Uncanny X-Men #281 is the first "core" post-Claremont book we're looking at. In X-Force and X-Factor we have seen very different takes on what you can do in an X-book - grim mercenary fantasies and powered detectivey stuff. This is the first time we see what someone else (in this case Whilce Portacio scripted by John Byrne and Jim Lee, apparently, although who knows what relation that bears to who did what) will do in Claremont's sandbox.
And it definitely his sandbox: rather than introduce anything new, it's business as usual, as we get the Hellfire Club, Sentinels, Emma Frost and the Hellions, the Reavers and Senator Kelly. It's practically a roll-call, and as such very reassuring - the X-Men are back as they were in the early 1980s, complete with mutants conspiring to build and set giant robots on other mutants for no clearly defined reason.
The element that wasn't present there, of course, is Jean Grey, what with her dying in 1980, before Emma was anything more than a cardboard cutout. That Jean/Emma dynamic starts to come alive here, for a moment. Until Jean Grey gets killed off in the last few pages. Well, that didn't last long, did it? Ironic that Claremont wanted to keep her dead and then the moment he leaves the book, they kill her off again.
Special shout-out to the names of some of the Hellions to die in this issue. "Beef" and "Bevatron". You don't get names like those any more. Thank god. These characters were both introduced over in New Warriors, which apparently exists now but I'm not going to cover...
Reading the X-Men from #1 to last week. Usually posts Thursdays.
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
X-Factor #72-#73: Multiple Man, Multiple Man, Exploring the Possibilities that a Multiple Man Presents
X-Factor #72-#73 is a bit more like it. It's a twist on a murder mystery with the main question not being the identity of the killer, but the victim. Madrox was shot dead at the end of the last issue, but then... turns up alive. It was a dupe, you see. Coming at this from 2014 and with my background my immediate question is "is there even an original?" This is the first dupe that has died, apparently. The surviving Madrox was expecting to be able to reabsorb it, but finds he is unable to. The patch-and-merge problem is not possible to solve with a corpse, and so he finds an entire set of memories gone. Including the identity of the murderer, presumably.
But then another Madrox turns up, also claiming to be the original. He says he pre-dates the events of the Muir Island Saga. This one is at least partly co-original, if more unofficial; they can (to the X-Factor Madrox's surprise) both create dupes. We never get quite to the point that they realise there isn't a difference between them, other than the path they take, I am sure that will come.
#73 touches on a social issue that hasn't really been covered by X-Men comics before: the issue of preferred nomenclature. We've had a few terms thrown around as abuse before, such as "mutie" and "genejoke", but "mutant" itself has been treated as a neutral term. But such terms tend towards the abusive. "Mutant", like "homosexual", has a more than a whiff of clinicalism around it, too. You would expect mutants as a group to come up with some term of their own, that they'd try to promote.
This is not what happens in #73. Guido is a bit annoyed with his television interviewer, and so makes up out of whole cloth the idea that "mutant" is considered deprecated by mutants and that the term "genetically challenged" is considered better. One problem is: he really did pull that term right out of his ass. Other mutants are puzzled and push back against him. The other problem is that, although this is modelled on "physically challenged", the majority of new coinages of the form "[something]ly challenged" terms are either gags or imagined usages. Folically challenged, vertically challenged, the list goes on. It is hard to read this as anything other than a joke against people campaigning for a right to their own identity.
But then another Madrox turns up, also claiming to be the original. He says he pre-dates the events of the Muir Island Saga. This one is at least partly co-original, if more unofficial; they can (to the X-Factor Madrox's surprise) both create dupes. We never get quite to the point that they realise there isn't a difference between them, other than the path they take, I am sure that will come.
#73 touches on a social issue that hasn't really been covered by X-Men comics before: the issue of preferred nomenclature. We've had a few terms thrown around as abuse before, such as "mutie" and "genejoke", but "mutant" itself has been treated as a neutral term. But such terms tend towards the abusive. "Mutant", like "homosexual", has a more than a whiff of clinicalism around it, too. You would expect mutants as a group to come up with some term of their own, that they'd try to promote.
