THE X-AXIS
30 March 2008
=============
For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
------------
This week:
WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS #1
- "The Buddy System"
by Fred Van Lente and Andrea Di Vito
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #10 - "Frederick"
by Jeff Parker and Craig Rousseau
X-MEN: LEGACY #209 - From Genesis to Revelations, part 2
by Mike Carey, Scot Eaton, Billy Tan and John Dell
TRANSHUMAN #1 (of 4) - "Discovery"
by Jonathan Hickman and J M Ringuet
------------
Sometimes I wonder whether Marvel know the meaning of the word
"overkill." We've got a new X-book this week, and it's WOLVERINE: FIRST
CLASS. Because heaven knows, the world was crying out for a third
monthly Wolverine title. After all, the two we've got are practically
overflowing with quality.
This is a sister title to X-Men: First Class, which is to say that it's
set in past continuity, clearly aimed at a slightly younger audience
(and readers with more retro tastes), and generally goes for simpler,
more straightforward and more direct stories. Presumably, it's intended
as a gateway title for new superhero readers.
X-Men: First Class may not be the best title in the world, but at least
it's a pun that makes sense. They're a class, and they're the first
one. Wolverine: First Class makes no sense at all. What we actually get
here is a Kitty Pryde & Wolverine series, with Kitty as the lead
character, set shortly after she joined the X-Men. Nitpickers might
observe that she and Wolverine didn't really become a duo until later
on, but we'll let that slide. Quite how this concept translates to the
title Wolverine: First Class, I have no idea, unless First Class is
about to succumb to the same inane overuse as New and Young.
While X-Men: First Class takes a very relaxed approach to the source
material, this book seems to be a lot more faithful to the tone of the
original. Of course, it has the advantage of working with stories from
the 1980s rather than the 1960s. The style hasn't dated nearly as
badly, and besides, this period is arguably Chris Claremont's creative
peak.
So we have Kitty as the newbie superhero, providing the point of view,
and attempting to bond with a surly Wolverine who really can't be
bothered with her. Naturally, the aim of the first issue is to send
them on a mission and get them to team up. Writer Fred Van Lente makes
the smart decision of packing the duo off to suburbia, where Kitty is
much more at home. And, of course, Kitty gets to have the big idea that
solves the case (while Wolverine still does all the conventional hero
stuff).
In other words, it's nothing you wouldn't have expected. But Van Lente
and artist Andrea Di Vito capture the characters' voices from the
period, and it does feel like an affectionate tribute to some rather
good comics, as opposed to just a gratuitous line expansion. Kitty in
particular was a much more strongly defined character in those days;
some of her best stories come from her novice period. Of course, there
was no way of keeping her in that role indefinitely - you can't play a
character as a novice when she's been around for over 25 years - but
this series does work as a reminder of her initial appeal.
We don't need three Wolverine titles a month, and nothing here convinces
me that we do. But it's better than Wolverine: Origins, and better than
a fair number of stories from the regular Wolverine series. Fans of the
early 1980s will enjoy it a lot, and it's a well-crafted story which
should appeal to younger readers too.
Rating: B+
------------
In another example of Marvel's scheduling genius, this week also sees
the release of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS - not to mention, both the Avengers
titles and half the Ultimate line. No doubt there is some extremely
good reason for this which happens to escape me.
Anyway, this is a Cyclops solo story. In theory, that's quite a good
idea. Usually, the point of doing a solo story is to bring out a
different side of the character by taking him away from his usual role
in the team. That ought to work particularly well with Cyclops. His
defining feature is that he's an uptight leader who tends to put that
role before everything else - in part, because it's a good excuse not to
deal with any of his other issues.
Take Cyclops away from the team, and you take away his leader****p role.
That ought to allow other aspects of his personality to come through.
And at first, this story seems to be heading that way. With the rest of
the team ill, Scott shows up on his own to try and investigate a new
mutant, and has to try and strike up conversation with the local cops
himself. Naturally, he's useless at it.
But from there, the story rather loses focus. Instead, we get a story
about an insane backwoods mutant holding people prisoner in a mine.
This doesn't have much to do with Cyclops at all, and we end up with a
story of Scott being stoic and heroic in the face of adversity. And he
does that every issue.
The end result is perfectly okay, but it comes across as a generic story
which simply happens to have used Cyclops instead of the whole team. As
such, it seems a bit of a missed op****tunity.
Rating: B-
------------
After last month's strong start, X-MEN: LEGACY is now confusing me a
bit.
Issue #208, you may recall, consisted of the Acolytes trying to wake up
Professor X, interspersed with dream flashbacks to his earlier days.
Most of them concerned why he'd formed the X-Men and whether he had any
ulterior motives. And the dream scenes were drawn by John Romita Jr,
which made for a nice contrast with Scot Eaton's more typical art for
the real world.
This issue, Magneto shows up, and we get some fairly generic flashbacks
of scenes from their past - many of which, I suspect, won't make a great
deal of sense unless you have a fairly decent knowledge of X-Men
continuity. There's even a scene which seems to be a snippet from X-Men
#-1, the Flashback Month issue.
