The X-Axis – 22 January 2012
It occurs to me that some of you may be wondering why I didn’t review Magneto: Not a Hero #3 when it came out a couple of weeks back. Well, the short answer is that it didn’t show up in my delivery, but since I didn’t notice, and nor (it seems) did any of you, I’m kind of figuring nobody else really cares. Such is the reality of X-Men spin-off minis these days. Which, to be fair, is one reason why Marvel seems to be giving up on such projects – albeit in favour of extra issues of the core titles. Because hey, when you’ve got a nice basket, put all your eggs in it. That’s always worked, down through history.
Anyway! This week, we have four X-books and a couple of other titles of interest, at least one of which may well show up on next week’s podcast too.
Generation Hope #15 – Bleeding Cool has an advance copy of the April solicitations and rightly points out that this book doesn’t seem to be on it, which would imply cancellation at issue #17. If you’ve been reading the sales charts, this won’t come as much of a surprise. For whatever reason, despite extensive promotion in Uncanny X-Men with an entire lead-in story, the book never found the audience you might expect, and the Regenesis relaunch had only a minor effect on sales. And writer James Asmus had previously said that Marvel were guaranteeing him one story arc. And pretty much everything down at the bottom end of Marvel’s range has been axed in the Great Scouring. So… that’s where we are, it seems.
This issue, the team return to Utopia with their new mutant, only for everyone to immediately recognise him as Sebastian Shaw and wrestle him into submission. That’s a nice idea in theory, but I’m not sold on the execution. For one thing, Scott’s whole deal is supposed to be that he wants all the surviving mutants together on Utopia, even the former villains (some of whom show up in this book). But Hope’s the only character who even raises this as an issue. Yes, it’s her book, and yes, it’s fine for her to be the one who leads that case, but to create that argument, Asmus ends up wrenching Scott miles out of character.
For another, I could have sworn that the reason Emma wiped Shaw’s mind and dumped him in the middle of nowhere was to stop Namor finding out that Shaw was still alive after all. Now that Shaw’s shown up in full view of the population of Utopia, Namor’s going to find that out – but even though Emma’s all over this issue, there’s no mention of that plotline. Sure, it was a stupid storyline (what was she afraid of?), but just dropping it entirely doesn’t work for me.
Fill-in art comes from one Tim Green II, and it’s a bit of a mess. It’s one of those strange books where the two inkers – Cam Smith and Rick Ketcham – have interpreted the pencils so differently that it looks incredibly uneven despite having only a single penciller. And even on its merits, it’s sub-par mid-nineties work. Page 3 has a frankly laughable panel of Psylocke contorting into absurd shapes for no apparent reason, and when the ex-villains show up to confront the team, Green cranks up the melodrama to such a degree that when it turns out they just want to talk, the effect is unintentionally comedic.
There are still a couple of decent ideas in here, but they’re dealt with in such broad strokes that it doesn’t work. Not a very good comic.
New Mutants #36 – The final part of the Diskhord arc, which didn’t really click. I like the concept – a band who’ve accidentally stumbled upon some sort of low-level Chthulhu demon which they’re carting around in their tour bus, and are causing chaos everywhere they go – but I don’t feel it ever developed into a very interesting story. The demon, the band and even the audience members remain ciphers throughout, as if Abnett and Lanning, having come up with the premise, couldn’t actually figure out a story to build around it. And Blink, who was the initial focus of this storyline, just fades into the background, because there’s no real story linking her with the band beyond the bare plot mechanic of “I’ve been investigating them.”
That said, there are still good moments here, and fortunately they’re the bits that suggest the book will get back on track once it moves on to a stronger story. The opening pages of Cypher explaining the plot are very nicely done; what could have been a tedious exposition sequence is made deliberately choppy and weirdly paced, giving it an unsettling quality that comes closest to capturing what the story was presumably going for. Lopez draws a good action sequence. Sunspot’s clumsy pep speech to Magma is well pitched, and develops their relationship skilfully. And the closing pages with the team returning to their San Francisco house are nicely homey, even if Mrs Livitz remains a rather broad comedy character. Overall, it’s a case of generally good book, bit of a dud storyline.
