It’s been a while.<\/p>\n
This, of course, is a happy side effect of Marvel deciding to have two line-wide break points\u00a0in 2015 – at the start and end of\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> –\u00a0giving nice long breaks\u00a0where everything’s in mid-storyline and I can put my feet up and recharge. \u00a0Because the current relaunch has rolled out so slowly, we should get back to a more regular schedule from here on –\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> launched this week, just as\u00a0Extraordinary X-Men<\/em> is about to finish its first arc. \u00a0Soon we’ll be back to five regular X-books –\u00a0Uncanny, All-New, Extraordinary, Wolverine<\/em> and\u00a0Old Man Logan<\/em>.<\/p>\n That’s still taking us back to the levels of\u00a01989. \u00a0For better or worse, after\u00a0a long period of treading water, it does feel like the X-Men\u00a0are entering a new phase of their history – one that’s going to be based around adjusting to reduced circumstances in more ways than one.<\/p>\n I’ll talk about the individual books as\u00a0we get to them, but let’s look at the bigger picture. \u00a0The line-wide angle for mutants after\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> is that the Terrigen Mists are apparently\u00a0going to wipe out mutants by poisoning and sterilising them, so the mutants are all being driven into retreat, and, oh yes, everyone hates mutants again,\u00a0like they did before and pretty much every year since 1963,\u00a0but this time\u00a0extra-specially so. \u00a0Meanwhile, the Inhumans are in the ascendancy instead, and I guess by implication we’re meant to take it that\u00a0Marvel’s typical bigot\u00a0on the street isn’t so bothered about them,\u00a0given how especially fired up he apparently is about mutants right now.<\/p>\n I say this is the line-wide edict. \u00a0Actually,\u00a0thus far, only\u00a0Extraordinary<\/em> and\u00a0Uncanny<\/em> are really working with it (and both are making it the core of their series). \u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> and\u00a0All-New Wolverine<\/em> are… yeah, pretty much ignoring it. \u00a0But\u00a0Marvel as a whole are big on it. \u00a0It’s being\u00a0used in\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em> (which, no, I still don’t regard as an X-book), and\u00a0New Avengers<\/em> (where Sunspot’s a regular character), and even Squirrel Girl<\/em> has gone to the trouble of dodging it by making her Not A Mutant After All.<\/p>\n So Marvel are really quite keen on it. \u00a0Why might that be?<\/p>\n Obviously, it’s not because it’s a good idea. \u00a0Because it isn’t,\u00a0for a variety of reasons, of which more in a bit. \u00a0No, we are in the\u00a0sodden drizzle of corporate synergy here.<\/p>\n Now, to be clear, I don’t subscribe to any sort of conspiracy theory that Marvel are trying to kill the X-books, or some such thing. \u00a0If you’re trying to kill an imprint, you don’t put the likes of Brian Bendis on it, or Mark Bagley, or Humberto Ramos, or even Greg Land. \u00a0Nor\u00a0is it\u00a0quite as simple as saying that Isaac Perlmutter, who hates all that is good and fluffy, hates everything\u00a0where Fox have the film rights. \u00a0Yes, he axed\u00a0Fantastic Four<\/em>, but that book wasn’t selling. \u00a0Do you see him dialling back on\u00a0Deadpool<\/em> comics? \u00a0No, me neither.<\/p>\n It’s a subtler issue. \u00a0All else being equal, Marvel quite understandably see more value in the properties where they can co-ordinate across media, and the X-Men don’t fall into that category. \u00a0And\u00a0since they like the\u00a0mutant concept but can’t use it in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they’re trying to plug the Inhumans into that gap, and that, due to the\u00a0aforementioned\u00a0corporate synergy, leads\u00a0to the\u00a0Marvel Universe Inhumans being repositioned similarly, which, well, kind of shoulders the X-Men aside and forces them into a different role.<\/p>\n There’s a looming problem here, which Marvel is kind of hoping will go away.