News broke this week from Peter David himself (haven't seen word from Marvel officially yet but the horse's mouth seems good enough for this one) that ALL-NEW X-FACTOR will be cancelled with issue 20. David writes on his blog that, though this was reported by Bleeding Cool, their report was almost entirely inaccurate except for the crucial detail of "this book is being cancelled." I guess Bleeding Cool (a terrible news site that no one should visit or give positive recognition to because it's often just rumor printed as fact) said that the book was cancelled with issue 19 and that it had to do with Quicksilver being brought back to the Avengers. Instead, David says on his blog, it's cancelled with issue 20 simply for poor sales, leading to some observations from David about the way comic sales are calculated, about Gambit's trouble heading up a book, and about how terrible Bleeding Cool is.
This doesn't necessarily come as a surprise but it still elicited a frown from me. I haven't been a huge supporter of this book in the way that I liked David's old X-FACTOR but it's certainly had its moments, showing that David can still craft a good story with compelling characters who have very specific and interesting dynamics. I thought the book tripped over itself occasionally and had the tonal issues of a book that wanted to infuse humor maybe a little too often, sometimes leading to ham-fisted jokes and references. Regardless, it certainly isn't the worst book out there right now, probably not even in the lower ten percent. Unfortunately, "middling with potential" doesn't tend to stick around.
Showing posts with label quicksilver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quicksilver. Show all posts
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Thursday, June 5, 2014
All-New X-Factor 9, Amazing X-Men 8, Amazing X-Men Annual 1
All-New X-Factor 9
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c) and Petit (l)
It's rather a rest day to start for X-Factor as the team returns home from their perhaps ill-thought-out mission to rescue Georgia Dakei with young Georgia in tow. She blames Cypher for the problems but seems onboard with Gambit, to Cypher's chagrin. Gambit is having his usual troubles with the team and its mission, troubles that will no doubt be exacerbated by the fact that he just unknowingly slept with Harrison Snow's wife Angela, as discovered by Harrison's assistant and secret lover Linda. Meanwhile, resident mad scientist Doctor Wexler DNA tests Georgia (pretty much just for fun) and reveals that Scott Dakei isn't her father and her deceased mother isn't actually her mother. Instead, her birth mother, Dakota Bennett, lives in Minneapolis and her birth father is unknown. Quicksilver argues on Georgia's behalf that she ought to be able to meet her birth mother and X-Factor brings her to Minneapolis, where she's greeted happily by her mother. Unfortunately, her birth father is apparently a supervillain named Memento Mori and he's been watching the house for a long time waiting for Georgia to return.
For a rest issue, there's plenty happening here. One of the good things about an issue like this, one that removes them from immediate action, is that we can get a sense of where the team is and how everyone stands with everyone else and what's happening in everyone's life. In many ways, the rest issues are some of Peter David's strongest because he understands the way a team works and knows that the important part of a team book is making sure they feel like a team. That was one of the strengths of his previous long-running X-FACTOR title and it's clearly at play here. There are certainly parts of this issue that drag a little and I'm still finding it a little hard to get behind the Georgia stuff (I'm not really compelled by her character as yet, but it's still obviously an early issue for her). Worth looking at in this book is a nice two page sequence where Georgia talks to Cypher and, when he leaves, she talks to Danger. The two pages are near-mirror images of each other with a few of the panels set exactly the same way and with Gerogia in the same position. Big shout-out to colorist Lee Loughridge on that one because he does pretty spectacular things with the very slightly different light on each page as time has passed a bit. I read it on my computer and could easily flip back and forth between the pages and it was pretty neat, you guys.
Total Score: 4/5
Amazing X-Men 8
Kyle and Yost (w) and McGuinness (p) and Farmer (i) and Rosenberg (c) and Caramagna (l)
It's important to note before I start this review and summary that Wendigos, the incredibly powerful, nigh-unstoppable Canadian murder machines that every so often run into Hulk or Wolverine, are created, thanks to a curse on the land, whenever anyone eats human meat. Anyway, two guys in Canada at a meat processing plant get into a scuffle and one accidentally shoves the other into a table at just the wrong angle, snapping his neck. To protect himself, the murderer shoves the victim into the meat grinder. Do you see where I'm going with this? Wolverine, kind of sick of being cooped up in the school and seemingly invited away, pays a visit to old friend Heather MacNeil Hudson (though she's labeled as Heather McDonald here so maybe I missed something?), AKA Vindicator of Alpha Flight. Heather tells him that her husband James Hudson, AKA Guardian, has been missing for some time and she's worried about him (they've also been fighting a lot lately, as they did the last time we saw either of them in FEAR ITSELF). She and Wolverine go to try to find him as back home Ororo worries about where the healing factorless Wolverine has gotten off to now. Wolverine and Heather quickly learn that Guardian was attacked by a Wendigo and immediately try to call in backup but they may be too late, as they're set upon by a whole slew of the creatures just as Ororo, with the help of Rachel Grey and Cerebro, calls an X-team to Canada.
AMAZING X-MEN so far has been an okay book, one that seemed to take the place of Jason Aaron's WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN in its lightheartedness and its near whimsicality. Now Craig Kyle and Chris Yost take over and immediately throw it into a much darker place, though the art of Ed McGuinness and colors of Rachelle Rosenberg still rather keep it a little lighter than most books. It's an immediately interesting story which will pit the X-Men, including, presumably, reintroduced Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Northstar, as well as a non-healing Wolverine, up against a ton of extremely powerful Wendigos. It immediately gets dark to the point where there was a legitimate chance that Heather was about to be torn in half by Wendigos. So bit of a different tone here but I certainly don't think it's the wrong way to go on this book right now. I also like the addition of Mark Farmer's inks on Ed McGuinness' pencils since McGuinness tends to draw action and certain people very well but sometimes makes people look a little too young for my liking and Farmer's inks seem to balance that a little. Overall, very good start to a new look AMAZING X-MEN.
Total Score: 5/5
Amazing X-Men Annual 1
Nero (w) and Larroca (a) and Oback (c) and Caramagna (l)
A new villain, who seems to be Inhuman though his origins are rather unknown and, presumably, will stay that way, named Meruda has been attacking and brutally killing members of Ororo's old tribe in Africa and has now targeted her cousin Abuya. Ororo rallies the X-Men and they set off to Africa, where they find Meruda is using Abuya's soul to power a dark and evil force. While the rest of the X-Men fight the beast, Ororo fights fellow elemental Meruda, who explains that Ororo killed his family and his tribe when she was a child with a sandstorm she could not control. Though all of this hurts Ororo and brings up some past doubts about what happened that day, she manages to fight Meruda down, destroying him in the process. Meanwhile, the X-Men manage to take down the beast and save Abuya. Ororo discovers, thanks to a spirit on the plains, that she was not responsible for the death of Meruda's tribe, that it was an unrelated sandstorm that killed them. There's a backup story in here by Marguerite Bennett that focuses on Firestar, too.
It's not an awful one-shot sort of story, focusing on Ororo and her past in Africa and that questions what could have happened thanks to a young girl who could control the weather but couldn't, you know, really control the weather. The story is a bit bogged down, though, by lengthy exposition and overlong dialogue. The art is alright but loses some points as well for one of the weirdest shots to end the story as we see Ororo from the back, butt clearly defined past her cape(?) looking out onto her team. Geez, egregious butt-use there, Larroca.
Total Score: 3/5
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c) and Petit (l)
For a rest issue, there's plenty happening here. One of the good things about an issue like this, one that removes them from immediate action, is that we can get a sense of where the team is and how everyone stands with everyone else and what's happening in everyone's life. In many ways, the rest issues are some of Peter David's strongest because he understands the way a team works and knows that the important part of a team book is making sure they feel like a team. That was one of the strengths of his previous long-running X-FACTOR title and it's clearly at play here. There are certainly parts of this issue that drag a little and I'm still finding it a little hard to get behind the Georgia stuff (I'm not really compelled by her character as yet, but it's still obviously an early issue for her). Worth looking at in this book is a nice two page sequence where Georgia talks to Cypher and, when he leaves, she talks to Danger. The two pages are near-mirror images of each other with a few of the panels set exactly the same way and with Gerogia in the same position. Big shout-out to colorist Lee Loughridge on that one because he does pretty spectacular things with the very slightly different light on each page as time has passed a bit. I read it on my computer and could easily flip back and forth between the pages and it was pretty neat, you guys.
Total Score: 4/5
Amazing X-Men 8
Kyle and Yost (w) and McGuinness (p) and Farmer (i) and Rosenberg (c) and Caramagna (l)
AMAZING X-MEN so far has been an okay book, one that seemed to take the place of Jason Aaron's WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN in its lightheartedness and its near whimsicality. Now Craig Kyle and Chris Yost take over and immediately throw it into a much darker place, though the art of Ed McGuinness and colors of Rachelle Rosenberg still rather keep it a little lighter than most books. It's an immediately interesting story which will pit the X-Men, including, presumably, reintroduced Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Northstar, as well as a non-healing Wolverine, up against a ton of extremely powerful Wendigos. It immediately gets dark to the point where there was a legitimate chance that Heather was about to be torn in half by Wendigos. So bit of a different tone here but I certainly don't think it's the wrong way to go on this book right now. I also like the addition of Mark Farmer's inks on Ed McGuinness' pencils since McGuinness tends to draw action and certain people very well but sometimes makes people look a little too young for my liking and Farmer's inks seem to balance that a little. Overall, very good start to a new look AMAZING X-MEN.
Total Score: 5/5
Amazing X-Men Annual 1
Nero (w) and Larroca (a) and Oback (c) and Caramagna (l)
It's not an awful one-shot sort of story, focusing on Ororo and her past in Africa and that questions what could have happened thanks to a young girl who could control the weather but couldn't, you know, really control the weather. The story is a bit bogged down, though, by lengthy exposition and overlong dialogue. The art is alright but loses some points as well for one of the weirdest shots to end the story as we see Ororo from the back, butt clearly defined past her cape(?) looking out onto her team. Geez, egregious butt-use there, Larroca.
Total Score: 3/5
Thursday, May 8, 2014
All-New X-Factor 7, New Warriors 4
All-New X-Factor 7
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c) and Petit (l)
Serval doesn't need X-Factor today so they come up with their own mission, brought to their attention by new team member Cypher. The daughter of anti-mutant author Scott Dakei has broadcast a live stream to the world saying how she's too cooped up and how she wants to experience the world before her stream is stopped by her father having one of his men shoot out the computer. The team agrees (some more willingly than others) to try to secret Georgia away from her father if it's what she really wants. They visit his locked-down home and, after some initial bumps, manage to get a chance to talk with Georgia. She says she doesn't want to run away and that she's happy where she is, happy to wait until she's able to leave. Cypher refuses to accept such an answer, believing that she's being held prisoner by her father, and tries to take her with them regardless. She shows off her own power then, though, as she reaches up and touches Cypher's face, seemingly draining life force from him.
Story
Peter David does have a tendency to take what's in the news of the day and place it into the comics world. I remember, in fact, reading a long section about it in his book on writing comics (I would be more specific but I'm not near the book right now, you guys). There are plenty of examples of this sort of thing happening, a discussion about whether you can separate art from its creator, but the most recent example is Ender's Game creator Orson Scott Card, an outspoken anti-homosexual...uh, bigot (I was trying to go with something classier but nothing came, sorry dudes and dudettes). Scott Dakei (guys, his first name is even Scott!) engenders the same sort of conversation: should Danger be reading his book despite his anti-mutant beliefs? Who does she support when she buys the book? Does she show support for his causes by buying a book unrelated to his beliefs? All sorts of questions and very few answers here because it's a hard question to answer. Beyond that, the attempted rescue of Georgia is a little far-fetched but David (something else he pointed out in his comic-writing book) himself makes sure to point out it's a little far-fetched before we can. Well countered, Peter David, well countered. 4/5
Character
There are some character movements in here, particularly surrounding everyone's motives for saving the girl and how far each is willing to carry on with it. Quicksilver hates Dakei and wants to upset him, Gambit wants to be the sort of hero who doesn't get so muddled up in dealing with supervillains that he forgets the little guy, and Cypher seems particularly attuned to the idea of a depressed girl trapped maybe against her will. Probably some more on that coming later, supposing Cypher isn't dead. There aren't huge revelations here but David is doing a good job to ensure we understand a little more about who these guys are as we push forward. 5/5
Writing
The issue gets a little long-winded and borders very tentatively on preachy well after we understand what the debate is. The order of the day in comics is shorter and quicker interactions but David forgoes that to make sure the specifics of each debate in this issue (whether you can separate an artist from his or her work, why this group of mutants should get involved in Georgia's struggle, the ethics of kidnapping someone who wants to be kidnapped, etc.) are unveiled. It's maybe a slower read than some of the other ones but it doesn't really drag, particularly. If there's a problem with it, it's really that there are too many debates going on and it means we jump from one ethical dilemma to another without any sort of resolution, leaving the reader exhausted by the end. David, though, does a good job to illustrate multiple points and counterpoints to a lot of these questions. 4/5
Art
Di Giandomenico does a pretty good job with the character designs here and works to some of his own strengths by showing faces at very specific angles and often giving the characters somewhat longer, wavier hair to give everyone a solid sense of motion. I don't always love Di Giandomenico's art but it works out pretty well here. 5/5
Miscellaneous
Maybe I should have talked about all that creator/art stuff down here and left "story" to the broader strokes. Whatever.