Prophet #21 – This is the one we might come back to on the podcast, as if you can’t guess. Despite the number, this is a relaunch of Rob Liefeld’s long-dormant character, as part of his curious (but genuinely intriguing) decision to relaunch Extreme Studios with a roster of indie creators whose style couldn’t be more different from his own. This may seem like a weird call, when Liefeld’s highly distinctive style is, for better or worse, usually the selling point associated with his work. But some of his books did have decent enough concepts, in theory at least.
Prophet – whose previous twenty issues are being cobbled together from several previous runs – doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia entry, but was apparently something to do with a warrior from the past awakening in the present day after a lengthy hibernation. Given Liefeld’s, shall we say, highly consistent design sense, I’m not sure how well he would have pulled off the fish-out-of-water idea. But the premise is basically sound.
Brandon Graham and Simon Roy keep to that core concept but change pretty much everything else. The series opens with Prophet waking up in the very, very far future, on a world now apparently devoice of humans but full of utterly unrecognisable thingies. The first issue basically consists of Prophet travelling to a weird city in search of his contact, to find out what he’s actually here to do. The plot’s pretty basic; Prophet himself is a largely silent protagonist, with the narrator carrying the burden of progressing the story. (Other people are comparing it to Conan, but since I’ve never read any Conan comics, I’ll leave that to them.) Mostly, it’s the design sense that stands out, and the thought that’s been put into the details of a world that’s wholly alien but somehow still seems to make sense as a future Earth. It’s a book good on steady world-building, and the art plays to that. It’s certainly a book with a very distinctive voice, and about as far removed from anything you’d associate with Extreme Studios as it’s possible to imagine.
Superior #7 – The final issue of Mark Millar and Leinil Yu’s mini, and you won’t be surprised to learn that it ain’t subtle. Obviously, Superior isn’t an original idea – it’s a riff on the original Captain Marvel, with the “child becomes adult superhero” idea. But there’s plenty of mileage in variations on that idea.
Much like Kick-Ass, what Millar has written here is a crashingly heavy-handed story that nonetheless reads like it could easily make a very good film. In the same way that Kick-Ass dialled down the comic’s contempt for its characters and allowed the story to have the wish-fulfilment elements that it needed to give it a bit of heart, this could easily be turned into a fun summer blockbuster. In that form, it would not have to wrestle with things like the painful epilogue that ends this issue, in which Millar tries for a worldwide outpouring of emotion; or the questionable depiction of journalist Maddie Knox, who has the vague echo of a character arc to be developed on a future rewrite, but within the context of this series, essentially does a jackknife U-turn from cynical seductress to surrogate mother because it’s time for everyone to achieve resolution.
Yet it does have a strong core idea, one heavily inspired by other comics but not overexposed to the general public; it does have a plot that would make a good movie, based on the old classic Faustian bargain device; and it does have a clever piece of twist plotting by Millar to get himself out of a seemingly inextricable corner, which I have to admit I didn’t see coming, and makes a great ending. It’s not an especially good comic, but it’s a very good pitch for a much better film. I’d license it. I’d change a hell of a lot, but I’d license it. Mission accomplished?
Uncanny X-Force #20 – Part one of “Otherworld”, in which the Captain Britain Corps put Fantomex on trial for… well, officially, for killing Apocalypse, it seems, though I’m not quite sure why that’s supposed to be in their jurisdiction. Presumably there’s meant to be an ulterior motive here, and the story duly hints at that by pointing out that Fantomex is apparently unique to our world, making him a bit disturbing to the Corps who protect the multiverse. One-off characters aren’t meant to happen, according to them.
(And yes, I know you can point to plenty of stories that claim the timeline doesn’t work like that. But the reality is that Marvel continuity on the nature of alternate timelines is such an utter mess that I’m past caring about it. As long as X-Force is internally consistent – which it is – I don’t much care if it contradicts Mark Gruenwald’s interpretation of Stan Lee.)
