{"id":163,"date":"2010-01-03T12:54:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T12:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2010-01-02T18:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T18:50:00","slug":"the-x-axis-3-january-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 3 January 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Diamond have chosen to take a week off over Christmas for the first time I can recall, there’s nothing new out this week – well, except for Blackest Night<\/em> #6, under some weird distribution arrangement, but I’m not buying that book anyway.\u00a0 Actually, I kind of hope Diamond keep doing this.\u00a0 A break from the weekly grind every so often helps it… well, helps it stop feeling like a weekly grind.<\/p>\n

I could do a “year-in-review” post, but I’m not going to.\u00a0 Firstly, I’ve still got last week’s books to review.\u00a0 Second, I really don’t have time.\u00a0 (And advance warning: you may\u00a0be hearing that a lot over the next couple of months.)\u00a0 And third, you probably know more or less what it would say: the X-books have written themselves into a corner with a post-M-Day set-up which still doesn’t really work, despite some talented writers giving it their best shot, but at least it seems like we’re finally getting to the Hope storyline, which presumably ought to move us on from that.\u00a0 Not that I necessarily want them to hit the reset button – I tend to agree, actually, that the Marvel Universe as a whole wasn’t well served by having\u00a0a mutant on every corner – but the current direction is an overcorrection and it’s time to swing back to the middle ground.\u00a0 With X-Factor<\/em> caught up in a storyline that was too long for its own good and which didn’t really work as a serial, and New Mutants<\/em> lacking a clear reason to exist, the best X-book of the year was probably Jason Aaron’s Wolverine: Weapon X<\/em>, which may not have told any important stories, but certainly entertained me on its own terms.\u00a0 Oh, and an honourable mention to X-Men Forever<\/em>, which was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, even if the last issue was a bit disappointing.<\/p>\n

I could have said all that at ten times the length but… well, you know.<\/p>\n

Equally, time and common sense suggest that rather than cover everything that came out the week before last, I’ll stick to the X-books and some significant others…<\/p>\n

Battlefields: Happy Valley<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Another of Garth Ennis’ war minis, which are always reliable.\u00a0 They can also be a bit formulaic at times, when they’re doing the male bonding routines.\u00a0 And to be honest, this story about an Australian bomber crew in World War II is one of those – new guy joins the crew to replace the injured captain, has to win over sceptical crew.\u00a0 It’s done very well, but it’s definitely a bit familiar at times.\u00a0 That said, there’s a bit more to this than meets the eye, since they don’t bond quite as easily as all that, and Ennis is the sort of writer good enough to get away with telling a well-worn story, because he tells it so skilfully.\u00a0 There are few people in comics with such reliable storytelling instincts, and that always comes through.<\/p>\n

Beasts of Burden<\/em> #4<\/strong> – This is the final issue of the current run for Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s series about pets fighting mystical evil in smalltown America.\u00a0 But the plan is apparently to do a series of miniseries, and at times this issue feels like it’s setting up mysteries for an arc story.\u00a0 Weird thingies raise some guy – presumably a devil-worshipper – from the grave, and the dogs have to get rid of him again.\u00a0 None of it’s really explained, and to that extent it’s a story that depends on the creators eventually getting to do their pay-off.\u00a0 But it still works as another encounter between the plucky pets and assorted bizarre stuff.\u00a0 The threat this issue almost gets into the territory of superhero comics, but it’s the way they handle it that makes this book special; nobody does better animals than these creators, walking the tightrope between anthropomorphic and cutesty, and pulling it off.<\/p>\n

Dark Avengers: Ares<\/em> #3<\/strong> – The final part of Kieron Gillen and Manuel Garcia’s miniseries, which remains mercifully light on Dark Reign content.\u00a0 True, the story is that Norman Osborn gives Ares a squad of men to train, in the hope of turning them into elite soldiers – and you can only really do that story with somebody rather dodgy in charge, since Ares is stark raving mad.\u00a0 But that’s about the limit of the Dark Reign stuff, in a series which is otherwise a tongue-in-cheek story of Ares teaching the soldiers his idea of what war’s all about.\u00a0 It’s really very good, and I’d recommend getting the collection.\u00a0 (Granted, as Al complained on the last podcast, they’ve packaged it with the previous Ares<\/em> series, but it’s good too, so don’t let that put you off.)<\/p>\n

