Writer: Matt Fraction
\nPencillers: Greg Land, Terry Dodson, Whilce Portacio and Phil Jimenez
\nInkers: Jay Leisten, Rachel Dodson, Ed Tadeo and Andy Lanning
\nColourists: Justin Ponsor and Soto
\nLetterer: Joe Caramagna
\nEditor: Nick Lowe<\/p>\n
Goodness, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.\u00a0 But then, “Nation X” has been running for six months.\u00a0 And besides, I’m not getting this week’s comics until Monday, so let’s start on the backlog.<\/p>\n
Despite the “Nation X” logo on the cover, this isn’t really a single storyline so much as a bunch of stuff that came out between the “Utopia” and “Second Coming” crossovers.\u00a0 There are several different strands here.\u00a0 They don’t entirely add up to a coherent whole, but then they weren’t necessarily meant to.\u00a0 View it as seven issues of an ongoing title rather than as a single storyline, and it makes rather more sense.\u00a0 In that context, it’s interesting to note that the “Nation X” hardcover, scheduled for May, features not just these seven issues, but also the Dark Reign – The List<\/em> one-shot and the entire Nation X<\/em> anthology.<\/p>\n “Utopia” ended with the X-Men retreating from San Francisco to live on their own little artificial island in the bay, something which was presented as something of a victory over the corrupt officialdom of Norman Osborn.\u00a0 It seemed a rather strange thing to do, when the X-books had only just relocated to San Francisco with such fanfare.\u00a0 Marvel’s wider publishing schedule may play a part here.\u00a0 We’re told (though the book never finds space to actually show it) that the team are still popular with the people of San Francisco, and there’s nothing really to stop them from moving back… except Osborn.\u00a0 But his story ends with Siege<\/em>, so if they’re going to do this story, there’s a fairly narrow window of opportunity.\u00a0 What happens next is anyone’s guess; logically, there’s nothing to stop the X-Men simply moving back to the mainland in a couple of months time.\u00a0 This is a problem with the whole set-up; Fraction seems to want us to see Utopia as a permanent move, but the plot’s driven by something that we all know is purely transitory.<\/p>\n Rather more interesting, and more successful, is the general uncertainty and ambivalence about the island.\u00a0 Scott clearly wants it to be some sort of mutant homeland and source of pride.\u00a0 As a haven for virtually all the surviving mutants, it’s at least managed to unite them all in a single group and put an end to the usual inter-mutant squabbling (though again, this is really just asserted as a fact, since Fraction doesn’t find time to show us the low-rent villains and bit part characters supposedly wandering around the island).\u00a0 Other characters see it as last-ditch retreat by a team who are increasingly backed into a corner.\u00a0 And Hank, channeling the feelings of long-time readers, spends the first few issues wondering why on earth he’s still bothering, before throwing up his hands in despair and walking out at the end of issue #519; for him, this just doesn’t resemble the X-Men any more.\u00a0 Of course, Fraction might just be writing him out so that he can be used in the Avengers titles, but it’s a smart move to use him as a mouthpiece to acknowledge all the problems with this direction.\u00a0 Scott’s pride in the island hovers somewhere between making a virtue of necessity, and outright denial.\u00a0 That’s a promising angle; is he suppressing things that are just too depressing to think about, or is he simply losing the plot?<\/p>\n Fraction also makes good use of Magneto, who shows up apparently to lend his support, and who naturally spends the next few issues trying to persuade people that he doesn’t have an ulterior motive.\u00a0 He probably does – he’s Magneto, after all – but his attempts to get the X-Men to trust him are well written.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the idea of the island as a “nation” never really comes across.\u00a0 It’s basically the X-Men running a facility and offering free board to any passing mutants – and that’s essentially what we had a couple of years ago when there was a refugee camp in the X-Men’s garden.\u00a0 This is presumably meant to feel different, but it doesn’t.\u00a0 And the main plot for these issues is a bit weak too.\u00a0 It involves a bunch of new villains attacking the island with Predator X’s, apparently as a cover to infiltrate the island with nanotech so that they can catalogue all the remaining mutants.\u00a0 This eventually builds to the revelation that they’re in league with John Sublime.\u00a0 But it doesn’t really go anywhere in the course of these issues, and the bad guys are not well established as characters.