THE X-AXIS
24 August 2008
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This week:
X-FACTOR #34 - The Darwin Awards, part 3 of 3
by Peter David, Larry Stroman and Jon Sibal
X-FACTOR: LAYLA MILLER
by Peter David, Valentine De Landro, Andrew Hennessy and
Craig Yeung
YOUNG X-MEN #5
by Marc Guggenheim, Yanick Paquette and Ray Snyder
AIR #1 - Letters From Lost Countries, part 1
by G Willow Wilson and MK Perker
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Big event crossovers aren't what they used to be. Time was, a crossover
meant something like Infinity Crusade, a mind-bendingly convoluted
affair crossing over into ninety-seven titles, all of which you were
encouraged to buy. It was a nightmare. The kids loved it.
These days, Marvel are generally a little more reasonable about the
whole thing. True, we had "Messiah Complex" a few months ago, but
that's very much an exception in recent years. For the most part,
Marvel have settled into a formula where the basic plot is all in the
core miniseries, and the tie-in books tell stories in the margins. So
although there are tons of Secret Invasion tie-ins, for the most part
they're just stories where Hero X fights Skrull Y during the ongoing
invasion of earth.
Still, it boosts sales. And what's to stop some of the minor titles
crossing over with each other, to help the sales a little bit more?
That's what we've got with "The Darwin Awards", a three-part crossover
between X-FACTOR and She-Hulk which doubles as both books' Secret
Invasion tie-in. Both books are written by Peter David, and at least
She-Hulk has a convincing reason to be in the story: it's already got a
Skrull in its supporting cast. Oh, and it doesn't sell very well.
The first part of this story at least tried to keep the ongoing X-Factor
stories going, but with the concluding part, we find the book dutifully
playing its role in the greater scheme of things. In fairness, the story
does have an important function for this title - it adds Darwin, from
X-Men: Deadly Genesis, to the cast. But it does that by tagging him
awkwardly onto a story where a random Skrull happens to be passing
through Detroit, allowing X-Factor and the She-Hulk to gang up on him.
X-Factor have only just relocated to Detroit, so ideally they'd be
appearing in a story emphasising the new set-up. This is not that
story, and frankly, it feels like an intrusion into the book. I can't
really blame Peter David for that; there are understandable publishing
reasons for a B-title like X-Factor to join this crossover. But it's
not the story I particularly want to read.
This is also the first arc drawn by returning artist Larry Stroman, who
worked with David on a previous incarnation of X-Factor back in... oh
god, seventeen years ago. I'm so old.
Now, I really liked Stroman's work in 1991 (which sounds so much more
recent than "seventeen years ago", doesn't it?), when it was angular,
stylised, and generally rather interesting to look at. But I've got to
say, I'm not feeling it this time around, and to be honest, while I
haven't seen much of Stroman's art recently, it's been a while since
I've seen anything that really captured the freshness of his early
nineties work. There are some rather bland layouts here; there are some
flat-looking panels. There's some clumsy body language. And there's...
well, there's a deficiency of backgrounds. I've never been to Detroit,
but I could have sworn it was a city, not a desert wasteland with the
occasional vague outline of a ruin.
Mind you, there are also a few great dramatic moments, and a couple of
lovely panels with Madrox trying to swamp the She-Hulk in his
duplicates. There are glimpses of what I used to see in Stroman's work,
which makes it all the more frustrating that the rest of it isn't up to
the standards I know he's capable of.
This is an adequate story, and so far as the writing is concerned, it's
probably as good as you're going to get for a story that has the burden
of crossing over into two unrelated comics at once. But that's an
obstacle in itself, and the art isn't all it might be. Not one of this
book's better stories.
Rating: B-
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This week's other X-Factor offering is a LAYLA MILLER one-shot. Like the
recent Quicksilver book, The Quick and the Dead, this isn't really a
spin-off at all. It's essential reading for those following the regular
series, because it picks up on the fate of Layla Miller after she got
dumped in the future during "Messiah Complex."
I rather suspect that this is a story designed to give at least some
closure to a character who is being written out for the foreseeable
future. And on that level, it largely succeeds.