Total score: 4/5
New Warriors 4
Yost (w) and To (a) and Curiel (c) and Caramagna (l)
Just as Nova has been captured trying to protect his fallen comrades, Justice, Speedball, Sun Girl and Haechi (that's what the splash page calls Mark, the new Inhuman they found) turn up and enter the fight. With the New Warriors assembled, they begin to fight back against the Evolutionary and the High Evolutionary (two different people, you guys, totally unrelated somehow) and manage to send the High Evolutionary fleeing for his machine. Well, maybe it's not totally fleeing because the machine will kill everyone with powers once he starts it up. It immediately knocks out their entire group (save for Nova, who was knocked out at the end of the fight) except for Sun Girl, who is human using tech. The High Evolutionary explains the stakes but Sun Girl refuses to listen and blasts him through the stomach before blasting the machine. With the High Evolutionary wounded and the New Warriors back on their feet, the villains are forced to flee (for reals fleeing this time). Though they regroup in the Savage Land, the High Evolutionary proclaims that there's no time to try again, the Celestials are on their way.
Story
It remains an intriguing story, the idea that the Celestials are ready to wipe out the unclean planet as evolutionary progress has been so...unique up to this point and as the villains of the series are trying to protect the Earth as a whole by killing the majority of the superpowered beings on the planet. It's the ultimate "kill one person to save a hundred" sort of story but ramped up to a much bigger scale (as the High Evolutionary points out). With a pretty neat group of characters representing each of the major evolutionary off-shoots (and a few more at that), this story has set itself up to be an exciting one. Also, bonus points for invoking Ghostbusters with the next issue tease of "Dogs and cats, living together." 5/5
Character
Christopher Yost has been one of my favorite writers recently for picking up just about any character and immediately writing them with a strong voice and a pretty interesting thing to add to a story. No one ever feels like they were just tossed into a story without a reason for being there and that's the case now too as everyone adds something to the issue and as Yost manages to write fun and exciting fight dialogue. It reminds me, in a way, of what Bendis likes to do on just about every page of every book but, instead of it being irritating to me, it's paced in a way that works and that makes sense and flows better. I'd say more but I'm afraid I would just rail against Bendis' back-and-forth dialogue some more and we've all already heard plenty about that. 5/5
Writing
I feel I've rather covered this in the previous two sections, particularly in "character," but Yost's writing continues to be strong and the pacing starts to get pretty hectic right when it needs to here, ramping everything up as the fights start. Solid stuff. 5/5
Art
Marcus To and David Curiel are doing a great job here. There wasn't a lot that really struck me in this book (I'm not great at reviewing art unless it really sticks out to me, positive or negative), but To conveys plenty of emotion and his action sequences work extremely well. Fun and fitting stuff. 5/5
Miscellaneous
I had high hopes for this book when it kicked off and I'm yet to see them disappointed. I also like that cover quite a bit.
Total score: 5/5
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c) and Petit (l)
Story
Peter David does have a tendency to take what's in the news of the day and place it into the comics world. I remember, in fact, reading a long section about it in his book on writing comics (I would be more specific but I'm not near the book right now, you guys). There are plenty of examples of this sort of thing happening, a discussion about whether you can separate art from its creator, but the most recent example is Ender's Game creator Orson Scott Card, an outspoken anti-homosexual...uh, bigot (I was trying to go with something classier but nothing came, sorry dudes and dudettes). Scott Dakei (guys, his first name is even Scott!) engenders the same sort of conversation: should Danger be reading his book despite his anti-mutant beliefs? Who does she support when she buys the book? Does she show support for his causes by buying a book unrelated to his beliefs? All sorts of questions and very few answers here because it's a hard question to answer. Beyond that, the attempted rescue of Georgia is a little far-fetched but David (something else he pointed out in his comic-writing book) himself makes sure to point out it's a little far-fetched before we can. Well countered, Peter David, well countered. 4/5
Character
There are some character movements in here, particularly surrounding everyone's motives for saving the girl and how far each is willing to carry on with it. Quicksilver hates Dakei and wants to upset him, Gambit wants to be the sort of hero who doesn't get so muddled up in dealing with supervillains that he forgets the little guy, and Cypher seems particularly attuned to the idea of a depressed girl trapped maybe against her will. Probably some more on that coming later, supposing Cypher isn't dead. There aren't huge revelations here but David is doing a good job to ensure we understand a little more about who these guys are as we push forward. 5/5
Writing
The issue gets a little long-winded and borders very tentatively on preachy well after we understand what the debate is. The order of the day in comics is shorter and quicker interactions but David forgoes that to make sure the specifics of each debate in this issue (whether you can separate an artist from his or her work, why this group of mutants should get involved in Georgia's struggle, the ethics of kidnapping someone who wants to be kidnapped, etc.) are unveiled. It's maybe a slower read than some of the other ones but it doesn't really drag, particularly. If there's a problem with it, it's really that there are too many debates going on and it means we jump from one ethical dilemma to another without any sort of resolution, leaving the reader exhausted by the end. David, though, does a good job to illustrate multiple points and counterpoints to a lot of these questions. 4/5
Art
Di Giandomenico does a pretty good job with the character designs here and works to some of his own strengths by showing faces at very specific angles and often giving the characters somewhat longer, wavier hair to give everyone a solid sense of motion. I don't always love Di Giandomenico's art but it works out pretty well here. 5/5
Miscellaneous
Maybe I should have talked about all that creator/art stuff down here and left "story" to the broader strokes. Whatever.
Total score: 4/5
New Warriors 4
Yost (w) and To (a) and Curiel (c) and Caramagna (l)
Just as Nova has been captured trying to protect his fallen comrades, Justice, Speedball, Sun Girl and Haechi (that's what the splash page calls Mark, the new Inhuman they found) turn up and enter the fight. With the New Warriors assembled, they begin to fight back against the Evolutionary and the High Evolutionary (two different people, you guys, totally unrelated somehow) and manage to send the High Evolutionary fleeing for his machine. Well, maybe it's not totally fleeing because the machine will kill everyone with powers once he starts it up. It immediately knocks out their entire group (save for Nova, who was knocked out at the end of the fight) except for Sun Girl, who is human using tech. The High Evolutionary explains the stakes but Sun Girl refuses to listen and blasts him through the stomach before blasting the machine. With the High Evolutionary wounded and the New Warriors back on their feet, the villains are forced to flee (for reals fleeing this time). Though they regroup in the Savage Land, the High Evolutionary proclaims that there's no time to try again, the Celestials are on their way.Story
It remains an intriguing story, the idea that the Celestials are ready to wipe out the unclean planet as evolutionary progress has been so...unique up to this point and as the villains of the series are trying to protect the Earth as a whole by killing the majority of the superpowered beings on the planet. It's the ultimate "kill one person to save a hundred" sort of story but ramped up to a much bigger scale (as the High Evolutionary points out). With a pretty neat group of characters representing each of the major evolutionary off-shoots (and a few more at that), this story has set itself up to be an exciting one. Also, bonus points for invoking Ghostbusters with the next issue tease of "Dogs and cats, living together." 5/5
Character
Christopher Yost has been one of my favorite writers recently for picking up just about any character and immediately writing them with a strong voice and a pretty interesting thing to add to a story. No one ever feels like they were just tossed into a story without a reason for being there and that's the case now too as everyone adds something to the issue and as Yost manages to write fun and exciting fight dialogue. It reminds me, in a way, of what Bendis likes to do on just about every page of every book but, instead of it being irritating to me, it's paced in a way that works and that makes sense and flows better. I'd say more but I'm afraid I would just rail against Bendis' back-and-forth dialogue some more and we've all already heard plenty about that. 5/5
Writing
I feel I've rather covered this in the previous two sections, particularly in "character," but Yost's writing continues to be strong and the pacing starts to get pretty hectic right when it needs to here, ramping everything up as the fights start. Solid stuff. 5/5
Art
Marcus To and David Curiel are doing a great job here. There wasn't a lot that really struck me in this book (I'm not great at reviewing art unless it really sticks out to me, positive or negative), but To conveys plenty of emotion and his action sequences work extremely well. Fun and fitting stuff. 5/5
Miscellaneous
I had high hopes for this book when it kicked off and I'm yet to see them disappointed. I also like that cover quite a bit.
Total score: 5/5
Thursday, April 10, 2014
All-New X-Men 25, All-New X-Factor 6
All-New X-Men 25
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a) and Ponsor (c) w/ Timm, L. Martin, A. Adams, Mack, Young, J. Keith, R. Rodriguez, Bermejo, Gracia, K. Williams, JG Jones, Del Carmen, J. S. Campbell, Ruffino, Wicks, Shiga, Hipp, Wittert, J. Parker, M. Wilson, J. Thompson, P. Smith, Wiacek, and Bellaire (a and c)
Beast (present day Beast, not Beast of the past in the present) lays in bed being lectured by the Watcher about how his decision to bring the original X-Men to the present was so bad that it's ruined the chance of happiness for mutants ever again. We see a ton of different possible timelines from a slew of guest artists (seen above) with a brief close-up on every one of the original X-Men and see all the bad futures they could have and all the good futures they can't have before Beast asks for help resetting things and Watcher tells him that he's deplorable and that he only watches and can't act.
Okay, so this is a weird little boy-who-cried-wolf situation because I tend to spend a lot of time not enjoying ALL-NEW X-MEN (I spend a lot of time actively not liking it which shows just how sad I am) and then this issue comes out. Don't get me wrong, I still don't like this issue but I dislike it for more reasons than normal and I even don't like it for the message Watcher's sending, although it's the message I've wanted sent since day one. No, what I don't like about this one is the fanfare. It's an oversized issue with what the cover claims is "the greatest artist roster ever assembled." I have no qualms with that claim and the art is pretty impressive throughout (though it takes some questionable turns here and there) but I don't understand why it has such a roster. It's the 25th issue of an X-MEN book. It's not like people are surprised it made it to 25. Even with Marvel's sometimes flagrant renumbering, 25 isn't a huge, huge mark to reach. DEADPOOL celebrates issue 27 this week. THUNDERBOLTS and IRON MAN are both on issue 24 this week and I'd be quite sure neither will pull out all the stops for issue 25. Even a book like X-MEN LEGACY that must have been constantly on the bubble numbers-wise hit 24 before the big 300th issue. Even putting that aside because why should I complain if comics get celebrated every once in a while, this story simply isn't that good. Like, it's a perfectly serviceable story but it feels perfectly serviceable as a .1 or something. It lands between arcs and it gives something of a recap of what's happening to give readers a jumping on point. The story, then, is fine for what it is but let's not act like what it is is something absolutely groundbreaking and worthy of the attention this book wants from everyone. Look. I shouldn't complain, this book has some great art in it (I particularly shouldn't complain because David Mack and Skottie Young each get a page and I adore them both). I just hate fanfare that feels so cynical. And I just flat-out don't like this book.
All-New X-Factor 6
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
The team goes to see Doug Ramsey, AKA Cypher, in the hopes that he'll shed some light on Warlock's current situation. Doug's been having some bad dreams wherein he becomes an incredibly powerful villain and kills all of his friends and he's decided he's going to throw himself off a cliff to prevent it happening. However, X-Factor shows up in time to shake him from that notion though it's still clearly sitting in the back of his mind. Danger scans him and discovers that he has a piece of Warlock tech in him and, despite his protestations, removes it to show it to him. He discovers that it's been sending transmissions about him to Warlock. The team and Doug go to find Warlock and the Magus, following the transmission from the piece of Warlock previously in Doug. When there, they're welcomed by the Magus who reveals that he's just trying to carve out a life for himself in the wake of the destruction of his home planet. The techno-organic virus that had infected him before gave him the ability to break from traditions once held by the Technarchy, meaning that he was able to set aside his enmity for his son and work together with him to promote their race. Now the Magus really is just a businessman trying to live life on Earth. He allows Warlock, who explains that the machinery in Cypher was just to ensure he didn't hurt himself as he'd been thinking of doing, to leave with X-Factor and the two former New Mutants join the team.
The book is coming together more and more and as these two new members join up with the team we can start to see that there are plenty of plot lines waiting to be unraveled. On top of the Quicksilver+the Uncanny Avengers storyline, there are burgeoning details about Cypher, about Danger and Warlock (Warlock quickly falls in love with Danger) on top of the Danger and Gambit weird thing that's happening, about Polaris' mental state, about the whole Serval thing, and even about Harrison Snow's affair with his personal assistant and his newly introduced and troubling wife in this issue. The characters are starting to come alive in their own way now too and it seems like things are really starting to fall into place for this book. Now there are a number of threads to be pulled, all of which could seemingly unravel everything, and still, presumably, plenty of other plots to build on going forward. Peter David lasted as long as he did with a book like the previous X-FACTOR because he write a solid team book and knows how to layer in problems for his characters as well as anyone in the business. They don't always work and sometimes the characters start to sound a little similar but by and large he manages to build a team that has a lot of heart and personality and a story that is barely keeping itself together in the best of ways. That's starting to come through here and ALL-NEW X-FACTOR could be primed for a nice run.
