THE X-AXIS
4 November 2007
===============
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This week:
NEW X-MEN #43 - Children of X-Men, part 2 of 2
by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost and Skottie Young
X-MEN: MESSIAH COMPLEX
by Ed Brubaker, Marc Silvestri, Joe Weems and Marco Galli
ZUDACOMICS.COM
various creators
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NEW X-MEN #43 was originally supposed to include the penultimate chapter
of "Endangered Species." But it's running late, so rather than delay
the entire crossover, the back-up strip was shifted over to last week's
X-Men instead.
In theory, that makes this issue returnable by retailers - and that
could be significant, because "Endangered Species" had a big impact on
the sales for this book and X-Factor. Personally, I think it was the
right call, because there's no point holding up the entire winter
schedule just because Skottie Young is running a couple of weeks late -
especially considering that a different artist is drawing the crossover
issues, so there's no knock-on effect. Still, I'm surprised Marvel
chose to handle things this way. They don't normally seem to take the
schedule quite so seriously.
Anyway, that leaves this issue with its lead strip - the concluding half
of "Children of X-Men." This is a two-part downtime story, filling in
time before the crossover by taking stock of where the series has got
to. In many ways it's one of the most successful stories that Craig
Kyle and Christopher Yost have written since taking over the series a
couple of years ago. This book's key strength is its characters, and it
works best when they're allowed space to breathe and to act like people.
Instead, the book has spent most of the last few years shoving them from
one histrionic crisis to another, racking up a ridiculously large body
count in the process. This wasn't an especially interesting approach to
the series, and it's had the effect of limiting what the book can do
with a story like this. Faced with some free time, the cast of New X-Men
look traumatised, shellshocked, and generally miserable.
And so they should, given the stories they've been appearing in for the
last couple of years, but that doesn't alter the fact that it's all a
bit miserable. Only the clueless and tactless Rockslide gets to provide
comic relief, and rather than lighten the mood, he just annoys his
co-stars with his blundering insensitivity. Things don't have to be
this oppressively miserable. When Chris Claremont was writing the
X-Men, the heroes lost time and again for the better part of a decade
and were reminded at every turn that all future timelines led to
disaster - but they still had fun. There was a balance. That's been
missing here.
Despite that, Kyle and Yost manage to get something out of this story.
There's a sense here of the characters starting to emerge from their
shells again. Perhaps most importantly, there's at least a hint of them
starting to take the initiative in dealing with their situation, instead
of being battered from villain to villain. It feels like Kyle and Yost
have a story to tell about these characters. And the misery is lifting,
just a little bit. It needs to go further, but it's a step in the right
direction.
With this storyline, artist Skottie Young has abandoned his old clean
style and switched to a much looser, more sketchy approach. It's a
definite improvement for this book, as it feels much more organic and
human while keeping the advantages of his cartoony exaggerations. More
conservative fans might not find it to their tastes, and there are some
moments near the end which look decidedly rushed. The colouring is also
unnecessarily gloomy - is there some reason why none of these people can
find a light switch? But on the whole, it's a good-looking issue, and
Young has hit on a style that works for him on a superhero book.
A good issue given the corner that the book has backed itself into. If
they could only cheer up a bit, the potential is still there for New
X-Men to be a great title.
Rating: B+
------------
And so, after months of build-up, we finally come to X-MEN: MESSIAH
COMPLEX, the first chapter of a three-month crossover running between
X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, New X-Men and X-Factor.
Messiah Complex is actually a normal length story with a bunch of pin-up
at the back, which rather begs the question of why they didn't just make
the first chapter double-sized and be done with it. One answer, I
suppose, might be that Marc Silvestri wasn't available to draw a full
double-length issue. Or maybe the feeling is that a one-shot says
"important" in a way that fans still believe.
Whatever the reason, the crossover kicks off with what amounts to a
duplicate issue of Uncanny X-Men. And it has to be said that nothing in
this issue will come as a particular surprise to anyone, especially if
they've read the solicitations for upcoming issues. A new mutant
finally shows up on Cerebra, for the first time since M-Day.
(Curiously, it's billed as "the first mutant birth in years", which is
only true if we're working in real time. But I digress.)
The X-Men race to Alaska to find it, but show up too late. The
Purifiers and the Marauders - both of whom have better means of
predicting the future - have got there first, and one or other group has
made off with the baby. And that's basically it. That's the first
chapter.
Now, granted, none of this comes as any sort of surprise. But what's
reassuring, in this day and age, is that the story has ploughed straight
through the set-up in the first issue. Now, we can move on with the
important stuff. And it's a good set-up issue, which delivers a bit of
panicky action, and hammers home the fact that the new mutant is a Very
Big Deal.
