{"id":4324,"date":"2018-10-04T22:53:32","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T21:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4324"},"modified":"2018-10-04T22:53:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T21:53:32","slug":"domino-annual-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4324","title":{"rendered":"Domino Annual #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annuals are always off to the side somewhere, and if they’re not going to be important to the plot, they have to find some other way of standing out. \u00a0The first\u00a0Domino<\/em> annual is certainly different: it’s a four-story anthology with four different writers (plus a framing sequence by Leah Williams and Michael Shelfer). \u00a0So we’re getting a bunch of different perspectives on Domino, a character who’s been written in wildly divergent ways over the years. \u00a0Does it add up to something coherent?<\/p>\n

First up is “Dead Drunk in Dry Gulch”, by regular writer Gail Simone, with art by Victor Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez and Jay David Ramos. \u00a0This one ties in directly to the regular title, since it’s a flashback to Domino’s first encounter with Outlaw, forming the posse from the regular title. \u00a0It’s a blatant retcon, equipping Domino with two best friends who she’s never previously been associated with, so a bit of back story probably helps lend it weight.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Domino and Diamondback stumble into Outlaw while hunting for a bad guy. \u00a0Domino, being Domino, is instantly impressed by the crazy cowgirl and wants to make friends. \u00a0You know the drill, but Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez does well at selling Domino’s casual flukiness (as she imperviously drinks beer during the fight), and Outlaw’s frenzied craziness. \u00a0Fortunately, the actual villain is a Z-lister who’s building a cross between a Sentinel and a pick-up truck, and when Outlaw finds out that he’s probably not going to pay her, she switches sides, And That’s How They Met. \u00a0It’s a cute little vignette, even if the Posse still feel like a new element pretending to be more established than they are. \u00a0That’ll fade with time.<\/p>\n

“The Good Fight” by Fabian Nicieza, Juan Gedeon & Jesus Aburtov is a very strange five pager. \u00a0It’s basically Cable in a future war zone (which Gedeon draws in a pleasingly chunky way) reminiscing about the time he had a bath with Domino. \u00a0Cable remembers that as a moment of peace or hope or something, but he’s angry with himself because he realises it wasn’t really Domino.<\/p>\n

This is a call-back to a scene from\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #6, and probably makes little or no sense to anyone who doesn’t remember the original. \u00a0Domino did indeed turn out to be an impostor in her earliest appearances – the real Domino’s canonical first appearance is a flashback in\u00a0X-Force<\/em> #8. \u00a0And the relative awkwardness of the art on the bath scene makes a lot more sense when you look at the art which Gedeon is trying to echo; Rob Liefeld’s original scene has some, er, interesting perspective and scale issues, just for starters.<\/p>\n

Nicieza did write Domino’s earlier appearances, so it makes sense to have him here, but this is a weird thing to produce for this issue. \u00a0It’s not a Domino story – if it’s anything, it’s a Cable story – and it’s not even particularly about Cable’s feelings on the real Domino. \u00a0It’s also totally out of place in the framing story device, which does it no favours.<\/p>\n

“Rebound”, by Dennis Hopeless and Leonard Kirk (and Jesus Aburtov, who colours all of the other stories, so I’m not going to keep listing him), checks in on the abortive Domino \/ Colossus relationship from Hopeless’s run on\u00a0X-Force<\/em>. \u00a0Hopeless’s take on Domino is fairly close to Gail Simone’s, so this fits in neatly enough; she loves the big guy, but enjoys playing the chaos role and teasing the serious professional at the same time. \u00a0It’s basically fine; the plot is a backdrop for the characters to play off each other, and Kirk’s great at the awkward interactions.<\/p>\n

Finally, “Domino & The Rejex”, by Leah Williams and Natcha Bustos, tries to balance things out with something of Domino’s more serious side. \u00a0Williams also writes the framing sequence (listed in the credits page as “Saturdays are for the Body Count”), which is basically an overcommitted Domino racing from place to place to pull off elaborate and absurd merc gigs; but her actual story takes a different tack.<\/p>\n

Domino is meant to be helping out with Nightcrawler’s new support group for “non-passing” mutants, “Mindfulness for Mutant Appearances”. \u00a0Most of the story actually consists of highlights of Nightcrawler chairing the inaugural meeting, for which Domino is late. \u00a0Depending on how seriously you take this sort of thing, you may be pleased to know that Maggott is apparently alive after all. \u00a0More surprising appearances are Kylun from Alan Davis’s\u00a0Excalibur<\/em> run, who doesn’t like the villains being there, and Stacy X, who lost her powers after\u00a0House of M<\/em> and looks perfectly normal, but showed up anyway looking for some sort of connection with her past life.<\/p>\n

Domino herself shows up literally on the last page to deliver a pep talk, which is a weird choice in a Domino story. \u00a0It’s not as if the rest of the story is particularly defined by her absence. \u00a0But then Williams is already doing Domino in the framing sequence, and there’s something I like about the idea that Domino would be on the fringes of this group; she’s too flaky to run it herself, and seriousness doesn’t come naturally to her as it does to Kurt, but it’s still in there somewhere. \u00a0It’s a story that only really works as a Domino story because it’s appearing in this anthology format.<\/p>\n

The others… mmm. \u00a0The annual doesn’t really hang together as a whole, and it doesn’t feel like we’re getting a bunch of different Domino stories; the Cable thing is just off in a little world of its own, while the Outlaw and Colossus stories are bit too similar in tone to the framing sequence. \u00a0Taken as a whole, it has its moments, but it doesn’t click.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annuals are always off to the side somewhere, and if they’re not going to be important to the plot, they have to find some other way of standing out. \u00a0The first\u00a0Domino annual is certainly different: it’s a four-story anthology with four different writers (plus a framing sequence by Leah Williams and Michael Shelfer). \u00a0So we’re […]<\/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-4324","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\/4324","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=4324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4325,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324\/revisions\/4325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}