THE X-AXIS
16 December 2007
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This week:
X-MEN: DIE BY THE SWORD #5 (of 5) - "Dawn of a New Day?"
by Chris Claremont, Juan Santacruz and Raul Fernandez
ULTIMATE IRON MAN II #1 (of 4)
by Orson Scott Card and Pasqual Ferry
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Reviewing Chris Claremont can be a frustrating business. He's the
single most important writer in the X-Men's history. He was one of the
writers largely responsible for getting me to buy American comics in the
first place. In his day, his books were great fun.
So, as you can imagine, I really want Claremont's comics to be good. I
want to be as charitable as possible. But these days his writing is hit
and miss at best, and sometimes he misses spectacularly.
X-MEN: DIE BY THE SWORD is really not good at all. Now, to be fair,
it's not a disaster on the scale of some recent books I could mention.
For the most part, it's entirely readable, despite the typically verbose
dialogue. It bounces along happily from scene to scene. Claremont
still has a whole armoury of vaguely story-shaped devices at his
disposal. But when you stand back and look at it as a whole, it just
doesn't make any damn sense.
This may not be entirely Claremont's fault. The story shows glaring
signs of last-minute rewrites, and I'll come to those in a minute. But
none of that alters the fact that it's a bad comic.
Despite the title, this is actually a miniseries co-starring the Exiles
and Excalibur. Both teams are up for an imminent relaunch, with
Claremont writing New Exiles and something (most likely Paul Cornell's
book) replacing the cancelled New Excalibur. The remit of this series
is to shuffle the characters around and get them into place for the new
series. Fine so far as it goes.
Claremont has tried to hang the reshuffling on the Fury, Merlyn and
James Jaspers. This plot thread has been meandering through his comics
for a few years now, and it reflects his understandable appreciation of
Alan Moore's Captain Britain stories. However, just because it worked
for Alan Moore doesn't mean that these characters are particularly good
ideas for a Chris Claremont story. Jaspers is a weird comedy
stereotype. The Fury is a mindless robot with no personality. And
Merlyn, at least in this story, is just a generic bad guy. So we're off
to a bad start, with no compelling villain.
To compound that problem, it turns out that there are simply too many
characters in the Exiles and Excalibur, most of whom have no
particularly good reason to be in this story. So most of the cast end
up standing around politely on the sidelines and being ignored. A
subplot reuniting Longshot and Dazzler, which ought to be a big deal for
the two characters involved, ends up squashed into a few panels at the
back.
Still, all of this could still lead to a fundamentally sound story. But
with this final issue, things finally degenerate into total incoherence.
It's built around a big fight between Captain Britain and the Fury. The
handful of remaining Captains from parallel worlds stand around on the
sidelines, deciding not to intervene because, er... yeah. Saturnyne is
given a speech which tries to justify this, but it makes no sense
whatsoever.
Despite that, the big finale is... two other characters charging to the
rescue. So apparently it wasn't so important to let Brian fight the
Fury alone after all. This is one of the most contrived examples of
artificial peril I've seen in years.
It gets worse. The Exiles' excuse for not charging in to help comes
when Blink tells them that they need to make a plan first, since the
Fury is so powerful. "We can't just react," she says, "we have to
think." In itself, not so bad. But then, a whole panel later, Blink
unveils a mysterious plan which she attributes to "instinct" and which
she "can't really explain." Then she makes her farewells in the style
of a character who's about to be written out.
Blink's inexplicable plan, as it turns out, is to teleport into the
battle, throw some javelins at the Fury, and get the hell out of there.
Because although Claremont has spent half the series telling us that the
Fury is terrifying, unstoppable and invulnerable, it turns out that you
can beat him just by chucking some explosive spikes at him. This is the
point where my jaw hit the floor.
The disjunction between Blink's set-up scene and what she actually does
a few pages later is so huge that it screams "re-write." For that
matter, so does the fact that there's a second Fury on the splash page
which is never, ever mentioned again for the rest of the issue.
And just to finish things off, everyone agrees that Albion should be the
one to rebuild the Corps, thus completing an insanely rapid turn from
"demented conqueror" to "villain with honour" to "protector of the
omniverse." It's not an inherently bad idea for the character, but it's
done with such speed as to be ridiculous.
