{"id":7519,"date":"2022-01-14T21:25:26","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T21:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7519"},"modified":"2022-01-14T21:25:26","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T21:25:26","slug":"x-men-legends-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7519","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Legends #10"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN LEGENDS #10<\/strong>
\n“…The Eighth Circle!”<\/strong>
\nby Fabian Nicieza, Dan Jurgens, Scott Hanna & Alex Sinclair<\/strong><\/p>\n

X-Men Legends<\/em> seems to be tweaking the format. It started with had short arcs by bygone writers (and occasionally writer\/artist teams), designed to fit into their original runs and do a bit of gap-plugging. Then it shifted to something more like “fill-in arcs we could have done”.\u00a0Legends<\/em> #10 is a little different – a one-issue story written in the margins of an earlier story.<\/p>\n

Well, kind of. The story in question is\u00a0X-Men<\/em>\u00a0vol 2 #34 (July 1994), which isn’t exactly in the top tier of memorable issues. It’s the one where Gambit and Psylocke explore Mr Sinister’s old Nebraska base, fight off some wonky Marauders clones, rescue Threnody, and escape before the place blows up. (No, don’t ask me how that fits with the first arc of\u00a0Hellions<\/em>. That’s a whole other question.)<\/p>\n

But Legends<\/em> #10 isn’t especially closely tied to X-Men<\/em> #34 – it’s a story about what Mr Sinister was up to while his base was getting destroyed. And the base getting destroyed does tie to the plot, but not all that centrally. The real high concept of this story is something else entirely, and you could have done it at pretty much any point in X-Men history before Krakoa.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nor is it really trying to evoke the style of the earlier story. Fabian Nicieza did write\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #34, but it’s drawn by Andy Kubert, back in the day when his art was, shall we say, a touch histrionic. This issue has art by Dan Jurgens, which is more what you’d call sturdy and sedate. Jurgens was a 90s artist in his own way, of course – he did\u00a0Death of Superman<\/em>, after all – but he feels like someone from an earlier era.<\/p>\n

But that’s not a bad choice for this issue, since the high concept is more of a locked-room conversation piece. There’s really no way of talking about this story without blowing the plot, by the way, so don’t say you weren’t warned.<\/p>\n

Mr Sinister has gathered an unlikely bunch of dinner guests for a meeting of the Eighth Circle, apparently some sort of high-end discussion forum. Joining him are the Beast, Professor X, Moira MacTaggert, Magneto and the Black Womb, because it may be 2021, but Fabian Nicieza hasn’t given up on trying to make the Black Womb a big deal. The topic of discussion, Sinister announces, is “the devolution of homo sapien and the evolution of homo superior”.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, it makes no sense for these people to be gathered together, let alone for them to be indulging Sinister in his academic debate. That’s the high concept: nobody realises at the start (except Sinister himself), but the big idea is to clone some of the big names of mutant science and use them to bounce ideas off. Unfortunately Sinister’s cloning technology isn’t up to much at this point – see\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #34 on that point – and so the hapless guests only have a few hours to live before they decay. For Sinister, this is just the latest batch of clones he’s whipped up so that he can enjoy dinner with the celebrities.<\/p>\n

That’s a neat little idea, which of course descends rather quickly into the clones figuring out their predicament and trying to save themselves – well, except for Black Womb, who shrugs her shoulders and resigns herself to the inevitable. As a concept, it works rather well, as does the understated bit where Hank somehow goes through his various character designs in the course of the evening without anyone mentioning it.<\/p>\n

It’s a nice idea that doesn’t quite go anywhere, though. Broadly speaking, this is a saner-than-usual Sinister, if only because he’s trying to get these other people to have a nice chat with him. But the plot inevitably becomes scientist types doing random things to no great effect (and it ignores the Moira retcon, which is generally fair enough, except that here it really ought to inform her attitude to dying). The point is\u00a0meant<\/em> to be that Sinister has all this incredible knowledge and data, but has failed to achieve anything with it beyond amassing data for its own sake. The flipside of being an amoral mad scientist who will do anything in the pursuit of knowledge is that he never actually does anything\u00a0with<\/em> that knowledge other than use it to pursue more knowledge. And sure, that’s a valid angle on Sinister.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t quite stick the landing, because it wants Black Womb to be the character who sends the message that even an amoral scientist can have a deeper understanding and insight than Sinister managed, and who points him towards some kind of epiphany. But what he realises at the end is both rather hazy and unlikely ever to be picked up on again – it’s the sort of thing you can do in an ongoing story because it would play as a hint of things to come, but in a story which we all know is freestanding, it just feels half-formed.<\/p>\n

Still, the idea is cute, and it’s nice to see\u00a0Legends<\/em> doing something more than gap-plugging.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN LEGENDS #10 “…The Eighth Circle!” by Fabian Nicieza, Dan Jurgens, Scott Hanna & Alex Sinclair X-Men Legends seems to be tweaking the format. It started with had short arcs by bygone writers (and occasionally writer\/artist teams), designed to fit into their original runs and do a bit of gap-plugging. Then it shifted to something […]<\/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":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7519","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\/7519","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=7519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7521,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519\/revisions\/7521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}