{"id":67,"date":"2009-11-15T15:17:43","date_gmt":"2009-11-15T15:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2009-11-15T18:09:03","modified_gmt":"2009-11-15T18:09:03","slug":"the-x-axis-15-november-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 15 November 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, hello there.\u00a0 I’m Paul O’Brien, the other half of House to Astonish<\/em>, and it seems to us that there’s not much point in having two blogs for one podcast.\u00a0 So we’re folding them in together.\u00a0 Which means that basically you’ll be getting all the stuff I was doing at If Destroyed<\/a>, but with a more memorable URL and a more attractive layout.\u00a0 (Well, except that we won’t both have to plug the podcast, obviously.)\u00a0 Oh, and I get to use WordPress instead of Blogger.\u00a0 It’s got a lot more buttons, hasn’t it?<\/p>\n

I gather the comments system here has all sorts of exciting moderation options that I could never be bothered figuring out with Haloscan.\u00a0 As near as I can figure out, we’ve currently got it set up so that comments should be appearing automatically unless they get flagged as spam, but, well,\u00a0who knows?\u00a0 I’ll keep an eye on it.<\/p>\n

So let’s get down to business.\u00a0 Not many X-books this week, but there’s a ton of other new releases worth mentioning…<\/p>\n

Batman & Robin<\/em> #6<\/strong> – I’ve seen quite a few people saying that this was the issue where Philip Tan’s limitations as an artist really leapt out at them.\u00a0 True enough, getting him to follow Frank Quitely invites rather unflattering comparisons, particularly when Quitely is still doing the covers.\u00a0 This issue’s villain is the Flamingo, evidently conceived as a flamboyant, Liberace-style assassin who inexplicably communicates entirely in grunts.\u00a0 And yes, it works much better on Quitely’s cover than it does in the interior, because Tan doesn’t seem entirely sure how to combine those two elements, and ends up drawing a generic raving lunatic in very odd clothes.\u00a0 Something’s also going on with the style, which seems less precise (or scratchy) and more soft focus than even the previous issue.\u00a0 But it’s not that<\/em> bad, it’s just not up there with the standards set by Quitely on the opening arc.\u00a0 Admittedly, my previous experience of Tan is his hopeless 2003 run on Uncanny X-Men<\/em>,\u00a0so perhaps I’m just perpetually surprised that he’s improved so much over the last six years.\u00a0 As for the story, well, Morrison is evidently trying to do some sort of meta-commentary about alternate models for the evolution of the Batman franchise, with Dick and Damian representing thoughtful development, and the Red Hood and Scarlet as thuggish violence; but it does feel a little as though he’s still arguing over the grim-and-gritty developments of the mid-nineties.<\/p>\n

Cable<\/em> #20<\/strong> – You’ll never guess, but in this issue, Bishop tries to kill Hope, and Cable tries to protect her, and in the end Bishop doesn’t manage to kill Hope, and they escape.\u00a0 Just like\u00a0in every other issue.\u00a0 I’ll give Duane Swierczynski credit – there’s a point near the end of this issue where I actually thought for a moment he was going to kill Bishop and the story was going to do something different for a change.\u00a0 But then he didn’t, and it didn’t.\u00a0 Cable<\/em> has become a sorely repetitious comic, where the characters do the same thing every month while hoping for something to turn up.\u00a0 As I’ve said before, the series would really benefit from giving Cable and Hope some sort of goal beyond mere survival: why not let them try and kill (or strand) Bishop, or at least give them some sort of quest to find a way back to the present day?\u00a0 Without any of that, it’s just the same story in a different setting time after time.\u00a0 Fortunately, it looks like we’re finally nearing the end, since Hope’s return to the present day is evidently the focus of the next major crossover.\u00a0 But that seems to have been dictated more by the demands of Marvel’s publishing schedule than the needs of the story.\u00a0 They could have done this more effectively in half the time.\u00a0 This particular issue is a characteristically competent rendition of the usual, and while the art is a bit lacking in atmosphere, it tells the story.\u00a0 It’s okay; it’s just the same thing we always get.<\/p>\n

