Podcast schedule
No new episode this week, I’m afraid, because Al’s at the other end of the country. We’d meant to mention this earlier but… uh, we forgot. Sorry.
We’ll be back with a new episode next weekend, which should at least give everyone a break from reacting to the election result.
And if you haven’t listened to it yet, don’t forget our appearance on the Thumbcast.
Number 1s of 2010 – 25 April 2010
Remember The X Factor? Remember how I spent the better part of last autumn explaining how half the chart was connected to it? Well… it’s time for the reprise.
(And if you can’t see that one, here’s the YouTube link.)
Necrosha
“Necrosha”
(X-Necrosha one-shot, X-Force #21-25)
Writers: Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost
Artist: Clayton Crain
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editors: Jeanine Schaefer & Nick Lowe
Thanks to the knock-on effects of the volcano, there are no new comics in Britain this week, which in turn means no X-Axis. So instead, I’ll take a look at the last X-Force storyline, “Necrosha.” Technically this is a crossover with X-Men Legacy and New Mutants. But in practice, the story is contained in X-Force. The other two titles simply did their own stories in the margins, taking advantage of the opportunity to use dead characters for a couple of issues.
First time around, I wasn’t a fan of this. As often happens, reading it again in one sitting does at least make it a little clearer what the creators were going for. This is a story with a lot of clutter, and the main threads come through more clearly without a month-long gap between chapters. But it remains a clunky story that doesn’t really hold together – albeit one which is at least trying to pay off a number of long-running storylines.
The basic idea goes like this. As we established quite some time ago, back in ancient Rome, Selene had a stab at sacrificing everyone in the city to turn herself into a goddess. It all went wrong because her lackey Eliphas made a hash of things. Eliphas is now trying to get back in her good books by offering to provide her with a zombie army raised from the dead with the Transmode virus. Selene’s big idea is to use the virus to revive the slaughtered population of Genosha, and then sacrifice them to turn herself into a goddess.
Running alongside that, the writers get to throw in cameos by a ton of dead characters; subplots about Elixir and Wolfsbane are wrapped up; and Selene’s zombie army invades the X-Men’s island.
So, fine. It’s all ridiculously melodramatic, but hell, it’s comics. Selene’s going to raise the dead and use them to gain ultimate power or something. But in an attempt to wring six issues out of it, it’s become incredibly complicated, littered with unnecessary characters, and plagued by plot holes.
The final two issues have major logic problems. Issue #24 sees X-Force launch a completely unnecessary frontal assault on a castle, charging through an army of the undead, instead of just asking the Vanisher to teleport them straight into the building. Vanisher teleports them in at the start of the scene; he teleports himself into the castle later on. The plot requires him to be separated from the group; but the story brings that about by having everyone’s IQ drop to single figures for two pages.
Issue #25 sees Selene defeated. I honestly don’t understand how. Something about a mystic ritual never mentioned before that issue, but beyond that, I’m lost. It’s obviously supposed to be some sort of pay off for the violation of James’ tribe, but there’s no proper set-up, so it doesn’t work.
And what about the early issues, where Selene’s zombies attack the X-Men’s island? Granted, Selene has a reason to attack the island. She needs to recover the magic knife that Eli Bard lost to Warpath in a previous issue, because apparently it’s essential to her ritual. But she only discovers that she’s missing a macguffin in chapter three, by which point the invasion is well underway. So why did she order the invasion in the first place? The dialogue seems to suggest that she just wants revenge on Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw, but that’s a ridiculously flimsy motivation – can’t she wait until after she’s become a goddess in twelve hours time? – and the story does nothing with it anyway.
The story also suffers from a bloated cast. The horde of zombie cameos is forgiveable, because it’s kind of the gimmick, but it also creates a smokescreen that obscures the important parts of the plot. A bigger problem is Selene’s inner circle, some of whom seem to have been selected using the Official Handbook, a blindfold and a pin. Yes, we need Eliphas, because he’s essential to the plot. And we need Wither because he was already linked to Selene in an earlier story, though he’s written here as a disappointingly one-dimensional villain.
