The X-Axis – 26 February 2012
This is a podcast weekend, so don’t forget the latest episode, just one post down from where you are now! Reviews include Glory, No Place Like Home and Challengers of the Unknown.
None of which I’ll be repeating here, because it’s a heavy week for the X-books – six of them are out, including three of the X-Men titles. A lesser man might think this was overkill, but no doubt somebody with a spreadsheet has managed to convince himself that it’s a wonderful idea. Luckily for our purposes, most of them are mid-storyline, but there’s still plenty to talk about here…
Magneto: Not a Hero #4 – The concluding part of Skottie Young and Clay Mann’s miniseries. And having re-read the whole thing, I can only say that this was a reasonable idea that needed a few more drafts.
Not a Hero is meant to pick up on the loose ends arising from Magneto’s addition to the X-Men roster, which was never very clearly explained in the first place. He pretty much just showed up and offered his services as a member. What Young is trying to do, from the look of it, is confront Magneto with his past self as an arch-villain, and ask how much he has actually changed. To that end, he dusts off Joseph, the clone of Magneto from the 1990s (who was originally intended to be just a de-aged version of Magneto, and spun off into a separate character when Marvel changed their minds about that story). Since Joseph’s dead, Astra is also brought out of limbo to bring about his return, and to brainwash him with Magneto’s memories so that he becomes a kind of Silver Age Magneto. And Clay Mann does a good Magneto; his style works for old-school superhero designs (which is what this story needs), and this final issue has some nicely done action scenes.
The story is a fair enough use of Joseph, who was always intended to be a vehicle for nature-or-nurture stories with Magneto. Astra turns out to be more of a means to an end, and is rather shuffled out of the way once she’s served her plot function. And Young has a reasonably interesting take on Magneto’s philosophy. In this version, Magneto doesn’t see himself as having switched sides. Rather, he claims to reject the whole concept of heroes and villains and considers that Cyclops’ version of the X-Men now fits in with his agenda.
Where the series struggles is in building a fully coherent plot around these ideas. The story basically involves Astra having struck a deal with an anti-mutant campaigner, Christopher Bach, to provide Joseph as an evil Magneto who can whip up a public frenzy. Bach mainly just intends to exploit the whole affair for profit. But once Astra is out of the way, Joseph becomes more interested in just slaughtering Bach’s people for real. Everyone’s motivations in this whole affair are rather vague. Astra just does what the plot requires of her; Joseph is for some reason apparently happy to leave Bach alive to make his profit even after he decides to kill everyone for real; and Bach is pretty a stock villain, whose plan is acknowledged to be unoriginal even within the scope of the story. More to the point, the story doesn’t quite manage to engineer the dramatic moments for Magneto that ought to be illustrating the big idea. They’re supposed to be there – they’re the bits where Magneto uses lethal force without remorse against bad guys he doesn’t technically have to kill – but somehow it feels a little anticlimactic. Young knows what he’s trying to achieve here, but he hasn’t quite managed to string those key scenes together into a strong story. It’s just not quite right.
New Mutants #38 – This issue starts a new arc, as Abnett and Lanning decide to revisit the death of Cypher way, way back in the late-80s “Fall of the Mutants” crossover. Cypher hasn’t been quite the same since he was brought back from the dead a couple of years ago, so it’s fair enough that at some point we have to go back to this and draw a line under it. After all, he’s a main character in the book, and it ought to be one of the defining events in his history. On the other hand, it’s a story that involves Bird-Brain and the Ani-Mates, not exactly seen as a high point of the original New Mutants run, and as far as I know, unused since. That original story does have some rather nice art by Bret Blevins, but the characters are not exactly ones that I’m desperate to see back.
As it turns out, Bird-Brain does show up in this issue when they revisit his island, but mainly so that he can be dying of a terrible virus which is the main focus of the story. Best use for him, I say. That allows the focus to stay firmly on the team, which is much more interesting. Leandro Fernandez’ art is strong – he does a decent Warlock, who many artists struggle with, and gets the character stuff across well. Considering the dodgy characters they have to work with – and it’s a story that kind of had to be done at some point if Cypher was going to stay in use at all – the creators have done a decent job here.
Uncanny X-Force #22 – The most striking thing about this issue is that Greg Tocchini’s art takes a major step up in quality. Earlier issues of the “Otherworld” arc were alarmingly sketchy. But this time everything looks a lot better. The stuff that worked in the earlier issues is still there, but this time everything is a little bit more stable, a lot more defined, and infinitely more readable. (Shame he evidently couldn’t find any reference for what a barrister looks like, but hey, it’s still a major improvement overall.)
