No podcast this weekend, for the reasons explained in the post just below.\u00a0 We’ll be back in a week’s time.\u00a0 In the meantime, I’ll make a start on my comics backlog.\u00a0 Regular readers will recall that last week, Diamond UK didn’t ship anything because of the volcano.\u00a0 So two weeks’ worth of comics showed up at my house on Friday, and needless to say, I haven’t read them all yet.<\/p>\n
But on the principle that I’d better get up to date with the crossovers, because there’s another chapter just around the corner, let’s start with the X-books and the Siege<\/em> tie-ins.<\/p>\n Dark Wolverine <\/strong><\/em>#85 \/ Wolverine: Origins<\/em> #47<\/strong> – These are the first two parts of “Reckoning”, a crossover in which Wolverine and Daken team up (well, kind of) to go after their mutual arch-enemy Romulus.\u00a0 Presumably this is heading to the final defeat of Romulus in the closing issues of Origins<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a rare example of a story which probably should<\/em> be a crossover, because it genuinely is important to both characters, and shouldn’t be taking place off-panel for either book.\u00a0 But of course, this is Wolverine: Origins<\/em>, so it’s time for yet more convolutions.\u00a0 Wolverine, it turns out, correctly predicts that Daken will betray him, and uses him to feed bad information to Romulus.\u00a0 That’s fine as far it goes, except for one thing: we’ve only just seen that story in Origins<\/em>‘ previous arc, with Ruby Thursday in the place of Daken.\u00a0 Yes, they acknowledge it; yes, the idea is that Wolverine is messing with Romulus’ head to draw him out.\u00a0 But a bit more variation, surely…?<\/p>\n It’s not a great story, unfortunately.\u00a0 As usual, Romulus is the least interesting thing about this book, and a Millar-esque determination to keep Daken unlikeable threatens to drain most of his potential appeal as a lead character into the bargain.\u00a0 Stephen Segovia, drawing the first part, is the sort of hyperactive artist who can be quite enjoyable when he’s doing melodramatic insanity, but doesn’t really suit an issue of conversations around tables.\u00a0 Will Conrad, on the second, is generally solid, though his Romulus is almost unrecognisably off-model.\u00a0 Mind you, I actually prefer his design, which has the merit of not being quite so ludicrous.<\/p>\n The big reveal, though, is Daken explaining Wolverine’s great plan: he’s going to defeat Romulus by exposing him to the world and ruining his mystique.\u00a0 It’s one of those moments where you pause and go, “Really?”\u00a0 Because, point one, four years to get here, and we’re doing The Wizard of Oz<\/em>?\u00a0 And point two, are we really doing a story based on the proposition that after all the mystery, Romulus is a bit disappointing and dull when you finally get to see him?\u00a0 You almost have to wonder whether it’s a gesture of grand self-parody, but I have a sinking feeling it probably isn’t.<\/p>\n Mighty Avengers<\/strong><\/em> #36<\/strong> – The final issue before the reboot.\u00a0 And to be fair, there’s more finality about this than you might expect, because it is indeed the end of Hank Pym’s splinter group of Avengers.\u00a0 Or rather, it’s the end of Hank Pym’s storyline.\u00a0 Officially this is a Siege<\/em> tie-in, but it qualifies for that banner mainly by having the rest of the team appear in subplot pages fighting the Thunderbolts in a mirror of Thunderbolts<\/em> #143.\u00a0 The meat of the issue is actually Hank, Jocasta and a couple of ultra-obscure guest stars taking on Ultron and his army of robot brides in a fantastically absurd climax.\u00a0 It’s just plain nuts, but Dan Slott tempers the goofiness by playing up Hank’s painful lack of empathy for Jocasta to give it a slightly bitter undercurrent.\u00a0 Good issue.<\/p>\n New Avengers<\/strong><\/em> #64<\/strong> – It’s a Brian Bendis issue during a crossover, so you know what to expect: flashbacks!\u00a0 Yes, the Avengers themselves are pushed to the margins in order that we can spend an issue looking in on the Hood and his army of Z-list villains.\u00a0 Mike McKone’s art on the Siege sequences is a bit muddled – it’s one of those “hurl characters at the page” routines which kind of gets over the chaos but gives you no real idea of what’s going on or where.\u00a0 But to give credit where it’s due, Bendis does get something out of the Hood himself, a character way out of his depth with the A-listers, who is just realising that this possibly isn’t going to work out so well for him.\u00a0 Technically this is the last issue of New Avengers<\/em> before the relaunch, but in practice it seems to be building to some sort of “last stand of the Hood” thing in the New Avengers: Finale <\/em>oneshot, which sounds suspiciously like plain old New Avengers<\/em> #65 to me.\u00a0 Bit lacking in terms of plot, but this is one of those Bendis stories which does enough with the character moments to stand up anyway.<\/p>\n Thor<\/strong><\/em> #609<\/strong> – In this issue!\u00a0 Loki explains his motivations!\u00a0 And… um… well, yes, that doesn’t work out very well for the story, to be honest.\u00a0 Because Loki’s motivations, it turns out, are so slender and contrived that it unavoidably results in a scene where Loki says “Just because” and a bunch of other characters gawp at him and complain that the plot doesn’t make any sense.\u00a0 And \u00a0 The idea seems to be that Loki is causing trouble for no particular reason; he’s just a stirrer by nature.\u00a0 He is, after all, the God of Mischief.\u00a0 Actually, as a take on the character, this could work.\u00a0 The problem is that it’s been set up as some sort of mystery, “What’s Loki up to?”\u00a0 And if the answer turns out to be “Nothing in particular”, then that’s, shall we say, a bit of an anticlimax.\u00a0 On the plus side, there’s a neat scene with Balder at the end, and a cute bit with an atheist supervillain.