{"id":3902,"date":"2017-10-05T21:54:57","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T20:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3902"},"modified":"2017-10-05T21:54:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T20:54:57","slug":"x-men-blue-10-12-toil-and-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3902","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Blue #10-12: “Toil and Trouble”"},"content":{"rendered":"

With\u00a0Secret Empire<\/em> out of the way,\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> returns to its storylines in progress. \u00a0We’re not quite pretending here that\u00a0Secret Empire<\/em> didn’t happen; the plot point of Scott and Jean’s mental link remains, and gets followed up. \u00a0But quite how it came about, we’re not talking about. \u00a0The really awkward stuff, it seems, we’re just going to ignore. \u00a0It’s the “No Man’s Land” solution, as I suspected.<\/p>\n

So instead, this is mainly a Beast story, as Cullen Bunn continues to follow up the storyline established by Dennis Hopeless on\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> about Hank’s dabbling in the occult.<\/p>\n

The basic idea is pretty sound. \u00a0Unable to compete with the scientific advances that have been made since his own time, Hank is drawn to magic simply because it can restore his status as a holder of esoteric knowledge. \u00a0It’s not about power, but simply soothing his ego. \u00a0Of course, characters who go down this sort of route are asking for trouble, and while Hank may know more about magic than anyone else in the regular cast, he’s still just an enthusiastic amateur by the standards of real magicians. \u00a0So this is all going to go badly wrong.<\/p>\n

Fair enough. \u00a0This three parter is, I guess, meant to keep things ticking over, and to bring a new character into the regular cast. \u00a0In his pursuit of magical knowledge, Hank is taking lessons from the Goblin Queen of all people. \u00a0That’s more through desperation than stupidity, in fairness. \u00a0Even so, she predictably betrays him and uses him to open a bunch of portals in the X-Men’s Madripoor home, through which she brings a bunch of Goblin Queens from other dimensions and a bunch of alternate X-Men who are already under her control. \u00a0Cue fighting, which largely means Scott and Jean beating a tactical retreat and then returning with the help of the Raksha (the local vigilante superteam from a few issues back).<\/p>\n

And, you know, it’s\u00a0okay<\/em>. \u00a0Whether in writing or art, there’s not much going on in terms of style to leave an impression. \u00a0It’s decently paced, it looks fine, but it all feels a bit interchangeable. \u00a0To be fair, there are two different artists working on this three parter – Giovanni Valletta on part one, Douglas Franchin on parts two and three. \u00a0Valletta’s work has a bit more kick to it, but given that he came on halfway through, who knows how long Franchin had for these issues. \u00a0They’re entirely solid, at any rate.<\/p>\n

The plot, on closer inspection, is a bit ramshackle. \u00a0We’re mainly interested in Hank, and the Goblin Queen is just here as a foil. \u00a0So her plan seems to be nothing more than to cause a bit of gratuitous chaos, and to bring some alternate versions of herself to Earth because… she feels like hanging out with them, I guess. \u00a0It’s not exactly complex, but it’s the sort of thing that can work as a chaotic villain for other characters to bounce off. \u00a0But the story starts off telling us that Hank is somehow under her control, only to turn around at the end and decide that, no, he isn’t.<\/p>\n

I get the idea, I suppose. \u00a0Hank has to save himself and reject the temptation of staying with Madelyne. \u00a0We’re probably meant to see this as some sort of turning point in his story. \u00a0The problem is that there’s a chunk of plot in the middle where Madelyne has already betrayed him, and isn’t obviously holding out the hope of any sort of hidden knowledge, but Hank is just acting like a transformed demon and siding with her anyway. \u00a0And then… he’s just kind of not, and he’s rejecting her, and so on. \u00a0It’s an awkward transition and it doesn’t really work. \u00a0From the way the rest of her henchmen are behaving, the idea is meant to be that they aren’t actually being mind controlled, they’re just desperate in one way or another, and hoping that she’ll deliver on promises to them. \u00a0But that doesn’t really come across in anything that happens with Hank.<\/p>\n

Instead, it’s a dynamic that gets shunted over to one of her other alternate-universe X-Men, namely Bloodstorm. \u00a0Yes, from\u00a0Mutant X<\/em>. \u00a0Or another version of the same character, at any rate. \u00a0This is the vampire version of Storm, and her story is clear enough: she’s there hoping to be cured of vampirism, and even though she realises that Maddie is stringing her along, she can’t quite bring herself to turn on Maddie just in case she’s wrong. \u00a0That’s a nice enough idea, particularly given that it’s only used for two issues. \u00a0For some reason Maddie’s treatment of Hank is the last straw for Bloodstorm, though that’s a bit harder to follow; the idea is probably meant to be that seeing Maddie manipulate Hank convinces Bloodstorm that she’s being treated the same way, but that’s not really how it plays out on the page.<\/p>\n

Bloodstorm seems to be sticking around, which is a weird choice. \u00a0With Jimmy Hudson already added to the cast, this seems to be expanding the concept from “extra versions of the Silver Age X-Men” to “duplicate X-Men more generally”. \u00a0If that is the direction, I’m not convinced. \u00a0But we’ll see where it’s going.<\/p>\n

Oh yes… Jimmy. \u00a0To keep the focus on Hank, the plot packs him and Angel off back to Colorado to investigate Miss Sinister’s experiments. \u00a0This gets a fair amount of page space over the three issues, but it really boils down to establishing that she’s doing some sort of evil experiments based on the DNA of the Ultimate Universe’s unique, man-made mutants; part of that involves doing unspeakable things to the Blob; and the word “mothervine” crops up a bit. \u00a0It never really seems to dovetail with the A-plot in any particular way, but it keeps up the momentum for that storyline.<\/p>\n

Overall, it’s fine. \u00a0It feels like it’s heading somewhere, which is worth a lot; and the destination still feels like it could be interesting. \u00a0But the details of how we’re getting to that destination aren’t bringing out all the potential here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With\u00a0Secret Empire out of the way,\u00a0X-Men Blue returns to its storylines in progress. \u00a0We’re not quite pretending here that\u00a0Secret Empire didn’t happen; the plot point of Scott and Jean’s mental link remains, and gets followed up. \u00a0But quite how it came about, we’re not talking about. \u00a0The really awkward stuff, it seems, we’re just going […]<\/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-3902","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\/3902","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=3902"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3906,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902\/revisions\/3906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}