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Nov 28

The X-Axis – 28 November 2010

Posted on Sunday, November 28, 2010 by Paul in x-axis

If you ask me, the only thing better than spending Sunday at work is having to trudge through the snow to get there.  So what a joyful day it’s been for me!

Anyway, it’s a ridiculously heavy week for the X-books – six of them, if you count Namor – but a fairly quiet one otherwise, with one notable exception.  Small mercies and all that…

Batwoman #0 – This would be the one notable exception – the start of the ongoing Batwoman series, without original writer Greg Rucka, but with artist J H Williams III.  He’s now co-writing alongside W Haden Blackman, who’s apparently done a bunch of licensed Star Wars stuff.  I’m not generally a huge fan of Zero issues, which are usually just a device to have two issue #1s, but I can see what they’re going for here.  This is a 16-page story which consists of Batman following Batwoman around and figuring out who she is.  It’s not really the start of a new series so much as a statement of how the creators see the character – one that’s much more concerned with laying out her personality and the style of her series than with the plot mechanics of recapping her origin story (which I assume need not concern me).   Since they’ve shoved all the adverts to the back, the story ends at the centre spread, which makes it look shorter than it actually is – though they’re still pushing their luck a bit selling it at the full $2.99 price, since the rest of the book is taken up with four pages of promo art for the next issue, and a seven-page excerpt from Detective Comics #871 which has cropped up in other books as a freebie.  Never mind, though; what you do get here is a clear and effective introduction of the character, and some absolutely beautiful artwork by Williams, an artist who can pull off imaginative panel layouts without sacrificing an ounce of clarity.  Colourist Dave Stewart is also doing wonderful things with the character’s black and red colour scheme, which gives her stories an abstract look that differs from the parent character.  I’m always a bit cautious about picking up any of the satellite Batman titles, since all too often it turns out that (as with the X-books) if you’re not willing to buy most of the line, you might as well not bother with any of them.  Hopefully Batwoman will prove to be a special case, because the real selling point here is Williams’ artwork, and with any luck it’ll be allowed to sell itself as a creator-driven book without getting sucked too far in.

Namor: The First Mutant #4 – The concluding part of “Royal Blood”, the opening storyline which notionally doubles as a “Curse of the Mutants” tie-in.  In fact, other than a bit of plot mechanics about recovering the head of Dracula in issue #1, it’s got nothing to do with that storyline.  The story Stuart Moore really wants to tell here is about Namor, while on Random Quest X, disturbing a bunch of undersea vampires and breaking the long-standing peace between them and Atlantis.  And that leads Namor to go on another quest where he has to perform the obligatory ritual to get rid of the vampires again.

Earlier issues had patchy art by Ariel Olivetti, but apparently this is not the sort of book which gets to wait for the regular artist to join in, since last month we had several pages of fill-in art, and this issue the whole book is drawn by Andres Guinaldo.  It’s fairly generic in style – it’s fill-in work, after all – but to be honest I’d still take it over Olivetti’s work, which too often seems stiff and to have no real sense of floating underwater.  Guinaldo’s characters at least seem to be swimming most of the time.  After all, if you’re going to go to the trouble of doing a whole series set underwater, you might as well follow through on that visually.

There are a few potentially interesting ideas in this issue.  The vampires are led by one of Namor’s not-too-distant predecessors as the king of Atlantis, who’s terribly disappointed by his grandson’s performance as the king.  Somewhere along the line, this is apparently supposed to translate into Namor symbolically breaking from the past and declaring a new direction for Atlantis – but that doesn’t come across very clearly, since it’s not terribly clear what he’s actually planning to do that might represent a break from the past.   There’s also a cute subplot about a soldier trying to save his already-vamped brother.  But on the other hand, the plot is formulaic (a ritual which conveniently dovetails with the plot elements, plus a shoehorned-in role for obscure X-character Loa) and the whole thing is fairly average.  It’s picked up significantly from the first issue, which was really pretty lousy, but the series remains ultimately uninspiring.

