{"id":906,"date":"2011-07-03T19:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=906"},"modified":"2011-07-03T19:00:14","modified_gmt":"2011-07-03T18:00:14","slug":"the-x-axis-3-july-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=906","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 3 July 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve listened to this week’s podcast (just one post below)<\/a>, you’ll know that the last two weeks weren’t exactly replete with notable new releases. \u00a0And while I skipped the X-Axis last week, it’s been a fairly quiet period for the X-books too, with just six books in two weeks. \u00a0Unless you count Namor<\/em>, which I don’t. \u00a0I’m starting to get a vague sense that everyone is killing time right now, waiting for the end of Flashpoint<\/em>, the end of Fear Itself<\/em>, or the start of Schism<\/em> – delete as applicable.<\/p>\n

Still, here’s some stuff that came out in the last two weeks:<\/p>\n

Flashpoint: Reverse Flash<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Er… yes. \u00a0This is a one-shot by Scott Kolins and Joel Gomez (not, as the cover claims, a three-issue miniseries), which I rather foolishly assumed might in some way be important to the plot of Flashpoint<\/em>, what with the Reverse Flash being the main villain and all. \u00a0Silly me. \u00a0What it actually contains is a recap of the Reverse Flash’s back story – not a direct copy of Geoff Johns’ recent story from Flash<\/em>, but certainly covering similar ground. \u00a0It’s tempting to say that the problem here is the odd decision to hire artist Scott Kolins as a writer, and there’s no doubt that Johns got the same basic idea across far more effectively and charmingly in his story. \u00a0But then, it’s not like the editors gave Kolins much to work with – if the finished product is anything to go by, the remit here was “Recap the plot.” \u00a0Joel Gomez’s art is patchy – bits of it look rushed, and there’s a blockiness that doesn’t really work for the Flash, but then there are also a couple of nicely rendered panels and some sweet material near the end with Barry Allen as a child. \u00a0Still, not a good comic.<\/p>\n

New Mutants<\/em> #26<\/strong> – I queried last month whether “clearing up the X-Men’s unfinished business” was really an adequate premise to serve as the direction for this series, and so it’s reassuring to see Sunspot asking the same thing here. \u00a0Actually, I can’t help wondering whether this arc is basically a case of playing for time until “Schism” explodes the status quo.<\/p>\n

At any rate, the ostensible point of this arc is to reintroduce Nate Grey, but since he spends the entire issue tied to a chair, the real focus is on the Sugar Man. \u00a0Not, at first glance, a villain anyone was crying out to see again, great character design notwithstanding. \u00a0But in fact, he’s a good choice for several reasons. \u00a0On a purely practical level, he’s got something in common with Nate – they both came from the same parallel world. \u00a0But more to the point, the Sugar Man’s whole raison d’etre was that he was a mad scientist who experimented on mutants. \u00a0So a world with virtually no mutants is, well, a bit disappointing for him. \u00a0Rather than go after the X-Men themselves, however, he’s decided that the simple solution is to go home. \u00a0Problem is, all he’s got is a wonky portal that could lead anywhere… so until he’s sorted out the co-ordinates, he’s going to need a few willing suckers to go through and tell him what’s on the other side. \u00a0Bring on the gullible and desperate ex-mutants…<\/p>\n

This is a rare example of M-Day actually being used sensibly as a springboard for a story, and it’s nicely done, with the villain in reduced circumstances having a suitably creepy edge. \u00a0You can question whether it’s really a New Mutants story – arguably anyone could have been plugged into the role of hunting for Nate – but the characters are well defined and there’s a fun team dynamic here that’s often missing from the regular X-Men titles.<\/p>\n

Sigil<\/em> #4<\/strong> – The conclusion of Mike Carey and Leonard Kirk’s CrossGen revival, and given the sales on this (and Ruse<\/em>), I have to wonder how far Marvel will pursue this whole idea. \u00a0In fact, this is a revival of the original Sigil<\/em> in name only, turning it into a sort of teenage-girl-who-turns-out-to-be-the-chosen-one book. \u00a0There’s a bit of jumping through time, which serves partly as a device to namecheck El Cazador<\/em>, and, as it turns out, no real twist from what we saw in the first issue. \u00a0I’ll have to re-read the series and see if there’s something I’m missing, but to be honest, I’m a little underwhelmed – it’s serviceable, but there’s little sense of anything new here.<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #539<\/strong> – Now that’s a pretty cover by Simone Bianchi. \u00a0As for the content, this is a done-in-one story that might have been more at home over in Generation Hope<\/em> (it seems odd that this book, rather than her own series, gets the clearest explanation to date of how Hope’s powers work), but so be it. \u00a0It ties up a loose end, namely why Wolverine doesn’t seem too keen on Hope. \u00a0Off on a trip to the mainland, Hope gets kidnapped by baddies, and Wolverine goes to the rescue. \u00a0And they get to talk.<\/p>\n

