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Oct 23

The X-Axis – 23 October 2011

Posted on Sunday, October 23, 2011 by Paul in x-axis

(If you’re here for the wrestling preview, it’s one post below.)

After the deluge of new material in September, things seem to be settling back into the normal routine.  But we’ve got a few X-books, we’ve got the end of a major crossover, we’ve got the second issue of DC’s flagship title, and we’ve got a new title from Image.

Fear Itself #7 – Well, this certainly didn’t work.  I have half a mind to do a separate post trying to figure out the plot glitches and random jumps that have plagued the series, but really, this issue illustrates the point.  It’s the big climactic battle between the Serpent’s forces and everyone else – okay, fine.  Iron Man returns from Asgard with the special weapons that will empower some characters chosen entirely at random and turn them into variant action figures.  There’s no discernible rhyme or reason to the characters chosen, and no real attempt to suggest a logic to it.  With all the world’s superheroes to choose from, Iron Man chooses to power up the Black Widow, Iron Fist, Hawkeye and the Red She-Hulk?  Why?

But the story of Fear Itself is supposed to be that the Serpent is empowered by fear, and that he’s been spreading terror to make himself more and more powerful, in order that he can take on Asgard.  In itself, this raises a plot problem: if the Serpent needs to do this, why didn’t the Asgardians just squash him right at the outset instead of fleeing the planet?  Put that aside, though.  If that’s your central theme, then logically, the Serpent’s defeat ought to involve undermining his power base by stopping people from being afraid.  Matt Fraction clearly understands that, because this issue is peppered with scenes of Hope around the world.

Except there’s no apparent reason for people to suddenly develop hope.  The story vaguely seems to suggest that because the Serpent’s being beaten back by the empowered heroes, therefore people are getting less afraid.  But that’s all backwards.  The fear wasn’t an effect of the Serpent’s success, it was the cause.

As a plot concept, this could have worked.  You could (for example) have done something where the heroes win, not so much by physically beating the Serpent’s forces, but by performing acts of heroism that inspire the public.  That might have made for a decent story, as a way of dramatising Why Heroes Matter.  What we get here, though, is a massive random fight scene, where completely incongruous moments of hope are thrown in because somebody has vaguely understood that they’re thematically necessary.  For its dramatic weight, it relies instead of the heroic sacrifice of Thor, but that’s weightless, because we know perfectly well he’ll be back soon enough.

Then there’s an epilogue about the ordinary folk of Broxton pulling together.  Remember the ordinary folk?  They were in issue #1.

It’s very pretty and all, but this was a dreadful story – partly because of the storytelling blunders that undermined key moments, but mostly because the plot itself is poorly constructed and lacking in drama.  Instead of building logically to a climax, it seems to throw in vaguely climax-shaped things and hope for the best.  It’s a mess, and while part of that can be blamed on the inevitable clutter of writing a story that doubles as the backdrop for a line-wide crossover, I’m left with the impression that Fraction and his editors just never had a clear enough handle on the story they were trying to tell.

Justice League #2 – Technically this is still on a monthly schedule, having shipped at the start of September and in the third week of October, but it does make you wonder whether Justice League is really going to remain on the same schedule as the other DC books, and whether DC would truly bite the bullet and use a fill-in artist if it came to it.

Anyway.  The main criticism of Justice League #1 was that people thought it was too slow and didn’t get the whole cast into play quickly enough.  And this issue isn’t really going to change any views there, since it’s evident that the plan is to introduce the characters one issue at a time.  This month, it’s the Flash, who’s brought into the plot by the simple expedient of revealing that he and Green Lantern are already friends.  About half of this issue is the obligatory hero-on-hero fight, as Superman outpowers everyone – though Geoff Johns does have a nice angle with the idea that Superman is to the other heroes what they are to the general public.  Cyborg gets another three pages to advance his subplot, and then it’s back to exposition territory for people to discuss the Mother Box until some actual baddies show up at the end.

The criticisms of issue #1 pretty much remain valid, but I kind of enjoyed this.  It does set up a nice team dynamic, with Flash and Green Lantern as their own little unit within the bigger group, Superman taking a little persuasion that these bozos have anything much to offer him, and Batman as the one who tries to herd them all into working together.  I’d prefer the story to move faster, but what it does, it does well.