Bendis (w) and Marquez (a) and Ponsor (c) w/ Timm, L. Martin, A. Adams, Mack, Young, J. Keith, R. Rodriguez, Bermejo, Gracia, K. Williams, JG Jones, Del Carmen, J. S. Campbell, Ruffino, Wicks, Shiga, Hipp, Wittert, J. Parker, M. Wilson, J. Thompson, P. Smith, Wiacek, and Bellaire (a and c)
Okay, so this is a weird little boy-who-cried-wolf situation because I tend to spend a lot of time not enjoying ALL-NEW X-MEN (I spend a lot of time actively not liking it which shows just how sad I am) and then this issue comes out. Don't get me wrong, I still don't like this issue but I dislike it for more reasons than normal and I even don't like it for the message Watcher's sending, although it's the message I've wanted sent since day one. No, what I don't like about this one is the fanfare. It's an oversized issue with what the cover claims is "the greatest artist roster ever assembled." I have no qualms with that claim and the art is pretty impressive throughout (though it takes some questionable turns here and there) but I don't understand why it has such a roster. It's the 25th issue of an X-MEN book. It's not like people are surprised it made it to 25. Even with Marvel's sometimes flagrant renumbering, 25 isn't a huge, huge mark to reach. DEADPOOL celebrates issue 27 this week. THUNDERBOLTS and IRON MAN are both on issue 24 this week and I'd be quite sure neither will pull out all the stops for issue 25. Even a book like X-MEN LEGACY that must have been constantly on the bubble numbers-wise hit 24 before the big 300th issue. Even putting that aside because why should I complain if comics get celebrated every once in a while, this story simply isn't that good. Like, it's a perfectly serviceable story but it feels perfectly serviceable as a .1 or something. It lands between arcs and it gives something of a recap of what's happening to give readers a jumping on point. The story, then, is fine for what it is but let's not act like what it is is something absolutely groundbreaking and worthy of the attention this book wants from everyone. Look. I shouldn't complain, this book has some great art in it (I particularly shouldn't complain because David Mack and Skottie Young each get a page and I adore them both). I just hate fanfare that feels so cynical. And I just flat-out don't like this book.
All-New X-Factor 6
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
The book is coming together more and more and as these two new members join up with the team we can start to see that there are plenty of plot lines waiting to be unraveled. On top of the Quicksilver+the Uncanny Avengers storyline, there are burgeoning details about Cypher, about Danger and Warlock (Warlock quickly falls in love with Danger) on top of the Danger and Gambit weird thing that's happening, about Polaris' mental state, about the whole Serval thing, and even about Harrison Snow's affair with his personal assistant and his newly introduced and troubling wife in this issue. The characters are starting to come alive in their own way now too and it seems like things are really starting to fall into place for this book. Now there are a number of threads to be pulled, all of which could seemingly unravel everything, and still, presumably, plenty of other plots to build on going forward. Peter David lasted as long as he did with a book like the previous X-FACTOR because he write a solid team book and knows how to layer in problems for his characters as well as anyone in the business. They don't always work and sometimes the characters start to sound a little similar but by and large he manages to build a team that has a lot of heart and personality and a story that is barely keeping itself together in the best of ways. That's starting to come through here and ALL-NEW X-FACTOR could be primed for a nice run.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
All-New X-Men 24, All-New X-Factor 4
All-New X-Men 24
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)
J-Son, King of the Spartax empire, interrupts Gladiator's tribunal to ask why Jean Grey has been put on trial for crimes she hasn't committed and why he'd still be going after her even after he's done so much to harm her, like hunting down her family to destroy any sort of genealogical attraction the Phoenix felt to Jean Grey. Of course, this leads to a delay in the trial and to a very angry Jean Grey. She's escorted back to her cell while Gladiator and J-Son argue but she breaks away from her captors, escaping into the city. Meanwhile, the Guardians, O5 X-Men, and Starjammers manage to secure a Shi'ar ship with the aid of Angela and fly it down to the planet, hoping to go unrecognized. They land and find themselves immediately discovered by Gladiator and his Imperial Guard. They quickly get into a fight before Jean emerges and asks to be brought back in and tried as a murderer.
It continues to be a little hard to review this book (and a good deal of Bendis' books, but the difficulty increases steadily the more characters are involved. I should make a graph) because my problems with the dialogue and the interactions and the tone and the double page spreads and everything else is already so well-documented. There's probably something deeper I could say about the fact that nothing changes in the style of so many of his books from issue to issue but it seems petty to complain about that; clearly if Bendis is popular, he's going to keep writing in that style and putting out books that fit that formula. So maybe one of my issues with this whole series and everything else that's come out surrounding this in the last year is that it's all so boring to me. I very rarely have found Jean Grey interesting, I tend not to be too connected to the Phoenix as a whole but particularly Jean Grey is uninteresting in the hands of many writers, and she and Cyclops, the oatmeal of the superhero community, are really at the center of this series, just like Cyclops is the center of UNCANNY X-MEN. Of course, it doesn't help that I have had real misgivings about the conceit of ALL-NEW X-MEN since it launched and I am getting more and more sick of stories about "can we kill an innocent person to stop crimes they may commit?" which means that, at least for right now, literally nothing about this book is working for me. Okay, and there IS something to be said about the fact that the format of these books never seems to change and I don't feel invested in ANY of these characters, partly because I know they all must get back to the past at some point and because I just haven't been given a reason to care about any of them yet. Too much to complain about in so little time.
All-New X-Factor 4
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Rosenberg (c)
X-Factor has discovered that Gambit's old associate Nil was the one responsible for taking considerable funds from Serval Industries and that he did it using a a very damaged Danger, former X-Man. Now she seems to have no memories and a distinct desire to kill her captor. Gambit, who has the closest semblance to a relationship with her on the team, tries to talk her down to no avail before Polaris destroys her body with her powers. However, Danger can inhabit other mechanical forms and quickly inhabits the team's ship to preserve herself and continue to fight. Her body rebuilds itself and she transfers back into that, ready at last to kill Nil, who finally offers himself up in the hopes it will save the island. Gambit refuses to allow it though and jumps on Danger again, this time kissing her before she can strike at anyone. Somehow, this restores her to herself enough for her to recognize Gambit and stand down. The team convince Nil to give back the money he took and they all leave with Danger in tow. Without discussing it with the rest of the team, Gambit promptly offers her a spot with X-Factor.
Okay, so let's get the compliments out of the way first. The issue moves pretty well. Peter David has a tendency to chew scenery a bit and load up dialogue with exposition and it happens here to an extent but, despite that, the issue moves quickly enough, keeping the action intense enough to merit a very action-based issue. There are, of course, still some flaws after that. The big one is the cliché yet also inexplicable return of Danger's memories after a kiss from Gambit, who admits himself that he never had any sort of romantic link to the robot, the living embodiment of the Danger Room. They had spent time together in various X-meetings and the like but I don't even think they've had a particularly close bond at any point. And yet, here we are, as the issue winds down, with Gambit kissing a robot and it having enough of an impact on that robot that her memories return and her homicidal rage is quelled. It's simultaneously a giant cliché and a deus ex machina, all wrapped neatly into one package. I think that the interesting things that are happening in this book are getting somewhat overlooked by moments like that and some of the exposition pieces. For example, I think David is developing something very interesting with Polaris but I think it's going to be hard to get to it if the book can't get past some of the set pieces. I'd also like to see a little bit more happening with Gambit and Quicksilver. It's a hard book to judge right now because we're only four issues in so there hasn't been a lot of time to really get into it with some of the characters and still tell compelling stories but I'd like it to at least go one way or the other. This story wasn't compelling enough (it basically boiled down to "Danger is crazy for some reason and Gambit's kiss made the crazy go away") and it ended up just taking away from the book as a whole. Still, four issues in isn't unusual for a book to still be finding its footing.
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)
It continues to be a little hard to review this book (and a good deal of Bendis' books, but the difficulty increases steadily the more characters are involved. I should make a graph) because my problems with the dialogue and the interactions and the tone and the double page spreads and everything else is already so well-documented. There's probably something deeper I could say about the fact that nothing changes in the style of so many of his books from issue to issue but it seems petty to complain about that; clearly if Bendis is popular, he's going to keep writing in that style and putting out books that fit that formula. So maybe one of my issues with this whole series and everything else that's come out surrounding this in the last year is that it's all so boring to me. I very rarely have found Jean Grey interesting, I tend not to be too connected to the Phoenix as a whole but particularly Jean Grey is uninteresting in the hands of many writers, and she and Cyclops, the oatmeal of the superhero community, are really at the center of this series, just like Cyclops is the center of UNCANNY X-MEN. Of course, it doesn't help that I have had real misgivings about the conceit of ALL-NEW X-MEN since it launched and I am getting more and more sick of stories about "can we kill an innocent person to stop crimes they may commit?" which means that, at least for right now, literally nothing about this book is working for me. Okay, and there IS something to be said about the fact that the format of these books never seems to change and I don't feel invested in ANY of these characters, partly because I know they all must get back to the past at some point and because I just haven't been given a reason to care about any of them yet. Too much to complain about in so little time.
All-New X-Factor 4
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Rosenberg (c)
Okay, so let's get the compliments out of the way first. The issue moves pretty well. Peter David has a tendency to chew scenery a bit and load up dialogue with exposition and it happens here to an extent but, despite that, the issue moves quickly enough, keeping the action intense enough to merit a very action-based issue. There are, of course, still some flaws after that. The big one is the cliché yet also inexplicable return of Danger's memories after a kiss from Gambit, who admits himself that he never had any sort of romantic link to the robot, the living embodiment of the Danger Room. They had spent time together in various X-meetings and the like but I don't even think they've had a particularly close bond at any point. And yet, here we are, as the issue winds down, with Gambit kissing a robot and it having enough of an impact on that robot that her memories return and her homicidal rage is quelled. It's simultaneously a giant cliché and a deus ex machina, all wrapped neatly into one package. I think that the interesting things that are happening in this book are getting somewhat overlooked by moments like that and some of the exposition pieces. For example, I think David is developing something very interesting with Polaris but I think it's going to be hard to get to it if the book can't get past some of the set pieces. I'd also like to see a little bit more happening with Gambit and Quicksilver. It's a hard book to judge right now because we're only four issues in so there hasn't been a lot of time to really get into it with some of the characters and still tell compelling stories but I'd like it to at least go one way or the other. This story wasn't compelling enough (it basically boiled down to "Danger is crazy for some reason and Gambit's kiss made the crazy go away") and it ended up just taking away from the book as a whole. Still, four issues in isn't unusual for a book to still be finding its footing.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
All-New X-Men 23, All-New X-Factor 3
All-New X-Men 23
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and Von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)
The ANXM find themselves in space alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy in the quest to find Jean Grey. They know that it was the Shi'ar who took her and have been tracking the Shi'ar ship but it's not gone unnoticed. The two factions quickly get embroiled in a space battle with various members of the Guardians deploying to fight the Shi'ar in space and others and the ANXM staying behind in the ship, where they get unlikely support from the thought-dead space pirate Starjammers, led by the Corsair, Cyclops' father Christopher Summers. Meanwhile, Jean continues to be told that she's on trial for crimes committed by the Phoenix and ham-fistedly tries to explain that she hasn't committed these crimes.
I would, perhaps, be less averse to this series (despite its horrible conceit) if issues read as quickly as these summaries went. Instead, thanks to Bendis' famous back-and-forth dialogue, the issue ends up losing both its tension and its pace. Bendis tries to restore it with the Jean Grey bits, putting her up against a seemingly impregnable foe, and with the tension Scott is clearly feeling (Scott, who will soon star in his own ongoing soon from Greg Rucka), but it falls short when you have Bobby making non-stop jokes and Rocket making non-stop (grr) fake swears. Of course, there is a time for comic relief in the midst of a serious situation but it tends to be bad if it's impossible to separate the two. I've pretty much been solidly on record about my dislike for the conceit that the O5 X-Men are in the present in the first place but I'm willing to accept it if it still yields good stories. This one feels like an attempt to bring up the trope of "can you find someone guilty of crimes they haven't yet committed," a question asked constantly in comics and other media and one that Bendis himself has even asked in the last year in AGE OF ULTRON. So I'm not on board with this plot, I'm not on board with the dialogue, and I'm not really on board with a lot of these characters. Guess how I'm feeling with this book?
All-New X-Factor 3
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
X-Factor is starting to get its bearing as Gambit moves into Serval Industries, Polaris continues to lead the team, and we discover that Quicksilver is working on behalf of Havok to keep an eye on Polaris and the entire set-up for the Avengers. Any sort of subtlety to the potential corruption or evil of Several Industries, too, can be put to rest as Snow reveals that he's planted a camera in Polaris' eye and as he offers a job to last issue's enemy, Dr. Hoffman. Of course, he doesn't tell any of the X-Factor members any of this and he sends them out on a new mission to find someone who hacked Serval's servers and made off with all sorts of plans and ten million dollars. Their physical trace leads them to the hidden Thieves' Guild island and Gambit immediately knows that Nil, the technomancer who threatened Gambit's leadership in his own title, must be behind it. They go and investigate and find that Nil has upped his abilities by hooking X-Man Danger up to his set-up. When Polaris frees her, Danger attacks all of them.
