{"id":988,"date":"2011-08-14T19:07:44","date_gmt":"2011-08-14T18:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=988"},"modified":"2011-08-14T19:07:44","modified_gmt":"2011-08-14T18:07:44","slug":"the-x-axis-14-august-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"The X-Axis – 14 August 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a busy weekend on the blog, so just to remind you: the Summerslam preview is here<\/a>, the chart post is here<\/a>, and this week’s podcast is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Which leaves the X-Axis. \u00a0And since it’s a pretty quite week for new releases, and I’ve already written quite a bit, and I’m rather short of time, I’m just going to stick to the X-books themselves this week. \u00a0There’s five of them, after all.<\/p>\n

Daken: Dark Wolverine<\/em>\u00a0#12<\/strong>\u00a0– We’re now three issues in to Rob Williams’ first storyline, and his new direction for the book seems to be working nicely. \u00a0He’s kept the inherited concept of Daken as a scheming manipulator, and Daken’s plan in this issue is indeed a characteristically overelaborate piece of showmanship designed not so much to succeed as to succeed in impractically over-the-top style. \u00a0Unlike some previous issues, it actually does<\/em>\u00a0feel like a properly pre-planned scheme, too.<\/p>\n

But Williams’ main addition to the book – other than to generally steer it away from concepts associated with Wolverine – is to get Daken hooked on drugs that screw up his powers and his planning abilities. \u00a0This makes sense for the character, who’s both bored enough to experiment and overconfident enough to think nothing can go wrong. \u00a0It also plays on the established theme of Daken’s obsession with control. \u00a0It gives the character a degree of vulnerability that makes him more interesting as an antihero protagonist – for the first time, instead of trying to convince us that Daken is unbelievably smart and outwitting everyone, the book is building the idea that he could be about to screw it all up. \u00a0And it gives an excuse for Riley Rossmo to do a few pages of luridly scrawled art that get the hallucinations across nicely.<\/p>\n

It’s not the strongest issue that regular artist Matteo Buffagni has done, but it’s fine. \u00a0The Taskmaster, as guest star, doesn’t get a great deal to do beyond provide a recognisable opponent for the issue, but it’s an amusing change to see him depicted as a mercenary hero cheerfully accepting his applause after completing a job with no actual criminal content. \u00a0The key thing, though, is that I’m actually intrigued to see where Daken’s story is going now; on that level, it’s a success.<\/p>\n

New Mutants<\/em>\u00a0#29<\/strong>\u00a0– Time for a Fear Itself<\/em>\u00a0crossover arc! \u00a0Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning start from a logical point: Fear Itself<\/em>\u00a0involves Asgardian bad guys, Dani Moonstar has a connection to Asgard from back in the day (plus an outstanding deal with Hela), so that’s the way in. \u00a0So we have Dani being hauled off to Hel to assist with sorting out the troops, while the rest of the New Mutants try to give chase and, uh, botch it quite badly by ending up in the wrong afterlife.<\/p>\n

Now that bit of the story is fine. \u00a0It’s basically using Fear Itself<\/em>\u00a0as a springboard to send most of the team off on an unrelated story to kill a few months before Schism<\/em>. \u00a0As for the stuff with Dani, well, that’s rather more directly connected to the crossover and not inherently that gripping. \u00a0I’m also a little thrown off to see that Hela apparently doesn’t know anything about the army invading her lands, which would suggest that she apparently hasn’t been reading the tie-in issues of Journey into Mystery<\/em>. \u00a0(Is it really too much to ask that Hela should retain knowledge from earlier parts of the same crossover?)<\/p>\n

David Lafuente takes over on art, and I suspect his rather elongated, stylised figures won’t be to everyone’s taste. \u00a0I’m not quite sure he’s got a handle on the characters yet, either – Cypher’s a lot more expressive than he’s been in a while, for example. \u00a0But his layouts are strong, he does a good Warlock (which is rare), his background characters actually emote, and his alien worlds are pretty excellent; on the whole, I quite like it, though I suspect his version of the cast will take a bit of getting used to.<\/p>\n

Fear Itself: Uncanny X-Force<\/em>\u00a0#2<\/strong>\u00a0– This miniseries really is one of the looser Fear Itself<\/em>\u00a0tie-ins. \u00a0The Serpent’s pretty much absent from this book. \u00a0Instead, the plot involves an apocalyptic Christian cult who are convinced the crossover means that end of the world is nigh, and are helpfully trying to speed innocent souls on their way to heaven. \u00a0Mass suicide having proved less popular than they’d hoped, they’re now moving on to plan B, in which they give said souls more of a nudge.<\/p>\n

Given the difficulties of writing a self-contained story in the margins of a crossover, this is as good a concept as any. \u00a0It’s basically a case of the heroes running around fighting maniac cyborgs in an attempt to track down the head bad guy, but hey, it’s a three issue X-Force\/Fear Itself<\/em>\u00a0crossover, it’s going to be an action story. \u00a0And the story does make some effort to flesh out the concept instead of simply using it to justify the fight scenes. \u00a0Simone Bianchi’s doing good work on this series too, keeping the delicacy of earlier work but greatly improving the clarity of storytelling. \u00a0Not essential, but perfectly fine.<\/p>\n

X-Men<\/em>\u00a0#15.1<\/strong>\u00a0– This, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess. \u00a0In theory, the Point One issues are supposed to be jumping on points for new readers. \u00a0So you might expect a story that set up the premise of the book. \u00a0In fact, this title’s remit is to be the X-Men book that interacts with the rest of the Marvel Universe – X-Men Team-Up<\/em>, in other words – so what this issue actually contains is a done-in-one story that guest stars the new Ghost Rider.<\/p>\n

Does it explain the concept of the X-Men? \u00a0No. \u00a0Does it have anything much to do with the concept of the X-Men? \u00a0No really, no – it’s about an old sorceress who Dani Moonstar used to know, and she isn’t even a regular character in this series. \u00a0Does it even explain who the Ghost Rider is? \u00a0No. \u00a0Does it serve as an introductory issue in any way, shape or form? \u00a0No. \u00a0Not at all.<\/p>\n

Leave that aside, and you’ve got a fairly stock story about somebody’s past catching up with them, which could have been fleshed out into a half-decent Ghost Rider or Dr Strange story, but ends up just being tacked onto a formulaic Ghost Rider\/X-Men team-up. \u00a0Weak.<\/p>\n

X-Men Legacy<\/em>\u00a0#253<\/strong>\u00a0– The final part of “Lost Legions”, in which, well, Legion’s final errant personalities are outwitted and defeated, and then most of the cast decamp to appear in the next storyline. \u00a0And… uh, yeah. \u00a0I’m going to re-read this arc to see if I’m missing something, but it does rather seem like Mike Carey is basically just been having fun with the idea of Legion as a factory for crazy powers, rather than telling a story that adds up to anything in particular. \u00a0It’s a good final showdown, though, and I’ll grant that I didn’t see the twist coming even though Carey spent a whole issue foreshadowing it, so that certainly worked. \u00a0I’m just not sure what it was all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a busy weekend on the blog, so just to remind you: the Summerslam preview is here, the chart post is here, and this week’s podcast is here. Which leaves the X-Axis. \u00a0And since it’s a pretty quite week for new releases, and I’ve already written quite a bit, and I’m rather short of […]<\/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-988","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\/988","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=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":990,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}