The X-Axis – 19 February 2012
If you’re looking for this weekend’s WWE preview, it’s one post down. Meanwhile – four X-books, plus a couple of others…
Generation Hope #16 – This is the penultimate issue, and so James Asmus grits his teeth and gets down to the necessary business of resolving the book’s main storyline – Hope’s influence over the other members of the team. That has to build to a climax at some point, and it makes sense to do it here, both to give this title some proper resolution, and to get it out of the way before Avengers vs X-Men.
Fortunately (well, from a certain perspective), Asmus has at least always known there was a good chance of getting axed at this point, so at least the exercise isn’t too rushed. On the other hand, it’s not entirely successful either; it’s never ideal to have an incoming writer resolve an inherited plot, and the noticeable tone shift between Gillen and Asmus’ issues doesn’t really help.
Roughly half of this issue is about Hope pondering whether she really wants Sebastian Shaw on her team, and stringing him along by claiming that, no, she’s got no idea who he is, and of course she’ll help him find out. The rest sees various characters deciding that the time has come to rein Hope in, for reasons of varying plausibility. Zero has the best case; he’s aggrieved by the interference with his own identity and makes the obvious point that if Hope has to stabilise every new mutant, then eventually she’ll end up in control of them all. Less convincingly, the story also tries to press the Stepford Cuckoos into service (on the logic that they disagree about Hope and the majority find this infuriating in itself) alongside the randoms from the previous issue. And the cliffhanger has unavoidable problems; they’re plainly not really going to kill her, so I can’t shake the feeling that the pay-off is going to be a bit of a cop-out.
On the plus side, though, the character work becomes a bit more subtle in this issue, and there’s some lovely visuals from guest artist Takeshi Miyazawa. This story would probably be a lot more successful if Hope wasn’t already being used in other, more important stories that necessarily rule out most of the possible endings and undercut a lot of the drama. There’s not an enormous amount Asmus can do about that.
Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #2 – We reviewed the first issue of this series on the podcast last month, but I thought I’d see how it holds up with regular artist Alex Milne. And actually, it remains a rather good comic; Milne’s a solid storyteller and decent with a giant brightly coloured robot. Which is obviously fortunate given that the cast here is exclusively comprised of them.
The obvious caveat does have to be attached here. It’s a Transformers comic aimed at their fan base, who will understand jokes like mysterious villains chanting about 1984 (which is the year the franchise debuted). As near as I can figure out, writer James Roberts was recruited from Transformers fandom. But all that notwithstanding, this is a well put together comic. The premise of IDW’s new direction is seemingly bizarre – the Autobots have won the war, so what happens next? For this title, the answer is that they go on a possibly quixotic quest to try and connect with their race’s lost past, which is a decent enough framework – even though it has the seemingly odd result of a Transformers comic with no Decepticons in sight or even on the horizon.
More to the point, though, it’s a well constructed story, it’s carefully put together, it’s got strongly defined characters, it strikes the right balance between taking the premise seriously and acknowledging it as ridiculous, and the comedy bits are actually funny. (Relentless optimist Drift, advising the captain on what to tell the crew: “I think you should accentuate the positive. We’ve got the quantum generators working again – big tick. We’re ready to resume our quest – big tick. And we’ve managed to save virtually all of the Autobots who got pulled outside – that’s more of a little tick. But it’s still a tick!“) I strongly suspect that nobody outside Transformers fandom actually pays any attention to the IDW books, but seriously, there’s some talent working on this.
Uncanny X-Men #7 – Part three of the Tabula Rasa story, and it builds to the big fight against the Immortal Man rather more quickly than you might expect. The basic story is really pretty straightforward – the Immortal Man has built a Dangerous Thingie which is going to bring his people back to life at the expense of killing everyone else. The X-Men and Savage must stop him. It’s the details that make it work – both survivors of the Apex spend the issue being monumentally condescending to the X-Men, and the dialogue pitches that perfectly. (“Let’s keep it simple. I’ll be ‘Good Apex’ and my old friend will be ‘Bad Apex.’ Can you handle that?”)
