Loads out this week, plus a couple I didn’t cover last time round. \u00a0Let’s take a deep breath and get to it…<\/p>\n
A+X<\/strong><\/em> #9<\/strong> – Is this still going? \u00a0Really? \u00a0Wow.<\/p>\n Oh well. \u00a0On paper, this is one of the book’s better line-ups. \u00a0The lead story has Nathan Edmondson and Humberto Ramos doing Captain America and Wolverine, though Wolverine’s been in the Avengers for so long at this point that I’d query whether he’s a sensible character to be using in this book. \u00a0Anyhow, Ramos’ art is a matter of taste, and it’s perfectly acceptable here. \u00a0But the story is a bit half-baked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The plot is essentially that Cap and Wolverine are trying to rescue of Dr Strange and have to fight giant animals which turn out to be the creations of a chimp who got hold of a magic staff. \u00a0I think it’s trying to make some sort of point about attitudes to animals, but if so, it’s so vague and half-formed that it never works, and just ends up as 11 pages of randomness with giant beasties.<\/p>\n The back-up is a David Lapham story in which Quentin Quire, Pixie and Eye-Boy sneak into Dr Strange’s house on a bet, and naturally end up stumbling upon a Baddie. \u00a0It’s a perfectly harmless little story, which suffers from the fact that nobody seems to be quite in character. \u00a0I just don’t see Quire and Pixie having anything close to the relationship that this story seems to assume, which is a shame, since on its own terms, the story’s not bad at all.<\/p>\n Astonishing X-Men<\/strong><\/em> #63<\/strong> – Okay, so we’re evidently going with “Iceman’s going mad because of the death seed from that crossover”. \u00a0Which makes it odd that the recap page studiously avoids mentioning that bit. \u00a0I can sort of see why, though, since this story is plainly trying to build mystery, and you’d blow that out of the water by putting a big sign on the recap page saying “Hey, remember the mind-corrupting thingie from a few issues back?” \u00a0Still… that also begs the question of quite why it’s\u00a0meant<\/em> to be a mystery.<\/p>\n The more interesting idea is that some of the stuff we’ve seen in the last couple of issues is meant to be Iceman’s subconscious rounding up his ex-girlfriends to get them to safety before he destroys the world. \u00a0And I’m increasingly impressed with Gabriel Walta’s art on this series, which now shifts effortlessly between the more grounded conversation scenes, and the big epic stuff at the end. \u00a0He doesn’t have the sort of surface polish that normally lands the big crossovers, but he’s got a unique style that’s proving to be more suitable to X-Men stories than it first seems. \u00a0The story itself is middling, but the book is great to look at.<\/p>\n Cable & X-Force<\/strong><\/em> #10<\/strong> – Regular writer Dennis Hopeless returns, and it seems we’re now back to the advertised story. \u00a0Two strands of plot here: Hope tracks down Blaquesmith, and X-Force get attacked by the Avengers. \u00a0Hope’s side of the story is works better. \u00a0Somewhat surprisingly, the series jumps straight to the explanation that Blaquesmith is responsible for Cable’s visions, presumably to keep him working on the desired missions. \u00a0It’s a sudden lurch forward in that side of the plot, and one of those nice moments where what initially appears to be a book’s premise turns out to be part of a bigger story.<\/p>\n I’m less wild about the fight with the Avengers. \u00a0Yes, these scenes set up the plot for the next arc (which looks to be X-Force splitting up to try and deal with loads of premonitions at once), and yes, the closing page is nicely done, with the reveal of Cable’s capture. \u00a0But the actual fight isn’t anything special, and setting it in a featureless plain doesn’t exactly give Salvador Larroca much to work with where visual interest is concerned.<\/p>\n Uncanny Avengers<\/strong><\/em> #9<\/strong> – The thing with time travel stories is that they can get awfully complicated, and this arc is no exception. \u00a0There’s a lot to keep track of here, and a degree of both obscurity and plot detail that risks overshadowing everything. \u00a0I think Remender just about keeps it on the rails here, since the general thrust of what the Apocalypse Twins are trying to achieve is reasonably apparent, even if the mechanics are a bit of a blur. \u00a0But we’re also now in the territory of some blather about seven divergent timelines, and a cliffhanger which seems to involve zombie superheroes and… it’s\u00a0complicated<\/em>, and at times it feels over-complicated.<\/p>\n Still, it’s got beautiful art from Daniel Acuna, and it’s holding on nicely to the central theme that the mixed X-Men\/Avengers team can’t work together. \u00a0Perhaps it hits that point a little heavily, but this isn’t a subtle book and it’s not meant to be. \u00a0If anything, this series harks back to the sort of thing you used to get in\u00a0<\/em>the sprawling cosmic stories of the 1970s; in a strange way it’s one of the most traditional team books Marvel have at the moment.<\/p>\n Wolverine and the X-Men<\/strong><\/em> #31<\/strong> – The first part of “The Hellfire Saga” is bound to divide people according to their tolerance for this book’s more extreme flights of insanity. \u00a0Aside from a couple of pages of subplot with the X-Men hunting for the Club, this issue is all about introducing the Hellfire Academy.