Plot-wise, there's a lot going on here. Serval is taking a very obvious step towards evil corporation even faster than I expected it would, Danger's a danger, and Quicksilver is, as Gambit suggested, a spy for an Avengers team. Aside from the introduction of Danger, though, all of these plot points are expected plot points, going so far as to even be plot points that Gambit, a character in the book we're reading, has expected them all along. In that way, the big plot shifts aren't super meaningful to us because they're plot shifts we've all been expecting and they're plot shifts only three issues deep, while we're still trying to figure out what this team is all about and who Serval is. Granted, we are only three issues in so these plot shifts may just be red herrings to cover bigger issues, but, on the face of it, it's not a terribly compelling set of plot twists. In addition, the writing ends up focusing a lot on quirky little quips and shoe-horned jokes. I'm a pretty big proponent of Peter David and his work (particularly his long work on the last X-FACTOR book) but this series isn't selling me quite yet. Of course, I'll keep reading it but that doesn't mean much coming from me, the guy who willingly reviews every single one of these jerk books.
Bendis (w) and S. Immonen and Von Grawbadger (a) and Gracia (c)
I would, perhaps, be less averse to this series (despite its horrible conceit) if issues read as quickly as these summaries went. Instead, thanks to Bendis' famous back-and-forth dialogue, the issue ends up losing both its tension and its pace. Bendis tries to restore it with the Jean Grey bits, putting her up against a seemingly impregnable foe, and with the tension Scott is clearly feeling (Scott, who will soon star in his own ongoing soon from Greg Rucka), but it falls short when you have Bobby making non-stop jokes and Rocket making non-stop (grr) fake swears. Of course, there is a time for comic relief in the midst of a serious situation but it tends to be bad if it's impossible to separate the two. I've pretty much been solidly on record about my dislike for the conceit that the O5 X-Men are in the present in the first place but I'm willing to accept it if it still yields good stories. This one feels like an attempt to bring up the trope of "can you find someone guilty of crimes they haven't yet committed," a question asked constantly in comics and other media and one that Bendis himself has even asked in the last year in AGE OF ULTRON. So I'm not on board with this plot, I'm not on board with the dialogue, and I'm not really on board with a lot of these characters. Guess how I'm feeling with this book?
All-New X-Factor 3
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
Plot-wise, there's a lot going on here. Serval is taking a very obvious step towards evil corporation even faster than I expected it would, Danger's a danger, and Quicksilver is, as Gambit suggested, a spy for an Avengers team. Aside from the introduction of Danger, though, all of these plot points are expected plot points, going so far as to even be plot points that Gambit, a character in the book we're reading, has expected them all along. In that way, the big plot shifts aren't super meaningful to us because they're plot shifts we've all been expecting and they're plot shifts only three issues deep, while we're still trying to figure out what this team is all about and who Serval is. Granted, we are only three issues in so these plot shifts may just be red herrings to cover bigger issues, but, on the face of it, it's not a terribly compelling set of plot twists. In addition, the writing ends up focusing a lot on quirky little quips and shoe-horned jokes. I'm a pretty big proponent of Peter David and his work (particularly his long work on the last X-FACTOR book) but this series isn't selling me quite yet. Of course, I'll keep reading it but that doesn't mean much coming from me, the guy who willingly reviews every single one of these jerk books.
Friday, January 24, 2014
All-New X-Factor 2, Cable and X-Force 19
All-New X-Factor 2
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
X-Factor enters the AIM lab to try to find Dr. Hoffman and Quicksilver and Gambit are almost instantly whisked away into traps, leading Polaris to start ripping the place apart. As the lab reacts and launches gas at her, she vaults into the holding cell where they're keeping Fatale. The traps that Quicksilver and Gambit were pulled into are ultimately beatable and the two reunite pretty quickly. The invasion, though, has drawn the notice of Hoffman and he's begun to launch into his testing. He had been draining the power from mutants Fatale, Reaper, and Abyss to charge himself up and to give himself a bunch of energy based powers. As Polaris tries to fight back, Quicksilver and Gambit rush on to the scene, with Quicksilver giving Gambit an opportunity to toss a kinetic card into the monster Hoffman's ear, destroying him from the inside out. Hoffman himself is alive but unconscious as the power dissipates. As the team regroups, Fatale, Reaper, and Abyss want to kill Hoffman but Polaris and Quicksilver won't let them. The appearance of Quicksilver, though, gives them an ample enough hate to turn their focus to him (fun fact: Quicksilver is hated by like, everybody). They leave, though, and swear their revenge someday.
Bit of a strange issue. It's also one of those issues that annoys me because it highlights some possible level of hypocrisy in me. I often think about long first arcs and wonder if it maybe hurt the book to stay in one story for so long to kick it off. In some cases, I think it works really well, like with CAPTAIN AMERICA and with THOR: GOD OF THUNDER (which did eventually wear on me a bit but was mostly solid and was technically two arcs, though it really was just one). Yet when this book comes along and gives a two issue arc to establish our characters, at least half of our team (the splash page indicates there may be more on the way) has been introduced, and we see a plot resolved, I'm left wanting maybe a bit more. It's not a bad issue, per se, just one that feels like we missed chunks of story that were maybe important. It also does the Marvel thing of playing with what exactly it is to be mutant. Right now, Rick Remender has Red Skull walking around the Marvel Universe with Charles Xavier's actual brain in him to give him telepathy while Peter David here explains that Dr. Hoffman was able to drain the energy from mutants to gain powers that may or may not be THEIR powers but are powers. Kind of have to overlook that. The ending is also a bit abrupt as everything winds down quickly and the issue ends with Gambit quipping about Quicksilver. Bit of a strange read, really.
Cable and X-Force 19
Hopeless (w) and Unzueta (a) and Rosenberg (c)
The two X-Force teams have met up and things have calmed down a bit between them since last time as they try to figure out what happened to Cable, Spiral, Bishop, and Hope. Psylocke can't locate them anywhere until Forge suggests that they get to a junkyard where he and Nemesis can whip up a power amplifier for her. Meanwhile, Stryfe has contained everyone in his vicinity and force-teleports Spiral away, not caring about her. He then makes Cable watch as he leaves Hope and Bishop in a room with a psimitar and he taunts Cable about how, despite all of his wishes, he built a daughter who knows how to be a killer. Back in California, the power amplifier works and leads the teams right to Spiral (sent to a fishing ship). Betsy says that the power amplifier can help her take the blocks out of Spiral's head as far as remembering where Stryfe is if she's willing to take them there. Spiral agrees and they prepare to take off.
It's a bit sad that this crossover is the way that both of these books will end because it means that we don't get to see a real Hopeless send-off to the book he so neatly crafted. Instead, this is the final issue of CABLE AND X-FORCE and it's very clearly not the final issue of the story. Sad to see it go and sad that it has to spend a lot of its time focusing on characters who weren't even in this book. Sure we'll see a little bit more of Cable's X-Force team as VENDETTA wraps up next week but it would have been nice to get just one more book to see the finale for this team, which Hopeless wrote so well and made so fun. As an individual issue in the crossover, this isn't a bad one. As I said in the last VENDETTA review, you can pretty much map out the beats of a four-issue crossover like this one and this issue is hitting those same beats now as the two teams come back together and put their differences aside to prepare for the final fight against the big bad with the stakes raised to their highest points. In a way, maybe that's what's so sad about this being the final issue. We don't get closure for the team we grew to like but we also don't get anything we weren't expecting in the course of this crossover. Kind of a buzzkill. As much as I want the new X-FORCE series to start, I wouldn't mind a true final issue for this book, no matter the outcome of the next issue.
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
X-Factor enters the AIM lab to try to find Dr. Hoffman and Quicksilver and Gambit are almost instantly whisked away into traps, leading Polaris to start ripping the place apart. As the lab reacts and launches gas at her, she vaults into the holding cell where they're keeping Fatale. The traps that Quicksilver and Gambit were pulled into are ultimately beatable and the two reunite pretty quickly. The invasion, though, has drawn the notice of Hoffman and he's begun to launch into his testing. He had been draining the power from mutants Fatale, Reaper, and Abyss to charge himself up and to give himself a bunch of energy based powers. As Polaris tries to fight back, Quicksilver and Gambit rush on to the scene, with Quicksilver giving Gambit an opportunity to toss a kinetic card into the monster Hoffman's ear, destroying him from the inside out. Hoffman himself is alive but unconscious as the power dissipates. As the team regroups, Fatale, Reaper, and Abyss want to kill Hoffman but Polaris and Quicksilver won't let them. The appearance of Quicksilver, though, gives them an ample enough hate to turn their focus to him (fun fact: Quicksilver is hated by like, everybody). They leave, though, and swear their revenge someday.Bit of a strange issue. It's also one of those issues that annoys me because it highlights some possible level of hypocrisy in me. I often think about long first arcs and wonder if it maybe hurt the book to stay in one story for so long to kick it off. In some cases, I think it works really well, like with CAPTAIN AMERICA and with THOR: GOD OF THUNDER (which did eventually wear on me a bit but was mostly solid and was technically two arcs, though it really was just one). Yet when this book comes along and gives a two issue arc to establish our characters, at least half of our team (the splash page indicates there may be more on the way) has been introduced, and we see a plot resolved, I'm left wanting maybe a bit more. It's not a bad issue, per se, just one that feels like we missed chunks of story that were maybe important. It also does the Marvel thing of playing with what exactly it is to be mutant. Right now, Rick Remender has Red Skull walking around the Marvel Universe with Charles Xavier's actual brain in him to give him telepathy while Peter David here explains that Dr. Hoffman was able to drain the energy from mutants to gain powers that may or may not be THEIR powers but are powers. Kind of have to overlook that. The ending is also a bit abrupt as everything winds down quickly and the issue ends with Gambit quipping about Quicksilver. Bit of a strange read, really.
Cable and X-Force 19
Hopeless (w) and Unzueta (a) and Rosenberg (c)
It's a bit sad that this crossover is the way that both of these books will end because it means that we don't get to see a real Hopeless send-off to the book he so neatly crafted. Instead, this is the final issue of CABLE AND X-FORCE and it's very clearly not the final issue of the story. Sad to see it go and sad that it has to spend a lot of its time focusing on characters who weren't even in this book. Sure we'll see a little bit more of Cable's X-Force team as VENDETTA wraps up next week but it would have been nice to get just one more book to see the finale for this team, which Hopeless wrote so well and made so fun. As an individual issue in the crossover, this isn't a bad one. As I said in the last VENDETTA review, you can pretty much map out the beats of a four-issue crossover like this one and this issue is hitting those same beats now as the two teams come back together and put their differences aside to prepare for the final fight against the big bad with the stakes raised to their highest points. In a way, maybe that's what's so sad about this being the final issue. We don't get closure for the team we grew to like but we also don't get anything we weren't expecting in the course of this crossover. Kind of a buzzkill. As much as I want the new X-FORCE series to start, I wouldn't mind a true final issue for this book, no matter the outcome of the next issue.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
All-New X-Factor 1, Cable and X-Force 18
All-New X-Factor 1
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
Wolverine's annoyed that Gambit keeps missing school, has taken over the Thieves' Guild, and has continued his thieving ways. He tells Gambit that he's going to have to shape up if he wants to keep teaching at the school. Polaris, though, shows up with an alternative: come work with her on behalf of Serval Industries. They go to Serval HQ to meet with Harrison Snow, CEO and president of Serval, to hear his pitch to Gambit, which is basically that Serval has plenty of resources as a huge and rising company (and poses Snow as the next Tony Stark, weapons-manufacturer-wise) and that Snow would like to see those resources used for good in the world. Gambit agrees to go on a mission with Polaris and surprise teammate (surprise to Polaris, anyway) Quicksilver and test it out. The three break into an AIM research facility harboring scientist Dr. Terrance Hoffman who is allegedly experimenting on mutants. As they make their way through the facility, Hoffman continues to test the mutant Fatale and relishes the idea of testing even more mutants.
This is definitely looking like a wait-and-see book after the first issue. Of course, plenty of books are like that and there's no shame in it (I would say, though, that both AVENGERS WORLD and BLACK WIDOW, which debuted this week as well, landed pretty squarely in the "things are looking good" camp). Right now there's just too much that needs establishing before we can start to see what these characters and this plot is going to feel like. Gambit (and probably the rest of the team but we get narration from Gambit this time out) is certainly skeptical of Serval and he probably should be, given the fact that it's a huge corporation hiring a superhero team to do good work in the world. Huge corporations don't tend to work exclusively on the side of good in comics (unless they're run by a superhero to begin with) and Gambit clearly recognizes that. The team's an interesting one and there's reason to believe we'll get good chemistry out of them and Peter David keeps up his knack for dialogue and fairly easy-flowing scenes in his return to Marvel (he wasn't gone for long, no, but it's still a return). Carmine Di Giandomenico brings a crisp art style to the book that could certainly pay off and Lee Loughridge's colors are phenomenal. Should be fun to watch this one play out.
Cable and X-Force 18
Hopeless (w) and Unzueta (a) and Rosenberg (c)
After a conveniently timed nightmare about Bishop (to be fair, we're led to believe she has nightmares about Bishop fairly often), Hope wakes up to find Boom Boom watching a live stream of Cable's visions. As she walks in, the TV flashes by an image of Bishop and informs her that Bishop is in Hollywood this very instant. Hope knocks out Boom Boom to stop her telling Cable, takes guns from the armory, and embarks on a mission to kill Bishop. When Boom Boom awakes and tells Cable, he sets off after her, hoping to spare Hope from cold blooded murder. Meanwhile, on the west coast, Bishop has angrily set off to stew in the city after learning that Storm erased his memories of hunting Hope. Now he's got them back, he's trying to learn to cope. He doesn't have much time to try, though, as Hope attacks him before either X-Force team appears to intervene. However, someone does appear in time to intervene as Stryfe, Cable's clone from the future, shows up and grabs both of them before, disappearing with the two of them as Cable arrives. It's not long before the Uncanny X-Force arrives and suddenly Cable has to explain why Psylocke can't find Bishop any more.