Uncanny X-Men #544 – The house ads billing this as “the final issue” have had me rolling my eyes in exasperation.  We already know they’re shipping Uncanny X-Men #1 in November.  It’s not the final issue, it’s just a renumbering stunt – one intended mainly to hype up the new direction, though I suspect it’s also intended to put Wolverine’s faction on an equal footing with Scott’s and avoid the impression that it’s X-Treme X-Men II.

But Kieron Gillen, bless him, understands that if you’re going to do something like this, you’ve got to commit to it all the way.  So this is an issue largely devoted to selling the idea that the X-Men have been profoundly altered and that, in some meaningful way, things are drawing to an end.  (It also serves to bring Mr Sinister back into circulation, as a strangely meta commentator reflecting on how Xavier’s version of the X-Men is finally dead.)

This would have been easier to pull off if the break had happened at around the move to Utopia, when there was much more obviously a shift in what the X-Men had become.  But Gillen manages to pull it off.  With Jean dead, Warren out of circulation following the current X-Force arc (though the story is careful not to spell out exactly why), and Hank long since departed, all that’s left of the original X-Men are Scott and poor, marginalised Bobby, who hasn’t had a storyline in years.  But Bobby gets plenty of use here, as the story plays up the fact that Scott is losing his last link to the original team.  The story completely glosses over what happened to Professor X, presumably to avoid treading on somebody else’s plot – which is unfortunate.

As for Greg Land’s art… well, there are some downright clunky sequences, and some wonky panel layouts in conversation scenes for no discernible purpose.  But the Sinister scenes are good, and the central double-page spread of X-Men history is well done.  Overall, it’s passable.

Still, even if there’s more than a little smoke and mirrors, the story does manage to sell the idea that this is a meaningful break.  For Scott, all the leavers are trying to recapture past glories.  He knows that his team, a bunch of separatists living on a rock and staffed mainly by characters of dubious sanity and/or virtue, are not really the X-Men as traditionally understood.  But he doesn’t see that as a problem, so much as empty nostalgia.  If I don’t buy the idea that this is where things changed, I at least buy that this is where Scott has it brought home to him, and that’s enough for the story to work.

Wolverine #17 – This has a “Regenesis” banner on it, but that turns out not to mean a great deal beyond “it takes place after Schism.”  Wolverine’s returned to San Francisco to pick up some belongings, say goodbye to Melita, and (by implication) collect some money that he was planning to use to fund the new school.  Naturally it can’t be that simple, and so we have a story of Wolverine being dragged into more feuding in Chinatown, presumably so that Aaron tie off the loose plot thread of Wolverine being the notional kingpin of the Chinatown underworld.  (Which dates from… what, the Wolverine: Manifest Destiny miniseries?)

This turns out to be an opportunity to do something with stray characters from Agents of Atlas, which should be a good match for Aaron’s writing style.  Ridiculous ideas played straight is pretty much the way he works, and Atlas has plenty of that.  Ron Garney seems very happy to be drawing gorillas and dragons, too.  I’m less convinced about the stuff with Melita; I suspect this is a feint and that she’s going to follow him to the east coast, but after the major role she had in the last storyline, I just don’t buy their relationship going this way, and certainly not so abruptly.

Xenoholics #1 – A new Image book which I suspect we’ll be talking about on next week’s podcast, but I may as well mention here that it’s pretty good.  It’s basically a comic about a support group for people claiming to have been abducted by aliens.  And while you can probably figure out that this comic will indeed feature aliens (there are some on page 1), since the group’s accounts are all wildly contradictory, it remains entirely possible that some or all of them could nonetheless be utterly deluded.  Nonetheless, the central plot hook appears to be: what happens to people like this if some actual aliens show up?  That’s a nice angle for a comedy-drama, which is basically where this is going.

Seth Damoose’s art might be a bit cartoony for some tastes (and I suspect it might look better at digest size), but he’s good with characters, and it’s a nice fit in terms of the tone of the story.  The cast are all well defined, and there’s a nice sense that this is going to be more of an ensemble piece than a gag comic.  I’ll stick with this a little longer, I think.

X-Factor #226 – Now that’s a great cover, even if the link to the contents is largely thematic.  Peter David seems to be set on rummaging around the obscure corners of the Marvel Universe in this book, as he’s now dusting off the Hangman, a villain whose only previous appearances were in two largely forgotten storylines from Avengers West Coast.  That’s fine, though, because he’s evidently more interested in the concept than the details of any previous stories; this is effectively a reintroduction of the character.