Somewhere along the line, an entire plot thread about a character called
Rouge-Mort seems to have gone missing, and there's a baffling subplot
about the Exiles being watched by unnamed "gods." This plot has been
meandering along for a while now. By the way, if you didn't know,
they're supposed to be Dave and Paty Cockrum, which is why this issue is
dedicated to them. Even though they play no part whatsoever in the
story, they're the focus of an epilogue which portrays them as legendary
figures representing the foundations of the superhero genre. What this
has to do with anything that has come before is an utter mystery.
The best that can be said for this issue is that the art is perfectly
acceptable, that it has some ideas that might have worked if they'd been
handled differently, and that Claremont makes a valiant but doomed
effort to disguise its essential incoherence. That, combined with my
inherent goodwill towards Claremont, is just enough to drag it out of
the D ratings - but only barely.
Rating: C-
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After the horror of Ultimates 3, I thought it would be interesting to
take a look at ULTIMATE IRON MAN II, a book which also arguably
illustrates the troubled status of the Ultimate imprint.
Once upon a time, the Ultimate imprint had a vaguely coherent identity.
It was a universe in which big-name creators could tell stories about
top Marvel characters, working from scratch. This meant they could
tweak the bits that didn't work, get rid of the clutter of accumulated
continuity, home in on the central ideas, and write about characters who
weren't as jaded as their Marvel Universe counterparts.
Whether this was a viable proposition in the long-term was always
slightly debatable. Still, at least it was at least an idea.
But then they started getting confused. Ultimate Adventures was nailed
onto the side of the imprint, and everyone ignored it. Tie-ins to the
Daredevil movie were awkwardly published as Ultimate titles, on the
grounds that they could be made to fit. And somebody thought it would be
a good idea to let Orson Scott Card reinvent Iron Man as a little boy
with blue skin, superhuman intelligence and healing powers, in his
Ultimate Iron Man miniseries.
This was just weird. It wasn't much like the Iron Man of the original
Marvel Universe. Nor was it much like the urbane genial drunk that Mark
Millar was writing in Ultimates at the time. Nor did it have much to do
with any core theme of the character.
As a story about some people squabbling over nanotech inventions, it
wasn't bad. But as an origin story for Iron Man, it seemed to have
completely lost sight of the traditional function that such a story is
supposed to perform. It was light on defining moments. It wasn't much
on big ideas. Instead, it was a thriller about corporate espionage,
running to several story arcs. Quite how any of this was helping to
define the character - let alone the character that Mark Millar was
writing - was less than clear.
Still, it meant that Marvel got to publish a comic by the novelist Orson
Scott Card, which one suspects is about as far as the "what is this book
for?" discussion reached. Mind you, the rate of progress has not
exactly been blistering. The first miniseries came out in 2005, and ran
late by five months. It has taken a further two years for the second
volume to appear, and we still haven't reached the stage of Tony Stark
becoming a superhero.
As we pick up the story, Tony has made one public appearance as Iron
Man, and everyone assumes it's a robot. That's actually a neat angle,
and it's the sort of thing you can only do in a Year One series, so
we're off to a good start.
The actual plot involves government spooks trying to enlist the aid of
Tony's expendable robot, and Tony deciding to play along. It's one of
those stories that J Michael Straczynski likes to write, where the
genius with integrity runs rings around comic-relief mediocre officials.
But it's done quite entertainingly, not least because Tony's judgment is
shown to be fallible.
A more dubious decision is to have Jim Rhodes as a second Iron Man right
from the outset. That just seems to make the character less unique, and
to focus attention on the weird bits that Card has added to the
character - such as that odd healing power.
We then head off to some unspecified corner of the world for our heroes
to charge into a terrorist training camp and kill people. There's a
reasonably successful bid for moral ambiguity, as our heroes try to
figure out whether "just go in and kill everyone in sight" is the sort
of order they should be following. But it has to be said that once we
get into the camp, the rest is a bit hackneyed.
Still, there's actually quite a bit to enjoy in this issue. It's well
constructed and it's fairly witty. It's also got art from Pascual
Ferry, an artist who is perfectly suited for robots and technology, and
who really deserved to be a bigger star than he is. If we're judging
this as a free-standing comic, this is perfectly good stuff.
