Jul 29
Hiatus
Posted on Sunday, July 29, 2012 by Paul in Uncategorized
As mentioned on the last podcast, we’re taking a break for a few weeks following my wedding, and we’ll be back in mid-August. Thanks for all your comments, and we’ll see you then!
Congrats Paul. Hope you have an amazing day!
Congratulations!
Mazeltov^^!
Congratulations, Paul! All the best!
Congrats. Enjoy the break gentlemen it well earned. Thanks for what you guys provide on this site.
Longtime reader from Spain, congratulations & thanks for the good job!
Congratulations on your wedding Paul. All the best.
Congrats!
Congrats!
Does this mean no new content until then?
I dont want to keep clicking on the site for a month, only to be disappointed there’s no guest x-axis or wrestling columns while paul is on his honeymoon.
Maybe al will post tv show reviews tweets as content. 🙂
Congrats! Thanks for all you do!
My best wishes mate, so very glad to hear.
Congratulations, and happiness.
Congrats, and here’s wishing you all the very best.
Huge congrats. Still think Al should cover the x axis until you return.
Congrats, and I hope you don’t spend your honeymoon in the future raising your future child.
All the best. Have a great wedding and honeymoon!
Congratulations! Wish you all the best!
Congrats, and very best wishes for your future life!
Happiest wishes! Enjoy yourselves as much as humanly possible!
Congratulations! Have an X-citing time!
Congrats on your wedding and honeymoon! Hope you survive the experience!
I reckon in the meantime, we should write our own reviews and post them on this thread. The funnier the better. I’d start but I haven’t read any X-book this week.
I hope it doesn’t get gatecrashed by supervillains like all the other X-Weddings.
Congrats!
And I second the suggestion to write our own reviews here (and if Al or Paul sees fit to use them as a guest reviews post even better)
Congratulations Paul! May you neither ask nor give quarter, and always be invulnerable when you’re blastin’ (or at least nigh-invulnerable).
Here’s my review of Wolverine and the X-Men 14: Colossus assuages any fears that the Phoenix Force is affecting the personalities of its hosts by proving he’s still the worst boyfriend ever.
I may have to go pick up some of the weekly comics and do some reviews. I’m only just finished fear itself (trade reader) so it should be amusing to review the middle sections of a crossover that I have no idea what the story is.
Haha, definitely do that Matt, see if you can reconstruct the whole story from what happens in this issue.
Congratulations Paul! Best to you sir and have fun!
OK since we’re tryibg our own reviews….Avengers vs. X-Men #9. (And, of course, spoilers below.)
What I gather is that because we have 12 issues to work with we have time for a Spider-Man spotlight issue. (I’m sure that was a creative decision, not editorial.) In which Spider-Man manages to counteract two Phoenix empowered X-Men by:
1. Webbing every Avenger from behind and pulling them backwards and then webbing down some rockes making them totally inaccessible to either the Teleporting or Super Strong adversaries.
2. Talking them into blasting each other.
(I’ll grant you that Peter Parker joking his opponents into frustrated mistakes is at least in character, but it really makes more sense against bank robbers than cosmic entities.)
At the same time, because we only have 12 issues to work with, there’s no time to delve into any other subjects. So Storm’s marriage is apparently dissolved in 2 panels, we can’t hear Professor X’s conversation with Cyclops from the end of last issue, we can’t show how he joined and organized a resistance team, and Scarlet Witch (featured prominently in the lead-up to this you may remember) is apparently on the disabled list and seen in the background of one panel.
I’m no Paul O’Brien, but I think this story may have some problems.
Was anyone else annoyed by First X-Men #1? Because I was. I’d go as far as to say I was vexed. Yes, vexed. Because, barring some sort of twist, “First Class + Wolverine” seems to be a very revisionist form of X-Men history, with Wolverine at the center.
@Person of Con: I very much doubt you’re alone on this, given that the premise is based on a fundamentally flawed interpretation of Charles Xavier – namely, that because his mutation wasn’t visible, he had no real reason to care about the fate of mutants. Well, except for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Kurt and Cain Marko, and the fact that his telepathy allowed him to experience other people’s pain.
Not an X-Men comic but I read Hawkeye #1 and really enjoyed it. The out of hours Avengers story really worked and the art was great. I’ll be reading #2.
I tend to wait for collected editions to read the X-Titles.
Congratulations too, and enjoy the break from my favorite (and only) blog reading.
I bought Astonishing X-Men #52 just to review it here. This was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, the storytelling’s good and the art’s absolutely lovely (extra points to any comics artist who can actually draw an epicanthic fold). But it was the middle of an ongoing story, and I hadn’t read any of the previous ones. It looks like one story, every issue told from another character’s point of view, so what you get is a bunch of scenes with no obvious connection to eachother. At $4 a pop, the full tale will go sadly unknown to me. But that aside, if you’re not a scrooge like me, and you want to read an X-Men story not taking part in the AVX junket, then you could do a lot worse.
