{"id":360,"date":"2010-06-06T19:18:06","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T18:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=360"},"modified":"2010-06-06T19:18:06","modified_gmt":"2010-06-06T18:18:06","slug":"the-x-axis-6-june-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=360","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 6 June 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a podcast weekend, and the latest episode of House to Astonish <\/em>will be up… ooh, any minute now, probably. \u00a0We recorded it earlier today. \u00a0This week, Al and I talk about Bulletproof Coffin<\/em>, Hawkeye & Mockingbird<\/em> and Justice League: Generation Lost.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also this weekend, I have been wrestling with an HP Photosmart Premium C309g that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the existence of my wifi network, or indeed any other ones. \u00a0This isn’t very interesting, I know, but it has taken up a disproportionate amount of my weekend, so I thought I’d share it with you anyway.<\/p>\n

Avengers Prime<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Marvel seem to be slipping back into the habit of overexpanding their main franchises. \u00a0As if three ongoing titles wasn’t enough, this is a miniseries about the three “prime” Avengers – Iron Man, Thor and the original Captain America. \u00a0This one is set in the immediate aftermath of Siege<\/em>, and I suppose it’s technically an epilogue. \u00a0It seems to be basically the story that completes the reconciliation between the three founders, in order to get things in place for the relaunch.\u00a0\u00a0At one point, they’d have done this story as a bridge between Siege<\/em> and the relaunch of Avengers<\/em>, but instead it’s been hived off into a separate mini – one that’s shipping on an incredibly slow schedule, by the way.<\/p>\n

Basically, our three heroes are helping out in the aftermath of the Siege when they get sucked through a stray portal and stranded in obscure parts of Asgard. \u00a0So they’re separated at first, and presumably they’ll end up teaming up and… well, you know the drill. \u00a0It’s quite good, actually. \u00a0Brian Bendis has seemed a bit uncomfortable writing the Asgardians’ dialogue before – it really doesn’t fit with his naturalist style – but he’s getting the hang of it now, perhaps because he seems willing to let Asgard be somewhere that isn’t<\/em> particularly realistic at all. \u00a0Artist Alan Davis sounds like he ought to be a style clash with Bendis, but he turns out to fit quite well; he gives the story a sort of retro epic feel that balances out Bendis’ style, and he knows how to get the dramatic (and comic) timing right. \u00a0Better than I was expecting.<\/p>\n

Bulletproof Coffin<\/em> #1<\/strong> – See the podcast, but this is a six-issue mini by David Hine and Shaky Kane. \u00a0The concept is hard to nail down, but basically, a guy discovers a bunch of Silver Age comics that shouldn’t exist, and which seem to be bleeding through into the real world. \u00a0It’s part EC pastiche, part David Lynch framing story, and all thoroughly odd. \u00a0Kane’s slightly awkward art isn’t exactly instant, but it builds a good atmosphere of nervy weirdness. \u00a0Really odd, and the cover seems almost perversely calculated to drive off casual readers, but well worth your time.<\/p>\n

Franken-Castle<\/em> #17<\/strong> – The comic formerly known as Punisher<\/em>. \u00a0I haven’t been buying this, but I’ve heard good things about it, and it’s about to do a two-month crossover with Dark Wolverine<\/em>, so I thought I’d see what it’s up to. \u00a0As you may be aware, the Punisher was cut to pieces by Daken a few months ago, and has been resurrected by the Legion of Monsters as, well, Frankenstein. \u00a0It’s a gleefully ludicrous change of direction for the book, and naturally Rick Remender and Roland Boschi play it dead straight. \u00a0I mean, it’s completely ridiculous, but it’s completely ridiculous in a good way. \u00a0The art is fantastic, and there’s something quite endearing about the way the Punisher seems to be treating this as merely a mild inconvenience in his ongoing war against crime. \u00a0Obviously there’s a shelf-life on this story (and you’ll note that the Punisher’s looking very healthy in the house ads for Shadowland<\/em>), but it’s surprisingly fun.<\/p>\n

