{"id":3113,"date":"2015-07-19T14:28:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T13:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3113"},"modified":"2015-07-19T14:28:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T13:28:12","slug":"interregnum-there-is-only-secret-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3113","title":{"rendered":"Interregnum: There Is Only Secret Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since we’ve had any updates with the X-Axis, for\u00a0fairly obvious reasons. \u00a0The entire line is currently doing\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> tie-ins, and so the entire line\u00a0consists of stand-in miniseries which are presently halfway through (aside from\u00a0Magneto<\/em>, which is doing a\u00a0“Last Days” tie-in).<\/p>\n

We’ll deal with the\u00a0individual Secret Wars<\/em>\u00a0X-books in due course, but\u00a0this seems like a good time to throw out a few thoughts\u00a0on the line and the crossover as a whole, if only to open a comments thread for it.<\/p>\n

Now that we can see where it’s actually going, it seems\u00a0that\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> isn’t going to be\u00a0doing any sort of sweeping line-wide reboot, and certainly isn’t going to be picking up the “threat to the timeline” stuff from\u00a0All-New X-Men <\/em>which, with hindsight, sits pretty oddly alongside a line-wide story in which the universe is destroyed and, presumably, remade with that flaw intact.<\/p>\n

Instead, the model here seems to be\u00a0the original “Age of Apocalypse” crossover, in which\u00a0all the X-books were put on hold for four months and replaced with\u00a0stand-in titles bearing varying degrees of resemblance to their notional parents. \u00a0Some of\u00a0those books got to do things that were important to the main plot; others got to\u00a0kill time for four issues with\u00a0What If\u2026?<\/em> stories that were tenuously tied to the main plot by some sort of side quest that played peripherally into the finale.<\/p>\n

Secret Wars<\/em>\u00a0takes this basic format and applies it to the whole line, using the standard technique of modern Marvel event books:\u00a0the core\u00a0story is contained in a single miniseries, but\u00a0at the same time, the premise of that story is pressed into service as\u00a0a backdrop or springboard for a whole load of solo\u00a0stories. \u00a0This, fundamentally, is what Marvel seem to be looking for in a crossover concept these days: something that has big margins for other people to work in.<\/p>\n

In theory,\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> provides maximum flexibility in this regard, because its\u00a0central concept is a patchwork world consisting of stray bits of a multitude of alternate Earths. \u00a0It’s the Multiverse in physical form, with the difference being that instead of the other worlds being\u00a0on the other side of a dimensional barrier, they’re just over there, a bit to the west.<\/p>\n

The tie-in books seem to be bracketed into two types. \u00a0There are\u00a0the ones which actually make use of the patchwork nature of\u00a0Battleworld by giving prominent roles to the Thors, or\u00a0interaction between domains, or whatever. \u00a0Then there are the books\u00a0that are\u00a0confined to individual domains. \u00a0These ones – which cover\u00a0most of the X-books – are basically stories\u00a0designed for alternate worlds, with\u00a0some polite concessions being made to Secret Wars<\/em>, most obviously a search-and-replace on “God” and “Doom”.<\/p>\n

It largely hangs together if you’re prepared to concede the basic premise that it’s\u00a0an artificial\u00a0world which\u00a0is only being held together through Doom’s efforts, which include some sort of global mind-control designed to make everyone think that it’s always been this way, and to accept it as it is. \u00a0Presumably this is why Doom wants to minimise\u00a0people travelling between domains – to keep the contradictions manageable. \u00a0That said, there are problems even within this set-up – most obviously,\u00a0there doesn’t seem to be a very consistent line about the degree of interaction that exists between domains. \u00a0Sometimes Doom is rigorously\u00a0prohibiting any involvement, sometimes people seem unaware that other domains even exist, sometimes\u00a0they seem to have trading\u00a0relationships, and off on the side somewhere,\u00a0Ghost Riders<\/em>\u00a0says there’s a global TV network. \u00a0(Who’s watching it?) \u00a0Maybe the idea is that the level of interaction varies\u00a0between domains depending on what the locals can handle without violating the rules of their story – if your world was ready to take the idea of inter dimensional travel, then you’re ready to speak to the guys over the wall –\u00a0but\u00a0it’s not exactly clear.<\/p>\n

At any rate, we have here the current form of Marvel crossover taken to its\u00a0logical extreme – an event where anything can qualify as a crossover, just as long as it\u00a0isn’t<\/em> in continuity. \u00a0There’s pretty much nowhere further to go from there, unless you’re going to do a crossover called\u00a0Shit Happens<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In “Age of Apocalypse”, the\u00a0end result was that the\u00a0event\u00a0(or at least its core books) told a fairly coherent self-contained story, and\u00a0the upshot was that the status quo ante was restored with a few extra refugee characters running about as new cast members. \u00a0The end result of\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> looks at this stage to be similar; characters like Miles Morales\u00a0and the\u00a0Old Man Logan<\/em> version of Wolverine get folded into the regular Marvel Universe,\u00a0and perhaps\u00a0we’ll get a bit\u00a0of tinkering around the edges of continuity to remove\u00a0stuff that’s really problematic to reverse in any other way. \u00a0But basically the effect on the X-books will be pretty minimal.<\/p>\n

