The X-Axis – 15 January 2012
It’s a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check out the show, one post down. This week’s reviews are Fatale, Scarlet Spider, and Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye. And now… other comics!
Batwoman #5 – This book gives me something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s great to see that DC are happy to give JH Williams III a book to use as a vehicle where he can cut loose, and the art is arguably enough in itself to justify the price of admission. On the other hand, the actual story doesn’t do much for me at all – it’s a rather confused tale of mad ghosts stealing children, with a subplot about a dodgy government agency trying to enlist Batwoman as an agent. These things are fine as far as they go, and it’s nice to see Williams dusting off characters from his much-loved series Chase, but it’s hard to deny that the art and the story in this book aren’t playing at the same level. And that kind of undercuts the effectiveness of the art, since I’m not sure there’s enough substance to ground the visual pyrotechnics.
We touched on this in the end-of-year podcast, when we discussed why none of the DC New 52 titles had made our list. This title and Flash both have exemplary art that should be of interest to anyone who loves the medium, but the same can be said of Daredevil, which has the considerable advantage of a stronger script. “Hydrology” is far from a bad story, but it’s not a great one. Sure, this book exists to be a showcase for Williams’ art, but the nature of his art is that he needs a strong story to tell.
Daken: Dark Wolverine #19 – Rob Williams’ run on this title has generally been pretty successful, showing that there are interesting things to be done with the character after all. But, after championing the book to this point, I have to admit that “Pride Comes…” is a bit disappointing.
The idea, I think, is that even though Daken recognises that he’s a psychopath, he strenuously resists any suggestion that he’s out of control, and doesn’t want to see himself as insane. Marcus Roston is meant to provide an ideal nemesis because he’s unrepentantly mad and impulsive, and (since he’s also highly successful) represents an affront to Daken’s worldview. That’s fine in theory, but it just isn’t clicking. Marcus’ unveiling as the villain represents too much of a U-turn from the patient schemer seen in earlier issues; it feels as though he’s suddenly bringing matters to a head because the plot needs to move forward. And because he doesn’t ring true as a character any more, the whole “nature of insanity” theme misses the mark. Shoehorning the Runaways in as guest stars, and linking the plot to them so late in the day, doesn’t help either.
It’s all rather frustrating, because Williams still appears to have an interesting take on the character, and the general idea of contrasting him with a chaotic villain should have worked. But the book seems to have spun a little out of control with this arc.
Scarlet Spider #1 – See the podcast for more on this. In short, though, this is Marvel’s attempt to expand the Spider-Man franchise without overextending it too badly, by taking the Spider-Man clone Kaine, and packing him off to Houston to become Spider-Man there. While Kaine is tainted by association with some truly terrible stories (some of which are unwisely recapped in a back-up feature), it’s nonetheless possible to boil him down to a relatively straightforward core concept: he’s a clone of Spider-Man with a rather grim back story, who used to be horribly scarred and terminally ill, but isn’t any more, so now needs to figure out what he wants to do with his life.
While Kaine himself is a rather downbeat character, the book wisely avoids letting itself be too bleak; this is fundamentally still a Spider-Man book, but with the more vicious 90s version of the character, happily detached from the awkwardness of having to be the real Spider-Man. Putting him in a completely different city is an interesting move, since not only is Spider-Man the archetypal New York hero, it clearly signals that they’re trying to build a self-contained spin-off here. The ending is a bit anticlimactic, and Kaine remains a very nineties character who might be a bit overly brooding for some tastes, but on the whole it’s a decent book.
Whispers #1 – A new series from Joshua Luna. We were going to do this one for the podcast, but decided there was probably more to say about the Transformers comic. Basically, it’s about a man with OCD who discovers that he’s got the power of astral projection and can (apparently) quietly influence people by talking to them while in that form. That’s a reasonably interesting idea, but it does depend on a bit of psychological subtlety, which is where the book runs into a bit of trouble. The OCD angle is actually quite well done, and the opening scene which introduces the lead character has some rather strong comic timing. The art’s rather good; Luna’s got a good sense of body language. And I like the way the book tries to lay out its ground rules.
