If Destroyed, Still True

After a couple of weeks away, there's something of a backlog building up. So let's start off by ploughing through the X-books and a bunch of debut issues.

Obligatory plug: don't forget to download this week's episode of House to Astonish, where Al and I talk about the big news at Marvel and DC, and review Beasts of Burden, Sweet Tooth and Vengeance of the Moon Knight. Download it here, or visit the podcast webpage, or subscribe via iTunes.

Beasts of Burden #1 - This is a four-issue miniseries - or, more accurately, an "at least four issues and then we'll see how it goes" series - for Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's stories about cats and dogs protecting their small town from mystic weirdness. Apparently they've been doing these in anthologies since 2003. It's a beautiful comic. Jill Thompson is a wonderful animal artist, and manages to get tons of expression into the cast with virtually no anthropomorphism going on. At first glance it might look a bit cutesy, but there's a dash of genuine nastiness in here which rears its head from time to time. Now, if it's done badly, that sort of thing can come across as a kids' story with some arbitrary adult content nailed on. But this book gets it right; it feels more like a fairy tale from the days before bowdlerisation. If I've got one criticism - and I do - it's that there's a lot of minor characters wandering around who seem fairly interchangeable. That aside, though, this is an excellent book.

Cable #18 - On this issue's thrilling cover: Cable holds a gun and clutches a child. Say what you will about Marvel, but god, they wouldn't know a decent cover these days if it kicked them in the face. Seriously, what is this meant to tell anyone, other than that it's another issue of Cable exactly like the last seventeen? Because there's already a perfectly good logo that says Cable. Use the rest of the page to say something else. Give people a reason to buy the comic. You know, like you used to do before Bill Jemas decided that every cover should be a generic pin-up shot. He's gone now.

Anyway. In the far future, Cable and Hope have fled into space, and Bishop has given chase. You know, Bishop really should have thought of this possibility when he started blowing up vast chunks of planet Earth just to box them in. And the plot problems don't end there, because even though Bishop is in possession of a nuclear device, and he's aboard the only ship in the universe where Hope might conceivably be, and the captain has even told him that Hope's on board, he's not prepared to detonate it until he has "visual confirmation." What? It's a fucking nuke! Just blow up the ship, you moron!

And that's the problem with this series. The characters are quite well written; Hope's starting to emerge as a decent character; in broad strokes, the story isn't bad; but the plot just falls apart on inspection. It's an infuriating book, because I can't help feeling it's only a couple of drafts away from being good - plugging the plot holes, giving Bishop some genuine reason for doubt. (Cable fires off an empty liferaft pod as a distraction, for example, so Bishop's not sure whether she's still aboard.) In the broader scheme, give Cable and Hope something to aim for so that it isn't just an endless parade of "Bishop chases them through a new environment, repeat until cancelled", and instead you have a macguffin providing the illusion of progress. (For example, what Cable and Hope really need is a replacement time machine - or the parts to repair Cable's.)

It exasperates me, this book. It would take so little to solve its problems... but it hasn't been done

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus - It may have taken until the last episode of the crossover, but at least the Dark Avengers finally have a role to play: they're needed to make up the numbers for Osborn's side in the big final battle. That's still a pretty minor role for a team who are supposed to be the co-stars in this story, though, and I can't help but feel that this story should have been simply an X-Men arc guest starring Osborn and his cronies. The upshot of this arc, if you don't know, is that we're moving on from the never-quite-worked San Francisco set-up already, and now the X-Men are living on an island off the coast. Apparently, for the purposes of this story, 1.2 miles off California is not American soil, which is news to me, since it's comfortably within US territorial waters.

The final issue is basically a big fight between everyone under the sun, with lip service paid to a couple of token subplots such as Dani Moonstar becoming a Valkyrie again. There's a rather good sequence with Emma Frost and the Sentry. But fundamentally, it's the same problem I've had with a lot of Matt Fraction's X-Men stories - the cast is too large, there are too many plots being juggled, there's not enough focus. And to be honest, the Utopia set-up doesn't really interest me. The X-Men in San Francisco could have worked (though it didn't). The X-Men on an island in the middle of nowhere is basically a return to the Mansion with more water and less context. I'm not sold.

Dark Wolverine #78 - This is the start of a second arc, as Daken causes PR problems for Norman Osborn, thanks to his overenthusiastic slicing up of baddies. I'm not sure I even buy that as a premise, to be honest. Yes, the Dark Avengers are meant to be bad guys posing as heroes. But they've never seemed all that bothered about using excessive force in public, and it seems to me that the none-too-subtle Bush-administration metaphor makes it something they wouldn't be ashamed about - if anything, they'd consider it a PR boon. "Yes, we torture and murder bad guys. We're keeping America safe. Got a problem with that, liberals?" Isn't that meant to be the story? Or shouldn't it be? For that matter, if Osborn doesn't want one of his heroes slicing up bad guys in public, why on earth did he recruit a Wolverine in the first place? Slicing people up is his only means of attack!

So... we've got a premise that I don't really buy into, and that's followed by a story Daken doesn't really appear in all that much. There's a convoluted conspiracy plot with Osborn, and some gratuitous lingerie scenes. What I liked about the previous three issues - Daken's playing both sides against the middle - isn't so apparent here, and instead it comes off as an exercise in killing time while the creators wait for Dark Reign to end. We all know Osborn's downfall can't come in this book, so where exactly can any of this be leading? On the face of it, nowhere, and that's a problem. If you want to read yet another Dark Reign conspiracy story, this is a decent one, but I think I'm bored of this set-up and I'm ready to move on, thanks.

Exiles #6 - Jeff Parker's relaunch meets with swift cancellation - though to be fair, if it wasn't for the renumbering, this would be something approaching issue #125. There wasn't a lasting increase in sales, so the decision to pull the plug is understandable; as I've said before, Exiles is a fairly narrow concept and probably due for a rest. Still, Parker had some interesting ideas; rehashing the original Exiles set-up with Morph playing the Timebroker, so that long-time readers knew from the outset that something wasn't quite right, was a clever twist on the formula. And Marvel have at least given him a double-sized issue to wrap things up. Inevitably, it still feels terribly rushed, but we do get a resolution to the Magneto storyline, and a head-spinning explanation of why the Exiles exist in the first place (which, basically, asserts that as different worlds get "fixed", the knock-on effects for the universe mean that the explanation itself is retroactively altered). With hindsight, it's a shame that they didn't give the series a proper rest and then relaunch it with Parker, since that might have worked. But it's probably time to put this concept to bed for the moment.