Meanwhile, Otherworld is also under attack by parties unknown, so Captain Britain tries to bring Psylocke back into the fold to help out. And as part of that, he’s offering to undo pretty much everything that’s happened to the character since she was folded into the X-Men cast, such as returning her to her own body. I have a suspicion that, in order for this to really work, you need to have a working knowledge of Psylocke’s continuity – or at least what a mess it is – but the basic idea of offering her a reboot, particularly coming straight after the rebooting of Angel, seems a smart one.
There’s certainly a style change here from the last arc. Remender seems to be trying to echo Chris Claremont and Alan Davis’ Captain Britain stories, which makes Greg Tocchini’s entirely different art style a bit jarring. On its own terms, it’s rather good, it just doesn’t seem to draw influence from the same sources as the story. Still, it’s probably a good move for X-Force to go for something a little lighter after the extended Dark Angel Saga, which was great, but a bit bleak at times. One of the strengths of Rick Remender’s take on the team has been his willingness to keep some balance in that area, and this issue, we have new member Nightcrawler (from the Age of Apocalypse) showing up as a mopey brat who, if anything, needs to be cheered up by the X-Men’s secret hit squad. For those readers who remember Warren Ellis’s X-Calibre mini, there’s also a fun running gag of Nightcrawler trying to use his decapitation technique and never getting it to work.
Interesting issue; not quite convinced that the various styles at work have meshed neatly, but I’ll give it time to win me over.
Uncanny X-Men #5 – The X-books seem to be rediscovering the possibilities of passing story elements from one book to another. So this arc sees the X-Men investigating Tabula Rasa, the weird time-bubble of parallel evolution which was a fun throwaway idea in the last X-Force arc, and which now becomes the focus of an arc. With Emma still recuperating (strangely, the story doesn’t actually make clear whether they managed to reattach her arm), Psylocke again takes her place on the team, and steers the Extinction Team into helping clear up the mess left by X-Force. Not that she’s about to tell them how Tabula Rasa got there. In a nice touch, the issue skirts around Psylocke’s own involvement for most of the story, until Magneto (who already knows about X-Force) finally takes Psylocke aside and extracts a proper explanation from her. It’s a nice way of working the exposition into a dramatic scene, but it also means that X-Force readers get the tension of wondering whether Psylocke is ever going to explain the plot properly to her teammates.
Greg Land is back, and… actually, it’s not that bad. Yes, there’s some blank expressions, there’s a bit of vamping and grinning, and there’s a badly botched panel of a horde of attacking creatures flying towards a group of people who seem to be shooting back in every direction but the right one. But on the other hand, it tells the story well enough. It does quite a good job with the weird design of Tabula Rasa’s fauna. (Land’s work is often improved when he can’t fall back too heavily on photo-reference.) And a moment with Colossus and Magik appreciating the beauty of the landscape is genuinely well done.
There are some smart ideas in here about the reaction of the people inside Tabula Rasa to the end of the time bubble, which from their perspective means that the sun has suddenly started racing across the sky in a very worrying fashion. Aside from being a neat thought in its own right, it also makes something of the “time bubble” concept of Tabula Rasa, and stops it being just another fantasy landscape. Gillen also plays with that idea by having the locals treat X-Force as legendary figures from the mythological past. Normally it’s the title characters who are put in that position in stories like this, so I wonder where the variation of sending in different heroes for the sequel leads us.
Overall, a decent issue, and while I’ve seen better art, it’s not the stumbling block I’d been fearing.
I couldn’t decide which had the more hideous art this week – Generation Hope or Uncanny X-Force. Tocchini I already suffered tthrough on FF, but I’ve never heard of the other guy, and frankly, I don’t want to.
Have to agree, I thought Greg Land did rather well for once. Uncanny was certainly the most interesting and entertaining issue of the bunch for me, this week.