This arc looks to be getting the series back on track after the “mythological figures chase the baby” stuff.  It’s a nice change to see the cast actually working as a team, and it gives David a chance to do something with the team dynamic.  Art from Leonard Kirk guarantees a nice clear read, and the comic relief moments are well judged.  Good issue.

Bring on the comments

  1. Jason Barnett says:

    Justice League was always supposed to ship in the third week in October. From now on it’s going to be a third week book. It’s just for some reason they wanted to launch the reboot with it, rather than Action 1, which I think would have made more sense.

  2. Kate says:

    I highly suggest that people read Journey into Mystery’s Fear Itself arc. It subverts the entire thing brilliantly. There’s a reason that the Serpent’s power was suddenly undermined – just none of the heroes have any idea what actually happened.

  3. Zach Adams says:

    What was Bobby’s last featured story, anyway? Milligan’s thing with him and Alex fighting over Lorna, but they’re both too clueless to notice that she’s been depowered?

    It’s kind of a shame; I’ve always felt that he was one of the most underappreciated members of the group. Hopefully Aaron has some concrete plans that his smaller cast will bring to the fore.

  4. Marc says:

    I loved Pip’s dialog with Monet, in X-Factor. Such a meta-critique on 90% of female heroes nowadays. It was especially poignant after all the Batman: Arkham City Catwoman comments.

  5. Jonny K says:

    “Matt Fraction clearly understands that, because this issue is peppered with scenes of Hope around the world.”

    I take it you mean “hope”, unless it’s gone into bizarre crossover with the latest Junior X-Men spin-off?

  6. Andy Walsh says:

    @Zach Adams – There was the Bobby & Mystique story in one of those anthology minis that came with every X-event for a while; I think it ran in the Manifest Destiny one.

    Of all the head-scratching elements of Fear Itself, I found it especially irksome that they wasted Tony’s sobriety and something like 4 or 6 issues of Invincible Iron Man to get a bunch of weapons that appeared for 3-4 pages, contributed nothing to the battle with the Serpent himself, and then got melted down again.

  7. Tdubs says:

    I really hope you get the chance and inclination to do an overview of FEAR ITSELF since the last time you did a write up of it was after the only positive issue (4 or 5). I hope that if Marvel are going to use Fraction as an “architect” of the universe going forward he gets a co-writer or stronger editor. Also this story was far from contained to the mini seeing as a third of the worthy were taken out of the story elsewhere.

    I enjoyed Uncanny as an ending for the Original team but wish that Iceman had a better reason to go other than Gage may have a use for him in Legacy.

    can anyone explain to me why Sinister was melting himself over and over? If there is a story reason for that I over looked it.

  8. Simon Jones who is blogless says:

    The thing that really bugged me about Fear Itselfs ending is…

    *spoilers*

    Asgard being shunted out of the story and the gods being stranded on Earth. Again. After there was a big long story involving bringing it back as a thing in Thor. Making the entire endeavour kind of pointless.

    Though, on the plus side, Kieron Gillen seems to have remembered that Volstagg has something like twenty kids and an equally vast wife. The absence of which was beginning to bug me in an obscure nerdy kind of way.

  9. clay says:

    Except there’s no apparent reason for people to suddenly develop hope.

    The Home Front miniseries dealt with this. Just like the Hulk Vs. Draculs series dealt with how the Hulk stopped being a Worthy.

    This is where footnotes would come in handy. Seriously, you’d think they’d WANT to cross-promote their books.

  10. Diana Kingston-Gabai says:

    Paul, would it be fair at this point to say that Marvel seems to have a bit of a problem with major events, in that they can never quite finish them properly? If I recall, you had similar reactions to “House of M” and “Civil War”: that they had interesting moments but, as stories, they just didn’t hold up to scrutiny…

  11. kingderella says:

    what on earth did ricor expect would happen? if youre gay and attractive, and you want a 3some, its going to happen.
    another good issue otherwise.

    uncanny way pretty good, too. not entirely sure about this interpretation of sinister, but well see. the art was terrible.

  12. wwk5d says:

    “With all the world’s superheroes to choose from, Iron Man chooses to power up the Black Widow, Iron Fist, Hawkeye and the Red She-Hulk? Why?”

    Maybe he’s setting up Bendis’ next bad fan-fiction level Avengers line-up?

    “as Superman outpowers everyone – though Geoff Johns does have a nice angle with the idea that Superman is to the other heroes what they are to the general public.”