New Mutants #19 – The cover bills this as the conclusion of “Fall of the New Mutants”, but nobody seems to have told the plot, which barrels gamely into a cliffhanger.  After last issue’s big fight with the Project Purgatory mutant squad, this is mostly an issue of our heroes as prisoners being prodded by the baddies.  Fortunately they’re mostly well-written scenes which double as an opportunity to flesh out the characters on the opposing team.  Magik gets to do some spectacular moping, while Sam and Dani have a hugely melodramatic sequence which is so over the top that it works rather nicely.  The token nice member of the Purgatory team, who just wants to see how things work, has some cute scenes based around the idea that the rest of his group don’t have much time for him either, and there’s a well-handled routine based on Karma making psychic contact with the Purgatory member who can’t see, hear or speak (though come to think of it, it’s a shame the character design left his ears intact, because it rather obscures the concept).  Good art from Leonard Kirk, as well, in an issue which seems to owe something of a debt to Adam Kubert at times.

The question here, I suppose, is pacing.  The plot involves the Purgatory soldiers attempting to conjure up a magical thingy that they don’t really understand but which seems to scare the hell out of the local demons, so it must be awesome.  That story has made fairly slow progress over the last two issues, perhaps because Zeb Wells is plainly more interested in writing strong character-driven scenes for his cast than in letting them make any progress towards the Macguffin.  Since that’s the best feature of the book, you can’t complain too much about that, but the overall story is a bit slow, and much of what happens here doesn’t really seem to contribute to it one way or the other.  A more clearly and strongly defined plot would be a plus, but it’s still a good series.

Uncanny X-Force #2 – Boy, Jerome Opena’s really doing some beautiful art in this book.  That’s the main thing that leaps out at you reading X-Force; it’s crisp, clean stuff which avoids the cliches of shadowy murk in favour of having some fun with the action sequences and letting the muted palette of Dean White’s colours contribute to the atmosphere.  While the villain here is technically Apocalypse, he’s been reincarnated as a little boy who’s being raised by his own enthusiastic cultists, and both Opena and writer Rick Remender are deadpanning their way nicely through the resulting absurdity – scenes of Apocalypse Jr learning his own philosophy from a well-meaning sociopathic schoolmistress, and a new bunch of henchmen with less literal takes on the “Horsemen of Apocalypse” theme that give them a weirdly surreal and dreamlike quality.  As for the title characters, well, they get a couple of nice scenes at the beginning setting up some subplots within the team, but this story is more about selling the Apocalypse revamp.  Under Remender, X-Force is still the “dark” X-book where the team bump off villains, but tempered by a streak of self-awareness (such as the group’s weirdly Silver Age headquarters, complete with trophy room) that makes it much more readable than the book’s previous, somewhat monotone incarnation.

Uncanny X-Men #530 – Part one of “Quarantine”.  Can you guess the plot?  Well, to be fair, the plot hook is established in the first few pages, so it’s where we go from there that matters.  There’s a modified strain of flu doing the rounds on Utopia – the one that the Sublime Corporation engineered a few issues back.  So Utopia is under quarantine, which also means that the mutants presently off the island can’t get back.  That includes Emma, Kitty and Fantomex (who were off disposing of Sebastian Shaw in the subplot last issue), as well as Dazzler and Northstar (so that’s why we had the seemingly gratuitous one-page scene with them fighting random baddies in San Francisco).  And at the same time, the Collective Man is moving in on San Francisco’s Chinatown, but Wolverine’s not available to do anything about him, because he’s stuck on the island.  Oh, and the Sublime group have plans of their own.  There’s a lot going on here, actually.

It’s a Greg Land issue, but to be honest, there’s nothing particularly objectionable in his work here.  It’s a bit flat at times.  He has no range when it comes to women, and he only has one expression for background characters (the inane smile).  But overall, it’s one of his better issues.  A bigger problem is whether the book has adequately set up some of the plot points that it needs to tell the story Fraction clearly has in mind.  Somebody seems to have belatedly twigged that it might be nice to explain the Sebastian Shaw subplot, as the issue opens with two pages of explanation.  But at the same time, the plot assumes that you know that Wolverine has a position of authority in San Francisco’s Chinatown – a story point from the Wolverine: Manifest Destiny miniseries the better part of two years ago which hasn’t received a great deal of play since, and certainly hasn’t cropped up with any prominence in this book.

