{"id":2484,"date":"2014-04-12T22:12:17","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T21:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2014-04-12T22:12:17","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T21:12:17","slug":"haunted-marvel-knights-x-men-1-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2484","title":{"rendered":"“Haunted” – Marvel Knights: X-Men #1-5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is there a place for the Marvel Knights imprint in 2014? \u00a0The sales on the three recent\u00a0Marvel Knights<\/em> minis certainly aren’t encouraging.<\/p>\n

When the original Marvel Knights imprint was launched, back in 1998, Marvel was a very different place; its titles stood out as creator-driven relaunches quite unlike the 90s house style that dominated at the time. \u00a0Mid-90s Marvel’s conservatism may have been driven partly by the financial strictures of insolvency, but that still made the new books from Joe Quesada’s office look truly new.<\/p>\n

But Marvel Knights was folded into the mainstream Marvel Universe in 2006, for the very good reason that Quesada had become editor in chief, and his approach had spread to\u00a0become<\/em> Marvel’s new default. \u00a0Not everything in the current Marvel line up would fit neatly into the original MK, but a fair chunk of it would.<\/p>\n

Instead, the remit of these minis ends up being major Marvel characters in stories by indie creators. \u00a0Whether that’s actually a hook is debatable, since it’s hardly a novelty for Marvel to hire creators with an established name from independent publishers. \u00a0It seems more like an attempt to devise a format that allow Marvel to hire them, given that they can’t really drop these arcs into the middle of the ongoing titles, nor does the market have much interest in supporting random minis.<\/p>\n

Marvel Knights: X-Men\u00a0<\/em>is written and drawn by Brahm Revel, best known for his unlikely chimps-at-war series\u00a0Guerrillas<\/em>. \u00a0It starts with an old X-Men stand-by we haven’t seen for a while: two new mutants are detected, the X-Men race to find and recruit them. \u00a0That results in Wolverine, Kitty and Rogue going to a backwoods town in Western Virginia in search of the new mutants.<\/p>\n

A bunch of other villains start showing up as well – not because they’re chasing after the mutants too, but because one of those mutants has the power to bring people’s memories to life. \u00a0When the only people around her were relatively ordinary locals, that was pretty manageable. \u00a0But when the X-Men show up, it’s a bit of a problem, and soon the town is overrun with characters from the archive.<\/p>\n

Alongside all that, the other mutant is a mind-controller causing problems of her own, and there’s a whole storyline about a corrupt Sheriff and a local weirdo drug dealer group who have been kidnapping mutants and have now drifted into being a weird mutant-worshipping cult – though not one any actual mutant would care to have around.<\/p>\n

At root, it seems to be a love letter to the Claremont era. \u00a0 \u00a0 It’s been a good long while since anyone played up things like Rogue angsting over her villainous past, or Sabretooth killing Silver Fox (which Larry Hama retconned out 20 years ago anyway). \u00a0The villains are similarly heavy on the 80s.<\/p>\n

There’s no doubt that it takes place in present day continuity – Kitty is in her current mother hen role, Xavier is dead, and Cyclops’ rival team are name checked. \u00a0But the final act is largely about how the X-Men are ultimately defined by all the elements of their past, not just the baddies. \u00a0And it’s a version of their past drawn blatantly from the original Claremont run; even the likes of Stonewall make it in.<\/p>\n

Revel’s art, combined with the small cast, gives the series a claustrophobic feel, with a dense but well constructed story that builds convincingly to chaos as the series progresses. \u00a0Visually, it’s clear and well told, but sketchy in a way that you wouldn’t normally associate with such a cameo-heavy story. \u00a0That probably works in the book’s favour, keeping the emphasis firmly on the story and not letting the reader get sidetracked in trying to recognise tiny background figures.<\/p>\n

The irony of this series is that it has a very distinctive voice and feel, marking it out from other X-Men titles – and yet one of the main things it wants to say with that voice is how much it loves Chris Claremont. \u00a0But in its recollection of both an era that defined the X-Men for years to come, and some of the classic X-Men plot structures that we don’t see so much these days, it makes a pretty convincing case for its nostalgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there a place for the Marvel Knights imprint in 2014? \u00a0The sales on the three recent\u00a0Marvel Knights minis certainly aren’t encouraging. When the original Marvel Knights imprint was launched, back in 1998, Marvel was a very different place; its titles stood out as creator-driven relaunches quite unlike the 90s house style that dominated at […]<\/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-2484","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\/2484","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=2484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2485,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions\/2485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}