{"id":5529,"date":"2020-08-24T20:17:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T19:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5529"},"modified":"2020-08-24T20:17:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T19:17:14","slug":"empyre-x-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5529","title":{"rendered":"Empyre: X-Men"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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EMPYRE: X-MEN #1-4<\/strong>
by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Leah Williams, Vita Ayala, Zeb Wells, Ed Brisson, Matteo Buffagni, Lucas Werneck, Andrea Broccardo & Jorge Melina<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a time when the X-Men got to sit out line-wide crossovers that didn’t concern them, back when they ruled the roost at Marvel. Innocent times. But this is 2020, and so here we are in the margins of an Avengers \/ Fantastic Four crossover about alien plants invading. We all know the Marvel event format for these events by now. The actual plot is confined to the core miniseries; there are a few side quests to keep the secondary characters occupied; and then there are books that are just finding something to do against the backdrop of the big event without really having any impact on it. This isn’t the X-Men’s story; we’re in category three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In fact, there’s an obvious angle for the X-books – they’re all about plant-based technology these days, and here come the plant invaders. So you might expect them to do something with that. But not really, no. Maybe there are plot reasons for saving Krakoa-centred plots for a more core title. Either way, the X-books have opted for the “romp” angle instead, with a kind of jam book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take a look at that parade of contributors. Basically, it’s the ongoing writers, plus a variety of pencillers who’ve worked on the X-books in the past, all taking turns on different issues – with Jonathan Hickman writing the start and the end. You can’t easily do a serious story in that style, and they don’t try, at least until the closing beats – instead, we’re going ridiculously over the top with the X-Men, Hordeculture, alien invaders, and millions of mutant zombies. The plot – which isn’t exactly complex – involves the hapless Cotati invaders trying to set up a staging post on the seemingly deserted island of Genosha, only to discover that the Scarlet Witch’s latest attempt to atone for M-Day has led her to raise its slaughtered population from the grave. But not in the form she had in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, the end result has a common problem with jam stories – it feels like the creators are having a lot more fun than I am. As a story, it’s incredibly slight, with the middle chapters feeling padded, and bits of plot mechanics feel disjointed even then. There’s a subplot with Magik that feels like filler. None of which would matter if it was funnier, mind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your mileage may vary, of course. A lot depends on how you feel about zombie armies (meh). And a lot depends on how funny you find Hordeculture. I don’t actually mind the old ladies as a concept, but at this point they’ve got one joke shared between four characters, and it outstays its welcome pretty rapidly. There’s not much else to them, and even as gimmick villains they need a bit more depth than this, at least if they’re going to stick around for a whole mini. I’m meant to be taking this as all great fun, but it’s just a bit flat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final issue changes tone, which kind of works. Much of it is devoted to one of the Genoshan zombies meeting his own resurrected self from Krakoa, for reasons that are never really very clear. The sudden tack into elegy at the very end of issue #4 is frankly weird. But what does come off is the reminder that this whole set-up, however much it’s been played for comedy in the earlier issues, has uncomfortable implications for what’s going on on Krakoa – implications which the book studiously ignores until it’s ready to draw them to your attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might well think this is an odd way to bring Genosha back into the frame. It’s always been an uncomfortable presence in the Krakoa era, a reminder that the mutants have tried island nations before, and it worked out really, really badly. It gets alluded to just often enough to let us know that it hasn’t been overlooked. On Krakoa, it’s the elephant in the room, which may be why they’re so keen to revive the Genoshan dead as part of their programme of resurrection. At the same time, though, the Genoshan massacre was always a little bit over the top, not least because nobody ever seemed to have thought there were anything like that many mutants living in Genosha until the moment they got slaughtered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if all the mutants are already resurrected on Krakoa, how come the zombies on Genosha still have their personalities? Are we quite sure the resurrected versions aren’t mere copies? The way the stories are written firmly steers us towards them being the originals – not least because several key characters have been killed and brought back through this device, and it’s hardly likely that they’re going to end the Hickman run by revealing that all the main characters died in act 1. But the rationale for why <\/em>they’re the same characters, let alone why all the mutants are so unquestioning about it, has always been hazy, and even on Krakoa there’s an acknowledged concern to make sure that they don’t accidentally revive people who are still alive. Because that would demonstrate that the people they’re bringing back are copies and, well…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the framing sequence of this series goes out of its way to stress that Wanda’s plan is a disaster, not because she made some sort of technical error, but because it’s fundamentally misconceived. She’s trying to reverse death itself, and that’s such a violation of nature that (we’re told) it’s always going to go horrendously badly. But this is exactly what the X-Men are doing on Krakoa – it’s literally the point of the resurrection gimmick. It’s a glaring warning that it’s all going to go catastrophically wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And tagging that onto the end of a throwaway comedy story – yes, that’s a gear change that I quite like. It gets the point out there without being too heavy handed about it; it’s another piece of reassurance that while these obvious objections to the set-up may not be being addressed right now, they haven’t been forgotten about either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that switch would work better if the main part of the series was actually as fun as it clearly means to be. As it is, Empyre: X-Men<\/em> is an interesting final issue tagged onto an eminently skippable crossover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EMPYRE: X-MEN #1-4by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Leah Williams, Vita Ayala, Zeb Wells, Ed Brisson, Matteo Buffagni, Lucas Werneck, Andrea Broccardo & Jorge Melina There was a time when the X-Men got to sit out line-wide crossovers that didn’t concern them, back when they ruled the roost at Marvel. Innocent times. […]<\/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-5529","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\/5529","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=5529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5536,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions\/5536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}