{"id":8350,"date":"2022-10-04T22:24:10","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T21:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8350"},"modified":"2022-10-04T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T21:24:10","slug":"x-men-hellfire-gala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8350","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: Hellfire Gala"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>X-MEN: HELLFIRE GALA #1<\/strong>
\n“Time Flies When You’re a Mutant”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Gerry Duggan<\/strong>
\nArtists: Kris Anka, Russell Dauterman, Matteo Lolli & CF Villa<\/strong>
\nColourists: Matt Milla & Matthew Wilson<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nAssociate editor: Lauren Amaro<\/strong>
\nSenior Editor: Jordan D White<\/strong><\/p>\n

So yeah, this came out\u00a0ages<\/em> ago. As in, July. I was thinking at one point that I’d treat it as the first chapter of the next block of Gerry Duggan issues, which is kind of what it is, but it’s also off to the side a bit. So. Let’s just do it now.<\/p>\n

The first Hellfire Gala was a line-wide crossover, but an unusual one. It wasn’t unified by a single story; it was all the different books showing what their characters were up to at the same event. There was a big reveal – the terraforming of Mars. There was a secondary reveal – the new X-Men line-up. And there was a cliffhanger – the Scarlet Witch got killed. But it wasn’t a single story, as such. It was different, and it worked quite well.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This time is different. There is no formal crossover, just this one issue.\u00a0Immortal X-Men<\/em> ties in to it fairly directly, and for some unfathomable reason\u00a0Amazing Spider-Man<\/em> has a direct tie-in that came out several months later. But it’s not a publishing event any more. The big events this time round are the reaction to the general public learning about resurrection (which already happened in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #12) and the announcement of the new X-Men line-up. And a bit with Moira, which is as close as this issue gets to a central plot. But \u00a0that’s played mainly as a lead-in to the Spider-Man story.<\/p>\n

So it can’t help but feel a little lightweight by comparison to the first one. Perhaps that’s the risk of trying to make this an annual event – you’re inviting comparisons that’ll be tricky to pull off year after year, and you don’t really need to do that. It also kind of lampshades the wonkiness of Marvel time, as the title hints – though that’s probably a minor issue for normal type readers who don’t pay much attention to the timeline.<\/p>\n

The issue we get is… less than the sum of its parts. The best bits are assorted character moments – Clea showing up to demand the return of Dr Strange, Firestar feeling uncomfortable because she’s never really been part of the mutant circle, Tony Stark and Reed Richards quietly deciding that they can’t trust the mutants. Scott and Emma finally sharing their respective secrets is a good scene, giving them a bit of their old intimacy. The art tends towards the bland but some of the individual costume designs are impressive – the Spider-Man outfit works, and giving Steve Rogers something colourful but traditional works.<\/p>\n

But the larger plot has problems. Is security really so bad that Feilong can just swan in without an invitation? The set-up with Moira and Mary Jane is clunky – the idea is\u00a0apparently<\/em> that Moira is communicating through her disembodied hand which is threatening to choke Mary Jane, but how does that dictate what MJ says? The visual is meant to be a threat of violence, but the plot acts like it’s complete control… except when it needs MJ to send a message by tapping in morse. It’s confused and it muddies a neat image.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the announcement of the new X-Men team which kind of gets rattled off in a few pages, with people just nominating one another on to the team. There isn’t really the sense of it being a vote, let alone a consensus, and while a bit of groundwork is laid earlier in the issue, it feels abrupt to me. I’m not a huge fan of the public vote gimmick at all, to be honest – I think it undermines the illusion when you let the readers vote on the plot – but the whole sequence feels anticlimactic.<\/p>\n

All told, it falls short of the first year – it does what it needs to do to get from A to B, but only occasionally does it really rise above that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-MEN: HELLFIRE GALA #1 “Time Flies When You’re a Mutant” Writer: Gerry Duggan Artists: Kris Anka, Russell Dauterman, Matteo Lolli & CF Villa Colourists: Matt Milla & Matthew Wilson Letterer: Cory Petit Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Associate editor: Lauren Amaro Senior Editor: Jordan D White So yeah, this came out\u00a0ages ago. As in, […]<\/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-8350","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\/8350","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=8350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8352,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8350\/revisions\/8352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}