{"id":4002,"date":"2018-01-11T22:55:57","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T22:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4002"},"modified":"2018-01-11T23:17:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T23:17:40","slug":"x-men-gold-annual-1-cross-atlantic-caper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4002","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: Gold Annual #1: “Cross-Atlantic Caper”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s thirty years since\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #1, and with three of the cast currently appearing in\u00a0X-Men: Gold<\/em>, it does make sense for the book to do a tribute. \u00a0And where better than in an annual, that traditional home of byways and digressions?<\/p>\n

The result is… odd. \u00a0There’s a nice Alan Davis cover, re-doing the cover of\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> #1 with the characters in their current costumes. \u00a0The interior art is by Alitha Martinez, and while it isn’t especially reminiscent of Davis, she does a sound job on the character comedy, she sells Meggan’s key scene very well, and she does nicely enough with a brief dimension-hopping homage sequence.<\/p>\n

Marc Guggenheim and Leah Williams’ story, on the other hand, is something of a half-formed affair, full of quite promising ideas that never actually tie together.<\/p>\n

Brian and Meggan have just had their first child, and Kurt, Rachel and Kitty go to visit them. \u00a0This being a tribute issue, the new parents have rebuilt the old Excalibur lighthouse as their new home. \u00a0The kid, Maggie, turns out to be hyper-intelligent, and is talking already – though physically she’s still just a baby and has to be carried everywhere. \u00a0Then Starhammer attacks (what do you mean, you don’t remember Starhammer?) looking for revenge on Rachel and the human race, but Excalibur press a button on a thingy and give him a way of reaching a world where his people weren’t all killed off. \u00a0So he can go and live there, and he does, and that’s the end.<\/p>\n

Okay, so. \u00a0This is two different stories bolted together to make a pantomime horse. \u00a0The first half – well, once you get past four pages of unnecessary set-up about getting the invitation and getting on a plane – seems to be setting up a rather charming story about the old friends getting back together and the oddity of the new and hyper-intelligent child. \u00a0Maggie feels like quite an\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> sort of idea, and she belongs in an anniversary story. \u00a0She demands that people pick her up so she can see what’s going on, and her dialogue veers absurdly from basic questions like “Why am I so small?” to philosophical musings, all of which Brian greets with adoring enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Meggan is genuinely upset at the thought of not getting to watch her child grow up properly, which gets about two pages, but is actually handled quite well.<\/p>\n

And then Starhammer shows up and there’s a fight. \u00a0He’s a strange choice of villain – Excalibur\u00a0<\/em>didn’t have the greatest selection of villains in the world, but there’s always the Warwolves, or the Crazy Gang – but he’d kind-of-sort-of work if he was a token villain who could get beaten by a ludicrously precocious toddler. \u00a0And there’s a not in that direction, because Maggie presses the button, but it doesn’t come across as anything more than her pressing a big red button right in front of her, marked “Press To Resolve Plot”. \u00a0 So it isn’t very satisfying, and it doesn’t tie the two halves together.<\/p>\n

Yes, yes, alright, I’m hearing you all saying. \u00a0But who the hell is Starhammer?<\/p>\n

Well, according to the opening flashback, Starhammer was one of the handful of D’Bari survivors who happened to be off-world when Dark Phoenix destroyed the planet back in\u00a0Uncanny<\/em> #135. \u00a0He helped to rebuild the remaining survivors, tried to kill Rachel in revenge for the death of his world, and thought he’d succeeded, when in fact she just used her telepathy to make him think he’d succeeded. \u00a0He returned home as a conquering hero, only to eventually be exiled in disgrace when everyone realised that Rachel wasn’t dead. \u00a0And now he is angry. \u00a0A footnote directs us to\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0<\/em>#387.<\/p>\n

If this doesn’t ring a bell, then it might be because\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #387 is the back of beyond, continuity-wise. \u00a0It’s a “Maximum Security” tie-in from the tail end of the second Chris Claremont run, just before the Morrison\/Casey reboot. \u00a0Starhammer was indeed a surviving D’Bari who attacked Phoenix and got palmed off with false memories. \u00a0But he claimed to be the only surviving D’Bari, and the Phoenix he attacked was Jean, not Rachel. \u00a0Rachel isn’t in the issue.<\/p>\n

(It’s a pretty dreadful issue, incidentally. \u00a0It ends with Jean giving a speech about how Phoenix may be a symbol of genocide but it’s supposed to be a symbol of fire, passion and life, and it’s desperately important to reclaim it for that meaning, by using the name “proudly – in order to set things right”. \u00a0Apparently, “to do any less would be a denial of everything the X-Men stand for, of everything Professor Xavier taught me”. \u00a0Um….)<\/p>\n

So… we’ve got a villain who’s out for revenge on the wrong character following his exile from a community that doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n

You do wonder how that sort of thing happens.<\/p>\n

Oh, and there’s a back-up! \u00a0It’s by Monty Nero and Djibril Morissette-Phan, and it’s ten pages of a girl dragging her mother around New York in the hope of getting the chance to meet Storm. \u00a0It’s simple, it’s charming (though it wouldn’t hurt to dial back on the meta in a couple of places), and it’s a sweet take on the X-Men as viewed from the outside. \u00a0It’s refreshingly optimistic for an X-Men story. \u00a0I liked it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s thirty years since\u00a0Excalibur #1, and with three of the cast currently appearing in\u00a0X-Men: Gold, it does make sense for the book to do a tribute. \u00a0And where better than in an annual, that traditional home of byways and digressions? The result is… odd. \u00a0There’s a nice Alan Davis cover, re-doing the cover of\u00a0Excalibur #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-4002","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\/4002","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=4002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4004,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions\/4004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}