Can we just go ahead and admit that Apocalypse is a bit of a washout as a supervillain already? Sure he talks a good game, but like Galactus, how many brutal mass pogroms against the unworthy has he really done? Don't grope for an answer--the answer is "barely any," because Apocalypse's endgame would mean a drastic upheaval in the status qu0 and they're not about to do that. So like the Coyote, he can't succeed in his end goal by his very design.
And before you bring up the the Age of Apocalypse, consider this: Apocalypse doesn't have anything to do with the advent of that storyline--he just happens to be on deck at the right time when Legion's crazy-ass son all of a sudden decides he has time-travel powers and ends up killing his dad. Like Roger Sterling, Apocalypse only inherited his success, which, coupled with the fact he hardly ever hauls himself off his ancient ass and does anything himself, makes him one of the Marvel Universe's most underachieving villains ever. He's a total Siena Blazeout.
So Apocalypse is rather lazily characterised, lazy in general, and in truth, even his intermediaries are a bit suspect: If you think that sending the Four Horsemen (well, unless we're talking about Flair/Blanchard/Anderson/Windham) or even worse, the Dark Riders is going to get you anything but disappointment in the end, you really probably aren't qualified intellectually to rule the world.
But I didn't come here to talk about that today. Well, not exactly. I came here to discuss Apocalypse: The Twelve, the crossover that was supposed to shut the door on the 90's for the X-Men and lead them into the new millennium, once again with Chris Claremont at the helm.
You would be forgiven, of course, if this is less than overwhelming to you. Because really, Claremont had at least been scripting the X-Books for months before this (either that or Terry Kavanagh's scripting did an amazing imitation of all his various tics) and the ultimate result of Claremont's new era would necessitate the Grant Morrison era a year later. Already, and even moreso in the light of retrospect, this whole "new era" seems like a shell game.
For all the shit I give Chris Claremont about . . .well, everything, I have a lot of sympathy for him. He'd tried a few things back in the 90's to gain some distance from his defining work on X-Men, and while they hadn't worked all that well, one could at least appreciate some effort was being made (well, maybe not with Sovereign Seven) Ultimately, I thin going back to the X-Books was something of a poisoned chalice--really nothing was going to satisfy the fans of the book. Had he hewn too close to his older style he would have been called a dinosaur, try to go too outre (which is what he did . . .sorta) and he would fall on his face. Really, there was no way he could win.
Anyhow, The Twelve. The Twelve is obscure plot point that had been picked up and dropped for about 12 years or so previous to this, and the final revelation of it hardly seems like it justified all the mystery swirling around it, and when you hook that to Apocalypse's lackadaisical villaining, you don't have the prospects for a great story, no matter how epic you build it up to be.
Good thing then, that The Twelve is not to much "epic" as a hurried, bewildering mess. Characters appear out of nowhere and disappear at will, fights start, last for two issues, and end inconclusively, there's a whole arc with Archangel that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense at all and dear lord, the Skrulls. So many Skrulls. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY SKRULLS?!?!
Anyways, let's (finally) get right to the heart of this thing. After the events of The Shattering (now grandfathered into the Reign of Error series) the X-Men broke up for maybe two issues or so even though it was supposed to be this big thing and Wolverine turned out to be a horseman of Apocalypse and blah blah blah. Naturally, this should be the leading edge of the X-Men encountering and working to undo Apocalypse's plan.
However, as the throughline of this crossover seems to be "hurry up and wait." So naturally we spend an issue recounting how Wolverine got turned. While there's a germ of a good idea there--Wolverine becomes a Horseman because the other option is Sabretooth and Logan feels he has a better chance of breaking his control--but it's all a bit padded and look back when we should be moving forward and raising the stakes. Instead, this story is framed by Wolverine fighting and losing against the Hulk, and naturally, Apocalypse shows and tell Wolverine "it's fine it's all part of the plan." Because yeah, getting the shit beaten out of you is a perfect way to advance your plans for victory, especially as beating on the Hulk has no bearing on anything that's going on elsewhere.