The mystery villain from the end of the last issue does indeed turn out to be the Skinless Man who was mentioned in passing in the Dark Angel Saga, and now shows up claiming a rather grotesque past connection with Fantomex. I’m not quite sure what this character is really doing in the current storyline; thus far, he does seem to have been randomly shoved into a storyline where he doesn’t obviously belong. But he’s another of the eccentric visual designs which have worked well for this book’s villains, and Fantomex could use a few villains of his own.
I’m not at all sure about the final page, which follows a horrifically grotesque cliffhanger with three panels of generic fight scene that add little or nothing to the moment. It’s a strange anticlimax to tag onto the issue, and doesn’t work at all.
Wolverine and the X-Men #6 – Wolverine and Quentin Quire go into an outer space Las Vegas to win money to fund the school, while everyone else does Fantastic Voyage with Kitty – not to save her, but to try and retrieve the useless Kid Gladiator. Oh, and while they’re otherwise occupied, another crazy alien attacks the school. So – yeah, basically an issue of all three plot lines advancing onwards, really.
Nick Bradshaw’s art continues to be impressive, particularly with the casino scenes where he gets to go wild. He’s obviously having the most fun with that bit, and you can see why. The actual content of those casino scenes is all fairly standard – it’s pretty much a stock “getting out of the casino with the illicit winnings” routine relocated to outer space. But it’s good to see the book doing another side of Quentin beyond the riot wannabe stuff. As for Kid Gladiator, he remains defiantly a one-dimensional comic relief character, and if he’s going to be quite this prominent in the story, he might be needing that second dimension.
Basically, it’s a continuation of what was in the previous issue. Nice art. Totally over the top plot. As you’ve come to expect.
X-Men #25 – The X-Men track down Jubilee and fight the Forgiven. And then some other bad guys show up at the end so that the X-Men and the Forgiven can team up next issue.
Here’s the thing. I have no problem with Victor Gischler using this book to push his new characters. In fact, so far as it goes, I’m in favour of that kind of thing. I’d much rather see new characters cycled in, than have old ones kept around long after they outlived their usefulness. Those characters have to be pushed as a big deal in order to get them established. That’s fine.
The problem with the Forgiven is much more fundamental – the premise isn’t strong enough. They’re a group of vampires who’ve kicked their addiction to human blood and are now good vampires. Okay. And…?
Perhaps I’m just at cross purposes with this story. But to be perfectly honest, not only do I not find anything interesting about the Forgiven, I don’t really understand what’s meant to be interesting about the Forgiven. I certainly don’t see the hook with any of the individual members. I get that they have a place in helping to move Jubilee’s story along, but that’s just a necessary step towards the bigger goal. It doesn’t mean I want to read about them for an arc.
X-Men: Legacy #262 – Exodus charges off to teach Cyclops the error of his ways (permanently), and Wolverine’s group give chase. In particular, Wolverine’s rather keen to stop Exodus himself rather than tipping off the guy he’s not speaking to. Wolverine really does come across as a bit of a child in this story. That’s possibly deliberate; it’s primarily Rogue’s book, after all, and it’s fine to cast him in the role of the testosterone-blinded alpha male in that context, because it’s something for her to kick against. Still, it’s maybe a touch overdone.
That aside, it’s a solid enough issue. We get another extended fight with Exodus, given a bit more depth by Rogue and Wolverine squabbling around the edges. Artist David Baldeon does a good old fashioned action issue rather well. And writer Christos Gage has a rather neat solution to the problem of keeping the two X-Men teams apart. It’s too early for the two groups to start teaming up again, but the plot clearly calls for somebody to ask Utopia for help. The solution is blindingly obvious once you see it – it’s not the X-Men who respond to the distress call, but Generation Hope. Which means Wolverine’s group have just put the kids in the line of fire. Oops. That’s a lovely twist, and it’s well handled.
Re: Legacy
I didn’t take it as Wolverine putting the kids in harm’s way, but rather that that was why he didn’t want to call Utopia. He knew they might send some kids, and they did, sure enough. The issue is a good way to underscore his differences with Scott.
Not to mention, the whole reason that Exodus is in this snit is that Scott has been putting Hope on the front lines. I doubt he’ll react well when he sees that she’s been sent there again.
“Decent idea, weak execution” seems to be a running theme with Young’s forays into writing. Definitely a creator I prefer to see at the drawing board.
