{"id":3253,"date":"2015-11-02T21:22:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T21:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3253"},"modified":"2015-11-02T21:22:23","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T21:22:23","slug":"house-of-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3253","title":{"rendered":"House of M"},"content":{"rendered":"

The X-books tour of Battleworld\u00a0has\u00a0been largely a parade of misery. \u00a0And so\u00a0it’s\u00a0something of a relief that we get to complete that tour with a relatively pleasant dystopia, at least if you’re a mutant. \u00a0Sure,\u00a0House of M<\/em> is a world where Magneto has installed himself as emperor and is systematically oppressing the\u00a0humans. \u00a0But hey, at least the mutants are doing okay. \u00a0They get to wear cool stormtrooper outfits and everything.<\/p>\n

The original\u00a0House of M<\/em> miniseries, ten years ago now, was always a better concept than it was a story. \u00a0It set up a world that looked quite interesting, but what followed was seven issues of gathering the characters and killing the pages\u00a0until it was time for the\u00a0deus ex machina<\/em> to happen. \u00a0So there’s actually some unused potential that’s worth revisiting here. \u00a0And that’s pretty much the approach which this book\u00a0takes; forget the details of the original story, and do something with the general concept, free of any obligation to hit the reset button at the end. \u00a0(Oh yeah, and\u00a0pay lip service to Doom. \u00a0But this is one of those books that might as well not be on Battleworld at all.)<\/p>\n

Dennis Hopeless was the original writer on this book, with Cullen Bunn joining as co-writer on the second issue. \u00a0Unusually, there’s a mid-stream change of\u00a0artists as well, with Marco Failla on the first\u00a0half of the series, and Ario Anindito\u00a0on the second. \u00a0Both are\u00a0perfectly decent artists\u00a0and solid storytellers, though the change of style\u00a0from Failla’s looser\u00a0line work to Anindito’s more\u00a0detailed rendering jars a bit on re-reading.<\/p>\n

Bunn may have\u00a0joined the story in mid-stream, but House of M<\/em>\u00a0fits reasonably well with\u00a0his take on Magneto, as seen in\u00a0the recent solo series. \u00a0This version of Magneto may be passionate about saving his people, and he may have dedicated his life that cause, but\u00a0he’s also driven by a hatred for his former oppressors, and decidedly\u00a0invested in the idea of himself as the Great Man Of History. \u00a0Now, the original\u00a0House of M<\/em>\u00a0got away with a lot because the\u00a0central premise was that it was a warped reality created by the Scarlet Witch – in that context,\u00a0things like Magneto as the head of a royal family could be\u00a0readily interpreted as wish fulfilment. \u00a0But that doesn’t apply here, since this setting is meant to be the remains of an actual House of M<\/em>\u00a0alternate Earth. \u00a0And yes, there’s a bit of a logical leap in here somewhere, in which Magneto not only\u00a0leads the mutants to triumph but actually becomes\u00a0king. \u00a0But even if a\u00a0literal monarchy is pushing it, the idea of\u00a0a post-revolutionary Magneto installing himself as a cult-of-personality strongman and convincing himself that it’s for the greater good is eminently\u00a0plausible.<\/p>\n

The plot sees Magneto as\u00a0a slightly bored emperor who never sees action any more. \u00a0He\u00a0has three\u00a0potential heirs in the royal family – Lorna, who’s essentially sane; Wanda, who’s nuts, but is largely content to retain the status quo as long as nobody screws with her beloved twins; and Pietro, who feigns loyalty but is actually planning to usurp the throne in\u00a0alliance with Namor. \u00a0Alongside all this, the remains of the human resistance are planning an attack, which\u00a0doesn’t succeed, but\u00a0temporarily depowers Magneto, forcing him on the run with them when Pietro and\u00a0Namor make their move. \u00a0So, naturally, it’s a temporary alliance of Magneto,\u00a0Lorna and the human resistance against Pietro’s regime, which is even worse.<\/p>\n

It’s been alleged over at\u00a0Bleeding Cool<\/a> that this story originally had\u00a0Namor and Pietro as a same-sex couple, before it was nixed. \u00a0This is undeniably\u00a0plausible, not least\u00a0because the story never offers any real explanation of why the duo are working together. \u00a0A\u00a0romantic link\u00a0would fill the gap rather nicely, and Marvel do indeed continue to demonstrate apparent\u00a0nervousness about the whole area that makes such an editorial decision entirely believable. \u00a0That said,\u00a0I can also imagine other\u00a0reasons\u00a0why\u00a0someone might have had second thoughts\u00a0about this particular case (if indeed it was the plan). \u00a0It’s not exactly a flattering portrayal of either character – particularly Pietro,\u00a0who starts out as a treacherous schemer and winds up being portrayed as an ineffectual, gullible fop. \u00a0I can see some reason to\u00a0be\u00a0cautious about how that might be taken, as a total package.<\/p>\n

At any rate, there’s\u00a0certainly\u00a0a gap in the story where it ought to be fleshing out the\u00a0relationship between these two. \u00a0Without that, their alliance, and its eventual breakdown, doesn’t carry a great deal of weight. \u00a0Wanda’s subplot also feels as though it’s been shoehorned in because the nostalgia remit demands that she be in the story somewhere. \u00a0The plot doesn’t need her, so she has to be sidelined, but prominently so.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, a nice touch is that the book doesn’t labour the idea\u00a0of the mutant characters having any particular qualms about this state of affairs. \u00a0Even if they have some concerns about the way Magneto is treating the defeated humans, they don’t really seem to have a major problem with the\u00a0idea that they won, goddammit. \u00a0That’s probably a more interesting tack than having everyone point out what the readers can see perfectly clearly. \u00a0More striking is that the book sets up a story which\u00a0would normally end with everyone learning to see things from the other side’s perspective, heralding a new era of mutual tolerance in Magneto’s regime – and then pointedly\u00a0refuses to deliver. \u00a0Magneto is willing to let\u00a0his human allies go free, but solely\u00a0because his sense of\u00a0personal honour demands a\u00a0quid pro quo<\/em>, not because his attitude towards them has changed in any way. \u00a0This is the basic tragedy of Bunn’s Magneto – he can never develop past this – approached from the other side, with a world where he’s effectively won, and undergone a story that\u00a0ought<\/em> to change him, but he just can’t be moved.<\/p>\n

There’s quite a bit going on in\u00a0this series, some of it interesting, some of it feeling underdeveloped and incomplete. \u00a0It could really stand to lose a few characters and give more space to the ones that remain.\u00a0 But it does\u00a0enough with Magneto and Lorna, I think, to\u00a0make the case that there’s something in the House of M set-up that’s worth\u00a0the time to revisit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The X-books tour of Battleworld\u00a0has\u00a0been largely a parade of misery. \u00a0And so\u00a0it’s\u00a0something of a relief that we get to complete that tour with a relatively pleasant dystopia, at least if you’re a mutant. \u00a0Sure,\u00a0House of M is a world where Magneto has installed himself as emperor and is systematically oppressing the\u00a0humans. \u00a0But hey, at least […]<\/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-3253","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\/3253","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=3253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3256,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3253\/revisions\/3256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}