    That’s one reason I preferred the John Bryne re-boot version. He had a slight edge over the other heroes…but just a *slight* one.

    Poor Scott.

  13. Tdubs says:

    I think most of the mighty were chosen because they are part of the upcoming Defenders. The rest? I like to imagine they were chosen to inspire Cap who in turn inspired the common peole to fight back.

  14. Dave O'Neill says:

    I was under the impression he was possibly imprisoned, and if he got stuff wrong (the red light), he got barbecued..

  15. Niall says:

    Can somebody explain what was going on with Sinister in Uncanny?

    Iron Man’s weapons: You could make a case for why he made them for each individual character, but not it would be a different argument for each character. Given what happened to Bucky, you can see why he might choose Black Widow. Given Hulk’s possession, you can see why he might choose Red She Hulk. Hawkeye, Spiderman, Iron Fist Wolverine and Doc Strange are all Avengers, so they don’t need a reason, but why he didn’t make some for others is hard to explain away. And furthermore, some of the designs seem bizzare. I can buy into the idea of a God giving somebody a mystical hammer, but why would a supposed technological weapon, designed by a scientist be based on the bow and arrow?

    As for Justice League, I finished it and wished that it was a weekly book. It’s fun, but not substantial enough to keep me interested between breaks. Shame.

    By the way, does anyone know of the Earth one stories are set in the DCuU?

  16. Reboot says:

    I got the impression that this was Sinister’s Plan D – basically, rebuild himself from scratch if he died and all the other plans failed*. Melting, tweaking and remaking when he got stuff wrong was an iterative attempt at getting exactly back where he was before.

    *Yes, there was the one that ended up escaping from Miss Sinister into a blonde teen girl clone in X-23, but this appears to be unrelated to that.

  17. clay says:

    Fleshing out my thoughts on Fear Itself a bit more…

    I’ve been more than willing to cut this series some slack in the past. I never considered it deep, or thoughtful, but I liked it in a way similar to Morrison’s JLA: big damn superheroes overcoming impossible odds.

    But the payoff was weak. I hate to keep comparing it to JLA, because that’s really a connection that exists in my own head, but one of the great things about it is that Morrison found A Moment for each of his heroes. In other words: in every arc, no matter how many cast members there were, Morrison found something awesome for each hero to do that justified their presence.

    Compare to Fear Itself. As Paul mentions, why is Black Widow there? Or even Spider-Man? I assumed that the collected heroes would each take down the Worthy in some awesome way, but we didn’t even see most of the Worthy in action, much less get their comeuppance.

    Cap got his moment in issue 6, and I guess Iron Man got his when he faced down Odin. Thor’s showdown with the Serpent was oddly predictable however. Prophesized, even. Narratively speaking, why would you introduce a prophesy if you aren’t going to a)subvert it, or b)have it come true in a way other than the literal meaning?

    Structurally speaking, I know that tie-ins are always a tricky issue. But some of them contained crucial plot elements were in tie-ins, and they went unmentioned in the main series. And some tie-ins seemed like they would lead naturally into the finale, like the Avengers Academy issues, or The Deep. (Wouldn’t you want Pym, Strange, Surfer, and Namor at the big battle?) But they were curiously MIA.

    So, yeah. Even as a big dumb blockbuster, it just didn’t work. Shame, really. Could’ve been a lot better.

  18. clay says:

    Whoop. Forgot that Strange was in the finale. Which only leads to the question as to why he didn’t bring the rest of the Defenders.

  19. Hellsau says:

    “With all the world’s superheroes to choose from, Iron Man chooses to power up the Black Widow, Iron Fist, Hawkeye and the Red She-Hulk? Why?”

    I haven’t read Fear Itself, but maybe the special weapons were a pen-gun (Black Widow), brass knuckles (Iron Fist), a bow and arrows (Hawkeye), and…something for Red She-Hulk. Iron Man would just distribute them to whoever could best use them.

    This is assuming they’re just like legendary mystical Norse weaponry and not just something Iron Man cooked up in a lab off-panel.

  20. Living Tribunal says:

    Definitely a shallow storyline overall and the last issue fell completely flat. The pacing was choppy; the dialogue was goofy; and the whole thing was rushed. Ask yourself this: If the Asgardian weapons blessed by Odin were enough to trash the Worthy, why didn’t Odin just arm his own men with the weapons? Why would Odin need to be convinced by Stark to allow him to make the weapons? That makes no sense, and it can’t be explained away by saying that Odin was to stupid to think about himself so he let Stark take a shot at it . Sorry, major plot hole. The ending reminded me of the ending of Secret Invasion where the Skulls were suddenly defeated when Osborn killed the queen. In fact you could easily replace Skrulls with the Worthy and it reads the same.