<\/p>\n The looming problem is that we’re a couple of years into this whole Inhumans push now, and\u00a0the comics-buying\u00a0public remains stubbornly unmoved. \u00a0On the most recent sales charts, for November,\u00a0Uncanny Inhumans<\/em> #2 limped in at number 59 (estimated sales 41K), compared to\u00a0Extraordinary X-Men<\/em> #2 at 24 (estimated\u00a0sales around 65K). \u00a0Not exactly great sales by X-Men standards, but even less of a\u00a0market endorsement for the Inhumans.\u00a0\u00a0Marvel must know it, but it’s\u00a0not putting\u00a0them off. \u00a0The philosophy seems to be: you can take a horse to water, and if the bastard won’t drink, you shove a feeding tube down its throat until it learns.<\/p>\n Please note, though, that the fact that Marvel are\u00a0sticking doggedly by an idea that the public isn’t initially going for is not, in itself, a bad thing. \u00a0On the contrary. \u00a0The Marvel and DC Universes are both gerontocracies, dominated by superannuated properties which have stubbornly refused to move aside and make room for new ideas. \u00a0The X-Men have no right to exist, and a strong case could be made that in a truly healthy market,\u00a0the book would have ended in 1988 or so and been replaced by something\u00a0entirely different. \u00a0It’s long overdue, you could argue, for Marvel to start\u00a0pushing some different concepts at the expense of the old guard – as they’ve been doing with\u00a0Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em> or\u00a0Ms Marvel<\/em>.<\/p>\n But Inhumans<\/em> isn’t a new concept; it’s an equally elderly one which has never been able to carry a series, and is now\u00a0being clunkily re-tooled into a cross between the X-Men and\u00a0Game of Thrones<\/em>\u00a0in order to dovetail with Agents of SHIELD<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0So we find ourselves in\u00a0an awkward mess where the Inhumans (who aren’t very popular) are trying to be the X-Men (which they were never designed to be), forcing the X-Men (who used to be very popular but that was a while back now) to find a new role for themselves.<\/p>\n It\u00a0occurs to me that there are two obvious\u00a0thought processes\u00a0that might have led to the current direction. \u00a0One is “If the\u00a0Inhumans are going to be the X-Men, let’s make the X-Men the Inhumans!” \u00a0So the X-Men\u00a0take the mutants off to become\u00a0a hidden race\u00a0in their own little haven. \u00a0There’s a certain poetic appeal to that, though\u00a0there’s also a big practical problem, which is that the classic\u00a0Inhumans formula isn’t\u00a0all that popular. \u00a0The other\u00a0is that they’re trying to be meta and play off the idea that the readers know (or at least think they know) that the X-Men are being shouldered aside by the Inhumans, by making that into the plot.<\/p>\n Either way (or neither), that’s where we are. \u00a0The X-Men are going to be Inhumans Classic for the foreseeable future. \u00a0Is it going to work – at least as a short-to-medium term idea until Marvel bow to the inevitable and\u00a0get the Inhumans out of their system.<\/p>\n As a concept, it certainly makes the heart sink. \u00a0It’s not just the fact that\u00a0being the Inhumans never really worked for the Inhumans either, or the fact that you can see the\u00a0editorial strings – in fact, not only can you see the strings, they’re\u00a0practically bedecked with fairy lights. \u00a0It’s also\u00a0been clumsily set up. \u00a0The\u00a0Terrigen Mists\u00a0were released back in 2013, which makes\u00a0it far too late to suddenly declare them a threat to mutants. \u00a0And the whole idea that sterilisation means there will be no more mutants simply doesn’t make any sense\u00a0under the ground rules of\u00a0the series. \u00a0Why\u00a0wouldn’t existing mutants continue to manifest at puberty for 13 years to come? \u00a0Why\u00a0aren’t new mutants being born to regular humans, just like always?<\/p>\n It’s also far too\u00a0similar to the “no more mutants”\u00a0storyline that came out of\u00a0House of M<\/em>, which was a few years back now, but by no means outside the statute of limitations for repeating a story in which (i) mutants face extinction, and (ii) the\u00a0remaining ones all end up living together in a little haven. \u00a0And it’s not like the previous storyline was even any good – in fact, it was chronically bad until people like Mike Carey came on and starting trying to\u00a0wrangle it into coherence. \u00a0The concept of mutants as a small band on the verge of extinction\u00a0isn’t really very interesting;\u00a0it\u00a0breaks most of the central metaphors that give the book its appeal. \u00a0(This, again, is a long and complicated topic for another day.)