{"id":7708,"date":"2022-03-22T21:46:45","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T21:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7708"},"modified":"2022-03-22T21:46:45","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T21:46:45","slug":"marauders-22-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7708","title":{"rendered":"Marauders #22-27"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>MARAUDERS #22-27<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtists: Matteo Lolli (#22 and #26-27), Klaus Janson (flashback in #22), Ivan Fiorelli (#23), Phil Noto (#24-25 and # 27)<\/strong>
\nColourist: Rain Beredo (#22-23 and #26-27)<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Jordan White<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve said before that the period between “Hellfire Gala” and\u00a0Inferno<\/em> showed some definite signs of drift for the X-books. Nowhere was that more obvious than with\u00a0Marauders<\/em>, which had been a very focussed, very successful book for its first 22 issues, but loses its way badly in the last few issues of the Gerry Duggan run.<\/p>\n

The first 20 issues have a central spine to them, of Kitty feeling isolated, getting killed, returning to claim her identity and take revenge on Shaw, and so on. But that’s all finished by the time of the Hellfire Gala, and the book doesn’t really find anything to replace it in these closing issues.<\/p>\n

By way of reminder, here’s what happens. Issue #22 is the Lourdes Chantel story, with guest art from Klaus Janson, which retcons the death of this minor character from a\u00a0Classic X-Men<\/em> back-up strip. It now turns out that Emma Frost created an illusion of her death to enable her to escape her abusive relationship with Sebastian Shaw, who to this day still looks back on that relationship fondly as his true love. This is the closest the book comes to a central theme in the closing issues, and it’s good enough as far as it goes, though Lourdes herself never really seems to develop much beyond a cipher.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

More dubiously, the story is paralleled with the Stepford Cuckoos helping Wilhelmina Kensington to avenge herself on her abusive father, which extends into issue #23. The main focus of that issue, in fact, is a rather random fight between Banshee and the Reavers in a warehouse, which seems to serve mostly to introduce Tempo to the cast – only for her not to be seen again. There are a bunch of questionable choices in this issue – the general Oirishness, the weirdly out of character use of Jumbo Carnation as a combatant – but trying to do a serious revenge story with Wilhelmina Kensington is a genuinely bizarre one. Even by the standard of the junior Hellfire Club members, Wilhelmina has always been a one-dimensional joke character; ascribing her behaviour to years of abuse seems incredibly tin-eared and mildly tasteless. To plug a character as ridiculous as her into a subject as serious as that requires some really convincing character work, which we don’t really get here – she just whiplashes from one stock persona to another.<\/p>\n

Then we get to the real filler. Issues #24-25 are a two-parter with alien mercenary Deen Lorix trying to steal back the Mercury; technically it ties up a loose end about where the Mercury came from, but there’s nothing especially interesting about it. There’s a moment where everyone works together to save the day, including Shaw, which seems like a nice turning point for him. And it’s got art by Phil Noto, whose facial expressions can elevate anything. But even his action sequences feel flat, and there’s barely enough story here to fill one issue, let alone two. Either Duggan is killing time with these issues, or he thinks Lorix is a really compelling character – but if so, it’s hard to see why. The guy’s just a stock rogue. Visually, the whole thing feels a bit\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>, which only serves to underline how derivative it feels.<\/p>\n

Issue #26 is the return of Harry Leland and his appointment as Krakoa’s UN ambassador. This is a nice little issue, partly because it feels like it’s heading somewhere, but also because Duggan’s Leland is quite a likeable, charismatic sort. He’s a gregarious fellow who was never really cut out for supervillainy and actually finds his niche as a Krakoan diplomat – and he brings out another, somewhat more sympathetic side of Sebastian Shaw, who clearly sees him as another long lost friend who helped to keep him grounded through their drunken exploits. Padding the issue out with a random fight between Iceman and Fin Fang Foom is underwhelming, though, and it retreads old ground – yes, yes, Iceman is recognising that he’s more powerful than people thought. We’ve been doing variants on this story since the 90s, guys. How many times can he realise it?<\/p>\n

Finally, issue #27 feels like a desperate race around stray subplots – if not to resolve them, then at least to acknowledge them as outstanding – with characters being abruptly written out and shunted into new positions in preparation for the new run. Nothing about it feels like it’s been set up, despite the previous three issues containing a heck of a lot of filler. The closing pages, with Kitty approaching Reed Richards, introduce an interesting plot, and there’s a certain sense of closure from Duggan going back and reprising the key elements from his run, but it just doesn’t feel like it emerges from what came before.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0Marauders<\/em> was so strong in its earlier issues, this batch is disappointing. It’s hard to tell how much of this is due to the book marking time waiting for other people to settle on a direction, and how much is simply the classic error of a series that finished its story but forgot to stop. It feels like a bit of both, since on any view Duggan had finished his main storyline and found himself with six issues still to kill.<\/p>\n

It has its moments, but we’ve come to expect better from Marauders<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MARAUDERS #22-27 Writer: Gerry Duggan Artists: Matteo Lolli (#22 and #26-27), Klaus Janson (flashback in #22), Ivan Fiorelli (#23), Phil Noto (#24-25 and # 27) Colourist: Rain Beredo (#22-23 and #26-27) Letterer: Cory Petit Editor: Jordan White I’ve said before that the period between “Hellfire Gala” and\u00a0Inferno showed some definite signs of drift 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,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7708","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=7708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7710,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7708\/revisions\/7710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}