But when we do get on to hearing other characters’ interior monologues, they’re all a bit heavy handed. Characters helpfully spell out exactly what they’re worried about, and seem to spend their time thinking about precisely what their problems are, rather than anything more prosaic. This might be due to the need to demonstrate the concept, but it results in the second half of the book feeling a bit clumsy. (Al would also tell you that the lead character has OCD in lieu of any other personality traits, and that the book doesn’t really get the plot underway. I don’t have quite such a problem with those aspects, but he does have a point.)
Wolverine #300 – Another title jumping back to its original numbering in order to celebrate the anniversary. This is billed as “Back in Japan”, part 1, though the story really began in the previous issue. With the Silver Samurai dead (in an earlier arc), there’s a power vacuum in the Japanese underworld, and somebody’s trying to manipulate the Hand and the Yakuza into fighting over it. Wolverine must investigate. Meanwhile, Amiko (remember her?) is hanging around with a new Silver Samurai, and Sabretooth’s in this story as well.
Which is… odd, actually, since they’re building to a “return of Sabretooth” arc by Jeph Loeb and Simone Bianchi later in the year. Strange scheduling. But whatever.
This book was solicited as having art by Adam Kubert, but somewhere along the line it seems to have turned into a jam issue, with Ron Garney and Steve Sanders handling about half the book. Interestingly, the design art at the back of the book shows that Sanders did the character design for the new Samurai – who admittedly only appears in his pages, save for two panels right at the end where Kubert makes the otherwise inexplicable decision to shoot him from behind and in shadow, even though we’ve seen him clearly earlier in the issue. So… yeah. Signs of production problems here.
In fairness, most of the individual scenes are perfectly fine; the problem is more an inconsistency of tone, particularly with Sanders’ more subdued art. Though some of Garney’s pages are a bit rushed too.
This is Jason Aaron’s final arc, and presumably he’s tying up some of the loose plot threads before he goes. As we’ve come to expect, it’s a story that veers cheerfully between over-the-top nonsense and (slightly) more character-driven stuff, and generally pulls that off. The returning Sabretooth actually fits quite nicely into Aaron’s style, since over the top lunacy is precisely his thing. For the more reflective reader, there’s a interesting meta-thread with a new Hand leader openly acknowledging how weirdly the Marvel Universe concept of ninjas has gone off the rails, and attempting to drag his colleagues back on message. But the bottom line is that it’s the sort of comic where the gangsters call in “Sky Yakuza” as back-up. And that’s what Aaron does well, so, fine.
There’s also a… well, I honestly don’t know whether it’s a back-up story or a five-page preview, but it’s trailing Loeb and Bianchi’s “Sabretooth Reborn” arc. And it’s, uh, pretty much what you’d expect. It’s basically a vignette of Wolverine rescuing Cloak, whom Sabretooth has (somehow) beaten up and chained to the top of the Empire State Building, after taking Dagger prisoner. There’s a sort of handwaving “got nothing left” explanation of why Cloak doesn’t just teleport himself down, at least. And the big dramatic stunt is that they slip from the antenna and fall, which requires the art to suddenly place them right over the street. Which obviously can’t be right. Aside from the fact that the Empire State Building is famously pointy, it’s also the size of a city block. There’s a lot of roof to bump down before you’re going to get anywhere near the street.
But I guess this stuff is no crazier than Aaron’s story. It’s more that it doesn’t get the tone right – at the same time as doing the ridiculous action scenes, it wants us to take seriously the prospect of Sabretooth doing horrible things to Dagger. And I don’t think you can do both at once.
Wolverine and the X-Men #4 – Nick Bradshaw comes on as artist for the second arc. I like his work; he’s a good character artist with a cartoony edge that suits Jason Aaron’s absurdist tendencies. It’s very different from Chris Bachalo’s art on the first three issues, but everyone’s different from Bachalo; best to have someone with a strong style of their own.