<\/p>\n But the oddity of the\u00a0X-books\u00a0launched so far is that while the concept is pretty bad, the execution thus far is reasonably good. \u00a0If\u00a0we politely turn a blind eye to the art on Uncanny X-Men<\/em> for the moment, the X-books have a very strong line-up of talent right now, and\u00a0the books are making an effort\u00a0to avoid some of the pitfalls of recent years, keep the tone light (except in\u00a0Uncanny<\/em>, which is the X-Force book, so fair enough), and extend an olive branch of goodwill to sceptical long-time readers.<\/p>\n So there’s a conscious effort to bring out some familiar concepts and villains\u00a0to establish continuity with the past.\u00a0\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> turns out to be a cheerful teen hero road trip book which pretty much couldn’t care less about the Terrigen stuff\u00a0so far. \u00a0It’s a neat little thing,\u00a0which\u00a0reminds me of\u00a0the Moore\/Pollina X-Force stories from the 90s, and that’s a pleasant surprise. \u00a0All-New Wolverine<\/em>, with X-23 as the new lead, has lightened her up too – if anything, a bit too quickly, but hey, a post-moping X-23 is\u00a0certainly a more\u00a0enticing prospect to read about. \u00a0Uncanny<\/em>, well, that’s where we’re going to town on the darkness, but it’s a book fronted by Magneto and in some ways carrying on from his solo series, so what do you expect. \u00a0And\u00a0Extraordinary<\/em> is, you know, the actual X-Men, actually doing something about the problem.<\/p>\n This is important, because it’s where both Bendis and\u00a0the “No More Mutants” arc went wrong – in giving the actual core X-Men nothing to do,\u00a0even when something dramatic came up that plainly needed solved. \u00a0This time round, there’s a sense that the X-Men are\u00a0really looking for a solution and that maybe they’ll find one. \u00a0Unexpectedly, Lemire’s stories, for all\u00a0that they have to work with the dodgy premise, and\u00a0despite a\u00a0couple of questionable elements that I’ll come to\u00a0in future posts, have\u00a0the sense of the X-Men as a family on the ropes. \u00a0They’re closer to\u00a0the spirit of Claremont than anything we’ve had in\u00a0ages. \u00a0There’s something\u00a0about the feel of the book that I really like, even when there’s a lot of more concrete things that\u00a0look dodgy.<\/p>\n I still don’t like the direction but, and very much to my surprise, I’m pretty pleased thus far with the\u00a0opening shots from the relaunched books. \u00a0So far, it’s overcoming my antipathy to the Inhumans. \u00a0How sustainable that’s going to be, well, that\u00a0could be another matter. \u00a0They’ve persuaded me, or at least got me to consider the possibility,\u00a0that this can be made to work – or worked around –\u00a0for\u00a0a year or two. \u00a0The line looks healthier than I expected, even if that comes with a big asterisk\u00a0and a footnote reading “despite the central premise”, which is a hell of a caveat.<\/p>\n But they’ve persuaded\u00a0me to give it some time. \u00a0As the books start wrapping up arcs over the coming weeks,\u00a0we’ll see how this pans out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been a while. This, of course, is a happy side effect of Marvel deciding to have two line-wide break points\u00a0in 2015 – at the start and end of\u00a0Secret Wars –\u00a0giving nice long breaks\u00a0where everything’s in mid-storyline and I can put my feet up and recharge. \u00a0Because the current relaunch has rolled out so slowly, […]<\/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-3328","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\/3328","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=3328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3329,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3328\/revisions\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}