{"id":141,"date":"2009-12-20T18:37:12","date_gmt":"2009-12-20T18:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=141"},"modified":"2009-12-21T20:54:09","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T20:54:09","slug":"the-x-axis-20-december-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=141","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 20 December 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is going to be a short one, because for various reasons I haven’t had time to read all this week’s books.\u00a0 (Most of them are mid-storyline anyway, although there’s always Silver Streak Comics<\/em> #24 from Erik Larsen’s Next Issue Project<\/em>, which is probably going to be interesting if nothing else.)\u00a0 So, I’m just going to run through this week’s X-books… all seven of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Astonishing X-Men<\/em> #33<\/strong> – We’ve reached part three of this storyline, and for once Astonishing X-Men<\/em> is actually sticking to a monthly schedule.\u00a0 Mind you, this issue has Phil Jimenez’ contribution downgrade to breakdowns, so I wouldn’t put money on them keeping it up for the rest of the storyline.\u00a0 Andy Lanning is doing the finished art, and although the results aren’t quite as polished, it looks fine.\u00a0 Last issue, you may recall, we discovered that the villain was a mysterious baddy who was reanimating dead mutants to use as weapons.\u00a0 Now, this isn’t quite the same concept as the current “Necrosha-X” crossover over in X-Force, Legacy<\/em> and New Mutants<\/em>, but it’s close enough to be a bit awkward.\u00a0 Anyhow, in this issue, we discover that said baddy is called Kaga, and has a hidden base somewhere.\u00a0 So the X-Men\u00a0fight another of his monsters, and then sneak aboard his ship… and, uh, that’s about it.\u00a0 It’s light on plot, then, and to be honest it’s fairly light on ideas too, so it stands and falls on whether it’s got cool fight scenes – which it does, for the most part.\u00a0 At least, it’s got enough to avoid feeling sluggish, even though the plot only inches forward.\u00a0 Even so, if Astonishing X-Men<\/em> is meant to be the book where creators can tell their own X-Men stories without having the hassle of worrying about wider continuity, you’d hope it would be doing something a bit more distinctive.<\/p>\n

Cable<\/em> #21<\/strong> – I swear, this book teeters on self-parody sometimes.\u00a0 We all know the formula by now: Cable and Hope arrive somewhere new, Bishop follows, Bishop tries to kill Hope, Cable and Hope escape yet again<\/em>… repeat until dead.\u00a0 Now, last issue ended with Cable and Hope escaping a starship in life support pods, with Bishop pursuing in a space whale.\u00a0 As you do.\u00a0 That allows our heroes to spend another couple of years in suspended animation, and so at long last, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Hope reaches adolescence, and gets her powers.\u00a0 (They’re the ones you’d expect.)\u00a0 So, they crashland on Earth, and Bishop shows up again<\/em>… and this time they beat him!\u00a0 Which, frankly, after all this build-up, is incredibly anticlimactic – especially so when it then turns out that they can just take his time machine and use it to go home.\u00a0 If it’s that simple, might it not have been a good idea to set this up as a goal about eighteen months ago<\/em>?\u00a0 But never mind… they’re finally going home.\u00a0 And guess what?\u00a0 They overshoot, they land in the past, and Bishop gets swept along so that they can do the whole sodding routine one last time.\u00a0 Now, okay, granted, this goes some way to neutralising the anticlimax of beating him so quickly earlier in the issue.\u00a0 But god, how many times do we have to see this comic recycle the same plot?\u00a0 Answer: until the other books are ready for the “Second Coming” crossover.<\/p>\n

Oh, and by the way, if Cable and Hope really do arrive in “New Amsterdam, 1614”, as the story claims, then that’s a bit odd, since the town wasn’t founded for another decade.\u00a0 They’re probably thinking of the founding of the New Netherland colony, which did<\/em> take place in 1614, but that’s Albany.\u00a0 To be fair, the art does show a forest, but if that was the idea, shouldn’t the caption just say “Manhattan”?<\/p>\n