But because we don't progress as much as digress, we now cut over to cable, where Rob Liefeld gives us a quiet (for him, anyways) issue wherein Cable says goodbye to X-Force (through gritted teeth, obviously) and Caliban has lost his shit and been turned into Pestilence, the second Horseman. Pestilence doesn't have any special powers--or, at least none apart from being a big strong guy who hits people (this is a Rob Liefeld comic after all) and for the next issue X-Force and Cable fight Caliban and finally, we have the big "final" throwdown between Apocalypse and Cable in issue #75 which had been built up (more or less) as the final battle between the two principals, but as the "final battle" thing has now been hijacked for the final part of The Twelve (which would then be punted even further down the field in "The Search for Cyclops" nonsense--have you twigged to the major fault with this crossover, yet?) in which . . .well, nothing happens.
Cut back to Uncanny X-Men for an issue where people sit around wringing their hands and waiting for something to happen while the X-Men poke at Skrulls and look very very concerned that something's up. Oh, and Roger Cruz is doing his very best Joe Madureria impression here. I would imagine Joe loved that. Flip over to X-Men and hey, stuff's actually happening--Deathbird is revealed as War, the third Horseman and . . .Ahab? Really? Really?--is revealed as Famine. They kidnap Iceman and Sunfire as stuff is now actually happening with the plot. I should add it's taken us four issues to get here. There's also a bit where Magneto, having recently conquered Genosha, wonders if he's dug his own mass grave. How prophetic. Anyways, this sets the stage for the final fight . . .
. . .so naturally, let's take a short detour and get Wolverine on the side of the angels again. I have no earthly idea exactly what happens in these books and I've read them dozens of times. Oh, the Wolverine stuff generally makes sense--he's confronted by his sidekicks while Psylocke tries to break his brainwashing. It works, and naturally Angel takes the opportunity to go utterly bugfuck insane with one of the most deathlessly hilarious lines ever in the history of bad comics:
"LIGHT--IT NEVER DIES--NOT EVEN IN MONSTERS!"
I try to drop that little gem into conversations any chance I get. I think the checkout lady at the grocery store wants to kill me by now.
Anyhow, in what I'm certain was a crucial plot point at the time, the Angel's hair and wings go all light-brighty and he flies around healing people. Naturally Wolverine, fresh off being brainwashed, has to try and stop him because this is a Bad Thing, although the story seems desperately uninterested in explaining why this is so terrible or even WHAT THE FUCK IT HAS TO DO WITH ANYTHING (apart from the fact that Angel and Wolverine were both Death at one time, but that again, has nothing to do with the larger story) and the Angel heals one more guy and everything's OK except none of this has anything to do with the motherfucking Twelve.
Well, thank heaven we finally get to the nitty gritty (which is good, this feels like it's been dragging on forever) and the X-Men take the fight to Apocalypse (well, they fight the Skrulls for a hell of a good long time and frankly they do way better than the Horsemen ever did, which makes me wonder why the Horsemen in the first fucking place and . . .gah) and the whole schema of the Twelve is finally revealed--it's a random collection of mutants who represent vague concepts (Fire and Ice? Time and Space?) that will make Apocalypse uber-powerful . . .somehow. You would be forgiven for the fact that this contravenes everything that was known about the Twelve previous . . .never mind there's actually Thirteen of them because the whole thing is a shuck and jive and Apocalypse changes his mind and decides to merge with X-Man because . . .well, if the massive plot holes in this crossover haven't already made you want to scream . . .
And the maddening thing of this is the climax of the story ends with Cyclops and Apocalypse merging. This is built up to be a "Death of Phoenix" level tragedy--hell, Claremont even cribs line and verse from the final issue--and it's completely undercut because this is not the end of the story--no amount of time is spent on this in the name of allowing the tragedy to sink in (Hell, when Jean Grey died they gave it a whole issue to sink in) before we have four months of alternate reality stories and then we're off to the next thing. So, no coherent throughline of buildup, no catharsis, no nothing. I can't imagine why this failed.
In short, this was yet another way to attempt a cosmetic fix to the problem and it failed because there was no real endgame in mind beyond "Get things to a point where we can announce Claremont's on the book and we can put "A bold new direction! A good jumping-on point!" and thus it was a great big ball of nothing that tied absolutely nothing up (not even the central mystery of the crossover) resolved no great plots and just marked time until they hit the reset button and tried very hard to pretend nothing happened.
Bottom line, it's probably best to avoid this, because even for fans of bad comics it takes a bit of willpower to slog through. I also recommend that you never forget that LIGHT NEVER DIES
not even in MONSTERS!
