{"id":4259,"date":"2018-08-16T23:26:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T22:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4259"},"modified":"2018-08-16T23:26:22","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T22:26:22","slug":"astonishing-x-men-annual-1-who-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4259","title":{"rendered":"Astonishing X-Men Annual #1: “Who We Are”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems we’re headed for yet another relaunch, with a new\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> weekly title on the way. \u00a0It’s no great surprise to see Gold<\/em> and\u00a0Blue<\/em> coming to an end (the time travelling kids look like their storyline is finally building to some sort of conclusion in the\u00a0Extermination<\/em> mini). \u00a0It’s perhaps a little odder to see yet another relaunch in the offing while\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> and\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em> are literally in the course of “gathering the team” arcs. \u00a0It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that this direction, or indeed any other, will stick it out for long. \u00a0Still, it’s a decent line-up of creators, so let’s hope it works out.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we have an\u00a0Astonishing X-Men Annual<\/em>, predictably numbered #1. \u00a0And this is pretty good. \u00a0Although it’s written by the current\u00a0Astonishing<\/em> writer Matthew Rosenberg, it’s a follow-up to Charles Soule’s arc, catching up with what Professor X is up to now that he’s been revived. \u00a0Always good to see some follow-up.<\/p>\n

The original X-Men – or the four that are left – get together for a reunion to celebrate Jean’s return. \u00a0The direction their lives have taken is all a bit depressing. \u00a0Hank’s spent his life being a superhero when he should have been a top scientist; Warren has to worry about his Archangel persona all the time; Jean kind of misses being dead; and Bobby’s fine, actually, but that’s still not a great strike rate. \u00a0At which point, X shows up claiming that he thinks they have a point; he asked too much of them when he recruited them as X-Men. \u00a0Fortunately, he can make it right.<\/p>\n

X takes them to a town called Lago, where he is inexplicably living in a mansion despite having no apparent source of legitimate income. \u00a0(The X-Men notice, but turn a blind eye.) \u00a0The people of Lago are unfailing polite, welcoming to mutants, and generally don’t seem to fear or hate them at all. \u00a0It’s all very nice and friendly, and, therefore, blatantly suspicious. \u00a0In fact, the town used to have a track record for being insanely anti-mutant even by normal standards, but there’s no sign of anything wrong.<\/p>\n

After a bit, X reveals that this is actually the work of Lucifer, who is apparently an alien mind-control parasite that merges with people rather than possessing them outright. \u00a0It’s been a long while since anyone’s done anything with Lucifer, the bad guy who was credited with paralysing Xavier back in the early Silver Age. \u00a0In fact, he’s barely appeared since the sixties.<\/p>\n

Consider how bad a Lee and\/or Kirby Silver Age character has to be, for nobody to use them. \u00a0This guy was clearly conceived as an arch-enemy for Professor X, and he’s had only marginally more staying power than the average Ant-Man villain. \u00a0And that’s probably because he’s downright dull; his costume is boring, he’s a generic alien invader, he doesn’t resonate with the X-Men’s themes, he has nothing much else to comment him, he’s simply rubbish. \u00a0Rosenberg’s approach is pretty much to ignore the established concept and start fresh, with Lucifer as a sort of mental virus that seemingly just wants to propagate.<\/p>\n

There’s not\u00a0much<\/em> basis for that in Lucifer’s previous stories. \u00a0But there is some – Rosenberg seems to be drawing mainly on his most recent appearance,\u00a0Captain America\u00a0<\/em>#177-178, which is one of those post-Nixon issues where Steve Rogers was on strike. \u00a0\u00a0In that story, he was indeed splitting his mind between two host bodies, and it didn’t work out very well for him. \u00a0Still, he was basically a generic big-talk conqueror; the idea that he just wants to spread is retcon central.<\/p>\n

But whatever. \u00a0It’s Lucifer; if you think you can retool him into something that might actually contribute something to the mythos, sure, fire away. \u00a0The irony here is that while Lucifer has to be stopped because he’s an alien mind-altering parasite, he really does seem to be just making everyone happier and nicer with no particular ulterior motive. \u00a0Still, Xavier’s point here is clearly meant to be the orthodox genre reading of a story like this: yes, it’s all very seductive, but it’d still be Lucifer taking over the world so it has to be stopped. \u00a0And Archangel is put in the position of killing Lucifer, which he does.<\/p>\n

More to the point, Xavier’s message to the X-Men is: you may not like your lives very much, but tough, because the alternative is letting the bad guys win. \u00a0It would be nice if you enjoyed it more, and hopefully you will, but you really don’t have a choice, so get over it. \u00a0This is not an especially sympathetic take on Xavier, and in part that flows from what Soule was doing: there remains a very clear sense that something is\u00a0Not Right about this reincarnated Xavier, even if he persists in attributing everything to a change of perspective. \u00a0Of course, in Soule’s story Xavier was under the Shadow King’s influence for most of the time, but there was still a hint of something not feeling quite right.<\/p>\n

Rosenberg hits the tone of a Xavier who is recognisable enough to register as “off”, instead of feeling like a different character entirely. \u00a0Still, in a perverse way, this Xavier does seem to be trying to set the X-Men back on the track to doing the right thing, and he\u00a0does<\/em> seem to genuinely care when they might be in trouble. \u00a0He’s self-righteous and self-justifying, and he’s stringing the X-Men along to teach them a lesson, but he’s not exactly wrong – and Silver Age Xavier certainly had his callous and manipulative tendencies.<\/p>\n

Rosenberg’s handle on the four main X-Men is pretty good on its own terms. \u00a0Hank and Jean play fairly normally. \u00a0Bobby is a bit of a dimwit, falling into the team junior role that he used to have through to the end of the 80s; it’s a little odd to write him like this today, but it is his traditional role among this group. \u00a0Warren is odder – the story runs with the idea that he needs to control Archangel and fears what he’ll do if he transforms. \u00a0But didn’t Xavier cure that problem in the very Charles Soule story that this is following up? \u00a0I don’t get it.<\/p>\n

Travel Foreman’s art isn’t always to my taste – it has an odd combination of realistic detail and brittle stiffness – but he works well here. \u00a0He’s good on costume design, he has an interesting approach to the Beast, and the whole story benefits from the general sense of slight unease which, to be honest, I get from a lot of his work.<\/p>\n

On the whole, this is a good annual; it tells a decent story in an issue, it picks up on a plot thread that I suspected was just going to drift, and it has some good angles on the original X-Men team. \u00a0The odd use of Archangel would normally be a problem for me, but heck, I liked it enough to give it a pass on that. \u00a0Worth a look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems we’re headed for yet another relaunch, with a new\u00a0Uncanny X-Men weekly title on the way. \u00a0It’s no great surprise to see Gold and\u00a0Blue coming to an end (the time travelling kids look like their storyline is finally building to some sort of conclusion in the\u00a0Extermination mini). \u00a0It’s perhaps a little odder to see […]<\/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-4259","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\/4259","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=4259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4260,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions\/4260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}