{"id":419,"date":"2010-07-25T17:25:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T16:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=419"},"modified":"2010-07-25T17:25:28","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T16:25:28","slug":"the-x-axis-25-july-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=419","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 25 July 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the weekend of the San Diego Comicon, but to be honest, I usually just wait until the dust has settled and read the round-ups then. \u00a0However, I see Marvel have announced Generation Hope<\/em>, an ongoing series which sounds like it’s the latest incarnation of Generation X<\/em>. \u00a0I’m not… altogether sold on that title, which makes it sounds like a teenage version of the Alpha Course, but it’s written by Kieron Gillen, so there’s a pretty strong chance it’s going to be great.<\/p>\n

The same article also features the horrifying words “four Wolverine<\/em> titles”, but it turns out that that’s counting the Daken and X-23 books. \u00a0The two actual Wolverine titles, from the sound of it, are the relaunched Jason Aaron title, and something called Wolverine: The Best There Is<\/em>, presumably the replacement for Wolverine: Origins<\/em>. \u00a0Charlie Huston and Juan Jose Ryp are an interesting choice of creative team and the series might well be decent, but considering how Wolverine: Weapon X<\/em> stumbled out of the gate, I can’t help wondering if Marvel are massively overestimating what the market will support.<\/p>\n

Anyway. \u00a0Quiet week for X-books, quiet week for major releases generally…<\/p>\n

Amazing Spider-Man<\/em> #638<\/strong> – The first part of “One Moment in Time”, the story nobody wanted to see! \u00a0Now, I think the Spider-Man books on the whole have been vastly improved by the revamp of a couple of years past. \u00a0But the decision to include an in-story explanation for the change in history has created an awkward dilemma. \u00a0At some point they needed to address the question of what happened instead of Peter marrying Mary Jane, since it’s important to the history of both characters. \u00a0It’s an open sore in continuity which had to be dealt with sooner or later. \u00a0It doesn’t follow, however, that anyone particularly wants to read<\/em> that story. \u00a0After all, it’s not like “One More Day” was any good.<\/p>\n

So by writing this story himself (and drawing the framing sequence) editor-in-chief Joe Quesada isn’t grabbing the glory so much as taking the flak, and I suspect he’s well aware of that. \u00a0What you actually get<\/em> in this story is a framing sequence with Peter and Mary Jane talking about old times – in which Peter may be wildly off model, but the acting is frequently great, with Quesada showing that he can still do emotion better than most. \u00a0That’s followed by what can only be described as a revised version of Amazing Spider-Man Annual<\/em> #21, the wedding story itself. \u00a0It’s a modified reprint (including some 14 pages of the original), which basically takes advantage of the “race to the church” structure of the plot to nudge things the other way and send the story off the rails without too much effort.<\/p>\n

I don’t recall the solicitations making clear that there would be quite so much reprinted material in this issue, but to be fair, it’s a 42-page story (plus a 2-page back-up) priced at $3.99, so it’s not like they’re charging extra for the reprinted pages. \u00a0It’s actually more enjoyable than I was expecting – which is to say that I was braced for something as ponderously awful as “One More Day”, while this is passably entertaining with its interpolations of the original issue, and Marcos Martin’s art on the additional sequences. \u00a0Still, it remains more of a necessary explanation than a story – though that may have been inevitable.<\/p>\n

Battlefields<\/em> #8<\/strong> – This is the middle chapter of “Motherlands”, the sequel to Garth Ennis’ earlier story about female Russian fighter pilots in World War II. \u00a0While Ennis loves his war stories, they do tend towards exercises in male bonding. \u00a0A female protagonist necessarily moves him away from that, and what Ennis seems to be mainly interested in here – aside from a fairly familiar “getting over the death of a loved one” story – is writing a military force which, for a change, isn’t exclusively male. \u00a0As a character, Anna’s not much different from Ennis’ usual male leads, but then arguably, nor should she be; it’s the relationships with the other characters that change. \u00a0Ennis isn’t always as convincing doing romantic subplots, but it’s good to see him varying the formula.<\/p>\n

Dark Wolverine<\/em> #88 <\/strong>– The “Dark Reign” stuff is over, the relaunch isn’t for another couple of months… let’s do a crossover with Franken-Castle<\/em>. \u00a0If you haven’t been reading Punisher<\/em>, well, it’s gone completely off the deep end of late. \u00a0They did a Dark Reign tie-in story where Daken showed up as a guest star, killed the Punisher, and chopped him up, only for a bunch of old horror characters to revive him as Frankenstein. \u00a0No, really. \u00a0It’s drifted a bit from the “vigilante who shoots drug dealers” routine.<\/p>\n