This issue is mainly about getting some subplots up and running, from the look of it. As trailed in X-Force #19, Angel and Genesis both show up as new students, to the understandable confusion of the existing class, who find them both worrying familiar. As usual, bits of this don’t quite make logical sense (does Wolverine really think he can get away without explaining to Iceman that Angel is now a blank slate?), but Aaron gets away with it, because it works with the vaguely farcical style he’s going for.
Along similar lines, Deathlok drops by to lecture the kids on future history, in a scene that could be hugely irritating if you took it seriously, but is great fun if you’re willing to accept this book as basically a comedy. (“I have come today to talk to you today about the future. The future is a violent and terrible place. Know now that at least 43.897% of you will die before reaching adulthood.”) Admittedly, when Aaron tries to use this same scene to set up a serious threat of Genesis going off the rails and becoming Apocalypse in a future timeline, I’m not sure it quite works. But on the whole, I think Aaron gets the balance right.
A couple of more general observations. First, it’s interesting to see this title so explicitly picking up on plot threads from X-Force. Much the same is about to happen in Uncanny, with an arc involving Tabula Rasa. Inter-title continuity has been out of fashion at Marvel for some time, to the point where the X-Men titles barely have any impact on one another. I wonder whether it’s now mounting some sort of comeback. (See also the handover of Havok and Polaris from X-Men: Legacy to X-Factor via the Regenesis one-shot.) If so, they’re doing it the right way; this is using one story as the springboard for the next.
Second, while everyone seems to have a clear idea about the exterior of the school, I’m getting the distinct impression that nobody’s giving the artists much guidance about the interior. Compare the classrooms and the teacher’s lounge in this book with the versions that appear in X-Men: Legacy. They’re not remotely similar. They’re not even in the same style of decor. That’s something the editors need to nail down; even if you don’t want a slavish style guide, artists ought to know whether they’re drawing sci-fi classrooms or a room full of old-fashioned desks.
X-Factor #230 – Madrox is still off bouncing between alternate timelines and waiting for his team to rescue him. But they think he’s dead, so this issue sees them return to the important business of squabbling and arguing over Guido. I like the way Peter David is playing this story. Guido has been brought back to life without a soul. Everyone’s vaguely disturbed by that, but can’t really articulate why… because nobody actually knows what a soul is or what difference it makes, especially since Guido’s behaviour doesn’t seem dramatically different from before. It’s a nice twist on an old cliche.
Oh, and Wolverine shows up to spell out how the book fits into Regenesis and to reintroduce Havok and Polaris to the team. That, to be honest, feels distinctly like Peter David accommodating an editorial remit. But I don’t have a big problem with it; it’s a direction that actually makes sense for the book, and it’s more the suddenness that makes it feel contrived.
X-Men: Legacy #260.1 – The first issue for the new creative team of Christos Gage and David Baldeon. As always with the B-titles, Gage’s main difficulty is finding a clear role for his book. And come to think of it, with this issue, what Gage really sets up is the premise of the school, rather than the premise of his particular book. The N’Garai attack the school as villains of the week, and the basic gag is Rogue leading the X-Men to fight them off so that the kids won’t have their classes interrupted. It’s a fun little conceit, and fits quite well into the tone that’s been established on Wolverine and the X-Men (though this book is pitched a bit more conventionally in style).
But what’s this book about? From the look of it, it’s the book that does stories about Rogue, Gambit, Frenzy, and the other main characters that aren’t being used in Aaron’s book. But if there’s still meant to be a distinct premise for this title, it’s not really pushed here. Still, Gage is a good writer of team books and juggler of extended casts, and there are enough characters at the school to leave plenty of stories that can be told with the background characters. It’s basically what Mike Carey was doing for the last couple of years, and it does leave the book with the chance to pursue its own stories. But the focus is very much on the X-Men defending the school, rather than Rogue mentoring the kids.
