The X-Axis – 3 July 2011
If you’ve listened to this week’s podcast (just one post below), you’ll know that the last two weeks weren’t exactly replete with notable new releases. And while I skipped the X-Axis last week, it’s been a fairly quiet period for the X-books too, with just six books in two weeks. Unless you count Namor, which I don’t. I’m starting to get a vague sense that everyone is killing time right now, waiting for the end of Flashpoint, the end of Fear Itself, or the start of Schism – delete as applicable.
Still, here’s some stuff that came out in the last two weeks:
Flashpoint: Reverse Flash #1 – Er… yes. This is a one-shot by Scott Kolins and Joel Gomez (not, as the cover claims, a three-issue miniseries), which I rather foolishly assumed might in some way be important to the plot of Flashpoint, what with the Reverse Flash being the main villain and all. Silly me. What it actually contains is a recap of the Reverse Flash’s back story – not a direct copy of Geoff Johns’ recent story from Flash, but certainly covering similar ground. It’s tempting to say that the problem here is the odd decision to hire artist Scott Kolins as a writer, and there’s no doubt that Johns got the same basic idea across far more effectively and charmingly in his story. But then, it’s not like the editors gave Kolins much to work with – if the finished product is anything to go by, the remit here was “Recap the plot.” Joel Gomez’s art is patchy – bits of it look rushed, and there’s a blockiness that doesn’t really work for the Flash, but then there are also a couple of nicely rendered panels and some sweet material near the end with Barry Allen as a child. Still, not a good comic.
New Mutants #26 – I queried last month whether “clearing up the X-Men’s unfinished business” was really an adequate premise to serve as the direction for this series, and so it’s reassuring to see Sunspot asking the same thing here. Actually, I can’t help wondering whether this arc is basically a case of playing for time until “Schism” explodes the status quo.
At any rate, the ostensible point of this arc is to reintroduce Nate Grey, but since he spends the entire issue tied to a chair, the real focus is on the Sugar Man. Not, at first glance, a villain anyone was crying out to see again, great character design notwithstanding. But in fact, he’s a good choice for several reasons. On a purely practical level, he’s got something in common with Nate – they both came from the same parallel world. But more to the point, the Sugar Man’s whole raison d’etre was that he was a mad scientist who experimented on mutants. So a world with virtually no mutants is, well, a bit disappointing for him. Rather than go after the X-Men themselves, however, he’s decided that the simple solution is to go home. Problem is, all he’s got is a wonky portal that could lead anywhere… so until he’s sorted out the co-ordinates, he’s going to need a few willing suckers to go through and tell him what’s on the other side. Bring on the gullible and desperate ex-mutants…
This is a rare example of M-Day actually being used sensibly as a springboard for a story, and it’s nicely done, with the villain in reduced circumstances having a suitably creepy edge. You can question whether it’s really a New Mutants story – arguably anyone could have been plugged into the role of hunting for Nate – but the characters are well defined and there’s a fun team dynamic here that’s often missing from the regular X-Men titles.
Sigil #4 – The conclusion of Mike Carey and Leonard Kirk’s CrossGen revival, and given the sales on this (and Ruse), I have to wonder how far Marvel will pursue this whole idea. In fact, this is a revival of the original Sigil in name only, turning it into a sort of teenage-girl-who-turns-out-to-be-the-chosen-one book. There’s a bit of jumping through time, which serves partly as a device to namecheck El Cazador, and, as it turns out, no real twist from what we saw in the first issue. I’ll have to re-read the series and see if there’s something I’m missing, but to be honest, I’m a little underwhelmed – it’s serviceable, but there’s little sense of anything new here.
Uncanny X-Men #539 – Now that’s a pretty cover by Simone Bianchi. As for the content, this is a done-in-one story that might have been more at home over in Generation Hope (it seems odd that this book, rather than her own series, gets the clearest explanation to date of how Hope’s powers work), but so be it. It ties up a loose end, namely why Wolverine doesn’t seem too keen on Hope. Off on a trip to the mainland, Hope gets kidnapped by baddies, and Wolverine goes to the rescue. And they get to talk.
