The X-Axis – 3 January 2010
Since Diamond have chosen to take a week off over Christmas for the first time I can recall, there’s nothing new out this week – well, except for Blackest Night #6, under some weird distribution arrangement, but I’m not buying that book anyway. Actually, I kind of hope Diamond keep doing this. A break from the weekly grind every so often helps it… well, helps it stop feeling like a weekly grind.
I could do a “year-in-review” post, but I’m not going to. Firstly, I’ve still got last week’s books to review. Second, I really don’t have time. (And advance warning: you may be hearing that a lot over the next couple of months.) And third, you probably know more or less what it would say: the X-books have written themselves into a corner with a post-M-Day set-up which still doesn’t really work, despite some talented writers giving it their best shot, but at least it seems like we’re finally getting to the Hope storyline, which presumably ought to move us on from that. Not that I necessarily want them to hit the reset button – I tend to agree, actually, that the Marvel Universe as a whole wasn’t well served by having a mutant on every corner – but the current direction is an overcorrection and it’s time to swing back to the middle ground. With X-Factor caught up in a storyline that was too long for its own good and which didn’t really work as a serial, and New Mutants lacking a clear reason to exist, the best X-book of the year was probably Jason Aaron’s Wolverine: Weapon X, which may not have told any important stories, but certainly entertained me on its own terms. Oh, and an honourable mention to X-Men Forever, which was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, even if the last issue was a bit disappointing.
I could have said all that at ten times the length but… well, you know.
Equally, time and common sense suggest that rather than cover everything that came out the week before last, I’ll stick to the X-books and some significant others…
Battlefields: Happy Valley #1 – Another of Garth Ennis’ war minis, which are always reliable. They can also be a bit formulaic at times, when they’re doing the male bonding routines. And to be honest, this story about an Australian bomber crew in World War II is one of those – new guy joins the crew to replace the injured captain, has to win over sceptical crew. It’s done very well, but it’s definitely a bit familiar at times. That said, there’s a bit more to this than meets the eye, since they don’t bond quite as easily as all that, and Ennis is the sort of writer good enough to get away with telling a well-worn story, because he tells it so skilfully. There are few people in comics with such reliable storytelling instincts, and that always comes through.
Beasts of Burden #4 – This is the final issue of the current run for Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s series about pets fighting mystical evil in smalltown America. But the plan is apparently to do a series of miniseries, and at times this issue feels like it’s setting up mysteries for an arc story. Weird thingies raise some guy – presumably a devil-worshipper – from the grave, and the dogs have to get rid of him again. None of it’s really explained, and to that extent it’s a story that depends on the creators eventually getting to do their pay-off. But it still works as another encounter between the plucky pets and assorted bizarre stuff. The threat this issue almost gets into the territory of superhero comics, but it’s the way they handle it that makes this book special; nobody does better animals than these creators, walking the tightrope between anthropomorphic and cutesty, and pulling it off.
Dark Avengers: Ares #3 – The final part of Kieron Gillen and Manuel Garcia’s miniseries, which remains mercifully light on Dark Reign content. True, the story is that Norman Osborn gives Ares a squad of men to train, in the hope of turning them into elite soldiers – and you can only really do that story with somebody rather dodgy in charge, since Ares is stark raving mad. But that’s about the limit of the Dark Reign stuff, in a series which is otherwise a tongue-in-cheek story of Ares teaching the soldiers his idea of what war’s all about. It’s really very good, and I’d recommend getting the collection. (Granted, as Al complained on the last podcast, they’ve packaged it with the previous Ares series, but it’s good too, so don’t let that put you off.)
New Mutants #8 – Ah. This is the conclusion of New Mutants‘ three-part tie-in to the “Necrosha” crossover, as the team fight the Hellions with Cypher at stake. I liked the earlier parts of this story, particularly the idea that a powered-up Cypher is terribly dangerous because almost everything is ultimately a form of communication, and he can understand it all. The scenes with Cypher providing a running commentary on the subtext of other people’s conversations were great. This issue… well, we have an extended fight against the Hellions, and then the story just kind of stops. It’s like Zeb Wells used up all his ideas in the first two parts. And once again, the book seems willing to take it for granted that readers will be familiar with rivalries from a quarter century ago. The pay-off is that the story seems to have permanently revived Cypher, although I really don’t follow it: if he’s been freed from Selene’s control and the techno-virus, because the Soulsword has got rid of all the magic, why isn’t he dead again?