Here’s a point. We’ve had several “student books” before – New Mutants, Generation X, New X-Men, Young X-Men. And the tradition has been to take the kids as the point of view characters. Strangely, despite the plethora of X-Men titles now around, nobody’s doing that. We’re doing school comics from the perspective of the staff. A sign of demographic drift, perhaps? Is Marvel’s current audience actually more likely to identify with the teachers than the pupils? Or is that, at least, the message that Marvel took from the failure of Young X-Men?
Anyway. It’s another X-Men title, but Gage and Baldeon are a solid creative team who seem to be taking the lead with some interesting characters. If the book lacks a clear identity, it does at least have the likelihood of being able to tell good stories.
The Empire State Building isn’t quite the size of a city block, but the tapering does mean that, yes, someone falling off of the antenna would have to do so at quite an angle to hit the street.
But hey, maybe they’ll be able to sneak in a quick plug for Jim Hanley’s Universe.
The scenes with Iceman and Wolverine left me with this feeling that Wolverine was just Cyclops in a different locale with a different person mad at him. In fact Bobby didn’t seem to give a shit when Cyclops was the person doing it (perhaps it has something to do with Angel being his best friend in hindsight but it still bugged me. )
I was excited for Gage to do Legcy and saw it’s role as the east coasts superteam then they announced Liu’s Astonishing book. Same premise even some of the same characters.
I should perhaps point out that Paul and I did discuss Whispers before we recorded the podcast; he’s not just guessing the kind of thing I might say about it. I thought it was a well-drawn book with no convincing characters in it whatsoever, and minimal impetus behind the story.
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the only one for whom the story in “Batwoman” failed to click. And just as the middling story fails to support the great art, I suspect the art is too good for the story in the sense that more straightforward art might make the story a bit clearer. In American football, that’s called “outkicking the coverage.”
On Marvel doing a school comic from the perspective of the staff, I can’t help but feel that maybe they decided the student POV is just a waste of time.
How many times have they done books about students, and how many of those students ever “graduated”? Some might get placed on a secondary X-book in an “adult” role. A few get recurring placement in a main X-book for a while, but are still in a “kid” role at that point.
The most successful kids were already in title before getting demoted to student book status. (Kitty Pryde was around when the school wasn’t really a school, Jubilee was long established before being bumped down to Gen X, X-23 ran with the X-Men for a while before being shifted to a student book.)
Legacy was about the point that Wolverine doesn’t want the kids to fight, a book starring them would be a lot like the boring New Mutants book that was about high school cliques. If we had a book about the east coast kids doing anything other than learning it would defeat Wolverine’s argument. I kind of see W&TX as more of an ensemble book.
I think they did a good job with Cannonball graduating to X-men status and he had a pretty long run. The current New Mutants book is all about graduates being given an important mission.
I’ve switched over to buying all my comics on the iPad, and despite being the same price there was no sabretooth vs cloak and dagger back up in wolverine 300. Although it doesn’t sound like I missed much.
Also we lose JH William’s art next issue for at least two months. If he isn’t coming back anytime soon I may be gone.
Marvel’s maths is terrible at the best of times but for Wolverine they appear to be completely ignoring the original mini, and that 0.1 issue from the latest run.
189 (1989 series) + 74 (2003 series, until it went ‘Dark’) + 16 (Weapon X) + 20 (2010 series) = 299
That numbering actually works, in it’s own way. None of the series use the .1 issues in their numberings and issue 300 is the 21st issue of the 2010 series.
@TDubs: JHW is rotating arcs with Amy Reeder. That’s been the plan since the book was announced back in 2010.
I was wondering why there wasn’t a student X book either.
But then I realized I’m not sure how one would work- the whole gimmick of Wolverine’s school is that the mutants can just be kids.
So you can’t really have a title about the students unless you plan to make it a non-action book.
Because if they do stumble into adventure, then Wolverine has failed right out of the gate.
Unfortunately, though, this isn’t the first time Cannonball has graduated to X-Men status. Maybe this time it’ll stick?
