{"id":1044,"date":"2011-09-17T18:39:21","date_gmt":"2011-09-17T17:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2011-09-17T18:39:21","modified_gmt":"2011-09-17T17:39:21","slug":"the-x-axis-17-september-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1044","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 17 September 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Before we get started: it’s a podcast weekend! \u00a0Just one post down!<\/a> \u00a0Don’t miss out!)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile: sticking with last week’s format, I’m going to do the X-books here, and the DC launches in their own post. \u00a0That’ll most likely be tomorrow, assuming I’ve actually read them all by then. \u00a0Which is not currently guaranteed. \u00a0But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.<\/p>\n

Actually, there’s only three X-books out this week, but hey, I’ve got six DC launch issues sitting here, so that’ll do me. \u00a0Check out the podcast if you want to hear Al and me talk about the first issues of Ultimate Spider-Man<\/em>\u00a0and Pigs<\/em>\u00a0(both of which are good reading).<\/p>\n

Daken: Dark Wolverine<\/em>\u00a0#14<\/strong>\u00a0– Judging from the comments threads, none of you are reading this book. \u00a0So let me spell it out: under Rob Williams, this title has become pretty darned good. \u00a0Not only does it now have a genuinely intriguing mystery plot, but Daken himself has become an interesting protagonist without embarking on any kind of redemption arc.<\/p>\n

The problem with Daken, put short, is that he’s Poochie. \u00a0He’s an unwanted Wolverine spin-off who simply isn’t as cool as he’s meant to be. \u00a0And the problem with earlier stories is that they tried to ignore that fact. \u00a0So we got story after story which simply consisted of Daken outwitting everyone to get his own way, Because He Is So Awesome. \u00a0(It didn’t help that some of his planning strained credibility, so that his achievements felt contrived and unearned.) \u00a0Rob Williams has addressed this problem simply by foregrounding it; his Daken hasn’t lost any of his technical skill, but he’s not as cool as he thinks he is. \u00a0And the gap between Daken’s self-image and the reality is what drives the story.<\/p>\n

The current storyline has Daken trying to identify a mysterious clawed serial killer, not because he cares in the slightest about the victims, but because he’s worried it might be him during his drug blackouts – and he sees himself as better than just a random killer. \u00a0In itself, that’s a nice idea. \u00a0But Williams develops it cleverly – first by bringing in a less than empathic police officer who’s also interested in the case more as a challenge than a moral issue; then by bringing in Moon Knight as a way to flag up Daken’s desperation to deny the influence of his father; and now with a really odd twist as the identity of the killer is revealed. \u00a0(Or is it?) \u00a0I’m particularly impressed by the way Moon Knight is fitted into the story; Daken’s understandably bemused reaction to a guy in completely the wrong costume doing a dodgy Wolverine impression is written nicely.<\/p>\n

Unexpectedly, this has turned into one of the stronger X-books. \u00a0Really, give it another try.<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Force<\/em>\u00a0#15<\/strong>\u00a0– Part 5 of the Dark Angel Saga (or six, if you count the prelude, which you probably should). \u00a0And in this issue Rick Remender draws together some plot threads from previous storylines in order to set up Archangel’s big plan: he’s going to use the Life Seed the team picked up a couple of issues ago, together with the time-distorting equipment from The World, to create some hothouse evolution in the real world, and steer it in the direction he wants.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Psylocke is hanging around trying to get a chance to talk to him, which surely won’t end well; Wolverine is nowhere to be found; and that leaves the team’s mercenary\/insane contingent to try and stop the bad guys pretty much on their own. \u00a0(As the previous issue made clear, this is partly a device to justify the team’s failure to call in help on a global threat – who’s going to trust a warning call from Deadpool or Fantomex? \u00a0Slightly contrived, but I’ll go with it for the purposes of this title.)<\/p>\n

Though in theory X-Force is still supposed to be about the X-Men’s black ops team, Rick Remender and Jerome Opena’s work on this title has none of the ponderous, grim-n-gritty tone that you’d expect from that. \u00a0What Remender’s truly writing here is simply a tight team book with a somewhat old-school epic threat, and enough of an original slant to make it feel relatively fresh. \u00a0Apocalypse and his cohorts have generally been written as lunatics whose supposed survival-of-the-fittest agenda has never been taken terribly seriously, so it’s a nice change to see Remender write them as true believers who genuinely think they’re helping to shape a better world, at a price that’s worth paying. \u00a0As for Opena’s art, it’s beautiful stuff, and the book is helped no end by his character designs for henchmen that depart from the genre standards.<\/p>\n

Not sure I would have suddenly wheeled in the Dreaming Celestial five issues into the story, but it’s only got a minor role (so far), so it’s not a big point. \u00a0They’re delivering a strong team book here.<\/p>\n

X-Men Legacy<\/em>\u00a0#255<\/strong>\u00a0– Part two of the Starjammers arc, and this is turning into an odd one. \u00a0The set-up is simple: to rescue the Starjammers from whatever it was that caused them to send a distress signal, Rogue’s teleported her team across the universe to find them. \u00a0As it turns out, they’re on a space station where the Shi’ar have recently been overthrown by a slave race called the Grad Nan Holt. \u00a0Havok and Polaris are helping the rebels, while Rachel is for some reason in a coma and being held by the Shi’ar freebooters from a few storylines back, who are quite coincidentally passing by. \u00a0And the space station is about the fall into the sun, though the Holt don’t seem too bothered about that for some reason.<\/p>\n

Carey writes his characters well, the Holt have a nicely weird design, and there’s something genuinely creepy in the Starjammers’ mildly perturbed response to their hideously sadistic revenge killings – even if it’s presumably a mind control storyline. \u00a0Sovel’s crew get some good lines in this issue too. \u00a0But the set-up feels a little too obviously contrived for peril, and for the life of me I have no idea why Rachel’s out of her coma or how Rogue beat Horse. \u00a0And nobody seems to have told artist Steve Kurth that those things on the Shi’ar’s heads are meant to be feathers, not hair.<\/p>\n

Of course, I’ve never been a huge fan of the outer space stories, and the story may seem more satisfying when we get the full explanations. \u00a0Still, thus far it’s a patchy one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Before we get started: it’s a podcast weekend! \u00a0Just one post down! \u00a0Don’t miss out!) Meanwhile: sticking with last week’s format, I’m going to do the X-books here, and the DC launches in their own post. \u00a0That’ll most likely be tomorrow, assuming I’ve actually read them all by then. \u00a0Which is not currently guaranteed. \u00a0But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1046,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions\/1046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}