I do like Generation Hope, though, and I think Psylocke’s contortion was probably an intentional joke put into the story by Asmus. I’ll be sad to see that book go.
But here’s where we disagree – if you ask me, there’s yet to be a single issue of this New Mutants relaunch which has been worth publishing. The current arc has been terrible, and D&A have delivered some really poor comics recently. Heroes for Hire was bad, and New Mutants is just so uninteresting. The characters are bland, the dialogue isn’t good, and the stories seem unimportant.
If I had to make a guess at why Generation Hope hasn’t caught on as Marvel would like, I’d lay a lot of blame on the title character (along with a very generic supporting cast launch out of UXM). Hope’s an interesting idea, but as a character, she’s manipulative, bratty, impulsive and not only does she get away with it, she gets put in charge of the future of the mutant race because she’s supposed to be really, really super special. I thought it was way out of character for Emma to smack her around this issue, but damn, was it satisfying.
I hope you’ll review the final issue of Magneto: Not a Hero, mainly for the purely selfish reason that I need to decide whether to pick up the trade. I’d decided not to bother with it when the first issue came out, only then I found out that it resurrected Joseph (yes, yes, I may well have been the sole voice clamouring for his return), but by then everywhere had ‘sold out’ (or otherwise gotten rid of) their copies of the first issue.
I’m surprised by your judgement on Timothy Green’s — no relation — work. I haven’t seen the issue in question, but Green has been working on the cosmic books in the past few years, on Star Lord and Rocket Raccoon and Groot and it’s been good work; although the inking was wobbly on the latter series, his style never approached anything resembling “mid-nineties” so I wonder what’s changed.
Since Zeb Wells left, New Mutants hasn’t been much to read. I would be much happier seeing it canceled than Generation Hope.
@Suzene
Sounds like Hope takes after Cable.
It’s a real shame that Generation Hope is going but unfortunately I’m not surprised. I joined it late on after feeling non plussed by its premise (especially the series’ title) and like Suzene mentioned, I felt Marvel were pushing Hope too much without really letting her build an audience first. But after enjoying Gillen’s Uncanny, I gave it a chance and enjoyed the different characters which have really stood out from all the bland Young/New X-Men students that came after Morrison’s ones.
And I agree with Steve – New Mutants is really stuck in a rut, for me. And that rut is nostalgia! Can they please have new costumes. And actually grow up? Never been a fan of Warlock but this ‘rebooted’ version grates – are we to believe the Douglock personality has completely disappeared now?
I think GH is a decent book that would have been better if it had more room to breath. The main mystery of the book was always going to be revealed elsewhere and Hope’s team’s reason for existing limits the number of stories that can be written.
The characters are pretty well developed and original. It’s going to be interesting to see how the book ends!
I really hope that they take the opportunity to at least put Psylocke back in her body. I really want to get that character out of the psychic when we need it badass ninja the rest of the time. On the art end of things, I found a lot of confusion in the pages of the Otherworld battle.
I enjoyed Generation Hope when it was a character building series by Gillen then it switched to an action oriented book and just fell flat. Other than Kenji the characters just come off so generic in the fights.
In Uncanny I kind of like the idea of “resting” Emma. She has been seen everywhere for a bit and she is rarely in character. I think Gillen gets her but so many don’t I cringe when she appears.
@Pierce
Tastes vary, obviously (I quite like the Academy X-Kids), but that about jibes with what I’ve been hearing from folks who are reading the book — they enjoy the Lights, but can’t stand Hope. That’s not an unworkable formula, but waiting eagerly for the title character to get her comeuppance really doesn’t seem to mesh with Marvel’s insistence that we give a damn about the new Mutant Messiah. When you’ve already launched two events and an ongoing off of a character, with two more events in the works, and the readership responses seem to range from “meh” to “hurry up with it so we can get rid of the brat”, there’s been a serious misstep somewhere.
I think the problem with Hope is that she was shoved down our throats as the Hot New Thing in some fairly mediocre stories. I’m coming round to her now but she irritated the hell out of me for a long time.