And, more curiously, the plot assumes that with the X-Men stuck on Utopia, there’s a need to assemble a makeshift team “to reassure the public and to help maintain law and order.”  The X-Men were patrolling San Franciso and maintaining law and order?  Since when?  To be fair, you can make a case that Fraction was setting this up with his one-page Northstar/Dazzler sequence a couple of issues ago, but it’s hardly been a major feature of the book.  After all, the current X-Men: Serve and Protect miniseries takes as its starting point the idea that Anole and Rockslide are going out on patrol because the X-Men don’t do that sort of thing – so if Uncanny was trying to set that up as part of the X-Men’s status quo, the point doesn’t seem to have sunk in even with Marvel’s own writers and editors, let alone the readers.

Still, there’s some potential in this one, and it certainly hits the ground running so far as the plot is concerned.  Overall, I’m pretty happy with it.

X-Men Forever 2 #12 – Everyone heads for Genosha, where the Ghost Panther is… well, breaking up arguments on the street and trying to make Martin Luther King speeches, I guess.  The X-Men show up, the two Storms fight one another, and hey, all the plot threads are being drawn together as the book approaches its conclusion in a few issues time.  I can’t say I’m that excited about revisiting Genosha, which was always a heavy handed metaphor for apartheid-era South Africa and doesn’t really translate too well to the twenty-first century.  And there are plenty of plot objections to be raised here.  Why are the Wakandan troops so willing to assume that the Ghost Panther is connected to the real Black Panther when it could plainly be anyone under the costume?  (It’s particularly awkward considering that other characters are appropriately sceptical, making the Wakandans come across as weirdly gullible.)  And if Havok is still a Magistrate in this timeline, surely he never returned to America to join X-Factor – so why is he wearing their uniform?  And yet, and yet… the plot threads are being drawn together neatly, there’s a nice sense that we’re heading towards resolution, and the final page is an unexpected but effective twist.  Undeniably flawed, but likeable all the same.

X-Men Legacy #242 – The start of a new arc, “Fables of the Reconstruction”, which seems to focus on Hellion and, uh, Karima Shapandar.  Remember her?  Apparently she’s still in the cast.  I’d pretty much forgotten about her, to be honest.  But that seems to be Mike Carey’s modus operandi with this book – pick a character nobody else cares about, and give them a storyline.  Not the most commercial direction for the book – and the idea of building around Rogue seems to be falling by the wayside, since her role in this story is hardly enormous – but it gives Carey freedom to tell his own stories, and that’s a plus.  This one is about the X-Men helping out with the reconstruction of San Francisco after Bastion’s attack; it’s all told in flashback and it’s pretty clear that something not very nice is going to happen to somebody, strongly implied to be Hellion.  Logically, I suppose, this is a story that should have come straight after the “Second Coming” crossover, but to be honest, the trip to India for several months made a nice break, letting us come back to this story fresh, and without the sense of it being just an epilogue to the crossover.  It’s more a string of character moments leading up to Something Nasty happening at the end, but Carey’s good at that sort of scene, and knows how to give C- and D-list cast members their own voice, something they rarely get as crowd members.  Artist Paul Davidson is an unfamiliar name; sometimes the subtler expressions don’t quite come across, but it’s nice clear work on the whole, and good with getting a sense of place.  Too early to say much about this one as a story, but there’s plenty here for X-Men fans who like to see the lesser characters get an outing with a writer who knows how to deal with them.

Bring on the comments

  1. odessasteps says:

    I would have said that the exception is the simply marvelous THOR: TMA 6 by Langridge and Samnee. Best book Ive read in months.

  2. Paul O'Regan says:

    The Rucka/Williams Batwoman story was probably my favourite superhero book of the last few years. Wonderful stuff. The OHC is well worth picking up, if you can find it at a decent price.

    Looking forward to the new run, though the lack of Rucka has me wary.

  3. Mike says:

    And both Uncanny and Legacy prove this week why I have never really liked the current status quo of “everyone’s an X-Man now”. Northstar and Dazzler, both entertaining characters in their own right (Dazzler had her own book at one point) are now one note props brought in when needed but never really developed beyond their (now) shallow characterization. And over in Legacy, I either didn’t know or missed somehow where Karima and Random were part of the group on Utopia.