Magog #1 - From the pages of Justice Society of America, apparently. I've never been especially interested in this character, who always struck me as a slightly off-beam representative of "modern" superheroes when he debuted in Kingdom Come. But hey, it's Keith Giffen, so it's probably worth a look. And, well... it's not terrible or anything, but there's nothing much to grab me. Giffen writes Magog as one of those superheroes who spends his time grumbling about the fact that other heroes won't get involved with street crime or Sudanese child soldiers because they're too busy fighting aliens. So he's a sort of globe-trotting street-level superhero, who's very angry about stuff, and likes smashing up opposing henchmen. Nothing you haven't seen before. It's competent but not very memorable.

Models Inc #1 - At least it stands out on the shelf. The art itself is dreadful - it looks like somebody's put a photo through a blurry filter and drawn a black line around it, and frankly they'd have been better off just using a photo - but the cover layout is different from anything else, and that's something. (And if it's not a doctored photo... well, it looks like one, and isn't that the real issue?) As for the story... it's a revival of some of Marvel's 1950s model characters, written by Paul Tobin with art by Vicenc Villagrasa. And that begs the obvious question: why would you want to revive the 1950s model characters? Was the world really crying out for a twenty-first century take on Millie the Model? Even if it was, I doubt this will be the book to satisfy them, because it's excruciating. I have no idea who this could possibly be aimed at - a clumsy book about models having adventures on the fringes of the Marvel Universe. If it was vaguely witty and had properly defined characters, it might have a certain camp or cult appeal, but it doesn't really manage that either. Oh, and there's a back-up strip about some guy who's apparently on television abroad.

Nomad: Girl Without a World #1 - A four-issue miniseries for Rikki Barnes, the Heroes Reborn Bucky. Rikki's a tricky character - she's actually not bad in her own right, but she's tied to a notoriously awful series in Rob Liefeld's Captain America, and her back story, involving artificially created alternate worlds brought into our dimension, is practically impenetrable. Sean McKeever wisely cuts through all that, by stripping it back to a simple idea: Rikki is from a parallel Earth, she's stuck in "our" world which is familiar but different, and her story is about her trying to find a place. And in the first issue she tries to be Bucky again, only to be warned off by the Black Widow. Given that the series is called Nomad, I think it's pretty obvious where this is heading - but McKeever writes this sort of thing well, and he's keeping the series down to earth with a story about high school politics, of all things. This is a pretty good issue. (Oh, and although the cover is a straightforward pin-up, it's at least got some striking colouring.)

Strange Tales #1 - First of a three-issue anthology of indie cartoonists doing comedy strips with Marvel heroes. The main attraction here is the long-awaited appearance of Peter Bagge's The Incorrigible Hulk, which was completed years ago and shelved when Marvel had a panic about damaging the Hulk licence. It's being serialised over these three issues, and on the strength of the opening pages, it's hard to fathom what Marvel could have objected to. ("Second-hand smoke bad for Hulk! It violate Hulk's civil liberties!") All told, it's a pretty good package. Most of the strips are short enough not to outstay their welcome; Paul Pope's tongue-in-cheek semi-deadpan Inhumans story is quite charming, and Junko Mizuno's inexplicable "Spider-Man moves to a city of spider-people where he isn't very special" story is genuinely sweet. A lot of it's just silly, but that's no bad thing.

The Torch #1 - It's Marvel's 70th anniversary, so it must be time to revive the Golden Age Human Torch again! Actually, on the strength of this first issue, it seems to be more of a comic about the Torch's sidekick Toro - who was apparently restored to life somewhere or other, and if only they still did footnotes, I'd know. Avengers/Invaders? Just guessing. The angle is that Toro doesn't fit in anywhere, because everyone he knew has moved on. If you only read one comic this month about a Marvel superhero feeling that they don't fit in, make it Nomad #1. This is okay, but nothing much more than that, and feels like primarily an exercise in reviving a character for the sake of doing so.

Sweet Tooth #1 - See the podcast for more on this. Jeff Lemire's new Vertigo series is definitely more of an indie title in sensibility, and I suspect it's going to be a tough sell, but all credit to Vertigo for trying it. It's a post-apocalypse story about a kid who's grown up in the middle of the forest alone with his father, and now has to go out on his own. Apparently all the post-apocalypse kiddies have animal characteristics, and Gus has antlers and the expression of a startled deer. In plot terms, all very familiar, but the execution is impressive - even if the metaphor of innocence might as well have a flashing neon sign over it. It's a quiet, bleak and brittle piece, which manages to keep up that mood despite fairly racing through the opening plot. From the preview pages, I had this pegged as likely to be irritatingly quirky, but at full length it turns out to be much more enjoyable than I'd expected. Worth a look, particularly given that Vertigo is still selling its first issues for a dollar.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #3 - This is a Banshee solo story, and it actually finds a relatively underused part of his history to work with. It's his wife Maeve, whose main function has hitherto been to spawn Siryn and get blown up by the IRA in an angstifying flashback. So, nice idea... but we end up with a rather awkward story about voodoo mutants and a bitter father-in-law. It all feels a bit contrived, and with both Sean and Moira featured prominently, much will depend on yuir tolerance fir the ol' Oirish accent. Adequate for what it is.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1 - Only in comics would a B-movie title like Vengeance of the Moon Knight actually seem like a good idea. Maybe the next relaunch can be Abbot and Costello Meet the Moon Knight? Anyway, Gregg Hurwitz and Jerome Opena bring Marc Spector back to New York, and he's out to make a name for himself as a proper, saner hero once again. The main theme seems to be Moon Knight's attempt to re-establish himself as an A-lister, which isn't a million miles away from what they've been doing in Ms Marvel. And although this isn't an official Dark Reign tie-in, there's the obligatory "renegade hero operating outside Osborn's control" schtick. It's all quite well done; the story is well paced, enough is done to acknowledge the previous stories without compromising the fresh start, and Opena's art is beautiful. The drawback is that the themes all seem a bit familiar; by this point in the Dark Reign storyline, we've seen pretty much everything. The back-up is a reprint of Moon Knight #1, not a particularly great story in its own right, but interesting for a chance to see Bill Sienkiewicz in the days when he was still finding his style.

X-Factor #48 - Are we nearly there yet? This storyline feels like it's been going on forever. Civilisations will die, continents will rise and fall, man will colonise the stars, and this storyline will still not be over. Apparently the book is heading for a relaunch with issue #200 (which, if you add up the first and second volumes, isn't that far away - though it's also rather meaningless, since the first 74 issues of volume 1 featured a different team of the same name). So presumably this has to end sooner or later, and I wonder whether it's being dragged out to fit that schedule. Anyway, this issue, the various plots shuffle a little further forward, and that's about all you can say about it. The story is over-long, and that's the bottom line.

