{"id":2549,"date":"2014-05-27T22:45:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T21:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2014-05-27T22:45:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-27T21:45:44","slug":"no-goats-no-glory-amazing-x-men-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2549","title":{"rendered":"“No Goats, No Glory” – Amazing X-Men #7"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m running late this week, but hey, this one shouldn’t take long. \u00a0Amazing X-Men<\/em> #7 is notable\u00a0more for what it isn’t than for what it contains. \u00a0What it isn’t, is\u00a0a comic that particularly matters – however you choose to define “matters” – because it’s a throwaway fill-in issue.<\/p>\n

Firestar and Iceman are\u00a0out shopping when they bump into an alien baby who’s being chased down by Spider-Man, who needs to retrieve him\u00a0in order to get back a goat mascot who’s been abducted by\u00a0aliens. \u00a0(For reasons not shared with posterity, Spider-Man was looking after the goat.)<\/p>\n

It’s a perfectly fun piece of silliness, by\u00a0Kathryn Immonen and Paco Medina. \u00a0Immonen’s\u00a0comedy stories have sometimes tended to teeter on the brink of stream of consciousness, but this is tighter, and in many ways better for it. \u00a0Medina is\u00a0a good superhero artist who\u00a0can handle the comedy pretty well. \u00a0And hey, if you’re of a certain age you can sigh fondly at a reunion of the cast of\u00a0Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends<\/em>, even if that doesn’t play into the actual story at all.<\/p>\n

But\u2026 what on earth\u00a0is this doing in issue #7 of a comic that\u00a0Marvel were trying to promote as some sort of big deal when they launched it only a few months ago? \u00a0Obviously we all know that the currency of issue #1s has been devalued\u00a0of late, and we also all know that\u00a0when there are\u00a0so many X-Men titles, most of them are going to be throwaway. \u00a0Even so, it comes as a surprise to see such a blatant filler issue so early in the run of a new title.<\/p>\n

An odd feature of the X-Men line right now is that while the two lead titles are plainly the Bendis books, neither of them actually features the X-Men. \u00a0By which I mean, they both feature teams that, until a few years\u00a0ago, would have been\u00a0given a different name and presented as spin-off titles. \u00a0The X-Men, by any sensible definition, are the team living in the\u00a0Jean Grey School. \u00a0Uncanny\u00a0<\/em>is about\u00a0Scott rebuilding a new group after the collapse of his side of the schism during\u00a0Avengers vs X-Men<\/em>;\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> is specifically about the time-travelling teen group, making it akin to the early nineties\u00a0Legionnaires<\/em>\u00a0spin-off from\u00a0Legion of Super-Heroes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That ought to leave the way clear for somebody else to write the\u00a0actual X-Men and have some leeway to make their book feel significant. \u00a0But none of the other\u00a0three titles\u00a0do<\/em> feel significant right now,\u00a0in pretty much any way, and\u00a0hitting a comedy fill-in issue about a goat seven issues in really brings that home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m running late this week, but hey, this one shouldn’t take long. \u00a0Amazing X-Men #7 is notable\u00a0more for what it isn’t than for what it contains. \u00a0What it isn’t, is\u00a0a comic that particularly matters – however you choose to define “matters” – because it’s a throwaway fill-in issue. Firestar and Iceman are\u00a0out shopping when they […]<\/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-2549","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\/2549","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=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}