{"id":917,"date":"2011-07-10T19:25:44","date_gmt":"2011-07-10T18:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=917"},"modified":"2011-07-10T19:25:44","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T18:25:44","slug":"the-x-axis-10-july-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=917","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 10 July 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

And in the week when News International cancelled the News of the World<\/em>, we ask – what’s the betting that they relaunch it in September with a new creative team? \u00a0(Dark News of the World <\/em>#1, perhaps.)<\/p>\n

There’s a veritable torrent of X-books and other new releases this week, so I’ll come back later to X-23<\/em> #12 (the conclusion of the Jubilee arc) and some of the other issue #1s. \u00a0That leaves…<\/p>\n

Fear Itself<\/em> #4<\/strong> – For the first time, I think I actually preferred this issue to Flashpoint<\/em>, though it’s close. \u00a0At long last the series gives a clear and coherent explanation of the plot, so now we know what’s supposed to be at stake and why. \u00a0The Serpent is Odin’s long-lost brother, erased from history, who wants to dethrone Odin. \u00a0He’s empowered by fear. \u00a0The point of all the random stuff going on in other books is to spread fear on Earth so that he’ll get stronger and he can take on Odin. \u00a0And Odin plans to cut off the Serpent’s power by destroying Earth himself.<\/p>\n

I’m tempted to ask why none of this was properly explained before now. \u00a0But then, without the slow reveal of exposition, the earlier issues would have little in the way of plot progression at all. \u00a0The bigger problem is really the way the series has built to this reveal. \u00a0Ideally you’d want the heroes to actually do something to solve the mystery – for example, find some evidence which Thor can make sense of when he gets back to Earth. \u00a0What actually happens is that Thor shows up and just explains the plot, which is a bit weak.<\/p>\n

Still, we’ve defined our terms now, and it’s a decent premise. \u00a0There are some nice scenes in here too; a scene of dead Atlanteans floating to the surface in British Columbia is wonderfully handled by Stuart Immonen, and Fraction pulls off the “getting the band back together” stuff quite well too. \u00a0I’m not completely sold on Iron Man’s “sacrifice” to get an audience with Odin; it’s a good idea, but it’s not very well set up, since it comes more or less out of the blue without any real sense that this has been a tough decision for him. \u00a0Perhaps it’s been set up more effectively in Iron Man’s own title, but in this book it feels like an underdeveloped concept.<\/p>\n

At any rate, now that the random fight scenes are starting to coalesce into a clearer story, the book is beginning to work.<\/p>\n

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force<\/em> #1<\/strong> – This week also sees the launch of two Fear Itself<\/em> tie-in minis, standing in for X-books that have better things to do than join the crossover themselves. \u00a0To judge from the first issue, the X-Force mini by Rob Williams and Simone Bianchi is not exactly central to the wider story. \u00a0There’s some passing mention of the general chaos on page 5, but the story is actually about X-Force investigating an anti-mutant religious cult who are threatening to execute a previously unknown superhero on the internet. \u00a0The cultists themselves have nothing to do with the Serpent; the link to the crossover is that the events of the wider story play into their doomsday prophecies. \u00a0Of course, pretty much any major storyline could have served that purpose.<\/p>\n

Not that I’m complaining, since at least there’s a thematic link to Fear Itself<\/em>, and personally, I’d rather the tie-ins were kept relatively self-contained. \u00a0Taken on its own terms, this is a perfectly solid issue of X-Force <\/em>with some fairly interesting new villains. \u00a0Rob Williams obviously has no sympathy for these characters but at least allows them to be sincere in their beliefs. \u00a0Admittedly, there’s some ropey plotting – on two separate occasions, the team resort to force in order to get information from someone, instead of just having Psylocke read their minds. \u00a0Yes, it’s more dramatic, but it doesn’t really make sense. \u00a0Still, Williams has the tone of the book down well. \u00a0And Bianchi, whose work has sometimes suffered from putting prettiness before clarity, gets the balance right here. \u00a0A perfectly fine issue.<\/p>\n