This makes the last\u00a0year or so of X-books look even weaker in hindsight; they don’t even seem to\u00a0have been marking time for anything in particular, but just desperately filling the pages. \u00a0On the other hand, unlike (say)\u00a0Silk<\/em>, the X-books do find themselves in the happy position of seeing this\u00a0hiatus\u00a0fall before an editorial and creative shake-up. \u00a0It’s a natural place for a season break to fall, and may well end up serving as a palate cleanser before normal service is resumed.<\/p>\n

Now that we’ve seen the first wave of announcements\u00a0for\u00a0Marvel’s revamp, and the October solicitations, it’s striking how few X-books there are. \u00a0Of course, “few” is a relative term here. \u00a0When I started reading the X-books, there were three of them.\u00a0 But to put it in perspective, the February 2015 solicitations had\u00a0All-New X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#39, Amazing X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#17,\u00a0Black Vortex Alpha<\/em>, Cyclops\u00a0<\/em>#10, Magneto\u00a0<\/em>#15,\u00a0Nightcrawler\u00a0<\/em>#11,\u00a0Spider-Man & The X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#3, Storm\u00a0<\/em>#8,\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#32,\u00a0Wolverines<\/em> #5-8,\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #15, and\u00a0X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#24 – a total of fifteen\u00a0X-books.<\/p>\n

The October\u00a0solicitations, which straddle the end of\u00a0Secret Wars\u00a0<\/em>and the start of the Marvel Universe relaunch, offer\u00a0Age of Apocalypse\u00a0<\/em>#5, Extraordinary X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#1-2,\u00a0House of M<\/em> #4\u2026 and that’s it. \u00a0Of course, that’s an odd month, and\u00a0the\u00a0complete “All-New All-Different” line\u00a0promise more – All-New Wolverine<\/em>,\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em>,\u00a0Extraordinary X-Men<\/em>,\u00a0Old Man Logan<\/em>, and\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em>. \u00a0But that’s still only five books. \u00a0Granted that we can expect some double-shipping,\u00a0and that\u00a0one suspects there are more announcements still to come, it’s still a significant scaling back in the size of the line.<\/p>\n

This, let’s be clear, would be a good thing. \u00a0If\u00a0the driving force here is Marvel’s feud with Fox over the film rights, who cares? \u00a0The line has been overextended for years and a depressingly large proportion of the line has consisted of blatant page-filler. \u00a0If Marvel’s approach to the line has finally shifted from “how are we going to fill eleven ongoing titles” to “how many titles does the market actually want”, so much the better. \u00a0Jeff Lemire is a good writer, even though nobody would claim that\u00a0his superhero books are his passion projects. \u00a0Cullen Bunn’s promotion from\u00a0Magneto<\/em>\u00a0to an X-Men title is welcome,\u00a0though\u00a0pairing him with Greg Land seems extraordinarily ill-advised. \u00a0I’m not especially sold on Dennis Hopeless, but I gather he’s done better work off the X-books. \u00a0It would be going too far to say that any of the announced post-Secret Wars<\/em> X-books look like surefire winners. \u00a0But most of them at least have possibilities. \u00a0(I struggle to imagine anyone overcoming Greg Land, quite honestly.)<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we have\u00a0the X-books in a rather strange\u00a0What If\u2026? Greatest Hits<\/em> mode, which I’ll come back\u00a0in the coming months. \u00a0What’s abundantly obvious, though, is that the trawl through the X-archive for potential springboards has turned up a seemingly endless string of dystopias. \u00a0There are a couple of exceptions, most obviously\u00a0X-Men ’92<\/em> (the animated series), but a general grimness prevails. \u00a0It’s\u00a0more than a little same-y, and it would be nice to think the X-books had some other moves in their playbook beyond “unremitting misery with no end in sight”. \u00a0Hopefully this is something the\u00a0revamped line will try to move forward from, rather than taking as\u00a0a template. \u00a0We’ll know by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since we’ve had any updates with the X-Axis, for\u00a0fairly obvious reasons. \u00a0The entire line is currently doing\u00a0Secret Wars tie-ins, and so the entire line\u00a0consists of stand-in miniseries which are presently halfway through (aside from\u00a0Magneto, which is doing a\u00a0“Last Days” tie-in). We’ll deal with the\u00a0individual Secret Wars\u00a0X-books in due course, but\u00a0this seems […]<\/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-3113","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\/3113","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=3113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3114,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions\/3114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}