    The ease with which characters are brought in and then scooted off to the background makes for convenient plot contrivances. I’m always feeling as though I’ve missed something because things just ‘happen’ and characters just ‘appear’ as if everything should be clear – and it isn’t.

  4. Isn’t it a little dangerous — from a continuity point of view — to quarantine Wolverine when he has to appear in ever other mutant and Avenger comic this month?

    I haven’t read it, but one assumes that Wolverine hasn’t caught the ‘flu himself. Or does the healing factor not extend to his immune system?

  5. lambnesio says:

    I was really surprised to see That Greg Land was illustrating this story. I thought Whilce Portacio was the new series artist- the fact that he’s actually splitting art duty with Greg Land means that we’ve just lost the one good artist this book had and gained a really awful one. Although to be honest, I like Greg Land a lot better than I like Portacio. His work is incredibly awkward and ugly, and occasionally hard to follow. Greg Land’s only guilty of one of those things. I still don’t understand why this is the X-book with the worst track record for art. Somebody else has got to be available for this, right?

    Anyway though, I did like this issue quite a bit. I actually do enjoy this book most of the time, despite its problems.

    X-Men Legacy has been great, and I’m looking forward to the rest of this storyline- the adverts for the Age of X storyline seem promising too.

    As for Karima and Random- both of these characters turned up during Second Coming. Karima was definitely in the opening and closing issues, and Random actually has had a few speaking roles in recent issues. Not that either character’s played a major role lately (or basically ever in Random’s case). In any case, I’ve been a pretty big fan of Karima Shapandar even since Carey used her in this book when it was still just X-Men, so I’m glad to see her.

  6. Shadowkurt says:

    It has not been possible to synchronize what Wolverine does in one of his books with his appearances in others since, I’d guess, the early nineties. So he may be under quarantine, in hell, with the Avengers, in Shadowland and wherever else – if you try to figure out how, your head may burst.

    I’m just glad that for almost all other X-characters, this does not apply.

  7. yeah! ho! wah! says:

    boy, do i disagree about the art on uncanny… again. i never liked lands art, but i hated portacios art so much, i was actually almost looking forward to lands return. now hes back, and in my opinion, his art in this issue looks worse than anything hes drawn before. so bad its not even better than portacios. its exasperating.

    but uncanny, x-force, legacy, and new mutants all delivered really good issues this week, so im happy.

    i particularly love new mutants, which at this point is my favourite x-title. i agree that the plot got a little confusing in the last few issues… this storyline actually started way back in issue 9, before being interrupted by two (!) crossovers. but i actually found that this issue made everything clear again.

    and im one of those fanboys whos a sucker for minor x-characters, so i always enjoy careys work. karima, yay!

  8. Ken B. says:

    The one thing I worry about with the X-Men right now is how even a good writer like Carey can’t really make headway with Hope. The whole scene with her and the little girl made no sense (why was she picking that spot to dig a fence, in the middle of construction? landscape comes after you put up the buildings), and if Hope of all people gets to reach out to Hellion, it just seems a bit forced.

    I would just let Hope stay in her own series, just to give the other books a break from her.

    And from the preview art for the next Uncanny issue, it looks like Greg Land traced a WWE wrestler for a Namor splash page. It’s just insulting that Marvel acts like we don’t know he’s tracing everything left and right.

  9. Jerry Ray says:

    Yeah, I couldn’t figure out what was going on with whatever Hope was working on in that scene (up to her waist in a giant hole with a weird-looking shovel, ostensibly setting fence posts in the middle of a construction site?). I figure there was probably at least a little bit of miscommunication with the artist.

    Speaking of miscommunication, I just caught up on the last 3 issues of Avengers Prime, and I’m having a hard time reconciling the goings-on in that issue (including Thor’s thoughts about Loki’s death) with what I’ve been reading recently in Gillen’s run on Thor, and in Fraction’s run to this point. That’s the problem with putting out such a vast number of uncoordinated books, I guess – the plots almost HAVE to stomp on each other.

  10. Argus says:

    Hate Greg Land’s artwork. Stiff, awkward, bland. Notice how sometimes background characters just don’t have faces, or seem to be looking away so you see the sides of their heads?