Wolverine in the X-Men is starting to grate on my nerves a bit, mostly because the kid cast Aaron is concentrating on are the “a little goes a long way” types. We’ll see how the next arc goes, though.
I’m really enjoying Legacy – it’s probably my favorite X-Book right now. We got a fun, nicely creative fight scene with clean storytelling, which is a sad rarity. I like that Rogue called Wolverine on his sudden and (to her POV) inexplicable concern for the kids that he himself was willing to send into battle not that long ago. Nice moments for Sam, Rachel, and Bobby as well — I’m hoping something big happens during the Exodus fight that means Rogue’s going to get rested for a bit. I’d like to see Gage give more attention to all these other interesting toys.
I didn’t get that Scott had sent Hope and the X-Kids to the fray, but that they’d been the ones to intercept Rogue’s call. And, given that Hope doesn’t bother asking Scott’s permission for anything and she has her own transport off Utopia, I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott was totally in the dark. I mean, he’s an idiot to give Hope slack a lead as he has, but he’s not THAT much of an idiot. 😉
Loved the X-Men Legacy ending.
Frodo, to be fair, Wolverine’s team had just been Claremonted and were about to be used to attack Utopia and hurt/kill the kids that lived there. It proved he was wrong to not to warn Utopia. I also understood that Hope had responded to the call rather than been sent there by Scott.
I have to say that I think it is pretty nice that the X-Office has stayed away from hammering us over the head with the idea that either Scott or Logan are right.
Magneto Not a Hero was a worthwhile exercise, but could probably have done with an extra issue.
It’s nice that they haven’t changed Magneto too much but his actions are a whole lot worse than those of say, Wolverine when he’s working solo.
I guess face skinning is this year’s arm ripped off. I had enough of that after Detective Comics, hope it doesn’t pop up much more.
I’m still loving Wolverine and the X-Men. I just think it’s a blast.
I enjoyed Magneto: Not A Hero, inessential as it was. The train fight scene in this issue was very well done.
I have found that Wolverine and the X-Men has quickly risen to one of my favorite x-books, despite Wolverine not being my favorite character. Combine that book with X-Factor and X-Force, and those three books ‘feel’ much more like the X-Men I enjoy reading, than Uncanny X-Men does. Uncanny – while more focused under the creative change – just feels flat to me. Generation Hope never really grabbed my attention (maybe because I had already been through two other X-Men in training titles that were cut short), Astonishing and X-Men really add nothing to the line, and Legacy – well, Legacy is actually moving up the rungs as far as I’m concerned. The last few issues have been quite enjoyable.
It seems to me like just about any ‘Team Wolverine’ X-Book dominates any ‘Team Cyclops’ X-Book at this point. Are there any exceptions?
@Kenny Depends…what side of the fence do you see X-Force as being on? It’s not my cuppa, but Remender is doing anything but playing it safe with his chosen cast.
All the x-books are pretty good right now.
Sure, Uncanny, at times, suffers from poor art, X-Men is mediocre & the current X-Force arc isn’t a patch on what went before but I think that almost all the books are at a high enough standard that the appeal of the book’s mission statement to the individual reader probably has much to do with how you’ll judge it in comparison to its peers.
For instance, I’d choose to read New Mutants, Uncanny, Legacy, X-Club, X-Force or Astonishing over Wolverine and the X-Men, simply because I’m not a massive fan of the tone of that book. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy WATX-M, and I think it is probably as good a book as that kind of book can be, but it doesn’t appeal to me as much as the other books.
Disappointed by Not A Hero. Agree with the review that while it has a good core idea, the execution is sloppy. And I disagree with Paul F; I found the artwork in the last issue to be really sloppy and hard-to-follow.
Not really liking X-Force either, after it was definitely my favorite comic through the Dark Angel Saga. Not liking the art, and the whole Otherworld/Captain Britain stuff just seems a bit weird for the book. Skinless Man is alright I guess, though I’m pretty sure him being Weapon III directly contradicts Morrison’s Weapon Plus program.
God help me, I’ve wanted to see a return to Animus Island for a few years now. I know this is wrong and sick, but there it is. I think the Bird Boy storyline was the first comic stories I read as they came out, bought with my own money. I have no illusions that Bird Boy was a good character or a neat visual design of course.
“That original story does have some rather nice art by Bret Blevins…”
Sarcasm? Because Bret Blevins & Louise Simonson’s run on the New Mutants was the worse thing that happened to the book, and ultimately destroyed it.
Blevins always drew them as snarling little kids, while Simonson wrote them as Power Pack–a bunch of whiny, immature brats.
” . . . and ultimately destroyed it.”