Blink? Well, the plot requires some teleporting, though Selene’s a sorceress and could do that for herself. But the other two? This group seem to have been assembled so that X-Force have a rival team to fight halfway through the storyline – but once you’ve spent three issues fighting zombies of characters people have actually heard of, it’s hardly raising the stakes to bring on nonentities like 90s henchman Senyaka, or Dazzler’s staggeringly obscure sister Mortis, last seen in 1984. (Dazzler doesn’t even have a major role in the plot.) Wouldn’t this have been a simpler and stronger story with just Selene, Eliphas, Wither and the zombies?
So: the plot’s a mess. Nor does it really end up being about anything in particular. Selene is not what you’d call a rounded character at the best of times. The emotional core of this story is apparently supposed to lie in Eliphas trying to get back in her favour, which never reaches a satisfying resolution, and James being tormented by the return of his brother, which is almost pushed to the sidelines. (The fact that the zombie horde includes James’ entire tribe only gets a passing mention in the whole arc.) A subplot with Wolfsbane’s boyfriend sacrificing himself to Hela in order to save her does carry a bit of emotional weight, but it’s a subplot.
As for the art… well, it’s a Clayton Crain story. He pulls off some nice effects on the transmode-infected characters, with little lines of brightly coloured circuitry standing out against his generally dark images. There are some moody establishing shots of Genosha which work well, though quite when the city got remodelled in gothic style, I have no clue. And sometimes, when he’s forced to work with brightly coloured characters hitting one another, there’s real energy to his layouts.
But it’s not great. His characters don’t do emotion very well, though it has to be said that the plot doesn’t exactly give him much to work with. The whole thing is murky and frequently hard to follow. Backgrounds seem to be a foreign concept to him. I realise that he’s going for mood, but for the most part his interiors don’t seem oppressive or claustrophobic – just undefined and vacant. Still, there are moments in these issues that do impress. It’s just that they’re usually the moments where the art breaks from a general air of monotonous gloom and does something interesting with colour. Much of the rest of the time, it comes across as a comic which has just painted its bedroom black.
This is a disappointing comic, because all involved have done far better in the past, and no doubt will do so again. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that it’s a weak concept, and a clumsily constructed plot, rendered predominantly in assorted shades of murk. One for completists only.
WWE Extreme Rules 2010
Traditionally the month after Wrestlemania is a bit quiet. That’s partly because the WWE ends all its major storylines at the big show, and partly because they usually haven’t given a great deal of thought to what comes next. So the following pay-per-view, which used to be Backlash, has generally been a bit forgettable, at least from a storyline standpoint.
The WWE have rejigged their pay-per-view schedule for 2010, so as to cut back the number of shows, and to pursue their policy of giving every show a theme of its own. So Backlash has been dispensed with, and we’re jumping straight to Extreme Rules, the show where… well, this takes a bit of explaining.
House To Astonish: On Tour
As part of our bid to take over the universe, you can hear representatives of House to Astonish on not one, but two other podcasts right now.
First off, there’s the episode of The Thumbcast that we recorded on Tuesday evening, where we joined Thumbcast hosts Iain Hepburn and Craig McGill, along with Tachyon TV‘s Damon Querry and podcasting guru Ewan Spence, to record a SF, cult TV and generally geeky version of the BBC radio show Fighting Talk. You’ll find it at the Thumbcast’s website here, and it’s also available on iTunes. NB: contains swearing, dark comedy and references to 40-year-old UK TV shows.
Also, if you don’t normally check out the superb comics podcast Awesomed by Comics, you might want to give this episode a try, and listen for a familiar voice giving his opinions on Siege: Loki.