Land’s art is rather patchy on this issue. There’s a major page near the end which is virtually unintelligible, seemingly unable to make up its mind whether it’s a symbolic splash or not, and ending up with a floating disembodied head out of scale to everything around it. And he doesn’t really have the subtlety to play comedy moments, though fortunately the deadpan humour largely survives that. On the other hand, I do like the way he draws Danger turning herself into a makeshift suit of armour, complete with enormous face on the front.
It’s an oddly structured storyline. By all appearances, the Immortal Man is pretty much beaten this issue, leaving the X-Men to face some more nebulous threat to Tabula Rasa next month. And the subplots with the other half of the team are parked for the whole issue. It’s full-blown false ending, and at this stage, I’m not quite sure why. Still, Gillen knows what he’s doing, so presumably all will become clear in issue #8.
Venom #13.2 – In the interests of completism, I’d better say something about the “Circle of Four” storyline running through this month’s weekly Venom issues, oddly numbered as issues #13.1 to #13.4. This storyline appears to have started life as a planned crossover between Venom, X-23, Ghost Rider and Hulk, only to be thwarted when half of those books were cancelled. Now it’s been reassigned as a Venom storyline with a whole load of guest stars. I’m more or less randomly picking this as the notional X-23 issue on the basis that it’s the one that has her on the cover, but it’s not like she’s the particular focus of this story.
In fact, it’s not altogether clear why she’s here at all. The story actually involves Blackheart, the son of Mephisto, bringing Hell to Earth within the boundaries of Las Vegas. The four heroes must team up to stop him before he can break through the barriers surrounding the city. That’s basically the idea. As for why X-23 originally came to Las Vegas, she’s supposed to be chasing down samples of her blood, but this seems decidedly tacked on to try and justify her presence. Even Venom and the Red Hulk have no particularly powerful reason to be in the story, beyond the fact that they were already in Las Vegas (though the fact that the Red Hulk is chasing Venom at least reduces that to one coincidence rather than two). But ultimately it feels like a Ghost Rider story with tacked-on guest stars.
Casting about for some way to make the guest stars feel integral to the story, the creators dust off the old standard of having them fight demonic opposites of themselves. This being a refreshingly absurd book, X-23’s opposite number is an irritatingly upbeat cheerleader called X-666, who helpfully points out that, aside from the obvious, she’s X-23’s opposite because her appearance and her true nature are ironically opposed. That makes her a two-dimensional character, which (she contends) puts her one up on X-23. That’s quite funny, and it does actually play off X-23’s hang-ups. But that was in the previous issue. This one tries to suggest that X-23’s existence in Hell proves she has a soul, and even if you find that a remotely plausible argument to start with (it’s not like she’s meant to be dead), didn’t we already do this schtick in the first arc of her own book?
Ultimately, this is a Ghost Rider story – the final pages depend on you caring about whether she atones for something that presumably happened in an earlier issue of her own book – and the other characters have been nailed onto it rather awkwardly.
Wolverine #301 – Jason Aaron’s final arc isn’t working for me. He’s finished his major storylines and so far, this feels less like a coda than a time-killing exercise. People run around and fight… there’s crazy ninja and Yakuza stuff… it’s all way over the top… you get the general idea. It’s not bad, and it does hurl tongue-in-cheek ideas at the page energetically enough, but it’s very lightweight in a way that doesn’t feel like it really justifies this many issues.
Art continues to be oddly divided between Billy Tan and Steve Sanders, whose styles are very different. Putting chapter labels on their respective pages is all very well, and covers for the situation as best it can, but it doesn’t ultimately disguise the fact that the art style is randomly changing in mid-scene in a rather distracting way. And the use of Sabretooth is particularly odd. After Marvel made a big deal over his return, this is his first major storyline – and yet he’s already being treated as just a face in the crowd. I don’t understand the thinking behind that at all.
Ultimately, it’s all a bit flat. Some of the throwaway ideas are fun, but as a story, there’s really not much here.
X-Factor #232 – The final part of “They Keep Killing Madrox”, which turns out to be basically a set-up for future stories. I’ll cut to the chase: the pay-off is that Madrox gets sent back home but the villains from the three worlds he visited get dragged along with him. So we’ve had three issues of introduction for these villains, and that was pretty much the story.