Showing posts with label reign of error. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reign of error. Show all posts
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Reign of Error 3: Welcome to the Errordome
Concluding our rather painful look at X-Men as a title and a franchise and how it stumbled and fumbled around in the wilderness until Grant Morrison made the scene, we close with the last X-Men book before the big takeover. This is X-Men as it was and never shall be again, this is actually the end of the X-Men's 90's period. This is X-Men #113, the final installment of "Eve of Destruction."
Time has not been kind to Chris Claremont.
Ever since getting kicked off the X-Men in 1991, he'd been stumbling a bit in the field of comics, with really only two main things to his credit: The short-lived Huntsman project at Image, which could be seen as either a clever commentary on Mary Sue-esque characters or him raiding his bag of tricks for the usual cliches and Sovereign Seven which was definitely him raiding his bag of tricks for the usual cliches and was full of Mary Sue characters.
As we learned last time, of course, the X-Men weren't in such great shape either. After Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle leave the books, things solider on with Alan Davis doggedly transcribing editorial's plot dictation and providing competent, yet unspectacular work. After a few months of this, the X-office ramps up for The Twelve, a particularly egregious example of comics about other comics which spins out of one line of dialogue from a book in 1987. It's the kind of book the new editorial regime circa 2001 wished they wouldn't do and, it's implied, wouldn't do. Except when they did.
The big plan, of course, was to bring Chris Claremont back to write the books. While it was greeted with somewhat muted anticipation at the time (Claremont had been in the midst of a not-too-great Fantastic Four run at the time) in the warm light of retrospect, it's clear that he really shouldn't have bothered. By the end of his run in 1991, it was clear he had little left to say with the characters, there had been nearly ten years for the conventional wisdom that Claremont's writing was domination, slavery, mind control, and gladiators all the time, and that put pressure on him to come up with new stuff to thwart expectations.
Unfortunately, his new plan was the Neo, and the less said about that the better. By the time he'd regained his footing and tried for something different, it was too late, and he was gone not even a year after he got on.
Because history repeats itself on a one to one basis, of course, Scott Lobdell came back for a few months to wrap everything up and well . . .he needn't have bothered, either. Because people who'd been driven off the book by Claremont had already gone and everyone else was waiting for Morrison to come on, whereupon he'd fix things. So it really didn't matter what was in the books-so long as he got them out on time, he could have the X-Men pull a train on Jean Grey for four months after taking enough ecstasy to destroy their minds and turn them into drooling sex maniacs (as it stands, they waited until Claremont and Milo Manara could collaborate for that)
Our book today is the conclusion of this little 90's coda. Eve of Destruction was intended to be a "grand finale" of sorts to the 90's style X-Men books that had been the standard of the time. Generally, it's the story of Magneto, who still ruled Genosha about this time--ready to attack the rest of the world with an army mutants. It's up to the X-Men to stop him, only there aren't any to hand because most of them have gone off to the X-Treme X-Men book to bungee jump and slam Mountain Dew.
So it's up to Jean Grey to recruit a team of X-Men to fight Magneto, because apparently no one carries a cel phone, or leaves a forwarding address or any of the other sensible ways that normal people who don't have brain damage stay in touch with each other, especially in case of emergencies, like I don't know, MAGNETO ABOUT TO ATTACK THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD. You'd think they'd wanna stay on top of shit like that.
To say that the team she chooses are scrubs is an insult to actual scrubs. Compared to them, the Cerebro X-Men are like 1980s-era Chicago Bulls in terms of competence. Let's do a roll call on these chumps because I feel like smacking someone:
Phoenix--Jean Grey gets to lead her own team of X-Men and when even she's saying she's not done a great job, you have problems. Phoenix seems to have developed the ability to fart out an enormous amount of thought captions in this issue, because damn if the pages to come aren't littered with tons of them.
Omerta--Jesus Christ, this guy. Omerta is invulnerable loudmouth from Brooklyn, and is Italian (or, at least as close as Lenil Yu can get) Given that the Italian-American Anti-Defamation league once protested the Sopranos because it perpetuated the stereotype that all Italian-Americans are mobbed up the wazoo, having a character act like the worst guido stereotype ever and having named himself after the Mafia's code of silence . . .uhm, isn't that like having a black character named the Mighty Sambo? (NOTE: Someone must have realised this and he's never actually called Omerta in the book, but honestly . . .that's the least of his problems)
Wraith--Wraith sucks, and while that's generally the point of the character, he's a walking example of why you can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to certain stories. You can't really expect to have a "wacky mutant with useless powers gets caught up the the car-azy world of the X-Men and somehow finds his way" story in the middle of what you're desperately trying to sell as Armageddon. Wraith can turn himself invisible, but only his skin--the rest of him is visible, and he can transmit it to people via touch. His mutant power is, I should add, less useful than someone else grabbing him by the legs and using his body to bludgeon people.