There's a lot happening here of interest but it's ultimately going to rely on the random Stryfe plot twist. It would have been enough to pit Hope and Cable against Bishop and eventually have the X-Force teams get involved with it (though I then would have complained about why no one is talking to one another just as I'm going to complain about Bishop's relationship with his new team) but this new wrinkle can either vastly improve the story or unnecessarily complicate it. We'll have to see which way it goes, though typically the words "clone from the future" tend to be in the latter camp. The other major issue I'm having is that UNCANNY X-FORCE hasn't exactly done a lot to show that the team actually cares about Bishop. Sure, the act of removing his memories was done out of some bit of caring and sure they already know Bishop but he's only just returned from the future and he's spent as much time fighting against them as fighting alongside them. I don't think it doesn't work, necessarily, but I would have liked to see some stronger connection between the team and Bishop. The VENDETTA crossover will pick back up in the next issue of UNCANNY X-FORCE so we'll likely get a better sense then of how this event will go.
David (w) and Di Giandomenico (a) and Loughridge (c)
This is definitely looking like a wait-and-see book after the first issue. Of course, plenty of books are like that and there's no shame in it (I would say, though, that both AVENGERS WORLD and BLACK WIDOW, which debuted this week as well, landed pretty squarely in the "things are looking good" camp). Right now there's just too much that needs establishing before we can start to see what these characters and this plot is going to feel like. Gambit (and probably the rest of the team but we get narration from Gambit this time out) is certainly skeptical of Serval and he probably should be, given the fact that it's a huge corporation hiring a superhero team to do good work in the world. Huge corporations don't tend to work exclusively on the side of good in comics (unless they're run by a superhero to begin with) and Gambit clearly recognizes that. The team's an interesting one and there's reason to believe we'll get good chemistry out of them and Peter David keeps up his knack for dialogue and fairly easy-flowing scenes in his return to Marvel (he wasn't gone for long, no, but it's still a return). Carmine Di Giandomenico brings a crisp art style to the book that could certainly pay off and Lee Loughridge's colors are phenomenal. Should be fun to watch this one play out.
Cable and X-Force 18
Hopeless (w) and Unzueta (a) and Rosenberg (c)
There's a lot happening here of interest but it's ultimately going to rely on the random Stryfe plot twist. It would have been enough to pit Hope and Cable against Bishop and eventually have the X-Force teams get involved with it (though I then would have complained about why no one is talking to one another just as I'm going to complain about Bishop's relationship with his new team) but this new wrinkle can either vastly improve the story or unnecessarily complicate it. We'll have to see which way it goes, though typically the words "clone from the future" tend to be in the latter camp. The other major issue I'm having is that UNCANNY X-FORCE hasn't exactly done a lot to show that the team actually cares about Bishop. Sure, the act of removing his memories was done out of some bit of caring and sure they already know Bishop but he's only just returned from the future and he's spent as much time fighting against them as fighting alongside them. I don't think it doesn't work, necessarily, but I would have liked to see some stronger connection between the team and Bishop. The VENDETTA crossover will pick back up in the next issue of UNCANNY X-FORCE so we'll likely get a better sense then of how this event will go.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Ultimates 29, Thunderbolts 14, Nova 7
Ultimates 29
Fialkov (w) and Di Giandomenico and Ruggiero (a) and Charalampidis (c)
Reed's team only needs the one remaining Infinity Gem to finish out the gauntlet and things really should be less complicated as Tony Stark is dead and his armor seemingly under Reed's control and the Ultimates are imprisoned. Unfortunately for Reed, Tony's smart enough to have uploaded his consciousness into his network, meaning that he can hack just about anything now. Bit of a buzzkill for Reed as it allows him to take his own armor offline, mostly, instead of allowing Reed to use it and it means he can hack Reed's systems and control a suit himself. The book moves incredibly fast as Tony works his way through all of Reed's plans, culminating in a rescue of the Ultimates and the serious delay of all of Reed's work, if not the ultimate end. Meanwhile, Quicksilver has used John Storm to drill to the Earth's core to retrieve the last Infinity Gem for Kang, who he believes is his sister Wanda. As he returns with the gem, he reads through Reed's math (Pietro admits he's not smart but he's great at math because the speed he can analyze it means that he knows math well purely through repetition) and realizes that Kang's plan isn't going to end the way he thought it would and it's not anything that Wanda would ever do. She's not Wanda. Kang realizes that Quicksilver's found out and quickly catches up with him, admitting it to him before taking the gem and ending his life, giving him 30 seconds in which he sprints to Wanda's grave to give a final speech to her, pouring his heart out before he dies by her side. It's that speech that serves as a sort of narrator for this book, starting right with the beginning of the comic and ending as Pietro actually reaches the grave before starting anew out of Pietro's actual mouth. So who is Kang? The Ultimates find out as they gang up on Reed that Kang is future Sue Storm and she'll kill every one of them if they get in her way.
There is a TON happening here. Really impressive the level of climax we had here. Guys, I know this is the Ultimate universe and people die here but Tony Stark is kind of dead and Quicksilver just died. I recounted this book to my girlfriend and the fact that Quicksilver died came up and was, honestly, kind of off-handed because Tony obviously is a bigger death and she had to stop me to be like, "wait, what? Don't they stay dead over there?" I know! That's not to say it's poorly done or something, the fact that it's more off-handedly mentioned. In fact, it's very well done. It's incredibly sweet (ignoring the weird Pietro-Wanda relationship in the Ultimate universe) and it justifies a lot of his actions. He's suddenly more understandable and more helpless than conniving and kind of pure evil, as he's been shown lately. But it still fits nicely and his sentiments are very sweet and very touching. The pace of the book is great as Tony consciousness runs circles around Reed, thwarting and mocking him at every turn. Everything is fast and smart and the Sue Storm end reveal (with present Sue Storm in the room working against future Sue) is pleasantly surprising and well hidden. Solid work here. I've had some skepticisms about this Ultimates Disassembled business but this issue really straightened some worries out, giving us plenty to look forward to next time. High fives all around.
Thunderbolts 14
Soule (w) and Palo and Pallot (a) and Guru eFX (c)
Guys, I'm going to be honest and give some review-spoilers here: the three books reviewed today all get slightly surprised high fives. I could not be happier that this is true; I've had my troubles with each of these series that extended even as far as the most recent issues before these but I found myself genuinely enjoying each of these books and happy to be reading them. Let's talk about the specifics more, hm? Okay, so Thunderbolts. The change is official: Charles Soule is the new Thunderbolts writer with Daniel Way stepping aside to make way for him. I'm a Daniel Way fan; I thought his run on Deadpool was great and really helped the character along in the Marvel Universe (don't talk to me about the new one, whatever guys, I'm having fun right now) and he carried that solid Deadpool into this book. There was plenty to like about this Thunderbolts team but I wasn't falling in with the tone of the book, which wasn't particularly well-established, and the other characters didn't have too too much meat to them. Soule takes over along with artist Jeffte Palo and the tone is immediately changed. I've liked the last couple issues a bit but they were meant to tie up final plotlines. In 12, Soule's first issue, Punisher hunted down Elektra's brother. In 13, we learned about Mercy. Here, in 14, Soule is building his first set of issues. They're kind of tied-in to Infinity in that the Avengers are off-Earth here and Thanos is likely on his way, which might have an effect or might be a backdrop to our story. But Ross is keeping to his promise for the team; he built the team with the assurance to each member that they'd have resources and a team at their disposal to do things for themselves and that the team would alternate missions, one for Ross, one for another team member, one for Ross, one for another team member, and so on. So he's sticking to it. The first team member to get to choose a mission, after picking names from a ridiculous hat, is Punisher. He says that his mission is that he wants their help taking down a crime family in New York, which is followed by this nearly perfect beat (I don't often post panels in my summaries but this was too perfect to pass up. It might still make its way to panel of the week this week):
Great, right? Anyway, Punisher wants help taking out a dangerous crime family who has the support of every other crime family in New York. A success would mean crippling New York crime, potentially even by taking out tons of players, but the risk comes with the fact that every crime family in New York is willing to drop everything to defend the Paguro family. Risky business. There's another fun moment where Punisher starts to make a plan which dances around utilizing the whole team, knowing that attracting the attention of the Avengers isn't a great idea but, as soon as he learns the Avengers are off-world, he changes the plan to a full on assault.
Look, this is a really long post because I'm very happy with this change in tone and pace and even art. I liked Phil Noto's stuff but it was kind of as tone ambiguous as Way's writing. The book had funny moments but wasn't funny and it had serious moments but didn't feel that serious. This book has its own serious moments but the humor really shines. The art also gives it a lighter feel, with Jeffte Palo's more cartoony artwork giving us a really great match for the writing. Lots of great moments, genuinely fun beats and an exciting plot. I can't ask for more out of a team that I originally anticipated being incredibly fun and exciting. Full-on applause for this one.
Nova 7
Z. Wells (w) and Medina and Vlasco (a) and Curiel (c)
Nova has been given permission to keep Nova-ing but isn't yet ready to join the Avengers. Point of fact, he's not really ready to keep Nova-ing. He ignores the damage he did to the skate park in his hometown during his first arc and speeds to New York, only to be immediately accosted by angry NYPD and to crash into a more angry and more dangerous Spider-Man. Spidey curses him out for his inexperience and naivety before sending him on his way with the useful suggestions of getting a police scanner to identify real emergencies and maybe going to a city without superheroes to practice (which would be any other city on Earth, practically). Sam rushes off to do these things, using his helmet to identify some real world problems and zooming around after a failed attempt in Los Angeles (with a not-so-thinly-veiled and a bit eye-roll-worthy nod to Joss Whedon and a quick cameo by former New Warriors Justice and Speedball). He quickly learns that rushing into situations isn't the best approach (there are some neat bits where he admits to construction workers back at his skate park where he's reluctantly decided to help that firemen are better at fires than he is and that angry crowds aren't easy to talk to) and slows things down, returning to Carefree, Arizona to start small. However, Thanos is on the horizon, so don't expect him to stay small for too long.
I really enjoyed this issue. Nova sounds like the fifteen year-old he's supposed to sound like and the book wants to have a more fun feel to it, something that books that try to hard fail miserably at. Instead, it works very well here and the laughs are mostly genuine (the Joss Whedon does indeed get an eye-roll). This one's applause comes with rather a wary eye, though. I wasn't a huge fan of the Nova reboot here. First and foremost, he spins right out of the newish Ultimate Spider-Man TV show which is garbage. Still, comics don't necessarily follow TV or movies word for word so he was still jumping into an established universe. I liked the idea behind the Black Nova corps but I didn't love the story or the character particularly under Jeph Loeb. It felt strained and very cliché. Zeb Wells took over recently and got me a little more onboard, giving Nova a more genuine sounding voice and putting the character back on new ground on Earth. I've liked the work he's done and this issue is certainly no exception; in fact, I'd say it's the strongest of the series so far. But issue 10 will see another writer change on the book, replacing Wells with Gerry Duggan. Remember above, in my Thunderbolts post, when I mentioned not liking the new Deadpool book? Or every Deadpool review where I've said that? Duggan is one of the men behind that. Don't get me wrong, that certainly doesn't mean Nova is bound to cross borders I don't care for. Deadpool's a different character and Duggan's a pro, who is also, it should be mentioned, writing Deadpool alongside a stand-up comedian in Brian Posehn. Still, I'm wary of the new direction that could be coming, especially after I liked this issue so much. Hoping that Wells' stay, if nothing else, is memorable. Truly hoping for better beyond that, but I'd except a solid five issues.
Geez guys, sorry for the really long post today. I've tried to limit my number of three review posts but sometimes you have fourteen books and you can't help yourself in four days. Also, I was really impressed by these three books and really surprised at how impressed I was. Days like these make me love comics anew. Wonderful. Maybe not the best books this week (building suspense for THIS WEEK'S PICKS tomorrow) but good enough to make me excited.
Fialkov (w) and Di Giandomenico and Ruggiero (a) and Charalampidis (c)
There is a TON happening here. Really impressive the level of climax we had here. Guys, I know this is the Ultimate universe and people die here but Tony Stark is kind of dead and Quicksilver just died. I recounted this book to my girlfriend and the fact that Quicksilver died came up and was, honestly, kind of off-handed because Tony obviously is a bigger death and she had to stop me to be like, "wait, what? Don't they stay dead over there?" I know! That's not to say it's poorly done or something, the fact that it's more off-handedly mentioned. In fact, it's very well done. It's incredibly sweet (ignoring the weird Pietro-Wanda relationship in the Ultimate universe) and it justifies a lot of his actions. He's suddenly more understandable and more helpless than conniving and kind of pure evil, as he's been shown lately. But it still fits nicely and his sentiments are very sweet and very touching. The pace of the book is great as Tony consciousness runs circles around Reed, thwarting and mocking him at every turn. Everything is fast and smart and the Sue Storm end reveal (with present Sue Storm in the room working against future Sue) is pleasantly surprising and well hidden. Solid work here. I've had some skepticisms about this Ultimates Disassembled business but this issue really straightened some worries out, giving us plenty to look forward to next time. High fives all around.