  21. errant says:

    So are we (or Marvel) done with Matt Fraction yet? Or he is going to be another Jeph Loeb….

  22. andrew brown says:

    I liked what sinister was doing. he would make a new clone of himself, tweak it a little, then he’d kill himself so the clone was the only ‘true’ sinister. Of course, that’s just what i got out of it, i could be wrong.

  23. Tdubs says:

    Hmm that’s four different interpretations of the Sinister scene.

  24. Andrew says:

    I honestly didn’t get Fear Itself.

    Maybe it was how poorly the first issue began with very little clear idea of what the story was about but Ih ave failed to find myself enthused at all about it, despite picking up every issue and re-reading them.

    Even House of M was better than this and it spent months dragging its feet.

    But at least it knew what it was and the story it was telling.

    DC seem to have completely stolen Marvel’s thunder, so to speak and asside from its slow pace, Justice League at least feels exciting and a bit fresh.

    Even if it isn’t at all new, it at least feels like it has a bit more momentum behind it.

  25. kingderella says:

    i think sinisters rebirth stuff is just a quick reminder explaining why hes alive again: he can clone himself. (because hes been dead since ‘messiah complex’, right?)

  26. sam says:

    I will second Kate at #2 on the Journey Into Mystery Fear Itself arc. It was the only part of the whole mess that I enjoyed.

  27. I don’t get how a lot of people don’t realize the story is broken until they read the final issue. Like, if issues #1-6 are a complete mess, since when does issue #7 come in and fix everything? Has that ever happened in a comic series, let alone a major event?

  28. ZZZ says:

    Here’s my take on what Sinister’s doing, which is mostly an elaboration on what people have already said:

    Sinister (or, at least, his equipment following his pre-programmed orders) is trying to clone a new Sinister since the real thing was recently killed off pretty thoroughly.

    And, in order to be the best Sinister he can be, he’s trying to make himself capable of devising those ridiculous, elaborate plans where, in the last act, it’s revealed that everything the heroes have done has been playing into the villain’s hands and the readers all complain because there’s no way the villain could have known that Iceman would lose his car keys and have to take the bus where he met the pretty co-ed who turned out to be an evil android or what have you.

    To that end, each clone of Sinister is trying to narrate the entire history of the X-Men from guesswork (without being told how events actually turned out), and every time one gets something wrong, the machines (who know what really happened) give him the red light and melt the current clone down, then make a new one with slight tweaks. The new clone resumes narration, and the process continues until a clone gets it right (the idea that the pick up where the last one left off instead of starting over from the beginning it a little wonky, but I think that’s just a narrative shortcut). The idea being that the clone that finally gets it right will be able to predict every move the X-Men will make because he’s already guessed every move they already have made.

  29. Jack says:

    Kingderella: Yes, he’s been dead since messiah complex, though he had some backup plans that backfired since then (one resulted in Ms. Sinister – whom I feel will be completely forgotten now that the original is back).

    On John’s league… it feels really mediocre. Ok art, standard crossover/group origin fare. It feels like the same thing we’ve been reading since Morrisson left (excluded, obviously, the incarnations that weren’t the big 7). Except the Green Lantern is mentally retarded and Superman’s more of a jerk.

    Oh, and this issue illustrates why Barry Allen doesn’t really work as the ‘iconic’ flash: I think that when people picture the most iconic ‘speedster’ superhero, they expect someone a bit more impulsive and funny… with a personality beyond ‘boorish nerd’.

  30. ZZZ says:

    In regards to Fear Itself 7, two things I’m sick of:

    1) Big, event-ending battle royales need to stop being written like a strategy game where each side rolls a die and adds their unit strength and the higher number is declared the winner. If a writer has no interest in (or talent for) choreographing fight scenes, he should let the artist do it, and if the artist doesn’t want to or can’t, the story shouldn’t end with a battle royale. Characters randomly blasting each other until one side is declared the winner aren’t satisfying.