Northstar--God, we're just ticking off boxes now, aren't we? Northstar is gay, and as a homosexual mutant from Montreal who holds hands and kisses other men, joins the X-men because he is not a heterosexual and acts like an asshole because being John Barrowman level camp would be too obvious and can play against Omerta's homophobia because Northstar is gay. Northstar's gayness is the only reason anyone uses the character--it's a cheap way of scoring points and playing up the connection between mutant phobia and homophobia. Have I mentioned that Northstar is gay? Because he is.
Dazzler--Speaking of ticking off, here comes Dazzler to add nothing to the X-Men (again) Dazzler is actually here because he subplot got canned--originally, Eve was going to have the X-Men deal with an X-Baby version of Apocalypse taking over the Mojoverse. I am very glad all this got cut out because there are few things I give less of a shit about than the X-Babies and the Mojoverse. Unfortunately, Dazzler stuck around, to everyone's detriment. Dazzler will also survive this crossover, which is another way it fails. I hate Dazzler, is what I'm trying to say.
Frenzy--When you pick random stereotypes off the street and give the mutant powers is one thing. When you recruit a lifelong back-bencher when 90% of X-Men characters have her same power set is just goddamned lazy. I would like to think the point of forcibly brainwashing Frenzy was so they'd have a person familiar with Magneto's operation on the team, but as we learned later, in another dropped subplot, they already had someone on the inside, so . . .why is she here?
Sunyre--Hey kids! Do you like Sunfire? No? Well, here he is with tits!
As a human depending on the X-Men, this is where I say "we are so screwed."
Anyways, we join the story with everyone yelling at each other and Magneto occasionally doing someone as the X-Men, the world's premiere mutant team with at least one member with decades of experience operating in a team dynamic . . .fight him one at a time. I would complain about this, but instead I'd like to point out that the artist of this book is drawing it like he could barely give a damn, if the ludicrous amounts of crosshatching, distored figures and histrionic expression are any indication. I feel you, man.
So while the X-Men are embarrassing themselves, Wolverine and Cyclops show up. A lot of blatherskite is thrown around about how, now that Cyclops, who used to be dead but then remembered that he wasn't, has come back "changed" and I'm glad the writer reminded me of this because otherwise he'd come across as the same old boring douche he'd always been.
Anyways, Magneto ends up being outmaneuvered by these ad hoc X-Men, who were counting on the fact that with pages to go, he'd spend all of them acting like a fucking idiot. Wolverine stabs him because like me, he's heartily sick of this shit. Xavier makes a speech and everyone leaves Genosha without another word because while the entire country was willing to go to war with the entire planet, no one is willing to do anything now that Magneto's got capped, even though there were like, seven X-Men and at least twice that when the artists remembered to draw a crowd scene. We cut to an allegedly clever epilogue where none of the new X-Men joined up, which plays up their space-filling nature even more and means they were that much more the loser squad.
Obviously, this is not a good book. But what makes it amusing is that, two years later, Grant Morrison uses bits of it (entire scenes in this book are referenced) in the "Planet X" story arc. That's not to say he ripped it off, it's more accurate to say that "Planet X" is a parody of Magneto stories just like this, where he does one bold thing early on, and does nothing in the middle of the story and is undone by own plot-mandated stupidity. If "Planet X" is a comment on the ultimately retrograde nature of the X-Men franchise, it's books like this that set the pattern.
Fortunately, no one will remember this book in a month's time, as Grant Morrison comes along and we start telling interesting stories and playing with the concept for the first time in decades. It lasts for three wonderful years and pretty much everything since then has been Chuck Austen, fixing Chuck Austen's mistakes, and then a whole lot of what amounts to X-Men fanfiction, be it Chris Claremont fanfiction, Grant Morrison fanfiction, or whatever the hell Warren Ellis can dig out of the bin and hastily do a "find and replace" to add in the X-Men.