New Mutants<\/em> #8<\/strong> – Ah.\u00a0 This is the conclusion of New Mutants<\/em>‘ three-part tie-in to the “Necrosha” crossover, as the team fight the Hellions with Cypher at stake.\u00a0 I liked the earlier parts of this story, particularly the idea that a powered-up Cypher is terribly dangerous because almost everything is ultimately a form of communication, and he can understand it all.\u00a0 The scenes with Cypher providing a running commentary on the subtext of other people’s conversations were great.\u00a0 This issue… well, we have an extended fight against the Hellions, and then the story just kind of stops.\u00a0 It’s like Zeb Wells used up all his ideas in the first two parts.\u00a0 And once again, the book seems willing to take it for granted that readers will be familiar with rivalries from a quarter century ago.\u00a0 The pay-off is that the story seems to have permanently revived Cypher, although I really don’t follow it: if he’s been freed from Selene’s control and<\/em> the techno-virus, because the Soulsword has got rid of all the magic, why isn’t he dead again?<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #519<\/strong> – Basically an issue of Cyclops fighting the Void inside his own head, and it’s pretty good.\u00a0 I still have my doubts about whether Uncanny<\/em> has done enough to set up the rather obscure concept of the Void before doing this story.\u00a0 But for those of us who are already familiar with it from other titles, this is a fun issue.\u00a0 It’s got art by Terry Dodson, which is always a plus; it’s got Magneto starting some politicking, which we all knew was coming; but most of all, it’s got Cyclops beating the Void because his powers of repression are too much for it.\u00a0 I love that idea.\u00a0 It teeters on the brink of being too silly, but it’s audacious enough to work – not least because iron-willed self-control and a complete disregard for his long-term mental health really are<\/em> Scott’s defining features.\u00a0 One of my favourite issues in a while.<\/p>\n

Wolverine: Origins<\/em> #43<\/strong> – Cloak and Dagger guest star, as Dagger is vexed by Romulus’ henchman – this being the guy who’s supposed to be terribly threatening despite being blind and not very bright.\u00a0 I’ve never quite understood what he’s supposed to be bringing to the table to make up for all that.\u00a0 Anyway, this story gets him out of the way, which is something.\u00a0 Plus, it makes better use of Cloak and Dagger than we’ve seen in the regular X-Men titles since they joined the cast, and Doug Braithwaite’s art is rather good (though I do think Cloak works better when you draw him as a silhouette rather than a guy in a black body stocking – this guy shouldn’t have highlights).\u00a0 As with so many issues of this series, fine when it’s not dealing too closely with Romulus, and a bit dull when it is.<\/p>\n

Wolverine: Weapon X<\/em> #8<\/strong> – In which we find out how Wolverine ended up in that mental asylum in the first place, and why it’s gone so weird.\u00a0 This feels less like a Wolverine story and more like something Steve Gerber would have created for a horror series, but that’s no bad thing.\u00a0 The central image, a confused Wolverine in a mental asylum even madder than he is and resisting its attempts to “treat” him, works both because it’s creepy in its own right, and because it plays off all sorts of standard themes for the character.\u00a0 Oh, and because it’s not afraid to flirt with being over the top.\u00a0 It’s Wolverine, after all – it’s not an understated comic.<\/p>\n

X-Men Forever<\/em> #14<\/strong> – The final part of “Black Magik”, and it’s a rather underwhelming issue.\u00a0 It’s the old mind-control and corruption schtick which we’ve seen oh so many times from Claremont before, and this issue doesn’t really bring a fresh angle to it.\u00a0 Nor does it resolve much; Kitty is freed, but Magik remains a baddie, and we still don’t really find out much about the original villain.\u00a0 Still, the subplots are ticking over nicely, and Tom Grummett’s art has some great images along the way.\u00a0 The nice thing about this series is that, thanks to its fortnightly schedule and old-school structure, when it does produce a story that doesn’t quite work, at least you know it won’t last too long, and there are plenty of sub-plots to keep you interested in what’s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Diamond have chosen to take a week off over Christmas for the first time I can recall, there’s nothing new out this week – well, except for Blackest Night #6, under some weird distribution arrangement, but I’m not buying that book anyway.\u00a0 Actually, I kind of hope Diamond keep doing this.\u00a0 A break from […]<\/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-163","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\/163","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=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}