Marvel go through cycles with the annuals. \u00a0Sometimes they’re\u00a0bonus extra-long issues of the regular title. \u00a0Sometimes they’re little mini crossovers off to the side somewhere. \u00a0Sometimes they’re quirky little one-shots that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. \u00a0And sometimes they’re basically a dumping ground for what would, in a former era, have been\u00a0fill-in\u00a0issues.<\/p>\n
Extraordinary X-Men Annual<\/em> #1 is pretty firmly in the last of those categories, or at least the lead story is.<\/p>\n The Terrigen Mists are about to\u00a0pass over a British prison where, for some reason,\u00a0obscure villains Ruckus and Ramrod are being held. \u00a0The British government won’t move them to safety despite Storm asking\u00a0nicely, so the X-Men decide to stage a prison break.<\/p>\n So, okay, fine, that’s\u00a0our set-up. \u00a0It’s pretty clearly intended as a caper story – there’s no great depth here. \u00a0Why Ruckus and Ramrod? \u00a0Because nobody else was using them. \u00a0Why won’t the British government just take them to safety? \u00a0Because there wouldn’t be a plot otherwise, and\u00a0Authorities\u00a0Bad.\u00a0\u00a0And again, fine, as long as the mechanics of the prison break are\u00a0clever enough.<\/p>\n That’s certainly where the story puts most of its effort, but\u00a0it’s a flat affair. \u00a0Let’s break it down. \u00a0The\u00a0prison has nullifiers that stop powers working inside the prison. \u00a0Okay. \u00a0Seems a bit excessive for a prison that apparently only has two\u00a0mutants in it – are the rest of the prisoners superhumans too? \u00a0The Health and Safety Executive really needs to crack down on lab accidents. \u00a0But okay. \u00a0That’s the deal. \u00a0Powers don’t work in the prison. \u00a0Gotcha. \u00a0So the\u00a0plan is that\u00a0Forge can briefly shut down the nullifiers for a five second window, and Nightcrawler\u00a0can teleport himself and Wolverine in, and Jean (from outside the prison) can stop anyone from seeing them.<\/p>\n So far so good. \u00a0We’ve got a suitably contrived goal for the X-Men to achieve (get everyone together in time to teleport out), and a gimmick where they can take advantage of being invisible to everyone else. \u00a0Forge\u00a0messes about with the cameras, so that’s at least raised and set to one side.<\/p>\n What happens when we get in? \u00a0Well, there’s already a riot going on, apparently because the prisoners have found out about the Terrigen Mists. \u00a0Kurt\u00a0gets knocked out immediately by a stray punch. \u00a0Ruckus is\u00a0located with no particular incident. \u00a0They\u00a0get past the riot again to find Ramrod. \u00a0They’ve missed the window, but they get Jean to open a hole in the wall and they escape that way. \u00a0And… that’s pretty much it. \u00a0It all feels a bit underdeveloped. \u00a0Perhaps the idea just isn’t that great after all. \u00a0Once you’ve decided that nobody (other than the rescue-ees) can actually see the X-Men, there’s not really much challenge beyond\u00a0stepping carefully around the fighty people.<\/p>\n I’m not familiar with Ollie Masters; I know he’s written some stuff for Vertigo, and I wouldn’t\u00a0really expect anyone to be\u00a0producing their best work on a random X-Men fill-in assignment. \u00a0He’s\u00a0English, which is presumably why he went for an English prison –\u00a0plus, I suppose it explains why Ruckus and Ramrod\u00a0aren’t in a massive super-prison\u00a0with\u00a0vast numbers of mutant inmates. \u00a0(Come to think of it, though, that would have been a better story,\u00a0wouldn’t it? \u00a0Do we let them die or do we blow up the prison and let them all out? \u00a0Two\u00a0guys\u00a0is pretty low stakes.) \u00a0 Unfortunately,\u00a0Carlo Barberi – a perfectly sound superhero artist, for the most part – hasn’t been pointed in the direction of any references for British prisons, and so he’s drawn an American one, complete with the\u00a0orange jumpsuits. \u00a0He also draws some weirdly flimsy prison walls.<\/p>\n It’s all a bit bleh. \u00a0Still, it’s competently paced, and he’s got the voices of the characters.\u00a0 There’s something in the\u00a0idea that feels like it could have been\u00a0decent with a couple\u00a0of inventive twists, but it just doesn’t get there.<\/p>\n There’s a back-up strip,\u00a0in which Forge meets Moon Girl from\u00a0Moon\u00a0Girl\u00a0& Devil Dinosaur<\/em>. \u00a0It’s written by her regular writer Brandon Montclare, and as you might expect, it’s more a showcase for\u00a0her than it is a Forge story. \u00a0I have no problem with that;\u00a0nothing wrong with giving\u00a0newer characters exposure in a more established title. \u00a0Forge has stumbled upon Moon Girl’s research on Terrigen and wants to help; with her usual mixture of genius,\u00a0naivety and\u00a0demented stubborness, she wants to fly to the Blue Area of the Moon to do research, and she’s determined to do it in a shonky home-made rocket which she knows deep down is probably going to blow up in her face. \u00a0The pay-off is to have her use it to rescue Forge when the Terrigen Cloud shows up ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n It’s pretty effective at\u00a0introducing Moon Girl, and Rosi K\u00e4mpe’s art hits the right tone in terms of making Moon Girl’s stuff look\u00a0rickety yet impressive. \u00a0Forge is an odd choice for this role; I\u00a0guess he’s been chosen as the team’s current house scientist, but given that he’s spent years being written as a misfit with\u00a0assorted personality disorders, it’s slightly jarring to see him cast in the role of the sympathetic voice of reason. \u00a0It’s no bad thing to bring out\u00a0that side of Forge again, but\u00a0you feel there was scope to\u00a0play more off his\u00a0own semi-detached status\u00a0among the other superheroes. \u00a0And\u00a0there’s a decidedly lame final panel\u00a0about how Forge and Lunella are new friends now, which is the sort of thing that\u00a0passes for an ending in a lot of\u00a0Thomas the Tank Engine stories. \u00a0It feels clumsy and unearned.<\/p>\n The back-up\u00a0is the better of the two stories, but neither is\u00a0particularly worth\u00a0looking out. \u00a0They’re not phoned in, and they have\u00a0a couple of reasonable ideas, but the results are still middling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marvel go through cycles with the annuals. \u00a0Sometimes they’re\u00a0bonus extra-long issues of the regular title. \u00a0Sometimes they’re little mini crossovers off to the side somewhere. \u00a0Sometimes they’re quirky little one-shots that wouldn’t fit anywhere else. \u00a0And sometimes they’re basically a dumping ground for what would, in a former era, have been\u00a0fill-in\u00a0issues. Extraordinary X-Men Annual #1 […]<\/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-3556","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\/3556","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=3556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3557,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions\/3557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}