    There are battle royales in old books – like the X-Men vs. the Shi’ar Imperial Guard or Secret Wars or the East Coast vs. West Coast Avengers – that were written decades ago and I can still remember who took down whom and how. I couldn’t even tell you what Spider-Man did during Fear Istelf 7. I remember Hawkeye shooting someone who was about to hit Black Widow, but I’m not sure who it was. I just went back and checked and … I think it was Grey Gargoyle, but there were three of him, so … maybe just a random demon? Did the Serpent have random demons? I don’t see any on the big 2-page splash of forces colliding, but I do see a bunch of those Nazi battlesuits. I could not have told you those were there from memory.

    2) The final issues of big event crossovers need to stop feeling like the writer had no idea any of the things that happen in them were going to happen when he started the series. The moment Fraction decided that Tony was going to make seven weapons for seven heroes to wield (which should have been BEFORE Tony left for Asgard), he should have decided who those weapons were going to, and made sure those seven characters and only those seven characters (plus possibly Cap) were present when Tony left, to give a clear reason why he picked the people he picked. Unless I missed something, Tony had absolutely no reason to think Red She-Hulk would even be there for the final battle, much less pick her over Luke Cage or Spider-Woman to get a weapon.

    Barring that, he could have at least left himself more flexibility: why say each weapon Tony builds is designed for a specific Avenger? It would have been so easy to say “this spear is designed to take down the Hulk and must be used by someone with close ties to him … of course, he’s not here, but we’ve still got the spear.” Or even “remember, each weapon will only accept one wielder, so don’t touch them until … I probably should have mentioned that before Red She-Hulk picked up that spear. Oh well, you’re one of the chosen now.” But the way he wrote it, we have to accept that Tony specifically built a spear for Red She-Hulk without actually knowing she’d be there for the fight and didn’t build anything for Luke Cage or Noh-Varr or Jessicas Jones or Drew.

  31. clay says:

    While we’re piling on…

    I appreciated the scene in FI #6 where Cap decides to make his stand. I really did.

    But, the idea that he can stand on top of a pick-up truck, blasting away with 2 machine guns, and a) survive and b) have it be effective in anyway, is just silly.

    He’s going up against god-like beings who can rain fire from the sky, plus giant flying Nazi mechs. Why didn’t they just annihilate him from a distance?

  32. Adam says:

    JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY’s storyline was always going to stand or fall on its ending, since that was when all the cunning, mysterious things Loki had been doing since the beginning of the story line needed to pay off in return for the immense patience requested of the reader, by making us ooh and aaah over the cleverness of Loki’s coup de grace. In my opinion that didn’t happen. I was disappointed.

    But there’s room for disagreement there. What I think is inarguable, though, is that Whilce Portacio can’t/didn’t draw children, just little adults, and quality of the storytelling took a fair dive under his pencil. Wish that hadn’t of been the case.

  33. wwk5d says:

    @ZZZ

    That was actually a No-Prize worthy explanation regarding Sinister.

    @clay

    Because he is Captain America. Logic never applies when you need to have him kicking ass.

    Here is EW reviewing a few titles. Always interesting to see the mainstream media’s views on some titles…

    http://shelf-life.ew.com/2011/10/23/comic-book-reviews-latest-issues-of-batman-and-uncanny-x-men-the-outstanding-graphic-novel-daybreak/

  34. kingderella says:

    @zzz regarding sinister: the co-ed was clearly a clone, not an android; and iceman lost his car-keys because sinister hid them using polaris’ cloned powers; which btw explains why he was so interested in her in peter davids original x-factor run.

  35. arseface says:

    Have there ever been two more irritating event “deaths” than Bucky and Thor? No-one remotely buys Thor dying for a second. He only returned from the “dead” a few years ago. He’s in a major Marvel motion picture next year.

    As for Bucky, his death seems purely to clear the decks for Steve Rogers and give a slight crossover some cheap gravitas. Marvel killed off one of its very few fresh major characters. I’ve stopped reading Brubaker’s Cap, which I enjoyed for years, not out of anger, but because Rogers-Cap bores me.

    I look forward to Marvel’s next summer crossover in which a couple of characters will die, New York will get trashed and readers will be left wondering what the point of 90% of the tie-ins were.

  36. steve says:

    For what it’s worth, Gillen’s commented on formspring that everything with Sinister gets spelled out in the next Uncanny arc. I think he’s made mention of making Sinister a little more concrete in his goals and what they are.

    As far as Uncanny goes, I read it more as the final issue of the run that started right after Messiah Complex, rather than the final issue of Uncanny. Not saying the whole thing holds together or anything, but it always felt like the 50 issue run hinged on Scott finding his footing as a leader and figuring out exactly what he wants to do with the X-Men, and this issue sort of signified that he’s finally come to grips with what he wants to do.