Frankly, none of this adds a great deal to what we already knew about
the relation****p between Xavier and Magneto. The payoff is that (once
Xavier has been woken), they agree that neither of them won - M-Day made
the whole thing irrelevant. But that's been pretty much self-evident
for a few years now, and we seem to be no closer to answering the
question "So where now, then?"
Instead, we have Exodus floating around the edges of the story,
presumably representing the zealot who can't adjust to the reality that
things have changed. This is all very well, but once again I come back
to a repeated theme: these are the stories that the X-books should have
been telling two years ago. We should be way past this point by now.
I'm still inclined to believe that Carey is heading in the right
direction, but I am bored with the M-Day storyline, and I want to see
some long overdue progress.
In an odd move, John Romita Jr is gone from this issue. Instead, the
flashback art is drawn by Billy Tan. This rather defeats the point,
because Tan's style isn't much different from Eaton's. Both are
perfectly decent artist, but the visual signposting that worked so well
in the previous issue is pretty much gone.
I'm rather disappointed by this issue. I mean, it's fine, it's still
something a little different, and I have enough faith in Carey to
believe that this must surely be heading somewhere - even if that isn't
exactly apparent on the page. But it doesn't pick up on the more
interesting aspects of the previous issue, the art's a step down, and we
seem to be back treading overfamiliar ground.
Rating: B
------------
Jonathan Hickman is the creator of Nightly News and Pax Romana, two
comics notable for their extremely design-conscious artwork. Sometimes,
his pages resemble diagrams more than conventional stories.
TRANSHUMAN is something a little different. Hickman is only writing it,
with art from the relatively conventional JM Ringuet. However, it's
still an unusual comic, as Hickman appears to have set out to make a
mockumentary in comic form.
The story appears to be a comic-book rendering of a near-future
documentary about the history of the "transhumanist" movement - the
improvement of the human body through a mixture of genetics and
technology. It's the sort of thing Warren Ellis likes to bang on about,
but this strips away the usual alt-culture trappings and presents the
movement as a story of scientists and businessmen competing to bring
their products to market. It's the sort of comic in which the phrase
"restrictive covenant" appears.
It's a fairly interesting story, which establishes its main characters
quite well through interview segments, and which lightens up the
proceedings with some black comedy. However, as a formal experiment,
I'm not altogether sure it works.
The mockumentary sub-genre works by presenting itself as a real
documentary, and appropriating the trappings of non-fiction film-making.
But non-fiction comics are extremely rare. They tend to come in two
types: visual essays, and autobiography. Crucially, there's no such
thing as a comic book documentary, because a comic doesn't have a
camera, and can't document anything in that sense.
So, comics don't have an established non-fiction form to ape, and if
they did, it wouldn't be the documentary. That makes the idea of a
comic book mockumentary a little questionable, to my mind. What you end
up with is something that looks like it wants to be a film, and which
can't really take advantage of the storytelling devices of comics. And
when the art does cut loose and fill the page with diagrams, it doesn't
really fit the mockumentary conceit.
On some levels, this is quite interesting. But it really does feel like
something that wants to be in a different medium entirely. In fairness,
that's because it's trying something very difficult - mock non-fiction
in a medium where the trappings of non-fiction have yet to be
consistently defined. I can't see how we can skip straight to the stage
of subverting conventions that don't yet exist. Still, I admire the
effort.
Rating: B
------------
Also this week:
ULTIMATE X-MEN #92 - This is the penultimate chapter of the Apocalypse
story, and frankly, it's all over the place. I'm not sure whether
Kirkman is ru****ng to tie up his stories before "Ultimatum" comes along,
but this certainly reads as though we've skipped an arc somewhere.
Without any real introduction or build-up, and without anything in the
way of personality or agenda, Apocalypse is suddenly tra****ng New York
and being presented as a major threat. There's a reasonable sense of
scale, but the failure to define Apocalypse as a character undermines
the whole thing. It leaves us with a rather convoluted fight against an
off-the-shelf villain, who would surely have benefitted from a bit more
build-up before we cut straight to the finale. Considering how long
Kirkman has dragged out other subplots, it seems particularly odd to
dive straight into the climax. Oh, and the explanation for the last
couple of years is that Cable and Bishop were joining forces to get the
X-Men ready to face Apocalypse - but why they couldn't have just
explained it up front isn't really examined. C+
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #23 - The issue I couldn't be bothered reviewing last
week, and I can barely summon up the energy now. This is part three of a
Wolverine/Deadpool fight scene that looks set to continue for the whole
five part story. There are a couple of passably inventive moments, but
for god's sake, it's literally just a single fight for three months and
counting. At least when Joss Whedon did it in Astoni****ng X-Men, he had
a large cast and plenty of little character moments and mysteries dotted
along the way. This is just two characters hitting one another
indefinitely, lacking the wit and energy it would need to get away with
it. D+
------------
There's more from me at If Destroyed, and if you're desperate for more
Article 10 columns, you can always hunt through the archives on Ninth
Art.
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
http://www.ninthart.com
Next week, another new book, as Young X-Men launches the latest
re-tooling of the junior team. Cable is still fighting Bishop in the
second issue of his new title, and X-Force #3 continues the Purifiers
arc. New Exiles completes its first storyline, and there's the second
issue of Vaughan and Risso's Logan miniseries.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
|