X-Men Forever #6-7 - One issue drawn by Paul Smith, one by Steve Scott. And they're nice-looking comics, actually, even if Smith seems a bit sketchy at times. Claremont's characteristic juddling of subplots fits nicely with the fortnightly format, which keeps up the momentum while allowing him to pursue his digressions. Issue #7 is certainly something of a digression, as much of the issue is given over to a flashback story with the Howling Commandos. But it bounces along as enthusiastically as ever, and it's a strangely likeable comic for all its rough edges. As promised before my break, I'll come back to look at this series in a bit more detail... honest.

X-Men Legacy Annual #1 - Actually the first part of a four-part storyline which presumably continues in X-Men Legacy itself, although nobody seems to have thought it necessary to specify that in the comic. It's an Emplate story, which takes as its starting point the reasonable observation that the old Generation X villain was supposed to survive by feeding off mutants, so he's had a tough time since M-Day. For whatever reason, he's finally thought of visiting the X-Men to go looking for Penance - who, you might remember, he could feed on indefinitely because of her diamond body. Well, Penance isn't there, so he tries somebody else instead - presumably you're supposed to either remember Bling! from the Peter Milligan run, or figure out for yourself what her powers must be in order for the plot to work. That piece of exposition aside, it's a solid story which seems to be having fun with Emplate's all-round weirdness - though I wonder whether Acuna's art is too realistic to quite pull him off. There's also a back-up strip, picking up on the "Gambit joins Apocalypse" subplot which we all thought had been abandoned; apparently Carey's going to do something with it after all.

Labels: Cable, comics, Exiles, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Axis, X-Factor, X-Men Forever, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Legacy

I'm still working my way through a backlog here - which includes a bunch of first issues from recent weeks that I'll hopefully get to, including Citizen Rex, Doom Patrol and Marvels Project. In the meantime, though, let's cover this week's X-books - neither of which really merits a full length review - and a few other books from the pile.

Absolution #1 - Christos Gage heads to Avatar for a six-issue superhero miniseries, with art by Roberto Viacava. Avatar have certainly come a long way from the days when their adverts were full of variant covers of unusually shaped women; nowadays, it's mostly Warren Ellis comics. But there still seems to be a sense of obligation in every Avatar story to crank up the violence to astronomical levels, as if to justify the company's market niche. This is, after all, a company whose copyright warning still routinely alerts readers that "All characters as depicted in this story are over the age of 18" - which isn't even true, by the way, unless some of the people in this issue's suburban barbecue scene are of extremely restricted growth.

Anyway, Gage takes as his starting point the frustration of cops who have to play by the rules when they know people are guilty, and then he applies that idea to a bunch of supeheroes who are basically the superpowered wing of the police. What you end up with is essentially Dexter with superheroes. The first issue is a bit cheerleading for my tastes - though there's nothing wrong with starting off the story that way, and to be fair, there's no doubt that Dusk is a seriously disturbed character. As Gage more or less acknowledges, it's a familiar concept which he's tried to freshen up by mixing in a different genre, but since the superheroes end up acting like glorified police officers, it doesn't entirely come off. It's relatively restrained by Avatar standards, mind you (which is to say, it's really no more violent than the typical issue of X-Force), but there are still some thoroughly gratuitous bits where you can't help feeling the book is trying to have it boh ways. "Look at this, isn't it horrible? Isn't it awful? You can't get this anywhere else, you know..." Basically an okay comic, with a few false notes that bring it down.

All-New Savage She-Hulk #4 - This book hasn't sold particularly well, but Marvel evidently like it, as the character is getting the back-up slot in the revived Incredible Hulk (which, despite the title, looks to be some sort of Hulk Family series - the lead strip is going to feature Skaar). Because low-selling miniseries don't get to wait for their artists, this issue has three pencillers and three inkers - but it looks solid enough, and it's still written by Fred Van Lente, a writer who can pull off the difficult task of simultaneously acknowledging the ridiculousness of the character's back story, and letting the occasional moments of drama work. Basically, though, this is the two She-Hulks fighting the Dark Avengers, plus a tie-up to resolve the main plot and keep Lyra around for future adventures - which results in her contributing nothing much to the resolution of her own mission, and makes me wonder whether it's a late decision. Still, more fun than it technically ought to be.

Blackest Night #1 - Now, I realise that this came out ages ago. After all, issue #2 comes out on Wednesday. But you'll recall that Diamond UK failed to ship the book to my store, and then the following week's consignment got lost in the post for the better part of a fortnight. Somebody asked in the comments thread why I didn't just go out and buy another one. To which the answer is: because then I'd end up with two copies, and I was never all that convinced about buying one. And now that I've read the first issue, it's another one to file under "DC Universe crossover in which I have not the faintest interest."

Which isn't to say that this is an impenetrable mess like the notorious DC Universe Zero. They've sorted that problem, at least. The premise is reasonably clear - somebody wearing black is raising deceased superheroes from the grave. I've no idea who or why, but it's only the first issue, and the story would presumably have got to that in due course. No, this is more of the Crisis on Infinite Earths problem, where you're presented with a barrage of characters and references to stuff that happened in the past, and it pretty much relies on an existing emotional investment in the characters for you to care about anything that happens. There's an awful lot of people standing around saying "Hey, remember when...?" Which, again, isn't a criticism as such; it's pretty much inevitable with this sort of story. But for the relative outsider like me, it's pretty much all "Hey, remember when...?" The plot boils down to something like 20 pages of memorial service, and then a bit of violence at the end (including a dreadful sequence with Hawkman and Hawkgirl, which misfires spectacularly and had me rolling with plainly unintended laughter), before the DC Zombies show up at the end for some fighting. Strip away the "Hey, remember when...?" and there's bugger all to it. Continuity's a tool, not a raison d'etre, and characters who bang on about their back story all the time evidently aren't doing enough interesting things in the here and now.

It's a pretty book. And I'm sure it'll go down very well with the core DC Universe constituency. After all, the company's last few efforts were downright irritating; this one merely doesn't hold my interest. They're heading in the right direction!