This is not what happens in #73. Guido is a bit annoyed with his television interviewer, and so makes up out of whole cloth the idea that "mutant" is considered deprecated by mutants and that the term "genetically challenged" is considered better. One problem is: he really did pull that term right out of his ass. Other mutants are puzzled and push back against him. The other problem is that, although this is modelled on "physically challenged", the majority of new coinages of the form "[something]ly challenged" terms are either gags or imagined usages. Folically challenged, vertically challenged, the list goes on. It is hard to read this as anything other than a joke against people campaigning for a right to their own identity.
Thursday, 20 March 2014
Everyone Should Try It
Further to the last post, pretend rubbish space boyfriend Hazel Robinson has made her epic Young Avengers post. Read it. 'nuff said.
X-Factor #71: or, a gonzo con report
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| Sadly there weren't any Oubliette cosplayers for me to fold my arms at. |
I don't know if I'll ever write about Young Avengers for the blog. I feel it's the sort of thing I should cover (I'm planning to broaden out in the 2000s and cover lots of general Avengers stuff - particularly the crossovers - because of interlinking - I mean how on earth can I write about Decimation without having done House of M, and how can I do Utopia without Dark Reign and Secret Invasion?), but it'll be a long way down the line if I ever do, and I doubt I'll have anything to add beyond what Hazel will say in her highly-anticipated mega-post (she was playing the role of my stupid space boyfriend on Saturday, being Noh-Varr to my Kate Bishop; the other of us is Clara, doing a highly-excellent Wiccan.)
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| *like* |
After the con closed on the Sunday there was further pubbage and then karaoke. It went a bit wrong, as karaoke tends to. I was left with a strong conviction that the food was nice, that several songs I had previously thought were OK were problematic (this is what happens when you get several socially aware creator-types in a room together), and that I had paid my share of the bill. After the karaoke we went back to the pub, and then back to Al Ewing's hotel, where the bar was still open. I didn't get home until Monday afternoon, after having spent the night (well, the brief couple of hours before it got light again) on Kieron Gillen's sofa. That's the real reason I can't write about Young Avengers right now, of course. It's too close. Not that that's an ethical judgement, it's just that saying the things I need to say about it would feel too close to exposing myself. Maybe I'll do that down the line. For now, I'm glad I'm in 1991.
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| Peter David totally signed my comic! |
I've been writing this post for an hour now, and I still haven't read the issue. It's sitting in my scanner. This is new. I've never been too nervous to read a comic before. What if it sucks? There's nothing for it. There's only so many cups of tea I can make. There's only so many games of 2048 I can play. (That bit's not true, I expect I could do that FOREVER.) I'm going to have to sit down and get cracking. You know what, I'll liveblog this, page by page.
Page 1: One big panel of Guido saying "excuse me, you got any grey poupon?" to an unspecified person. I'm not quite sure what grey poupon is. Googling tells me that it is a brand of mustard known in the United States. But what sort of brand? High-end, low-end? This is important. It's owned by Kraft, so I'm guessing not exactly gourmet.
The credits box reminds me that I don't talk about artists enough. This issue is pencilled by Larry Stroman and inked by Al Milgrom. Now that I've started to draw faces a bit I am starting to actually look at the strokes in comic art properly in a technical sense rather than just the overall aesthetic, a mental breakthrough like that week in 2004 when I suddenly started hearing individual parts in music.
Guido's face here is drawn very stylised, with a radiator grill for a mouth, his pink face and hand amid a sea of purple that represents his shirt but extends far beyond the area that is plausibly cloth. Is that the background? What's going on here. We'll see on...
Page 2:
But before I get to page 2 I am interrupted by a twitter notification. Charlotte, who is another of our little Young Avengers collective, is replying about my suggestion that she use a MUD client for talking to MicroMUSE. I try and log into the MUD myself, with my own client, just to check that it can work. It does. I muse (see what I did there) for a bit about the energy I was feeling when I wrote that versus the energy I have for comics now. It's similar, but I'm in a better, more driven and more capable place, now. MUDs and comics are at once almost opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, but they share commonalities. MUDs are basically the ultimate in indie games - back in the 1990s everyone was making their own MUDs, and only a few ever were commercialised. Everyone can make their own comics and even the biggest event book at Marvel or DC still has a bit of an artisan feel to it, because it's predominantly the work of a handful of people.