@Diana Kingston-Gabai: What really got me was that it was pre-X-Men Wolverine, of all people, that’s convincing Xavier to show a basic level of altruism. It struck me as elevating one character at the expense of another, and honestly, does Wolverine really need any more elevating at this point?
X-Factor #241, being a crossover-free zone, wasn’t too bad. Not great, though. It’s entertaining enough, but if this is the payoff of the arc that seemed to exist just to set up the alternate universe villains with a grudge against Jamie, then I’m not sure it was worth it.
Yes, there’s the interesting point that both Jamie and Havok now have connections to alternate universes, which could lead somewhere (especially since the previous issue could be interpeted as saying so does Layla), and we’ve got Guido’s quitting and the disappearance of Rahne’s alternate daughter. But that’s it, it’s yet another issue of setting things up, which apparently includes clearing out some of the clutter from previous set-ups. The eventual payoff had better be *really awesome*, that’s all I can say.
Daibhid,
I would agree that X-Factor had a little too much set-up and not enough story. But…the character beats are very interesting.
Lorna who doesnt’ have to kill chooses to. And in a rather off-handed way. That’s not how she’s acted under Peter David before, but perhaps he’s trying to make a workable character out of all the bits over the years.
Jamie and Alex seem to be working towards a detente. And as you say if they both are connected to their alternate reality counterparts (did we know that about Jamie before?) and you throw in Lyla’s apparent ability to see/exist in alternate timelines last issue (thanks for making that connection for me,I hadn’t thought about it) there looks like a pay off coming fo all the dimension hopping in the last year.
Guido. I’m still not sure what to make of his soulessness. In Marvel Universe cosmology, shouldn’t his soul be his real self? And even if it’s “only” that he’s less human why doesn’t he care about Monet and rescuing his team but not about the hostage.
As a full story, I agree it falls short. As Part I of V, this could end up being really good.
@Rich Larson – My impression is that Guido’s consciene is either gone or extremely diminished, but that he still cares about his friends. Basically, he’s become more selfish – possibly even sociopathic – but selfish people still try to protect things and people that are important to themselves, they just do it for different reasons. And I think that he’s consciously aware that he should be doing things like fighting crime and saving the world because that’s what he did before he lost his soul, but it doesn’t really come naturally to him anymore, so he’ll think things like “lose one person to stop a villain? Eh, it’s worth it.”
Of course, that’s just my best guess. Soulessness, like time travel, is one of those irritating things that CAN lead to good stories but often muddles things because no one’s ever had to deal with it in real life, so we’re left with each individual author’s interpretation of how it works.
@ Person of Con: I used to keep a running list for my own amusement of “Top 5 retcons that ‘prove’ Charles Xavier is actually a terrible person.” (And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a similar list on Comics Should be Good that was different from mine, because there are THAT many to pick from) I hadn’t thought about it much lately since Xavier’s been out of the spotlight for a while, but I have a feeling that that’s going to have to be expanded to a top 10 list pretty soon.
AVX continues to be a great idea executed badly with some good moments that only serve to highlight the potential the premise had.
The Spiderman scene didn’t really make sense. Compare that entire issue of AVX to X-Men Legacy. The Avengers assault makes no sense whatsoever. If the Phoenix powered Avengers are all telepathic/psychic at this point, how does Spiderman’s plan work? Actually, why did they even use fists and blasts when they could have just used these abilities to freeze the Avengers? If they can all teleport, why would the rocks hold them back? And why are the residents of Limbo so powerless compared to what Rogue faced in Legacy?
As for the Avengers, well that’s a team that is in deep need of some self-reflection. Originally, they thought that they needed to destroy the Phoenix force and that Hope would not be able to control it. Now they want Hope to be its host? Why? Even if they kill are, as Wolverine originally intended, the Phoenix then returns to its destructive hostless form.
Okay, the Phoenix 5 made some pretty questionable use of the Phoenix force, but then again if you take the good that they’ve done, it’s hard to argue that on the whole, it’s been a good thing. The world no longer has wars, the hungry have food and water, global warming is no longer a problem and natural disasters are a thing of the past. In the absence of some sort of solution to the problem posed by the hostless Phoenix, what the hell makes the Avengers think that killing the Phoenix’s hosts is a good idea? So a bunch of Avengers have been put in prison, but on the whole, surely that’s a small price to pay for world peace and an end to famine and disease?