Captain Britain and MI-13 #15 - The final issue of yet another well-reviewed, low-selling series. Perhaps the problem with this book was that it didn't have an obvious marketing hook, beyond "hey, Wisdom got good reviews." It's just a very good, well plotted superhero book. Actually, that's not quite fair - the book does have a theme, which is Paul Cornell's take on Britishness. It's about having one foot rooted in tradition, but only one. The problem is that he's trying to sell that concept to a primarily foreign audience. Oh, and this issue also throws in some cameos by the likes of Digitek and Dark Angel, which is a bit self-indulgent, but it's the last issue, so go nuts, why don't you? It's a good, satisfying final issue - the storyline has evidently been allowed to run its course, and everything gets properly tied up. The book may not have lasted long, but at least it got a proper resolution.

Exiles #5 - The most recent renumbering failed to improve sales significantly, so Marvel are pulling the plug at issue #6. I know people will say that's too soon - and to some extent I agree, in the sense that if a publisher gains a reputation for axing books before they really get under way, it'll make the task of marketing a new launch even more difficult than it already is. But let's not forget that this is in fact the 123rd issue of Exiles. (Come to think of it, axing the book with issue #6 means that they can start the inevitable next relaunch with issue #125. Hmm.)

This is the second half of the robot-world storyline, and it's perfectly serviceable without ever quite being great. To be fair, I get the impression that the book is rushing through its subplots more than a little - they're going to tie up the dangling threads next month - so we get Hank suddenly announcing a revelation that probably should have been built up over more time, but obviously can't be. Jeff Parker was the right man for this book, he's chosen a good direction, and he's paired here with the very solid Casey Jones; but it was a mistake to try and relaunch the book immediately, instead of resting it for a while.

Incidentally, the cover is lousy: a generic action shot of Blink, drawn by somebody who has apparently never seen a textile in his life. Somebody buy this man some cloth.

Phonogram: The Singles Club #4 - This issue, it's the DJs - Seth Bingo and the Silent Girl. And we get them from one camera angle, in a six panel grid, for the better part of 16 pages. Now that's just showing off. Not the normal type of showing off that people do when they're not actually that good, but have learned to be flashy. The type of showing off you do when you're so good that you can get away with holding a single camera angle for the better part of sixteen pages, and actually be interesting within those limits. Even the dancers asking for requests don't make it into the panel. There's damned few comics out there that can get away with this sort of thing, and few enough that would even attempt it, and most of those would make it a tiresome theoretical exercise rather than just a great little character story about an egomaniac DJ who doesn't realise why he's funny. Why aren't there more comics like this?

Ultimatum: X-Men Requiem #1 - The cover has the colon between X-Men and Requiem, but I'm going with the version from the copyright warning, because if in doubt, ask a lawyer. I gave up on Ultimatum about halfway through, but the general consensus seems to be that it was one of the worst comics of the last decade, and from what I saw of it, I can well believe it. This is a one-shot serving as an epilogue to Ultimate X-Men, and you can't really blame creative team Aron Coleite and Ben Oliver for the hopeless set-up they've got to work with. I could point out that it's a wholly unsuitable and arbitrary finish for this series, and indeed all its stablemates, but you already know that. In this issue, the surviving X-Men have a funeral, there's a brief fight with some villains, then everyone goes home. It's just rubbish, but the attempt to attach any sort of genuine emotion to Ultimatum was doomed from the start. To be honest, this whole storyline has been so horrifically bad that I'm left kind of hoping that the relaunch bombs, lest somebody at Marvel gets the idea that they should be publishing more books like Ultimatum. I've actually pre-ordered the first issues of the relaunches, for podcast review purposes, but they're going to have to be pretty damned impressive to convince me that I want to continue supporting the imprint in any way shape or form after this fiasco.

Labels: comics, Exiles, Ultimate X-Men, X-Axis

Okay, then. Two weeks of stuff to get through, one of which saw an enormous quantity of X-books dumped on the market, with the other seeing a ton of first issues. So some of these might be on the concise side, but it'll get up back up to speed.

I'll come back to the "Ghost Boxes" storyline from Astonishing X-Men, and the "Messiah Complex" crossover arc from Cable and X-Force, both of which finished in the week before last, since they really merit more attention than this. And later tonight, on this week's House to Astonish, Al and I are planning to look at the first issues of JLA: Cry for Justice, Greek Street and Existence 2.0.

But let's take a deep breath and get into the backlog.

Astonishing Tales #6 - The final issue of this low-selling anthology title, from the look of it - which is to say, they don't seem to have formally announced a cancellation, but they haven't solicited any more issues, and that's usually a bit of a giveaway. There's not much here to change any opinions you might have formed before. The Wolverine/Punisher story is lightweight fluff, but it does have quite interesting art, and I like the colouring a lot. Jonathan Hickman's Mojoworld serial with Cannonball and Sunspot is utterly absurd (and, with this chapter, depends on you knowing that Sunspot was a huge fan of Magnum back when he was first introduced in 1983, a character point that has understandably been allowed to fall by the wayside in the intervening years), but it's genuinely funny. The rest is competent but forgettable - an Iron Man 2020 story which seems to be trying to set up the character as an Ellis-style futurist for subsequent stories, and good luck with that one, and a Sabra short which kind of circles the topic of Israeli conscription without ever quite managing to say anything about it. To support an anthology title in this day and age would take much stronger material than this, but then Astonishing Tales was primarily a means of reprinting material originally commissioned for the website.

Batman and Robin #2 - Now this is a good comic. That opening page is a lovely piece of art, and Morrison is doing a great job here with the basic idea of Dick Grayson taking over as the new Batman. Even if they don't know who's in the costume, everyone who met Batman regularly can immediately tell it's a different guy, and his new Robin is just an infuriating brat. So there's a nice little angle about whether Dick can ever meaningfully be the new Batman, as opposed to just a Batman impersonator, which ties back to the old theme of "was Bruce Wayne pretending to be Batman, or was he pretending to be Bruce Wayne?" Alongside that, there's a wonderfully bizarre fight scene with some circus freaks, and more genuinely creepy stuff at the end with the Pig. Better than the first issue, I think.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #26 - Either I've missed an issue somewhere, or worse, I've stopped caring enough to remember what happened in the previous issue. And I have a sinking feeling it might be the latter. Vampires have insinuated themselves into the mainstream, and the Slayers are on the run from a world that no longer has much time for them. Basically this is a whole issue of people running away and regrouping, with an admittedly cute ending that I'm sure would work much better if I could actually identify the character in the final panel from the art alone. (You can work it out, but I don't think it was intended that you should have to.) Perfectly alright, but not really grabbing me for some reason.