Given her apparent failure to catch on, her seemingly central role in AvX is an interesting choice.
I would love it if Marvel had the guts to make Hope evil. The “savior” of the mutant race is what Bishop said she was and every decision Scott made was the wrong one.
@Tdubs
Haha! I would buy the whole cross-over and five copies of the trade if that were the case.
while i can see the appeal of a reset button for psylocke – she must be the most convoluted of all the major x-men – i hope that she can keep the asian body. we have enough white people in the cast already.
also, id argue that asian psylocke is the most iconic version of the character. ‘original’ does not always equal ‘best’ – nobody wants beast to go back to his ‘guy with large feet’ design, or iceman to become fluffy again, right?
It isn’t the asian body to me so much as the reliance on the ninja skills that weren’t earned.
as far as “iconic” maybe. I will say it is the version that got the most exposure and is recognizable. I find it to be the character at her most generic story wise. What I remember as her big moments came from Captain Britain and Uncanny pre-Acts of Vengance. The fight with Slaymaster and later taking on Sabertooth.
I also think there is a good story to be told by putting her back to her old body. Marvel has teased this three or four times in the past 15 years.
Amazon has a listing for the next Generation Hope trade and it’s called The End Of A Generation, which would further imply it’s for the chop.
Reading your weekly reviews reminds me why I no longer spend $30 a week on comics like I did in the 90’s.
it’s possible that the outcome of (or lead-up to) AvX makes the premise of the Generation Hope book, with the “Lights” and what, not moot.
and what do you want to bet that an X-book launched out of AvX will be “Cable & the New X-Men” or somesuch now that her father-figure is back, so that we can get the same dynamic we did when he was introduced in the New Mutants? and maybe he’ll slap her around a little for being such a c*nt and tell her that he raised her to be better than that.
>Asmus ends up wrenching Scott miles out of character.
Paul, what exactly are the boundaries for Cyclops’ characterization when he’s been plotting the San Francisco’s mayor’s assassination and demanding the Scarlet Witch be either placed in his custody or executed on the spot? I’ve stopped putting anything past him – he’s crazier than a soup sandwich.
I’m not sure of the particulars, but I do know that the asian body with it’s ninja skills that she did not earn, was a huge part of Psylocke’s growth as a character. That she had always wanted to be a fighter, a more physical force (not sure if it was ever explained why she wasn’t or training towards it)… I remember the armor she wore for a brief time was meant to reflect her desires for more physical aspects. I don’t see the need for her to return to her old body, but agree it would be cool to see her have to earn her physical skill… to become the fighter that the body shope made her… etc, etc…
Query on Otherworld… When did Jamie go legit? And what happened to Megan after Paul Cornell’s take on her in Captain Britain?
New Mutants is a huge nostalgia trip, and maybe for that reason alone I enjoy it considerably every month… my biggest problem with nostalgia though, is I keep wanting the story to do even more stuff we’ve seen before and I get really hung up on continuity bites that don’t usually offend me. The biggest jarring moment I’ve had with the book is Sam and Illyana not being apart of the core cast (why does Magik not get a new costume in Uncanny?) and how we’ve managed to go this long without a teary reunion with Rahne and Doug. Ohh, I didn’t even know how much continuity the nostalgia of NM had perked up in me… shame…
If you want to be REALLY generous, you could argue that her uniqueness was part of the reason why Saturnyne was so interested in hunting down Rachel Summers all those years ago….
More importantly though: would you guys recommend the new X-Force arc to an old skool Captain Britain fan? Or are we all waiting for the trade?
One thing that I really like about New Mutants is that Abnett & Lanning seem to be really interested in making Magma a major character. It seemed like way back in the original series Claremont made a major production of introducing her then promptly relegated her to the background where she remained more or less for the next 30 years. I’ve always liked Amara, but she’s been one of those characters like Havok and Polaris that most writers have just treated like an irritant to dredge up when they need someone to be mind-controlled or punched around for a while. So I’m glad to see her prominence in the current series.