How far we've come, indeed.
Time has not been kind to Chris Claremont.
Ever since getting kicked off the X-Men in 1991, he'd been stumbling a bit in the field of comics, with really only two main things to his credit: The short-lived Huntsman project at Image, which could be seen as either a clever commentary on Mary Sue-esque characters or him raiding his bag of tricks for the usual cliches and Sovereign Seven which was definitely him raiding his bag of tricks for the usual cliches and was full of Mary Sue characters.
As we learned last time, of course, the X-Men weren't in such great shape either. After Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle leave the books, things solider on with Alan Davis doggedly transcribing editorial's plot dictation and providing competent, yet unspectacular work. After a few months of this, the X-office ramps up for The Twelve, a particularly egregious example of comics about other comics which spins out of one line of dialogue from a book in 1987. It's the kind of book the new editorial regime circa 2001 wished they wouldn't do and, it's implied, wouldn't do. Except when they did.
The big plan, of course, was to bring Chris Claremont back to write the books. While it was greeted with somewhat muted anticipation at the time (Claremont had been in the midst of a not-too-great Fantastic Four run at the time) in the warm light of retrospect, it's clear that he really shouldn't have bothered. By the end of his run in 1991, it was clear he had little left to say with the characters, there had been nearly ten years for the conventional wisdom that Claremont's writing was domination, slavery, mind control, and gladiators all the time, and that put pressure on him to come up with new stuff to thwart expectations.
Unfortunately, his new plan was the Neo, and the less said about that the better. By the time he'd regained his footing and tried for something different, it was too late, and he was gone not even a year after he got on.
Because history repeats itself on a one to one basis, of course, Scott Lobdell came back for a few months to wrap everything up and well . . .he needn't have bothered, either. Because people who'd been driven off the book by Claremont had already gone and everyone else was waiting for Morrison to come on, whereupon he'd fix things. So it really didn't matter what was in the books-so long as he got them out on time, he could have the X-Men pull a train on Jean Grey for four months after taking enough ecstasy to destroy their minds and turn them into drooling sex maniacs (as it stands, they waited until Claremont and Milo Manara could collaborate for that)
Our book today is the conclusion of this little 90's coda. Eve of Destruction was intended to be a "grand finale" of sorts to the 90's style X-Men books that had been the standard of the time. Generally, it's the story of Magneto, who still ruled Genosha about this time--ready to attack the rest of the world with an army mutants. It's up to the X-Men to stop him, only there aren't any to hand because most of them have gone off to the X-Treme X-Men book to bungee jump and slam Mountain Dew.
So it's up to Jean Grey to recruit a team of X-Men to fight Magneto, because apparently no one carries a cel phone, or leaves a forwarding address or any of the other sensible ways that normal people who don't have brain damage stay in touch with each other, especially in case of emergencies, like I don't know, MAGNETO ABOUT TO ATTACK THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD. You'd think they'd wanna stay on top of shit like that.
To say that the team she chooses are scrubs is an insult to actual scrubs. Compared to them, the Cerebro X-Men are like 1980s-era Chicago Bulls in terms of competence. Let's do a roll call on these chumps because I feel like smacking someone:
Phoenix--Jean Grey gets to lead her own team of X-Men and when even she's saying she's not done a great job, you have problems. Phoenix seems to have developed the ability to fart out an enormous amount of thought captions in this issue, because damn if the pages to come aren't littered with tons of them.
Omerta--Jesus Christ, this guy. Omerta is invulnerable loudmouth from Brooklyn, and is Italian (or, at least as close as Lenil Yu can get) Given that the Italian-American Anti-Defamation league once protested the Sopranos because it perpetuated the stereotype that all Italian-Americans are mobbed up the wazoo, having a character act like the worst guido stereotype ever and having named himself after the Mafia's code of silence . . .uhm, isn't that like having a black character named the Mighty Sambo? (NOTE: Someone must have realised this and he's never actually called Omerta in the book, but honestly . . .that's the least of his problems)
Wraith--Wraith sucks, and while that's generally the point of the character, he's a walking example of why you can't have your cake and eat it too when it comes to certain stories. You can't really expect to have a "wacky mutant with useless powers gets caught up the the car-azy world of the X-Men and somehow finds his way" story in the middle of what you're desperately trying to sell as Armageddon. Wraith can turn himself invisible, but only his skin--the rest of him is visible, and he can transmit it to people via touch. His mutant power is, I should add, less useful than someone else grabbing him by the legs and using his body to bludgeon people.
