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Feb 5

The X-Axis – 5 February 2012

Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2012 by Paul in x-axis

Our main event this weekend, it would seem, is the Before Watchmen piece in the post below.  But we also have some X-books out this week, so let’s cover those.

Before we start, fair warning: there’s a common theme with all five of this week’s books, which is that it’s the middle chapter of a storyline, and in most cases my views remain much the same as they were last issue.  But here we go anyway…

Avengers: X-Sanction #3 – You may have seen that the early January sales charts are out, and DC took a clean sweep of the top 10.  As it turns out, X-Sanction tailed in somewhere around number 15, quite some way off being even Marvel’s top seller for the month.  Which, on the one hand, is maybe not a good sign for interest in the upcoming Avengers vs X-Men crossover that this book is supposed to be building to.  On the other hand, it could just be that Loeb and McGuinness aren’t the draw they used to be, and everyone knows that preludes are disposable, and so a lot of people decided to skip it.  After all, Fear Itself tie-ins didn’t do much business, but people still bought the regular series.

In this issue, Cable fights the Red Hulk for half the issue, and then we get a flashback where – to give it  its due – the story does indeed explain where Cable got all that convenient technology from the previous issue.  (Basically: same place he got the time machine.)  The upshot of all this is that Cable apparently infects the Red Hulk with his techno-organic virus – which, for some unfathomable reason, Ed McGuinness chooses to represent as little yellow lines coming out of the big guy, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to any visual that’s been used in this connection before.  Then Cyclops and Hope show up so that we can go through an extremely desultory reunion, and then more Avengers show up for more fighting.  There is dialogue like “This isn’t the way to solve anything.”

The bottom line is that it remains a pretty mediocre series.  It’s far from terrible.  The plot holds together.  The motivations are at least there, even if the story merely waves vaguely in their general direction.  The art is easy on the eye, even though it lacks the spectacular element you might expect from McGuinness.  It’s ultimately okay.  But it’s nothing special, even judged as the straightforward action story it aspires to be; and I don’t see it doing much to sell the crossover.  It’s just an unambitious, very middling comic.

Uncanny X-Force #21 – Part two of the “Otherworld” arc, and I’m increasingly unsure about the choice of Greg Tocchini as artist for this arc.  In story terms, it’s pretty clear that Rick Remender is paying homage to elements from Excalibur and Captain Britain.  We’ve got other versions of Captain Britain wandering around; we’ve got Psylocke wearing the Captain Britain costume she had for about two issues of a UK-only series in the early 1980s; we’ve got a cameo appearance by Widget.  We’ve even got broad comedy like Deadpool’s severed head still chattering away happily.

All of which would seem to cry out for an artist who echoes the style most associated with those stories, namely Alan Davis – clean lines, primary colours.  Instead, we’ve got Tocchini’s very loose, almost sketchy work, which is often quite attractive in its own right, but doesn’t seem at all suited to the material.  Quite aside from his dissimilarity to the source material, he doesn’t seem at all comfortable trying to draw anything whimsical.  And there are points where the storytelling really does fall short – most obviously, a scene where the shape changer Meggan shows up in a different body and confuses everyone before changing to her regular form.  Remarkably, Tocchini has her simply changing appearance between panels so that the dialogue has to explain the joke.  That’s a serious misfire, and it appears in a sequence that already looks hideously rushed to start with.

As for the story – well, the bits with Psylocke trying to rescue Fantomex from retroactive erasure are quite fun.  There are some good moments with the Excalibur characters reacting to X-Force’s replacement Nightcrawler.  But the attacking army isn’t really working.  And the cliffhanger falls flat, unveiling a villain whom I… guess we’re meant to recognise?  Except I don’t.  I have no idea who he’s meant to be, and I’m just confused.  Right now, this arc is looking a bit glitchy.

Uncanny X-Men #6 – This is a Greg Land comic.  But oddly enough, it’s also the second straight issue of Land’s Uncanny X-Men to ship alongside another X-book which was far more visually irritating.  Sure, his art has an overly airbrushed feel, his photo-referencing results in characters having inconsistent faces, and his facial expressions all too often veer between stagey and blank.  But to give him his due, it’s rarely hard to follow the action.  And whether by accident or design, the “Tabula Rasa” arc also prevents him from going overboard on the photo reference, since the whole thing takes place in a fantasy world of weird-looking creatures.  So while it could be a lot better, it’s entirely readable.

