{"id":4624,"date":"2019-07-06T21:11:36","date_gmt":"2019-07-06T20:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4624"},"modified":"2019-07-06T21:11:36","modified_gmt":"2019-07-06T20:11:36","slug":"age-of-x-man-x-tremists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4624","title":{"rendered":"Age of X-Man: X-Tremists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leah Williams and Georges Jeanty’s\u00a0X-Tremists<\/em> takes on one of the trickier tasks of the\u00a0Age of X-Man<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>crossover: writing a bunch of characters as a secret police force who mindwipe, and ultimately disappear, inconvenient people – people who won’t get on board with Nate’s relationship-free, individualist culture. \u00a0While the public don’t know about all the mind wiping, or at least know about it only as a rumour, they do know about Department X itself, as a relatively low level outfit policing antisocial behaviour. \u00a0From the standpoint of the\u00a0Age of X-Man<\/em> public, they’re the vice squad. \u00a0(Rather unfortunately, their slogan “Semper Vigilo<\/em>” – “Always Watching” – is also the motto of Police Scotland.)<\/p>\n

But they’re a bit more awful than that, which raises awkward questions for the characters. \u00a0After all, sure, they’re under outside influence. \u00a0But so is everyone else, and plenty of them are breaking free. \u00a0Most of those that aren’t are simply living “normal” lives in Nate’s society. \u00a0The Department X members are actively enforcing Nate’s pseudotopia.<\/p>\n

The characters Nate has selected for this role – and other series do indicate that Nate has made conscious choices in where people wind up – are Psylocke, Jubilee, Northstar, Iceman, Blob, and somebody called “Moneta” who’s obviously patterned on M, but whose exact identity and nature are a bit obscure. \u00a0That could be a plot point for the\u00a0Omega<\/em> issue. \u00a0In the meantime, given that Moneta is far and away the most enthusiastic enforcer of Nate’s rules, and that she’s said to be a new recruit, the implication seems to be that she’s loosely modelled on the real Monet, and intended to nudge the rest of the squad back into line.<\/p>\n

As for her teammates… well, Psylocke has the actual mind-wiping powers and a history of moral flexibility. \u00a0The presence of both Iceman and Northstar in the puritan squad might imply that Nate has some sort of additional hang-ups at play. \u00a0Jubilee is a seemingly random choice, except that it allows the story to do a motherhood parallel playing on the absent Shogo.. \u00a0And Blob is one of the handful of actual villains that Nate had to draw on – though ironically this version of Blob turns out to be rather nicer than usual. \u00a0He’s hardly heroic – he’s in Department X, after all – but he does come across as diligent and well-meaning. \u00a0Given some actual trust and responsibility, and treated with general respect by everyone else, his bullying side seems to vanish. \u00a0It’d be nice to see this followed up instead of being forgotten.<\/p>\n

Now, beyond that, some choices in this series work rather better than others. \u00a0The first issue loses a lot of time on a running joke about baking terminology that doesn’t work, but the generally small-scale and domestic air of the series works quite well. \u00a0Why would these guys see themselves as the bad guys? \u00a0They’re driving around town in a Volkswagen camper van. \u00a0Georges Jeanty can be an inconsistent artist – there are some clumsy panels from time to time here, and I’m really not sure about his Iceman or Jubilee – but he certainly does bring the sense of low-key banality which the story needs (and to be clear, that’s a compliment). \u00a0His Blob is great, and he really does draw a wonderfully innocuous camper van.<\/p>\n

Issue #1 sees the team capture a rogue mutant who has managed to get pregnant, something which is obviously doubly awful, since nobody knows quite what to do about that from a healthcare standpoint. \u00a0The mere existence of Nezumi raises some odd questions, since she’s not a pre-existing character, so presumably she must have been created by Nate. \u00a0In fact, Department X seem to be keeping themselves busy at least in part by dealing with the misbehaviour of Nate’s own figurants. \u00a0Perhaps the idea is that Nate is self-sabotaging on some level; again, maybe\u00a0Omega<\/em> will tell us. \u00a0This series largely ignores the problem and treats Nezumi as a proper character with a life of her own. \u00a0More to the point is that, Moneta aside, the team \u00a0seem to be trying to deal with her in a vaguely ethical way – or at least in a way that they can convince themselves is vaguely ethical.<\/p>\n

As the series goes on, Blob and Psylocke drift together – a seemingly bizarre pairing that works better than you might expect, since it seems to be driven mainly by both responding to the possibility of connecting with someone in Nate’s emotionally incomplete world. \u00a0It’s played completely straight and largely succeeds. \u00a0Well, except for the bit with Betsy crawling over a table towards Blob, which is a bit over the top given the general tone. \u00a0Meanwhile, most of the team seem happy keeping their role as banal as possible, and perhaps dialling it back around the edges. \u00a0Except for Moneta, who is mistreating the prisoner. \u00a0Nezumi’s main role here is to confront Jubilee, Bobby and Jean-Paul with what it is that they’re actually doing.<\/p>\n

All this remains, by X-Men standards, a remarkably low-key plot; aside from this sort of gentle character development, not a huge amount really happens in issues #2-3. \u00a0Things start to build to a climax when we establish that Moneta is trying to prove herself (or maybe get the team back on mission) by showing that there really is a rebel force, while Bobby and Jean-Paul do in fact seem to be playing along with the day jobs. \u00a0And then… out of nowhere everyone just gets their memories back and there’s a bit of a riot. \u00a0The trouble is that that this feels weirdly contrived. \u00a0Jubilee has something concrete to prompt it, but Bobby and Jean-Paul seem to remember either because it’s time for the final act, or perhaps because something random is going on in another book to cause it. \u00a0Either way, it reads as if four issues of gentle and quite diverting build get suddenly overtaken by events, instead of coming to a natural crisis.<\/p>\n

X-Tremists<\/em> seems to want to tell a story about its characters finding love, or at least relationships, in a society that doesn’t want them to do so – which is a fairly obvious extension of the usual mutant metaphor, but no worse an idea for that. \u00a0In a sense it does deliver on that story, but winds up feeling like a random plot swerve was needed to jump from that to a climax, because the book as a whole lacks an overarching plot to hold it together. \u00a0That’s a shame, but there’s a lot to like in the moments along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leah Williams and Georges Jeanty’s\u00a0X-Tremists takes on one of the trickier tasks of the\u00a0Age of X-Man\u00a0crossover: writing a bunch of characters as a secret police force who mindwipe, and ultimately disappear, inconvenient people – people who won’t get on board with Nate’s relationship-free, individualist culture. \u00a0While the public don’t know about all the mind wiping, […]<\/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-4624","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\/4624","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=4624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4625,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}