Thunderbolts 14
Soule (w) and Palo and Pallot (a) and Guru eFX (c)
Great, right? Anyway, Punisher wants help taking out a dangerous crime family who has the support of every other crime family in New York. A success would mean crippling New York crime, potentially even by taking out tons of players, but the risk comes with the fact that every crime family in New York is willing to drop everything to defend the Paguro family. Risky business. There's another fun moment where Punisher starts to make a plan which dances around utilizing the whole team, knowing that attracting the attention of the Avengers isn't a great idea but, as soon as he learns the Avengers are off-world, he changes the plan to a full on assault.
Look, this is a really long post because I'm very happy with this change in tone and pace and even art. I liked Phil Noto's stuff but it was kind of as tone ambiguous as Way's writing. The book had funny moments but wasn't funny and it had serious moments but didn't feel that serious. This book has its own serious moments but the humor really shines. The art also gives it a lighter feel, with Jeffte Palo's more cartoony artwork giving us a really great match for the writing. Lots of great moments, genuinely fun beats and an exciting plot. I can't ask for more out of a team that I originally anticipated being incredibly fun and exciting. Full-on applause for this one.
Nova 7
Z. Wells (w) and Medina and Vlasco (a) and Curiel (c)
Nova has been given permission to keep Nova-ing but isn't yet ready to join the Avengers. Point of fact, he's not really ready to keep Nova-ing. He ignores the damage he did to the skate park in his hometown during his first arc and speeds to New York, only to be immediately accosted by angry NYPD and to crash into a more angry and more dangerous Spider-Man. Spidey curses him out for his inexperience and naivety before sending him on his way with the useful suggestions of getting a police scanner to identify real emergencies and maybe going to a city without superheroes to practice (which would be any other city on Earth, practically). Sam rushes off to do these things, using his helmet to identify some real world problems and zooming around after a failed attempt in Los Angeles (with a not-so-thinly-veiled and a bit eye-roll-worthy nod to Joss Whedon and a quick cameo by former New Warriors Justice and Speedball). He quickly learns that rushing into situations isn't the best approach (there are some neat bits where he admits to construction workers back at his skate park where he's reluctantly decided to help that firemen are better at fires than he is and that angry crowds aren't easy to talk to) and slows things down, returning to Carefree, Arizona to start small. However, Thanos is on the horizon, so don't expect him to stay small for too long.I really enjoyed this issue. Nova sounds like the fifteen year-old he's supposed to sound like and the book wants to have a more fun feel to it, something that books that try to hard fail miserably at. Instead, it works very well here and the laughs are mostly genuine (the Joss Whedon does indeed get an eye-roll). This one's applause comes with rather a wary eye, though. I wasn't a huge fan of the Nova reboot here. First and foremost, he spins right out of the newish Ultimate Spider-Man TV show which is garbage. Still, comics don't necessarily follow TV or movies word for word so he was still jumping into an established universe. I liked the idea behind the Black Nova corps but I didn't love the story or the character particularly under Jeph Loeb. It felt strained and very cliché. Zeb Wells took over recently and got me a little more onboard, giving Nova a more genuine sounding voice and putting the character back on new ground on Earth. I've liked the work he's done and this issue is certainly no exception; in fact, I'd say it's the strongest of the series so far. But issue 10 will see another writer change on the book, replacing Wells with Gerry Duggan. Remember above, in my Thunderbolts post, when I mentioned not liking the new Deadpool book? Or every Deadpool review where I've said that? Duggan is one of the men behind that. Don't get me wrong, that certainly doesn't mean Nova is bound to cross borders I don't care for. Deadpool's a different character and Duggan's a pro, who is also, it should be mentioned, writing Deadpool alongside a stand-up comedian in Brian Posehn. Still, I'm wary of the new direction that could be coming, especially after I liked this issue so much. Hoping that Wells' stay, if nothing else, is memorable. Truly hoping for better beyond that, but I'd except a solid five issues.
Geez guys, sorry for the really long post today. I've tried to limit my number of three review posts but sometimes you have fourteen books and you can't help yourself in four days. Also, I was really impressed by these three books and really surprised at how impressed I was. Days like these make me love comics anew. Wonderful. Maybe not the best books this week (building suspense for THIS WEEK'S PICKS tomorrow) but good enough to make me excited.
Friday, August 9, 2013
All-New X-Men 15, Cable and X-Force 12, X-Factor 260
All-New X-Men 15
Bendis (w) and Lafuente (a) and Campbell (c)
The original X-Men are still in the present. That about sums up the issue and the series at large, but let's keep going because we are gluttons for punishment. Bobby admits to Scott that he's freaked out whenever he sees Kitty and his older self embrace because he doesn't really like Kitty and he doesn't understand this crazy future. He and Scott decide to leave the mansion for a while and go hit on girls. Meanwhile, Jean is working with the grown Beast to focus her telekinetic powers, which leads to her reading his mind and finding out that he was once in love with her in what must be the creepiest thoughts Beast has ever had (he's can't stop thinking about how beautiful she is, despite the age difference now, and how much he regrets not telling her before). Then she approaches young Hank and makes out with him for a while.
I've asked it before and I'll no doubt ask it again but for whom is this book written? I understand that it has fans and I understand that, at the root of every review I write, I can never be right because what people like is objective and no one has a correct opinion, as it were. But who benefits from this book? On top of the writing, which I happen to find annoying and grating because Bendis writes most characters exactly the same and as if they're all teenagers so it's particularly grating when they actually are teenagers and he has to differentiate, to whom is this story compelling? Who is out there enjoying the new love triangles that change the face of the Marvel Universe for no particular reason and which puts Jean in such an ungodly position of choosing between a couple of her teammates? Is she going to track down Angel and make out with him later too because he wanted to date her originally as well? Being a physically strong character doesn't make you a strong character and somehow this book feels like it's weakening Jean Grey as a character, who was already quite weak at her inception. In addition, I can't help but again say that the original X-Men have spent 15 issues in the future and who is enjoying this book? Then again, I bought a shirt that was three sizes too big for me the last time I went shopping so what do I know?
Cable and X-Force 12
Hopeless and Bunn (w) and Larroca (a) and D'Armata (c)
So I didn't get exactly what I was hoping for out of this issue as we don't get the story that focuses on Dr. Nemesis just yet but I'm holding out hope for next time. Instead, we get Domino helping Colossus break into a supervillain bank vault that contains a magical artifact that will destroy the Earth if not dealt with today (cutting it a little close, guys). The break-in and the inevitable fight against all of the enemies is mere backdrop to the lover's quarrel they're having about whether or not they should have a relationship that goes on further than where it's gone already. Meanwhile, Hope is in the future to find out who is behind Cable's visions and why.
Maybe I'm too much of a cynic here or something but I don't really care about the relationships developing in this book or in All-New X-Men, which made two of the reviews today a little hard to get through (evidenced by the fact that I'm going to just keep complaining about this shirt I bought). I don't even necessarily think the problem in this book is a lack of caring about Domino and/or Colossus. I like both of them just fine (Colossus more so, probably, but Domino's been great under Hopeless' watch) but I think we've seen enough awkward start-stop relationships built over time and this one seems less intriguing than even most of those. One of my favorite things about Winter Soldier's introduction to the Marvel Universe was the implied relationship between him and Black Widow prior to their time as heroes, which is then instantly and without fanfare picked back up when they come together again. I read comics for the characters and the world they've built but that tends to make it a little harder to care about them going through relationship problems that have been forced on them. Maybe that's just me. I did, after all, buy this dumb shirt (yes, I'm wearing it now, for the first time, which is why I'm particularly annoyed with it today).
X-Factor 260
David (w) and Edwards and Leisten (a) and Milla (c)
The end of the world came and went, X-Factor is somewhere in the wind, separated and lost, and Polaris is getting drunk. Like, crazy amounts of drunk. And she's sick of the world right now so she's going a little more villain than she normally would, which means that when the bartender refuses to keep serving her, she starts wreaking a little havoc. Eventually the police come, who Polaris instantly disperses, followed by a SWAT team. Before the SWAT team has a chance to try to take out Polaris, Quicksilver stops by on his way to Avengers Mansion (not sure why he's living there at this point but whatever, let's keep going). Quicksilver, of course, is Lorna's half-brother and the two quickly come at odds with one another. Quicksilver attempts to talk Lorna down and Lorna very much does not want to be talked down, leading to quite a fight between the two
As X-Factor winds down to its final issue (only two more left! I don't care for that!), we've seen where various members of the team have ended up post-Hell on Earth. Lorna seems to be the only one back in New York (that we know of so far) and she is not faring well. It's a nice portrayal of a breakdown for a superhero, especially since Lorna has been moving this way for a while. We can only hope she doesn't turn supervillain, honestly, given everything that's happened with her lately. Now with her team lost to her, she's fallen rather hard. The conversation between Lorna and Pietro is a decent one with Peter David no stranger to writing the two of them. Of course, Lorna being drunk means that conversation goes over the top at times and it gets a little annoying after some time but overall it's a seemingly accurate example of someone falling so quickly on to hard times and overreacting. There is a moment at the end where, sober, she remembers what happened and regrets her attack on Quicksilver, which is at least reassuring. Also at the end was a hint of a new X-Factor team/series in the works, which is the first I've officially heard of that, assuming it will bear a new series.
Bendis (w) and Lafuente (a) and Campbell (c)
I've asked it before and I'll no doubt ask it again but for whom is this book written? I understand that it has fans and I understand that, at the root of every review I write, I can never be right because what people like is objective and no one has a correct opinion, as it were. But who benefits from this book? On top of the writing, which I happen to find annoying and grating because Bendis writes most characters exactly the same and as if they're all teenagers so it's particularly grating when they actually are teenagers and he has to differentiate, to whom is this story compelling? Who is out there enjoying the new love triangles that change the face of the Marvel Universe for no particular reason and which puts Jean in such an ungodly position of choosing between a couple of her teammates? Is she going to track down Angel and make out with him later too because he wanted to date her originally as well? Being a physically strong character doesn't make you a strong character and somehow this book feels like it's weakening Jean Grey as a character, who was already quite weak at her inception. In addition, I can't help but again say that the original X-Men have spent 15 issues in the future and who is enjoying this book? Then again, I bought a shirt that was three sizes too big for me the last time I went shopping so what do I know?
Cable and X-Force 12
Hopeless and Bunn (w) and Larroca (a) and D'Armata (c)
Maybe I'm too much of a cynic here or something but I don't really care about the relationships developing in this book or in All-New X-Men, which made two of the reviews today a little hard to get through (evidenced by the fact that I'm going to just keep complaining about this shirt I bought). I don't even necessarily think the problem in this book is a lack of caring about Domino and/or Colossus. I like both of them just fine (Colossus more so, probably, but Domino's been great under Hopeless' watch) but I think we've seen enough awkward start-stop relationships built over time and this one seems less intriguing than even most of those. One of my favorite things about Winter Soldier's introduction to the Marvel Universe was the implied relationship between him and Black Widow prior to their time as heroes, which is then instantly and without fanfare picked back up when they come together again. I read comics for the characters and the world they've built but that tends to make it a little harder to care about them going through relationship problems that have been forced on them. Maybe that's just me. I did, after all, buy this dumb shirt (yes, I'm wearing it now, for the first time, which is why I'm particularly annoyed with it today).
X-Factor 260
David (w) and Edwards and Leisten (a) and Milla (c)
The end of the world came and went, X-Factor is somewhere in the wind, separated and lost, and Polaris is getting drunk. Like, crazy amounts of drunk. And she's sick of the world right now so she's going a little more villain than she normally would, which means that when the bartender refuses to keep serving her, she starts wreaking a little havoc. Eventually the police come, who Polaris instantly disperses, followed by a SWAT team. Before the SWAT team has a chance to try to take out Polaris, Quicksilver stops by on his way to Avengers Mansion (not sure why he's living there at this point but whatever, let's keep going). Quicksilver, of course, is Lorna's half-brother and the two quickly come at odds with one another. Quicksilver attempts to talk Lorna down and Lorna very much does not want to be talked down, leading to quite a fight between the twoAs X-Factor winds down to its final issue (only two more left! I don't care for that!), we've seen where various members of the team have ended up post-Hell on Earth. Lorna seems to be the only one back in New York (that we know of so far) and she is not faring well. It's a nice portrayal of a breakdown for a superhero, especially since Lorna has been moving this way for a while. We can only hope she doesn't turn supervillain, honestly, given everything that's happened with her lately. Now with her team lost to her, she's fallen rather hard. The conversation between Lorna and Pietro is a decent one with Peter David no stranger to writing the two of them. Of course, Lorna being drunk means that conversation goes over the top at times and it gets a little annoying after some time but overall it's a seemingly accurate example of someone falling so quickly on to hard times and overreacting. There is a moment at the end where, sober, she remembers what happened and regrets her attack on Quicksilver, which is at least reassuring. Also at the end was a hint of a new X-Factor team/series in the works, which is the first I've officially heard of that, assuming it will bear a new series.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Uncanny X-Men 6, X-Men Legacy 11, Ultimate Wolverine 4
Uncanny X-Men 6
Bendis (w) and Irving (a and c)
Scott's team of X-Men are in Limbo right now (capital "L" means that they're in the place, not the state of being. Unless the place is a state of being. Look, just...it's a place in the Marvel Universe and we're all going to have to get over that) and Dormammu is enjoying trying to torture Illyana and claiming sole ownership of Limbo. The team, almost entirely consisting at this point of new mutants with untested powers and of teachers with broken powers, is nervous to engage Dormammu and his minions but are also unable to escape. The Cuckoos enter everyone's minds to give them courage to fight, which they proceed to do. Meanwhile, Maria Hill is trying to figure out who masterminded the attack on Cyclops in San Diego and what Cyclops' mutant revolution is planning on doing, exactly. To do this, she has enlisted another mutant to head up mutant affairs at SHIELD (I don't know if that's a real department, it's just what I'm trying to say): Dazzler.