This issue continues following through the premise of the time bubble to its logical conclusion.  The villain, it turns out, is one of the last survivors of an advanced race who got wiped out by an extremely protracted nightfall.  The water creatures are out of their minds with panic because, for the first time ever, the river is flowing.  And so on.  It takes a bit of goodwill to believe that such a small pocket ecology could actually have survived for all this time, but the story has a fair stab at addressing that head on.

The question of Psylocke trying to blur over her own involvement in creating Tabula Rasa rather goes on the back burner here, as the focus shifts to the locals, and a good old fashioned origin flashback for the bad guy.  Personally, I’d have preferred a bit more balance in terms of the focus on the guests and the regular cast, but there are interesting ideas in here, and it’s a good solid “hidden world” story.

X-Club #3 – Well, talk about throwing away a cliffhanger.  Last issue, Dr Nemesis was at the bottom of the ocean when his oxygen cable was cut!  How will he get back to the surface?  Well, he, uh, just will.  God, that’s weak.

That aside, this issue is mainly a case of keeping the various plates spinning.  Madison is still flakey but gets to make contact with an artificial intelligence.  Danger finds out why she’s acting all weird.  Dr Nemesis is still infiltrating the bad guys’ base.  And Kavita is the sensible one.  It’s more of the same, basically, and there’s not much more I really have to say about it.

X-Factor #231 – Part three of “They Keep Killing Madrox” returns to Madrox as he bounces his way through alternate worlds.  This time, it’s a world where M-Day wiped out most of the ordinary humans, and the Sentinels protecting the survivors are all giant versions of Iron Man.  We kind of get an explanation of what’s going on with Madrox – kind of – but most of the issue is actually about an unresolved conflict between alternate versions of Captain America and Iron Man.

The aforementioned explanation is that parallel worlds are coming together and Madrox is, for some reason, getting a “preview” of it.  And Mr Tryp knows about it but isn’t responsible for it.  And that’s pretty much the sum total of plot advancement in this issue, unless the details of this parallel earth turn out to be significant in some way.  I can only assume that they will be, since I can’t imagine Peter David would be wasting this much space on them unless it was set-up for something, but it’s not yet apparent how or why they might turn out to be significant.

Even assuming that it does indeed turn out to be vital set-up for future stories, it’s not the strongest of issues.  Iron Man as a vaguely suspect defender of the remaining humans works well enough; but Captain America as a psychotic Deathlok just comes across as rather arbitrary, and not especially interesting in its own right.  But David always writes sharp dialogue, and artist Emanuela Lupacchino does a solid job with the character redesigns and with the scale of the giant Iron Man suits.

 

Bring on the comments

  1. Thom H. says:

    Unfortunately, Tocchini’s art on X-Force reminds me of Kordey’s on New X-Men: sketchy, rushed (or at least rushed looking), and following other artists more suited to the look of the book (and presumably with more time to draw it). Which is too bad — X-Force has had so much great art up to this point.

  2. Nick says:

    I believe the character on the last panel of X-Force is the Skinless Man, a statue of whom was glimsed during Genesis’ fight with Archangel in #18. (Along with Dr. Mindbubble and an unidentified female.)

    Tocchini’s version makes him look like a lizard-person though and if I hadn’t just re-read #18 on Monday night I don’t think I would have caught it.

  3. Isaac Leiro says:

    I do not think you are actually supposed to know who the cliffhanger villiain is in X-Force. You can, however, recognize him from the clan Akaba citadel, where a statue of him was briefly seen “The Skinless man”.

    Thus the idea is that this whole arc is tied somehow to the relationship between the Braddocks and him (By interviews we know it also links with Weapon Plus). But I spent a solid minute trying to piece out who may he be.

  4. Paul O'Regan says:

    I’m glad PAD has brought back Tryp to X-Factor. I was disappointed when he/they disappeared after the first year of the book.

