The X-Axis – 3 October 2010
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote one of these. But fortunately, they’ve been a quiet couple of weeks. So I’m just going to do the X-books, because to be honest, there isn’t a great deal else going on. Check the podcast this week – you’ll find it two posts down – for our reviews of Skullkickers (it’s quite good) and Matt Fraction’s first issue of Thor (it’s very good) along with… well, something from the back catalogue.
Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #3 – In which we get a recap of the origin story of Dr Crocodile (a character from the 1980s Captain Britain series, if you didn’t know), a brief discussion of how cash-strapped African countries might deal with crazy mutant babies, and a wander into the woods where some more weird stuff awaits. There’s actually an interesting idea at the heart of this story; what do you do with incredibly dangerous mutant kiddies when you really don’t have the resources to do anything but kill them? Not that there’s any real doubt about the morally approved answer, granted, but Joshua does have an understandable point of view here.
A couple of points come to mind, though. First, this is another illustration of why M-Day was a bad idea. The dilemma here is basically “what does the developing world do with mutants?”, with the Warpies serving as a workaround to dodge M-Day. Frankly, it would be a stronger X-Men story with actual mutants in it. Ellis has managed to get around that problem. But it shows, once again, that far from opening up interesting story ideas, M-Day has just created obstacles for writers to clamber over.
Second, there are still real issues with the pacing of this as a monthly series. It’ll look great in the collected edition, to be fair. But four splash pages, one of which just shows cast members running into a forest? It’s fair enough if you regard the selling point as being Kaare Andrews’ art – and it’s certainly beautiful stuff – but it really does feel dragged out in this format.
Namor: The First Mutant #2 – Not that I’m planning to keep buying this series, you understand. However many logos you stick on it, Namor is not an X-book. But it’s part of the “Curse of the Mutants” crossover, so I ordered it anyway. And after I panned the first issue, it’s only fair to say that this is better. Having got the actual “Curse of the Mutants” tie-in out of the way, Stuart Moore and Ariel Olivetti are moving on to the story they really want to tell, which is about the new Atlantis going to war with a tribe of underwater vampires. Something which looked like a plot hole in the last issue turns out to be deliberate, and there’s some attempt to build up an idea of Atlantean society. A scene with an eccentric geriatric soothsayer telling embarrassing stories about Namor’s childhood is very good.
But there are still problems. Namor says that he killed the vampires’ leader because “I thought it would end the Aqueos’ attacks on us and our colonies” – but didn’t they spend most of last issue telling us that he was breaking a peace treaty? (The recap page certainly thinks so.) The opening scene has an interesting idea about Atlanteans using their Atlantis off the coast of San Francisco to break from their cultural past, but it comes off as a clumsy “coming to America” moment. And Olivetti’s work remains hit and miss, lacking the grace I’d expect in a Namor story. Still, better than the first issue.
Uncanny X-Men #528 – “The Five Lights” continues, and this time we’re introducing a girl with fire and ice powers in Nigeria. This is a very episodic arc – the unifying element is actually the subplot with Emma Frost figuring out how to get rid of Sebastian Shaw – and boy, wouldn’t it be nice if the recap page bothered to remind us of why she needs to get rid of him, because I’m certainly struggling to remember. Something about Namor thinks she killed him already? I think? I don’t remember why… Still, I like the scenes with Emma and Kitty in this issue – there’s a great rapport between these two that Fraction writes rather well.
The introduction of the “five lights” characters isn’t really working for me so far, because we’re not really getting to know them as characters. The problem, I think, is that since we’re meeting them all in a state of absolute panic, there’s not much room for anything else to come through. I’m sure once they calm down a bit we’ll see a bit more from them (and it looks as though Idie is being set up for a Wolfsbane-type role in the new group), but for the moment it’s mostly the local colour that makes the characters distinct.