The Great Ten<\/em> #8<\/strong> – Originally a ten-issue miniseries, now cut to nine – so either there’s a swerve where one of the characters gets killed, or that “each issue focusses on a different team member” structure is a bit screwed. \u00a0It’s a shame that this book hasn’t done better, as Tony Bedard and Scott McDaniel, working within a fairly loose overall story, have basically been fleshing out the team into viable characters, many of whom have neat little origin stories of their own. \u00a0This issue, it’s Shaolin Robot, a martial arts robot who speaks in I-Ching hexagrams. \u00a0Obviously, as a character, he’s a bit elliptical – but Bedard uses him here as an excuse to do an entertaining short about a clockwork Terracotta Army, an endearingly crazy idea. \u00a0I just hope Bedard has some plan to bring this series in at nine issues without compromising the structure too much, because the standard has generally been kept up well.<\/p>\n

Hawkeye & Mockingbird<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Again, see the podcast, but we liked this. \u00a0It’s not perfect, but its problems are largely a function of writer Jim McCann trying to work with the characters’ history, and running up against the fact that, for example, Hawkeye’s villains are a bit rubbish. \u00a0But there are big-picture reasons why you might want to cover this territory straight away. \u00a0I like McCann’s take on the characters; there’s a good central relationship between the two title characters, and Mockingbird’s defensiveness is being written well. \u00a0David and Alvaro Lopez’ art is good, dynamic stuff with a nice clean feel to it. \u00a0Oh, and Dominic Fortune’s in it, if you’re a fan. \u00a0Goodness, I’m in a positive mood this week.<\/p>\n

I, Zombie<\/em> #2<\/strong> – I’m still not quite sure what I make of this. \u00a0It’s part a black comedy soap opera with “monster” characters who are quite normal really, and part a story about Gwen investigating the murder of the last guy whose brain she ate. \u00a0There’s a slightly stilted feel to the whole thing, but there are also some lovely ideas, like the vampire paintballing company. \u00a0I hate to say it, but I’m not quite sure Mike Allred is the right artist for this – maybe it’s just me, but while he’s an excellent artist, I find his style gives the story a slightly ironic sheen which it might be better without. \u00a0It’s okay, but I’m not gripped.<\/p>\n

Sweet Tooth<\/em> #10<\/strong> –\u00a0\u00a0Billed as an interlude in the “Captivity” storyline, this is the closest we’ve come yet to finding out where Gus actually came from. \u00a0Gus gets hypnotised by the scientist, and tells us all what he remembers about his early life. \u00a0This is a lovely series, and I think the reason it works is because, even though we don’t really know what’s going on, we certainly know a lot more than the heartbreakingly naive Gus, who is always one step behind even us, and is frequently doing the equivalent of standing in the path of an ongoing truck while the reader shouts “Move, you fool!” \u00a0But at the same time, Gus doesn’t come across as stupid, simply excusably ignorant and out of his depth. \u00a0It’s really hard to write a basically ineffective protagonist without the audience losing patience with them, but Jeff Lemire’s pulling it off wonderfully here.<\/p>\n

Giant-Size X-Men Forever<\/em> #1<\/strong> – The only X-book this week! \u00a0This is a sort of transitional issue between the first and second years of Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever<\/em>. \u00a0It’s priced at four dollars, but that gets you 32 pages of original story, plus a reprint of X-Men<\/em> #108. \u00a0That’s the first Claremont\/Byrne issue and, by the way, the one\u00a0\u00a0where Claremont first tries to explain what Phoenix is – with a load of blather about the Kaballah that suggests Grant Morrison’s take on the character isn’t so wide of the original premise. \u00a0Anyhow, the purpose of this story is to write out Charles Xavier, who gets hauled off to the Shi’ar Empire again. \u00a0I’m fine with getting rid of him – he’s a character who often seems to get in the way of telling stories, partly because he’s so impractically powerful – but this isn’t a particularly good story. \u00a0It’s another one where the Shi’ar Empire suddenly get it into their heads that they have to do something wholly unreasonable because the plot demands it. \u00a0It’s got art by Mike Grell, but the heavy inking isn’t particularly attractive. \u00a0On the other hand, it’s nice to see Claremont bringing in the early nineties X-Men whom he relegated to the background in the first year. \u00a0And I’m strangely looking forward to the next story, guest starring the early nineties Avengers – Spider-Woman, Thunderstrike, the albino Vision…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a podcast weekend, and the latest episode of House to Astonish will be up… ooh, any minute now, probably. \u00a0We recorded it earlier today. \u00a0This week, Al and I talk about Bulletproof Coffin, Hawkeye & Mockingbird and Justice League: Generation Lost. Also this weekend, I have been wrestling with an HP Photosmart Premium C309g […]<\/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-360","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\/360","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=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}