MUD writing was fun, but I was never able to achieve the intellectual conversation I wanted out of them, and I drifted away from them in around 2003/2004, about the time I got into Wikipedia. I am still proud of the body of work I produced for the Cryosphere, and it pains me that it is so inaccessible. And one day the worldbuilding (my spin on a mashup of 2300 AD and Warren Ellis's Ministry of Space, something that I never got around to reading until 2005) is going to emerge in a comic, probably the one about the stupid space captain. I try to persuade Charlotte to log in to the Cryosphere, but she is resistant. Fair enough, one MUD at a time.
The first panel of page 2 answers my question about Guido. He is being drawn huge and that colour fill really was supposed to be his shirt. He's with Lorna Dane and another chap, and they are having a bit of a back and forth in a style that is instantly familiar, because David is still writing those characters just like that.
Lorna is worried about the guy they are bringing in to head this new X-Factor. This would be the new incarnation of Freedom Force that #70 trailed, then, but that link is implied, so far.
Page 3:
Four-panel page, the most we've had so far, with only a tiny bit of dialogue on each page really, compared to say, Claremont. You can tell who says each line even without the attribution of the speech bubbles. The second and fourth panels are head-shots of Lorna Dane (Polaris) from unusual angles - one showing her chin and jaw, and the other a profile from below.
Lorna is worried about Alex Summers (Havok) being the team leader. Not because he's her ex, but because she doesn't know what she is, they've been mind-controlled and that so much, what's even is the state of affairs of their relationship?
Page 4:
Guido hits on Lorna in that way he does. Eew.
Page 5:
And the other person at the table is named as Madrox (in case you couldn't tell before from the knocking and duplicating). Jamie Madrox is the main character in the 00s David's X-Factor. Will he arrive as well-constructed as Guido has?
Something is going on with the jars. Particularly the mayo.
Page 6:
And now Val Cooper is in Genosha, recruiting Havok. He'd ended up rebuilding Genosha after the X-Tinction Agenda crossover. In having Cooper the linkage with the new Freedom Force is made explicit. Alex is a hard sell. Cooper probably isn't helping by denigrating something he really believes in rather than trying to
Page 7-8:
Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair) saves Havok from a falling girder. Our first action scene. Val uses it as a mind-game. Did she set it up?
Page 9-10
Change of scene, and we're with Quicksilver. Quicksilver who has of course, deep Young Avengers connections, being the template for Speed (Tommy). He's looking for the X-Factor HQ in Washington (not New York!), and being impatient.
Page 11/13
Alex's brother Scott Summers arrives, with Professor Charles Xavier, to persuade Alex personally. Alex is a very reluctant leader here. More recently, he is reluctantly persuaded to lead the Uncanny Avengers team, in the wake of Xavier's death and Cyclops's rebellion; they argue that he would be a good example for human/mutant relations, something that apparently will stick with him.
Page 14-15
Back at the HQ. Pietro has arrived and is in a bit of a state. Lorna is surprised to see him not on the West Coast with the Avengers; has she not heard of his power?
But in context, it's Quicksilver in a bit of an addled state, so it manages to get away with it very slightly. His power, in case you are wondering from the page, is killing him.
Page 16
Alex and Rahne on the plane to the US. Looking forward to the future and considering their team-mates.
Page 17-19
Pietro clarifies exactly what he means. Using his power is ageing him. He is being blackmailed, of sorts (well, taunted anonymously by postcard with no specific demands, but eh.) This smells a bit.
We get the punchline on the mayo jar (not the mustard jar, oddly... I'd have made it the mustard). They've all used their powers to try and open it, and in the end Val Cooper manages it by "rap[ping] it a few times."
Page 20-22
EXCEPT it turns out that Madrox made a fake jar with remote control lock as a practical joke. This is not the 2005 Madrox, is it? The animosity between Multiple Man and Quicksilver starts as... a series of practical jokes??? I did not see that coming.
And then someone shoots him. Who? We just don't know.
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| Steve links the portals. Don't ask. |
Now, it's getting on for 3.30pm and I've been writing about this comic for several hours. I didn't really have lunch because it would have felt like procrastinating. I'm heading into town for... comics, and then to Steve's house to ninja-decorate everywhere with tiny cakes for his birthday.