Layla does not lend herself to a solo story. Although she was
notionally created by Brian Bendis in House of M, she was little more
than a cipher in that series. The character as we know her was laid
down by Peter David in X-Factor, when he cast her as an enigmatic,
irritating child who was a literal know-it-all. Her role in the book
was to annoy other characters and nudge the plot along with shameless,
tongue-in-cheek contrivances.
Fine when she was on the margins, but this presents more of a challenge
once she takes centre stage. Layla's trademark is that she's a plot
cheat, and how do you build a satisfying story around that? The answer
is partly to focus on her limitations: Layla can only take advantage of
things that were going to happen anyway. And partly, the answer is to
let Layla have the importance her powers would suggest.
So what we get here is Layla escaping from the mutant prison camp where
we left her, thanks to particularly absurd, but paradoxically
satisfying, contrivance. And then she sets the ball rolling to start
the Summers Revolution. (Nitpickers will quite rightly point out that
the "Summers Revolution" is supposed to be from Bishop's timeline, which
ceased being a potential future back in the nineties when Onslaught
failed to wipe out the X-Men. But whatever.) And of course, because
we're probably not going to see her for a while, so it might as well
happen now, she gets to drop the mask and show emotion. For a couple of
panels.
This is the sort of story where Peter David really impresses me, not so
much because the results are fantastic, but because he's working with
such unpromising material and manages, yet again, to hammer it into
something worthwhile. For readers who are remotely interested to know
what happened to Layla, this is a thoroughly satisfying answer.
Rating: A-
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Of all the stories to launch out of "Messiah Complex", YOUNG X-MEN has
been by far the biggest misfire. This week sees the book conclude its
opening five-issue storyline, and leaves me none the wiser as to what
they could have been thinking.
Actually, my suspicion is that Marvel wanted to launch all these stories
out of "Messiah Complex", but had decided that they weren't starting the
San Francisco stuff until Uncanny #500, leaving everyone with several
months to twiddle their thumbs and fill time. That's just speculation
on my part - but it's the most plausible explanation I can imagine for
why this series would launch with a five-issue arc that doesn't
introduce the cast, doesn't set up the premise, and doesn't really
achieve anything.
Solicitations of upcoming issues suggest that we're about to get "the
younger mutants move to San Francisco and audition to be in the regular
cast", or something to that effect. That would have made sense for an
opening arc. What we actually got was a false start, in which an
impostor Cyclops recruits a bunch of minor characters into a new team,
and gets them to fight the original New Mutants. The big dramatic
pay-off is the death of one of the cast (as trailed in the first issue),
which is supposed to be a moving lesson about what it means to be a
proper X-Man - but the death toll in this book's predecessor, New X-Men,
was so far through the roof that bumping off another background figure
means nothing.
Marc Guggenheim writes the story passably, but the concept just doesn't
have much to it. It certainly doesn't seem to have engaged the interest
of artist Yanick Paquette, who turns in what I can only describe as a
cursory effort, with uninspired layouts and inexpressive, sketchy
figures. Sometimes he gets to draw women and he perks up a bit.
By delaying the San Francisco stories for a few months, instead of
jumping straight into them after "Messiah Complex", the X-books lost a
lot of momentum across the board. But Young X-Men has suffered more
than most, ending up with an opening storyline of no particular apparent
significance, and doing little to establish the premise of the series
beyond the bare bones that are obvious from the title.
For my money, they've botched this launch big time. A shame, because I
do like some of the characters, and I've enjoyed work by the same
creators in the past. But as an opening storyline, this hasn't worked
at all.
Rating: C
------------
Vertigo may have been returning to its old favourite themes of late, but
they haven't given up on being the HBO of comics just yet. Their latest
new series is G Willow Wilson and MK Perker's AIR, a curious piece about
a stewardess getting drawn into a world of vaguely surreal conspiracy.