I also really like where the character of Cypher has been taken. It’s perfectly in keeping with who he was in the 80s, yet much more imaginative than anything Claremont or Louise Simonson did with him.
Otherwise, though, I agree the series is kind of lacking. I wonder if it just needs one or two more characters to spark the cast or something? For example, why the heck would Boom Boom/Meltdown be content to hang out on Utopia when he former teammates have their own place in the city? Not only does that seem pretty out of character for Tabitha, but having her personality in the mix might shake things up a bit.
Something needs to be done, anyhow. It’s a good but not especially compelling comic right now and is in dire need of some sort of shake-up before it blands itself out of existence.
I’ve never liked the Asian body for Psylocke. It’s argued above that there’s too many white people already, but really she isn’t Asian. Very few artists seem to be able to draw epicanthic folds, so what you’re left with is this straight-jawed woman with purple eyes and hair, maybe a tan, who speaks with a British accent and grew up in a British Manor. None of those things alone dismiss her from being Asian of course, I’m sure there are any number of real women of Japanese heritage who grew up as wealthy Brits, and also have access to hair dye. But all of this is on top of the fact that she used to be Caucasian, so what you end up with is basically this girl who dresses up as an Oriental to do martial arts. Is this not on the nose to anyone else?
“or iceman to become fluffy again”
I’ve always enjoyed Kirby’s snowman look for Bobby, so I’d be perfectly happy with that. I’m also with Kelvin as far as Green II’s work wherever I’ve seen it before. Hopefully that Psylocke pose won’t be all people remember him for, even if there is already a .gif of it on Comics Alliance already.
I never understood the appeal of Psylocke. If you gave me a list of all of the X-Men characters and asked me to write a brief description of their personalities, I could do that no problem, but I’d struggle with Psylocke. Actually, I’d be stumped. Does she even have a personality?
As for Hope, here’s why I think she’s problematic. X-Men readers can be broken down into three groups:
1) Readers who want Jean Grey to return.
2) Readers who don’t want Jean Grey to return.
3) Readers who don’t particularly care either way.
The only readers I can see Hope NOT annoying is group 3. I imagine that for groups 1 and 2, she’s not even a real character. She’s just a shoe that we’re (by this point, impatiently) waiting to drop with her “Might-be-Jean-Grey-reincarnated-but-we’re-not-ready-to-say-just-yet-probably-because-we’re-not-quite-sure-ourselves-just-yet-and-so-in-the-meantime-we’re-just-going-to-drag-out-the-ambiguity-Bob-Harras-style-until-we-figure-it-out.” shtick.
Thanks for always reviewing these every week! There are only a few I subscribe to, and your reviews help me feel one way or the other about buying those I’m on the fringe about. For example, I saw the Emma slapping Hope scene in Generation Hope #15, but after reading your review, I’ve decided to appreciate the scene without buying the issue. Too many plotholes not yet filled!
I won’t miss Generation Hope. I never liked Hope, and none of her supporting class clicked with me. If they were relegated to comic book limbo or were cannon fodder for the next X-over, I wouldn’t mind. And Emma’s bitch-slapping her was way overdue.
As for Psylocke getting her white body back…that seems an even bigger nostalgia bomb than anything going on in New Mutants. I wonder if it will make things even more complicated, as I imagine lots of people not reading X-force will be asking themselves “Wait, didn’t she have an Asian body? When did she become white (again)?” I don’t have a problem with her having an Asian body, or being a telepathic ninja, so not sure I like this possible change.
I doubt Psylocke will go back to being white, or at least not permanently. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the purpose of this arc in X-Force was to put that storyline to rest once and for all.
One of the themes of the book seems to be characters making decisions about their own lives despite having been controlled/changed/determined by someone else in the past. Making X-Force sort of like a really angry, deadly support group. Given that, I predict that Betsy will struggle with the offer from her brother, but ultimately realize that her family obligations are another sort of subtle control over her own freedom.
