I've always had this idea for a great X-Men story, and it goes something like this:
The X-Men are doing their usual thing--hanging around and waiting for someone to attack them--and all of a sudden Apocalypse drops out of the sky. He does his usual stuff about how he will make rivers run red with blood and the sun will darken with the ashes of burnt bodies and he will sit on a throne of skulls and only the strong will survive. . .
And as he's doing this, the X-Men walk away, disgusted. Heard it so many times and so many ways, and they're just tired of it. Every panel is people's feet walking away in the foreground as Apocalypse gets smaller and smaller in the background.
And all the while, Apocalypse is still doing his usual tired spiel, only with added desperation now. "Come on! Throne of skulls! Rivers of blood! Survival of the fittest! C'mon guys!"
And that's the last we ever see of Apocalypse.
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16 comments:
And the Jim Halpert Award for Best Overdue Idea goes to... kazekage! :)
Man, if I was but allowed, I would knock all these alleged world-beaters into the dustbin. If I never had to read another story with Sinister, Apocalypse, Stryfe or whoever ever again I think I could somehow manage to live happily. :)
Actually, I thought Carey did a great job using Sinister in "Messiah Complex" and the build-up to that event; of course, he also stripped the character of all the Wannabe Darwinian BS, so there's something to be said for creative character tampering. :)
Well, I kinda felt like he actually used him in a way consistent with what had been done, but in a way where he wasn't some silly-ass vague mastermind. Obviously, obsessed with the mutant race's genetic integrity as he was, he'd have a stake in it. Carey just managed to do it in such a way as not to just have him pop out of the shadows, mumble something vague, fail to get blown up, make a pun on the word "Sinister" and leave again (This is just about every story with him since 1993, I think)
Oh my God I remember those days. And they'd always put "Sinister" in triple-size underlined light blue font. Good times, she said while rolling her eyes so hard they dropped out of her sockets and went merrily down the road. :)
YES. Or they'd italicize it. Jesus, I have good things to say about Fabian Nicieza and his perfectly acceptable run on X-Men, but damn if he didn't pull that nonsense every damn time.
For all that they've been identified with the nadir of X-Men history (at least prior to Chuck Austen), I do have quite a few fond memories of the Lobdell/Nicieza era: Scott and Jean's wedding, the deaths of Mastermind and Illyana, Jubilee and Xavier skating at the end of the X-Cutioner's Song... they had a knack for the emotional/dramatic character beats.
They've been identified with it, but if you want to see the real pre-Austen nadir of X-history, by all means go get a copy of "The Shattering" trade. This, Diana, was why it seemed like a godsend when Claremont came back. I can't beleive Marvel re-published this, honestly.
I think the Lobdell/Nicieza era is best remembered for being competent yet unexciting. They had a formula that worked for the time, and little variation was needed. There's no crime in that, especially as we're talking about characters that are published in perpetuity and can't be altered or broke but so much.
Oh, I try to avoid bridging the eight-year gap in my X-Men comics - I went from the end of AoA to Morrison, and I've never once been tempted to go back and fill in the blanks. :)
Exciting, not so much: I still remember that scene during Fatal Attractions where Colossus defects to the Acolytes and delivers a Very. Long. Soliloquy. while punching Bishop in the back. It was the Longest Punch Ever. But they were quite good with the characters themselves. And they finally got Scott and Jean married, which actually stuck for quite a while as these things tend to go.
You missed very little--sooner or later I'm going to write about "The Shattering/The Twelve" and all that and let me tell you, the workmanlike reliability of the Nicieza/Lobdell era seems like a golden age compared to that period.
Well, that was a holdover from late Claremont, I think--he was forever having people vomit out paragraphs of dialogue in what should have been a split-second moment, but somehow managed to, possibly due to a wrinkle in time.
I have a lot of time for Nicieza in the right slot. I'm planning a long appreciation of his work and how he built this weird ur-story through everything he wrote at Marvel . . .
Consider my curiosity piqued: I look forward to the eventual column. :)
Did Claremont ever do that during action sequences, though? I mean, I remember he'd have characters strike that dramatic Look What I Can Do pose while delivering their page-long soliloquies, but I can't recall any instances where all that talking was meant to occur in mid-punch...
Does that include the editorially-mandated crossovers, though? Because there are only a handful of writers with the skill to work around that sort of thing and still tell their own story...
If I ever get the time to do it, it'll be lovely. :)
I remember it once or twice. I don't know that he did it all the time, mind, but most of his annoying tics weren't constant, they were just so annoying when he used them, that in memory they form a huge gestalt of annoyance.
I think he did as much as he could with those. Mind you, I DO have some harsh words for the whole business of editorially mandated crossovers, but that's coming up in a non-Nicieza article . . .
Worth the wait. :)
As opposed to these days, where it really is one mind-control story after another...
The fact that Peter David can't plan ahead for more than six months because of the damned crossovers says it all, really. I mean, he's good at that sort of slow-burn foreshadowing, but what's the point when the rug is constantly getting pulled out from under your feet?
If only Claremont had had some other obsession, eh? Of course, we'd have long have since gotten tired of them too, I'll wager.
That's kinda the same problem I had with the early parts of Agents of Atlas--the crossover stuff bogged down any personality the title might have had on its own and it makes it that much harder for the book to grab me because its identity is subsumed by the editorial mandate . . .
We had a brief glimmer of that when he implied that Storm and Callisto were having tentacle hentai sex. Better the devil we know, I suppose. :)
I imagine that's been a problem with any series launched out of a crossover: you spend months stuck inside the status quo of a larger, less interesting narrative, and by the time the series breaks out and tries to do its own thing, half a year's already gone by. If these books were coming out on a bi-weekly or weekly basis, that sort of thing might be acceptable, but six months just to get to Point A of a given series? Hell to the naw.
Chris Claremont, everyone. Look for his arc on Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose coming soon!:)
And that's what killed Agents of Atlas dead for me, really. We finally got to some interesting stuff long after Dark Reign had bored the living hell out of me and arrested the unique voice that AoA had that was exactly what I wanted to read.
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