Dark X-Men<\/em> #1<\/strong> – This is a five-issue miniseries about Norman Osborn’s fake X-Men team, by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk.\u00a0 Thanks to a year of saturation coverage, virtually every story you could possibly tell with “Dark Reign” has been done at least three times by now.\u00a0 So thankfully, Dark X-Men<\/em> doesn’t much bother with that stuff, and simply focusses on telling a regular story about this wonky and wholly unqualified team of lunatics trying their best to act the part of proper superheroes, by investigating weird mutant-related stuff in California.\u00a0 After all, even Norman’s teams have to go out and do their official job from time to time.\u00a0 With the wider storylines de-emphasised, this turns out to make a surprisingly successful team book.\u00a0 The Dark X-Men aren’t an entirely unsympathetic team – only one of them is an outright bad guy, after all – and the team dynamic of Mystique trying to keep her crew of maniacs on the rails makes for good entertainment.\u00a0 You might have seen in the pre-release publicity that this series also provides the return of a character who’s been out of circulation for the better part of a decade; I wasn’t really looking forward to that, but by the end of the issue, Cornell has more or less managed to sell me on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There’s also a\u00a0back-up strip by Duane Sweirczynski and Steve Dillon, billed as part two of “A Girl Named Hope.”\u00a0 (The first part was in Psylocke<\/em> #1, if you’re wondering.)\u00a0 From what we’ve seen so far, presenting this as some sort of serial is a bit of an overstatement.\u00a0 It’s actually a string of character vignettes, presumably intended to introduce Hope to readers who haven’t been buying Cable<\/em>.\u00a0 Which would be fine if it was appearing in Uncanny X-Men<\/em> or Wolverine<\/em>, but perhaps it’s a bit dubious when it’s used as a sales device in its own right to try and shore up Dark X-Men<\/em>.\u00a0 Still, the story itself isn’t bad at all – especially because it focusses on Cable and Hope’s relationship rather than getting caught up in the Bishop stuff.<\/p>\n

PunisherMax<\/em> #1<\/strong> – A relaunch of the Max imprint’s version of the Punisher, this time with Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon.\u00a0 And yes, they’re really calling it PunisherMax<\/em>.\u00a0 Perhaps the name sounds slightly less stupid to Americans (though I doubt it), but it can’t help reminding me of the trailers that used to run on the Adam & Joe podcast.<\/a>\u00a0 (“The Adam & Joe podcast now has a new name: PODMAX.\u00a0 The name will never be written down, or spoken out loud, but every time you think of the Adam & Joe Podcast, remember: PODMAX…”)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anyway, Aaron is working on the basis that his Punisher is a completely separate character from the Marvel Universe version.\u00a0 And he’s taking advantage of that fact, by doing a story that introduces his version of the Kingpin.\u00a0 To be honest, it’s only very loosely based on the original character; he’s kept the name and appearance, but otherwise Aaron is telling a story about a henchman politicking his way to the top.\u00a0 The tone of the story is weirdly inconsistent – it veers between over-the-top gross-out violence and more down-to-earth character moments.\u00a0 Presumably Aaron’s going for black comedy drama,\u00a0much as Garth Ennis did, but\u00a0he’s in danger of lurching between the two instead of bringing them together.\u00a0 Still, Steve Dillon can do both , and the story hangs together.\u00a0 It’s a strong first issue, but the comedy sequences could be blended in a little better.<\/p>\n

Strange<\/em> #1<\/strong> – At first glance, this is an odd time to do a Dr Strange miniseries.\u00a0 The current set-up, from events in New Avengers<\/em>, is that Strange’s hands have started shaking again, so he can’t do proper magic any more.\u00a0 Consequently he’s been replaced as Sorcerer Supreme by Brother Voodoo, handed his cosmic carriage clock, and packed off into retirement.\u00a0 But in fact, in many ways this makes Strange an easier character to write.\u00a0 The problem with magic is that it’s terribly open-ended, and omnipotent heroes aren’t very interesting, because they have to face horribly contrived threats.\u00a0 In this version, Strange still has tons of mystic knowledge, and some rudimentary mystic ability, but not a great deal else.\u00a0 And so Mark Waid is doing stories with that.\u00a0 The tone is pretty light – this issue, Strange helps to thwart a demonically-possessed baseball team – but it’s a good read, and goes to show that you can do more with the character when he can’t just hand-wave everything away.\u00a0 Artist Emma Rios is working in a slightly manga-tinged version of the Marvel house style (though a Google search suggests her range actually extends way beyond that), and it’s the right approach for a slightly old-fashioned but fun story like this.<\/p>\n