\u00a0 But… mmm.<\/p>\n Thunderbolts<\/strong><\/em> #143<\/strong> – The final issue before the new direction, and what you get is the team continuing to implode while they fight the Avengers.\u00a0 Or rather, while the ones who can be bothered fight the Avengers, and the rest make a break for it.\u00a0 It’s two thirds of a good issue, at which point it suddenly turns into an issue of Mighty Avengers<\/em> and most of the team just sort of get beaten without it feeling like a pay-off.\u00a0 There’s a nice little epilogue with Ant-Man and the Headsman’s brother, and then the issue ends with an introduction of the new status quo which isn’t a segue so much as a handbrake turn.\u00a0 The bottom line is that it all feels a bit truncated.\u00a0 Good art, though.<\/p>\n X-Factor<\/strong><\/em> #204<\/strong> – This is a “Second Coming: Revelations” tie-in, which means it’s not actually part of the “Second Coming” storyline, but it’s a tie-in to the crossover anyway.\u00a0 In practice, that means that for no readily apparent reason, Bastion has decided that this would be a perfect time to attack X-Factor as well, something he could have done at any point.\u00a0 And again, the contrived plot alarm sounds as soon as you have characters asking the unavoidable “But why, sir?” questions.\u00a0 Still, leave that point aside and it’s a good issue.\u00a0 David’s villains have a nice line in tortured yet vaguely consistent logic, and there’s a nice spread from the stark-raving Bastion at the top of the chain of command down to basically sane military types who are simply trusting to the chain of command.\u00a0 Valentine De Landro’s art is on form.\u00a0 The crossover is turned to advantage by having it literally interrupt the Baron Mordo storyline in progress.\u00a0 And the cliffhanger ending is another winner, simply on the “Hold on, that can’t have happened, can it?” level.<\/p>\n X-Men Forever <\/strong><\/em>#22 \/ X-Men Forever Annual<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Issue #22 is the middle chapter of a three-parter where the X-Men finally go to confront the Consortium, and basically it involves them all going to the bad guys base and fighting them.\u00a0 It’s fine, it’s a good old-school superhero routine, but there’s not much more I can really say about it.\u00a0 The Annual is a flashback story explaining the start of the Logan\/Jean love affair which was a plot point in earlier issues.\u00a0 Of course, the romantic tension had been established long, long ago, so it’s really a question of putting the two characters in a situation where they can be nudged in a different direction.\u00a0 In practice, that turns out to mean a story where they go undercover to investigate a dodgy holiday resort run by evildoers, and etc etc.\u00a0 At times it feels like some romantic character moments which have been bolted on to a fill-in story, but it does hang together on the whole.<\/p>\n X-Men Legacy<\/strong><\/em> #235 \/ X-Force<\/em> #26<\/strong> – Parts 4 and 5 of “Second Coming”, in which there is running around, and there is chasing, and there is fighting, and Somebody Dies.\u00a0 The all-important death comes in X-Force<\/em> (which is an odd choice, since you’d think you’d want it in one of the X-Men books), and I don’t know quite what to make of it.\u00a0 To be honest, I don’t really buy it.\u00a0 It’s treating a major (albeit largely unused) character as cannon fodder, and killing him off at a suspiciously early stage in a 14-part story where we all know Phoenix will be along sooner or later.\u00a0\u00a0 If they’re serious, then frankly it feels a bit desperate – in a sense, I doubt they’re serious about it because<\/em> I give them more credit than that.\u00a0 We shall see what happens.\u00a0 That aside… Legacy<\/em> has art by Greg Land, who’s having one of his better days.\u00a0 There’s still some awkward posing and stiff expressions to drag things down, but less than usual, and he actually does quite a good Warlock, perhaps because the character is so unavoidably at odds with the rest of his style.\u00a0 X-Force<\/em> has Mike Choi and Sonia Oback, and very little space for its nominal lead characters – it’s mainly Rogue, Kurt and Hope on the run from Bastion.\u00a0 The art errs on the side of over-busy, and loses some of Choi and Oback’s style in the process, but it’s not bad.<\/p>\n X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back!<\/strong><\/em> #3<\/strong> – Okay, then, so now we have a clear explanation of what the hell was going on in the first two issues, and we’re heading for the big finale!\u00a0 It’s still a decidedly off-kilter story, as you’d expect from Kathryn Immonen and Sara Pichelli.\u00a0 I’m not quite sure why you’d want to tie Pixie to the Mastermind sisters, who don’t really seem like characters that have much in common with her.\u00a0 But I like the basic take on Pixie, as well as the exasperation of the supporting cast.\u00a0 Immonen gets X-23’s character, which is very hard to write well, and understands how to make her work in a group cast.\u00a0 And the art is lovely.\u00a0 This could still go either way in the final issue – it could redefine Pixie in an interesting way which will give other writers somewhere to work from, or it could end up cluttering her up horrifically.\u00a0 The series so far has been wonky enough that it’s hard to call.\u00a0 But I’m definitely intrigued, and that’s the key thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No podcast this weekend, for the reasons explained in the post just below.\u00a0 We’ll be back in a week’s time.\u00a0 In the meantime, I’ll make a start on my comics backlog.\u00a0 Regular readers will recall that last week, Diamond UK didn’t ship anything because of the volcano.\u00a0 So two weeks’ worth of comics showed up 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