Re: Wolverine and the X-Men 4: Were we supposed to recognize the woman with the bandages and scars during the teachers’ meeting? Or is her unrecognizable state the joke?
I’ve been picking up Batwoman and enjoying it, both art (quite a lot) and story (to a lesser extent), but this last issue completely lost me.
The resolution with the ghost-baddie was borderline nonsensical, and the supporting cast was basically MIA despite some dramatic developments with two of them last issue.
I might come back to the book when JHW3 returns as artist, but Amy Reeder is not enough of a draw for me to pay money for such an ill-structured story.
@Ben – Not necessarily. The whole thing with the divide is that everyone living on Utopia is considered to be part of the X-Men army by default, whereas the school is about giving the kids the choice to take a path that doesn’t involve being cannon fodder just because they happened to be born mutants. If the kids decide to tackle danger over the objections of their teachers (as they often did back in the New Mutants/Academy X days), it’s not the people who are supposed to be protecting them putting them on the front lines, and that’s the point of the school. I think a post-Schism young X-Men book could work with much the same set-up as New Mutants and Generation X — the X-Men shield the junior team from the worst of things as best they can, but they can’t be everywhere, and the kids themselves aren’t always happy about being sidelined either and take matters into their own hands, with much disapproval from the senior team when they’re found out. And with these kids, given as much time as they’ve spent as combatants or doing good on their own (X-Dudes, anyone?), they’d probably be more of a handful than any of their predecessors.
Well, WATX does focus on a portion of the student body, much the same way Morrison’s New X-Men did. Although personally I have a fondness for some of the Young X-Men (or New X-Men, whatever) and it’s a little frustrating to see them basically reduced to wall paper while Aaron essentially introduces a set of new characters (Broo, Kid Gladiator, and to an extent Genesis). I understand the writer wanting to introduce new characters but stuff like that always feels a bit odd to me.
@PoC: it took me I while to recognize her, but that’s Husk. Her flaky skin was supposed to clue us in.
As a person who in theory likes what Mike Carey did with X-Men Legacy (in practice, I’ve only read about five issues of it), I’m really glad that Gage appears to be taking much the same approach to the characters, that Rogue is still the de facto lead, and that he isn’t looking to reverse the development she’d gone through in the last few years. Given how the trend in big 2 books has been for big status quo and tone changes with each new creative team, I’m really glad for the smooth transition. In fact, my only real complaint was the reappearance of Rogue’s unzipped costume after the book had gotten better about that.
I really don’t have a problem with there being not student book for the Westchester team, outside of Wolverine & The X-Men, since that’s the premise of that book anyway, although it’s a mixture of the staff and students. There’s already one for Utopia (Generation Hope, if you call them “students” — so, we’ll say the next generation of X-Men rather than students).
You might say that in the past 10 years, or a little bit more, we’ve already had several books that dealt with the school/young X-Men setting from the tail end of Generation X, Morrisson’s New X-Men, New Mutants vol. 2, New X-Men (Academy X), Young X-Men, X-Men Legacy, and now Generation Hope and Wolverine & the X-Men.
Of them, Morrisson’s New X-Men, Legacy and W&TXM focused on the adult members of the team as much as (or more) than the students, but it isn’t as if the idea of a younger generation of mutants/X-Men hasn’t been dealt with.
I think we’re going to see more of that because there have been several attempts to launch a new team of students in the last decade from NMv2/Academy X, Young X-Men, and Generation Hope.
However, Marvel has shown no real committment to them, and so the audience has realized that with another year or phase of the status quo, a new batch of students that will go nowhere has been introduced. The fact that they unceremoniously cancelled New X-Men (the Academy X version), which was doing fairly well for itself and had a fanbase for the characters without even wrapping up the series properly after Messiah Complex and replaced it with the absolutely terrible Young X-Men with some really stupid and boring characters probably means that we’re not going to see another students-only focused book for awhile. They were doing pretty well in establishing the New X-Men as characters in that book, and then… nothing.
They have shown signs of committment to Generation Hope, but I think that has more to do with them feeling the need to push Hope, rather than the Lights, at least until their/her story culimantes in AvX.