There are some decent ideas in this book. Obviously training new mutants to use their powers and teaching them about what it is to be a mutant are cornerstones of X-Men books and those cornerstones are made more complicated by the fact that this is the first wave of new mutants since decimation. On top of that, learning that mutant powers can "break," as opposed to being simply magicked away or "cured," is an interesting thought if it's approached the right way. Speaking of approaching things the right way, there is really a feeling that Bendis can't get out of his own way on this. I've already spoken at great length in this blog and to anyone who will listen about how I don't like Bendis' writing style of late, which relies very heavily on snappy back-and-forth (he had a Tumblr post this week about how The Newsroom is not The West Wing in the same way that Bunheads isn't Gilmore Girls; both West Wing and Gilmore Girls are clearly pretty high up in his pantheon of shows and it DEFINITELY reflects in his writing style but, like I've said, that can work in TV and movies but works best if used very infrequently in comics). Putting aside the fact that I personally think it's obnoxious and gets pretty boring to read when done too often, I do think it slows up the actual good ideas he might have about the characters or about the world. It's a pity because I think there is still a Bendis out there I could not spend my time criticizing but, unfortunately for me, it's not present right now.
X-Men Legacy 11
Spurrier (w) and Davidson, Huat, and Yeung (a) and Rosenberg (c)
This book continues to be a joy to read. The secrets of the "red rage" and the Xavier (or at least one of them) in David's head are revealed as he continues through his tour of the I.B.S.S. facility to see if the "cure" pill is the real deal or some scam meant to kill mutants or steal their powers to be used by the stealer. As the issue pushes forward, David finds out a number of things about the facility, including the fact that the pill leaves mutants in a somewhat vegetative state, able to still feel happiness but not much else and never to really develop a personality again. Despite that, he still demands the pill, knowing that putting him in a vegetative state is better than him eventually losing control of his powers and destroying the world. As he reaches the last room, full of people who were the victims of mutant violence (all these victims have been unintentionally hurt as bystanders), he is surprised to find that they're not actually real. Well, they were. They are all dead, reanimated by an Xavier linked to David's brain. They're guarding any secrets perfectly from David because they're almost entirely shells. The red rage attached to that Xavier appears and berates David for trying to give up his powers and making himself a failed legacy to his father (X-MAN LEGACY), all of which David falters under and apologizes for. However, as the red rage disappears, he pulls himself together and understands that his father is dead and whatever sick being is corrupting David's mind to show him this has no control over him. He still demands the pill. In the end, the mastermind reveals himself as none other than the Red Skull, pulling off the Marcus Glove mask and starts soliloquizing, expecting David to lash out at him or something along those lines. Instead, David tells him that he's not going to be any part of the plan, the pill really does seem to work and that's all that matters because he still wants the pill.
The end of this issue was pretty amazing. On top of the reveal of the Xavier and the red rage in David being controlled by the Red Skull and the Red Skull running this little facility, David makes a real character stand and manages to do something that I'm not sure I've ever seen done in comics: not fight. Sure, fight scenes are great and comics are great at them, but there is a real expectation, especially when the mask comes off, that David is going to attack Skull or flee or decide not to take the pill because Skull is evil so this procedure is clearly evil or so on. Instead, David stands up to him and very candidly tells him that he doesn't care that it's Red Skull running the operation, he doesn't care that the Skull has his father's brain, he doesn't care about anything that could spawn from that. All he cares about is that the pill works and he's going to use it. It's a really brilliant twist in that it's not a twist from anything David's said over the last two issues but it breaks from everything comics are known for doing. Meanwhile, Blindfold is rallying the troops at home (by troops, I mean three other mutants who want to beat up David but are also willing to try to save him) to rescue David from taking the pill. That's more like comics but it's set opposite David insistence on taking the pill in such a way that it will still create new drama and a new story to build on. Really expertly done, great series, another great issue.
Ultimate Wolverine 4
Bunn (w) and Messina and Erskine (a) and Tartaglia (c)
The Ultimate Wolverine limited series concludes as Quicksilver and Wolverine brawl over what to be done with the Mothervine sample running through Jimmy's veins. Quicksilver wants to weaponize it to bring the mutant race back to its power and Jimmy refuses to let innocent people be hurt by whatever it is Quicksilver wants to do. Quicksilver, though, has the upper hand in this fight because he just needs blood and Jimmy doesn't want to kill him. However, Jimmy gets in enough hits to stall Pietro and is eventually saved by the reappearance of his birthmother, who knocks them both down. Jimmy, she reveals, will heal so she's not too worried, but she's willing to let Pietro suffer a bit. For Jimmy, that healing is going back to Utopia and forgetting about Mothervine for a bit while also embracing his heritage as Wolverine. For Pietro, suffering means whatever's about to happen next in Ultimates Disassembled, the Ultimates storyline set to start in Ultimates 25. Ultimates.
It's a neat and tidy story with a little bit of character building for both the Wolverines of this universe, giving us the father aspect of Logan that knew the best way to protect and raise Jimmy to live and be a good man was to give him to his old war buddy James Hudson and giving us a good amount of information on Jimmy, who has starred in plenty of Ultimate X-Men books but hasn't had a ton of time to really be explored in that series. The Ultimate Quicksilver is also a somewhat fascinating person; he's not so removed from his 616 parallel that his whole personality is different, but he has more of the villainous streak that makes Pietro such an interesting character across both universes. Obviously he's been a hero in each place, but he has done his fair sure of treacherous acts and is often viewed with suspicion or contempt from his peers. Adding to that feeling in the Ultimate Universe isn't a bad way to push forward. It'll be nice to see him re-emerge in the Ultimates in a few issues.
Bendis (w) and Irving (a and c)
There are some decent ideas in this book. Obviously training new mutants to use their powers and teaching them about what it is to be a mutant are cornerstones of X-Men books and those cornerstones are made more complicated by the fact that this is the first wave of new mutants since decimation. On top of that, learning that mutant powers can "break," as opposed to being simply magicked away or "cured," is an interesting thought if it's approached the right way. Speaking of approaching things the right way, there is really a feeling that Bendis can't get out of his own way on this. I've already spoken at great length in this blog and to anyone who will listen about how I don't like Bendis' writing style of late, which relies very heavily on snappy back-and-forth (he had a Tumblr post this week about how The Newsroom is not The West Wing in the same way that Bunheads isn't Gilmore Girls; both West Wing and Gilmore Girls are clearly pretty high up in his pantheon of shows and it DEFINITELY reflects in his writing style but, like I've said, that can work in TV and movies but works best if used very infrequently in comics). Putting aside the fact that I personally think it's obnoxious and gets pretty boring to read when done too often, I do think it slows up the actual good ideas he might have about the characters or about the world. It's a pity because I think there is still a Bendis out there I could not spend my time criticizing but, unfortunately for me, it's not present right now.
X-Men Legacy 11
Spurrier (w) and Davidson, Huat, and Yeung (a) and Rosenberg (c)
The end of this issue was pretty amazing. On top of the reveal of the Xavier and the red rage in David being controlled by the Red Skull and the Red Skull running this little facility, David makes a real character stand and manages to do something that I'm not sure I've ever seen done in comics: not fight. Sure, fight scenes are great and comics are great at them, but there is a real expectation, especially when the mask comes off, that David is going to attack Skull or flee or decide not to take the pill because Skull is evil so this procedure is clearly evil or so on. Instead, David stands up to him and very candidly tells him that he doesn't care that it's Red Skull running the operation, he doesn't care that the Skull has his father's brain, he doesn't care about anything that could spawn from that. All he cares about is that the pill works and he's going to use it. It's a really brilliant twist in that it's not a twist from anything David's said over the last two issues but it breaks from everything comics are known for doing. Meanwhile, Blindfold is rallying the troops at home (by troops, I mean three other mutants who want to beat up David but are also willing to try to save him) to rescue David from taking the pill. That's more like comics but it's set opposite David insistence on taking the pill in such a way that it will still create new drama and a new story to build on. Really expertly done, great series, another great issue.
Ultimate Wolverine 4
Bunn (w) and Messina and Erskine (a) and Tartaglia (c)
It's a neat and tidy story with a little bit of character building for both the Wolverines of this universe, giving us the father aspect of Logan that knew the best way to protect and raise Jimmy to live and be a good man was to give him to his old war buddy James Hudson and giving us a good amount of information on Jimmy, who has starred in plenty of Ultimate X-Men books but hasn't had a ton of time to really be explored in that series. The Ultimate Quicksilver is also a somewhat fascinating person; he's not so removed from his 616 parallel that his whole personality is different, but he has more of the villainous streak that makes Pietro such an interesting character across both universes. Obviously he's been a hero in each place, but he has done his fair sure of treacherous acts and is often viewed with suspicion or contempt from his peers. Adding to that feeling in the Ultimate Universe isn't a bad way to push forward. It'll be nice to see him re-emerge in the Ultimates in a few issues.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Savage Wolverine 4, Ultimate Wolverine 3, Wolverine MAX 6
Savage Wolverine 4
Cho (w and a) and Keith (c)
Amadeus Cho (WAIT A MINUTE, I just connected that writer/artist of the book Frank CHO has brought Amadeus CHO off the bench and back into the Marvel Universe. I'm not sure what to make of that but there must be SOMETHING. Or maybe there isn't, that's a totally viable answer too) directs the natives of the Savage Land to bring Shanna to where ever it is they can revive her. That place seems to be a little bath in front of a creature that looks suspiciously like Man-Thing. Cho decides it can't be Man-Thing because he's off somewhere else with the former Thunderbolts right now. However, his onboard computer Calvin insists it has the same genetic makeup as Man-Thing, meaning that there's more than one Man-Thing out there. Anyway, Shanna is laid down in the little bath and Man-Thing covers her up in neon-green liquid. Moments after she's fully submerged, she springs out from it, her wound healed. She demands answers and is told that she is forever bonded to the Savage Land now. Her power is greater than it was and she'll live as long as the Savage Land does. Bad news on that front, though, the bomb that she and Wolverine were planning to bring to destroy the dampening field wouldn't be enough and would likely only serve to wake up the monster that the savages have kept trapped there. She runs full tilt to the machine (with Amadeus clocking her at 52 miles per hour, showing off her new enhanced powers) and launches a spear through Wolverine to stop him. It works, but the island brings someone new to them at the same moment: Hulk.
As the first arc pushes to its conclusion, we now have a scrappy brawler in Wolverine, a world-class specimen in Shanna, a genius with a powerful suit in Amadeus Cho and a heavy in Hulk. We pretty much have our own full-fledged superhero team on the island at this point. Whether Hulk will be the amenable Hulk who's eager to help (unlikely and possibly non-existent) or the angry and defensive Hulk (far more prevalent) remains to be seen. It also is worth questioning whether he's strong enough to serve as the three high-yield hydrogen bombs Cho determined they need to shut down the dampening field or just strong enough to wake up the monster. I guess we'll find out next issue as Frank Cho's first Savage Wolverine arc comes to an end.
Ultimate Wolverine 3
Bunn (w) and Messina and Carlucci w/ Erskine (a) and Tartaglia (c)
Project: Mothervine is revealed as a secret government project to inject women with chemical that would ensure their children would be mutants and, on top of that, mutants that could be weaponized with a single phrase. On top of the ethical problems that come right off the bat with that one, there are concerns about mutants as property and as created by the government as weapons and as being peaceful humans, which is what Jimmy is fighting for on Utopia. Kind of in the same way that Cable and X-Force had to stop a virus from killing humans and leaving mutants unharmed and therefore blamed in their first arc, Mothervine would make non-weaponized mutants culpable for the actions of the ones who couldn't help themselves. Quicksilver knows about the project and intends to use it to strike back at humanity, citing the Sentinels as reason enough to attack humans. He insists that Wolverine's blood is the key, though hasn't revealed how yet. He does demonstrate the power of Mothervine, showing Jimmy a young woman who, when activated, kills everyone surrounding her with a flesh-eating virus, unaware of what she's doing. Jimmy demands that he stop it and Quicksilver kills her. Jimmy attacks Quicksilver but finds himself outmatched as Quicksilver easily puts him down and contains him, along with Black Box. When Jimmy wakes up, Black Box reveals that he can open the lock to their prison and that the cameras are running on a loop. They decide to go after Quicksilver when he's hopefully not expecting it.