Cable #16 - Well, "Messiah War" sure didn't advance matters a lot, did it? Cable's still on the run with Hope, they're still fleeing further and further into the future because his time machine won't go back, they're still being chased by Bishop, and even Stryfe is still hovering around on the fringes. If the recap page is anything to go by - and so often, it isn't - Hope is supposed to have been deeply affected by meeting X-Force, because they're from her own time period, and "for the first time in her life, she feels like she's found some friends whom she doesn't want to leave behind." Quite why Hope would have any particular attachment to a time period she doesn't remember, let alone care about X-Force more than the people she lived with for five years earlier in the series, I don't really understand, but then, reading the story, I'm not quite sure that's how writer Duane Swierczynski was trying to sell the idea in the first place. What actually happens in this issue is that Hope gets separated from Cable during a time jump and lands two years early, meaning that she's going to have to make her own way and grow up a bit more before being reunited with him. There's some quite nice intercutting between the two of them, and some very good art from veteran Paul Gulacy. It's actually quite a decent issue, but undercut somewhat by the nagging awareness that "Messiah War" ended up heading nowhere, so why should this one be any different?

Captain America: Reborn #1 - Which is effectively an issue of Captain America with "#1" on the cover, but hey, that's what it takes to shift units these days. It seems we're doing the "lost in the timestream" angle, as Steve Rogers relives scenes from his past - which feels like a bit of a cop-out after he got shot in the chest and buried. This is decent enough, but it doesn't have the emotional weight of issue #600, and really, the return of Steve Rogers is the single least interesting aspect of Brubaker's story, so far as I'm concerned. Bryan Hitch seems awkwardly cast on this book - inker Butch Guice and colourist Paul Mounts seems to be trying their damnedest to maintain the tone of the regular Captain America series, resulting in what feels like a stylistic tug-of-war between Hitch's polished faces and something darker and looser that comes through at times. Not sure it really works.

Chew #2 - Thanks to his power to pick up psychic impressions from eating stuff, Tony Chu settles into his new job at the FDA, "the most powerful law enforcement agency on the face of the planet." As with the first issue, there's plenty of dark absurdity and a dash of gross-out comedy, but all while keeping a grounding in reality - a tricky balance to pull off. The basic set-up of Chu and his obnoxious boss is familiar stuff, but it's the comic timing and the details in the art that make it fly. As I said last month, I'm not quite sure where you go with this in the long run, but so far the high concept is working nicely. Oh, and it's interesting to note that, even though this is officially part of a five issue storyline, the first two issues have both been largely self-contained. You'd almost think the creators wanted the book to be accessible to new readers. How unfashionable.

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia - The first part of the Uncanny X-Men/Dark Avengers crossover, all of which is being written by Matt Fraction, and which should certainly help raise Uncanny's profile. The Humanity Now! Coalition (is the exclamation mark compulsory? Because if it isn't, I'm going to stop using it, if you don't mind) marches on San Francisco with a million people, which rather comes out of nowhere, given that the storyline has only had a couple of mentions in Uncanny to build it up. Actually, this makes a bit more sense when you get to part two, but it comes across very strangely here. And then you get a riot with the humans versus the mutants, and Cyclops singularly failing to calm everyone down. All this provides an opportunity for Norman Osborn to declare that HAMMER need to move in and take control, and there's your plot. If you can buy that premise, the rest is fine, but my problem here is that - repeat after me - there's only supposed to be 300 or so mutants in total, and even though Fraction has clearly been searching through the darkest recesses of The 198 Files to find obscure ones, I just don't buy this storyline with a grand total of 300 rioters (minus the ones who are trying to control the situation, minus the ones who aren't in San Francisco at all). Add another one to the increasingly long list of theoretically decent story ideas, strangled in the crib by M-Day. You can't do this stuff with 300 mutants. It just doesn't work. I'll keep saying it until it stops being true: if the X-office have no ideas for what to do with the post-Decimation set-up, and it sure looks like they don't, then they should be reversing it ASAP and at least provide a set-up that works for the stories they apparently do want to tell, about mutants as a minority population in San Francisco.

Dark Wolverine #75 - In other words, a Daken solo title. The actual Wolverine isn't in this story at all, but with the recent launch of Wolverine: Weapon X, I rather suspect that this is the soft launch of an ongoing Daken series, which will get a more sensible name once Dark Reign is out of the way. (No doubt with a shiny new #1.) In this issue - you'll never guess - Daken is impersonating Wolverine, charming the ladies, and scheming against his fellow villains. I've been skipping most of the Dark Reign tie-ins, but something tells me there's a lot of variations on this storyline being told right now. To be fair, it's well paced, and I like Giuseppe Camuncoli's art, which almost manages to make Daken's dodgy mohawk work. Curiously, even though this is co-written by Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu, Daken doesn't act much like he did in Way's previous stories - he's more flippant than before, for one thing. Granted, it probably helps that he doesn't have to interact with Wolverine here, and he gets an interior monologue to explain himself, but the dialogue doesn't read much like Way at all. As for the story, there's really not much to it other than "Daken winds up his fellow Dark Avengers" - which is done quite well, but where's it heading?

Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #1 - Because you apparently are perceived to have demanded it, it's a second ongoing Deadpool series. This one is written by Victor Gischler with art by Bong Dazo. (Google says his real name is Angelo Dazo, but you've got to love somebody who changes his name to Bong.) AIM hire our demented antihero to retrieve an item from the Savage Land, and so he goes there and discovers... something that looks like it was intended to be a twist at one point, except they've been giving it away in house ads for weeks. It's the head of the Deadpool from Marvel Zombies. This is a straight Deadpool story in more or less the same style as Daniel Way's work on the main title, and there's no obvious sign of this book bringing a different angle to the character. It's basically an action comedy. But the comedy works - lots of good dialogue, and Dazo pulls off the visual gags effectively - which is really the bottom line here. It's entertaining.

Exiles #4 - The Exiles arrive on another world and have to liberate it from the robots who've already wiped out the human race. Um... that's basically it, really. Entirely solid, not sure what to say about it that we haven't covered in previous months, and it's a busy week so let's move on.

Gotham City Sirens #1 - A team book for female Batman villains, with Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. The cover is faintly embarrassing, but the interior art by Guillem March is more acceptable (albeit also a bit more wonky). The idea is that Catwoman's not on top form at the moment, and ends up, somewhat against her better judgment, having to hook up with the two crazy girls. Paul Dini writes a pretty strong first issue here, setting up the characters well for those of us who don't read the Batman titles, and pitching his throwaway first-issue villain about right. Rather better than I was expecting, and actually quite enjoyable.