    Oddly enough, this sort of dovetails into Fraction’s writing. Most of us can agree that his run on Uncanny was a disappointment and I think it shares a lot of the same problems (at least, that I’ve heard) with Fear Itself. I’ve really liked what Fraction has done with Iron Fist, Cassanova, Iron Man and the Order, and it seems to me that he does a really good job when the book has a clear focus, direction, and main character to drive that direction. When he gets a book with a large cast and one where there are multiple points of view, the book tends to become unwieldily and then spins out of control. Which is why I don’t think he’s the right writer for a book like Uncanny or line wide crossover (which rarely work anyway).

  37. clay says:

    Speaking of Bucky — arrgh, why do I keep doing this; everytime I think about it, I think of more problems — I suppose it could be argued that Black Widow was there because she had a personal stake in beating Sin (who killed her boyfriend). Of course, the text never hinted at that.

    But, how much more satisfying would it have been had the Widow been the one to take out Sin? I know Cap had a stake in it too… Maybe they could have done it together. Cap has her on the ropes, Sin does some trickery to gain the upper hand, but Widow comes in and just owns her.

    I’ve mentioned this before, but each of the Worthy really need to be defeated individually (or, in the case of Titania and Absorbing Man, together). Hopefully by someone who had a reason to be fighting this particular foe.

    The Avengers Academy tie-in issues (and, to a lesser extent, The Deep mini) were examples of how to do this right. The heroes had emotional ties to the villains, they conveyed the terror and impossibility of fighting the Worthy, but the heroes won because of bravery, teamwork, and cleverness.

    BUT, each of those tie-ins ended in basically a draw because the Worthy had to leave to appear in the main title. Why? They didn’t do anything, nor were they actually beaten. I’d prefer they get beaten in the main series, but if you aren’t going to do that, then why not just have Namor beat Attuma in The Deep, or Pym beat Absorbing Man in Avengers Academy? That way the tie-ins “matter” and the story doesn’t feel unresolved.

  38. Karl Hiller says:

    @ZZZ: RE: battle royales — yes, exactly. The double-paged spread of dozens of characters flying through the air at each other has become a cheap postery substitute for actual combat. It’s weak that the Worthy were built up as these huge threats but barely appeared in the last issue, despite being in the fight.

  39. Billy Bissette says:

    Gillen may explain more with Sinister in the next issue, but I won’t be there for it.

    Uncanny under Fraction was a mess. A very poorly conceived mess. But Uncanny under Gillen only rates around passable to me. It is kind of boring and forgettable. The biggest problem though are the stories being written, whether they be Gillen’s idea or Editorial mandate. Breakworld didn’t need a revisit, and the story wasn’t particularly good. Readers don’t need the continual pushing of Emma towards Namor, as it is both crappy in its own right and just comes off as teasing for the inevitable Marvel mandated return of Scott being with Jean. The constant reminders of Jean range between annoying, stupid, and being hit in the head with an anvil. (Like the Uncanny spread that has Jean/Phoenix largest and dead center, and Scott’s appearance is him kissing Jean.) And of course the actual return of Phoenix that Marvel admits is coming.

    Its all just… The writing is average and competent, but the plot ideas are bleh.

    Not that Marvel is giving reason much of anywhere to stay with any of their titles. Fear Itself showed that they still don’t care about putting together a decent event. You can’t really say that they don’t know what to do, or that it was a misfire, or even just say that Fraction wasn’t suited for the job even if all of those are true. Marvel simply doesn’t *care*. Before Fraction, it was Bendis doing the same poorly constructed misfires. And before Bendis, they were still poorly constructed and planned.

  40. Tdubs says:

    I’m betting money when the Phoenix returns it will start X-men and end up moving the Phoenix force into the Avengers universe and to Bendis.

  41. ZZZ: Something akin to your explanation is pretty much what I hoped a very close reader would take away from the Sinister scenes.

    KG

  42. Hazanko says:

    I really want to be excited about the X-Men franchise. With Gillen, Aaron, Carey, Remender, and DnA on the books, we really have an embarrassment of riches. I’m hard pressed to think of a time when we had a more impressive lineup. And yet, the line isn’t coming together for me at all.