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| Did I mention I'd started drawing? I did the pencils in about half an hour, then inked and shaded it while Clara and Hazel discussed Sarah Ditton's recent article, which now, god help me, I am reading. Let me assure you, I am not doing it for the boys. |
Tuesday, 18 March 2014
X-Force #1-#4: Cable Cable Cable Eggs and Cable
X-Force launched before X-Men vol 2 but I'm doing them out of order BECAUSE. What have we got here? Rob Liefeld drawing whatever he likes and then Fabian Nicieza desperately trying to make it make sense. I'm sure this could work as an arrangement, but here it's not. It produces a generic terrorist fighty comic with bad, if exciting, art that was inexplicably popular. It's exactly what I expected it to be.
Well, except for #4, which is a strange SIDEWAYS COMIC. Now, there had been the odd sideways splash page in #1 and #2 so seeing that I was supposed to turn the page when immediately opening #4 was not The Most Surprising Thing In The World Ever, but then seeing it continue for the rest of the issue was actually quite exciting!
Since I haven't got anything else to say about these issues, how about some art by the amazing Hazel Robinson. We were at the comics pub quiz a couple of weeks ago, and there were bonus points available for drawing Sandman in the style of Rob Liefeld. And, well....
Well, except for #4, which is a strange SIDEWAYS COMIC. Now, there had been the odd sideways splash page in #1 and #2 so seeing that I was supposed to turn the page when immediately opening #4 was not The Most Surprising Thing In The World Ever, but then seeing it continue for the rest of the issue was actually quite exciting!
Since I haven't got anything else to say about these issues, how about some art by the amazing Hazel Robinson. We were at the comics pub quiz a couple of weeks ago, and there were bonus points available for drawing Sandman in the style of Rob Liefeld. And, well....
Rare Sandman movie concept art found at comics quiz (they made us do it) pic.twitter.com/Hz8HTQ6oZF
— Hazel Robinson (@piratemoggy) March 6, 2014Thursday, 13 March 2014
X-Men #1-#3: Mic Drop
According to the Guinness Book of Records, X-Men #1 is the highest-selling comic of all time. This was not a surprise, the X-Men were very popular and the comics speculation boom was in full bloom. This mass speculative was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of why things like Action Comics #1 were going for large sums. At the time they were seen as ephemeral, and so therefore when we come to 1991 surviving examples are rare. 1991's hot comics were being printed in their millions and purchased by a buying public that knew how to handle them properly. 23 years later, they're still not rare. They never will be, not in our lifetimes.
This is one of the least interesting things about this arc, though. It's Chris Claremont's last, for now. By now he had ceased plotting the books, and was doing dialogue, frustratedly. Some sniping is possibly apparent here in the "invisible spaceship" that is mentioned in the text.
Given its massive potential audience, what does it do? Does it take advantage of this to tell a compelling story while introducing the concept of the X-Men to a larger audience, like #1s try to do these days? Does it buggery. Yes, we've returned to the X-Men's default status quo, but within that we get a continuity-dense story resting on Magneto's brief time as a baby in 1977.
Today we would call that foolhardy, but in 1991 the book continued to sell, and would pick up readers. Was it a lost opportunity to get even more? Or is it that the modern rhetoric that comics are too hard to get in to does not really explain anything?
The story plays with the idea that the post-1977 Magneto is a different person to the pre-1977 one, because of a genetic alteration by Moira MacTaggert. She used him as an experimental testbed for a treatment for Proteus, her son. What she found was that the use of Magneto's powers made him mad, and what she did was a little tweak to his make-up to make this not a problem. Magneto's new group of Acolytes have found a variance, and Magneto is really quite pissed off at it. Crucial to the storyline's resolution, though, is the fact that this, if it ever worked, wore off (as his attempt at doing the same thing to Cyclops's team of X-Men also wears off, during their fight with Storm's team). Every decision Magneto has made has been his own, even the good ones.
The Magneto in this doesn't quite join up with the last time we'd seen him, in Uncanny #275. There, he looked like he was about to do something, here he's withdrawn and has to be drawn into action by the Acolytes. His interaction with Rogue carries on straight from that, though.