If that book is going to be cancelled and the characters disappear into the same obscurity that the Gen X, New X-Men, Academy X, and Young X-Men did, why get invested in any new generation of mutants? There’ll be another one along in a year a or two. The relatively rapid-fire succession of this type of book in the last 10 years has seen the law of diminishing returns set in.
They had their shot with the New X-Men/Academy X class of students and threw it out for no particularly good reason. Even in W&TXM, which is based out of the school again, half the students that appear are aliens, baby Apocalypse clones, etc., instead of the literally dozens of new mutants they’ve populated the universe with in the last decade.
Which is fine, but it’s probably best to co-feature the younger generation here and there than attempt to launch yet another book with the concept for a good long while.
I agree that a student book wouldn’t make sense with the current direction, but that’s precisely my point. No previous era of the X-Men would have taken the “keep the kids out of action” line in the first place because it would have been assumed that the kids were the audience identification characters. Or rather, like New Mutants in its early days, the X-Men might have tried to keep them out of action, but they’d have failed utterly, and it wouldn’t be seen as a big deal.
@shagamu: Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.
Al said:
“I should perhaps point out that Paul and I did discuss Whispers before we recorded the podcast; he’s not just guessing the kind of thing I might say about it.”
Could be an interesting segment for your respective blogs or the podcast. Al/Paul tells readers/listeners what he thinks Paul/Al would think of a book. That concept could come in handy if/when you two start running out of ideas.
I think they know the audience is adult now. I think the aging of the audience has to do with the shift in tone from racism and puberty to living WMDs.
If the book’s called X-men it’s obvious IMO to do it from the staff’s POV. New or Young X-men indicates the book being from the student’s POV.
Houston is a very confounding setting for a character with Spider-Man’s power set. It’s as diffuse a city as Los Angeles and has a relatively small downtown. Strikes me as an odd choice when San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago are all relatively dense and currently free of Marvel heroes. In Houston Spider-Man would hardly be able to get anywhere unless he took the bus.
Very curious why they went with that city, other than “It’s big and we haven’t used it before.”
Perhaps that’s the idea – so that when he’s travelling around town, he WON’T look like a knock-off Spider-Man.
It’s because they’re bringing back the dune buggy spidermobile.
Did the Wolverine back-up take into account the status quo change for Cloak & Dagger that their recent (excellent) mini left them with?
I’m guessing “no”…
“Very curious why they went with that city, other than “It’s big and we haven’t used it before.” ”
Do either of te creators live there?
“Did the Wolverine back-up take into account the status quo change for Cloak & Dagger that their recent (excellent) mini left them with?”
Of course not, silly… It’s Jeph Loeb.
To be fair, the Loeb back-up takes place “weeks ago”, so it shouldn’t be too hard to slot it in prior to the Spider Island mini.
How is the life of a student in wolverine’s school different from that of a student in Utopia? Both get attacked regularly, learn how to use their powers and study.
It seems like editorial are setting Cyclops up for a fall, but it’s Wolverine’s plan that seems the most likely to fail.
‘They had their shot with the New X-Men/Academy X class of students and threw it out for no particularly good reason.’
Yeah, Marvel’s virtually disregarded a ‘student title’ for a while now. Having gotten into the X-verse around the Morrison run, via NewMutantsV2/AcademyX titles, I too wonder why Marvel thinks it’s sufficient to just poorly address this new generation of characters they already created by merely spreading them here and there through some of the titles, while parallelally adding more new young faces.
Furthermore, the Academy X characters were raped with so much (case in point, WearthefoxElixir?!?) that I feel absolutely no energy in picking up on fresh new characters like the ones in Generation Hope, for example.
I never really regarded Carey’s Legacy as a ‘student book’, more like a character focused book featuring Rogue at its core.
The tone in W&TXM is a wacky one. Though there’s the premise of Quinton Quire, and possibly even Hellion, there’s quite a few new characters I am finding hard to engage with in there.