Uncanny X-Men #519 – Basically an issue of Cyclops fighting the Void inside his own head, and it’s pretty good. I still have my doubts about whether Uncanny has done enough to set up the rather obscure concept of the Void before doing this story. But for those of us who are already familiar with it from other titles, this is a fun issue. It’s got art by Terry Dodson, which is always a plus; it’s got Magneto starting some politicking, which we all knew was coming; but most of all, it’s got Cyclops beating the Void because his powers of repression are too much for it. I love that idea. It teeters on the brink of being too silly, but it’s audacious enough to work – not least because iron-willed self-control and a complete disregard for his long-term mental health really are Scott’s defining features. One of my favourite issues in a while.
Wolverine: Origins #43 – Cloak and Dagger guest star, as Dagger is vexed by Romulus’ henchman – this being the guy who’s supposed to be terribly threatening despite being blind and not very bright. I’ve never quite understood what he’s supposed to be bringing to the table to make up for all that. Anyway, this story gets him out of the way, which is something. Plus, it makes better use of Cloak and Dagger than we’ve seen in the regular X-Men titles since they joined the cast, and Doug Braithwaite’s art is rather good (though I do think Cloak works better when you draw him as a silhouette rather than a guy in a black body stocking – this guy shouldn’t have highlights). As with so many issues of this series, fine when it’s not dealing too closely with Romulus, and a bit dull when it is.
Wolverine: Weapon X #8 – In which we find out how Wolverine ended up in that mental asylum in the first place, and why it’s gone so weird. This feels less like a Wolverine story and more like something Steve Gerber would have created for a horror series, but that’s no bad thing. The central image, a confused Wolverine in a mental asylum even madder than he is and resisting its attempts to “treat” him, works both because it’s creepy in its own right, and because it plays off all sorts of standard themes for the character. Oh, and because it’s not afraid to flirt with being over the top. It’s Wolverine, after all – it’s not an understated comic.
X-Men Forever #14 – The final part of “Black Magik”, and it’s a rather underwhelming issue. It’s the old mind-control and corruption schtick which we’ve seen oh so many times from Claremont before, and this issue doesn’t really bring a fresh angle to it. Nor does it resolve much; Kitty is freed, but Magik remains a baddie, and we still don’t really find out much about the original villain. Still, the subplots are ticking over nicely, and Tom Grummett’s art has some great images along the way. The nice thing about this series is that, thanks to its fortnightly schedule and old-school structure, when it does produce a story that doesn’t quite work, at least you know it won’t last too long, and there are plenty of sub-plots to keep you interested in what’s coming next.
I was reading a handful of your old reviews (specifically, Cable & Deadpool 1-6) and ran across this gem:
It sometimes seems like a Fabian Nicieza character will never simply pop down to the shops to buy some milk when he could use a subcutaneal nanoimplant to send arcanopsychic signals to a hidden icon in a supermarket fridge which will open a bacterial portal through which milk will be telekinetically relocated in hard-light form to a pocket holding dimension located in an occipital interstitiality whence it may be drawn down with the use of an experimental computer program held on three separate computer discs located in Bangkok, St Petersberg and the Sea of Tranquility.
Just thought I’d share.
Are people really clamoring for Cypher to come back?
Uncanny #519 was real good, and actually seemed like the first issue in the series where Fraction actually knows what he wants to do now. He balanced the Cyclops, Beast, and Magneto plots just fine in one issue.
And of course, no Greg Land makes the book better alone. The Hotel pattern layouts Dodson did for the panels, Land’s head would explode if tried to do that.
And Mike Carey’s recent Legacy issue was fun just because he had Nightcrawler being a good competent leader, Betsy and Colossus having fun like in the old days, and lightly treaded the Rogue/Magneto stuff.
Finally, we’ll never again have to bear witness to Land’s awkward depiction of Beast: a lion’s head (always the same one) stuck on a burly man’s body. Though he is given a poignant sendoff on the cover.
Really happy with the Ares mini, though Kieron Gillen (and just about anyone from the UK) guaranteed quality. Just a great, compact little miniseries, right out of the blue.
And what *is* the deal with essentially every UK writer writing consistently fantastic comic books?
Well,
here is my review of the latest X-Men Forever story arc…
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2536905/xmen_forever_s_11_to_14_black_magik.html?cat=38
I was in agreement with Paul O’Brien on a lot of things. I ended up going into more detail because, well, this is the only X-book I follow regularly. So I had time to indulge 🙂
Maybe I’ll pick up the latest X-Factor arc if it comes out as a TPB. At least Peter David finally explained why Layla Miller “knows things” or however she put it.
