{"id":6192,"date":"2021-01-19T21:10:01","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T21:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6192"},"modified":"2021-01-19T21:10:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T21:10:01","slug":"x-of-swords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6192","title":{"rendered":"X of Swords"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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X OF SWORDS:<\/strong>
X of Swords: Creation<\/strong><\/em> #1<\/strong>
X of Swords: Stasis<\/em> #1<\/strong>
X of Swords: Destruction<\/em> #1<\/strong>
X-Factor <\/em>vol 4 #4<\/strong>
Wolverine<\/em> vol 7 #6-7<\/strong>
X-Force<\/em> vol 6 #13-14<\/strong>
Marauders<\/em> #13-15<\/strong>
Hellions<\/em> #5-6<\/strong>
New Mutants<\/em> vol 4 #13<\/strong>
Cable<\/em> vol 4 #5-6<\/strong>
Excalibur<\/em> vol 4 #13-15<\/strong>
X-Men<\/em> vol 4 #13-15<\/strong>
by various creators<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first major crossover of the Krakoan era is an important point for the line. Not just because of the plot itself – much of the appeal of Jonathan Hickman’s run turns on a sense that there’s a bigger picture. Although his X-Men<\/em> mostly tells short and self-contained stories, they depend on the sense of a wider context for their weight. And the aura of a grand plan was important to get buy-in for the radical change of direction represented by Krakoa in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But you can’t arrange pistols on the mantelpiece forever; there has to be some movement on the big picture from time to time. “X of Swords” needed to show some movement on that score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it does. The upshot of “X of Swords” leads to a number of plot points that are obviously significant. Apocalypse is gone. The rival mutant island of Arakko is back on Earth, and overshadows Krakoa in power – an angle that only works because the books took a year or so to play out the previous Krakoan status quo where the mutants suddenly had an upper hand on everyone. They still do in a sense, but the Arakkans complicate matters enormously so far as that’s concerned. And Cyclops makes his split with the Quiet Council to start re-forming the X-Men as a rival power base. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the big picture, then, there’s quite a lot going on here that seems important. The same applies for Excalibur<\/em>, which is the other key participating title. Removing Apocalypse and shunting Betsy into a new status quo is a pretty substantial deal for that book too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But “X of Swords” is an old-school line-wide crossover. Marvel’s favoured approach to event comics, in recent years, has been a core miniseries that anchors the story, and a bunch of tie-in arcs that take place in the margins. Some of them are important to the plot, some are just busy work to keep characters occupied, and some are outright peripheral. That’s the established way of doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, “X of Swords” goes back to the 90s with a full-on “part X of 22” approach. And it runs across the entire line. And… 22 parts. That’s longer than Operation: Galactic Storm (which ran to 19). It’s more than 50% longer than Maximum Carnage. I can’t say the prospect of reading a 22-part story by committee filled me with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s better in that respect than I’d expected, but it’s still hard to understand why some of these books are in the crossover at all – except perhaps because a decision has been taken to put the rest of the line on hold during “X of Swords”, and this way their creative teams have something to do. X-Men<\/em> and Excalibur<\/em> are core titles here. It has nothing to do with the ongoing storylines of Cable<\/em> or Wolverine<\/em>, but at least their tie-in issues focus on the title character. The two Hellions<\/em> chapters are really a Hellions<\/em> side tie-in, but for reasons I’ve already covered, they benefit from being billed as part of the crossover – and besides, they’re certainly Hellions<\/em> issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But “X of Swords” also includes an issue of X-Factor<\/em> which barely features X-Factor, two issues of X-Force<\/em> that are actually bonus issues of Wolverine<\/em>, and three issues of Marauders<\/em> of which at least two are not in any meaningful sense issues of Marauders<\/em>. They’re some of the more entertaining issues of the crossover, to be sure, but would I rather have just read Marauders<\/em> getting on with its own plots? Absolutely. What’s the point of doing a crossover where the participating titles aren’t recognisable as themselves, after all? What actually makes<\/em> it a crossover, beyond the title arbitrarily printed on the cover?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-two parts is… well, demanding. I normally re-read a storyline in its entirety before writing a review but my god, it’s 22 parts. Now, it’s 22 parts compressed into just ten weeks, so the pacing is fine from the time standpoint. But there’s a vast amount of stuff going on in here, much of which seems annoyingly pointless in hindsight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plot of “X of Swords” is, at its core, relatively straightforward. Apocalypse is trying to get back to Arakko. But Arakko has been conquered by the forces of Amenth, under the leadership of Annihilation (possessing Apocalypse’s long-lost wife Genesis). Their combined forces are marching through Otherworld to invade Earth. Saturnyne intervenes to channel the impending war into some magical tournament or other, which both sides are given little choice but to sign up to. Saturnyne seems to be trying to rig the tournament against the Krakoans, but ultimately they prevail, Genesis is freed, and Apocalypse goes off to Amenth to live with her. Somewhere in there, Saturnyne restores the Captain Britain Corps, but gets saddled with a version she didn’t particularly want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does that run to 22 issues? Because the first half of the crossover is mostly people running around collecting swords, and because Saturnyne’s contest turns out to be a series of completely random and arbitrary challenges, supposedly dictated by tarot cards, but by all appearances being rigged in a way that leaves the characters to stumble through them blindly and hope for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot turns here on whether you find the tournament itself – and the bait-and-switch nature of the whole story – a bravura exercise in wrongfooting the audience, or just plain irritating. The story builds up what sounds like it’s going to be a series of sword fights, which admittedly feels like it would be deeply repetitive by the time you got to the fourth or fifth fight. And then it lurches into Alice in Wonderland<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You either find that charming or you don’t, and I don’t, really. Whimsicality isn’t really my thing at the best of times, but there are a lot of other reasons why this is just annoying. It devotes an inordinate amount of time to retrieving some macguffins that don’t appear to matter to the plot in the slightest, and looking back, it’s hard to see what the point was beyond time-killing. Yes, it sets up expectations to make the twist more effective, but it spends something like six issues on doing so, which is inordinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More to the point, it’s never really very clear what Saturnyne is hoping to achieve by manipulating the contest – well, it’s clear enough that she wants Brian back, but how exactly the contest plays into that agenda is completely obscure. And several issues of characters dutifully participating in random games is just boring. When the rules are completely arbitrary, there seems to be nothing the characters can do to influence the outcome, and none of them seems to have any plan to change that… and that goes on for several issues… well, what’s the interest? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps some of the problems with the Saturnyne plot are an overspill from Excalibur<\/em>, which often has characters doing essentially random things that turn out after the fact to be the arbitrary ingredients of some magic spell or other. Excalibur<\/em> has never been especially good at clarity, and the single biggest problem with “X of Swords” is that it’s so utterly obscure what the point of the contest is, and what Saturnyne is trying to achieve by holding it. And these are key plot points. They ought to be at least broadly<\/em> clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to like “X of Swords” more than I do. I like a lot of the plot ideas that it sets up; I appreciate the ambition of trying to do something unexpected and to wrongfoot the audience. But it doesn’t really work and it’s far, far too long. It exhausted my patience long before the final issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X OF SWORDS:X of Swords: Creation #1X of Swords: Stasis #1X of Swords: Destruction #1X-Factor vol 4 #4Wolverine vol 7 #6-7X-Force vol 6 #13-14Marauders #13-15Hellions #5-6New Mutants vol 4 #13Cable vol 4 #5-6Excalibur vol 4 #13-15X-Men vol 4 #13-15by various creators The first major crossover of the Krakoan era is an important point for the […]<\/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":[29,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192","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=6192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6194,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192\/revisions\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}