As for the art, while I’ll happily take Whilce Portacio over Greg Land, whose work seems untouched by human hand, I have to admit there are problems here. Portacio does the Nigerian scenes quite well, perhaps because the setting holds his interest, but from there we go into a scene with Bobby Drake and Kate Kildare which is little short of abysmal – the opening panel makes Bobby look like Charlie Chaplin, and the rest of the scene somehow manages to take place in a completely blank room except for a single prop that was presumably mentioned in the script. It’s a really bad scene, and the issue as a whole is frustratingly uneven.
X-Men Forever 2 #8 – The Marauders versus the X-Men and the Starjammers, again. Halfway through this story, I was wondering whether Claremont had botched his cliffhanger last issue – by bringing back Wolverine only to expose him as a clone and kill him immediately. But no, he’s going to be around for a while, presumably as one of Sinister’s deranged henchmen. There’s some oddities in Claremont’s attitude to clones (why doesn’t it matter if you kill them, and how the hell can Sabretooth smell the difference between Wolverine and his clone?). But still, the last couple of issues have been an enjoyable romp of a fight scene, and that’s fine in a book like this.
X-Men Legacy #240 – Continuing the “Children of the Vault” story. Clay Mann’s art in this story doesn’t seem to be up to the standards of earlier – perhaps the deadlines are catching up with him, but it means that the story launches with a rather confused action sequence. A splash page unveiling the Children’s big plot-driving machine works quite well, but overall it’s a step down. Paras’ big act of self-sacrifice is a bit melodramatic too, but there’s a twist near the end that works better. Still, not the strongest chapter of this storyline, which has generally been pretty good.
X-Men vs Vampires #1 – Frankly mystifying anthology series in which a bunch of writers have been asked to do stories where members of the X-Men fight vampires, and only a couple of them seem to have been told that they should tie in with “Curse of the Mutants” in any way. James Asmus and Tom Raney’s “From Husk Till Dawn” is a thuddingly uninspired few pages in which Husk is looking for the captured Jubilee, and fights some vampires, and that’s literally it. Really, truly dreadful. Christopher Sequeira and Sana Takeda’s story is better, with Dazzler meeting a bunch of blaxploitation vampires, but it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the crossover, and even taken in isolation it’s no more than diverting. As you can probably imagine, Peter David does better, teaming with Mick Bertilorenzi in a story about a vampire who’s come to San Francisco with his own agenda, though again it doesn’t gain anything from the wider crossover and would be a better story taken completely in isolation. Rob Williams and Doug Braithwaite go for a similar idea, with Magneto encountering a vampire he knew in life. Good concept, not really developed into a story, but it looks nice. And rounding it off, there’s a reprint of the first half of Uncanny X-Men #159, the X-Men/Dracula story (the second half will be in the next issue), where you can see Bill Sienkiewicz back when he did house style. The Peter David story is worth reading, but as a package, it’s a bit of a dud.
I imagine it doesn’t matter if you kill clones, or atleast Sinister’s clones because he’ll just clone them again.
But each one is a living being with a mind, sepperate view on the world etc. robots get more respect in the MU.
Also Skrulls and other unnamed aliens are fair game.
I think the only way to really justify the X-Men running around and offing clones is if Claremont establishes that Sinister has created them to be generally soulless and genuinely evil incarnations of the originals who are programmed to listen to his every beck and call. Otherwise, it’s grossly out of place for the X-Men to be so callous.
The most interesting question that occurred to me when I saw Peter David was writing a vampire story was, what if one of Jamie’s duplicates gets bitten by a vampire? Of course that’s not the story, but it’s an interesting enough hook that I almost wish they had dragged X-Factor into the crossover.
Presumably, Sabretooth can smell the difference because the clone doesn’t use the same eau de toilette as Wolverine.
haven’t gotten up the current issues of X-Men Forever yet, but if they’re clones that Sinister keeps churning out to hurl at the X-Men, what kind of intelligence, personality, life, etc. could they have. I know his clones have turned up in the mainstream Marvel U over the years, but none of those stories made enough of an impression for me to remember if they were mindless killing machines or had a little more going on upstairs.