That villain is the Crimson Commando, who was depowered on M-Day, but happens to be a cyborg anyway. (Honest, it was in Howard Mackie’s X-Factor or something.) He wants his powers back, since without them he’s just an old man with a lot of metal. And he’s got it into his head that Hope can fix him. That’s a nice idea, though I’m not quite sure how it leads to him having a whole organisation backing him up – presumably he’s blowing his life savings on mercenaries. There’s some beautiful art by Ibraim Roberson, and the book also has an unusually old-fashioned use of Wolverine’s healing powers – it’s nice to see someone remember that this stuff ought to hurt, and by doing the stunt with Hope (using her power mimickry), the story sidesteps the overfamiliarity of seeing Wolverine get beaten up.
I wanted the Commando’s story to have more of a resolution – ultimately he’s just there as a vehicle to give Wolverine and Hope their moment together – but a decent issue nonetheless.
Wolverine #11 – This arc may have the unusually direct title of “Wolverine’s Revenge!” (it does what it says on the tin, I guess), but in fact the real focus is on the members of the Red Right Hand wanting revenge on Wolverine. I like the central idea of this group – an organisation made up of bereaved relatives of all the bit-part characters Wolverine’s killed over the years. But two chapters into this arc, a pattern is emerging: Wolverine fights a gimmicky henchman in the present day, and somebody reminisces about how he killed their dad. As with the previous issue, while the flashback narrator is convinced their loved one was an upstanding hero cruelly killed by a vicious bastard, it’s made abundantly clear that they’re seeing things through rose tinted glasses.
There are good moments, but it’s all a bit too similar to the previous issue. That said, the cliffhanger suggests that Aaron’s going to break that pattern, so maybe this is more of a pacing matter than anything else.
Wolverine: The Best There Is #7 – Notionally the start of a second arc, “Broken Quarantine”, this is actually a direct continuation from the previous issue. Wolverine staggers back to Utopia to recover, and the X-Men kind of roll their eyes and go into quarantine until his healing factor gets rid of the various conditions that he was saddled with in the previous arc. Naturally enough, Wolverine is more interested in getting back out there to pick up the loose end of how Winsor managed to catch him in the first place.
While the first arc was something of a mess, this is actually not bad at all. Now that the book has stopped hammering the “parental advisory” angle, it’s shading into a more reasonable story. There are still a couple of points where the book is trying to hard to convince you it’s edgy, but the art’s improving, and the story had shed its previous incoherence.
That being said, you’d have thought the editors would have picked up that the Beast left the X-Men somewhere over a year ago, and that somebody would have vetoed this book and Uncanny X-Men doing two quarantine stories in quick succession. Those quibbles aside, though, this issue is a big improvement.
X-Men: Legacy #251 – More hunting for Legion’s escaped personalities. This issue, we’re in London to fight Chain (who turns other people into copies of him) and Susan in Sunshine (a little girl who loses her powers when she’s sad). Carey is basically having fun with the gimmick, though he also uses it as an opportunity to play up the question of quite where the X-Men would draw the line and pull the plug on Legion altogether.
Khoi Pham’s art doesn’t really get the best out of the idea. The story ought to provide plenty of opportunity for visuals of London deserted aside from duplicates of Chain, but sketchy backgrounds tend to undermine that, and it turns out that crowd scenes aren’t really Pham’s thing either. He’s better with the conversation scenes, though, and the crazy little girl is realised well. All in all, a bit patchy, but there’s good stuff in here.
X-Men: Prelude to Schism #4 – I’m going to come back to this miniseries in a separate post, because its very existence truly is a mystery for the ages, but suffice to say that this doesn’t save it. The focus this time is on Wolverine, and in the absence of any discernible plot beyond “something is coming”, I can only speculate that Paul Jenkins’ agenda here is to set out the back stories of Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops and Wolverine in some attempt to identify what makes a leader. What that means in practice is a six-page recap of Origin, another five pages of Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X”, and another chance to enjoy several pages of conversation that we already saw in earlier issues, all adding up to pretty much nothing. There’s a slight hint about people looking to Wolverine for leadership when they can’t get an answer from Scott, and reiteration of the same mystery threat that we’ve already heard about, but that’s literally as far as the “prelude” aspect seems to go. A bafflingly pointless series.