Number 1s of 2010: 18 April 2010
Scouting for Girls lasted two weeks at the top, and looked to have a good chance of hanging on for a third. But as it turns out, they couldn’t quite keep up the sales for the whole week, in the face of a challenger that was gaining momentum. On the plus side, the new number one has been climbing over a few weeks, which is the sort of thing I like to see in the chart. It entered at number 13 three weeks ago, and had climbed up to number 2 last week.
On the down side… (more…)
The X-Axis – 18 April 2010
It’s Sunday afternoon, it’s time to review some comics!
But first… you’ll also be wanting to download this week’s episode of House to Astonish, which you’ll find in the next post down. In this one, Al and I talk about Brightest Day, Kill Shakespeare and Turf. And for those of you who don’t listen all the way to the end, keep an eye out over the next few days when Al and I appear on the next episode of The Thumbcast. We’re doing a panel game based on the BBC radio show Fighting Talk. (Only not about sport, obviously.) Should be fun. We’re recording it on Tuesday, so we’ll let you know when it’s up. Or you could just subscribe to their podcast too. I do.
Next week… well, god knows, really. Theoretically there’s a whole lot of comics out (including two chapters of “Second Coming”, just to prove that Marvel really are the worst schedulers imaginable), but given that Diamond are usually unable to get their heads round a bank holiday, I don’t see them overcoming a volcanic dust cloud. So it may be an involuntary skip week next Sunday. Time will tell.
And now, some comics that came out this last week…
Black Widow #1 – Just to prove that Marvel are nothing if not eternally optimistic, this is a new ongoing series for the perennial C-lister, presumably on the basis that she’s in the upcoming Iron Man movie. Anyone seriously think that’s going to help it get past the year barrier? No, me neither. You know, if it were me, I’d take the “series of miniseries” route with these lower-tier characters. It’s a vicious circle when you start cancelling books after five months, because then readers have even less faith in the next launch (and they’re right to do so). Seems to me that if you call it a mini then you’re probably going to turn out to be right anyway, and you’ll restore some of the lustre of launching something as an Ongoing Series.
Anyway, the comic. It’s by Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna, a decent creative team. Despite the silly acres of cleavage on the cover, the interior art has no truck with such nonsense, which is reassuring. It’s one of those stories where Natasha is attacked by baddies with a Mysterious Agenda, who cut something out of her and then leave her for the doctors to deal with. And… actually that’s about the extent of the main plot, but Liu fills it out nicely with good supporting roles for the other Avengers (higher-profile characters who nonetheless don’t overshadow her), some neat interactions between Natasha and the other spy types, and a genuinely nasty, if rather implausible, surgery sequence. Acuna’s art is a good match for the character, who goes well with slightly stylised visuals. And it strikes a decent balance between using other Marvel Universe characters (to appeal to the Wednesday crowd) without letting them dominate the story (and thus alienating all those movie viewers who are theoretically supposed to be buying the book). All told, it’s pretty good. And even if it doesn’t survive for long as an ongoing series, I think it’ll manage to deliver an entertaining few issues with this story.
Brightest Day #0 – See also the podcast. This is the opening issue of DC’s next universe-spanning thingy, running fortnightly for the next few months. A bunch of characters were brought back from the dead at the end of Blackest Night; this series is, well, about them. So it’s an ensemble cast, except the characters have seemingly nothing in common other than being brought back from the dead – it’s a motley crew ranging from the likes of the Martian Manhunter and Maxwell Lord down to Captain Boomerang and Hawk. I can sort of see why they’ve billed this as issue #0 – it’s really about introducing the vast set of characters rather than kicking off the story proper – but it is essential reading and to all intents and purposes it’s issue #1. Much depends here on whether Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi ultimately have a good explanation for reviving this oddball selection of characters, since that’s the central mystery that has to drive this series. Without that, it risks becoming an exercise in reversing unwanted continuity. There’s also another possibility, which is that the series manages to do something interesting with the whole concept of how the different characters deal with their reincarnation, but that doesn’t exactly seem to be a priority here. Fernando Pasarin’s art is lovely, and I thought this was basically fine as an intro issue. Al wasn’t so sure, to put it mildly.