I know he gave Madelyne Pryor memories and the Phoenix force imprinted a personality on her, but how many of his other clones have had the kind of programming besides kill kill kill?
Scalphunter is one of Sinister’s clones and a member of the Marauders who has been written with a personality. In fact, he’s been pretty sympathetic in a number of his appearances. He’s still totally on the list characters that the X-Men seem to feel fine killing with impunity though.
I don’t think sympathetic is the right word. I’d say if there’s anybody the X-Men should be okay with killing, it’s him.
In any case though- the X-Men have done a fair amount of killing in their time.
To be fair, it’s only Sabretooth, Gambit and Corsair who kill the clones without a second thought – the others were a bit squeamish last issue, and this time they just hide behind a forcefield while Corsair executes a ‘plan’ that he didn’t go into detail about. Not that anyone reacts with ‘oh my god they’re all dead’, but still.
I haven’t read X Men Forever, and probably won’t, but as a former ’90s X Fan, and current smoker, I’m curious as to whether Nick Fury, Wolverine and Gambit still smoke in the series.
@Valhallahan – Nope. Marvel’s non-smoking these days. Funny how ass-backwards everything is now. When I was a kid reading Marvel in the 70’s and 80s, graphic violence could only be implied and blood had to be colored black or brown, not red. Wolverine could puff away on a cigar though.
Today you can show Wolverine graphically hacking guys to pieces and the blood can be colored red, but he can’t be shown smoking.
Does that make sense to anyone?
@Brian – I was discussing Kick Ass (the film) with a colleague today and he said how shocked he was by the language used by Hit-Girl. The fact she slaughtered dozens of men with swords and guns was apparently incidental.
@Brian
I think the decision of whether or not to smoke comes up more in kids’ lives than whether or not to hack guys into pieces. I really can’t foresee someone who is relatively sane turning into a mass murderer because he read a wolverine book, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone took up smoking because Nick Fury smoked a cigar. It worked with James Dean.
Wow. A new story with Doctor Crocodile in it. Surely this must be a sign of the apocalypse.
And not to get too involved with the continuity, but wasn’t he turned into an 8″ baby croc last time we saw him?
In all fairness, the smoking ban came into effect because one of Joe Quesada’s relatives contracted lung cancer caused by smoking. I thought it was his father, but there appears to be some dispute about that.
I think it was that his grandfather died of lung cancer, so out-right banned all smoking in Marvel comics. And while I think it’s a good thing stopping characters like Nick Fury, The Thing and Wolverine smoking, you know the heroic characters that the scant impressionable kids reading comics might look up to and emulate, a blanket ban is just silly and a denial of reality. Especially when your books supposedly have age-ratings. And while you can maybe justify the excessive violence in the face of ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING, it’s a bit rich that Young Avengers was able to do a storyline where Patriot turns out to be a drug-user (for which he pretty much gets rewarded with real super-powers, I might add), but Ultimate Avengers can’t have the Red Skull smoking while tossing a baby out of a window or whatever.
Oh, and I’m a complete non-smoker, hate the entire practice and my grandfather died of lung cancer from smoking as well, so I wish Quesada would get off his high-horse.
Martin: What? You’re suggesting that Quesada would take a sledgehammer approach to a problem? I’m shocked at the implication.
Or, here’s another way to look at it…
Comic books today = mostly read by adults.
Comic book-based films = lotsa teenagers go to see these.
Comic book Wolverine = Can’t smoke.
Hugh Jackman = can be seen chomping on a cigar in all three X-Men films and the Wolverine film.
It’s not an out-and-out smoking ban. It’s a superhero smoking ban.
From http://www.mania.com/marvel-smoking-zone_article_29222.html —
“It’s not for every Marvel character,” Quesada says. “It’s, for the most part, any Marvel character that kids are going to identify with. So it’s also depending on the book.
“So for example, if an artist wants to draw a guy on the street smoking, fine by all means. We just have a problem with Wolverine smoking. My grandfather died of a heart condition related to his smoking. My father just had a collaposed lung last year.
