Let’s start with the bad news.\u00a0 We’re due for another podcast next weekend, and I do believe we plugged it at the end of the last show.\u00a0 But, um, I’m actually not in town that weekend, so it’s going to be a bit later than that.\u00a0 Probably the weekend after.\u00a0 Hopefully.\u00a0 We’ll let you know.<\/p>\n
With that out of the way, let’s talk reviews!\u00a0 A scattering of X-books this week, plus a few other interesting releases…<\/p>\n
Amazing Spider-Man<\/strong><\/em> #625<\/strong> – We’re back to Joe Kelly and Max Fiumara, picking up their Rhino storyline.\u00a0 With most books, this would have been a straightforward two-parter.\u00a0 And effectively, it still is a two-parter.\u00a0 But the nature of the story means that it actually benefits from having something unrelated in the middle, to space it out.\u00a0 The new Rhino remains a cipher (though that’s kind of the point), and the heart of this is the previous Rhino stubbornly trying not to get drawn into a pointless fight over the name.\u00a0 Yes, the pay-off is kind of hokey, but it’s well executed.\u00a0 And Fiumara’s art is great stuff; the Spider-Man books have some of the best art in superhero comics right now.<\/p>\n American Vampire<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – We might well be talking about this on the next podcast, but for now, some initial thoughts.\u00a0 This is the new Vertigo series by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque which has managed to get Stephen King to co-write the first few issues.\u00a0 Basically there’s a lead story by the regular team (setting up the origin of one of the lead characters) and a back-up strip by King (a few decades earlier, and setting up the other).\u00a0 The high concept here is that a couple of Americans are turned into vampires near the start of the 20th century and become the first distinctively American vampires.\u00a0 As opposed, presumably, to vampires following in the traditions of the old country.\u00a0 It could be a B-movie story, or it could be a somewhat warped take on America’s developing sense of uniqueness and relationship with its cultural heritage(s).\u00a0 For the moment, wisely, it seems mainly concerned about setting up the two leads, and it does that very well.\u00a0 The lead story doesn’t quite convince me as the mid-1920s, but I like the characters.\u00a0 And the art is strong, with Albuquerque shifting easily between two entirely different settings.\u00a0 It’s not really horror, at this stage, but there’s something interesting about it.<\/p>\n Battlefields<\/strong><\/em> #4<\/strong> – Unusually, instead of going for three miniseries (and thus three issue #1s), Dynamite have chosen to publish this run of Garth Ennis war stories as a nine-issue miniseries, even though the three stories are unrelated.\u00a0 So, this is the first part of “The Firefly and his Majesty”, a sequel to the “Tankies” story from the first run.\u00a0 For my money, “Tankies” was the weakest of the previous three (though it was up against extremely stiff competition), a bit heavy on the comedy and a bit light on the drama.\u00a0 But this time the balance seems to have been struck better.\u00a0 The issue does a great job with the apparent pointlessness of people continuing to fight in early 1945, when everyone knows the Germans can’t win; naturally, the machine just keeps grinding on, and in the short term at least, the Germans still have better tanks…\u00a0 I wasn’t especially looking forward to a second “Tankies” arc, but this is more interesting than I’d expected.<\/p>\n Joe the Barbarian<\/strong><\/em> #3<\/strong> – By this point we’ve got the idea: Joe is dying, he needs to get to his insulin, and he’s hallucinating the whole experience of getting downstairs as an epic fantasy quest.\u00a0 It’s so simple, but it’s brilliantly done.\u00a0 Morrison gives the whole thing a woozy feel that never loses sight of the fact that it’s a hallucination, but also makes it abundantly clear that if the story doesn’t play out properly then Bad Things Will Happen.\u00a0 And Sean Murphy’s art gives Joe’s world a sense of reality even though we all know it’s in his mind.\u00a0 As with some other Morrison stories, there’s almost a sense here that just because the characters are plainly fictitious that doesn’t mean they aren’t real<\/em> – after all, if Joe is hallucinating them, then in some sense they exist…<\/p>\n Nation X<\/strong><\/em> #4<\/strong> – The last X-Men anthology of the current batch.\u00a0 Peter Milligan and Mike Allred reunite for a Doop story, loosely based on the idea that everyone is potentially the snake who’ll destroy Utopia.\u00a0 It’s a bit lightweight but it’s quite good fun.\u00a0 Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Harvey Tolibao’s story with Emma Frost and the Stepford Cuckoos is a bit wonky; the girls are tormenting the other kids out of boredom, and Emma tries to put them back on track.\u00a0 Everyone’s a little bit out of character, and the Cuckoos seem to be such dreadful teachers (are they really<\/em> teaching a class of teenagers the alphabet?) that the ending falls flat.\u00a0 Ivan Brandon and Rael Lyra’s “Ice Cream Alamo” is a throwaway piece with some of the background kids trying to raid the fridge at night – there’s not much more to it than that, but it’s pretty good fun.\u00a0 Finally, Joe Caramagna and Niko Henrichon give us Namor bitching to Ororo about how the whole project is doomed; it’s really a conversation rather than a story, but at least it’s got beautiful artwork, and probably the best establishing shot of the island that I’ve seen.<\/p>\n Siege<\/strong><\/em> #3<\/strong> – In this issue: fighting!\u00a0 Now that we’ve got past the initial awkwardness of “sorry, why is Norman doing this again?”, the story is actually starting to get a bit of momentum.\u00a0 It does feel like it’s building to a climax, even if only because everyone’s calling in their favours, and everyone’s converging on the same place.