X-Men #1 is at once an odd comic to be the biggest-selling of all time, and yet also an obvious candidate. It had a superstar artist and writer, and is a #1 from the X-franchise. It's not great but neither is it interestingly flawed. It is the end of one era and the start of another (it will continue in publication until issue #275, making it I think the second longest-surviving bronze age comic series after Hellblazer). It is a perfect representation of what was going wrong and right with comics in the early 1990s. I have five.
This is one of the least interesting things about this arc, though. It's Chris Claremont's last, for now. By now he had ceased plotting the books, and was doing dialogue, frustratedly. Some sniping is possibly apparent here in the "invisible spaceship" that is mentioned in the text.
Given its massive potential audience, what does it do? Does it take advantage of this to tell a compelling story while introducing the concept of the X-Men to a larger audience, like #1s try to do these days? Does it buggery. Yes, we've returned to the X-Men's default status quo, but within that we get a continuity-dense story resting on Magneto's brief time as a baby in 1977.
Today we would call that foolhardy, but in 1991 the book continued to sell, and would pick up readers. Was it a lost opportunity to get even more? Or is it that the modern rhetoric that comics are too hard to get in to does not really explain anything?
The story plays with the idea that the post-1977 Magneto is a different person to the pre-1977 one, because of a genetic alteration by Moira MacTaggert. She used him as an experimental testbed for a treatment for Proteus, her son. What she found was that the use of Magneto's powers made him mad, and what she did was a little tweak to his make-up to make this not a problem. Magneto's new group of Acolytes have found a variance, and Magneto is really quite pissed off at it. Crucial to the storyline's resolution, though, is the fact that this, if it ever worked, wore off (as his attempt at doing the same thing to Cyclops's team of X-Men also wears off, during their fight with Storm's team). Every decision Magneto has made has been his own, even the good ones.
The Magneto in this doesn't quite join up with the last time we'd seen him, in Uncanny #275. There, he looked like he was about to do something, here he's withdrawn and has to be drawn into action by the Acolytes. His interaction with Rogue carries on straight from that, though.
X-Men #1 is at once an odd comic to be the biggest-selling of all time, and yet also an obvious candidate. It had a superstar artist and writer, and is a #1 from the X-franchise. It's not great but neither is it interestingly flawed. It is the end of one era and the start of another (it will continue in publication until issue #275, making it I think the second longest-surviving bronze age comic series after Hellblazer). It is a perfect representation of what was going wrong and right with comics in the early 1990s. I have five.
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Uncanny X-Men #278-#280/X-Factor #69-#70: Muir Island Saga
Uncanny X-Men #278-#280 and X-Factor #69-#70 constitute the "Muir Island Saga", which is a mess in a completely different way than I was expecting. I imagined it as overly long and tedious, with terrible gender politics.
TARDIS Eruditorum (an excellent Doctor Who blog, and one of the reasons I am writing this one) has a concept of "narrative collapse", a threat that falls outside the usual bounds of problemspace and attacks the premise of the show. It's not just your usual end of world scenario or possible death of the protagonist, it's stuff like the Daleks getting time travel, or an evil Doctor from the future putting the show on trial.
The threat in the Muir Island Saga is big - we have a culmination of a Claremont plot that has been in the offing since 1979. The Shadow King, a kind of body-less super-Xavier, has been able to subvert the minds of the X-Men on Muir Island, and an initial raid by the main team had very marginal results. And in a mirror of Second Genesis, the start of this era of X-Men, Xavier has to go back into the series's history to find the original X-Men and rescue his next batch from being captured on a perilous mission to an island. But despite that this is all bit business as usual.
The narrative has collapsed, though, in another sense. This story broke X-Men, and made it impossible to tell stories in the old model. After 16 years on the title, Chris Claremont leaves. His last sole writing credit is #278, and Fabian Nicieza is credited for bringing it to a conclusion in #280.
Well, I say conclusion. The story, much to my surprise given that it was called a "saga", moves along at quite a place (in fact, I spent quite some time hunting for the other issues of it in comic shops, before I realised that there really were only 5). Lots happens, and it doesn't stop. In the last few pages of the fourth issue (Uncanny #280), I started wondering what was going on. There was not much time and there was still a lot to go. It felt an awfully lot like getting to the twenty-minutes-from-the-end mark of Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings. And then it does the same thing, wrapping it up in no time at all, they just use Psylocke as a get-out-of-possession-free card with most of the action explained in captions or dialogue.