\u00a0 A couple of them have nice one-liner powers (a kung-fu speedster is a fun idea) but they have no personality and the designs are uninspired.<\/p>\n There are also some gratingly awful plot problems in there.\u00a0 Issue #517 can’t make up its mind about how hard it is to beat a Predator X – Magneto is wiped out by fighting one, yet some random Atlantean can beat one singlehandedly by chucking a spear at it.\u00a0 That’s inconsistent.\u00a0 Then, a few issues later, this same depowered Magneto is supposed to be powerful enough to pluck a spaceship from light years away and turn it back round.\u00a0 That’s stupid.\u00a0 Issue #520 wants to tell us that Wolverine’s sense of smell is so acute that he can sense Fantomex in the sewers while he’s standing on the roof of a skyscraper.\u00a0 That’s ridiculous.\u00a0 That said, these problems become less prominent when you read the thing in one go, because they tend to be matters of detail rather than going to the heart of Fraction’s story.\u00a0 But they’re still bad.<\/p>\n Spliced into the middle of all this, issues #518 and #519 are a seemingly unrelated two-parter about Scott, Emma and the Void.\u00a0 “Utopia” ended with Emma getting contaminated by a sliver of the Void, the evil alter ego of the Sentry, in a scene that came completely out of the blue.\u00a0 These issues get rid of that plot almost immediately, in a way that almost makes you wonder why they bothered doing it at all.\u00a0 The upshot is to transfer the Void to Scott’s mind, and then have him contain it with his staggering powers of repression.\u00a0 Now, that’s a great idea, and I do like the concept of Scott having superhuman levels of worryingly misdirected willpower.\u00a0 And perhaps it’s not a complete detour; Fraction’s take on Cyclops is a character who has the responsibility of leading but has no real plan.\u00a0 He’s just clinging on and hoping for something to turn up.\u00a0 He is, in short, on the way to a nervous breakdown.\u00a0 Saddling him with the Void might pay off down the line, then.<\/p>\n And while these issues seem unrelated to the surrounding story, they’re still the best ones.\u00a0 Partly, that’s because they have the benefit of art from Terry and Rachel Dodson, who have the visual inventiveness to pull off great sequences in the astral plane, and to make the Void a striking jet-black visual.\u00a0 Their pages have all sorts of eccentric panel layouts without losing clarity.\u00a0 It’s good stuff.<\/p>\n The rest – well, aside from issue #522, which is a fill-in by Whilce Portacio – is drawn by Greg Land.\u00a0 Now, in fairness, it’s getting better.\u00a0 There’s a bit more atmosphere in the inking, and less sense of airbrushing.\u00a0 Some of his action scenes are quite striking, and he does good establishing shots.\u00a0 But his women are terrible – interchangeable and inexpressive.\u00a0 His acting’s not great generally, to be honest, and his pages are still littered with awkward, slightly odd facial expressions.\u00a0 There’s too much manic grinning.\u00a0 Still, there are also moments where he gets it right, and we’re moving in the right direction here.<\/p>\n It’s a very mixed set of stories.\u00a0 There are good ideas in here, but too much of the “Nation X” set-up is left to assertion instead of being properly explained.\u00a0 The main villains are weak.\u00a0 The art’s patchy.\u00a0 And the Void two-parter comes across as a story being aborted prematurely.\u00a0 But the Dodson issues look great, Fraction does have some strong ideas for Scott’s character, and the idea<\/em> of Nation X as described (even if we don’t actually see it on panel) is a decent last-stand concept, something which makes sense if this is meant to be the mutants being backed into a corner before Hope shows up to save the day in “Second Coming.”<\/p>\n But having good ideas isn’t enough; you need to get them across.\u00a0 Even at their best, these issues all too often feel like Fraction is telling us about<\/em> the story, instead of actually telling it.\u00a0 There’s a stronger idea in here somewhere, but it isn’t coming through properly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Nation X” Writer: Matt Fraction Pencillers: Greg Land, Terry Dodson, Whilce Portacio and Phil Jimenez Inkers: Jay Leisten, Rachel Dodson, Ed Tadeo and Andy Lanning Colourists: Justin Ponsor and Soto Letterer: Joe Caramagna Editor: Nick Lowe Goodness, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.\u00a0 But then, “Nation X” has been running for […]<\/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":[29,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","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=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}