  5. Tdubs says:

    I had trouble enjoying both X-Force and Uncanny this week. I actually put both books down and came back to them later. X-Force was extremely bad for me and after reading the review, I feel confident in saying I had issues with the art. This is the first time I’ve felt this way since the Nazi issue, I hope X-Force bounces back quick.
    I also looked at the Iron Men sentinels and thought the scale was fantastic. It is something that gets lost from to often.

  6. ZZZ says:

    A problem I’m having with X-Sanction – which may or may not be intentional – is that Cable is acting exactly like Bishop after his heel turn: Coming back from the future to attack his allies and enigmatically proclaiming that the X-Men should just go along with it because “if you knew what I know you’d be helping me!”

    The only differences are that we have a lot more insight into Cable’s motivation than we did with Bishop’s, and that while Bishop had no discernable reason not to tell the X-Men why he needed to kill Hope, Cable seems to assume they already know why he’s trying to kill the Avengers (and I think Blaquesmith is actually supposed to have told them, making the Avengers themselves the only ones being affected by his “no time to explain” syndrome).

    I have no idea whether this is intentional: the parallels are extremely strong and “the hero becomes the thing he hates most” is an overdone cliche that a lot of writers still think is profound; but the fact that Hope didn’t point it out within a few panels of appearing makes me think Loeb doesn’t realize he’s rehashing her origin story, and “good man has to do something bad to make the future turn out right” is an equally overdone/profound time travel cliche.

  7. wwk5d says:

    “if you knew what I know you’d be helping me!”

    That’s one thing that bugs me about these types of stories. It hinges on the character not explaining things, and if he/she did, it would resolve so much, but of course they can’t, since that would end the story in 5 minutes.

  8. Brad Curran says:

    “Except I don’t. I have no idea who he’s meant to be, and I’m just confused.”

    I’m glad, because that bugged the hell out of me too. I’m really disappointed that the art is so rough in this storyline. The Kordey comparison is unfortunately pretty accurate, and it’s even tougher to swallow given how much this series has spoiled us, by and large.

    “That’s one thing that bugs me about these types of stories. It hinges on the character not explaining things, and if he/she did, it would resolve so much, but of course they can’t, since that would end the story in 5 minutes.”

    I do hope someone does that in one of these kinds of stories anyway. It would be like the last issue of the Galactus Saga, where Johnny Storm is enrolling in college by the end of it.

  9. Paul, I just realized that you haven’t reviewed Deadpool for a long time now. Why? That’s still an X-title, no? (although I understand that the tsunami of Deadpool titles of previous years might put anyone off.)

  10. Argus says:

    I think the Skinless Man may long-term have something to do with the anti-mutant bullets that Captain Britain and Psylocke’s father designed. Back in the issues of Excalibur where they visited Genosha, bullets were used from the sentinent skin of a mutant or something similar, right? They had little screaming faces. Fantomex has been seen firing similar bullets (as in the Paris/eurotunnel arc of New X-Men). So there’s some kind of connection there.

    Remender is an author who likes his continuity, and I think it will be great if he has joined the dots.

    I like the artist on the current Uncanny X-Force arc: but as you note, I worry that his style isn’t the correct fit. But then again, I think Alan Davis (much as I love his work) may be too “traditional superhero” for this book, which has had some really cool, unusual art. That said, I always love Davis’s rendition of Captain Britain characters. Was such a shame when he left Uncanny X-Men midway through the House of M arc and we got muddled Bachalo artwork instead (again, a case of good artist, wrong fit).

    I do like seeing Meggan though. And I like how this Nightcrawler is just a bastard (would be neat if the tattoo ties into Crimson Dawn somehow… just for circularity). I also like how Remender takes existing story elements and really expands on them. How much have we ever actually seen of Otherworld, anyway?

  11. Paul says:

    I don’t regard Deadpool as an X-book since they spun it off into its own little franchise.

  12. The original Matt says:

    When was the last time DC did a top ten clean sweep? I find that interesting.

  13. Matt Horak says:

    The thought of Alan Davis art on Uncanny X-Force for this arc is a great one. Printed from his pencils and colored by Dean White? That would have fit the story (and the series) perfectly.

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