Fear Itself: Wolverine<\/em> #1<\/strong> – If the X-Force tie-in is mainly thematic, Wolverine’s is downright tenuous. \u00a0A bunch of renegade mercenaries from STRIKE (an old Captain Britain concept from the 1980s, as I recall) hijack one of Norman Osborn’s unused Helicarriers and all the crazy weapons aboard. \u00a0Wolverine is sent to stop them. \u00a0What does any of this have to do with Fear Itself<\/em>? \u00a0Well, they’re happening at the same time, and STRIKE are taking advantage of the confusion. \u00a0And, uh, that’s about it, really.<\/p>\n

So it’s not so much a crossover as a story that acknowledges that other things are also happening in the Marvel Universe at the same time, but again, I’ve got no problem with that. \u00a0God knows one of the mistakes with Secret Invasion<\/em> was to try and build all the tie-in stories around the Skrulls, which got very repetitive very quickly. \u00a0You can argue that there’s a bait-and-switch, Red Skies element to some of these tie-ins, but by the same token, they’re probably better comics for being given the space to tell a story of their own.<\/p>\n

Writer Seth Peck had some stories published by Image a couple of years back, but this is his first work on a major superhero title, and he’s pretty good. \u00a0The hijackers’ personalities are quickly established; the Fear Itself elements are used well by working them into the introduction scenes; there’s good use of Melita Garner, who’s given something worthwhile to do; and the action scenes are nicely laid out. \u00a0Roland Boschi, whose art more usually crops up on the likes of Punisher and Ghost Rider, turns out to be very much at home with more regular superhero stories too. \u00a0As with the X-Force story, while I might feel a bit annoyed if I’d bought this solely for the Fear Itself<\/em> tie-in, judged as a Wolverine issue, it’s really quite good.<\/p>\n

Flashpoint<\/em> #3<\/strong> – As I said earlier, this is the first month where I preferred Fear Itself<\/em> to Flashpoint<\/em>, perhaps because the strings are getting a bit obvious here. \u00a0Issue #2 ended on an excellent cliffhanger, but the resolution – he’s not dead after all, and they try it a second time and get it right – is a thundering anticlimax. \u00a0From there, the book lurches into what appears to be the gathering of the new Justice League roster, which strikes me as a loss of focus, given that the story is basically about the Flash. \u00a0The reinvention of Superman is a clever idea, though, so there’s always that.<\/p>\n

Red Skull Incarnate<\/em> #1<\/strong> – Greg Pak is certainly setting himself a challenge with this miniseries about the origin of the Red Skull. \u00a0As the Afterword makes clear, this is a companion piece to Testament<\/em>, the Magneto origin miniseries which was first and foremost about the Holocaust. \u00a0When I reviewed that story, I commented that writers tended to adopt the victims’ perspective, but that relatively few looked at the equally important other side of the equation – how a country not so dissimilar from our own lost its way so spectacularly. \u00a0This is Pak’s attempt to deal with that question.<\/p>\n

Aside from the inherent challenges of having such an unsympathetic lead, there are other difficulties with making this work. \u00a0Testament<\/em> was dealing with a young Magneto and could sidestep the trappings of superhero comics almost entirely if it wanted. \u00a0But the Red Skull was created back in the 1940s as a World War II supervillain; he was a cartoon Nazi during<\/em> the war, and it’s not quite so obvious how you work around that. \u00a0Since this story begins with Johann Schmidt as a child in 1923, the answer may be that Pak is going to do the build-up to Schmidt putting on the mask, and stop there. \u00a0There’s certainly a precedent for treating the character as some sort of everyman-gone-wrong (which is why he was ascribed the real name John Smith in the first place).<\/p>\n

Still, what we get in this first issue seems to be one part social forces in Germany, one part youth of a serial killer. \u00a0As with Testament<\/em>, it’s a sober exercise, and more of a character piece than a plot-driven one. \u00a0Pak does start off with a nine-year-old Johann who doesn’t seem devoid of good qualities, so perhaps the idea is to use him as a microcosm of his nation and show how the forces of the Weimar Republic shape his life. \u00a0If that’s the idea, though, I’m not quite sure where the animal-beating comes in. \u00a0No doubt Pak’s angle will become clearer over the course of the series.<\/p>\n