Marvel Divas #1 - This book drew an awful lot of flack for that admittedly godawful J Scott Campbell cover. The title is also somewhat mystifying, since of the four main characters, only the Black Cat could remotely be classed as a "diva" by my understanding of the term. Either Marvel need a dictionary or I do. In fact, they were being a lot more accurate when they billed Robert Aguirre-Sacasa and Tonci Zonjic's comic as Sex and the City with female superheroes (albeit C-list ones, which is kind of the point). The interior art is excellent, in fact, and the opposite of the cover in almost every conceivable way. As for the story... well, they talk about men for 20 pages and then an Issue of the Week plot is unveiled, which is a bit underwhelming. If only there was a stronger story I'd say this was a good comic; as it is, I'd still say it's worth a look on the strength of the art. And in fairness to Marvel, I suppose I can understand their logic in trying to attract attention to the book, but the problem is, they've done so by appealing to lowest common denominator - and in so doing, they've pretty much sent the message that the book would be of no interest at all to those people who might actually want to read 20 pages of Monica Rambeau and Patsy Walker discussing their romantic difficulties. I think that cover will alienate at least as many readers at it attracts - but to be fair, the book was always something of a niche proposition.

Uncanny X-Men #512 - The Beast's "Science Team" go back to 1906 to get blood samples from the parents of America's first mutant. This is in a different league to the preceding "Sisterhood" storyline, and it's hard to believe that both stories are by the same writer, Matt Fraction. Which isn't to say that this is perfect; it starts piling on the cute moments a bit too blatantly by the end, eventually reaching for one of the ultimate time travel cliches. But it's got a focus and enthusiasm that just didn't seem to be there before, perhaps because Fraction is getting an opportunity to write about some of his pet themes, and pay homage to Tesla. He also gets to work with Yanick Paquette on this story, who is rather better suited to draw Fraction's ideas. Best issue in quite a while.

Uncanny X-Men #513 - And then we have this, which is the second part of "Utopia", the crossover with Dark Avengers. It's perfectly fine, it has characters politicking nicely for control of Norman Osborn's new "X-Men" team, and it has the Dodsons on art (actually, with rather less of the cheesecake than usual). It's also unbelievably camp, with Emma wearing black to signify that she's one of the baddies in case anyone hadn't picked up on it yet. I'm in two minds about this; there's a lot of amusing bits, but it also sees Fraction hauling out a cast of thousands yet again, something which has contributed to a lack of focus in many of his stories. He's mentioned in interviews needing a flowchart to keep track of the characters, and one can't help thinking that if the writer's having that much trouble, what chance do we have? I wonder whether this is going to turn out to be another Matt Fraction story in need of streamlining. But it is quite fun if you're prepared to run with the idea.

Wolverine: First Class #16 - Guest starring Siryn and Dazzler, written by Peter David, and with art from the Gurihiru duo. And who wouldn't want a Wolverine series drawn by Gurihiru? They could call it Adorable Wolverine. I love their work, and they're actually very well suited for this book, which, despite the title, is really a Kitty Pryde series. It's a straight Kitty Pryde story for younger readers where she feels jealous of Siryn and Learns An Important Lesson, but it's Peter David and Gurihiru, for heaven's sake, of course it's good.

Wolverine: Noir #3 - In which this version of Logan explains his origin story, and Mariko turns out to be the Japanese equivalent of a flapper. Um... yeah, it's alright, but you know the drill by now: I just don't get why someone thinks the world needs noir versions of superhero characters.

Wolverine: Weapon X #3 - "The Adamantium Men", part 3 of 5. Wolverine runs rings round the twelve members of Strikeforce X for an issue, more or less. The reason why this book works is that Jason Aaron and Ron Garney can take a fairly basic concept for what happens in this chapter, and then make it work with the little details that allow the individual Strikeforce X members to have a bit of personality. That's what makes the difference between an enjoyable issue, and Wolverine beating up randoms for 20 pages. There's a slightly jarring bit toward the end where Aaron starts defending the credibility of his plot in the post-Bush world, which doesn't really work, but he pulls it back pretty quickly with the henchmen from Blackguard's human resources department (who summon back-up by radioing in an "HR Emergency!"). It's what you want in a Wolverine story.

X-Factor #45 - Somebody reminded me the other week that I hadn't actually reviewed X-Factor fully in ages. But then, the story just never seems to come to a natural break point. This issue, in the far future, Madrox meets up with what's left of Dr Doom, while back in the present, some of the team fight a mind-controlled Shatterstar, and the rest of the team aren't even in the book. The future sections are probably the most successful - there's something very likeable about a senile Dr Doom in chronic denial about his reduced circumstances - but it's another solid issue all round.

X-Men Forever #2 - Better than the first issue, I'd say. Claremont teases the death of Wolverine - which he could actually do in this series if he wanted to, since it's out of continuity. Of course, having set up a romantic triangle subplot in issue #1, he's hardly going to end it like that - but it's a good point in the series to remind readers that in theory, at least, this book can tell the sort of stories that would have been ruled out by inter-title continuity even if Claremont had stuck around. And it's got the requisite "How do they get out of that?" factor too. Oh, then Sabretooth shows up for a fight. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it flows quite nicely, the story is definitely stronger than the first issue, and there's a definite retro charm to it.

Labels: Cable, comics, Exiles, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine: First Class, Wolverine: Weapon X, X-Axis, X-Factor, X-Men Forever

"Long Live the King!"
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Salva Espin
Colourist: Anthony Washington
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Editor: Mark Paniccia

The assignment of breathing life back into Exiles isn't a particularly enviable one. The format always suffered from an obvious problem that it tended become repetitive in the long run: team arrive on alternate Earth, team are arbitrarily assigned mission, team achieve it, team move on. Yes, the same basic idea worked for Quantum Leap, but that show only ran for five years. In the real world, concepts like this run their course. Nothing wrong with that, mind you - superhero comics are anomalous in clinging to the idea that a good format it one that will survive indefinitely, even interminably.

Still, Jeff Parker and Salva Espin face a difficult task in shaking up the series without turning it into something else altogether. But so far things are going well. Parker's solution is rather clever: he goes back to the original format with a team of new characters, but throws in Blink (playing the innocent) and Morph, both of whom clearly know more than they're letting on. If you're an existing reader, the mystery of what they're doing is a subplot. And if by some happy chance you're a complete newcomer, the story still works on the same level that it did the first time around.

Of course, this subplot needs time to build, so in the meantime we have a two-part story which introduces our new cast against a fairly straightforward backdrop. It also gives Espin a chance to flex his muscles as a superhero artist; he seems to be increasingly comfortable as the story goes on, which is nice to see.