I'm not a big fan of Marc Silvestri's work generally, but he does a
pretty decent job on the art here. It's rather obvious that he can only
do one woman, admittedly. But otherwise, the story is relatively light
on random posing. Silvestri's style suits these event books quite well
when he concentrates more on telling the story. He's a solid superhero
artist when he doesn't get sidetracked by the big moments.
The story has its glitches. When the X-Men approach the town, Emma
can't sense anyone, even though all the adults turn out to be alive and
well. There's no apparent explanation for this, and it seems like
artificial peril. Having identified the missing mutant from the
hospital records, it doesn't seem to occur to the X-Men to find out who
the parents are. They just get on their plane and go home.
And there's a lack of joined-up logic. The X-Men act as though it's
somehow amazing that the Marauders and the Purifiers beat them to the
scene. But the last six issues of X-Men were entirely devoted to the
X-Men figuring out that Sinister had knowledge of the future and was
trying to stop the X-Men from finding out what was coming. And the
Purifiers' ability to predict the future is based on a New X-Men
storyline which the X-Men know all about. So why are they so surprised?
Isn't it obvious?
Still, even though I could pick holes in it all day if I wanted, I kind
of liked this book. The storyline hits the ground running, and they've
convinced me that it's a big deal. That's half the battle.
Rating: A-
------------
After months of hype, DC finally launched their ZUDACOMICS.COM website
this week. It's a strange beast in all sorts of ways.
Webcomics have been around for a while now, and it's clearly possible to
make them work if you've got a good enough product. Which begs the
question: why would you go through Zuda instead of self-publishing?
Granted, they pay for the work, which has to help the cashflow. And if
the site takes off then clearly it could be a good way of raising your
profile. But it remains to be seen whether that will happen.
Strangely, the Zuda website avoids any mention of DC, except in the
copyright warnings. So instead of building on a brand they already own,
they're trying to create Zuda from scratch. That's a bold decision, but
it makes a little more sense when you see the sort of material they've
chosen. The plan is for the website to have a few ongoing comics -
presently just Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan's Bayou - and to run a
monthly competition in which readers vote on which of ten shorts should
become a regular feature. The initial selection is certainly eclectic.
It's hard to imagine DC ever commissioning some of these series in print
format. At present, Zuda seems to be positioned as a blue-skies imprint
that will give pretty much anything a try.
But that in turn begs the question: how do DC expect to make any money
off this thing? It doesn't seem to be running any adverts, save for a
tiny sponsorship logo on the competition menu page. The stories
themselves are free. None of them have obvious potential as a
conventional DC series. Is the plan to throw a load of comics out there
at random, and hope to stumble upon something that might make a
successful trade paperback? Or is this simply about belatedly staking
out a place on the Internet for DC, establishing a creator-driven brand
name and figuring out what to do with it later?
The competition format sits a little uneasily with the indie-oriented,
creator-driven way in which the site has been promoted. It also sits a
little uneasily with the stories themselves, as it seems that each
entrant gets eight screens to try and win over the voting public. The
problem is that eight screens isn't very much at all, and what makes for
a good eight-page story isn't necessarily going to make a good ongoing
series.
There are other problems with the site. They've chosen to use Flash as
a viewer, presumably because it reduces the loading time between pages.
But you only have two options for size - a quarter-screen window, and a
full-screen one. (Using the Zoom function on Internet Explorer doesn't
work - the picture size stays the same.) Unfortunately, the lettering
is almost invariably illegible at normal size, and manually zooming in
on every single speech balloon isn't exactly sensible. So your only
real option is full-screen. And at full-screen, the keyboard shortcuts
don't work, so you have to change pages by bringing up a pop-up toolbar
at the bottom of the screen and clicking. Then you have to move the
cursor away again, because if you don't, the toolbar sits there covering
part of the art. It's not a brilliant piece of design.
It seems that additional pages of Bayou are just being tacked onto the
end of the existing story rather than being marked in chapters. If
that's going to be the standard, then it'll cause all sorts of problems,
because there doesn't seem to be a "jump to next chapter" option.
There's only a "jump forward ten pages" option - not exactly handy when
the standard chapter length is eight.
For that matter, despite my best efforts, I couldn't find anything on
the site to explain when Bayou was next going to be updated. Is it
weekly, daily, fortnightly, monthly...? If it's weekly, which day?
Failing to post something as elementary as that is a bizarre oversight.