The Flash #1 – What, another Flash relaunch? Do you think they’ll ever take the hint and put the poor guy on the back burner for a while to let interest build? Probably not, unfortunately; it’s alien to DC’s entire way of thinking about their older characters. So, here’s Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul to kick off another stab at breathing life back into the franchise. Barry Allen returns to Central City (where everyone apparently thinks he’s been in witness protection or something), and picks up his old job as a forensic scientist. Which, yes, is backwards… but it’s also a useful dual identity for plot purposes, so I’ve got no real problems with that. And we’re also back to the old deal where everyone thinks Barry is gifted but incredibly slow, when of course we all know he’s… and so on and so forth. All told, even as someone who’s not particularly familiar with the character’s history, it’s pretty clear that this is a case of a creative team hammering the reset button as hard as they can and hauling the character back to what they regard as a classic status quo. The concession to the passage of time is that Central City has become darker and more disillusioned in Barry’s absence – DO YOU SEE THE SUBTLE METAPHOR? – and so presumably he’s going to be setting the world to rights a bit. But okay, I guess. If you’re going to do the Silver Age throwback routine with anyone, the Flash is a fair choice – his powers lend himself to that sort of story, and he ought to be a shiny, happy hero of the old school. I like the art; Manapul’s got a simple but expressive quality to his work, though it’s unfortunate that he’s chosen to interpret Barry as a square-jawed hero so traditional that, when he’s not in costume, he’s the least interesting thing on the page. As for the story… well, it’s throwback city, like I say. But that seems to be the mood of the industry right now, and to be honest, I don’t have enough investment in any later incarnation of the Flash to have a problem with Johns doing it in this book. For what it is, which is a very old-fashioned superhero book with a slightly modernised sheen, it works quite well. Whether that’s what you want is another matter.
Kill Shakespeare #1 – A miniseries written by Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col with art by Andy Belanger, in which a bunch of Shakespeare villains try to enlist Hamlet to, well, kill Shakespeare. This has had some mixed reviews. Al and I didn’t mind it; those who knows their Shakespeare say it’s missing the point of the characters. But is it? It’s hard to say; after all, the story has a couple of characters departing from the plot of Hamlet completely unprompted, so perhaps they’re not meant to act quite like the characters from the plays. As I mentioned on the podcast, I have a theory that the characters who want to get rid of Shakespeare are united in being villains from the histories who weren’t actually quite so villainous in real life – Shakespeare had a tendency to take the politically safe option when it came to writing about historical figures who had gone out of favour. A clearer problem is that the characters are decidedly two-dimensional compared to Shakespeare’s versions – though when you’re inviting comparisons to Hamlet, you’re setting the bar ridiculously high to start with. It’s basically League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Shakespeare characters, though maybe not with the subtlety. And as with Moore’s comic, the question lurking in the background is whether this is just a gimmicky idea, or whether there’s actually a point to be made about the plays. It’s really too early to tell at this point; it could go either way. Certainly a flawed comic, but for all that, I’m genuinely intrigued to see where the creators are going with this odd premise.
New Mutants #12 – Part 3 of the “Second Coming” crossover, and you guessed it, there’s more fighting. In fairness, to preserve the idea that this is indeed an issue of New Mutants, the focus is on Cannonball and the others trying to hold off the Right and stop them from providing reinforcements to the other baddies. And of course, that’s not the focal point of the overall story by any means. But it does at least provide the New Mutants with a story of their own, instead of getting them submerged into the bigger picture. Basically, though, there are still two threads here: everyone chasing after Cable and Hope, and the X-Men starting to realise that some of Scott’s decisions are a bit questionable. It’s not a bad issue – there are some good moments with the New Mutants wavering about whether to obey Scott’s seemingly suicidal attack orders, and a couple of cute ideas such as the bad guys taking out Magik with a “weaponised ritual”. And Ibrahim Roberson’s artwork is pretty good, though his backgrounds are rather generic. The downside is that the story seems to have become completely detached from the real world, so that it’s all about people in costumes hitting one another; and it feels at this point like a diversion grafted on to the “Second Coming” story in order to shoehorn New Mutants into the plot and give it a sales boost. Zeb Wells has written better issues than this, but hey, that’s crossovers for you.