Northstar--God, we're just ticking off boxes now, aren't we? Northstar is gay, and as a homosexual mutant from Montreal who holds hands and kisses other men, joins the X-men because he is not a heterosexual and acts like an asshole because being John Barrowman level camp would be too obvious and can play against Omerta's homophobia because Northstar is gay. Northstar's gayness is the only reason anyone uses the character--it's a cheap way of scoring points and playing up the connection between mutant phobia and homophobia. Have I mentioned that Northstar is gay? Because he is.
Dazzler--Speaking of ticking off, here comes Dazzler to add nothing to the X-Men (again) Dazzler is actually here because he subplot got canned--originally, Eve was going to have the X-Men deal with an X-Baby version of Apocalypse taking over the Mojoverse. I am very glad all this got cut out because there are few things I give less of a shit about than the X-Babies and the Mojoverse. Unfortunately, Dazzler stuck around, to everyone's detriment. Dazzler will also survive this crossover, which is another way it fails. I hate Dazzler, is what I'm trying to say.
Frenzy--When you pick random stereotypes off the street and give the mutant powers is one thing. When you recruit a lifelong back-bencher when 90% of X-Men characters have her same power set is just goddamned lazy. I would like to think the point of forcibly brainwashing Frenzy was so they'd have a person familiar with Magneto's operation on the team, but as we learned later, in another dropped subplot, they already had someone on the inside, so . . .why is she here?
Sunyre--Hey kids! Do you like Sunfire? No? Well, here he is with tits!
As a human depending on the X-Men, this is where I say "we are so screwed."
Anyways, we join the story with everyone yelling at each other and Magneto occasionally doing someone as the X-Men, the world's premiere mutant team with at least one member with decades of experience operating in a team dynamic . . .fight him one at a time. I would complain about this, but instead I'd like to point out that the artist of this book is drawing it like he could barely give a damn, if the ludicrous amounts of crosshatching, distored figures and histrionic expression are any indication. I feel you, man.
So while the X-Men are embarrassing themselves, Wolverine and Cyclops show up. A lot of blatherskite is thrown around about how, now that Cyclops, who used to be dead but then remembered that he wasn't, has come back "changed" and I'm glad the writer reminded me of this because otherwise he'd come across as the same old boring douche he'd always been.
Anyways, Magneto ends up being outmaneuvered by these ad hoc X-Men, who were counting on the fact that with pages to go, he'd spend all of them acting like a fucking idiot. Wolverine stabs him because like me, he's heartily sick of this shit. Xavier makes a speech and everyone leaves Genosha without another word because while the entire country was willing to go to war with the entire planet, no one is willing to do anything now that Magneto's got capped, even though there were like, seven X-Men and at least twice that when the artists remembered to draw a crowd scene. We cut to an allegedly clever epilogue where none of the new X-Men joined up, which plays up their space-filling nature even more and means they were that much more the loser squad.
Obviously, this is not a good book. But what makes it amusing is that, two years later, Grant Morrison uses bits of it (entire scenes in this book are referenced) in the "Planet X" story arc. That's not to say he ripped it off, it's more accurate to say that "Planet X" is a parody of Magneto stories just like this, where he does one bold thing early on, and does nothing in the middle of the story and is undone by own plot-mandated stupidity. If "Planet X" is a comment on the ultimately retrograde nature of the X-Men franchise, it's books like this that set the pattern.
Fortunately, no one will remember this book in a month's time, as Grant Morrison comes along and we start telling interesting stories and playing with the concept for the first time in decades. It lasts for three wonderful years and pretty much everything since then has been Chuck Austen, fixing Chuck Austen's mistakes, and then a whole lot of what amounts to X-Men fanfiction, be it Chris Claremont fanfiction, Grant Morrison fanfiction, or whatever the hell Warren Ellis can dig out of the bin and hastily do a "find and replace" to add in the X-Men.
How far we've come, indeed.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Reign Of Error 2: Erratic City, Can't You See . . .