This issue, Madrox fights a version of Dormammu, who’s pretty much like any other version of Dormammu, except that he’s possessing the body of Dr Strange. I’m not sure we really needed a whole issue just to set that up. It comes off as a fairly generic Dr Strange/Dormammu battle with a bit of possession thrown in, and I don’t really understand what I’m meant to be taking from this beyond “yup, that’s a Dormammu alright.”
Granted, the pages with Madrox’s actual return to the real world are very well done, and they work. Otherwise… it’s a third issue of set-up without much going on in its own right, and there’s really not much more I can say beyond that.
It’s a good thing that is your first experience to Alex Milne on Transformers, because has *massively* upped his game in the work he’s been producing in the past year. Like Roberts, he was hired out of the fandom, but years ago, by Dreamwave, when his art wasn’t even approximating a professional standard, and he has delivered some *despicable* work in his time. On the oddness of the new direction, note that MTMTE is one of two books – the other, “Robots in Disguise”, is the one with a more recognisable cast of mainstays, a Cybertronian setting, and lots of Decepticons in major roles.
I actually kind of enjoyed the X-Factor arc. It might be interesting if any of the Madrox power changes occur again. I also kind of like David going “Ok…I have an editorial mandate to put in Havoc & Polaris…here’s a 4 issue storyline, where they’re only in one panel.” It’s kind of a nice screw you, to Marvel. I have kind of a hope that the 3 characters stick around. I wasn’t really aware though, that Captain Deathlok was a villain, but maybe I just didn’t pay attention that much.
Not to be an insufferable know it all, but Takeshi Miyazawa provides art on Generation Hope, while Takeda is on Venom. I only point this out because I had half resolved to drop Generation Hope because of the hideous art last month, but Miyazawa was much closer to the Ibrahim Robertson art I quite liked
I enjoyed X-Factor too. Peter David on Dr. Strange might work. Curious to see where PD is going with the story.
For a while there not even many people IN Transformers fandom cared about IDW’s comics. I’m certainly going to be getting back on board with the trades of the two new series and the Marvel US revival.
When did they bring back Sabretooth? I thought it was going to be the storyline after this one with Loeb penning it. Did they do it already?
Oops, it is indeed Miyazawa on Generation Hope. I’ll change that.
Sabretooth simply shows up, mysteriously alive, in the back-up strip of Wolverine #300. They haven’t yet done the story of how he comes back, which seems to have drifted off the schedule. The current Wolverine arc reads as though Aaron was assuming that somebody else was covering this.
Isn’t the Loeb/Bianchi Sabretooth mini that was announced a while back meant to “explain” how he’s back?
[And, technically, didn’t Sabertooth first reappear in the cliffhanger of Wolverine/X-Men #3?]
The transformers comics are so insular that I guess that they decided that it was pointless to try and appeal to anyone but the hard-core – I tried the other transformers series that parallels the one reviewed here and it was so po-faced and serious, I thought it was some sort of parody. Laserbeck (or whoever) as some sort of civil leader took it beyond breaking point for me.
I want to believe all of the weird characters are being introduced for a massive Mojo/Longshot/Shatterstar story to come.
That’s Ratbat as the Decepticon leader – which to be fair is an idea that dates back to the original Marvel run.
The Circle of Four storyline in Venom actually convinced me to drop the series, since I didn’t like it enough to stick around for four extra issues featuring characters I don’t much care about. But! I am highly, morbidly amused, to realize that it’s basically an updated version of the “All-New Fantastic Four” from the ’90s. Only with Venom as the Spider-Man stand-in, X-23 for Wolverine, Red Hulk for Hulk, and the female Ghost Rider instead of the Danny Ketch GR.
Comics, everyone!
I think that’s deliberate. Vaguely recall it being mentioned in interviews.
From reading the Venom premise, I see that the team-up is a reference to Simonson and Arthur Adams’ story in Fantastic Four 347-349, where Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Ghost Rider were briefly the New Fantastic Four. However this time, we have Red Hulk, Venom, X-23 and female Ghost Rider, all “new” takes of the same characters. So basically, this is the New New Fantastic Four.