The Pilgrim #1 – This is by Mark Ryan and Mike Grell, and apparently it’s a reprint of a web comic that I’ve never read. It’s a rather frustrating read. The central idea is quite fun: much of the issue introduces the Psimex Research Institute, in which the American military is testing people with psi-powers. The good news is that these subjects actually do have psi-powers – but not very strong ones. They’re meant to be an intelligence unit; in practice, they’re the thought-controllers of paranoid fantasies. Combining that with bureaucratic budget arguments is a nice enough idea. However, it’s topped and tailed with scenes of weird stuff in World War II and Afghanistan which are hard work to decipher. It’s not even always clear which way your eye should go around double-page spreads. The opening section seems to be intentionally cryptic, but the closing sequence just comes across as a mess. There are some major clarity problems here, and I end up with the feeling that deciphering the story is going to be a major headache and more trouble than it’s worth.
The Unwritten #12 – Once again, Mike Carey throws in a single-issue story between arcs. This one has art by Peter Gross, and it’s fantastic. Pauly Bruckner is a bad, bad man. He tried to take Wilson Taylor’s map, and ended up being condemned to the world of fiction. Specifically, he’s now a bunny in Eliza Mae Hertford’s Willowbank Tales, a sort of halfway house between Winnie the Pooh and Beatrix Potter. And boy, he’s not happy about that. In this issue, we join Mr Bun as he tries to escape life as a stuffed rabbit, while the other woodland folk try their best to help him fit in. It’s a simple idea, it’s very funny, and it’s got a clever pay-off to boot. Easily the best comic I’ve read in weeks, and worth picking up even if you have no interest in the wider series at all. Simply excellent.
X-Factor Forever #2 – “For six years, writer Louise Simonson steered the course for Charles Xavier’s first class of X-Men in their adventures as X-Factor. Now the legendary scribe returns to the mutants she made famous for their most daring adventure yet.” Marvel Comics: never knowingly underhyped.
Now, that said, I liked Louise Simonson’s run on X-Factor, and for largely nostalgic reasons, I’m really quite enjoying this book, which harks back to a long-forgotten supporting cast and a long-abandoned interpretation of Apocalypse. I suspect if I didn’t have that attachment to the source material, I’d be crawling up the walls at some of this stuff – it’s one of those comics where humanoid robots have “visual input sensors” instead of “eyes”, and where characters stay stuff like “Apocalypse? Only he could be so diabolical as to combine the Master Mold and Hodge into a single being!” In other words, it is, in some respects, rather crap. But loveably so, and in an authentically late-eighties way. And in its favour, it’s got a completely loopy robot for the heroes to fight, and there’s a jittery energy to Dan Panosian’s art which I genuinely like a lot. I’m enjoying it; if you don’t remember the original, you might not.
X-Men Forever #21 – In this issue: a convoluted macguffin is explained! Also, Claremont goes a little further into last issue’s big revelation that Iron Man is the bad guy. A little disappointingly, he seems to be already setting up the idea that it’s all a feint and that he’s infiltrating them, or something to that effect. That’s a shame, since I quite liked the idea of doing a story in X-Men Forever that was manifestly impossible in the real Marvel Universe, by gleefully wrecking the cast of another book. In many ways, Iron Man’s ideally suited to be the well-intentioned anti-mutant superhero, particularly in his Civil War-era version. Anyway, this is largely a set-up issue as everyone sits around delivering exposition to one another, in preparation for the climax of the first year. But it’s building well enough, and the pay-off should be good fun. A fortnightly book can get away with this sort of issue. (Be honest: is there any book that wouldn’t be improved by a more frequent schedule?)