But as an origin for Iron Man it's a little weird, to put it mildly. And
as a spin-off from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Ultimates - which is
what it's supposed to be - it's downright bizarre. Clearly you couldn't
do this story in the mainstream Marvel Universe, because it would drive
a coach and horses through continuity. But that doesn't make it a good
idea to do it in the Ultimate imprint.
Ideally, this would just be a free-standing series in its own
continuity. Of course, if they'd done that, it wouldn't have sold as
well. That's the dilemma. But it dilutes the Ultimate brand when you
start shoving any old stuff in there just to boost sales. This isn't
about getting back to basics, and it's wildly at odds with the
established Ultimate Iron Man. But here it is anyway, confusing the
brand identity.
None of this alters the fact that it's an enjoyable comic, of course.
Still, at the same time, it shows Marvel's apparent confusion about this
whole imprint.
Rating: B+
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Also this week...
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD: THE LAST ENEMY - Chronicles of Wormwood was
precisely the sort of series you'd expect Garth Ennis to take to Avatar.
It had the Antichrist as an antihero, a viciously obnoxious take on the
Catholic church (complete with degenerate Australian pope), and lots of
really childish comedy. It was also quite good fun in its own way, but
it's still a little surprising to see Ennis producing a 44-page sequel
already. This is typically over the top, and to be honest, much of this
is just an exercise in baiting the devout. There isn't really much
pretence of being anything more. But Ennis does it with such verve that
it can't help raising a smile. Artist Rob Steen is a little
inconsistent, but the issue entertains on the strength of sheer
ridiculous excess. B+
UNBEATABLE - This is a self-published graphic novel by writer Matthias
Wolf, with art from Carlos Gomez. The high concept is a guy being
locked in an asylum and tormented with dreams that are supposed to be
teaching him to fight. In fact, it takes most of the book to get to
that point, and the set-up is the best part. Some of the earlier scenes
are very nicely paced, and the relationship between the lead character
and his father is well written. The asylum material works better than
you might expect. On the other hand, there's also a cipher girlfriend,
and an ending that (although admittedly foreshadowed) doesn't feel very
satisfactory. The art is largely fine, but has some issues with scale
and perspective, and badly botches a major page-turn reveal by
inexplicably doing the next page in landscape format. It's a decidedly
hit and miss affair, but there are definitely some good moments, and it
certainly shows potential. B-
WOLVERINE #60 - The penultimate chapter of the bizarre "Logan Dies"
story, which seems to be degenerating into yet more continuity clutter.
Was anyone really crying out for the return of a minor villain from the
1980s, out of nowhere, two thirds of the way through a storyline about
something completely unrelated? No, me neither. I'm starting to wonder
whether I've been too optimistic about where Marc Guggenheim is heading
with this storyline, which is turning into something of a train wreck.
The odd thing is that Guggenheim does write quite a good Wolverine, and
there's something curiously appealing about Chaykin's admittedly
ungainly art. But the premise of Wolverine fighting angels of death in
the afterlife is just silly, and doesn't work. C+
X-FACTOR #26 - Introducing the new X-Force, who seemed thoroughly
contrived in the promotional material. This issue doesn't exactly
provide a clear answer for why we need an X-Force series either, but
perhaps it doesn't need to answer that just yet. I can understand the
logic of putting all the tracker characters together or this story. How
that translates into a premise for an ongoing series, I have no clue,
but they've got some time to get there. Despite my misgivings about the
new team, the characters are all well written, and the wider crossover
storyline continues to develop in a satisfying way. X-Factor manage to
avoid being entirely shoved to the margins of their own series, and
overall "Messiah Complex" continues to keep up the quality level. B+
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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, Exiles is notionally cancelled with issue #100, although it's
being relaunched almost immediately; Wolverine: Firebreak is a one-shot
by Mike Carey and Scott Kolins, so it'll probably be good; "Messiah
Complex" continues in New X-Men #45; Storm features in Ultimate X-Men
#89; Deadpool teams up with Brother Voodoo in Cable & Deadpool #48; and
the World War II storyline finishes in Wolverine: Origins #20.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS -
http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED -
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART -
http://www.ninthart.com
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