Okay, so the first installment of this series on the complete and utter meltdown of the X-Men franchise in the mid-to-late 90's turned out to be a huge success, so much so that it instantly turned a one-time entry into a sudden trilogy, just like the Matrix. Only hopefully, the next two installments won't be a brutal well of sucktiude that crushes the spirit and makes you forget why you liked the first one.
Last time we had Operation Zero Tolerance kick off a whole new status quo for the X-Men in which they had new members some of the old guard had left, very few of which wanted to be there, all their fancy technology got taken away and clearly, plainly, nothing would ever be the same again.
It lasted roughly twenty issues or so, split between two books, then editorial got cold feet and decided to change their minds. This led to the writers leaving the books, or at least partially heading out the door. They stick around to script the next few issues of editorial's plots, but it's clear they just wanted a sweet little severance cushion, because they're basically willing accomplices to the dismantling of what they wanted to do.
And they do a right awful job of it. Not just because of the obvious--the characters who up and disappear off-panel, or the one who shows up for two pages and basically says "Yeah, I was a scrub, wasn't I? heh heh." Oh, and Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowcat join up with the X-Men again for reasons that can be best summed up as "Excalibur just got canceled and we have no place for them in any other book." Gambit will be showing up soon as well, since obviously after Uncanny X-Men #350, where they left him in Antarctica to freeze to fucking death left plenty of wiggle room for a quick return.
But that's next issue. Most of the heavy lifting for this new newer status quo takes place in the following two issues. They also set up a new storyline. They also introduce a new threat and his six minions. This is a lot to do in six issues. They have two double-sized issues. Will they succeed?
Will they hell.
Uncanny X-Men #360 and X-Men #80 are some of the least coherent books I have ever read, and I once read everything Rob Liefeld wrote and drew (I'm not proud, that's just what one did in 1991) They are big double-sized issues that have nice shiny covers, which I believe commemorates the 35th anniversary of the X-Men. There was a mania for this for a while at Marvel--they were forever inventing new occasions to do larger issues. I believe they did one to commemorate the 30th anniversary of when Chris Claremont his his head on the porcelain in his bathroom and had a vision of the Phoenix Force, which is what . . .makes . . .X-Men . . .possible.
The books pivot on a couple plot points left over from Onslaught and Operation Zero Tolerance--namely, Professor X has been out of the book since Onslaught (because of the whole "unleashing a psychic monster on New York who killed the Avengers and Fantastic Four" thing. See, this is what happens when people snitch) and Bastion stripped the mansion of damn near everything during Operation Zero Tolerance (presumably even Wolverine's pile of fap pics of Jean Grey) including, it is assumed, Cerebro, their mutant detecting system that, if it worked would have YELLED that there was mutant attacking them constantly because it happened ALL the damn time.
Okay, now I can finally get to talking about the books, though I will inevitably drift off. Uncanny X-Men #360--there's a new group of X-Men in town, all of whom are recruited by Professor X in very rapid quick-fire vignettes. Let me tell you something, you've never lived until you've seen Chris Bachalo try to get stuff across in tight-grid panels. It's uh, something to behold. Yeah.
Anyways, the curious thing about this group of X-Men is that they are less real characters in their own right than mash-ups of other characters. This proves to be a plot point, sort of, but no real recognition of this point ever happens on the part of the characters or the narration, so you're kinda on your own. But generally, as Mighty Boosh taught us, mash-ups, being a combination of elements from the past and elements from the future coming together to make something not quite as good as either are a bad thing. As are eels.
Ok, so, X-Men roll call!
The Grey King --I keep misreading his name as "Asinine" instead of "Addison." The Grey King has some vague Phoenix esque powers mumble mumble telepathy mumble mumble power dampener. He's the leader of the X-Men and I'm very glad that Professor X tells us that he has "a formidable intellect" because I would have not guessed it considered what a fucking moron he acts like in this issue. He is hated and feared by people who play chess and people who think wearing a ponytail in 1998 is totally stupid (this is, BTW, said by a guy who was wearing a ponytail in 1998)
Rapture --
Rapture is blue, has wings and carries a sword. Practically speaking this gives her all the powers of a human-size pigeon who could shank your ass. Rapture is hated and feared by those who walk beneath her when she's barely continent.
Mercury -- Would 90's comics have survived had Terminator 2 not invented liquid metal? Probably not. Mercury is made of liquid metal. He shoots down the X-Men once and gets sliced open by Wolverine and uh . . .that's it? Weirdly enough, an X-Man will pop up a decade later with the same powers & the same name, but some attempt is made at making an actual character out of them. Mercury is hated and feared by Robert Patrick.
