{"id":2271,"date":"2013-11-10T23:04:43","date_gmt":"2013-11-10T23:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2271"},"modified":"2013-11-10T23:04:43","modified_gmt":"2013-11-10T23:04:43","slug":"amazing-x-men-v2-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2271","title":{"rendered":"Amazing X-Men v2 #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll return to this storyline in full once it’s over, obviously. \u00a0But in the interests of balance, let’s have a quick look at\u00a0Amazing<\/em> #1.<\/p>\n

To all intents and purposes, this is a relaunch of\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em>, the one-time flagship title that was allowed to wander into obscurity over the years, and didn’t even get invited to the last crossover. \u00a0As with any new X-Men title, the immediate question is, what (if anything) marks it out from the rest of the line?<\/p>\n

This one doesn’t have a central gimmick like\u00a0All-New<\/em> or\u00a0Uncanny<\/em>. \u00a0In interviews, the line has been that\u00a0Wolverine and the X-Men<\/em> is about the X-Men as teachers, and this book will be about them as heroes. \u00a0But you could say that about\u00a0X-Men<\/em> too, especially since Brian Wood had disavowed any suggestion that the all-female cast of that book is supposed to be its hook. \u00a0And it’s a second Jason Aaron title, so it’s not obvious that it’s going to have a distinctive tone either. \u00a0The absurdity is certainly reined in by comparison with\u00a0W&tX<\/em>, but that’s hardly saying much. \u00a0This is still a comic about Azazel invading the afterlife.<\/p>\n

But I liked it. \u00a0The focus of the opening arc is the return of Nightcrawler, and it’s clear that both Aaron and artist Ed McGuinness get his appeal. \u00a0This is good, because it’s been a surprisingly long time since any creative team has got him right. \u00a0In the land of the angst-ridden, Nightcrawler is, if not angst-free, certainly angst-lite. \u00a0He brings to the team a swashbuckling joy in adventure and a sense that, for all the terrible things the team has to face, this is still ultimately\u00a0fun<\/em>. \u00a0He’s never had many classic stories of his own, but he’s a valuable character in bringing some light to the series and some balance to the team dynamic.<\/p>\n

This surely isn’t hard. \u00a0And yet otherwise sane creators (and Chuck Austen) decided first to use the character for an exploration of religious angst, and then to simply stick him at the back of crowd scenes for a few years. \u00a0Then one day he got killed because they wanted to make Hope’s debut look important, and it wasn’t like anyone had plans for him. \u00a0Not many people will feel cheated by the reversal of Kurt’s death, which threw him away in service of a character who no longer needs the boost. \u00a0It was never even his story. \u00a0He deserved better.<\/p>\n

So Aaron wisely jettisons all of that brooding and makes sure to establish right from the opening scene that this is Kurt the fencing elf, and all of these wrong turns are going to get the discreet burial they deserve. \u00a0Ed McGuinness’ take on the character shows a heavy influence from Alan Davis, which is all to the better. \u00a0It’s been a long time since people have just done Nightcrawler straight and got it right. \u00a0It’s good to see.<\/p>\n

That still leaves the problem that he’s dead, which Aaron chooses to address by doing a magical story in which the X-Men are drawn into a literal invasion of the afterlife by Nightcrawler’s father. \u00a0To avoid the messy question of what Kurt actually experience in the afterlife, we’re told outright that he’s spent the entire time hanging around on the fringes and has never really ventured inside. \u00a0And sure, if you’re going to bring major characters back from the dead, best make a real song and dance about it. \u00a0These things should never seem routine.<\/p>\n

Still, Azazel? \u00a0Added to Kurt’s back story during the lamentable Chuck Austen run, Azazel was the main villain of “The Draco”, one of the more incompetent entries in X-Men history. \u00a0That in itself doesn’t make him a fundamentally flawed character. \u00a0But Kurt certainly didn’t benefit as a character from the revelation that his biological father was an immortal mutant who claimed to be the real Satan. \u00a0It makes his demonic appearance tiresomely literal and it clutters his back story with unnecessary crap. \u00a0Even leaving aside the quality issues with “The Draco” itself, which are profound, Azazel is still a bad idea.<\/p>\n

Here, though, at least he’s made more fun – an equally flamboyant lunatic presented less as a demon and more as an evil version of Nightcrawler himself, complete with his own red Bamfs. \u00a0I guess I can see why he’s here; the list of Nightcrawler solo villains is very short, and Mystique’s already hopelessly overused at the moment. \u00a0But I have some trepidation about him sticking around.<\/p>\n

Oh, there’s also a subplot, in which Firestar arrives at the school to join the team, and basically plays the confused ingenue all issue while craziness goes on around her. \u00a0It’s\u00a0fine<\/em>, and it makes sense to use her as the eyes of the reader, but it doesn’t really give her all that much to do, which means that the story never quite gets round to selling us on why a franchise with an already massive cast needs to be adding Firestar. \u00a0I don’t quite get what she’s meant to be adding.<\/p>\n

Overall, though, a really fun first issue. \u00a0I was sceptical about bringing Nightcrawler back, since it’s been so many years since anything was done with him, but it looks like Aaron and McGuinness know how to recapture the enthusiasm he used to bring to the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll return to this storyline in full once it’s over, obviously. \u00a0But in the interests of balance, let’s have a quick look at\u00a0Amazing #1. To all intents and purposes, this is a relaunch of\u00a0Astonishing X-Men, the one-time flagship title that was allowed to wander into obscurity over the years, and didn’t even get invited to […]<\/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-2271","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\/2271","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=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}