X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #2 – I actually missed this when it came out, so let’s cover it now. Issue #1 had a nice enough set-up, but this one just gets a bit confusing – is Blindfold with the others or not? Are they in a dream or in the real San Francisco? Yes, I realise that we’re meant to be asking ourselves what on earth is going on, but the plot here is so murky that it’s hard to get a sense of what exactly the drama is supposed to be. I recall having similar issues with Kathryn Immonen’s Hellcat mini. Maybe I’m just slow. There are some good moments in here, and I really like Sara Pichelli’s art, which gives the characters a real sense of life, and provides a suitably off-kilter tone to Pixie’s scenes. As a story, though, I’m not sure it works.
House To Astonish Episode 36
We’ve got a particularly good episode for you this time round, as we talk about the C2E2 convention, Marvel’s deal with Hachette, the Eisner award nominations and Kick-Ass’s performance. We also review Brightest Day, Turf and Kill Shakespeare, and consider the life of a paranoiac with a tricked-out car in the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. All this plus vampire voices, a plea to the Avengers and a gang of old people.
As we mention at the end of the podcast, we’re going to be joining our friends from The Thumbcast for a special show next week, based on the format of the BBC Five Live show Fighting Talk – we’ll keep you updated and let you know when that goes live.
The podcast is here – let us know what you think, by commenting here, on twitter, via email or on a pair of stone tablets handed down from on high.
Kick-Ass
The Kick-Ass movie opens in America tonight. It’s been out in Britain for a couple of weeks, and I went to see it yesterday. Largely, to be honest, because it’s the sort of film I’m obliged to have an opinion about, so it might as well be an informed one.
And do you know what? It’s good. It’s really good.
As you must surely know by now, the basic idea goes like this. Teenage boy decides to become a superhero, despite completely lacking any qualifications for the job other than good intentions and a willingness to wear stupid clothes in public. More by luck than talent, he ends up crossing paths with actual bad guys and proper vigilantes. Beyond that… well, they’ve changed the plot somewhat from the comic, though they’ve stuck to the same basic story. But I won’t go into the spoilers.
What’s interesting, if you compare the synopses of the comic and the film, is that the film has actually reined in Millar’s more egregious tendencies. This probably doesn’t come across from reading the reviews. But the film has dialled back the levels of cynical nihilism from “prohibitively toxic” to merely “black comedy.” So the film, for example, is much more willing to embrace Big Daddy and Hit-Girl as real, proper superheroes inexplicably bleeding into Kick-Ass’s otherwise more-or-less real world. It resists the temptation to undercut them. It just goes with the idea that an eleven-year-old ninja is inherently cool. And because they’ve somehow migrated into Kick-Ass’s world from a different film, their total lack of realism ceases to be a problem.
Once you get rid of those bits in Mark Millar’s writing that make you roll your eyes and go “Oh, Mark…”, and once you impose a bit more structure on what remains, you end up with a really entertaining film. (By the way, the film does manage to include John Romita Jr’s art as the basis for Big Daddy’s animated origin sequence.)
And yes, Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage are excellent as Hit-Girl and Big Daddy. They’re the best thing in the film.
Now, you can argue that the film doesn’t work as a satire because it’s still trying to have it both ways – being a superhero is manifestly unworkable and incredibly cool at the same time. The result is moral bankruptcy, albeit ironic. There’s a lot of truth to that criticism. Frankly, the film is entertaining enough that it doesn’t matter whether it has a coherent worldview to offer. But I think it works because we’re never asked to accept the two genuine vigilantes as remotely realistic. They’re don’t belong in the real world (which isn’t really the real world, of course, but which otherwise plays by the rules of black comedy rather than John Woo movies) and the story warps to accommodate them. It’s funny because it’s a collision of elements that don’t belong in the same film. Is this making a point? Probably not, but it’s an enjoyable thing to watch.