    Also agree with the worries of the huuuge X-Men cast where people seem to pop up and drop out with no prior notice. It’s not conducive to consistent character development at all. As a new reader, I’d be very lost. (also, when people like Cecilia Reyes show up with no explanation, it’s irritating, much as I like her character – wasn’t she dead?!).

    That said, I do love Mike Carey’s work on Legacy and how he picks up minor characters and gives them a chance to shine. Karima has been in and out his book since he first came on as a writer, and is obviously a favourite. She’s not been around really since Messiah Complex and the immediate aftermath.

    Loving the new X-Force, it’s great. Focused cast, gorgeous artwork, interesting moral question looming (can you kill Apocalypse if he’s a child? Answer: probably yes…).

  11. Jason Powell says:

    “And if Havok is still a Magistrate in this timeline, surely he never returned to America to join X-Factor – so why is he wearing their uniform? ”

    ***How weird. I haven’t read this issue yet, but previous issues showed Havok and Polaris hanging out with Scott, Corsair and the other Summers folk in Alaska. Now Claremont has Havok as still a magistrate in Genohsa?

  12. Brad says:

    For those wondering when Karima and Random came to Utopia, it was at the end of the issue of Legacy when Professor Xavier convinced Exodus to disband the Brotherhood without a fight. Karima, Random and I believe Tempo decided to come to Utopia, Unuscione and Frenzy (I think that’s her name?) went their own ways, and Exodus went off to ponder his next move. Can’t remember for sure what Amelia Vogt decided to do.

  13. AJ says:

    I see Mike Carey is an R.E.M. fan.

  14. ZZZ says:

    The problem I had with X-Men: Legacy (in addition to Hope’s inexplicable fencepost-and-pit construction technique and a little girl radomly wandering a construction site, which didn’t make sense but could just be Hope having no idea what she’s doing and bad security at the site) was that it required Cyclops to make absurd decisions to justify the setup the book wants.

    He wants to help rebuild a city has an entire literal army of mutants a his beck and call, so he sends eight people (plus Hope, whom he didn’t want to send).

    He wants mutants to be seen helping out, so two of the four people he sends aren’t mutants (and are really obviously not mutants).

    Cyclops has access to known heroes and celebrities like Dazzler, Northstar, Iceman, and Angel, so he sends the worst mutant terrorist the world has ever known (didn’t a recent issue of X-Men imply that they didn’t even want the public to know Magneto was on Utopia, or am I misremembering?), a cyborg designed to kill mutants, a robot designed to kill the X-Men, a mercenary thug (seriously, literally everyone Cyclops picks was a villain at least briefly, though Colossus and Psylocke at least have the excuse that they weren’t in their right minds), and an emotionally unstable teen still coming to grips with a recent disability.

    Instead of pitching in with emergency services or helping transport vital goods and services to areas cut off to regular tranportation, they help rebuild a random building. Even if it were possbile to get a building thrown together by Magneto in a day certified safe for public use, would anyone want to work or live in it? And wouldn’t the construction workers (and therefore their probably very vocal and defensive trade union) resent the X-Men effectively taking months worth of pay out of their pockets? Is “Don’t worry San Francisco – mutants are here to take your jobs!” the message Scott wants to send?

  15. The original Matt says:

    “I haven’t read it, but one assumes that Wolverine hasn’t caught the ‘flu himself. Or does the healing factor not extend to his immune system?”

    “It has not been possible to synchronize what Wolverine does in one of his books with his appearances in others since, I’d guess, the early nineties.”

    With comics in general, it’s impossible to do that. But at least Bendis had a go and didn’t use Logan after the Utopia crossover.
    Since the 2 most difficult things about Logan is that 1. He appears everywhere and 2. He has that pesky healing factor, you’d think this would be one of those overly convienient times where they could say “oh, Logan’s busy right now” for the duration of a plot which requires people to be in fear of a virus.

    Unless of course they need Logan on the island to design a cure using his cells.

  16. ZZZ says:

    One of the things that’s supposed to make the flu epidemic so scary (especially considering that no one’s died from it yet) is that it shuts down people’s powers and even affected Wolverine.

    Yeah, some writers would say he’s immune because it can’t infect him until his healing factor is down and it can’t shut his healing factor down until he’s infected. But there are plenty of examples of Wolverine being exposed to something, manifesting the symptoms, screaming a few manly screams, and then getting better as his healing factor fights off whatever he had. So it’s not too big a stretch.

