{"id":2978,"date":"2015-05-13T22:45:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T21:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2978"},"modified":"2015-05-13T22:45:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T21:45:47","slug":"x-men-vol-5-burning-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2978","title":{"rendered":"X-Men vol 5 – “Burning Earth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have four issues to fill before\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em>, plainly you could do a lot worse than call upon the services of G Willow Wilson,\u00a0who’s been\u00a0delivering on\u00a0Ms. Marvel<\/em>. \u00a0In fact, anyone\u00a0looking for a Marvel Universe title to try could do a lot worse than\u00a0Ms. Marvel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, though,\u00a0G Willow Wilson can also do a lot worse than\u00a0Ms. Marvel<\/em>. \u00a0“Burning Earth” is\u00a0not\u00a0especially bad, but it’s safe to say that this is one to be filed in the Minor Works section of her bibliography.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The\u00a0story opens with a giant sinkhole opening up at the Burning Tree Festival and a giant storm appearing overhead. \u00a0Gambit, who just happens to\u00a0be at the show, calls in the X-Men to help. \u00a0(Yes, yes, he’s still a member of\u00a0X Factor, but this\u00a0is<\/em> a problem that seems at least well suited for Storm, so fair enough.) \u00a0This brings Storm, Rachel, Monet and Psylocke running to help, and winds up with all of them being stuck\u00a0underground. \u00a0Meanwhile, Jubilee investigates why Krakoa is feeling sick. \u00a0And eventually, it turns out that the\u00a0problems at Burning Tree are due to a Krakoa-like creature\u00a0who was\u00a0accidentally created by an experimental weapon. \u00a0The plot duly\u00a0explained, the X-Men\u00a0despatch the\u00a0marauding thingie.<\/p>\n

All of this is fine so far as it goes. \u00a0The plot aspects of the X-Men trapped underground are\u00a0well enough\u00a0handled, with enough variation to\u00a0avoid it just being endless wading through\u00a0tunnels. \u00a0There’s a welcome\u00a0effort to give all\u00a0four main characters (Jubilee is pretty much\u00a0relegated to\u00a0exposition lass) some opportunity to showcase themselves. \u00a0Wilson wrestles gamely with the challenge of finding some sort of difference between the three telepaths that the existing cast saddles her with – and finds more potential in there than most writers have.\u00a0\u00a0Roland Boschi’s art\u00a0is generally okay,\u00a0and\u00a0every so often raises itself to produce a starkly effective page layout.<\/p>\n

But Wilson’s handle on some of the characters feels shaky. \u00a0Her Monet in particular is hard to recognise from prior takes. \u00a0That’s not to say it’s a bad character; on the contrary, it’s a convincingly rounded character, headstrong and not a great team player. \u00a0But it simply doesn’t feel like Monet; the speech patterns are way off, the interaction with the other characters is too casual, the\u00a0distance isn’t there. \u00a0It may well be a take that could bed in and be accepted over time, but not in four issues. \u00a0Storm is more convincing, but it’s still odd to see a sequence that presents her\u00a0as the woman of action and Rachel as the cautious peacemaker who wants to solve all their problems by talking – a virtual reversal of their positions in their feud over the team leadership\u00a0that was a major subplot in this title under Brian Wood.<\/p>\n

And “Burning Earth” feels like a story that can’t quite figure out what it’s supposed to be about, as it hops between underdeveloped elements and occasionally chucks in a beat that seems to come from a different story entirely. \u00a0The story is structured with each of the four main characters taking turns to narrate an issue, but\u00a0there doesn’t seem to be any discernible point to doing so (and any element of character study\u00a0hits problems\u00a0when the characters themselves feel off model).<\/p>\n

There’s no\u00a0very clear reason for Gambit to be here at all; his plot function is pretty much limited to picking up the phone. \u00a0The entire subplot with\u00a0the X-Men’s Krakoa being sick goes pretty much nowhere, aside from prompting Jubilee to do some investigatory exposition. \u00a0Nor does it make\u00a0much sense – Krakoa is sick because\u00a0several\u00a0thousand miles away another creature also created in the same way has\u2026 woken up\u2026? \u00a0Jubilee’s trip to visit the Inhumans seems to serve no purpose beyond\u00a0stalling her for another chapter, as they tell her nothing that advances the plot and (as Medusa quite reasonably points out) there was never any good reason to think they would know anything anyway.<\/p>\n

The story\u00a0tries to suggest that the monster is the result of a Kree experiment, only to reveal that it’s actually the\u00a0product of a human experiment using captured Kree technology. \u00a0This is the old “ah, but you see, we\u00a0humans are the real monsters” story, which is a pulp sci-fi classic and for good reasons. \u00a0But\u00a0it doesn’t work here; the Kree theory is as good as anything else,\u00a0Jubilee follows it up but doesn’t particularly push it, and\u00a0there’s\u00a0no particular reason for anyone to be learning the lesson of humility that this story traditionally turns on. \u00a0Equally,\u00a0when the final issue suddenly brings out the “do we have the right” argument over whether to destroy the marauding earth\u00a0creature,\u00a0it doesn’t seem to relate to anything else that’s going on in the story; it’s just a familiar trope being pressed into service to raise the stakes in the finale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Given the standard of work Wilson has done elsewhere, this has to be rated a disappointment. \u00a0We’ve\u00a0certainly seen a lot worse\u00a0– it hangs together, the\u00a0personalities are well drawn even if they’re not always right. \u00a0And it probably suffers from the expectations\u00a0that go with a writer with a good track record. \u00a0It’s average, perhaps\u00a0a bit\u00a0above that. \u00a0But I was hoping for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have four issues to fill before\u00a0Secret Wars, plainly you could do a lot worse than call upon the services of G Willow Wilson,\u00a0who’s been\u00a0delivering on\u00a0Ms. Marvel. \u00a0In fact, anyone\u00a0looking for a Marvel Universe title to try could do a lot worse than\u00a0Ms. Marvel. As it turns out, though,\u00a0G Willow Wilson can also do […]<\/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-2978","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\/2978","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=2978"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3034,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions\/3034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}