<\/p>\n And the Hellfire Academy, being a supervillain academy run by mad children, is lunatic even by the standards of this book, certainly if you take some of this stuff at face value. \u00a0Let’s assume, though, that the teachers aren’t really proposing to kill the students. \u00a0After all, none of them react as if they’re taking this stuff literally, though Quentin seems to think the place is dangerous anyway… the story can’t seem to make up its mind how seriously anyone takes the threats, which is part of the problem here. \u00a0Perhaps the idea is that Quentin’s the only person who does realise it ought to be taken seriously, but that’s a real stretch.<\/p>\n At any rate, a lot of this pretty much has to play as very broad comedy if it’s going to work. \u00a0Fortunately, a lot of it’s genuinely funny. \u00a0(“Your textbooks were handwritten by the Horned Monks of the Pit and bound in the flesh of fallen nuns. \u00a0Do not write in your textbooks.”) \u00a0But I’m not sure it functions as a story, because it’s all kind of unreal even on its own terms. \u00a0It’s just too over the top to build any real drama, which is the problem I’ve always had with the Hellfire Kids. \u00a0Even with a tremendous amount of goodwill and suspension of disbelief, there’s no credible psychological core to any of this. \u00a0It works, more or less, as a string of gags. \u00a0It doesn’t really work as anything else.<\/p>\n Oh, and incidentally –\u00a0Mystique is now appearing simultaneously in\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em>,\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> and\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em>, in three completely unrelated stories, and, frankly, with three completely unrelated personalities. \u00a0Is there some clever reason why she’s suddenly being overused in this way, or is it just wonky editing?<\/p>\n X-Factor<\/strong><\/em> #258<\/strong> – In what he apparently considers an act of charity, Guido sends Wolfsbane back to Earth, in time to save Reverend Maddox from a couple of crazed gunmen. \u00a0The upshot seems to be that Rahne retires as a superhero and decides to become a deacon.<\/p>\n “The End of X-Factor” isn’t a storyline, it appears, but simply a collection of epilogues for the various characters. \u00a0Hopefully that indicates that the likes of Rahne are going to be left alone for a while. \u00a0I’d be perfectly happy with that; I’ve always been more than pleased to see a character given a proper ending and written out. \u00a0Sure, bring them back for cameos from time to time, but try and resist the compulsion to get them back into circulation. \u00a0Create something else. \u00a0It’s not like the X-books haven’t got a horde of characters to use in the third-tier books in future.<\/p>\n Rahne’s a character who feels like, at this point, she really ought to quit and do something normal with her life. \u00a0Even if the story involves a bit of handwaving to get us there (the gunmen are a hell of a random coincidence designed to add some drama to the whole thing, and some vague muttering that maybe Guido sent them doesn’t really square that), it feels like an ending that the character and the series have both earned. \u00a0Let’s hope it sticks.<\/p>\n X-Men Legacy<\/strong><\/em> #12<\/strong> – The thing with Si Spurrier’s stories is that they can often be both quite clever and quite easy to pick holes in. \u00a0For example: it turns out here that David has a big plan after all. \u00a0He’s seen the immediate future and knows that Blindfold’s group are coming to rescue him, so that’s going to blow the Skull’s operation. \u00a0Skull will then manipulate them into killing the figurehead Marcus Glove, and David will screw everything up by parachuting in Santi – the kid from a few issues ago with the mutant power to take credit for everything – so that he can publicly declare himself the martyr behind the group, and screw up all the propaganda in a cloud of paradox.<\/p>\n That’s all quite clever, and I like the idea of David outwitting the Red Skull by making his operation literally collapse under its internal contradictions. \u00a0We\u00a0did<\/em> see David looking into the future a couple of issues back, so the contrivance isn’t completely out of the blue; there was just misdirection about what exactly he was looking for. \u00a0And yet, and yet… if the Skull was always planning to kill Marcus publicly and blame mutants (as David claims), he’s had plenty of mutants through the door already, and he’s got mind control powers. \u00a0Why didn’t he get one of them to do it? \u00a0And doesn’t this whole plot hinge on there being a ton of people watching the video feed from the Institute, which seems a bit unlikely?<\/p>\n Still, I do like the concept. \u00a0There’s a few kinks that I can’t quite bring myself to ignore entirely, but the ideas here are good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Loads out this week, plus a couple I didn’t cover last time round. \u00a0Let’s take a deep breath and get to it… A+X #9 – Is this still going? \u00a0Really? \u00a0Wow. Oh well. \u00a0On paper, this is one of the book’s better line-ups. \u00a0The lead story has Nathan Edmondson and Humberto Ramos doing Captain America […]<\/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-1993","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\/1993","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=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}