  17. Ash says:

    The X-books are a mess. Basically you’ve got editors who don’t seem to coordinate with one another when it comes to characters and plotlines. The entire vampire crapfest appears to be happening in their own closed-off universe, with no mention or repercussions in the other X-books, just like Necrosha was ignored in Uncanny.

    As for Karima, I’ve always liked how Mike Carey used her in Rogue’s own team of X-Men a few years back. She was underutilized in Second Coming, which was a pity, since being Omega Sentinel would’ve made a big difference in firepower had Cyclops decided to put her on the front lines. Instead, we get ditzes like Pixie, who hardly does anything useful except whine about Magik and escapes unscathed from everything…go figure.

  18. lambnesio says:

    “also, when people like Cecilia Reyes show up with no explanation, it’s irritating, much as I like her character – wasn’t she dead?!”

    Cecilia was in a Weapon Plus death camp, but she was never actually shown to be dead, which pretty much means that she wasn’t.

    “Cyclops has access to known heroes and celebrities like Dazzler, Northstar, Iceman, and Angel, so he sends the worst mutant terrorist the world has ever known (didn’t a recent issue of X-Men imply that they didn’t even want the public to know Magneto was on Utopia, or am I misremembering?), a cyborg designed to kill mutants, a robot designed to kill the X-Men, a mercenary thug (seriously, literally everyone Cyclops picks was a villain at least briefly, though Colossus and Psylocke at least have the excuse that they weren’t in their right minds), and an emotionally unstable teen still coming to grips with a recent disability.”

    That is a very good point, and I didn’t think of it at all. He chose characters he thought would be the most helpful, but that is sort of crazy. Of course, the public has no idea that Karima Shapandar is a sentinel, or that Danger was ever an enemy of the X-Men; likewise, there’s no reason why the public should know that Random was a mercenary.

    Cyclops was keeping Magneto’s presence on Utopia under wraps though… But then again, he just traveled to India with Rogue and the kids, and he’s running around with the Young Avengers too, so I guess it’s not such a big secret. Did he ever make it off the island during Second Coming? I don’t think he did, which would mean his involvement in that wouldn’t have been public at all.

    “Even if it were possbile to get a building thrown together by Magneto in a day certified safe for public use, would anyone want to work or live in it? And wouldn’t the construction workers (and therefore their probably very vocal and defensive trade union) resent the X-Men effectively taking months worth of pay out of their pockets? Is “Don’t worry San Francisco – mutants are here to take your jobs!” the message Scott wants to send?”

    Also a really good point.

    “The X-books are a mess. Basically you’ve got editors who don’t seem to coordinate with one another when it comes to characters and plotlines. The entire vampire crapfest appears to be happening in their own closed-off universe, with no mention or repercussions in the other X-books, just like Necrosha was ignored in Uncanny.”

    To be fair, I’d rather see the vampire storyline ignored in the other X-books than see it turn into a sprawling crossover. And if Uncanny were going to acknowledge the vampire storyline, it’d probably be a lot less confusing if they did it once it was over.

  19. yeah! ho! wah! says:

    i definitely dont want the various x-men titles to be in constant crossover mode, like they used to be during the 90es. make a proper crossover – like ‘messiah complex’ or ‘2nd coming’ – or leave it be altogether.

    im just assuming that ‘curse of the mutants’ takes place after ‘five lights’, ‘collision’, and ‘reconstruction’, and probably before ‘quarantine’.

  20. Maurice says:

    Paul, it is interesting you mentioned the price point for Batwoman. It was originally solicited at $3.99 (http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=16000). Personally, I believe the 16 pg story is due to the lack of prep time by the creative team. In a Newsarama or CBR interview, JH Williams said DC wanted a ‘0’ issue after work begin on no. ‘1’. Personally, I feel like DC gave me my $1 back. I felt like I got stiffed over Batman: The Return. That book’s content was not worth the $5 price tag.

  21. “And wouldn’t the construction workers (and therefore their probably very vocal and defensive trade union) resent the X-Men effectively taking months worth of pay out of their pockets? Is “Don’t worry San Francisco – mutants are here to take your jobs!” the message Scott wants to send?”