That villain is the Crimson Commando, who was depowered on M-Day, but happens to be a cyborg anyway. \u00a0(Honest, it was in Howard Mackie’s X-Factor<\/em> or something.) \u00a0He wants his powers back, since without them he’s just an old man with a lot of metal. \u00a0And he’s got it into his head that Hope can fix him. \u00a0That’s a nice idea, though I’m not quite sure how it leads to him having a whole organisation backing him up – presumably he’s blowing his life savings on mercenaries. \u00a0There’s some beautiful art by Ibraim Roberson, and the book also has an unusually old-fashioned use of Wolverine’s healing powers – it’s nice to see someone remember that this stuff ought to hurt, and by doing the stunt with Hope (using her power mimickry), the story sidesteps the overfamiliarity of seeing Wolverine get beaten up.<\/p>\n

I wanted the Commando’s story to have more of a resolution – ultimately he’s just there as a vehicle to give Wolverine and Hope their moment together – but a decent issue nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Wolverine<\/em> #11<\/strong> – This arc may have the unusually direct title of “Wolverine’s Revenge!” (it does what it says on the tin, I guess), but in fact the real focus is on the members of the Red Right Hand wanting revenge on<\/em> Wolverine. \u00a0I like the central idea of this group – an organisation made up of bereaved relatives of all the bit-part characters Wolverine’s killed over the years. \u00a0But two chapters into this arc, a pattern is emerging: Wolverine fights a gimmicky henchman in the present day, and somebody reminisces about how he killed their dad. \u00a0As with the previous issue, while the flashback narrator is convinced their loved one was an upstanding hero cruelly killed by a vicious bastard, it’s made abundantly clear that they’re seeing things through rose tinted glasses.<\/p>\n

There are good moments, but it’s all a bit too similar to the previous issue. \u00a0That said, the cliffhanger suggests that Aaron’s going to break that pattern, so maybe this is more of a pacing matter than anything else.<\/p>\n

Wolverine: The Best There Is<\/em> #7<\/strong> – Notionally the start of a second arc, “Broken Quarantine”, this is actually a direct continuation from the previous issue. \u00a0Wolverine staggers back to Utopia to recover, and the X-Men kind of roll their eyes and go into quarantine until his healing factor gets rid of the various conditions that he was saddled with in the previous arc. \u00a0Naturally enough, Wolverine is more interested in getting back out there to pick up the loose end of how Winsor managed to catch him in the first place.<\/p>\n

While the first arc was something of a mess, this is actually not bad at all. \u00a0Now that the book has stopped hammering the “parental advisory” angle, it’s shading into a more reasonable story. \u00a0There are still a couple of points where the book is trying to hard to convince you it’s edgy, but the art’s improving, and the story had shed its previous incoherence.<\/p>\n

That being said, you’d have thought the editors would have picked up that the Beast left the X-Men somewhere over a year ago, and that somebody would have vetoed this book and Uncanny X-Men<\/em> doing two quarantine stories in quick succession. \u00a0Those quibbles aside, though, this issue is a big improvement.<\/p>\n

X-Men: Legacy<\/em> #251<\/strong> – More hunting for Legion’s escaped personalities. \u00a0This issue, we’re in London to fight Chain (who turns other people into copies of him) and Susan in Sunshine (a little girl who loses her powers when she’s sad). \u00a0Carey is basically having fun with the gimmick, though he also uses it as an opportunity to play up the question of quite where the X-Men would draw the line and pull the plug on Legion altogether.<\/p>\n

Khoi Pham’s art doesn’t really get the best out of the idea. \u00a0The story ought to provide plenty of opportunity for visuals of London deserted aside from duplicates of Chain, but sketchy backgrounds tend to undermine that, and it turns out that crowd scenes aren’t really Pham’s thing either. \u00a0He’s better with the conversation scenes, though, and the crazy little girl is realised well. \u00a0All in all, a bit patchy, but there’s good stuff in here.<\/p>\n

X-Men: Prelude to Schism<\/em> #4<\/strong> – I’m going to come back to this miniseries in a separate post, because its very existence truly is a mystery for the ages, but suffice to say that this doesn’t save it. \u00a0The focus this time is on Wolverine, and in the absence of any discernible plot beyond “something is coming”, I can only speculate that Paul Jenkins’ agenda here is to set out the back stories of Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops and Wolverine in some attempt to identify what makes a leader. \u00a0What that means in practice is a six-page recap of Origin<\/em>,\u00a0another five pages of Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X”, and another chance to enjoy several pages of conversation that we already saw in earlier issues, all adding up to pretty much nothing. \u00a0There’s a slight hint about people looking to Wolverine for leadership when they can’t get an answer from Scott, and reiteration of the same mystery threat that we’ve already heard about, but that’s literally as far as the “prelude” aspect seems to go. \u00a0A bafflingly pointless series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve listened to this week’s podcast (just one post below), you’ll know that the last two weeks weren’t exactly replete with notable new releases. \u00a0And while I skipped the X-Axis last week, it’s been a fairly quiet period for the X-books too, with just six books in two weeks. \u00a0Unless you count Namor, which […]<\/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-906","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\/906","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=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}