“It’s just a matter of whether we want to promote cancer or not, and quite frankly, we’re done promoting it.
“Again, there are exceptions. I just went through this with somebody. Can Nick Fury smoke? Well, you know what, if Nick Fury shows up in the FANTASTIC FOUR, I’d rather not have him smoke. But if Fury’s in a MAX title, which he is, sure, let him smoke away. I think our adult readers are a little more responsible and know whether they want to smoke or not.”
@arseface – lol!
@Randy – I appreciate what you’re saying but James Dean was James Dean (HUGE influence on teens because they identified with him.) and it was the 1950s when smoking didn’t carry as much negative stigma as it does today.
“We just have a problem with Wolverine smoking.”
Even though readers don’t actually identify with Wolverine (unless someone here has suffered from long-term amnesia and a badly-written history, in which case I apologize).
So, it seems to me that smokeless-Wolverine is in consideration of the fact that the character appears in nearly every book.
Glenn Danzig identifies with Wolverine.
Again with the smoking outrage? Does smoking add anything to a character? To the story? Why does anyone care?
Actually you could probably do a really good story about Ben Grimm trying to quit, wrestling with addiction, big man brought low by a simple chemical, et cetera. But he doesn’t gain anything from chomping a cigar that wearing a tiny derby hat wouldn’t.
People do pretend to have Wolverine’s claws, including kids. Most aren’t going to use real knife blades, but an adult might use a real cigar (lit or unlit) and a kid in a smoking house can easily take one of their parent’s cigarettes or (less often) cigars.
Wolverine is also established enough that he shows up in areas outside of comics, and for quite some time the cigar was a fairly well established part of his character.
Who the fuck identifies with Wolverine?
To Baines: If the kid is stealing his parents’ cigarettes, then it isn’t Wolverine that’s teaching him to smoke. Or maybe that was your point?
Si: Smoking does actually add something to a character. It’s a short-hand literary device for characterization in almost all media.
To be fair, I remember Wolverine being shown smoking pretty heavily after his encounter with Storm.
@Randy: Living in London, knife crime is actually an issue for kids. Happens quite a bit, so yeah, I do find it stupid that Wolvie can stripe people up willy nilly but can’t be shown relaxing with a cigar.
Do you not see the inherent silliness of Spiderman making a deal with the devil and that being OK, but smoking is so evil not even the 100 year old killing machine with a healing factor can be seen doing it?
On a related note, I remember an issue of The Pulse(?) where Ulrich offers the other reporter “Gum” that is clearly a recoloured packet of cigarettes.
Marvels: Eye of the Camera showed a Marvel Character smoking for the first time in ages and guess what? He had lung cancer! It was such an “after school special”. I really hope they never do a storyline focusing on Ben Grimm’s “addiction” to an occasional cigar.
“Smoking does actually add something to a character. It’s a short-hand literary device for characterization in almost all media.”
“Shorthand” is another word for “lazy way”. Stories work perfectly well without that device.
And the fact that smoking is shorthand for someone who is cool, edgy or bad is an excellent reason for not helping to perpetuate that image to impressionable people.
Didn’t the Marauders used to get killed all the time by the X-Men back in the standard, canonical Claremont days? I seem to recall back in Inferno when they showed up, the X-Men’s collective reaction was basically “What, didn’t we kill you already,” and then going and killing them again in the space of a few panels. It struck a strangely discordant note then, too, because these were supposedly the same people who went out of their way to not kill super-powered crazy person Magneto every time they ran into him, and of course would later pull out a dozen fainting couches because the New Mutants were palling around with a dude who – gasp! – had guns and shoulderpads.
“And the fact that smoking is shorthand for someone who is cool, edgy or bad is an excellent reason for not helping to perpetuate that image to impressionable people.”
Kids won’t smoke because Wolverine smokes. Kids will smoke because they succumb to peer pressure. Or because their parents don’t want them to smoke and they begin doing so simply to test their boundaries and/or rebel. Or because (insert name of hot young movie/rock star here) is a smoker and they want to emulate that person— a real person, not a cartoon.