Oops! Posted it before reading other postings. Sorry.
@Marc: Were Havok and Polaris really forced on Peter David by editorial?
I find that difficult to believe given that X-Factor seems to be a book that people read more so because of the writer’s style and less so because of the characters involved. Also Havok and Polaris, while decent characters, aren’t likely to boost the sales of anything. Taking a character away from David to use elsewhere I can understand (like they once did with Wolfsbane), but making him take characters?
I don’t know if they were forced on him or not, but I can see a situation where management/marketing wanted the characters back in circulation to use in some upcoming crossover (Avengers vs X-Men even, who knows), or for the toy range or whatever, but none of the A team writers wanted them. So they were put into their natural home.
Havok is a problem, his thing used to be that he was a more interesting version of Cyclops. But now Cyclops has been rebuilt (primarily by Grant Morrison), Havok’s actually the less interesting version. Part of his problem is probably that he’s stuck with Polaris, who was never interesting.
In the letters page of X-Factor, in the issue where Havok and Polaris show up, PAD expresses disappointment that the surprise was spoiled by Marvel marketing. Their arrival was original intended to be a surprise cliffhanger but Marvel pulled the curtain back months earlier in promos.
With that in mind I assume PAD has some plan in place for them even though the team is already crowded. I imagine it’s something that came up during a X-Men writer’s retreat when the writers and editors were like, “what they heck are Havok and Polaris doing?” They wound up in X-Factor.
I think Peter David wouldn’t have taken them on, if he hadn’t some plan for them – even it is just for them to fuck up and for Layla and Jamie to have to return to save the day.
I felt the same way about ‘They Keep Killing Madrox’. I’m glad a favorite character of mine isn’t going to stay dead, but he was essentially just a bystander during the story, sitting on the sidelines while David introduced some new villains. Madrox was funny and very fun to read, but David didn’t have anything for him to actually do.
The Takeda art on Venom was what made me realise it was supposed to be an issue of X-23.
> I strongly suspect that nobody outside Transformers fandom actually pays any attention to the IDW books
Unlike the X-Men books, whose scope is wider than X-Men fandom? Franchise books cater to fans of the franchise; are we surprised?
Peter David seems happy to take in any characters other writers don’t want, like Darwin or Longshot. I’m more worried when they take them away, like with Rahne a few years ago.
I’ll wait and see on Havok and Polaris. Thry could work, or it could feel even more crowded.
I think the X-Men attract a lot more interest in the broader comics fandom than the IDW licensed titles do.
I think the point of the people ganging up on Hope at the end was that Kenji has them under his control, with a little help from Martha. If Kenji can control his parts as revealed, like those Kenji burgers, and the weird mind meld he showed with Martha, he could be making them sleeper agents to go after Hope in a way that is the extreme version of what they would really like to do to the character.
“I think Peter David wouldn’t have taken them on, if he hadn’t some plan for them”
I don’t think he would have either. Seems more likely that an editor said “Havok and Polaris are free. Want ’em?” and David thought about it and said, “Sure.”
I agree with Si about Havok needing some refocusing now that Cyclops has turned into Patton. I also agree that he needs to be permanently severed from Polaris.
Polaris is such an odd character. I think she gets by mostly because she’s already been around for so long. She’s so weird otherwise. Exact same powers as the X-Men’s foremost villain/ally but, um.. with green hair (why?). Very strange.
The one thing that is annoying me about the future of X-Factor is that according to the May previews, it’s going up to $3.99: http://www.previewsworld.com/Home/1/1/71/918?articleID=118188
Seems an odd move, isn’t it one of Marvel’s lowest-selling books as it is?
Well, it’s not just the fact that she’s Magneto Lite with green hair, it’s that the character herself is so utterly flawed. If you know her past, you have to take into consideration her connections to Magneto and/or Zaladane, her switch to having super strength, her transformation into Pestilence, and the time she was stark raving mad: none of which was any good. If you don’t know her past, she’s a generic character who you can hang on your fridge and doesn’t seem to do anything interesting.
