THE X-AXIS
8 April 2007
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This week:
FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA - WOLVERINE
"Denial"
by Jeph Loeb and Leinil Francis Yu
AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #1 - "Happy Accidents"
by Dan Slott and Stefano Caselli
OMEGA FLIGHT #1 (of 5) - Alpha to Omega, part 1 of 5
by Michael Avon Oeming and Scott Kolins
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In Marvel's weekly Q&A over at Newsarama, somebody asked why it was that
the scheduling of the X-books, and the similar families, is so
haphazard. The official answer, given by David Gabriel, was to the
effect that Marvel put hours of effort into planning the schedule for
each month.
"Great consideration is put into shifting Spider-Man titles so they are
not all in one week," he explained, "and the same goes for X-titles,
Ultimate books, Marvel Adventure titles and now Ultimate books. Keep in
mind that this is all done 3-4 months prior to the on sale week. Then
life takes over, books shift around for one reason or another, even by a
week or two within a month, and by the time the on sale date is up, the
books have often shifted in the schedule beyond anyone's control."
Uh-huh. Marvel solicited thirteen X-books for May, with six in one
week, and none in another. You're telling me that's because of
last-minute rescheduling? Before the solicitations came out? To that
extent? I have some trouble with that explanation.
To be fair, June is a lot more balanced, so perhaps somebody's finally
taking this in hand. But the scheduling has been an utter mess for
months now, and you can't blame it entirely on delays.
This, for example, is another very quiet week. The only X-books are New
Excalibur #18, and FALLEN SON: THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN AMERICA - WOLVERINE,
the first part of Jeph Loeb's five-part miniseries in which various
characters react to the death of Captain America.
Jeph Loeb was one of DC's big name writers. Understandably, his jump to
Marvel was greeted with some fanfare. I wasn't reading any of his DC
work, but I do recall it getting a decent reaction. His Marvel output,
thus far, has been distinctly underwhelming. Wolverine has not
impressed. Onslaught Reborn is outrageously horrible.
Fallen Son isn't great either, but to be fair to Loeb, the basic premise
of this series is credited to J Michael Straczynski. And the premise is
a far bigger problem than anything to do with the execution. The high
concept is that each issue represents one of the so-called five stages
of grief - so issue #1 is denial, issue #2 is anger, issue #3 is
bargaining, issue #4 is depression and issue #5 is acceptance. I've
certainly heard worse ideas.
But the decision to base each story on a different character strikes me
as a mistake. For this structure to work, surely it needs to follow the
psychological process. In other words, there needs to be some sense of
progression. If you're going to have a different character representing
each stage then you're not showing anyone's progression - you're just
doing a gimmick based on some overfamiliar pop psychology.
In fact, it doesn't feel like a story at all. The distinct impression
given is that Marvel came up with this structure, thought it was
incredibly clever, and only worried later on about the actual content.
To pull off something like this requires a writer with a sure touch for
complex emotion. I can just about imagine it working with Straczynski.
But Loeb is principally a writer of big, sweeping epics. This sort of
story isn't his strength.
The most fundamental problem, of course, is that nobody really believes
that Captain America is dead. Marvel can insist that he's dead until
they're blue in the face, but nobody will believe them. In 2012, if the
Winter Soldier is firmly established as the new Captain America, and the
Captain America movie has come and gone and Steve is still dead, then
maybe people will start to say "Hey, he really isn't coming back." I'm
actually more open-minded about this than most. I think there's, ooh,
about a 5 to 10% chance of that happening. I'd actually like to see
that story. But I certainly wouldn't put money on it.
In Captain America itself, this isn't a problem. Even though we don't
believe Cap is dead, his supporting cast do, and that's good enough for
the story's purposes. But when you start wheeling out characters like
Wolverine, who have very little connection with Captain America, you're
really just making a declaration that the death of Captain America is an
event - an event so big that it deserves a five-issue tie-in miniseries
to remind us of how big it is.
The more you present it as an event, the more it looks like a stunt, and
the less it looks a story. I don't believe Cap's dead and bluntly, I
couldn't care less what Wolverine thinks about the subject. And after
reading the story, I still can't work out why I'm supposed to care what
Wolverine thinks about it.
If this story serves any purpose, it's to stick Wolverine in front of
the corpse so that he can verify it as dead. But he did that back in
the mid-1990s when they killed of Nick Fury, in a similar spirit of "No,
honestly, he's really dead - look, Wolverine's checked the body."
Having been fooled by a SHIELD substitute once before, you'd think
Wolverine would be less easily persuaded this time round. I don't blame
Loeb for not mentioning that - even if he knows about it, there's no
possible upside in undermining the story by drawing it to people's
attention. But really, you could publish an entire issue consisting
entirely of trustworthy characters examining the body in detail and
proclaiming it definitively dead, and still nobody would believe it.