    For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be any sense of coordination. It seems pretty clear that Warren will die or Something Similarly Terrible will happen to him at the end of the Dark Angel Saga, and yet he’s flying around in a couple issues of Schism. And where was Piotr’s Juggernautiness? Having the same characters in so many stories published simultaneously, without the repercussions being reflected elsewhere, is just doing my head in. I just can’t keep reading 7 (now 8) X-books if editors can’t be bothered to sit down and make sense out of any of it.

    Not to mention how contrived Schism felt. With more titles running than you can count on one hand, there is no excuse for not finding space to lay the groundwork for the split between Wolverine and Cyclops.

    I’ve loved all of Uncanny X-Force, which I couldn’t have imagined when it was first solicited, and Generation Hope has been a consistently great read for me. I also enjoyed Wells’ New Mutants and Age of X. Everything else over the last few years has ranged from boring to downright diabolical at times. I get the whole X line through Marvel’s mail subscriptions and have six months left on most books. If I don’t see some serious improvements, X-Force will likely be the only one to get renewed.

    (PS: Iceman’s been lucky if he can find two speech bubbles to rub together over the last five years, and now I’m supposed to believe that Logan just can’t live without him?)

  43. Niall says:

    Okay, I’m impressed, both with ZZZ and KG. It’s an idea that – within the Marvel Universe – makes sense. It’s the kind of un-natural selection that a mad biologist might play on themselves. I’d had a similar idea, but thought I was reading too much into it.

    I’d love to see this played out more. I’d love to see the mechanics of how this works – especially in regards to the inclusion or exclusion of aspects of Sinister’s personality that were based on experience – as well as plain old fashioned memories. To what extent was Sinister Prime willing to offer himself up to his ultimate goal?

    This might not be so much a rehabilitation of Sinister as a transformation into something rare in comics – an interesting villain.

  44. The original Matt says:

    Sinister can be an interesting villian all he wants. The X-men line is broken and I’m fed up. It hasn’t been any good since Morrison.

    Whedon’s run came out too slow, M-Day was stupid at best, Fraction’s run read more like a series telling us about decent stories he could tell, without actually telling decent stories. I gave up mid Nation-X and I haven’t read anything so far that makes me interested in coming back.

  45. wwk5d says:

    I think the problem is, there hasn’t been a solid flagship title that set the tone for the rest of the line since Morrison. They tried it with Whedon’s Astonishing, but ended up being such a fiasco. And after Whedon, there seemed to be no real attempt. It seems the events are crossovers are trying to set the tone, but overall, yeah, it’s not quite working. We’re at a point where the satellite X-titles seem to be much more enjoyable than the main X-men titles.

  46. Ethan Hoddes says:

    I’m going to jump on Wolverine + the X-Men. It may be the first time in half a decade that there’s an in continuity 1) X-Men core book, 2) Written by a writer I like, 3) That has demonstrated an ability to stick with an ongoing and have it come out monthly, 4) With no plans to have intermittent arcs drawn by Greg Land. Some have hit 3 of those, but never all of them. Bachalo’s story-telling is still bad, but if I have to go back and look at some pages, at least I WANT to.

  47. Brian says:

    I think it’s no coincidence that the decline of the X-Men franchise can be traced back to the the rise of the Avengers franchise in 2004.

  48. Niall says:

    Original Matt, try reading the Uncanny Fear Itself tie-in. It’s pretty good. There’s a threat to the X-Men that threatens them and their relationship with their allies. It leads to lasting changes for individual characters and the X-Men’s status quo.

    The New Mutants Fear itself tie in was actually rather good as too. Actually, now that I think about it, almost all of the main Fear Itself tie-ins were decent to good.

  49. maxwell's hammer says:

    Niall: yeah, but that Uncanny arc was ‘drawn’ by Greg Land, which always knocks a few points off any given issue’s enjoyability factor. You can only take so much maniacal grinning.

    Ethan: I’m sure Paul will cover this in this week’s X-Axis, but ‘Wolverine + the X-Men” was rather good. It seemed to actually a)take its time in setting up a distinct new status quo, b)move along briskly enough to get the job done in a single issue, and c)have great clear readable art from Bachalo. I was rather impressed. Now let’s see if Aaron can do anything interesting with the Hellfire Kids.

  50. Niall says:

    Did I really just write that there’s a threat that threatening them? Need some sleep.

    To be fair, Land’s art wasn’t bad and was manic-grin free on that arc. The problem with Land’s art isn’t so much ability as his judgement.

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