{"id":4407,"date":"2018-11-21T21:42:43","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T21:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4407"},"modified":"2018-11-21T21:42:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T21:42:43","slug":"astonishing-x-men-13-17-until-our-hearts-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4407","title":{"rendered":"Astonishing X-Men #13-17: “Until Our Hearts Stop”"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve just had a relaunch of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0<\/em>last week, positioned back in its flagship role, and clearly the title that we’re meant to look at and go “ah, there is the direction for the line”. \u00a0But there are some signs of incoherence in here as well – not least that\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em> and\u00a0X-Men Red<\/em> are both running “gathering the team” arcs which wind up being overtaken by the next relaunch before they’ve even finished.<\/p>\n

So Matthew Rosenberg’s first arc on\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em> – solicited with “A new era begins now!” – is also the last, even though he’s going to be writing\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> going forward. \u00a0It has the distinct look of things being made up on the fly.<\/p>\n

The main point of this story, it seems, is to rehab a couple of characters who needed to get back in circulation. It’s basically a team that forms around Havok, after his “inversion” was cured in\u00a0X-Men Blue\u00a0<\/em>a few months back. \u00a0Havok is trying to get back into being a superhero again, only to find that his assistance isn’t especially welcome – partly because people don’t really trust him, but mainly because he’s still a bit erratic, off his game, and generally a bit of a loser. \u00a0So Kitty is very much not down with him leading an X-Man team, and he’s off using the name without permission.<\/p>\n

This is the sort of thing that would work a bit better if we didn’t already have multiple X-Men teams running around without reference to each other, by the way; at least this book makes a big thing of the fact that they have no real claim to the name.<\/p>\n

For the rest of the group, we have Beast, who’s decided that he’d really rather just go and teach in a regular university, only for Havok to bring the bad guys to his doorstep; Banshee, who’s been in suspended animation since\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em>\u00a0#23, and spends most of the story shuffling around as a zombie until he can be properly restored through a bit of handwaving in the final issue; Warpath, taking his\u00a0Weapon X<\/em> role as the straight man sent to keep an eye on the wonky team; drunken rebound Colossus, who’s a bit disappointed that the X-Men actually did leave him alone when he told them to leave him alone; and Dazzler, back in failing retro disco act mode (even though the last time we saw her, she was into punk… but whatever).<\/p>\n

The bad guys are a revived version of O*N*E, now in anti-mutant mode (which makes some sense given that you-know-who probably appointed the current leadership), and the Reavers, pressganged into working for O*N*E but more interested in stealing the new technology for themselves. \u00a0They’re engaging enough here, pretty much treating the whole thing as just business, and given enough personality as backstabbing mercenaries to play entertainingly off the X-Men.<\/p>\n

The original concept for this series was a different artist on every issue, which didn’t exactly contribute to a visually coherent storyline. \u00a0Now we get a single artist for a whole arc… and it’s Greg Land. \u00a0Of whom I am not a fan. \u00a0And, look, this is actually some of his better work. \u00a0It’s not as awkward as he’s often been; he’s given plenty of oddball tech stuff to draw, which tends to bring out the best in him. \u00a0It’s bright and clean. \u00a0And aside from Dazzler, there are virtually no women in the comic, so he doesn’t really have the chance to be at his most obnoxious.<\/p>\n

But this is still a story that makes heavy use of character comedy, and plays its central cast as loveable losers. \u00a0It feels like a script designed to be drawn by someone like Kevin Maguire, who has the nuance to really give it some charm. \u00a0And while Land does better on that side of things than you might expect – there’s a wider range of facial expression than I’m used to seeing from him – charm is not his strong suit. \u00a0There are scenes which are clearly trying to write Alex as puckish, and it’s not landing. \u00a0Plus, frankly, it’s pretty obvious that Land’s back to tracing different expressions from entirely different models, without actually smoothing them together into a consistent character design. \u00a0It’s glaring on Alison and Alex in particular.<\/p>\n

The arc here is broadly about Alex’s seemingly haphazard approach kind-of bonding his team, and at least proving himself in some degree by the end of the arc. \u00a0Obviously that’s rather undermined by the fact that they\u00a0don’t<\/em> stick together because we’re going into another relaunch, but at least we’re shown that Warpath is won round to the idea that Havok knows what he’s doing. \u00a0And the final issue has a good epilogue scene with Havok explaining to Dazzler that he’d rather be the butt of the joke than end up grim and depressed like Scott did.<\/p>\n

There’s a good story in here, but it’s not well served by the art, which can’t handle the comedy. \u00a0But with a different artist, this could actually have been the start of a promising series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve just had a relaunch of\u00a0Uncanny X-Men\u00a0last week, positioned back in its flagship role, and clearly the title that we’re meant to look at and go “ah, there is the direction for the line”. \u00a0But there are some signs of incoherence in here as well – not least that\u00a0Astonishing X-Men and\u00a0X-Men Red are both running […]<\/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-4407","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\/4407","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=4407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4408,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions\/4408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}