On this world, all the mutants are living on Genosha under Magneto, and the Exiles are supposed to help Wolverine overthrow him. Unfortunately, Wolverine's already dead before they show up. And Magneto's mutant paradise seems pleasant enough, really - even the local X-Men are on side. But the Exiles set about their business and, of course, it turns out that Magneto isn't being entirely honest with everyone.

All of this could have been rather predictable, but Parker sets it up well by focussing partly on the question of why exactly the Exiles are here in the first place, and taking a roundabout route to his pay-off. It works by playing off the mystery subplot of what the Exiles' format is: the story explicitly draws our attention to the fact that this is a basically arbitrary mission, and likewise makes plays up the seemingly arbitrary resolution at the end. Really, the big idea is to do the classic Exiles formula, but with a vague sense that something's not quite right here, and there are loose ends where the story cuts off.

It's a smart way of riffing on the formula, while still playing to its strengths. Which isn't to say that it won't have a shelflife - at some point everything has to be explained, after all. But I like their approach. There's life in this one yet.

Labels: comics, Exiles, X-Axis

This week's podcast has reviews of New Mutants, Power Girl and Fin Fang Four Return. And for blog readers, I'll come back to New Mutants later on. But first, here's some other stuff from this week's books.

Astonishing Tales #4 - More reprints from Marvel's digital comics service. I'm mentioning it here for the X-completists among you, since it's got a Wolverine/Punisher serial and a Mojoworld story both underway. I've written about them before, of course, and there's nothing new to report. The Wolverine/Punisher thing is a serviceable action story, but it does have some striking artwork going for it. Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra's Mojoworld story, though, is ridiculous but genuinely funny, with Cannonball and Sunspot pausing at the end to argue over how old they're actually supposed to be these days. ("We were first published in 1982... that makes us, what, 36...?") You also get a throwaway Iron Man 2020 story which spends most of its page count on fighting, and an atmospheric, virtually-silent Daredevil short with little plot but a cute use of his powers. It's not a bad package, as superhero anthologies go.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 #25 - If you're wondering how "Season 8" got up to issue #25, it's because the series is meant to have roughly as much story content as a full season of the TV show, and obviously that's rather more than 25 standard comics. Anyway, after 25 issues of subplot about Dawn being turned into a giant, this is the pay-off. Or, perhaps more accurately - after 25 issues of subplot about Dawn being turned into a giant, this is the pay-off? It's a story about an off-the-peg jilted boyfriend, who nobody really seems appropriately angry about, with a very odd B-story about a sort of abusive Gepetto in the Scottish hills, who rather gets forgotten about at the end. The ideas are fine, but the treatment doesn't fly.

Cable #14 - Part four of "Messiah War", the crossover with X-Force. And it's better than you'd probably expect, to be honest. There's some good material with Bishop trying to keep up his facade of loyalty for Stryfe's benefit - and I like the way the story is using Stryfe, as a guy who thinks he's Cable's arch-enemy, but is actually just a nuisance in the path of the other characters. On the other hand, there's a weird torture scene which manages to be simultaneously too graphic and not graphic enough, and a very strange subplot with Apocalypse that doesn't seem to achieve a great deal. But I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it pays off somewhere down the line. And there's a strong cliffhanger, taking advantage of the fact that Hope doesn't know all sorts of stuff which the readers are familiar with. Pretty decent, really.

Exiles #2 - Ah, a twist on the format. For some reason, even though they keep travelling between parallel Earths with counterparts of the familiar Marvel characters, the Exiles have generally managed to avoid bumping into themselves, or getting mistaken for a local. I'm surprised it hasn't been done more frequently, to be honest. But since this version of the Exiles is using high-profile characters like Wanda Maximoff and the Black Panther, I suppose we're going to get it more often. And indeed, we get plenty of scenes of the Exiles bluffing their way past the locals by crossing their fingers and hoping things generally played out like they did at home. The Blink subplot continues to build nicely, as well, simply by having her take a back seat in the story and gently nudge the characters now and again. Obviously it's a book for the devoted Marvel fans who get all the references, but that's fair enough in a parallel-worlds set-up. Good fun, and I'm pleasantly surprised that Jeff Parker has managed to reinvigorate the format.

Fin Fang 4 Return - We talk about this on the podcast, but it's a collection of shorts from the Marvel website (plus a reprint of the Christmas story, though they didn't mention that in the solicitations). If you haven't seen Scott Gray and Roger Langridge's strips before, the basic gag is that a bunch of monster characters from the fifties have been shrunk to human size and forced to live in the relatively prosaic setting of Marvel New York. So Fin Fang Foom is a chef, Gorgilla is just a well-meaning talking ape, the loveable Electro is a hopelessly out-of-date robot, and Googam, Son of Goom, still spends all his time scheming to take over the world. It's a simple set-up and the strips are generally very funny (the Madonna one is particularly good). Silly, but in all the right ways.

Power Girl #1 - Again, see the podcast, but I may as well reiterate my big question: what is the concept of Power Girl, other than that she's a Supergirl knock-off? The set-up in this series is that she's running one of those charitably-inclined technology companies that heroes tend to end up with (regular capitalism being a rather unfashionable occupation these days), but since there's no mention of any technical genius or vast wealth, I have no clue how she ended up with it. It's basically fine if you can live with the gratuitous T&A jokes, but the real problem here is that Power Girl comes across as a generic character.

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #2 - One part convoluted metaphor to three parts dreamy nonsense, but it's the sort of book where that's a ringing endorsement. Features perhaps the most unlikely bullfighting scene in history. A series this absurd won't be to everyone's taste, but it has a strong enough plotline to hang together through the weirdness. I love it, personally.

X-Men: First Class Finals #4 - Um... more greatest hits from earlier X-Men: First Class stories, strung together with a loose "let's travel inside Jean's memories" plot. The pay-off is something about Jean dreaming about her fears, and frankly, it seems a bit of a weak justification for a four issue miniseries. Oh, and judging by the ending, we've also given up any pretence of First Class being more than a loose parallel to mainstream continuity (as the book apparently forgets to write out Hank before diving into Giant-Size X-Men #1). Anyway, it's perfectly inoffensive, but in its eagerness to remind us of First Class stories of yore, it doesn't manage to deliver a story on their level.

Labels: Cable, comics, Exiles, X-Axis, X-Men: First Class

"Deja Vu"
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Salva Espin
Colourist: Anthony Washington
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Editor: Mark Paniccia

Another relaunch of Exiles? It seems like only last year that we had the last one. And, in fact, it was. But Chris Claremont's New Exiles didn't set the world alight, so here we are again.