This is all just conjecture, of course, but it seems to me that Remender is working on redeeming these characters in various ways, and it’s about time someone resolved Psylocke’s ambivalence about her past and moved her forward a bit. I agree she doesn’t have an easily identifiable personality, but I think she’s starting to get one because of what Remender is doing.
Rebooting Psylocke just seems misguided to me.
In her earlier appearances in Uncanny back in the 80s, Claremont seems to have written her as a replacement for Jean and Xavier when they were away (the school NEEDS a telepath for story and exposition purposes, after all).
In my opinion, the ninja training, asian body (and the thongs, admittedly) made the character distict in her own way. In a group filled with extremely powerful telepaths/telekinetics (Jean, Xavier, Cable, Nate, Rachel, Emma, maybe Hope) it was refreshing to see one who’d rather kick somebody in the face.
If that’s the story they’re trying to tell (an extension of Psylocke’s desire to be a warrior, as touched on by Claremont and Nicieza’s use of the character) that’s a perfectly fine storyline. If it leans towards a reboot, I’m afraid the writers are in danger of making the character LESS distinct.
“In a group filled with extremely powerful telepaths/telekinetics (Jean, Xavier, Cable, Nate, Rachel, Emma, maybe Hope) it was refreshing to see one who’d rather kick somebody in the face.”
And Cable wouldn’t?
i think hope, as a character, is fine. not great, and there is definitely something contrived about her (as brian points out nicely), but shes fine. she is also rather unlikable and irritating. thats not a problem when she is a team player in uncanny – i think it actually makes her more interesting and rounded – but it is a large problem when shes the focus on generation hope.
and while i like the rest of the generation hope cast well enough, i just cant forget that id rather read about anole, rockslide, hellion, mercury, dust, surge, etc.
With regard to Psylocke’s personality, I seem to remember Joe Kelly (I think) giving her a bit more vivaciousness than usual, but it does seem like she suffers from the typical design flaws of Claremont’s steel magnolias—body of a pinup, bearing of an aristocrat, soul of a warrior, wardrobe of a dominatrix, and not much else. I want to say she had a certain sweetness that might’ve been distinct when she first joined the X-Men, but that was pretty much washed away with the body swap, if not before. Maybe when she traded in the puffy pink sleeves for the body armor.
Still, at least she’s not as much of a total blank slate as Sage. There’s a character I’d be surprised to see any other writer revisit.
Psylocke in her original body was one of the most bland characters runing around back then. I remember well the ridiculous armor she wore a few issues, she was just this helpless telepath standing on the sidelines which anybody could wipe the floor with. I can´t imagine that this would be considered as an improvement.
Unfortunatly she became one of the most convoluted characters after. Every writer tried to improve her, it became like a sport, and failed spectaculary. Kwannon anyone? Ugh!
What is it with the X-Men and the uninspired artist of the week? Based on Paul´s reviews I browse now and then our german X-Men editions which are published mostly as samplers, and I have to say that I think most of the art is just utterly forgettable. I nearly always put them back on the shelves nowadays.
oh, and another thought on psylocke:
rogue was another character who was hopelessly convoluted, especially in the mid 00es. carey rescued her, not by applying continuity patches, but by writing her well and showing his obvious affection for the character. i think thats the way to go with psylocke, and i think remender is already doing work along those lines.
btw, does anybody know what the hell kind of codename ‘psylocke’ is?
kingderella: I wondered that myself for twenty-five years. Then I read that it was a play on “psyche”—that is, “psy-key.”
It still doesn’t make any sense, but it looks good. Very apt.
^ i have learned something today!!!!!!!!!
Whatever Psylocke was before she gained her Asian body, she wasn’t boring or a wimp when Claremont wrote her. Her problem was, she was much tougher mentally (no pun intended) than she was physically, and that was a characterization Claremont gave her throughout much of her run. She was tough, cold, and not above manipulating others. She fought Sabertooth twice, the first time to a draw, the second time to a win. She suggested killing Havok in order to keep the X-men’s plan to fake killing themselves after the Mutant Massacre. She also manipulated the remaining X-men to enter the Siege Perilous, rather than fight the Reavers (no wonder Havok was always uneasy around her in a way he wasn’t around Professor X or Jean). And, unlike many Mary Sues, she wasn’t unbeatable; Longshot, Vertigo, and Crimson Commando were all able to best her at one point.
