THE X-AXIS
6 April 2008
============
For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information on the
X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
------------
This week:
NEW EXILES #4 - "New Life, New Gambit!"
by Chris Claremont, Tom Grummett and Scott Hanna
YOUNG X-MEN #1 - "Final Genesis"
by Marc Guggenheim, Yanick Paquette and Ray Snyder
------------
NEW EXILES #4 completes the book's first arc. Look, it says so, right
here in the solicitations. "The conclusion to the series' first arc",
it says. It's worth stressing, because I suspect it would come as a
surprise to a lot of readers.
Now, admittedly, I had been wondering whether New Exiles was going to
feature anything remotely different from what we've seen before. This
issue suggests that perhaps it will. In the past, New Exiles has been
the comic book equivalent of Quantum Leap - a handful of regular
characters, but essentially a series of separate stories in separate
settings. With this arc, however, Claremont seems to be setting up a
world that he plans to return to. At the very least, I can't figure out
what else he might be doing.
This might not be a bad idea. The Exiles format can get rather
repetitive, and the possibilities for hanging out in the Crystal Palace
are a bit limited - not to mention that it's an ungodly ugly place,
which involves drenching the page in bright pink. Now that the Exiles
are in control of their travels, it actually makes reasonable sense that
the series should pay regular visits to their respective homeworlds, and
start to build up some stories there.
So in principle, all this sounds fine. The problem is that what we've
actually had is four issues of set-up with no real plot to speak of.
The recap page speaks volumes: it solemnly recounts that character A
went here and met so-and-so, while character B went there and met some
other guy, but at no point gives the faintest indication as to why any
of this happened, or what anyone was fighting about.
This isn't the fault of the recapper. The story has simply consisted of
the Exiles wandering around this world, meeting assorted characters, and
getting shot at occasionally. The world itself is a garbled and
overcomplicated one. Starting off with the premise of a planet ravaged
by disaster back in the sixties, it somehow lurches off to become a
story about a hybrid of Wakanda and Atlantis, and then belatedly
announces that the human race has terraformed Mars. Meanwhile,
Claremont has slipped back into his habit of hurling under-defined
villains at the page, with names like Bloodwitch, Black Dog and Rough
Justice. There's even a Shadowclaw wandering around.
Set-up arcs are all well and good, but they still have to tell some sort
of story in their own right. Go back to Claremont's early X-Men issues
and you'll find plenty of stories that work in precisely that way -
stories where the point is really to introduce a villain for future use,
but which are at least structured around the X-Men overcoming a clearly
defined immediate threat. In comparison, this is just a random string
of events with a fight at the end. It doesn't even serve as a good
introduction for new character Gambit, who stands around on the fringes
for most of the issue without really contributing anything.
In the wider scheme of things, there may well be some merit to this
approach. But as an opening storyline, it's all over the place, I'm
afraid.
Rating: C
------------
The main X-book of the week has to be Marc Guggenheim and Yanick
Paquette's Young X-Men #1, the launch of yet another new title.
Young X-Men is the latest attempt to make the junior team successful.
After New Mutants was a little too sedate, and New X-Men was too much of
a bloodbath, it seems we're going back to the drawing board yet again.
Marvel seem to be approaching this part of the franchise like an old
television set - if they keep thumping it enough, maybe it'll start
working.
The title certainly doesn't do it any favours. It's presumably intended
to set up some kind of parallel to Young Avengers, which was doing
rather well until it vanished from the shelves. Of course, the books
have nothing in common beyond the age of their protagonists. It's
awkwardly reminiscent of the embarrassing overuse of New. For that
matter, even First Class seems to be heading the same way, now that
they've applied it to a title where the pun doesn't make any sense.
Quite what Marvel think they're achieving by giving similar titles to
unrelated comics, I have no idea; the practical effect is simply to make
it look as though they've run out of ideas.
Anyway, what Marc Guggenheim gives us in the first issue is a "gathering
the team" story, in which Cyclops goes around visiting everyone. This
is a bit odd to start with, as we never actually saw the old team break
up. So the first thing we hear about the ex-pupils returning to their
regular lives is... when Cyclops shows up to bring them back to the
Mansion. It comes across as an unnecessary detour.
Strangely, Guggenheim has chosen to dump most of the existing cast
members in favour of a couple of new characters, and some characters
who've been standing around on the fringes of crowd scenes for years.
This is another odd choice, because the problem with New X-Men wasn't
the characters. It was the unremittingly miserable stories that they
appeared in.
Still, only Rockslide and Dust survive from the previous cast. The rest
of the group is filled out by Blindfold from Joss Whedon's Astonishing
X-Men run; Wolf Cub, whom you might remember having the occasional line
of dialogue three years ago; and two new mutants. Yes, new mutants.