Supergod<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Warren Ellis’ latest Avatar miniseries sounds like it might be an exercise in controversy-baiting – and the cover, showing a Superman-style figure on a crucifix, certainly wouldn’t dissuade you from that view.\u00a0 In fact, Ellis’ big idea for this series is Voltaire’s claim that if God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him.\u00a0 So it’s a story about various government super-soldier projects all trying to produce superhumans to… worship, basically.\u00a0 Well, I call it a story.\u00a0 It’s really more of a lecture, with a series of vignettes that are variations on that basic theme.\u00a0 But it’s not much of a narrative – it’s a whole issue of the usual stuff about how dangerous superhumans would be in the real world, with a bit of religious fervour sprinkled over the top, and a couple of hints about plots to be developed in future issues.\u00a0 Ellis is clearly very pleased with this idea, so it’s a shame he didn’t just allow it to emerge from the story instead of painstakingly explaining it for 20 pages.\u00a0 In its favour, though, the book has some excellent artwork from Garry Gastonny, who has some wonderful character designs, who knows how to make his cities look different from each other, and who generally looks like he’d be right at home doing this sort of thing for a major publisher.<\/p>\n

S.W.O.R.D.<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Kieron Gillen and Steven Sanders are\u00a0the creative team for this\u00a0ongoing series about the intergalactic Earth-protecting agency that Joss Whedon introduced in Astonishing X-Men<\/em>.\u00a0 Or, more accurately, it’s an ongoing series for commander Abigail Brand and some supporting characters… but S.W.O.R.D.<\/em> is catchier.\u00a0 And this actually has some potential as an ongoing title.\u00a0 Brand is a relatively undeveloped character, and the organisation’s remit is broad enough to allow stories about virtually anything.\u00a0 Plus, it has a comfortable niche in the Marvel Universe, bridging the gap between the cosmic titles and the earthbound titles.<\/p>\n

It’s a good introductory issue.\u00a0 Henry Gyrich is brought in to provide an internal sparring partner for Brand, we get a cheerfully bizarre parade of the sort of stuff S.W.O.R.D. has to deal with (alien diplomats demanding “temples of pain”), and there’s a story about Brand’s embarrassing brother showing up with a bounty-hunter in tow.\u00a0 Since this book is written by somebody British, you can probably guess which bounty-hunter.\u00a0 And a couple of subplots are set up for members of the supporting cast.\u00a0 As Hank points out near the end, these are pleasingly traditional challenges, rather than the catastrophic upheavals that most Marvel titles seem to go for these days.\u00a0 Quite right too; it’s only issue #1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dialogue is great.\u00a0 I’m not so wild about the art; it’s generally solid, but Sanders goes overboard with Brand charging around, and his Beast is so far off model that he appears to have turned into a donkey.\u00a0 Mind you,\u00a0he does a decent line in robot bounty-hunters.\u00a0 There’s also a back-up strip illustrated by Gillen’s Phonogram<\/em> partner Jamie McKelvie; it’s basically an extension of the Lockheed subplot from the main story, but X-Men fans may wish to note that it does finally offer an explanation of why nobody’s been able to recover Kitty Pryde yet.<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Men: First Class<\/em> #5<\/strong> – Um… well, a bunch of aliens invade Earth and the X-Men fight them.\u00a0 Yeah, that’s basically it.\u00a0 It’s good to see a First Class<\/em> issue creating its own villains rather than relying on the parade of guest stars that seems to have become the norm in these books, and in fairness, Scott Gray and Nelson DeCastro do a fine job of building them up as a threat.\u00a0 And they’re villains with great character designs, too.\u00a0 But it’s still a very familiar story.\u00a0 Then again, that’s fine, if you think the First Class<\/em> books are there to provide a lead-in for younger readers; by that standard, if any book should be doing the X-Men in generic action stories where they fight bad guys, this is the one.<\/p>\n