    The scene reminded me immediately of the introduction of Colossus in the 90s cartoon series, wherein a group of human construction workers show up to protest that one mutant has rendered them all obsolete. In that case, I believe the argument was called on account of Juggernaut attack (it’s like calling the game on account of rain, but instead of your car getting wet, it’s crushed into a small cube and hurtled into a building). So the issue does open itself up to criticism inserted over a decade ago.

    The second thing it brought to mind was X-Men 85, in which Magneto attempts to goad a construction worker into showing anti-mutant bigotry so that he could feel justified in launching his next big war against humankind. So it’s only poetic justice that his next construction effort is to support good human relations.

    And for the utter tangent: I couldn’t remember exactly which X-Men issue it was, so I googled “X-Men Archive.” It’s somewhat disturbing that the first thing that search turns up is “the definitive X-Men Erotica” site.

  22. Baines says:

    it looks like Greg Land traced a WWE wrestler for a Namor splash page. It’s just insulting that Marvel acts like we don’t know he’s tracing everything left and right.

    I wouldn’t be surprised, as he has copied pro-wrestlers in the past. A few years back, he was copying guys like Triple H and Randy Orton. Pro-wrestling is an easy source of photos of comic book muscular men, and even in comic book poses. (Fitness mags have the overly muscular men, but the poses are more limited.)

  23. Baines says:

    As for the obviousness of Land’s tracing, Marvel didn’t care even when the manga tracing scandals were breaking a few years back, resulting in the cancellation of at least one manga series. Quesada made comments like how Marvel didn’t accept that kind of behavior in its artists, photo-references were okay but not blatant tracing and heavy use of the works of others. When people pointed to all the Land evidence online (and there was plenty even then, several with the sources found), Quesada just went quiet.

  24. Chief says:

    Is it too much to ask for to get a decent, steady artist on Uncanny? It’s like Marvel doesn’t even try anymore. I know that they would never go for it, but Marvel should reduce the number of Uncanny issues in a year to 12 and hand the reigns over to someone that can keep up with a monthly schedule. Land’s style and Portacio’s style clash horribly, the book has no artistic identity. It doesn’t help that neither artist is particularly good either.

  25. robniles says:

    I love the way Archangel launches himself out of the Blue Area in X-Force, repeating the very same mistake he made in The Dark Phoenix Saga. Nice minor bit of character continuity spanning thirty years.

    Also, Apocalypse is frighteningly adorable as a schoolboy. I think it’s the dimples.

  26. Jerry Ray says:

    “The X-books are a mess. Basically you’ve got editors who don’t seem to coordinate with one another when it comes to characters and plotlines. The entire vampire crapfest appears to be happening in their own closed-off universe, with no mention or repercussions in the other X-books, just like Necrosha was ignored in Uncanny.”

    Yeah, but as I posted above re:Thor, it’s not just the X-Books – it seems to be Marvel as a whole.

    I’m not really the sort that requires EVERYTHING to have an explicit on-page rationale and timeline, nor am I the sort that wants all the books in perma-crossover. I AM the sort, however, that gets kind of irritated when stuff is just wildly inconsistent (or contradictory) and so uncoordinated that it’s impossible to keep up with the current broad status of any particular character.

  27. Joe Simpson Walker says:

    “I see Mike Carey is an R.E.M. fan.”

    I saw that and thought it was very tiresome indeed. Better to give a story the most generic title possible than to work in a bit of second-hand pop culture.

  28. The original Matt says:

    “One of the things that’s supposed to make the flu epidemic so scary (especially considering that no one’s died from it yet) is that it shuts down people’s powers and even affected Wolverine. ”

    Ahh, of course. “It’s really scary, see? Even Wolverine is sick!” Hadn’t thought of that, I shamefully admit. But when you’re talking about his immune system, shouldn’t he just have the sniffles when everyone else is dying of pneumonia? (Sorry if I got the spelling wrong)

  29. I always thought Wolverine would get sick from stuff, but just, y’know, heal from it quickly, rather than being super-immune to even getting sick or get the weakest possible showing of it.

    ‘hey, where’s Wolverine?’
    ‘Oh, he’s just laid up with the ebola virus. He’ll be back tomorrow.’

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