{"id":2269,"date":"2013-11-09T23:33:33","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2013-11-09T23:33:33","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:33:33","slug":"fantomex-max-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2269","title":{"rendered":"Fantomex Max #1-2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fantomex Max<\/em> is a four-issue miniseries, so normally I would wait for the end of the run before reviewing it. \u00a0But I won’t be buying the other two issues, so we might as well cover it now.<\/p>\n

Hmm. \u00a0I’ve kind of spoiled the ending, haven’t I?<\/p>\n

In theory,\u00a0Fantomex Max<\/em> isn’t a bad idea. \u00a0Wolverine Max<\/em> has turned out alright – and yes, I’ll get around to reviewing vol 2 at some point, honestly. \u00a0But basically, that book has correctly identified the opportunities offered by an out-of-continuity, adults-only take on Wolverine. \u00a0You can jettison all the convoluted continuity, get to the core of what makes the character work, and avoid having to tiptoe around things that have a place in a comic about a violent man with knives prone to short bursts of shocking violence.<\/p>\n

Andrew Hope’s take on Fantomex starts off with the right idea. \u00a0Detach him from the complications of the X-books and even his back story with the World, and just make him a loveable-yet-punchable master thief who runs rings around the authorities. \u00a0In other words, make him more like Fantomas, the character Grant Morrison was referencing in the first place. \u00a0Fantomex isn’t a particularly violent character – if he has to resort to extreme violence, something’s gone horribly wrong with his plans. \u00a0But he is an inveterate womaniser, so I can see the logic behind playing his Max title as some sort of high camp action comic slash sex comedy.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t mind reading that comic. \u00a0It could be fun. \u00a0I suspect Andrew Hope thinks he’s already written it. \u00a0Artist Shawn Crystal and colourist Lee Loughridge certainly deliver work that suggests they’re going for that sort of archly-amused tone, with pronounced dot colouring that screams “self-conscious pop art reference”. \u00a0But fine – their art, on the script that Hope seems to have been aiming for, would have been a good match.<\/p>\n

So where does it all go so horribly wrong?<\/p>\n

The first issue opens by setting up the love-hate relationship between Fantomex and Rhona Flemyng (yes, with a Y), the long-suffering, loyal government agent whose job is to track him down. \u00a0Fantomex outwits her on yet another heist and makes his usual getaway. \u00a0Flemyng’s bosses finally lose patience with her and bring in a new elite team of agents – Stuart Stirling, Alexandra Macready and Richard Gaunt, collectively known (for some reason) as Grover Lane. \u00a0Flemyng is busted down to being their sidekick. \u00a0Learning of this, Fantomex takes pity on her and sends her a message offering her a date. \u00a0She hands it right over to Grover Lane, who promptly turn out to be rogue agents who kill everyone in sight \u00a0and set out on their own little mission, using Flemying as a hostage to lure Fantomex in. \u00a0Oh, and somewhere along there, Macready turns out to be an aggressive lesbian who makes heavy-handed advances on Flemyng. \u00a0Because that’s what happens in Max books. \u00a0There’s also some gratuitously graphic violence, for no very obvious reason.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a desperately great issue, but at least it’s got a story, it’s got nice art, and it’s got a voice. \u00a0It’s not funny, and it sure thinks it’s being funny at some points, but there you go.<\/p>\n

Issue #2 sees Fantomex setting out to retrieve the macguffin that drives the plot – the master key for a massively powerful weapon, which is what Grover Lane are trying to seize control of. \u00a0This involves him going deep underwater to try and recover the key from a citadel in the Marianas Trench which is decorated with brightly coloured cartoon fish. \u00a0That side of the plot goes much as you would expect. \u00a0Meanwhile, Grover Lane explain the plot to Flemyng, and try to torture a minor character to learn how to operate the massively powerful weapon. \u00a0Flemyng, being the hero, stops that, at which point they turn her over to Macready, who rapes her.<\/p>\n

No, seriously. \u00a0That happens.<\/p>\n

By this point, I’m left with the clear impression that Hope has no clue what he’s doing here. \u00a0The most charitable interpretation you can put on this scene is an utter lack of understanding of tone. \u00a0There are more than a few writers out there who are overly willing to resort to rape as a plot point, because it’s a very cheap and obvious way of getting heat on a villain (which is a bad reason) and because murder is too much of a genre convention to generate a visceral response from readers (a slightly better reason, but still requiring extremely careful handling). \u00a0But when Mark Millar does something like this, at least it feels of a piece with the rest of the story – if only because of an all-pervading misanthropic nihilism. \u00a0Hope has written a story that’s basically a fluffy action comedy with some incongruous moments of violence and swearing, and then casually chucks in a lesbian rape as if that were a perfectly normal cliffhanger for such a story. \u00a0Perhaps he was going for a grinding gear change to wrong foot the readers and undercut the established tone, but there’s really nothing on the page to suggest that, since he set up Macready as a predatory homosexual in the previous issue, and the story then returns to Fantomex fighting a giant squid for a couple of pages.<\/p>\n

This is offensively bad, in every possible sense of those words. \u00a0It’s offensive because the story sure gives the impression that the writer and editor (Jordan White, if you’re wondering) think lesbian rape has a place in a fluffy action comedy – which makes them look like misogynists and homophobes. \u00a0Now, in this context, it’s only fair to note that shortly after the first issue came out, Hope did say on Twitter that “The rampant sexism and misogyny readers are seeing in Fantomex MAX is a character-driven plot point, don’t fret.” \u00a0You can certainly read much of Fantomex (and EVA’s) dialogue in that way, but I don’t really see how it can apply here.<\/p>\n

Even if you ignore the dimension of offence entirely, it still doesn’t work, because it’s so wildly out of tone with the rest of the story. \u00a0It’s glaringly, embarrassingly, excruciatingly out of place in a comic that otherwise sets itself up as a rollercoaster romp. \u00a0Not that it’s actually funny, mind – it’s pretty unamusing – but it does at least establish a very clear tone for itself. \u00a0Which it then gets horrendously wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the Max imprint at its worst – comics that start with the R-rating and work back from there, resulting in “controversial” material that doesn’t serve a story, doesn’t serve\u00a0anything<\/em> beyond justifying the R-rating (which, by the way, doesn’t even do anything to drive sales). \u00a0Whether Young was aiming for this reaction or has simply horrendously misjudged his execution, I’m emphatically clear about one thing: wild horses wouldn’t get me to read the rest of this series.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fantomex Max is a four-issue miniseries, so normally I would wait for the end of the run before reviewing it. \u00a0But I won’t be buying the other two issues, so we might as well cover it now. Hmm. \u00a0I’ve kind of spoiled the ending, haven’t I? In theory,\u00a0Fantomex Max isn’t a bad idea. \u00a0Wolverine Max […]<\/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-2269","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\/2269","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=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2270,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}