I have it in my head that the scripts for the first ~12 issues of “Wolverine: The Best There Is” were submitted in one go. That might explain (but not justify) the editorial lapses.
I like the idea of the Red Right Hand, but can’t help but feel that the writer is a bit too in love with Wolverine to actually depicted as the amoral monster he is supposed to have been in the past.
Part of Wolverine’s appeal is that he is a reformed villain. He’s someone who was a Very Bad Man and now he is trying to sort his life out and make amends. Aaron should let some of the RRH members be a bit more sympathetic.
There’s a good case to be made that Wolverine really does need to answer for his crimes, but if you depict his victims as lunatics and portray Wolverine as somewhat merciful while he kills their relatives, you encourage people not to ask that question.
Yes, the whole Red Right Hand thing is an interesting idea, sadly it’s also one that was done much better during Greg Rucka’s criminally underappreciated run on Elektra. As Paul pointed out, it’s clear that the family members’ memories are skewed, and so we aren’t really as sympathetic to them as we should be. Elektra actually was the monster that Wolverine is made out to be, so seeing her confronted with her past was much more effective.
I was expecting a much more venemous review of Prelude of Schism, based on Paul’s tweets the other day.
The question around Schism shouldn’t be who will follow Scott and who will follow Wolverine, but why most would follow either of them at this point. Gosh, do we throw in with the guy who founded the X-Men’s first covert murder squad, or with the one leading the current covert murder squad?
I’m hoping they’ll pull a got’cha at the last moment and put Storm in charge of the whole mess.
I’m kinda hoping that with Schism, the divided X-Men would go the East-West route, with the West X-Men staying on Utopia and the East X-Men returning to the X-Mansion. I doubt that’s gonna happen though, as the X-Men’s group dynamic has been so badly screwed up in the past few years with books that seem to revolve around their own little universe with no effect on the other titles whatsoever.
Putting Wolverine as the counter to Cyclops seems to stem more from their historic early rivalry, and the fact the Wolverine is a bigger draw card, when logically Storm (or more interestingly) Emma should be the other side.
After 35 years we’re still going round and round on how Wolverine was once a Bad Bad Man and that he’s torn over this? Glad I’m not following Aaron’s run. And he wonders why Alan Moore doesn’t fall to his knees and declare him a genius? Or even know who he is at all…
Precisely, the original Matt. That historical Cyke vs Wolverine rivalry doesn’t make a lot of sense when it comes to deciding who should lead, given that Cyclops’ “whatever it takes” leadership style of the past few years doesn’t give him any more moral high ground than Wolverine, or that much difference in what nasty measures get taken to get the job done…Cyke just doesn’t get his hands as directly dirty.
Now, if this were a matter of, say, Cyke or Wolverine inadvertently offing the other in a fight over leadership, then the X-Men deciding if they could still follow the guy left standing or if that were the last straw, I’d be a lot more interested in that story.
Wait…
Wolverine was an actual bad guy and not just a poor brainwashed hobo prone to animal rages?!
When did this happen?
Believe it or not, the Crimson Commando as cyborg was not introduced in Mackie’s X-factor run. I think either Lobdell or Nicieza introduced in an early 90s X-men annual…I remember that issue had horrible art, but was actually a decent read with a new character and good ideas that were introduced but were never followed up on. Yup, early 90s X-men 😉
“And he wonders why Alan Moore doesn’t fall to his knees and declare him a genius? Or even know who he is at all…”
Bwahahahaha!
Aaron’s run is ok. It doesn’t set my world on fire. While it is enjoyable, it’s not usually at the top of my must read list. And I’m already bored with the Red Right Hand.