If really you think a kid is liable to pick up a cigar habit because they see Wolverine doing it in a comic book, then (according to my own teenage kids) you’re completely out of touch with today’s youth.
Brian, it’s cumulative effect. The more imagery there is that enforces the idea that smoking is cool, the more likely a person is to smoke. That’s one of the pillars of advertising. Of course people are going to emulate a cartoon, they do it all the time.
But that aside, the point isn’t whether it works or not, it’s whether the stories need Wolverine sucking on a cigar. I can’t think of any stories that do, which makes it baffling why so many fans are so up in arms about the whole thing. After all these years.
Smokers are cool. what can you do. :shrug:
If Joe Quesada had a relative who’d been killed by a drunk driver, I suppose no one in Marvel comics would be drinking, either, but as it is, there’s still four-color booze in superhero comics – not that its presence or absence makes a difference as to whether The Children Who Am The Future drink the devil rum. For fuck’s sake – when was the last time a kid even read a Marvel comic, anyway?
I hope the children don’t watch mad men.
I think both points that are being made here- one: that’s ridiculous; two: who cares?- are pretty valid.
Well said, lambnesio. And that’s a good point to end this on.
“And that’s a good point to end this on.”
God, I hate it when people do this. Translation: “Now that I’ve got the last word in for the moment, and I’m satisfied with my argument, let’s just end the discussion, shall we?”
SI, you came into this citing “smoking outrage.” Just because I find it silly that Quesada imposed that rule, that doesn’t mean I’m outraged. I’m actually not. I really could care less if Wolverine smokes in comics or not.
It’s just as I said in my first post, I find it absurd that Marvel has basically gone conservative and “kiddie mindful” on the smoking front but on the other hand it’s “LOOK KIDS! SNIKT! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! A TORSO! BLOOD EVERYWHERE! OH, AND PSYLOCKE’S THONG DISAPPEARED INTO HER BUTT-CRACK AGAIN!” You can’t, as a publisher, say “We’re going to ban our heroes from smoking.” giving the argument that you’re trying to be mindful of young readers, but then ramp up the violence and sexually suggestive scenes/dialogue (which they certainly have over the years) and not appear as though you’re schizophrenic.
I’ve never really understood how Wolverine could ever be marketed as a kids character, anyway. He’s a heavy smoker and drinker, prone to ultra-violence with a “man’s gotta be a man” rhetoric.
Fezes are cool.
Wolverine should wear a fez now.
Because of Wolverine, I cut off my nose and tied a bandanna over my face.
Give it time and Wolvie will be deflecting lasers with his claws and drinking “Root Beer”.
@Brian: Hear, Hear.
@Si: If you want to talk about something else, actually change the subject or if you don’t, just ignore the thread. Don’t try and shut people up, it’s rude.
While on the topic of Wolverine, I’ve got a question, however unrelated to smoking it may be.
With the launch of X-men vol. 2, all the characters premiered new costumes except for Logan. His costume change happened in issue 4 (or Wolverine 50). Did Claremont happen to champion the brown costume for a his last issues?
Some kid smoking because Wolverine does is kind of a ridiculous idea, though I admit when I was 16 or 17 I did start smoking because the Cigarette Smoking Man did.
But, the CSM was a whole lot cooler than Wolverine.
Heheh…
The Cigarette Smoking Man. Guess what he did.
He got cancer, then an alien made him better, then he got shot in the head, then living in a cabin made him better?
Tbh most of the X-Files is now a blur to me. Thankfully.
“Did Claremont happen to champion the brown costume for his last issues?”
I don’t know. If memory serves, Wolverine’s yellow costume made it’s initial comeback in an issue of McFarlane’s “Spider-Man” and I think that was just supposed to be a one-off. Perhaps someone in the X-Office read the issue and decided he should go back to it permanently. The final Claremont/issues might have already been in production at this point. This is all just guesswork on my part though.
Well I’m glad someone noticed my question, I was actually about to repost it. I wonder where I would find this information…