I'm told this series started off as a graphic novel before being
converted into an ongoing series. (Which might explain the cover quote
by Neil Gaiman, who claims to have read the first six issues.) It's
certainly an unusual premise for an ongoing. Blythe, a stewardess for
Clearfleet Air, finds herself crossing paths repeatedly with the same
ethnically indeterminate passenger, who keeps changing his identity and
purported nationality. Meanwhile, she's also approached by a bunch of
oddball in-air vigilantes, with some rather unusual ideas about what
constitutes safe flying.
The plot fairly races by, and - aside from one awkward segue to a
flashback - the story bounces along with unusual speed. I'm not
altogether sure what to make of it, at least just yet. It's notionally
realistic, but at the same time, completely divorced from reality.
Wilson describes it as "the ordinary unreal" in her introductory essay,
which is as good a description as any. Artist MK Perker follows that
line, rendering everything as a superficially banal dreamworld.
It's the sort of story where most of the characters aren't people at
all, so much as personifications of fears about security. Blythe
herself, in uniform throughout, seems to embody the traditional
perception of air travel as a closed system somehow separate from the
real world. The other characters seem to be mainly influenced by the
paranoia over security which still doesn't seem to have subsided after
9/11 - although the story isn't interested in the nuts and bolts of
terrorism, so much as the way it's intruded into what was formerly a
psychological bubble.
All this makes it a story of ideas rather than of recognisable human
beings, plugging downright weird characters into a seemingly
conventional thriller story, to unusual effect. Provisionally, I rather
liked it, but it's the sort of series where after a single issue, you
could very easily be missing the point, or equally reading in something
that isn't actually there. Still, it's got my attention for now.
Rating: B+
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Also this week...
UNCANNY X-MEN #501 - Um. Anti-mutant Hellfire Cultists take to the
streets of San Francisco to beat up the newcomers, and meanwhile, the
X-Men move into their new base. (Again.) I wanted to like this more
than I actually did. There are plenty of decent ideas: I like the fresh
start, I like San Francisco, I'm happy to see Empath dusted off. The
crib is still a nice touch, even if Cable got there first. But this
isn't clicking for me. Partly, it's Greg Land's plastic, air-brushed
art, which is problematic at the best of times but just plain
embarrassing when the script actually calls for him to draw a
dominatrix. In concept, the Red Queen is nothing we haven't seen before
from endless Claremont stories; but Land's alike tracing really
brings out how stupid the whole thing is, in a way that's tough to
ignore. Moreover, though, the whole issue is shot through with that
"Isn't this cool? Isn't it? Isn't it? No, isn't it? No, but really,
isn't it? Isn't it, though? Isn't it?" vibe that used to get on my
nerves when Mark Millar was writing Ultimate X-Men. It's just trying
too hard and needs to chill out a bit, and it feels so excitably keen to
be loved that I feel terribly guilty for not loving it. Y'know, just
tell the damn story and let me figure out for myself that it's cool,
hmm? B-
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #15 - X-Men Team-Up continues with the Silver Age
version of Medusa, back in the days when she was an amnesiac member of
the Frightful Four. We're going way, way back here, and this is getting
into dreadfully indulgent nostalgia territory. There really doesn't seem
to be much point to it, other than to put the X-Men next to a version of
Medusa who hasn't been seen in decades, and say, "Look, remember 1967?"
I'm starting to tire of these formula guest star stories - have you
guessed? Rather more remarkably, the "Angel quitting" storyline is
hastily tied up when he just shows up on the final page, with his return
explained in a one-page epilogue drawn by Colleen Coover. It's a
baffling way of ending the book's first multi-issue arc, and frankly,
this book is in danger of losing its way. C
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There's more from me at If Destroyed, and apparently the Ninth Art
archive is going back online at some point...
http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
Next week, ooh, tons. Angel: Revelations #4 continues Angel's revised
origin story. More Napoleonic fighting in New Exiles #10. The Banshee
arc wraps up in Ultimate X-Men #97. "Old Man Logan" continues in
Wolverine #68. Siryn guest stars in Wolverine: First Class #6. X-Force
#6 completes the first arc of mass slaughter. And Professor X confronts
Cyclops in X-Men: Legacy #215.
--
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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