Dark Wolverine<\/em> #81<\/strong> – Moonstone (sorry, “Ms Marvel”) has a nice long chat with Daken and tries to psychoanalyse him.\u00a0 On the plus side, it’s certainly better than the last arc, which came across as filler.\u00a0 Giuseppe Camuncoli returns on art, and it’s good, striking stuff – he knows how to make an extended conversation into something visual.\u00a0 It’s also a story which tries to get some mileage out of Moonstone’s psychiatric background, with the idea that she sees him as an interesting case study.\u00a0 And for a pleasant change, the story plays down Karla’s manipulative side in favour of the idea that she was basically a legitimate psychiatrist (or at least, that’s how she sees herself).\u00a0 On the other hand… the pay-off comes down to saying that Daken isn’t as complex as he seems, and that underneath all the charm, he’s basically just a psychopath.\u00a0 Why would you want to tell that story?\u00a0 It’s basically an issue devoted to telling the readers that the lead character is much less interesting and much more shallow than he appears.\u00a0 And… this is good, why?<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Men: First Class<\/em> #6<\/strong> – More retro superheroics, with the seventies X-Men still fighting the all-powerful cosmic weirdos, the Knights of Hykon.\u00a0 The character designs are great – they look unique, but there’s a common theme that makes them look connected.\u00a0 And the story does a decent job of setting them up as A-list villains, which isn’t always easy in a book like this.\u00a0 When all is said and done, though, it’s still a straightforward and old-fashioned story, almost a throwback to Marvel’s house style of thirty years ago.\u00a0 That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if you see the First Class<\/em> books as something intended for younger readers; a series like this has a good reason for being told in that style.\u00a0 What sticks out a mile, though, is an attempt to retcon the origin of Phoenix, as if it wasn’t complicated enough already.\u00a0 It’s a trivial retcon, adding an explanation for the solar flares from X-Men<\/em> #100, but still, I don’t see what it adds, and in an area of X-Men history that already looks like a particularly cumbersome Heath Robinson device, I’d personally steer well clear unless there was some good reason for meddling with it.\u00a0 And it seems especially incongruous if they’re going for younger readers.<\/p>\n

X-Factor<\/em> #200<\/strong> – Jumping back to its original numbering.\u00a0 It’s priced at five dollars, but for that you get 52 pages of story, plus a reprint of Madrox<\/em> #1 and a bunch of Handbook<\/em> profiles.\u00a0 And it’s certainly the best of this week’s crop.\u00a0 I question the decision to just relocate to New York between issues without offering any explanation, but at least it keeps the team separate from the rest of the X-books and lets them function as the X-team who still have a foothold in the mainstream Marvel Universe (given that the rest of the groups relocated to the west coast).\u00a0 The main plot sees X-Factor being roped in to investigate weird goings-on with the Fantastic Four, but alongside that, there’s some great character-driven subplots, continuing the triangle with Madrox, Theresa and Layla.\u00a0 And Peter David has finally hit on the right formula for writing Shatterstar, going back to the original premise that he was bred for show as much as anything.\u00a0 A smug Shatterstar beating up higher-profile superheroes, posing, and yelling “Are you not entertained<\/em>?!” just works.\u00a0 Good issue.<\/p>\n

X-Force<\/em> #22<\/strong> – Part of the “Necrosha-X” crossover.\u00a0 And I’m starting to get a bit confused here.\u00a0 Selene raises the population of Genosha from the dead, only to discover that most of them are still depowered – something which apparently comes as a surprise.\u00a0 But… hold on, hasn’t Selene already raised a bunch of mutants from the dead?\u00a0 If most of the dead were also de-powered on M-Day, then she’s been remarkably lucky in her choice of zombies, hasn’t she?\u00a0 Actually, I suppose there might<\/em> be a point to this.\u00a0 So far, Selene’s only revived mutants we’ve heard of.\u00a0 Most of the population of Genosha were anonymous no-names… so perhaps the idea is that M-Day really did have a disproportionately limited effect on characters associated with the X-Men.\u00a0 Then again, I’m probably being too generous: that’s always<\/em> been obviously true, yet very few characters have ever remarked on it, and they don’t start here.\u00a0 That aside… yeah, fighting, and more fighting, and murky art, and more fighting.\u00a0 And scheming among the villains, and then more fighting.\u00a0 The last issue sparked my interest somewhat, with the idea of raising the Genoshans from the grave, but this doesn’t follow through.<\/p>\n

X-Men: Legacy<\/em> #230<\/strong> – Rogue fights Emplate, part four.\u00a0 Basically.\u00a0 I mean, you’d struggle to say that this was a story about<\/em> anything in particular – it’s simply Rogue getting to be a good old-fashioned hero by beating up a villain we haven’t seen in a while.\u00a0 Not sure I’d have spent four issues on a story like this, but it is quite good fun.\u00a0 Mike Carey writes an entertaining Emplate, as a character who’s either a terrifying weirdo or just a ridiculous poser, depending on your perspective.\u00a0 And since the future direction of this title apparently involves Rogue as the mentor of the X-Men’s trainees, the story might also serve an important purpose by getting Bling! back into circulation, giving her some screen time, and setting up a relationship between her and Rogue.\u00a0 But time will tell about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is going to be a short one, because for various reasons I haven’t had time to read all this week’s books.\u00a0 (Most of them are mid-storyline anyway, although there’s always Silver Streak Comics #24 from Erik Larsen’s Next Issue Project, which is probably going to be interesting if nothing else.)\u00a0 So, I’m just going […]<\/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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","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\/141","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=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}