REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 27 January 2008

THE X-AXIS
27 January 2008
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X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com

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This week:

ASTONISHING X-MEN #24 - The Unstoppable, part 6 of 6
by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday

X-MEN #207 - Messiah Complex, part 13 of 13
by Mike Carey, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, Victor Olazaba,
Jon Sibal and Al Vey

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Technically, we have finally reached the last issue of ASTONISHING
X-MEN. Very technically.

This is issue #24, and Warren Ellis is supposedly relaunching the series
from issue #1. But the story isn't finished yet. Yes, after almost
four years, twenty-four issues just wasn't enough to accommodate Joss
Whedon and John Cassaday's storyline. We'll have to wait for the big
pay-off in Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1, due out next month.

Sorry - originally due out next month. Now due in April.

Issue #24 is a rather frustrating comic. It's frustrating because in
many ways it's really quite good. But the format hasn't done it any
favours. This storyline really didn't need to be twenty-four issues
long. Even if it had come out monthly as intended, two years would have
been pushing it. It'll read better in the trade paperback, but frankly,
even in page count, many of these stories are longer than they would
ideally be.

There has been a trend towards tighter writing in the last few years,
and in fairness, Whedon and Cassaday have probably been committed to
this structure for quite a while. It would be a very strange collected
edition if the pace suddenly doubled halfway through. But if you look
at the stories that Whedon is writing nowadays, for his own Buffy the
Vampire Slayer or even Marvel's Runaways, they're tighter. They're
faster. They've got more momentum.

Which means I can't help thinking, as I read Astonishing X-Men, that if
only Whedon was doing it over from scratch, it would probably be much,
much better. And half the length.

It's still good, though. Whedon's story is carefully constructed, and
as we build to the finale, all sorts of accumulated misdirection is
being allowed to pay off. He's very good at working with audience
expectations and setting us up to view the story in completely the wrong
way, without actually cheating.

There are some very clever sequences along those lines. When the Beast
offers a theory of what's going on, in a scene that looks like the
typical "Heroes figure out the mystery" routine, we're simply inclined
to take him at face value, even when he admits he doesn't have the
evidence to back up his claims - and so it comes as a surprise when the
story seems to go in a different direction. The confusion at the end of
the story, about quite how this strange missile works, is also nicely
handled. These are skilful little details that elevate the story.

Okay, we didn't need the pointless misdirection about Magik, which adds
nothing and would merely confuse new readers to no benefit. But that
point aside, this is a well-constructed story.

John Cassaday is still producing graceful artwork, and while the story
doesn't give colourist Laura Martin quite as many opportunities to show
off as some previous issues have, she's still doing an excellent and
subtle job, adding extra dimensions to the work.

So what holds the story back? Two things, ultimately. It's too slow.
And it doesn't really have much to say about the characters; they've
been dumped into a story about power-mad aliens, and their character
moments are essentially incidental to that story. Yes, Cyclops gets to
demonstrate his leadership skills, but he can do that against any
opponent. This still doesn't feel to me like a story about the X-Men,
or even a story about any individual X-Man. It's a superhero story
which happens to feature the X-Men, but could have been done just as
well with the Fantastic Four or the Avengers or the Teen Titans.

But even so, Whedon constructs his story impressively enough that I've
got to acknowledge this as a good issue. He has better stories in him,
but this certainly works.

Rating: A-

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Meanwhile, in the regular titles, X-MEN #207 completes the thirteen-part
"Messiah Complex."

Hmm. I'm in two minds about this story, now that it's finished.
Basically, I've quite enjoyed it. Thirteen-part crossovers between four
titles are unwieldy beasts. The creators have wisely chosen to do a
straightforward action story, in which lots of characters race around
chasing after the baby, and ultimately, somebody gets it.

Some other plots are tied up or advanced along the way, but at its core,
"Messiah Complex" is a very simple story that sets aside any pretensions
of depth to give us brightly-coloured characters hitting one another for
three months. On a weekly schedule, this relatively lightweight story
bounces along just fine. It doesn't actually establish what the baby
leads to, or in what specific way she's meant to matter. But it drops
fairly clear hints as to who she is, and it does resolve the key
question of who gets to raise her.

All this is fine. The problems with "Messiah Complex" stem from the
fact that it's also trying to set up a line-wide reshuffle, and at the
same time, Mike Carey wants it to tie up a Rogue storyline. Oh, and it
needs an excuse to feature the New X-Men. Consequently, the story
features quite a few elements which feel as though they've been bolted
on to the core.

Let's be blunt: the New X-Men didn't need to be in this story. Their
contribution is fairly minor, and all they really do is chuck in an
extra complication or two. X-Factor had a slightly better excuse, but
not for their whole cast. But with the benefit of hindsight, if they
were going to cancel it anyway, New X-Men would probably have been
better off spending three issues tying up its plots.