The X-Axis – 11 April 2010
Ridiculously late, I know, but then I didn’t actually get a chance to read any of these books until yesterday. Such is the fate of those who rely on a combination of Diamond and the postal service.
Batman & Robin #11 – “The Return of Bruce Wayne begins here!”, says the cover, which is an odd thing to put on the second part of a storyline, but that’s DC for you. In this issue, the new Batman continues to explore the underground bits of Wayne Manor, while Robin teams up with a bloke in a mask to fight some baddies. Is the bloke in the mask Bruce Wayne? Probably not, because that’d be a bit obvious. As I feared, now that we’re getting to the obligatory mechanics of returning to the traditional Batman set-up, this really isn’t anything particularly special. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that we’re now getting into the territory of established villains like Damian’s mother wandering about, and she’s a character I neither know nor care about. And neither knowing nor caring about major characters is… an issue. It’s fine, it’s well paced, it’s efficiently handled, it just doesn’t grab me.
Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love #6 – The concluding part of the miniseries. I’m not sure this has really worked. Partly, that’s because three Fables titles a month is stretching it, particularly when the third one is lagging so far behind in continuity that it’s evidently been tied up in development for an age. But mainly it’s because the basic conceit of Cinderella as a Bond-style spy isn’t sustained effectively for the whole series. The problem here is that they’ve ended up doing a story about a spy for the Fables universe, but that character doesn’t have a great deal to do with Cinderella, and so when they wheel out bits of Cinderella’s background, it feels rather forced. And that means that the “characters from fables in the modern world” routine has been done better by the parent title. Shawn McManus’ art is excellent, and the story itself is acceptable, but it doesn’t quite pull off the admittedly tricky task of blending these two ideas.
Deadpool & Cable #25 – Or just Cable #25, if you go by the indicia. It goes without saying that Deadpool is overexposed to the point of self-parody these days, and Marvel seem to be trying to make a virtue of necessity by turning that into a joke in its own right. So here’s Deadpool to bid farewell to a series he never really appeared in. That said, while this is notionally the final issue of Cable, it’s actually more of a coda to the Cable & Deadpool ongoing series that preceded it. It’s a flashback story, with Deadpool helping Cable out during the “Messiah Complex” crossover and fending off the baddies while Cable gets to safety. It’s quite a nice way of bringing the book full circle, but it’s not really enough of a story to justify an entire issue. Deadpool is in full-blown fourth-wall mode here, by the way, not only lamenting the demise of their partnership but berating the fact that there’s still been no adequate explanation of why anyone regards Hope as important. It’s almost as though they’ve belatedly figured out that they botched that one. Best viewed as a one-shot wrapping up Cable and Deadpool’s erratic relationship, and it’s not really a storng enough story to recommend even on that level, but it’s not without its charm.
S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 – Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s new series is thoroughly odd, recasting S.H.I.E.L.D. as a sort of Marvel Universe version of the Illuminati who’ve been secretly protecting the world from alien invasions and such like all the way down the centuries. The framing story is set in the fifties; it’s about a guy called Leonid being recruited into the organisation. But much of the issue is given over to flashbacks as diverse as Imhotep fighting the Brood and Leonardo da Vinci taking on Galactus. While it’s certainly a Marvel Universe title in the sense that Marvel’s own mythology is deeply embedded into it, it’s not a superhero book in any normal sense. Hickman’s indie work has generally been more eccentric than his relatively conventional Marvel books, but here he seems to be going off the deep end into something genuinely odd. At the same time, it also has the best feature of his Fantastic Four stories, which is his willingness to take a thoroughly insane concept and run with it. It’s too early to judge it as a story, but as a set-up issue establishing a truly demented premise, it works. Admittedly, my sense of intrigue is somewhat undermined by the fact that I can’t imagine something like this lasting a year in the current market. But presumably all involved are sufficiently alive to the commercial realities that they’ve got a good self-contained story lined up for the first few issues. On the principle that “it’s bound to get cancelled” risks being a self-fulfilling prophecy, I’m going to stick with this one for a bit.