It’s too early to tell whether this is going to work. \u00a0It\u00a0has the potential to slip into horrific bad taste if the Marvel Universe elements are handled wrongly, but Pak avoided that trap with Testament<\/em>. \u00a0It’s certainly ambitious and it strikes the right tone; the question may actually be whether Pak can build a sufficiently compelling story around the material.<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #540<\/strong> – I approached this issue with a certain amount of trepidation – a Fear Itself<\/em> tie-in and the return of Greg Land on art? \u00a0Actually, it’s better than I’d expected on both counts. \u00a0So far as the crossover is concerned, yes, the Juggernaut shows up to smash things with his enormous hammer, but that’s also something of a villain-of-the-week around which the X-Men’s ongoing storylines can revolve. \u00a0Those storylines, unexpectedly, turn out to include the imprisonment of Magik, a New Mutants<\/em> plot which crops up here rather out of the blue. \u00a0(Peter and Kitty have some dialogue that nudges in the direction of explaining it, but personally, I’d have thrown in a footnote to direct readers to the storyline in question. \u00a0Who knows, maybe it’d sell a few trade paperbacks.) \u00a0As for the Juggernaut himself, I guess it’s been a few years since we’ve had a “nobody can stop the Juggernaut” story, so what the heck – Fear Itself <\/em>does at least sweep aside the character’s devaluation over the last few years so that it can be done properly. \u00a0The question is whether Kieron Gillen has an original slant on it, and time will tell on that one.<\/p>\n

As for the art, while I’ve still got quite a few reservations about Greg Land’s art, this issue is something of a step up. \u00a0He’s largely ditched the irritating manic grin that used to dominate his work; for the first time in ages, his characters are displaying a full range of emotion here (and often quite well). \u00a0Yes, his Cyclops looks like he’s wandered out of Miami Vice; yes, his Illyana is inexplicably wearing make-up in her cell – which is both illogical and thematically wrong for the scene. \u00a0But still, it’s a big step in the right direction, and the most annoying features of his work seem to have been toned down.<\/p>\n

Wolverine & The Black Cat: Claws II <\/em>#1<\/strong> – Well, this is a very odd commission. \u00a0Marvel is generally dialling back on the miniseires in favour of doing extra issues of the regular titles. \u00a0But here we have a three-issue sequel to Claws<\/em>, a miniseries that came out in 2006. \u00a0Stranger yet, it picks up immediately after the previous story, and despite a caption saying “Today”, it’s obviously not set in present continuity (unless Wolverine’s got a very open relationship with Melita). \u00a0Since that opening caption is in the lower case font from the Jemas days that Marvel stopped using a while ago, I can’t help wondering whether this is another book like 15 Love <\/em>that Marvel found at the back of a drawer when they moved office.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t much of a fan of the original mini, but if you can live with some less-than-subtle innuendo, this is actually alright. \u00a0Wolverine and the Black Cat go out to celebrate their win in the previous series, Arcade and the White Rabbit escape from the Savage Land to cause trouble, hijinks ensue, and a wildly unlikely guest star shows up at the end. \u00a0It’s lightweight but it’s fun.<\/p>\n

X-Men<\/em> #14<\/strong> – Part 4 of “First to Last”, and the structure of telling parallel stories in the past and present is starting to show the strain. \u00a0The trouble is that there’s not really enough progress in the present day sections to justify the space they get, and most of the real plot is in the past. \u00a0Somewhere along the line, this story also seems to be trying to iron out some kinks in Emma Frost’s continuity by explaining away some stray references to her being institutionalised. \u00a0The story also suffers from the fact that it seems to be teasing the possibility of Magneto turning on the X-Men – but since we know he’s still hanging around in Prelude to Schism<\/em>, it’s hard to suspend disbelief and take that threat seriously. \u00a0The past sections are solid, and the art’s pretty good – but it’s not quite clicking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And in the week when News International cancelled the News of the World, we ask – what’s the betting that they relaunch it in September with a new creative team? \u00a0(Dark News of the World #1, perhaps.) There’s a veritable torrent of X-books and other new releases this week, so I’ll come back later to […]<\/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-917","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\/917","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=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":918,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}