Basically, Psylocke was always worried she wasn’t as physically strong as she was mentally, hence why she started wearing the armor, in case she was up against people she couldn’t affect telepathically. Claremont continued this line of characterization once she gained her Asian body. Rather than attacking her opponents from a safe distance, she would try to fight them hand to hand to hand or use her psychic knife. She even commented on it, wondering if her opponents would use that against her, and it did happen a few times, to Fabian Cortez, of all people (which, is just sad).
Unfortunately, post Claremont, nobody followed up on this, and that’s when she started to suffer as character. First she was the ninja bimbo trying to break up Scott and Jean, then the Kwannon mess, then Crimson Dawn…oy, the 90s were not a good era for her at all.
I’ve never cared for Hope, and I’ve never much cared for _Generation Hope_ or the supporting cast therein. If that book’s going away, I certainly won’t miss it.
Regarding Psylocke, I really liked her look with the cloak and the armor. I wouldn’t mind rebooting her back to that look and personality, but I think the “nimbo” thing is too well-established at this point to go back.
The one thing I liked about Claremont endowing Psylocke with a lifetime of martial arts training over the course of a single storyline was that it was a truly original idea at the time.
No, wait… sorry. He did the same thing with Kitty Pryde several years earlier in the “Kitty Pryde & Wolverine” miniseries.
Never mind.
Hi Paul,
I like to go back and read your reviews, but the search function on the blog isn’t great. I have been playing around with a Python script that could be used to generate an index of the reviews you’ve written. If this is something that would interest you, please send me an email.
Thanks!
One of the most interesting aspects of this week’s Uncanny story is that it underlines the fact that in it prior incarnation, X-Force was a secret that Scott kept from everyone else. Now they’re a secret being kept from him, which is kind of a neat turnaround.
It also has the added benefit of making Beast look like a gigantic hypocrite since now that he’s in the know about X-Force he’s willing to tolerate the idea – which implies that the real motivation over his leaving Utopia was not moral qualms abut X-Force but in fact he was just throwing a tantrum about not being in the loop. And while I like Hank very much, he’s been a bit of a self-righteous jackass for the last couple of years and I’ll be interested to see if Aaron, Gillen or Remender do a story calling him on it.
@Brad re: Beast & X-Force
Actually, that is exactly why Beast left. He didn’t object to X-Force; he objected to the secret. And actually, that wasn’t even the biggest reason he left. He objected even more to how Cyclops handled his imprisonment by Norman Osborn.
While this does make Hank more interesting, I really hope somebody calls him out on it (maybe the have and I missed it)
Yeah Hank objected to the principle of a secret team so he quit the X-Men and joined… The Secret Avengers!
Also I remember it took me years to figure out that Psylocke was actually meant to be asian, as very few artists actually ever gave her asian features.
Hank objected to X-Force because it was a hit squad, not just because it was secret. That’s the distinction with the Secret Avengers.
I was rather fond of the pre-ninja Betsy. I especially liked her relationship with Dough Ramsey. It was extremely cute. I was never able to figure out whether it would have been inappropriate though… Betsy’s age back then was kinda vague.
Betsy was about a decade older than Doug, IIRC. And yeah, I thought their mutual crushes were cute, but I’m also kind of glad that was nipped before we could get a Kitty and Colossus retread (and, all due respect to the man, it was Claremont…there was no way we wouldn’t have).
Magneto: Not a Hero seems to be decent enough. Nothing spectaculor, but it’s nice to see Mags given more than a few lines.
I quite liked how he was handled in Uncanny X-Men recently in his conversation with Psylocke. He is still Magneto. His views have changed, but they’re far from unrecognisable.