuff in Uncanny – I’ll always like the HoM story, if only for the sheer incongruity of switching from Alan Davis to Chris Bachalo for no creative reason partway through a story.
I can’t help feeling that, to be consistent, we should really be calling for Marvel to either try some major revamp/ change, let it stick for a while, or seriously think about resting Uncanny X-Men.
I liked the original Generation X uniforms.
I liked the original Generation X uniforms.
So did I. But maybe that was mostly a function of their being drawn by Chris Bachalo – sort of how I liked the look of Emplate, but once anyone else tried to draw him, he just kind of looked like an emaciated elephant man in a gas mask.
The main problem on Uncanny right now is the cast size, which is a function of the current status quo: having the mutant population reduced to a couple hundred people, and putting all of them in one place, makes for writing that’s prone to the use of ciphers instead of characters. And that makes for a book that’s fairly tedious to read.
Now, this kind of setup doesn’t necessarily have to make for a boring book. There were dozens or hundreds of mutants milling around the mansion in Morrison’s X-Men, but Morrison – and Quitely, of course – managed to make those characters feel like a natural part of the background, so that the book picked up a kind of bustling energy to their presence. I didn’t feel like I needed to know the story of every blobby guy or kid with tentacles who walked through the hall. But Fraction, with his dumb captions and his habit of trying to briefly spotlight random characters with bits of interchangeable throwaway dialogue, spends enough time on the various extras to make me feel their indistiguishability: they come across as dead weight rather than detail. I never feel like the X-Men are living in a place, like I did during Morrison’s run – I feel like I’m reading about a large, unwieldy team of ciphers living in a generic sci-fi setting.
OMG. The Xavier/Vought JRJR/Lobodell issue was 15 years ago?! That was one of the last issues of UXM I bought before I gave up reading comics. Since I’ve returned I only buy TPBs. Come to think of it, none of the UXM TPB’s are any good. So let’s call it what it is: the Age of Apocalypse was the last, good story in UXM.
>who is this book actually aimed at, other than readers who well remember the original New Mutants stories from a quarter century ago? And is that really enough to justify a whole ongoing series?
At the age of 11 I wandered into Strange Days in Crawley. It was my first visit to a specialist comic shop, inspired by my earlier purchase of TSR’s Marvel RPG.
The sheer density of complex interlocking narrative sequestered in those back-issue bins was disorienting, and I flipped through the covers adorned with musclemen and topheavy women in skintight outfits until I came across this:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/new-mutants/61-1.jpg
It kind of stood out. Superman punching Lexx Luthor isn’t an image that leaves you with any questions, but this? I had to find out WTF was going on here.
The blevins/simonson stuff wasn’t great, but it sold me on the characters, and I read all of the back issues – but slowly, so as not to run out. As a gamer I appreciated that they were ‘not munchkin’ – most of the team had quirky, indirect powers that required thought and planning to use. They had the strongest female characters of any Marvel superteam.
They didn’t posture as much as the X-Men – Claremont’s X-Men were obnoxiously up themselves, and I remember one scene with Storm and Wolverine pontificating on how not all of the New Mutants would make it as X-Men because of the sheer unbridled heroism required to make it in the X-Men. If Logan had been trying any harder to blow his own trumpet he would have ended up stuck bent double, healing factor or no.
So it was like the X-Men, but the characters were more human, the fights were more interesting, there was a real sense of acheivement when they beat anyone, and there were more girls. What’s not to like? This was what I wanted out of comics.
Unfortunately what I got was the 1990s. Being a kid I was too dumb to stop buying comics for several years and suffered through a great deal of pouches, poor anatomy, and tortured storylines before finally quitting. The whole time I was hoping they’d bring back the New Mutants or something like it.
And so I learned a valuable lesson: The people who publish comics don’t care about you or the quirky, lovable things you enjoy. They care about the bottom line, which means catering to the people who want to see Wolverine cut a bitch.
But now, suddenly, and against all probability, that lesson has been proven wrong. If this were 1994 I’d be delighted. As it is, I’m more pleasantly baffled. Like you I wonder, who is this aimed at? It’s almost exactly the comic I wanted to see published back in those bygone days. Not that it’s perfect, but it’s decent enough and is written by someone who obviously cares about the characters, and that’s good enough for me.
To answer your question, I have no idea who it’s aimed at, other than me personally. In their own way the New Mutants are as iconic as the X-Men or the Avengers, just more obscure. Maybe this comic is an attempt to bring them out of that obscurity and turn them into a mainstream X-team. They’re certainly no worse as characters than the dregs inhabiting X-Force at the moment.
Is it enough to justify an ongoing series? I don’t know that either, but I certainly hope so. Would that all the disappointing lessons of childhood could be so easily unlearned.
Do the people who have this attachment to the New Mutants mirror the people who feel the same way about the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans?
Johnny K:
“You mean (courtesy of Paul’s indexes) issues #365, cover dated February 1999 or #311, dated February 1994?”
I think it was issue #309, but yes, those are the ones. I haven’t read them since they came out, mind you, so I’m not sure how they hold up nowadays.
[…] less reviews for the second issue of a mini than the first, but here’s a couple of fun ones – House to Astonish and Factual Opinion. Oh – and it’s talked about in Awesomed By Comics, which is a lot of fun. […]
>Do the people who have this attachment to the New Mutants mirror the people who feel the same way about the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans?
By ‘mirror’, do you mean are we evil versions of them with goatees?
I can only hope so.
who is this book actually aimed at, other than readers who well remember the original New Mutants stories from a quarter century ago? And is that really enough to justify a whole ongoing series?
Unfortunately, for those of us who still love the medium, those of us who remember the original stories from a quarter century ago are the only people still buying these things.