Seriously, has any writer EVER had a good idea about what to do with Polaris?
Oh – and on top of all of that, most of her costumes have been rubbish.
Polaris always had a bum deal with writers; when she’s not being a whiny damsel in distress, she’s being mind-controlled by villains.
Given her power set, the character had potential, but was squandered on so many silly plots and personality twists that it’s now virtually impossible to see her as someone who’s not used as cannon fodder.
I think she and Havok would do well as leaders of their own team, with younger mutants to guide. I was hoping they’d end up in New Mutants or the Jean Grey school, but instead they were awkwardly shoved into an already crowded X-Factor.
Yes, for almost all of Polaris’ history she’s been body swapped/mind controlled/generally Claremonted, or she’s been on extended hiatus. So she’s never had the scope to develop as an individual. Now she’s Magneto’s daughter, there’s no hope at all for her. A carbon copy Magneto, paired up with a carbon copy Cyclops.
(I seem to recall the Zaladane thing interesting me back in the day though, but I can’t remember where or how that ended)
“Given her power set, the character had potential”
I actually think her power set doomed her from the start. Her having the same powers as Magneto is one of the main reasons I never much cared for her.
If you make her as powerful as Magneto, then Magneto no longer seems all that impressive, and he’s the more important character.
If you make her less powerful than Magneto, then she becomes, as someone else described her, “Magneto-Lite.”
I mean, what do you do with her? Kill her, I guess. At least that might spur some new ideas for Havok.
Yeah the power set is definitely an issue. These could be changed easily enough, Wikipedia tells me her powers now come from some device wired into her body, so they can be changed to just about anything. Probably best to stick with strength etc. because she’s already had that power, except the green hair will make people think of the Hulk family. But that aside, she has some interesting and unexplored history. Who was her mother? How did the mother get nasty with Magneto and how did she die? What’s all this about Zaladane and the Savage Land?
Actually no, it’s really convoluted just asking the questions, let alone trying to answer them. I read a thing just now about Mr Sinister being behind it, sounds interesting but can you imagine tying Magneto and the Savage Land into the whole Summers family tree? Best just to kill her.
@ Paul O’Regan:
X-Factor is one of Marvel’s lowest-selling books, but it’s also one of the most consistent; there’s virtually no drop-off from issue to issue. I suspect the reasoning is that the vast majority of readers will suck it up and pay the extra dollar, which would be entirely in line with the rest of Marvel’s current publishing strategy.
Fortunately, Taibak, I seem to remember one, and only one, writer ever doing anything good with Polaris: Peter David the last time she was on X-Factor.
He’s got a great track record for rehabilitating useless characters – he basically elevated Madrox from footnote in the OHTMU to a headliner, gave us the definitive take on Quicksilver, and was the first person to use Guido as anything other than a sight gag. He’s made people care about freakin’ Shatterstar. For that matter, Layla Miller was the blank slate deus ex machina of House of M until David got his hands on her.
Of course, the downside to that is that he periodically gets drunk on his success and tries to do the same for someone like Darwin and it doesn’t pan out as well, but I liked Polaris the last time he wrote her, so I’m cautiously optimistic that he’ll make her readable again.
Well, that’s sort of my point, innit? You have all these writers who have tried and failed to do something interesting with her, which would suggest that she’s a character not worth keeping.
For what it’s worth though, I don’t think that Magneto is as a big a problem for Polaris as much as Jean was. Given the way they use their powers, there’s not a whole lot of functional difference between Lorna’s magnetism and Jean’s telekinesis and the romance between Lorna and Alex has always struck me as too similar to the one between Jean and Scott. Why keep her around when her storyline is basically a repeat of her teammate’s?
The fact that lots of writers have tried to write Polaris and failed is a good reason to be apprehensive when a new writer says he wants to try a new spin on her, but it’s a pretty bad argument against giving her back to the one writer who’s actually written her well. It’s like saying no one but Alan Moore has ever done Top 10 justice, therefore Alan Moore shouldn’t be allowed to do another Top 10 book.