Now, plainly, Franken-Castle<\/em> is stark raving mad, though part of the joke is to play it dead straight and commit wholeheartedly to the concept as if it were utterly normal. \u00a0When he shows up as a guest star in another book, though… you’ve got a bit of a tone clash, let’s say. \u00a0This issue starts off as a standard Daken story – he’s in Japan looking to replace the Muramasa Blade with another weapon that can kill Wolverine. \u00a0So presumably that’s going to be the subject of his next arc. \u00a0And then the Punisher shows up looking to kill him. \u00a0Cue big fight. \u00a0It comes off as a grinding gear change. \u00a0I can’t quite figure out whether the creators think Dark Wolverine<\/em> is already a crazy romp along the lines of Franken-Castle<\/em> (it isn’t), but I can’t help feeling Daken really needs to react to Frank as something much, much stranger, instead of making a passing reference and taking it in his stride. \u00a0Maybe they’re trying to play it straight, but it feels more like a standard Punisher guest appearance that pays lip service to the current direction.<\/p>\n

New Mutants<\/em> #15<\/strong> – One of those “before we were so rudely interrupted” stories that you sometimes get in the aftermath of a crossover. \u00a0Zeb Wells and Leonard Kirk bring the title characters back into the series, and pack them off on holiday to get to know one another again. \u00a0Which is for the best, because Wells is good at the character details, and the team dynamic ought to be the thing that makes this series stand out from the other X-books. \u00a0Our new villains are, from the look of it, a bunch of soldiers who’ve only just managed to get back to Earth after being teleported to Limbo by Magik a good while ago. \u00a0They’re partly demonic. \u00a0They’re a bit mad. \u00a0And they’re out for revenge. \u00a0They’re a great idea for a bunch of New Mutants villains, since (a) they’ve sort of got a point about Magik, and (b) the visual of a bunch of half-demon soldiers is enjoyably ludicrous. \u00a0This should be a fun story. \u00a0Minor glitch: the story also uses Pixie, but doesn’t seem to have noticed that she and Magik sort of reconciled at the end of the Hellbound<\/em> miniseries, which undercuts the end of a story that only just finished. \u00a0Still, plenty to like here.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Tranquility: One Foot in the Grave<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Gail Simone writes a sequel to her cancelled WildStorm series about a superhero retirement village. \u00a0I could have sworn the WildStorm universe had had an apocalypse or something, but evidently not in this series, and thank heavens for that. \u00a0This is actually a direct continuation of an earlier plot, with the mayor having dubiously achieved an acquittal on the murder charge thanks to a lack of direct evidence and his world-famous reputation as a hero. \u00a0As before, this series works by striking an odd balance between small-town drama and superhero trappings, in a way that’s often explicitly absurd – such as the defence lawyer wearing a cape and mask over his suit. \u00a0Tranquility<\/em> takes the utterly bizarre and makes it normal, simply by making sure that everyone’s so bizarre that the baseline of weird shoots up – easier said than done, but Simone can make this sort of thing work. \u00a0Artist Horacio Domingues seems to be principally emulating the style of the earlier series rather than imposing his own identity, but for a sequel, that may be for the best.<\/p>\n

X-Factor<\/em> #207<\/strong> – Another book returning to normal after the “Second Coming” crossover (though X-Factor<\/em> at least continued to feature its core cast). \u00a0The Baron Mordo subplot is tied up and seemingly brushed aside in the opening pages, in a slightly awkward way, but the issue moves on to start a new arc where the team get hired to retrieve an ancient magical artefact for a client whom we all know is Hela, but they don’t recognise. \u00a0Given the character who returns to the cast at the end of the issue, I suspect this isn’t quite the random guest appearance it first seems. \u00a0It’s a bit unfortunate that the cover completely blows Hela’s identity, but then I suppose it doesn’t hugely matter. \u00a0The tension here isn’t that we<\/em> don’t recognise Hela, it’s that X-Factor don’t recognise her. \u00a0Also in this issue: another completely random guest star who you wouldn’t expect to see in this book (but then, as the semi-detached X-book, X-Factor<\/em> is best placed to make use of the resources of Marvel’s New York City), and some deep and meaningful conversation between Rictor and Shatterstar. \u00a0There’s something about that relationship that isn’t quite working for me at the moment – I think perhaps it’s a vague sense that Peter David is advancing a carefully thought out argument rather than just writing them as a couple. \u00a0Then again, Shatterstar’s such an odd character that his romantic subplots probably shouldn’t come naturally to him, and maybe that’s where the slightly stilted feeling comes from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the weekend of the San Diego Comicon, but to be honest, I usually just wait until the dust has settled and read the round-ups then. \u00a0However, I see Marvel have announced Generation Hope, an ongoing series which sounds like it’s the latest incarnation of Generation X. \u00a0I’m not… altogether sold on that title, […]<\/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-419","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\/419","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=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}