{"id":6560,"date":"2021-04-05T20:45:42","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T19:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6560"},"modified":"2021-04-05T20:45:42","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T19:45:42","slug":"x-men-legends-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6560","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Legends #1-2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN LEGENDS #1-2
\n“The Burning Blood”
\nby Fabian Nicieza, Brett Booth, Adelso Corona & Guru-eFX<\/strong><\/p>\n

So this is a strange little bit of counter programming.\u00a0The X-books are the focus of attention at the moment in a way that they haven’t been in some years, but they’ve done it with a version of the X-Men that differs wildly from the traditional set-up. For those looking for something a bit more traditional, we now have the determinedly retro\u00a0X-Men Legends –\u00a0<\/em>not merely a series telling stories set in the past, but a series in which past creators are invited to come back and tell stories set during their own runs.<\/p>\n

The obvious way to kick off something like this would be to call up Chris Claremont. But then maybe not. Claremont has written tons of continuity implant stories over the years. Some of them (notably the\u00a0Classic X-Men<\/em> back-ups) are very good. But we’ve seen it before. Instead,\u00a0X-Men Legends<\/em> opens with a two-parter that seems to be targeted unapologetically at continuity geeks: Fabian Nicieza getting the chance to finish off his Adam X storyline from the mid-90s.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, by all means, if you’re going to have creators revisit old runs, it makes all the sense in the world to tie up loose ends – especially if they’re stories that the writer wanted to complete in the first place. But gosh. Adam X. That’s one for the purists.<\/p>\n

Adam X has an unfortunate reputation, for fairly obvious reasons. He’s often seen as a ludicrously 90s character, which isn’t entirely fair. I mean, yes, they gave him the codename X-Treme. That was unfortunate. And he wore a silly baseball cap, though that’s more actual\u00a0<\/em>90s than\u00a0comics\u00a0<\/em>90s.\u00a0And he had a convoluted blood-based superpower that suggested his stories were going to tend towards bloodbaths.<\/p>\n

But… a lot of that is superficial. His basic story, viewed in hindsight, is sound enough. Adam was created by the previous Shi’ar Emperor D’Ken, using a mixture of DNA from D’Ken himself and Katherine Summers. He winds up living as a farmer with no idea of where he comes from and goes looking for answers, purpose, direction and all that. Those answers turn out to involve people trying to pressgang him into a destined role that he has no particular interest in, and ultimately he opts out of the whole thing and tries to go back to farming. That’s a perfectly okay “he had what he wanted all along” kind of story, and it’s nothing especially extreme or 90s.<\/p>\n

And as for his powers, they’re overcomplicated by Nicieza’s fondness for technobabble. Igniting the electrolytes in oxygenated blood? What? What does that actually mean? I still don’t really know what it means in theory, but\u00a0in practice<\/em> it means that Adam can win a fight as soon as he draws blood. So far from his powers promising a bloodbath, the logic of Adam’s powers is that he can win by giving you a paper cut. You’d rather fight this guy than Wolverine. Or Callisto, for that matter.<\/p>\n

Maybe that was always meant to be the joke? That he promises all sorts of 90s-ness and turns out to be something else entirely?<\/p>\n

Legends\u00a0<\/em>has nonetheless opted for a very nineties artist in Brett Booth. At the time of the original stories, Booth was working for Jim Lee at WildStorm. The actual X-books of the mid-90s didn’t look quite so much like this. Andy Kubert was the regular artist on\u00a0X-Men<\/em> by this point; Adam’s one spotlight issue was drawn by Terry Dodson. But Booth’s style is what people associate with the 90s. It makes sense on that level; it’s not bad at the level of individual panels. When you get to the visual storytelling it’s another matter. The page layouts on the second issue in particular are often cacophonous.<\/p>\n

Regardless… Adam was clearly intended to fit into the notorious Third Summers Brother storyline, which began in the mid-90s and finally paid off in an entirely different way with Vulcan. Nicieza doesn’t exactly abandon the original idea – genetically, at least, Adam is Scott and Alex’s half-brother, and this story is very, very clear about that fact. At the same time, though, it acknowledges that they have no real shared history, nothing much in common, and no real family connection.<\/p>\n

Most of the details of Adam’s back story were in fact revealed back in the 90s. Nicieza covered most of it in\u00a0Captain Marvel\u00a0<\/em>#3, an obscure comic which isn’t available on Unlimited, but which established the stuff about him being D’Ken’s creation. The connection with Katherine had been very heavily implied but not stated outright before. So the actual revelations in this story are barely revelations at all; it merely confirms what everyone already understood to be the case – and, perhaps, makes clear that those hints aren’t to be disregarded merely because the role of third Summers Brother has since been given to Vulcan.<\/p>\n

But if the story had played out in the mid-90s, then revealing Adam as the third Summers brother would also have carried the weight of him being a big deal. That’s no longer an option, which leaves this story to play out purely on the level of the family relationship. It works up to a point. Just as Adam wanted to know where he came from, and wasn’t particularly satisfied by any of the answers, he likes the idea of having a family, yet feels no particular connection to any of these people. Why would he? His connection to them is purely genetic, and he’s not the one who’s attaching any significance to the DNA.<\/p>\n

The plotting has issues, too. The pay off is meant to be that Adam chooses to reject all of these revelations and just go and live a peaceful life as a farmer; he asks for Oracle to scramble people’s memories of him so that he’ll be left in peace. That in turn gives Lilandra the assurance – supposedly – that Adam is not going to cause trouble for her as a rival claimant to the throne. It makes sense in terms of Adam’s character arc, but not in terms of the plot – the whole story is about cultists trying to pressgang Adam into this role even before he knows anything about it, and it’s not very clear why \u00a0any of that would stop.<\/p>\n

There’s also something a little odd about trying to give closure to a character who has in fact shown up subsequently – he was last seen quite recently over in X-Factor<\/em>, in something more of a 90s bro role. All told, tacking a resolution onto a story from a quarter century ago that was actually mostly finished at the time feels like a well-meaning exercise that doesn’t quite work in practice. But there’s a certain charm to it for all that; if nothing else, it feels like Nicieza thought more of this character than most readers did, and is taking genuine pleasure in wrapping up his story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN LEGENDS #1-2 “The Burning Blood” by Fabian Nicieza, Brett Booth, Adelso Corona & Guru-eFX So this is a strange little bit of counter programming.\u00a0The X-books are the focus of attention at the moment in a way that they haven’t been in some years, but they’ve done it with a version of the X-Men that […]<\/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-6560","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\/6560","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=6560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6562,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6560\/revisions\/6562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}