I don’t know, I always get annoyed by characters who enigmatically tell you bits & pieces of information, but cannot be bothered to explain *why* they know what they know. Like in the Doctor Who: End of Time two parter. Just exactly who was that mysterious woman who kept popping up to offer Wilf cryptic advice?
I liked the resolution of the Void thing in the Uncanny issue; it reminded me of the Generation X special wherein Chamber beats Dys’pare (warning: apostrophe placed randomly) with his unbridled pessimism.
Sorry but the only problem with new mutants in the art by neves, that in this issue make for a confused fight more than for a dinamic one. The characterization of everyone (a part for Sunspot) is very good and I can give you a clue why the book was needed: these are loved characters that have been very poorly treated/written in the past years. Having them together, with responsibility and stuff is pure gold to me.
Just reread what’s happing to rahne in the abysmal x-force to see what’s happening to them when they are not in the right team…
Also: in the preview of the next episodes of new mutants it seemes that the virus in doug has retreated but it’s still there, I suppose that’s why he is still alive.
“The pay-off is that the story seems to have permanently revived Cypher, although I really don’t follow it: if he’s been freed from Selene’s control and the techno-virus, because the Soulsword has got rid of all the magic, why isn’t he dead again?”
Sloth is a sin, isn’t it? So, randomly hypothesizing, I figured that the TO virus repaired all cell damage before it was eliminated (during fights they were also healed by it… if I remember correctly).
Liked the year-in-review short, and Uncanny was fun.
I’m still having a problem with the full cast of X-Men. Considering we have multiple x-books, I prefer pared down teams that can’t just call up Perfect For the Occasion mutant. I know the over all idea was to trim the mutant population, but when you have ALL the mutants ALL the time on a tiny island, it certainly doesn’t FEEL as if the mutant population has been thinned.
In reply to Ken B., I stopped reading comics regularly years ago. In the last four years I think I’ve bought one comic.
I loved the New Mutants back in the day, but I was never particularly into Cypher. I definitely don’t think of myself as being hopelessly nostalgic or some kind of fanboy completist. I didn’t care about Cannball in Uncanny and I definitely didn’t care about Wolfsbane in X-Force.
But man, when Young X-Men came out, I took notice. Then when it was turned into New Mutants, I was tempted. But then when I saw the previews with flesh-and-blood Doug Ramsay in them, I broke down and ordered the first trade*.
So if the stunt can hook someone like me in, then it really is worth doing, sales-wise. I can only imagine the effect it would have on someone who still actively cared about the characters.
*yes, I know he’s not actually in that trade
I didn’t buy this issue of Uncanny, so I might have missed something flipping through it on the stand, but it appears that Hank has just left because he feels out of place in the new, darker era. While I’m glad he refuses to follow Cyclops’ reign of error, wouldn’t it be better to actually try to stop Scott from doing these stupid things? The way it comes across, Hank is an old fuddy duddy who can’t handle the changing needs of the real world, and we all should know that’s just not Hank.
I agree w/Lebowski inre: art on New Mutants. Neves cannot draw distinguishable faces. Everyone has the same bloody face. In a perfect world, Bill Sienkiewicz or Steve Leialoha would be great to have on art again. Hell, Rick Leonardi would be welcome for sure.
I will say, even for a fan who had reread his New Mutants Vol. 1 run not too long ago, I was stretching to remember what each Hellion’s power or relationship w/the New Mutants was. Too bad they didn’t get time to visit their old teacher, Ms. Frost or their ex-teammate Warpath (does he still go by that or did he take on the mantle of Thunderbird now?).
Paul says: “I tend to agree, actually, that the Marvel Universe as a whole wasn’t well served by having a mutant on every corner – but the current direction is an overcorrection and it’s time to swing back to the middle ground.”
The idea behind the current direction was an overcorrection. The implementation of the last several years has pretty much gone back to showing the pre-Morrison version of a mutant on every corner, while continuing to claim the early Decimation claim of only a few hundred left.
Michael Sonnier lays the blame on putting all the mutants together in a tiny space, but I think it is more than that. While the characters talking about how there are hardly any mutants left, the stories don’t show it. We’ve had old and new mutants continuing to pop out of the woodwork since Decimation. The effective status is just like it was before Morrison. The only difference is the claim itself.
Its kind of like when Morrison killed everyone in Genosha except for Magneto (who hid himself from Cerebra) and Emma (who turned to diamond and was thus presumably hidden from Cerebra), and then later writers just kept popping up survivors.