That's just comics for you.
A story that asks us to believe, as a starting point, that Captain
America is really dead and that it's a huge event deserving of
commemoration, is a story that faces a huge uphill struggle. That's
essentially what Loeb confronts here, and while I can't really fault
anything in particular about his approach to it, I'm not at all
persuaded that it's an achievable task. It's not a bad comic, just an
unconvincing one - and it does have some beautiful artwork for Leinil
Francis Yu to liven up the proceedings. That's the main thing that
raises the book out of the doldrums. Sketchy as his art is, his layouts
have a lot of power and grace to them.
Ultimately, though, it's a story about a character chosen for his star
power rather than his relevance, reacting to an event that I simply
don't believe in. It doesn't work for me.
Rating: B-
LINKS:
http://www.marvel.com
http://leinilyu.deviantart.com
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AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE started life as a miniseries, but on the
strength of initial orders, it's been upgraded to an ongoing title right
from the word go. The result is a curious first issue, which clearly
displays its roots as the start of a miniseries.
Now that the Superhuman Registration Act is in force, the registered
heroes have to get on with the job of recruiting and training the new
wannabe heroes who have signed up. That takes place at Camp Hammond,
the Initiative's HQ, insensitively located at Stamford. In theory, the
new heroes get trained up and then assigned to the fifty state teams,
thus ensuring that Vermont is forever safe from nastiness.
This is billed as an Avengers title, but for the life of me, I can't
fathom out why. It's actually a comic about a superhero boot camp, told
from the perspective of the students. A couple of the tutors are
Avengers, but they're not the lead characters, and the logo seems to
have been shoved on the cover simply to boost sales. Unless we're now
claiming that "the Avengers" encompasses all the registered state teams,
in which case the term is about to become even more diluted than
"X-Men." The cover design - which simply has the Avengers logo with the
line-wide "Initiative" banner, thus making it look like a tie-in
Avengers issue - also seems needlessly confusing. Does this poor book
not deserve its own logo?
Dan Slott is best known for writing semi-comedy books like She-Hulk, and
he's very good at it. This time he's aiming for something more
straightforward. For him, this book would count as almost grim and
gritty, but it's still reasonably light by today's standards generally.
The new students arrive at the Initiative, start to settle in, and we
get a series of introductions along with the first sign of the
government covering up any problems with the place.
There are bits that don't quite work. The plot seems to suggest that
this is a draft, and that every new superhuman is being dragged along
for training whether they like it or not. Strangely, nobody seems to
express any resentment at this. I suspect that I'm simply not
understanding the way this is supposed to work, since all the characters
behave like volunteers, and there are some scenes where people are being
persuaded to join. Whatever the position, it's yet another example of
Marvel's utter failure to explain in a remotely clear or coherent way
what the Superhuman Registration Act actually is. Even if they think
they've done it before, this is the first issue of a new series, and it
should be spelt out again. Otherwise, you haven't explained your
premise, which means you've botched a central plank of the story.
And given that this isn't a comedy book, the scientist with the German
accent has got to go. ("Und I haff discovered something vhich is most
disturbing...")
Other than that, though... not bad. Some likeable characters, a
workable premise, nice clean art. I'm not quite sure what you do with
it as a long term book, especially given that in theory it has to
co-exist with Young Avengers - who surely ought to be playing a major
role in this book.
But it's still a promising start, and Slott's storytelling skill holds
up outside his usual comedy area. I can see this working, as a series
about a group of trainee superheroes.
Rating: B+
LINKS:
http://www.stekart.blogspot.com (Stefano Caselli)
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While Avengers: The Initiative is upgraded to an ongoing series, OMEGA
FLIGHT has the misfortune to go the other way. But after reading the
first issue, I can see Marvel's point.
The basic idea is that the Civil War in the USA over the Superhuman
Registration Act has led to criminals taking refuge in Canada, and a new
crime wave emerging. This doesn't really make sense to start with. The
villains weren't directly involved in the Civil War. But in any event,
they're in Canada now and causing trouble, which prompts the Canadian
government to reform Alpha Flight. Except this time, they're called
Omega Flight, and half the team is made up of Americans.
At a push, this is a concept for a single story - the team is brought
together to deal with the temporary problems caused by Civil War. But
it certainly isn't a premise for an ongoing title. The entire book can't
be about people running away from the war that finished a few months
ago.
The big problem with Alpha Flight has always been the fact that it's a
weak premise. Some of the characters are rather interesting, but most
of them are dead. Remove those characters, and you're left with the
concept of the Alpha Flight team itself - which is no more than "They're
Canadian." In the past, writers have tried to make something out of the
fact that they were a government sponsored team, but Civil War has
actually removed that as a viable distinguishing feature.