Then again, the first page also includes a note saying "Congratulations
to Jeremy Love on Bayou ... Read it now - Free!" which links to the
competition page instead of Bayou. There's a lot of work to be done
here.
Oh, and before you can vote, you have to log in. That's fair enough,
because they only want one vote per account for each competition. Fine.
But to log in, you have to register. And to register, you have to wait
for the site to send you a registration e-mail. And I've been waiting
for two days. It doesn't bloody work. Evidently some people have been
able to register, but it doesn't work for me, and I see a couple of
people have brought this up on other blogs as well. This is basic
stuff. Was this site rushed online before it was ready?
But what about the stories? Well, Bayou is certainly head and shoulders
above the rest. It's a gentle and subtle story set in 1930s
Mississippi, with some beautiful artwork and genuine emotion. Freed
from the need to beg for votes in eight pages, it's able to get off to a
well-paced start.
Other strips face the reality of trying to attract votes in the space of
eight pages. The entrants have taken different approaches to this
problem. Strips like High Moon have just produced the opening of their
story, and more or less challenged the audience to vote for it. Others,
like Lepronomicon, seem to have just produced an extract from the series
- in some cases, relying on readers to scan the intro blurb to figure
out what the hell is going on. And some, like Raining Cats and Dogs,
just spend their eight pages explaining the concept without actually
doing anything.
None of these tacks are entirely successful. It's probably unfair to
judge any ongoing comic on the strength of an eight-page teaser - in
fact, it's definitely unfair - but that's what the Zuda format requires.
And the reality is that none of them are especially impressive. Several
concepts here might make a decent series, but the format reduces them to
the basic pitch. It's a western with werewolves! It's a superhero
parody for ten-year-old boys! Few of them really manage to get beyond
that.
There are a couple of middling comedy strips, and a few
insert-peg-A-into-slot-B stories from the superhero and adventure
genres. There are also a couple of oddities. Dead in the Now is a very
strange-looking thing about a sociopathic boy and his pet zombie which
has a lot of style and energy but doesn't make good use of the limited
space. Black Swan has a potentially intriguing clash of art styles, but
generally comes across as a bit of a mess.
There are also a couple of obvious duds. The Enders has a hopelessly
convoluted premise and a dreadful plot, while This American Strife is a
collection of unrelated gag strips which simply aren't that funny. It
doesn't help that Zuda apparently missed a page out, but even the
completed sections often left me wondering where the joke was meant to
be, let alone what was supposed to be funny about it.
The frustrating thing, though, is that none of these strips really come
across well at eight pages in length, and it's hard to tell whether the
creators simply couldn't overcome the format, or whether they just need
more work generally. There are a couple here that I might check out if
they became regular features, and to be fair, Zuda only need to find one
decent strip a month in order for this to work. Ideally, they don't
want to be turning nine worthwhile strips away - and on the strength of
this opening selection, they won't be. But I don't think this format
shows off any of the creators in the best light.
There's an interesting idea in here somewhere, but if Zuda takes off,
it's going to be on the strength of the ongoing series that it
commissions, and not this questionable competition gimmick. Hopefully,
as time goes on, the ongoing stories will become the main attraction.
For the moment, though, it's mainly a vehicle for the competition
entrants, and the standard isn't enthralling - perhaps as much due to
format limitations as to the quality of the contributions.
Rating: C+
http://www.zudacomics.com
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Also this week...
ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST - QUASAR #4 - Much as I've enjoyed Christos
Gage's work on some other superhero comics this year, Quasar hasn't
really done much for me. Moondragon turns into a literal dragon? A
"power of love" ending? Oh dear. And while I can see some potential in
the new Quasar as a character, Gage is really pushing his luck by having
her fret about living up to the incredible heroic legacy left by her
predecessor. Let's be honest, he was never much more than a poor man's
Green Lantern, and it just doesn't ring true to have characters talking
about him as though he was Superman. Still, the coda is nicely handled,
and the art's quite attractive when it remembers to make sense. But I
don't think this really worked. C+
DAREDEVIL ANNUAL #1 - In a particularly odd piece of character
rehabilitation, Ed Brubaker spends an issue revamping the Black
Tarantula, a little-known Spider-Man villain from the late 1990s.
Really, what's happening here is that Brubaker wants to tell a story
about an ex-crimelord, and he's chosen the Black Tarantula because he's
got an adequate back story, but nobody's going to miss him. This is
Brubaker's home territory, and unlikely as it may seem, he makes the
character work. A-
------------
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" continues in Uncanny X-Men, and Joss
Whedon's storyline finally reaches its penultimate issue with
Astonishing X-Men #23.
--
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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