The mini-series is winding down and it shows with this issue. The pacing of this book has been solid, lining everything up well and explaining things when they need to be explained. The four issues give enough time to lay out the plot, explain the plot, give us characters, give us tension and action, and end the story. It's done well here and it gives us a good sense of most characters involved. If I'd say it's lacking anything, it might be a greater understanding of Jimmy Hudson. He's been mostly quiet and, aside from his desire to find out about his past and a quick stop in with his parents, we haven't seen too much about him. Of course, there has to be some amount of sacrifice when you only have four issues and, frankly, Jimmy gets the most screen time outside of this book so it makes sense that revelations about his personality might be few and far between. Quicksilver continues to be an interesting character in the Ultimate Universe, both brutal and horribly efficient while remaining dedicated to his cause. He also shows some regret and a desire for redemption for his past, though maybe his methods aren't the best. I'll be interested to see how this series wraps up. It's been impressive so far.
Wolverine MAX 6
Starr (w) and Ruiz, Jacinto, and Mogorron (a) and Brown (c)
I couldn't help but think back, when I read this issue, to the answer Matt Fraction gave this weekend on his blog about why he was promising not to kill Lucky the pizza dog off in Hawkeye. The asker had wondered if it had anything to do with a threatening email in issue three about killing the dog. Fraction, seemingly genuinely confused about the question, responded that it had nothing to do with that but instead had "everything to do with not wanting to be the hugest hack in the universe." Well good news because from panel two of Wolverine MAX 6, we could pretty much deduce the kind of person who would kill a dog to illustrate a villain. Yes, Wolverine gets a pet dog in this issue (names it Dog and everything) and instantly sets about telling the audience how much he loves her. As someone who loves dogs, the only solace I could take in its death was knowing from the very first word of the comic that it was going to die. Made it easier not to get attached throughout the book. Fraction's not wrong, it's a hack move to create a dog, known for its loyalty and near unwavering love and also for being a dog and not a superhero, and kill it off simply to show that the bad guys are bad. We know they're bad because they're the type of people who would kill a dog. So who are these bad guys? They're tied to a woman that Wolverine meets at the beach and promptly offers to drive around to her various "modeling" jobs. These seem a bit less than wholesome and Wolverine crashes one and attacks a guy who is attempting to rape the woman (who says her name is Candy). Wolverine demands Candy leave with him and they get away, with Candy warning Wolverine that he's angered the wrong people. He finds this out after he drops her off (and doesn't have sex with her, nicely done Wolverine, thanks for avoiding that at least) and returns to his car to find his beloved dog Dog dead. BAD GUYS.
I don't think it's wrong to give Wolverine a dog. After I had seen the dog and decided it was going to die, I thought about it a little more and overall the dog fits with Wolverine. He's dog-like himself, Marvel has never been particularly subtle about that. So I'd be okay with Wolverine having a dog. Like Fraction, though, I'm less okay with giving Wolverine a dog and INSTANTLY killing it to show the bad guys. I'm not sure I would feel better or worse about giving Wolverine a dog and, somewhere down the road a ways, killing it to show off some bad guys as particularly bad. I think it's a step better than what happened here, creating a dog solely so you can kill him, but overall it still has the same taste about it. So I guess my review for this comic boils down to "keep not killing Pizza Dog over in Hawkeye, Fraction. Bang-up job."
Cho (w and a) and Keith (c)
As the first arc pushes to its conclusion, we now have a scrappy brawler in Wolverine, a world-class specimen in Shanna, a genius with a powerful suit in Amadeus Cho and a heavy in Hulk. We pretty much have our own full-fledged superhero team on the island at this point. Whether Hulk will be the amenable Hulk who's eager to help (unlikely and possibly non-existent) or the angry and defensive Hulk (far more prevalent) remains to be seen. It also is worth questioning whether he's strong enough to serve as the three high-yield hydrogen bombs Cho determined they need to shut down the dampening field or just strong enough to wake up the monster. I guess we'll find out next issue as Frank Cho's first Savage Wolverine arc comes to an end.
Ultimate Wolverine 3
Bunn (w) and Messina and Carlucci w/ Erskine (a) and Tartaglia (c)
Project: Mothervine is revealed as a secret government project to inject women with chemical that would ensure their children would be mutants and, on top of that, mutants that could be weaponized with a single phrase. On top of the ethical problems that come right off the bat with that one, there are concerns about mutants as property and as created by the government as weapons and as being peaceful humans, which is what Jimmy is fighting for on Utopia. Kind of in the same way that Cable and X-Force had to stop a virus from killing humans and leaving mutants unharmed and therefore blamed in their first arc, Mothervine would make non-weaponized mutants culpable for the actions of the ones who couldn't help themselves. Quicksilver knows about the project and intends to use it to strike back at humanity, citing the Sentinels as reason enough to attack humans. He insists that Wolverine's blood is the key, though hasn't revealed how yet. He does demonstrate the power of Mothervine, showing Jimmy a young woman who, when activated, kills everyone surrounding her with a flesh-eating virus, unaware of what she's doing. Jimmy demands that he stop it and Quicksilver kills her. Jimmy attacks Quicksilver but finds himself outmatched as Quicksilver easily puts him down and contains him, along with Black Box. When Jimmy wakes up, Black Box reveals that he can open the lock to their prison and that the cameras are running on a loop. They decide to go after Quicksilver when he's hopefully not expecting it.The mini-series is winding down and it shows with this issue. The pacing of this book has been solid, lining everything up well and explaining things when they need to be explained. The four issues give enough time to lay out the plot, explain the plot, give us characters, give us tension and action, and end the story. It's done well here and it gives us a good sense of most characters involved. If I'd say it's lacking anything, it might be a greater understanding of Jimmy Hudson. He's been mostly quiet and, aside from his desire to find out about his past and a quick stop in with his parents, we haven't seen too much about him. Of course, there has to be some amount of sacrifice when you only have four issues and, frankly, Jimmy gets the most screen time outside of this book so it makes sense that revelations about his personality might be few and far between. Quicksilver continues to be an interesting character in the Ultimate Universe, both brutal and horribly efficient while remaining dedicated to his cause. He also shows some regret and a desire for redemption for his past, though maybe his methods aren't the best. I'll be interested to see how this series wraps up. It's been impressive so far.
Wolverine MAX 6
Starr (w) and Ruiz, Jacinto, and Mogorron (a) and Brown (c)
I don't think it's wrong to give Wolverine a dog. After I had seen the dog and decided it was going to die, I thought about it a little more and overall the dog fits with Wolverine. He's dog-like himself, Marvel has never been particularly subtle about that. So I'd be okay with Wolverine having a dog. Like Fraction, though, I'm less okay with giving Wolverine a dog and INSTANTLY killing it to show the bad guys. I'm not sure I would feel better or worse about giving Wolverine a dog and, somewhere down the road a ways, killing it to show off some bad guys as particularly bad. I think it's a step better than what happened here, creating a dog solely so you can kill him, but overall it still has the same taste about it. So I guess my review for this comic boils down to "keep not killing Pizza Dog over in Hawkeye, Fraction. Bang-up job."
Friday, March 29, 2013
Wolverine and the X-Men 27, Ultimate Wolverine 2
Wolverine and the X-Men 27
Aaron (w) and Perez (a) and L. Martin and Milla (c)
After being defeated and tied up by his brother Dog in the last issue, Wolverine spends most of this issue trying to free himself (pretty unsuccessfully) from his constraints. Meanwhile, Dog has unleashed cavemen, cowboys, and robots on the at-risk Jean Grey School students in the Savage Land. The kids all have different causes to think back on things Wolverine told them on the plane ride over; for Evan (Genesis), it's the strength in knowing that you can overcome your upbringing our your destiny. For Sprite, the newly named rocky-skinned, flying student, it's that you don't have to take everything so seriously to be serious. For Shark-Girl, it's that having people to count on doesn't weaken you, it strengthens you. The lessons seem a little trite but it's not so much the lesson that's important, it's the idea of Wolverine giving it. Coming into this arc, he wasn't exactly prime teacher material. He already knew that and all the kids (save maybe Evan) brought on the trip were beginning to believe it too. Now, as they all are able to look back on the advice he gave as they attempt to fight their way through these obstacles, it'll give them a reason to think again. I would expect next issue to see the advice he dispensed to Glob Herman and Eye-Boy, as I think we've already seen his talks with everyone else.
It's a nice bit of character development for everyone. It's particularly necessary to see development from the students who are varied and largely newer student, but it's nice to see the development in Wolverine (however small it may be, given that we already know a fair amount about Wolverine) in the way he handles the students. That's the key to this arc, as demonstrated by Dog's insistence on being the better man and teacher than Wolverine, and the way it's wrapped up will show whether or not the arc worked. The issue ends with the cavemen, cowboys, and robots deciding to team up against the kids and Dog and Quentin throwing Dog under the bus as he figures out Dog's intent and the fact that it was Dog who displaced everyone from time to bring them here. Quentin starts belittling Dog's plan and Dog, showing his own feral side, snaps and punches Quentin out as the issue concludes. Leaves us in a possibly interesting place going into the next book.
Ultimate Wolverine 2
Bunn (w) and Messina and Erskine (a) and Tartaglia (c)
Jimmy and Black Box make their way to Florida (where one of the research facilities indicated by Wolverine's message lies) and Jimmy makes a quick stop to check in on his parents, the Hudsons. It's a nice little moment as we see the parents actually actively missing Jimmy. He doesn't interact with them or make his presence known and they move on to the facility, which is being watched by Wild Child and a group of security waiting to see if anyone makes a move on the place. Black Box and Jimmy break in and Black Box accesses enough files to understand what Mothervine is. It's essentially a program developed to try to weaponize mutation. This is a plot point that comes up pretty frequently with X-Men books (as it probably would in real life) and maybe even more so in the Ultimate Universe, where it's been discovered that the government created mutants in the first place. Wild Child and his cronies attack, knock out Jimmy, and begin to take Black Box for questioning. Suddenly, everyone in the group (save our heroes) are instantaneously skinned alive. Quicksilver shows up and introduces himself as Jimmy's brother. We get a quick flashback to Wolverine's days trying to take down Mothervine where he runs into (and subsequently makes out with) Magda, Pietro's mother.
I think there are some interesting ideas here and overall the book continues to be solid enough to carry a four book mini-series. Again, I get the distinct sense that it would be overstepping its bounds if it went longer than that so good call by Bunn and Marvel. I did have some trouble with the way both Magda and the sole female member of Wild Child's hit squad were portrayed; Magda appears in a very tight and pretty open outfit with massive breasts and the female security member is the only one on the team who has skin showing. Personal peeve of mine and, as I say in all my Savage Wolverine reviews, I'd prefer it if comics didn't make it so easy for people who find the medium juvenile to prove their points. Otherwise, pretty solid book with a good place to go for the second half of the series. I'll be interested to see what comes of the discovery of Mothervine's true intent and what difference any of it all makes in the long run.
Aaron (w) and Perez (a) and L. Martin and Milla (c)
It's a nice bit of character development for everyone. It's particularly necessary to see development from the students who are varied and largely newer student, but it's nice to see the development in Wolverine (however small it may be, given that we already know a fair amount about Wolverine) in the way he handles the students. That's the key to this arc, as demonstrated by Dog's insistence on being the better man and teacher than Wolverine, and the way it's wrapped up will show whether or not the arc worked. The issue ends with the cavemen, cowboys, and robots deciding to team up against the kids and Dog and Quentin throwing Dog under the bus as he figures out Dog's intent and the fact that it was Dog who displaced everyone from time to bring them here. Quentin starts belittling Dog's plan and Dog, showing his own feral side, snaps and punches Quentin out as the issue concludes. Leaves us in a possibly interesting place going into the next book.
Ultimate Wolverine 2
Bunn (w) and Messina and Erskine (a) and Tartaglia (c)
Jimmy and Black Box make their way to Florida (where one of the research facilities indicated by Wolverine's message lies) and Jimmy makes a quick stop to check in on his parents, the Hudsons. It's a nice little moment as we see the parents actually actively missing Jimmy. He doesn't interact with them or make his presence known and they move on to the facility, which is being watched by Wild Child and a group of security waiting to see if anyone makes a move on the place. Black Box and Jimmy break in and Black Box accesses enough files to understand what Mothervine is. It's essentially a program developed to try to weaponize mutation. This is a plot point that comes up pretty frequently with X-Men books (as it probably would in real life) and maybe even more so in the Ultimate Universe, where it's been discovered that the government created mutants in the first place. Wild Child and his cronies attack, knock out Jimmy, and begin to take Black Box for questioning. Suddenly, everyone in the group (save our heroes) are instantaneously skinned alive. Quicksilver shows up and introduces himself as Jimmy's brother. We get a quick flashback to Wolverine's days trying to take down Mothervine where he runs into (and subsequently makes out with) Magda, Pietro's mother.I think there are some interesting ideas here and overall the book continues to be solid enough to carry a four book mini-series. Again, I get the distinct sense that it would be overstepping its bounds if it went longer than that so good call by Bunn and Marvel. I did have some trouble with the way both Magda and the sole female member of Wild Child's hit squad were portrayed; Magda appears in a very tight and pretty open outfit with massive breasts and the female security member is the only one on the team who has skin showing. Personal peeve of mine and, as I say in all my Savage Wolverine reviews, I'd prefer it if comics didn't make it so easy for people who find the medium juvenile to prove their points. Otherwise, pretty solid book with a good place to go for the second half of the series. I'll be interested to see what comes of the discovery of Mothervine's true intent and what difference any of it all makes in the long run.
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