Despite the multiple relaunches, Exiles has been running more or less continuously since 2001. In reality, this is issue #119. That's a very long run for a book launched in the current century. It may not be a top seller, but it's sold consistently in the past, and you can see why Marvel don't want to give up on it just yet.

The premise is simple: it's What If? meets Quantum Leap. A bunch of superheroes from parallel worlds are yanked out of time and forced to go bouncing from world to world, sorting out the local problems. It's basically a string of variants on established Marvel Universe concepts. The book doesn't generally bother explaining this stuff; it's taken as read that the readers are broadly familiar with the originals, and will get the references. In another title, that might lead me to complain about accessibility for new readers. But Exiles exists to riff on pre-established concepts; it's the nature of the beast.

The problem with the original series, in fact, was that the formula ended up being rather limiting. There's only so much you can do with "arrive on world X, solve problem, move on." Eventually the book gave them control of their travels and an extra-dimensional headquarters; and from there, it ended up drifting into a more conventional team book that didn't seem to click as well. But the original format has been given a rest, so apparently we're going back to it.

Jeff Parker's debut issue is a standard "gathering the team" story. We get short scenes of the team members (or rather, most of the team members) in their home worlds, we get a pep talk by Morph (as the new Timebroker), and we get the start of their first mission. So far, so standard. And in fact, that seems to be the point. Although billed as a first issue, the story clearly assumes that we all know the Exiles, and we all know something's not right here. It loosely copies the original Exiles #1, but this time round, we know that Morph's lying about nature of the Timebroker; we know that there's something suspicious about Blink (presumably the character from the previous series feigning ignorance); and we know that there must be a better explanation for what's going on.

But very little of that is there on the page. There are some oblique hints about Blink, but otherwise, the book relies on a knowledge of earlier stories to provide that subtext.

Is that fair? Maybe it is. After all, Exiles had a solid audience until relatively recently, when sales went into decline. If the aim here is simply to recapture disaffected Exiles readers, then they'll know the context and they'll get the point. And if you don't know the history, then you're still left with a story that can be taken at face value, like the original Exiles #1.

Parker and Espin take us back to an X-Men-related roster: Blink, Wanda, Polaris, Forge and the Beast, with only the Black Panther rounding out the numbers (and even there, the story strongly hints that it's another character wearing the costume). Much of the first issue is given over to setting up their back stories, which might be overkill unless we're going to see more of their homeworlds in future. But by returning to the old format with mostly new characters, Parker sidesteps the risk of the relaunch seeming entirely backward-looking.

Nonetheless, on the surface, we're back in standard Exiles territory: arrive on world, get mission, save world. This wore thin after a while the first time around, so hopefully Parker has something up his sleeve to stop it getting stale. Since he's hinting pretty strongly that All Is Not As It Seems, I'm prepared to assume he does.

It's a book for readers with a reasonably broad knowledge of the Marvel Universe - not necessarily obsessive fans, but at least those who know the general layout of things. But it has some clever plays on the usual routines, with twists on familiar characters rather than just randomly changes to prove that it's an alternate universe. Good fun; not really a first issue, but an enjoyable start to Parker and Espin's run on the title.

Labels: comics, Exiles, X-Axis

"Begin Again!"
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Tim Seeley
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colourist: Wilfredo Quintana
Editor: Mark Paniccia

I'll be honest, I was surprised by the number of people who wanted to know what I thought about Chris Claremont's upcoming X-Men Forever series. If you haven't heard, it's a book picking up where he left off in 1991, immediately after X-Men vol 2 #3.

Now, firstly, the final few issues of Claremont's run were an editorially-mandated reset button, putting Xavier back in his wheelchair, moving the team back to the mansion, and all that. So to be honest, if we're going to do this thing at all, I'd rather have seen it pick up with Claremont's original proposed ending to the Muir Island Saga.

But secondly, the project illustrates Claremont's weirdly marginal position in the X-books these days. In the seventies and eighties, he was the writer who turned the X-Men from an obscure failed property into the defining team book of their time. Now, he's writing strange little fringe properties like Exiles, GeNext and X-Men Forever, apparently aimed at a dwindling audience who think the franchise took a terrible wrong turn eighteen years ago. And you can make a strong case that it did - but it's a bit late to do anything about it now. Quite honestly, I can't help but find something a little bit sad about seeing Claremont forever replaying iterations of his past glories. At this stage in his career, I'd really rather see him go off and make something completely new, instead of playing the nostalgia circuit like this.

New Exiles seems to have been conceived, sensibly enough, as a playpen for Claremont to do what he wanted in his own little corner of the Marvel Universe, visiting parallel worlds and showing us new versions of characters he created. I recall seeing an interview where Claremont explained that the use of his own past creations was an editorial mandate, rather than his own choice; in any event, it's a rule that he interprets fairly loosely, as some of these characters have little in common with their namesakes.

And to give it its due, the book generally read like the work of somebody who was having some fun. But for the most part, the stories weren't great. Much of the time, it felt as though a bunch of randomly selected concepts had been fed through a blender. The final arc, with an army of lizards in Iron Man costume and another army of Daughters of the Dragon, and a bunch of Shi'ar Death Commandos made up of X-Men, and a plot loosely echoing something he wrote in the late seventies, was very much like that. Plenty of ideas, yes; none of them fundamentally bad; but no sense that it adds up to anything in particular.

Issue #18 is a final issue of the old school, apparently racing its way through the stories that the book would have been telling if it hadn't been cancelled due to low sales. (They're replacing it with another Exiles book.) So, Gambit inherits the throne of his world. Valeria Richards joins the team, paying off a subplot from the recent annual. Sabretooth and Psylocke hook up. Sage becomes a literal living computer. Rogue leaves the team to marry a lizard. And everyone more or less lives happily ever after.

It's very cramped. But you used to see this a lot, back in the days when comics got cancelled at short notice. Faced with the impossible task of wrapping up years of planned stories in 22 pages, writers would frequently just bite the bullet and give you a condensed summary of what was going to happen, so that at least you weren't left hanging. It's not an especially satisfying way of doing it, particularly as the book starts bouncing randomly around disconnected stories in an effort to tell us how everyone would have wound up.

The Psylocke/Sabretooth subplot has some chemistry going for it. Aside from that, though, I can't say any of these stories strike me as a great loss. It looks like, given the chance, the series would simply have drifted on in much the same way. It's a conscientious effort to give loyal readers some sort of resolution, and that's to be applauded; but it doesn't leave me wondering whether Marvel made the right call here.

Labels: comics, Exiles, X-Axis