To Grok: actually I think they met Warpath and Emma in X-force, not sure of that though, x-force looks just like a set of dark pin-up to when (at least when Crain is doing it).
That’s pretty cool if they did. I’ve kept very far from X-Force thanks in part to Crain’s art and I just can’t bare to have anyone seeing me buy it. 😉
Speaking of the finale to Doctor Who, does anyone else here follow Lawrence Miles’ blog and has he written anything about it?
I know he will generally post something and then delete it within hours. He’s certainly unpopular amongst hardcore fandom but I enjoy reading his opinions on Doctor Who.
“Speaking of the finale to Doctor Who, does anyone else here follow Lawrence Miles’ blog and has he written anything about it?”
I did a search, so I’m guessing you mean this…
http://beasthouse-lm2.blogspot.com/
Yeah, Russell T. Davies loves his deus ex machinas, doesn’t he? I could not stand the end of the first season, that was just too much, with Rose using theh eart of the TARDIS to destroy the entire Dalek army. I found the endings to successive seasons easier to take, though.
And then I bought some of the very early Dalek stories on DVD, and read the novelizations of the lost stories, and I realized something: since the very beginning of Doctor Who, the Daleks have always been presented a totally unstoppable force that cannot be defeated… until the last five minutes of the final episode, at which point someone wrecks a control console, or rewires some machinery, or sets off a Time Destructor, or runs current through a bunch of wires, or blows up a corridor.
So, really, RTD is merely following in the footsteps of Terry Nation, who never met a plot device he didn’t like.
Credit where credit’s due: I thought Beast leaving was one of the most well-handled character moments in the X-Books in years. Nice and quiet, and happening in sight but out of “earshot” was perfect. A civil & private conversation between two old friends.
So, 198 mutants is too few (even if the book treats it as much, much more, to the point where they’ve even got their own country; even Morrison thought giving them an island nation was a bad idea) and 16 million mutants is too many.
So…when Second Coming rolls around, and Phoenix either allows new mutants to be reborn or repowers those who lost their powers (I prefer the first one, actually, since there aren’t that many characters who NEED their powers back), what do we think an acceptable number would be? 10 000? 100 000? A million?
4400
Doctor Who is one of those shows where it’s not so much HOW they solve it that’s important, but how the characters react to it.
Certainlly, I thought the point of the final episode was that everything up to the 4 knocks was unimportant, compared to the Tenth Doctor’s actual sacrifice. His speech/rant (“I could do so much more” and “it would be my honour”) made me cry. Just a bit. In a manly way.
I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a bit more for Doctor Who than I am for most sci-fi shows – in part because the show seems to operate with half its brain tied behind its back (“whenever you change history, giant bats show up to eat the world! except for every other time we change history!”), and mostly out of childhood nostalgia. But I do wish the plots and characters themselves would be a little less utterly stupid.
The tonal shifts in this finale were absurd and distracting – was I supposed to find the thousands of grinning John Simm clones dressed up in ill-fitting suits and dresses somehow menacing? was there supposed to be any rhyme or reason to when the Master was a gibbering cannibal beast-man and when he was a scientific genius, other than the arbitrary demands of a bad script? – and the pacing abysmal – how long did it take the Doctor to die of radiation poisoning, anyway?
As always, Davies never draws a character when a hastily-scribbled caricature will do, never produces pathos when melodrama will suffice, never writes an actual story when he can stitch together a bunch of unrelated scenes and images he’s got scribbled down on a napkin somewhere. Here’s the Master being resurrected by never-before-seen (and never seen again) Master-cultists in a sort of cod-Satanic ritual, here’s the Master running around a junkyard sniffing the air and eating people, here’s the Galactic Senate scene from Phantom Menace, here’s the Doctor in an absurd parody of Spock’s death scene from Wrath of Khan.
Davies’s instincts as a storyteller are such that he’s able to tell that each of these scenes could look impressive on television, but he’s not able to figure out what should go where, or what they have to do with one another, or what he should leave in and what he should leave out. So he throws in everything and the kitchen sink (Obama! A successful but ominous black man who is not Obama! Random wacky aliens accompanied by “here are the wacky aliens” theme music! Comic relief in the form of wacky old ladies grabbing the Doctor’s ass!) and figures some of it’s got to work, and what we end up with is a pile of random crap on the floor.
Anyway.
I only checked out the Doctor Who finales because Timothy Dalton was in them (I’m a big Bond nut). I was such a moron. The shows fell into the “It’s so bad, it’s actually quite good” category that I love.