X-Babies<\/em> #2<\/strong> – Well, this is turning into a very strange series.\u00a0 The plot is straightforward enough.\u00a0 The new management at Mojoworld have replaced the X-Babies with even cutesier versions.\u00a0 The brats have escaped, but now find themselves hounded by a string of impossibly saccharine and irritating characters extracted from Star Comics, Marvel’s short-lived mid-eighties imprint for younger readers.\u00a0 The Star imprint is so obscure that it’s hard to imagine there’s much of a built-in audience for this.\u00a0 The motive, presumably, is some sort of warped corporate synergy: there’s a Star Comics trade paperback due out at the end of the month.\u00a0 This issue even includes a reprint of Planet Terry<\/em> #1, encouraging readers to pick up the trade to find out what happened next.\u00a0 (The answer, if you’re wondering, is that the book got cancelled at issue #12 without resolving the plot.)\u00a0 But the main story seems to have no affection for the characters at all – they’re openly portrayed as hatefully twee, boringly worthy, generally loathsome relics of a justly-forgotten past.\u00a0 To be fair, I wouldn’t be surprised if the final issue reveals that these are supposed to be cutesy doppelgangers of the Star characters, much like the imposter X-Babies from issue #1.\u00a0 But still, if the aim of this series is to promote the Star trade paperback – and I can’t imagine what else it could be – you’d have thought they’d be trying to convince us that these were lost classics, instead of encouraging us to throw the characters down the deepest available well.<\/p>\n

X-Force<\/em> #21<\/strong> – Rather confusingly billed as the second part of “Necrosha”, though it’s the third to appear.\u00a0 So presumably the New Mutants<\/em> and Legacy<\/em> chapters don’t count.\u00a0 For the most part, this is a fairly dispiriting read.\u00a0 Zombie mutants are still attacking Utopia, and X-Force fight them, and… yeah, that’s basically the story.\u00a0 Actually, that’s not quite fair – there’s also various people trying to wake up Elixir so that he can resolve their respective subplots.\u00a0 But basically it’s an extended fight scene along much the lines you’d expect.\u00a0 Artist Clayton Crain gets through most of the issue without drawing more than a handful of intelligible backgrounds, seemingly content as usual to turn down the lights and hope for the best.\u00a0 Naturally, the result is that the action appears to take place in an unspecified fogbank somewhere, with the occasional girder lying around.\u00a0 To be fair, there’s a couple of decent moments in here (there’s a rather nice panel of Archangel shielding the team from a fire, which makes effective use of light and shade), but a lot of it is just murky and inexpressive.\u00a0 Now, having said all that, the story does start to get my attention near the end, when it finally gets to the point, and Selene attempts to resurrect the entire population of Genosha, thus restoring mutantkind… ish.\u00a0 That’s got some potential, and evidently this is going to be more than just a whole storyline of “and then vengeful techno-zombies attacked.”\u00a0 So if we’re getting that obligatory stuff out of the way before moving on to the more interesting bit of the story… fair enough, I guess.<\/p>\n

X-Men Forever<\/em> #11<\/strong> – The last issue of Chris Claremont’s alternate-history series ended by teasing that the differences from the Marvel Universe went even further than he’d previously suggested.\u00a0 But naturally, we don’t pick up on that subplot straight away.\u00a0 Instead, it’s off to Russia, where Colossus has taken up a position as an official superhero of the Russian government.\u00a0 From the look of it, this is going to be a device to bring Magik into the cast (the eighties ended with her turned into a child and packed off back to Siberia, so that’s where the series picks her up).\u00a0 A nice straightforward globe-trotting lead story, and a bunch of cutaways advancing a score of subplots… yes, it’s eighties-style Claremont.\u00a0 But that’s what he does best.\u00a0 Tom Grummett is on form, too.\u00a0\u00a0He does a great job with the Crimson Dynamo armour, and I like his patriotic redesign of Colossus’ costume – yes, it has vague echoes of Judge Dredd, but maybe that’s no bad thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, hello there.\u00a0 I’m Paul O’Brien, the other half of House to Astonish, and it seems to us that there’s not much point in having two blogs for one podcast.\u00a0 So we’re folding them in together.\u00a0 Which means that basically you’ll be getting all the stuff I was doing at If Destroyed, but with a […]<\/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":[19,18,20,21],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis","tag-cable","tag-x-axis","tag-x-force","tag-x-men-forever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","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=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}