Then, there’s the wrecklessness they are showing by using Wanda to fight the Phoenix? Do they not remember the events of House of M and Decimation? The Avengers refuse to use their infinity gems but trust a mentally disturbed woman to use reality altering powers to defeat the Phoenix? Really?
And how about, just for a panel or two, having somebody in the Avengers notice that they are the cause of the current problem. If Stark and Pym hadn’t fractured the Phoenix, it wouldn’t have been imposed on a bunch of anti-hero X-Men.
My favourite stupid scene of the crossover had to be in WATX, where Iceman realses that Scott must be taken down, because he is stopping natural disasters. WTF?
“Stop Cyclops! San Francisco needs earthquakes! If you take away our natural disasters, there’ll be no more disaster movies and FEMA employees will be out of work. You need to negotiate with the unions before you do this!”
And Professor X? What exactly is he objecting to? It’s hard to understand what he doesn’t like about what has happened recently.
Anyway, Emma’s reaction to her increase in power seems pretty bizzare. When she becomes capable of reading all the minds on the planet and turning them off remotely, she decides to travel to some man’s house and kill him for a manslaugher offense carried out over a decade ago. Why?
Why not put the Avengers in comas? Why not kill Doctor Doom? Why not collect the missing infinity gems so that the Avengers couldn’t use them?
Through it all, the only character showing some degree of consistency is Cyclops. He is still Cyclops and still clings to his vision. Clearly, he is a bit powermad, but not in the cartoonish way that Colossus and Magik were depicted. He is unwilling to give up his power, but he goes about making the world a better place in a pretty cold and calculating manner. He considers the Avengers nucances, but as we see with Hawkeye, wishes them no harm. The only jarring thing about Cyclops in AVX is the fact that he shows no reaction to his inability to reverse M-Day.
It really looks like the outcome of the current crossover will be the “death” of Cyclops, so hopefully the writers will touch upon what was wrong with his vision for mutantkind. Fans have been really critical of Cyclops and Emma’s Utopia, but most of the criticisms of the project seem to stem from the fact that they adopted a more realistic approach to protecting mutantkind than the idealistic approach that typically characterised the Silver Age X-Men. In reality, the idealistic approach only worked because we accepted it as a genre convention. If we judged Utopia by the standards that we hold real world nations to, there’s relatively little to criticise.
In Lorna’s defense, she killed a murdering robot.
Grats on the nups!
My non-controversial prediction for the end of AVX: The X-Men en masse switch sides because the Jackson 5 are clearly insane and dangerous. Later this will herald a new era of cooperation between the two organisations. All of the Phoenix 5 will die, except for Namor who will still be needed for Fantastic Four stories and whatnot. Cyclops might actually sacrifice himself fighting the others. This is why the B-list Rasputins got the power while more popular X-Men stayed home.
@Si – The Rasputins and Namor have already lost their shares of the power (which were redistributed to the remaining hosts), so now it’s just Scott and Emma, each with half the Phoenix Force in them.
Okay, here’s my review of Adjectiveless X-Men #33:
The X-Men away team arrive at the base of the mad scientist who’s been resurrecting proto-mutants (well, cloning them, but it’s the same thing because they have memories in their DNA, which makes sense because if they didn’t we couldn’t have a subplot about how horribly they were treated by humans when they were alive the first time and then it wouldn’t be an X-Men comic) and turning them into rampaging beasts because as anyone who’s seen the movie “Bats” can tell you, that’s what science is for. The X-Men jump out of their plane above the base without parachutes even though three out of five of them can’t fly because…
So Pixie teleports ahead while the others freefall because they know there are amped-up frenzied proto-mutants down there and she has to say a seven-syllable phrase to teleport so it’s perfectly safe for her to poke around alone. She comes back and tells Colossus to watch out because one of the proto-mutants is hurtling upwards and apparently she right-clicked on it or something and knows it’s targetted Piotr. She then teleports Domino and Pslocke to the ground because Storm has forgotten that her powers let her carry other people aloft. This does nothing to decrease their momentum after falling for a minute or so, but fortunately they hit a roof instead of the ground; it’s the last few feet that kill you, so if you can circumvent them, you’ll be okay.
Psylocke reminds everyone that the proto-mutants are victims so they are not to kill them, just a little to late to save the one that attacked Juggolosus, which Storm has vaporized. Domino announces that she is now shooting them unconscious instead of dead, because she’s read the part of the Player’s Handbook that says that when you reduce a target to 0 hit points you can decide whether it dies or not. Hey, a few gunshots to the torso never killed anyone.
Collosus crashes into the mad scientist’s lab and yells at the guy (referring to the proto-mutants as “something that holds such significance to me and my friends” and “history we didn’t even know about” in the same word bubble), who responds by gloating (his only goal apparently being to do as much bad guy stuff as possible, so: mission accomplished), clicking a remote control with one giant button on it, then shooting himself because his part of the story is done. Colossus doesn’t respond until the gun is against the scientist’s chin because what’s the worst a remote control with one giant button on it can do?