Now, I could have sworn there was this big M-Day storyline that was
supposed to stop writers from introducing random new mutants as if they
were standing around on every street corner, but apparently not, because
nobody seems to regard is as particularly noteworthy here.
Now, to be fair, it's pretty obvious reading between the lines that
there's supposed to be more to this than meets the eye. Cyclops' stated
reasons for recruiting this group don't make a great deal of sense, and
he even seems to be pitching it to the kids as though they're the only
X-Men team - not quite what he's telling people in the other titles.
The closing page makes it quite obvious that there's something we're not
being told.
And the tone of this book is much more to my liking than New X-Men,
which was far too miserable. Yes, there's a death in flash-forward in
the opening pages, but it's played as a very big deal rather than just
another corpse. Yanick Paquette's art probably helps; his work is
cheerful enough to take the edge off a couple of moments that could
otherwise easily come across as excessive.
But the whole thing just feels a bit off. I'll grant that the team
concept is clearly supposed to be slightly questionable, so that gets a
pass for now. Still, the established characters all seem a bit
off-model. Cyclops is acting strangely all round these days, but
Guggenheim is only paying lipservice to Blindfold's garbled speech, even
allowing the narrator to spell out exactly what she's thinking. Dust
has implausibly gone from a mutely deferential streotype to an
ass-kicking Afghan heroine who mutilates Taliban soldiers. Now, god
knows she needed to grow a spine, but not overnight. And Wolf Cub, who
I recall being Generic Schoolboy #46, has suddenly decided he needs to
hunt down and kill Maximus Lobo, because of a story from Chuck Austen's
run on Uncanny X-Men which isn't even properly explained to new readers.
The biggest problem, however, is that the issue doesn't persuade me that
these are more interesting characters than, say, Surge, Hellion or
Mercury. For all the flaws of New X-Men, it had some very good
characters, and jettisoning them in favour of the X-tras is a bemusing
decision.
I'll give it some time to see where Guggenheim is heading with this,
because there's evidently a lot of misdirection going on in this opening
story. But first impressions are underwhelming.
Rating: B-
------------
Also this week:
ANNA MERCURY #1 - Another Warren Ellis miniseries for Avatar. (And you
know you're dealing with a classy publisher when their standard
copyright warning includes "All characters as depicted in this story are
over the age of 18.") Apparently, this is one of his attempts to revive
other pulp genres, and that's certainly how it comes across. Anna
Mercury is a babe in black leather who runs around the retro city of New
Ataraxia doing cool stuff and confusing the locals. Frankly, she's a
bit too blatant as a wish-fulfilment character to really make me
interested in her, but Ellis's fanbase should love it. Newcomer artist
Facundo Percio does a generally good job, though. He's gone a bit
overboard with Anna's hair, but he's strong on the cityscapes. B+
CABLE #2 - Well, this is slow. It's basically just a protracted
continuation of a single fight scene, interspersed with a Bishop
flashback explaining the series from his point of view. None of the
contents are terribly surprising, but there are a few neat details in
there, and I like the fact that Bishop clearly still thinks he's the
hero. Still, the main plot consists essentially of Bishop and Cable
fighting ve-e-e-e-ery slowly, and there doesn't seem to be much to it.
Ariel Olivetti's art is also hit and miss - for every impressive page,
there's a panel where people are standing at 45 degrees to vertical. B-
LOGAN #2 - Well, at least he didn't turn out to be Sunfire's dad. It's
Hiroshima, it's 1945, Logan fights the racist American soldier from the
last issue, and then somebody drops a nuke on them. It's a strange
story, this, and one that could easily come across as a bit tacky. To
Vaughan and Risso's credit, it doesn't, but I'm really not sure at this
stage what point they're trying to make with it. Vaughan seems to be
trying to spin this as some sort of turning point in Wolverine's life,
but with the best will in the world, I don't really see why. B
SECRET INVASION #1 - Alien doppelgangers invade the Marvel Universe. As
a concept, I rather like this - it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers with
superheroes, and what's wrong with that? In practice, I'm not so sure
they've really managed to make the most of the paranoia angle, and at
times Bendis seems unsure of how seriously he wants to take this.
They've got to build up the Skrulls as a semi-credible threat in order
for it to work, but come on, it's still basically little green men
invading - as the B-movie logo tacitly admits. Superhero team books
generally haven't been Bendis' strength, but this is one of his better
efforts, hitting the ground running in the first issue, and with a cute
"everything you know is wrong" tease that's surely a misdirection
(anything else would be suicidal) but promises to be fun nonetheless. I
enjoyed this more than I was expecting. A-
------------
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
Next week, um, Wolverine #64, which is the third part of the Mystique
storyline. Oddly, everything else has slipped off schedule...
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com
|