I know he’s outgoing but it’s real hard to dislike David Tennant even if I’m rather envious of him – he’s good looking, he can do drama-ish shows like this, and he can do comedy well as evidenced by his guest hosting of ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’.
For this newbie I thought they were pretty enjoyable even if I had to resort to referring to the characters by whatever bodily abnormality they had. It got me to the point where I want to go back and check out the series since it got reborn a few years back.
There’s old-school Who on MSN…or there was. The Flash interfacey streamy thing makes my computer hurt, so I avoid it where possible.
Oh, apparently, all the things I was going to go out and buy on DVD tomorrow are up. Caves of Androzani, Talons of GODDAMN DOUGLAS ADAMS WOO! Chang. Mark of the Rani! Ace!
That’s just…a big flip, is what that is.
Here y’are:
http://player.uk.msn.com/sci-fi/doctor-who/
PLANET OF TEH SPIDARS!!!
//\Oo/\\
John Simm must be making money hand over fist, since he’s a skilled actor but the whole premise of The Master that he has to play is flawed. If I had to describe it in a word, it’s just very broad. The eating scenes were even more grotesque than Kurt Russell’s nacho eating in “Death Proof” and that was uncomfortable as all hell.
Simms makes Anthony Ainley’s portrayal look subdued by comparison. They should have left well enough alone after Roger Delgado’s death in the 70’s or at the least stopped using The Master after “The Deadly Assassin”.
BUT, I just watched The Time Monster the other day and it has all or more of Russell T. Davies’ failings as a writer/producer in it as well. Bad attempts at being topical and silly humor are just things that Doctor Who does I guess.
Still, I’d take Doctor Who’s revival over Star Wars’ revival.
What I do find interesting about Doctor Who is the number of people who don’t like it, but stil watch it. Granted, there’s a degree of whinging and complaining in all fandom, but the DW fans are often fairly accurate in their complaints. But they still watch it.
Do other people just have a lot more time than me to watch shows they don’t like, or what?
I think Doctor Who fans are disproportionately likely to associate the show with memories near and dear to their childhoods, and to keep on watching the series out of nostalgia long after we realize it’s a bit crap.
QUOTE:I think Doctor Who fans are disproportionately likely to associate the show with memories near and dear to their childhoods, and to keep on watching the series out of nostalgia long after we realize it’s a bit crap.
Yep. Hammer meet nail.
Paul do you think Wolverine: Origins is worth buying? I stoped buying the monthly with issue 40 and was waiting for the Hardcover for issues 41-45, but i’m kinda torn betwen buying the wolverine hardback or the Bone single vol. edition by Jeff Smith, what should I buy?
Saludos from Tijuana, Mexico
Don’t know about Wolverine, but Bone is very definitely worth it.
I’d love to hear Al and Paul’s take on the Doctor Who’s finale as part of the next House to Astonish. Assuming you both watched it of course.
“I think Doctor Who fans are disproportionately likely to associate the show with memories near and dear to their childhoods, and to keep on watching the series out of nostalgia long after we realize it’s a bit crap.”
Maybe. But then, the original series was also a bit crap at times. And at other times, it was very crap. So I’m confused.
– “whenever you change history, giant bats show up to eat the world! except for every other time we change history!”)
I’d just like to point out that the “giant bats” turned up when Rose caused a temporal paradox while altering history, not just because she saved her father.
Wasn’t it the double whammy of her having no reason to be there if her dad didn’t die AND the Doctor & Rose crossing their own timelines, leading the earlier pair to evaporate?
Yeah. It was a culmination of things that weakened the structure of time.
1/ She’d gone back to a crucial point in her past.
2/ Both of them then crossed their own time lines.
3/ She ran out in front of her earlier self, which she hadn’t seen when she was that earlier self, earasing them from time.
4/ She saved her dad’s life. Since she’d only come back in time to see his death, if he didn’t die then there’d have been no need to watch this. This paradox, combined with the effects above AND the lack of Time Lords to held maintain order (however they did that) is what caused the Big Bat Things to appear.
Oh, and then she picked up herself, which made everything so much worse.
Making a mockery of The Blinovitch Limitation Effect in the process!
Not really – when the Brigadier touched himself, there was a huge flash and not much bang. Not much different from Rose grabbing at herself, ultimately.
“when the Brigadier touched himself, there was a huge flash and not much bang”
Sounds kind of dirty.
Doctor Who’s time-travel logic is embarrassingly awful. At this point I’d just as soon they give up on the time-travel aspect entirely and just stick with the alien stuff.
“But then, the original series was also a bit crap at times. And at other times, it was very crap.”
No one is disputing this.
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