Still, there's issue #70 of X-Factor, written by Peter David, which is billed as an epilogue, but is much more integral to the narrative than that might imply. He spends a lot of time on the main emotional storyline to be left dangling, whether Legion, who had been used as a tool by the Shadow King, can be saved and what Xavier is willing to do to save him. This is a good bit.
The other main salvage operation he does regards Mystique, Val Cooper and Rogue. This is a bit of a misfire. The core reveal that Val Cooper could not kill Mystique, even when mind-controlled, is fine, and the revelation of the substitution of Mystique for Cooper also works (indeed, this blog had thought that was obvious already). Where it goes wrong is the idea that Mystique would submit herself to a psychic procedure to make her truly believe that she was Cooper - and to leave the key to her identity in the hands of Nick Fury. This is not Mystique, she's more tricksy than that. Her reunion with Rogue also rings false, not so much in the affection involved but the specific dialogue.
Meanwhile, David sets up his run on X-Factor, by having Val Cooper mention that the government wanted a new iteration of Freedom Force, although not necessarily under that name.
Not only this is not the last we've seen of Chris Claremont. In fact, due to some odd publishing history, it's not even the last of him we've seen this week. Stay tuned!
TARDIS Eruditorum (an excellent Doctor Who blog, and one of the reasons I am writing this one) has a concept of "narrative collapse", a threat that falls outside the usual bounds of problemspace and attacks the premise of the show. It's not just your usual end of world scenario or possible death of the protagonist, it's stuff like the Daleks getting time travel, or an evil Doctor from the future putting the show on trial.
The threat in the Muir Island Saga is big - we have a culmination of a Claremont plot that has been in the offing since 1979. The Shadow King, a kind of body-less super-Xavier, has been able to subvert the minds of the X-Men on Muir Island, and an initial raid by the main team had very marginal results. And in a mirror of Second Genesis, the start of this era of X-Men, Xavier has to go back into the series's history to find the original X-Men and rescue his next batch from being captured on a perilous mission to an island. But despite that this is all bit business as usual.
The narrative has collapsed, though, in another sense. This story broke X-Men, and made it impossible to tell stories in the old model. After 16 years on the title, Chris Claremont leaves. His last sole writing credit is #278, and Fabian Nicieza is credited for bringing it to a conclusion in #280.
Well, I say conclusion. The story, much to my surprise given that it was called a "saga", moves along at quite a place (in fact, I spent quite some time hunting for the other issues of it in comic shops, before I realised that there really were only 5). Lots happens, and it doesn't stop. In the last few pages of the fourth issue (Uncanny #280), I started wondering what was going on. There was not much time and there was still a lot to go. It felt an awfully lot like getting to the twenty-minutes-from-the-end mark of Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings. And then it does the same thing, wrapping it up in no time at all, they just use Psylocke as a get-out-of-possession-free card with most of the action explained in captions or dialogue.
Still, there's issue #70 of X-Factor, written by Peter David, which is billed as an epilogue, but is much more integral to the narrative than that might imply. He spends a lot of time on the main emotional storyline to be left dangling, whether Legion, who had been used as a tool by the Shadow King, can be saved and what Xavier is willing to do to save him. This is a good bit.
The other main salvage operation he does regards Mystique, Val Cooper and Rogue. This is a bit of a misfire. The core reveal that Val Cooper could not kill Mystique, even when mind-controlled, is fine, and the revelation of the substitution of Mystique for Cooper also works (indeed, this blog had thought that was obvious already). Where it goes wrong is the idea that Mystique would submit herself to a psychic procedure to make her truly believe that she was Cooper - and to leave the key to her identity in the hands of Nick Fury. This is not Mystique, she's more tricksy than that. Her reunion with Rogue also rings false, not so much in the affection involved but the specific dialogue.
Meanwhile, David sets up his run on X-Factor, by having Val Cooper mention that the government wanted a new iteration of Freedom Force, although not necessarily under that name.
Not only this is not the last we've seen of Chris Claremont. In fact, due to some odd publishing history, it's not even the last of him we've seen this week. Stay tuned!
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