Er, you do know it kept going until issue #100 and then relaunched, etc. etc., right? I mean, I get hyperbole, but let’s keep things in perspective.
So, this brat, Hope, seems essential to mutant survival at the moment and she goes traipsing off into hostile situations, without adult supervision, backed up only by her underpowered posse of untrained kids. Not a big failing by the standards of comic book logic I know, but still.
Bret Blevins is great. He’s good at a lot of things that “hot” artists suck at, like drawing diverse facial expressions, different body types, anatomy, body language, backgrounds… In a word, he has range.
I still don’t see the point of bringing back Cypher, other than Zeb Wells- whose work I normally enjoy- really missed him. Hey, I really missed him, but it was 25 years ago. I’ve had time to get over it.
Dan, I don’t think it’s so much that there was a need to bring him back, so much as this is currently the era of All Of Our Characters Are Alive Now. I mean, it’s not like they’re creating new ones, so they might as well use the (dead) ones they own.
And to be fair, I rather like Wells’ take on Doug, and am glad to see him put to good use, and not just relegated to set dressing like so many other characters during the Utopia Era. I’m glad DnA seem to be finding interesting things to do with him as well…
I want to like WATX, but it always seems to go just a little too far. If you’re out of money, how does it make sense to fly your spaceship to the other end of the galaxy to scam a casino? Doesn’t spaceship fuel cost money? Is your bank going to convert Space Bux to US dollars? It’s a day trip from Westchester to Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.
Yes, I get that it’s cartoonish on purpose, but there’s no reason that Aaron’s cartoonish storytelling can’t be done in a way that’s still plot-cohesive.
x-men v3 and astonishing are completely superfluous, but otherwise, i think the x-line is doing pretty great right now!
im not a fan at all of reviving characters. since there are so many good and underused x-characters, why not use them instead? but despite this, cypher and magik have been two of my favourite characters since theyve been brought back. i guess its all in the writing.
just some random thoughts after i went through the comments.
I assume the argument for space casinos is that in any world partially written by Chris Clairmont, the casinos would have long since prepared for mindreaders and telepaths by now. Chances are most of those places would be run by the wilson Fisks and Doctor Dooms of the world instead of the mob anyhow.
As far as reviving Cypher, it didn’t bother me mostly because old Doug got such a poor shake of it originally, though he is now sufficiently creepy.
@Joseph – That’s a funny observation, because it turns out that the space casino is, in fact, prepared for mindreaders and telepaths, which is the main plot development of this issue.
Magik, in my opinion, is a character who is being wasted over in Uncanny. I was really hoping Gillen would get around to doing some character based stories, but so far we’ e had three stories about what I’m sure he thinks are neato villains (Sinister, Phalanx, Tabula Rasa whatever-they-are’s) in which the Extinction Team are just catch-phrase shouting set dressing…
@ASV
I was under the impression that was Kid Gladiator’s ship (maybe someone who has their copy of WATXM #1 handy can confirm or deny that that’s the ship he arrived in) and therefore the Shi’ar Empire will pay for the gas (assuming it isn’t solar powered or fueled by a nuclear reactor that can run for a thousand years on a single atom or something – alien technology can get pretty hand-wavey).
@Andy Walsh: Yeah, I know, I suppose that was meant to be irony. THe other possibility is that everyone in the world knows wolverine, and might think something funny was going on if he walked into a casino with that kid who mind controlled the UN a few weeks ago.
Space Casino isn’t the best idea either way, but I enjoyed WAXM enough not to let it bother me too much.
You know, I think Wells’ version of Cypher was really excellent, particularly since he was using his powers in much more interesting and threatening ways. The new creative team’s take is still fun, but kind of disappointing since it’s a more conventional and goofier version that what we were seeing previously.
Still, it’s obviously a very a really different book now.
“Still, it’s obviously a very a really different book now.” Great.
Haven’t gotten to read any new issues in a long time, sigh. (The last one was “X-Men” v.3, #11. However, it would not surprise me if the Forgiven are meant to cash in on those paranormal romance series (not necessarily for teens) with vampires. I’ve read some paranormal romances myself and sexy vampires who may or may not be living on synthetic blood seem to be a staple.
Sounds as if Cyclops still needs a good slapping. Thanks.
@David:
Cypher’s and Amara’s conflict was so interesting that, in my own mind, I’ve decided Cypher is just doing a mask of sanity thing now.
If he’s acting normally, and engaging in emotionally normal behaviors like soapy love trianges with Dani, it’s only to put Amara at ease.