Clearly "Messiah Complex" was tasked with a deck-clearing exercise.
We've got Cyclops clearly established as the alpha male in place of
Professor X, and that's a smart move. We've got rid of Sentinel Squad
O*N*E, and thank heavens for that. But the introduction of X-Force
still feels contrived, and frankly, I still don't understand what the
concept is, beyond "They've all got very similar powers." Even though I
like most of the characters, and have plenty of time for the creators
working on the upcoming X-Force series, "Messiah Complex" didn't do a
great deal to interest me in it.

And then we have the finale, in which Professor X is seemingly bumped
off, apparently leading to the disbanding of the team. Now, the
solicitations have made it perfectly clear that he doesn't actually die,
which makes this ending a rather confusing piece of false tension. It
doesn't flow logically from the story - it feels almost like a hangover
from some earlier draft where Xavier was standing on the fringes wailing
"Why can't we all get along?" In the event, he's barely had a role in
this story, so shooting him at the end doesn't really work,
dramatically.

Nor is it immediately clear to me why that would lead to the X-Men
disbanding. But then again, I tentatively welcome that direction. The
basic problem with M-Day is that if there are no mutants, the X-Men no
longer have a viable mission. In other words, they've got nothing to
do. Now, the baby has solved that problem to a degree by establishing
that there will be mutants again in the end. But she doesn't answer the
question of what the X-Men are going to do in the meantime, and frankly,
if we're going down this route for the foreseeable future, it makes more
sense to acknowledge the implications of where we've got to and close
the team down. They have no point. They might as well go home. We can
do stories about them as individual characters instead, while the baby
subplot builds in the background.

Yet even though this works in a broad sense, I didn't get the feeling
that "Messiah Complex" set it up very convincingly. It's almost an echo
of "One More Day", which - leaving aside for a moment the fact that it
was rubbish - was clearly engineered to provide a justification for
undoing the marriage. But instead, it's been used as a device to make
all sorts of other changes that don't flow logically from the plot at
all. Of course, "Messiah Complex" is nothing like as egregious an
example. But it does seem to be making a similar mistake. This
storyline sets up the new Cable series, and sets it up very well.
Unfortunately, it's also expected to set up several other stories, for
which it doesn't seem to have been designed.

Notwithstanding those reservations, however, I enjoyed "Messiah
Complex." It was bouncy and it was energetic and it had momentum. It
was fun to read, and it left me more convinced than ever of the merits
of a weekly schedule. Dan Slott's Amazing Spider-Man book is also
making a strong case for it. If we're going to have multiple X-Men
creative teams, I'd be very happy to see them all taking turns on a
single book. After all, that's effectively what they're doing at the
moment - just in a very cluttered and incoherent way.

This isn't a classic story. But it's a fun story, and one that's
addressed, if not fully solved, the X-Men's lack of direction over the
last couple of years.

Rating: B+

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To be honest, it's an extremely quiet week for new releases, and there
are other things taking up my time this weekend, which is why you're
only getting two reviews. But for the sake of completeness:

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS #6 - This is an odd story for First Class. For
starters, there's the anachronism of the Silver Age X-Men appearing
alongside the Man-Thing, who wasn't created until 1971. Then there's a
string of scenes of the X-Men visiting dystopian futures, one of which
assumes that we all know about Dark Phoenix. I wouldn't have expected
the target audience to get that reference. To be honest, the story's a
bit incoherent generally, with the young X-Men blundering through
assorted weird stuff in the swamp before it all comes right in the end.
But Ed Nguyen's art is lovely, with some pleasingly delicate colouring.
It's certainly the best-looking issue of First Class to date, which
makes up for many of its faults. B

YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS #1 - The first issue in a long-delayed follow-up
miniseries, as Marvel finally resign themselves to the fact that they've
got to do something with these characters, or give up. The series
appears to be built around a series of spotlight stories for the
individual members, rather than a wider plot, and we start off with Ed
Brubaker doing Patriot. Patriot's always struck me as a character who
doesn't quite work. I can see what they were going for. He's wearing
the costume because he's a legacy hero, but he's actually quite
ambivalent about America. In principle, I quite like the idea, but in
practice they've stressed his bitterness so much that it's hard to
imagine why he's calling himself "Patriot" at all, given that he seems
to identify more as a victim and outsider. Brubaker bravely tries to
wrestle the character back towards general confusion, using the death of
Captain America as a token justification, and wheeling out the Winter
Soldier to embody a much more uncertain American self-image that Patriot
can just about identify with. It's a step in the right direction for
the character, probably defining him more clearly in the way his creator
always intended. It's not a particularly strong story in its own right,
but it's a worthwhile piece of remedial work for the character which
makes a reasonably convincing case for his untapped potential. 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, "Messiah Complex" concludes in X-Men #207. The Man-Thing
guest stars in First Class #8. And after all this time, we finally
reach Astonishing X-Men #24 - which turns out not to be the end after
all.

--
Paul O'Brien

THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
IF DESTROYED - http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com
NINTH ART - http://www.ninthart.com