In theory, I suppose you could have done a book about expatriate
American superheroes fleeing to Canada in order to set up the sort of
team that the Superhuman Registration Act no longer allows. That might
actually have given the book a clear reason to exist, since it would
have been able to tell a type of superhero story that the rest of the
Marvel Universe titles can no longer do. But they haven't done that.
Instead, it's a government-sponsored superhero team, comprised of some
loyal Canadian superheroes, and some registered heroes on loan from the
USA. There's an attempt to stress the links with the old Alpha Flight
by building the first issue around Sasquatch and, to a lesser extent,
Talisman. But really, it's just another superhero team. And it's not
even a Canadian superhero team. It's a half-American superhero team,
based in Canada. That's not a premise. That's a location.
I don't get it. I really don't get what the big idea of this book is
supposed to be. Surely it's just a random assembly of superheroes who
happen to be in Canada but are just doing the same sort of stories as
registered heroes in the USA? I don't see anything in it. What's the
point? If this is the concept then they made the right call in cutting
it down to a miniseries. If there's more to it, well, it's a shame they
didn't manage to communicate it in the first issue.
Without a strong concept behind it, there's not much more to be said.
It's a generic superhero comic, done quite skilfully, and making the
most of what it has to work with. Michael Avon Oeming has written some
good stories in the past, and he does the best that could be expected of
him with such a shaky premise. There are plenty of nice details, and
artist Scott Kolins has always been a sound storyteller. In fact, it
really feels as though the creators care about this book, which is the
one thing that genuinely marks it out from the pack. And it makes me
feel a little bit bad about the fact that I can't honestly say I share
their enthusiasm.
As with Fallen Son, there's nothing really wrong with the execution. In
fact, it's better than many books in that regard. It just doesn't seem
like an especially great concept to start with.
Rating: B
LINKS:
http://www.mike-oeming.com
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Also this week...
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, SEASON 8 #2 - Ooh. Now, you see, I liked
issue #1. I thought issue #1 was pretty good for a comic book
adaptation. It met my expectations. But this is better. It's got a
better pacing. It's got a better grasp of the medium. It's got better
jokes. It's got better character moments. It's just plain better.
We've always known that Joss Whedon is a hugely talented writer, but
it's now clear that he's learning and improving when it comes to this
particular medium, and for the first time this really feels like it's in
the same league as his TV work. A very pleasant surprise, and a book
that's now absolutely living up to the hype. A+
NEW EXCALIBUR #18 - This is the origin story of Albion, a Captain
Britain analogue who showed up before Chris Claremont's break. I wasn't
much impressed by the character first time round, but this is a real
improvement. The concept is pretty simple. Across the multiverse,
Captain Britains are supposed to get their powers after choosing between
the amulet of right and the sword of might (this being the dodgy origin
story created for the Captain back in the 1970s). Everyone else chose
the amulet. Albion chose the sword, and got away with his new powers
before Roma could stop him. So far, so average. But what I like about
this story is that Albion isn't simply an evil Captain Britain. He's
just a well-intentioned hawk, and as far as he's concerned, by filling
the multiverse with super-powered doves instead of good honest
ass-kickers like him, Roma has got it all terribly wrong. So the whole
system needs to come down and be replaced with something more
aggressive. I like that angle; it's a good concept for a Captain
Britain villain, and Albion has a perfectly defensible point of view.
Good stuff. B+
RUNAWAYS #25 - Joss Whedon takes over Runaways, and after the huge sales
for Buffy, Marvel must surely be kicking themselves about the fact that
they only put his name in tiny letters on the cover. The kids come to
New York where they meet the Kingpin, even though that makes no sense in
continuity at all. (Supposedly it's being explained next issue. It
should have been explained in this one.) Between this and Buffy, it's
particularly clear that Whedon has learned from the dreadful error of
his glacial pacing on Astonishing X-Men, and he won't be making that
mistake again. The story bounces along nicely, and while there's no
jarring shift in character or tone from Brian Vaughan's run, Whedon
brings his familiar sparky dialogue to the book. It's not revelatory or
anything, but it's an absolutely fine issue, and any Whedon fans
attracted to the book should be perfectly happy with it. A-
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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
I'm on holiday next week, so the X-Axis will be back in a fortnight.
Next week, "The Fall and Rise of the Shi'ar Empire" reaches its
penutimate chapter in Uncanny X-Men #485. New X-Men #37 begins a new
storyline about Magik. You know, Magik. Blonde girl, had a magic
sword, been dead about twenty years now. Come to think of it, you
probably don't remember her, do you? And Wolverine: Origins #13
continues the comeback of Cyber.
The week after, X-Men #198 continues "Condition Critical", while
Ultimate X-Men #81 brings back the Beast. Agent X guest stars again in
Cable & Deadpool #39. The X-Cell storyline continues in X-Factor #18.
And, running late, there's also X-23: Target X #5.
--
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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