\u00a0 That doesn’t quite get round the problem that the siege of Asgard itself appears to have been selected more or less at random to provide that climax – the bits of this story that work could have been bolted on to basically any story where Osborn overreaches himself.\u00a0 But it does have the long-awaited scenes where the good guys get their act together and finally get the upper hand, and Olivier Coipel’s art is good, bright, energetic stuff.<\/p>\n Wolverine: Origins<\/strong><\/em> #45<\/strong> – That’s the explanation for why we’ve spent a storyline messing around with obscure Defenders villain Ruby Thursday?\u00a0 Really?<\/em> I mean… yes, to be fair, Daniel Way did spend some time setting up the idea that Wolverine’s trying to think outside the box in order to confuse Romulus and throw him off the scent.\u00a0 So the basic idea that it’s a red herring… fine.\u00a0 But the story overreaches itself by suddenly hauling in a dangling subplot about the Answer, a character who I don’t think has even been mentioned before in this series, and who doesn’t get a proper introduction.\u00a0 If you’re wondering where on earth the Answer’s relationship with Ruby Thursday was established, well, it comes from the 2006 one-shot\u00a0I \u2665 Marvel: Outlaw Love<\/em>.\u00a0 Besides which, spending several issues just to declare that it’s all a tactical swerve – one with no particular dramatic ramifications other than to wrongfoot the baddie – seems excessive.\u00a0 There’s a good idea in here somewhere, but it needs refining.<\/p>\n X-23<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – One of many “Women of Marvel” one-shots which are coming out over the course of 2010, as part of Marvel’s rather vague celebration of its female intellectual property.\u00a0 Come to think of it, if you really<\/em> want to do stories with gender as a linking theme, X-23’s not a bad choice of character, since she’s supposed to be literally a female version of Wolverine.\u00a0 But in fact, Marjorie Liu takes the story as an opportunity to reunite X-23 with the cast of NYX<\/em>.\u00a0 That’s fair enough – it’s the book where X-23 first appeared in comics, and Liu wrote it.\u00a0 In its favour, the issue also has some excellent artwork, with some incredibly striking “astral plane” scenes.\u00a0 And Liu does understand the character of X-23, particularly the central idea that she’s been manipulated to such an extent that she’s never sure how much of what she thinks is programming and how much is truly her, something which she plays as an exaggerated nature\/nurture metaphor.\u00a0 The downside is that the plot is all over the place.\u00a0 A set-up about ex-mutants being targetted never really goes anywhere; the Gamesmaster is used in an interesting way but isn’t very clearly explained; and for some reason, nobody thinks of asking the NYX cast whether they might care to come to Utopia and get a good night’s sleep.\u00a0 So it’s flawed, but there are definitely plenty of positives here.<\/p>\n X-Factor Forever<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong> – Louise Simonson picks up X-Factor<\/em> where she left off in 1991, which more or less means progressing with the subplots in progress, and going back to Apocalypse as the arch-enemy.\u00a0 The first issue seems largely concerned with setting up the status quo, but that’s logical enough, even if some of the infodump exposition stands out like a sore thumb.\u00a0 To give Marvel credit, they’ve learned from their mistakes with X-Men Forever<\/em>, and so this issue also includes an introduction by Louise Simonson explaining the idea, and a back-up feature recapping the series.\u00a0 Like Chris Claremont, Simonson doesn’t seem too concerned about doing stories that she would have written in 1991; instead, her editorial suggests that she’s taking the opportunity to do a story that follows her take on Apocalypse through to its logical conclusion, freed from the need to worry about any wider continuity issues.\u00a0 In practice, the first issue is still largely introduction, but it bounces along at a fair speed, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing where this is going.\u00a0 Dan Panosian is an intriguing choice of artist – most of his Marvel work has been as an inker, but he’s actually got a very distinctive style, spiky and angular, and willing to let characters like Archangel look ugly.\u00a0 At the same time, there are some wonderful backgrounds, and his Apocalypse clearly harks back to Walt Simonson’s definitive take.\u00a0 It’s not always pretty, but it’s certainly interesting to look at, helped by nicely subdued colouring from Jim Charlampidis.\u00a0 It won’t be to all tastes, but I like the way this book looks.<\/p>\n X-Men Legacy<\/strong><\/em> #234<\/strong> – Sandwiched between two crossovers, a story where Rogue gets telepathy for an issue and has trouble with it.\u00a0 This is one of the best issues in quite a while, freed as it is from any wider agenda beyond doing an interesting story with the lead character.\u00a0 Mike Carey’s created an unusual format here – effectively this is a Rogue solo title, but instead of using it to tell stories of Rogue’s solo adventures, it’s an X-Men book done from Rogue’s perspective.\u00a0 As for the art, Yanick Paquette may have unfortunate tendencies towards out-of-place cheesecake, but he does know his body language, and he actually does a very good Rogue.\u00a0 The current direction on this series is probably the best use of the character in years.<\/p>\n Let’s start with the bad news.\u00a0 We’re due for another podcast next weekend, and I do believe we plugged it at the end of the last show.\u00a0 But, um, I’m actually not in town that weekend, so it’s going to be a bit later than that.\u00a0 Probably the weekend after.\u00a0 Hopefully.\u00a0 We’ll let you know. […]<\/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-257","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\/257","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=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}I \u2665 Marvel<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"