As someone who hadn’t bought a single IDW TF comic since Megatron: Origin (which was written by an old MUD friend of mine) I’m actually thrilled with MTMTE. They managed to fit two of my very favorite obscure Autobots into the cast (Chromedome and Skids), as well as Ratchet, Rodimus and Magnus and it looks like they’re going for the Big Space Opera feel of the best comic book and cartoon stories. Looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here. (Also, thanks for reviewing #1 on HtA: if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have ever considered it)
@ZZZ
Madrox, Strong Guy, and Layla were blank canvases before David got ahold of them. David fleshed them out. Not to take anything away from him, but there was really nowhere else to go with those characters but up.
Quicksilver, by contrast, was a well-established character with a well-established personality. David just provided insight as to why he was so cranky all the time. He miraculously improved the character without changing him at all, and of course deserves props for that.
But Polaris? I read his entire ’90’s X-Factor run at the time it was coming out, and I remember very little of how he handled Polaris. I have a vague recollection of her being stand-offish with Doc Samson during their session, but for the life of me, I can’t remember why. I’m therefore skeptical he’ll do anything to really pique my interest in her this time around.
I’ll also add that if a character really needs to be handled by a specific writer in order to be any good, then said character is either too attuned to the sensibilities of it’s creator for anyone else to do the character justice (e.g. Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck) or perhaps it’s because the character just plain sucks.
Glad to see MTMTE get some love. The Transformers line was dreadful under Mike Costa, but the two current Transformer comics are amazing. Yeah, they’re pretty insular (especially MTMTE, which as you pointed out, is written by a guy who got into the business writing Transformers fanfiction) but there’s good story underneath all the in-jokes.
Well, then here’s a question for those of you more familiar with David’s first X-Factor run than I am:
What would you say was the more memorable and/or definitive Polaris storyline – her respectful treatment under Peter David or her going batshit crazy under Chuck Austin?
Chuck Austen’s run was nothing if not memorable.
Hmm. Interesting question. Unfortunately, I think it may well be true that, even though she’s been around for decades, Polaris has never had a centre stage storyline which is both memorable and good.
I’d like to think that PAD’s first run on X-Factor was more memorable, but the horror that was Chuck Austen, in spite of the X-offices basically taking the ostrich head in the sand position toward him, is pretty hard to forget. The apocalypse returns story involving Polaris didn’t really do her any favors afterwards either.
I’m not necessarilly against the character in general, I find the natural reaction to her to more or less be indifference.
Oh, actually, that reminds me – I was going to say the only Polaris storyline that made any impression on me was the poor body-image/eating disorder one in X-Fsctor, but no, the depowered Polaris/Daap issues of X-Men amused me. I know most people were unimpressed with Peter Milligan’s run, but I really enjoyed it.
Personally, the storyline I remember best was when she was controlled by Malice.
As much I loved PAD’s first 90’s run – and that’s a lot – Polaris really got the least development of any of the cast. Havok had his discomfort taking the leadership role and trying to not be in his brother’s shadow. Wolfsbane had her post-Genosha trauma, her crush on Havok, her jealousy of Polaris, and her usual struggles with her animal side. Strong Guy refused to take anything seriously as a cover for the pain caused by his deformity. Quicksilver had his perpetual impatience justified. Multiple Man had the start of his identity issues and an interesting romance. Even Valerie Cooper had her role as a benign bureaucrat.
Polaris, though, mostly existed solely in relation to other characters. She was Havok’s reliable girlfriend and someone for Wolfsbane to feel envious of. Otherwise, all she had was her body issues subplot and the base level of snarkiness PAD gives all his characters.
That said, PAD can probably do something with her. Madrox didn’t get *really* interesting until his mini. I don’t think we’ve ever seen Pietro, a character with serious sister issues, react to the revelation he has a second sister.
RE: Pietro’s “sister issues”:
I’d say the Ultimate Universe’s Pietro has sister issues, while 616 Pietro’s sister just has issues.
Re: Generation Hope. On a first readthrough, seeing Nightcrawler really, really confused me.
Guh. Those were some glowing reviews for Marvel books.