So all the proto-mutants keel over.
Colossus and his sporadically reappearing hairline find the dead sister of Ister, the dead proto-mutant from last issue, and recognizes her from Ister’s flashback. He tells her corpse that she’s lucky to be dead because she’s a dark-furred mutant with pointy teeth and Colossus has never known anyone like that who enjoyed being alive.
Also Pyslocke still has Ister living in her head because that’s something she does. She’s sad on Ister’s behalf, then she boots him out. She tells Pixie that she’ll never feel the same way about things again, which is either sarcastic or ominously ironic, depending on whether this is set before or after the X-Force story where she loses the ability to feel bad about stuff.
Pixie is all messed up inside because the proto-mutants were totally different than the Neo and the Children and the Warpies and all the other kind-of-but-kind-of-not-in-some-vague-way mutants the X-Men have met in the past, so finding out about them has made her reconsider what it means to be a mutant. Like, you know how whenever scientists discover evidence some new kind of proto-human in a dig somewhere it makes you reconsider what it means to be human? It’s like that. I know the Olduvai Gorge is just a constant source of existential distress for me.
Colossus tells Storm that the scientist’s notes and stuff were probably taken by someone else before he died, and Storm laments that he followed his plan perfectly, thus confirming that the previously unknown middle part of his plan (“Weaponize proto-mutants -> ? -> Profit”) was “Kill self.” Colossus now understands that it was so important not to tell Cyclops about all this because…
So the team burns the bodies of the proto-mutants (who are all normal human size and shape in death, if not in life), and they agree that this ain’t over. And Colossus finally agrees that Storm was right not to tell Cyclops because…
So we end with Storm calling Cyclops to tell him.
(Sorry that was so long … I think there were a few things about the issue that bugged me)
Wait, Psylocke is sad? Isn’t that supposed to be impossible?
Yup. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a mistake or not because the book doesn’t indicate whether it’s taking place before or after that X-Force story. The best you can narrow it down to is that it takes place after Fear Itself but before AvX (unless Colossus loses his hair again at the end of Avx) because Piotr has no hair (though there are panels where it really looks like he was originally drawn with hair and embaldened later).
If anyone’s trying to follow continuity in AvX, can anyone work out where in the main series Quicksilver and Pym’s captures (by Rachel’s hunt team) were supposed to happen? The issue of WATX where they’re caught has the X-Men trying to find the Avengers with Hope, so it’s after #6.
#7 has them both in Wakanda (despite Magik saying “We’ve found them all” – no idea where) at the Avengers’ meeting where Dr. Strange comes up with his Scarlet Witch illusion, and they’re both pictured involved in the battles where that illusion is used. At the end of the issue Namor’s attacking Wakanda, so his depowering is imminent (he’s still Phoenix-y when Pym & Pietro are caught) and Hope’s gone to K’un Lun, so Rachel’s already found her before.
#8 shows Quicksilver in the fight against Namor, and escaping to K’un Lun at the end. Pym is not seen.
#9 shows Quicksilver already captured on the recap page, but not Pym, who’s listed as injured, and shown in the K’un Lun ‘hosptal’.
So Pym is captured, never rescued, but not a prisoner.
I have Rachel on the hunt some time during #7, but there’s no way Quicksilver can be captured within that issue’s time frame.
Also, Ms. Marvel is thrown in the volcano after Spider-Woman, Cage, Hawkeye and Quicksilver. She’s just absent in the main series #7 and #8, so that’s OK, but if the other 4 are supposed to have been caught before (or even during, really) #7, that doesn’t work.
Then there’s Black Widow, who’s present in Wakanda at the start of Namor’s attack in #7, absent from #8, never shown being caught, but listed as a prisoner and rescued from the Limbo prison in #9.
It feels like some extra bits were needed in some of the tie-ins, in place of the contradictory scenes we did get.
All of this goes to prove that Marvel should consider hiring editors.
They have editors. Just editors that choose to clarify all story problems on formspring rather than in the actual comics.
Niall – I guess Lorna might think she’s disabling a robot (I personally would have counted Deathlok cybirgs as sentient beings, but maybe she doesn’t.) However, the way she does it is a little sadistic and does say soemthing about who lorna is shaping up to be.
ZZZ – Impressive sarcasm! i enjoyed the review and am glad I missed the issue.
Dave – You’ve already given more thought to the details of this than anyone involved in producing it. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, it will never be consistent, because no one tried to make it consistent. And yet, we’re all apparently buying it….Sigh.