And yes, Storm would make a much more logical counterpart to Cyclops than Wolverine. The Cyclops/Wolverine could be interesting, if, say, Emma sided with Logan…but that goes back to an earlier point that the 2 leaders of the sides isn’t the issue, but rather, who will follow whom.
Wasn’t Wolverine suppose to be a terrible leader? I seem to have a vague sense of that being a minor plot element during Claremont’s run, whenever Storm was not leading the X-men.
Not using Vanisher to teleport the team to Selene during Necrosha X is proof of terrible leadership.
Don’t really like the idea of Storm leading, maybe because I wasn’t reading around when she was cool (mohawk and morlocks?) but was reading when Claremont was beating people over the head with how super-duper fab she was and how every villain totally had the hotz for her.
I would like to see Magneto as a leader after Schism and then have a gradual descent into villainy. Not just a snap, ‘I’m evil, let’s change our names to the Brotherhood or the Acolytes and kill some humans’ but have years of Magneto trying to do the good thing, trying to lead by example, trying to actually take his team of X-Men somewhere only for it to blow back in his face due to previous misdemeanors, misunderstanding and the natural prejudice of Marvel Earth’s human population.
“Prelude to Schism” may actually represent an entirely new kind of comics storytelling: A series that exists only to hype a forthcoming series.
This is, I guess, minor in the scheme of things– but isn’t the machine that Nate Grey is hooked up to the Omega Machine?
You know, the one that we saw Gambit specifically blow to pieces in X-Men: Legacy?
@Jacob – if you had been reading during Storm’s cool mohawk phase, you’d have seen Claremot do that story already with Magneto 😉
@Michael P – Haven’t Marvel and DC been doing this for the last 8 years or so anyway?
@Michael R.
I was always under the impression that it wasn’t so much that Wolverine was a bad leader per se as that he had no interest in leading and little or no experience at it. Which, I suppose, is a recipe for a bad leader, but in a “he refuses to even try” way as opposed to a “he’ll get everyone killed and fail the mission” way. I remember at least two specific incedents in which he flat out refused to lead, one of which saw him deferring leadership to Kitty (and this was pre-Excalibur, pre-Whedon, pre-Mary Sue Kitty).
I’m kind of torn on the idea of Wolverine leading. On the one hand, he’s spent literally decades insisting he won’t or shouldn’t lead. On the other hand, “loner becomes a leader” is legitimate character development of the sort we often complain there isn’t enough of in comics, and saying Wolverine can’t lead because he wasn’t a leader when I started reading is exactly the sort of thing we always deride writers for. On the OTHER hand, it’s so transparent that he’s being declared a natural born leader just because he’s the most popular character (or because he’s usually the leader or main character in the cartoons and movies, which is, in turn, because he’s the most popular).
And, if I’m being honest, I just don’t FEEL the character development here. He doesn’t feel like the loner he was back in the 70s and 80s, but he also doesn’t feel like a leader to me yet.
Wolverine doesn’t make any sense as a leader because he isn’t interested in the greater good and all that jazz. Field leader, sure, he’s grown into that role, but as a counter point when the team is splitting in two? Not so much.
Hear, hear. Wolverine is specifically cut to _not_ be a leader. Story-wise it makes no sense that he would be accepted as such, particularly when he recreated X-Force.
Well…I can see him leading X-force in it’s current black ops/wet works incarnation. But representing the opposition to Cyclops? That just doesn’t work.
Unless the rift is going to be Scott pulling back at the last moment, and half the team think he should get all X-Force on the threat. So Logan goes for the kill and half the team back his play.
I think we’re all expecting Cyclops to be the one to go too far. Could be that he does draw a line, and he has followers who are underwhelmed because they thought he was more hardcore now.
The hacked visor artwork with the “I won’t let him divide us” tag could actually be quoting Cyclops, using the visor in the art as a double swerve.
I actually read the “I won’t let him divide us” as quoting both Scott and Logan. Presumably they are both going to think they are doing the right thing with the unintended consequence of dividing the mutants. But you’re right the picture is a slashed visor, not a slashed visor and an adamantium skeleton.
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