Spider-Man: Fever #1 – Artist Brendan McCarthy writes and draws a three-issue miniseries for the Marvel Knights imprint. Despite the title, in spirit it’s more of a Dr Strange story with Spider-Man as a guest star. Weird magical stuff escapes from a weird insect dimension and steals Spider-Man’s soul; it’s Dr Strange to the rescue. The story is functional, but that’s not really the point. This is McCarthy paying homage to Silver Age Steve Ditko by teaming up his two best known creations and going to town on the psychedelic landscapes in the same way that Ditko did. It’s incredibly stagey at points – some of Strange’s dialogue is downright stilted – but that’s probably deliberate. Some comics really are just an excuse for the artist to go nuts, and some artists are interesting enough to make that a good enough reason to put out a comic. And this is an example.
Turf #1 – We’re going to talk about this on the podcast this weekend, but this is the miniseries by Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards. Now, while Jonathan Ross may be unknown in America, he’s a major star in Britain (think a younger David Letterman and you’re on the right lines), and even though he’s a well known comics fan, he’s a very big name celebrity to actually write one. And he seems to be serious about it, too – he’s been doing the publicity rounds to promote the book, and he never does the publicity rounds himself. For American audiences, of course, it’s an Image miniseries by an unknown writer and a well-respected artist.
So. Any good? Actually, on the whole, yes, it is. The high concept is a turf war in prohibition-era New York between gangsters, vampires and, um, aliens. But it’s played mostly straight – or deadpan, if you prefer – as a historical drama, with a dash of knowing absurdity. Needless to say, Edwards is good at that. It’s got an unusually rounded moral attitude to prohibition (yes, it’s a stupid law, but you are supporting organised crime…), and the gangster vampires are a fun idea. On the downside… it’s probably a bit too dense, it’s very wordy (even Mark Millar’s characteristically enthusiastic afterword suggests a Don McGregor influence), and the tone is uneven, with occasional lurches into B-movie that don’t quite sit with the rest of the story. But yes, it’s really quite decent, and a lot better than I was expecting.
Uncanny X-Men #523 – Part two of “Messiah Complex”, and fortunately we’ve got Terry and Rachel Dodson on art for this arc. So not only is there brightly-coloured fighting, but it’s pretty and the characters are alive. It’s a pretty good issue, too. Part one set up the basic formula of the bad guys chasing Cable and Hope. Fraction has fun with that here, as Hope gets used to a pre-apocalyptic society for a change, albeit one where everyone’s still shooting at her. But he also introduces the second strand of the story, which is that all the dubious decisions Scott’s taken as leader of the X-Men over the last few years are evidently going to come home to roost. X-Force have just been exposed, and the cuddly members of the group are thoroughly disconcerted. Of course, they can’t exactly walk out now, what with the baddies trying to kill Hope… so they’re stuck with Scott for now. And all this leads me to think that maybe recent commenters were right in suggesting that Scott’s the one in line for the chop here. The build to this point has been decidedly erratic, but I’m still interested to see where it’s all heading, so job done, I suppose.
Wolverine: Weapon X #12 – The second part of “Tomorrow Dies Today”, in which timetravelling Deathlok cyborgs from the future come back to kill off leaders of a future rebellion – specifically, guest star Captain America. Meanwhile, in the future, a band of rebels try to take down the Roxxon Corporation. So… Terminator crossed with “Days of Futures Past”, then? It’s fine, but it doesn’t have the inventiveness of the previous issue, and ends up getting a little more caught up in the cliches.