Landslide --Landslide is supposed to be a mash-up of The Blob, Sabretooth, and the Beast, but he doesn't really do anything except stand around and look big, so I can only assume that Landslide has all the superpowers of a big fat guy who wants to beat everyone up. Also, if the opening of the story is to be believed, Landslide is hated and feared by proprietors of "all you can eat" restaurants.
Chaos/Xaos/Kaos/WILL YOU PLEASE DECIDE HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE SPELLED, MARVEL --Seriously, they change his name like twice in as many issues. A mashup of Cyclops and Havok, Daniel Dash is autistic, which means in this case he just says random words and doesn't react to anything (Just like Grandpa!) and along with M, this means Marvel is 0 for 2 in writing credible autistics. Oh, and he can fire Havok's blast out of his eye.
His eye. Singular. Phenomenal destructive power, and he can apparently only shoot it out of one eye.
You know what? I don't often say this, but I could take his punk ass down in a hot second (Yes, I know he's a fictional character, this is not a cry for help) Come on, all you have to do is stay away from that eye that shoots stuff (no big thing, as his depth perception's probably shit) and he can't touch you. You know how easy it is to screw up your eye? This isn't like punching out Thanos or anything--hell, I could take him down with a sharp stick.
Just -POKE- and then I can gloat: "AH HA HA HA CHAOS YOU TOTALLY LOST YOU POWERS YOU PUNK BITCH! WELCOME TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL M-DAY, ASS CLOWN! YOU! ARE! POWERLESS!" And then I would laugh. On into the night. I am a poor winner.
Chaos is hated and feared by the proprietors of airshows, which were probably having a bad year anyway.
Crux --Crux is French and as such has all the powers of being an asshole or a slut, as all French characters in comics must. Despite being named "Cristal," (No she's not a stripper) she is more on the "asshole" side of the range (also, she's underage, which means the other option is off the table, provided Colossus leaves her alone) Crux can project fire and ice from opposite parts of her body, and she is also a figure skater, which means she has all the powers of Brian Boitano.
Crux is hated and feared by French comic fans who wonder when America's going to stop casting them as the team goon already.
They refer to Xavier as "The Founder" which gives me a small hope that they're referring to the Dominion. Alas, this is not to be. Xavier is rendered in show looking all sinister, which is again supposed to be a clue, but really, Bachalo draws everyone that way.
That was a very long roll call. Thankfully, nothing much happens in this issue. The Excalibur expatriates are on a ship which soon gets attacked by the New X-Men, who announce themselves with a huge explosion and the following quote from the Grey King (remember--he has a "formidable intellect")
"HEAR ME! We are POWER and MIGHT, sent to collect the one who can save the FOUNDER. Those set against out mission will PERISH in fire or water."
The following quote is what I'm going to use next time I go to the grocery store:
"HEAR ME, FARM FRESH! I am POWER and MIGHT, sent to collect sodas at 3 for $6 and hamburger meat for .63 cents/lb for my DINNER. Those set against my mission will PERISH when I run them over with my SHOPPING CART!"
The X-Men are after Shadowcat by the way. Naturally, the best way to get her to go with you is to sink the boat and jeopardize a ship full of tourists and threaten to murder everyone when you really didn't have to at all. What else would you do--ask her?
Anyways, while this is going on, the X-Men (the ones who aren't mash-ups) fight their way through sewers to get to the Lincoln Memorial, where Val Cooper tells them they have to go to Cape Citadel (because it's a callback to Uncanny X-Men #1, y'unnerstand. They had to justify shiny double sized issues somehow) and learn that Xavier's missing and . . .uh . . .wow, Steve Seagle is verbose as hell here. I don't know if this intentional or not that one caption seems to sag and hang off as if about to fall from the amount of verbiage, but I like to think they meant to.
Meanwhile, Nightcrawler and Colossus turn up at the X-Mansion which is deserted except for Cecilia Reyes who threatens them with a gun and exposits at them. So obviously, they entrusted the protection of the X-Mansion to Cecilia because they really didn't give a shit what happened to it. Could be worse, I guess--they could have let Maggott look after it. Anyways, they unearth the Blackbird jet (the old one) and because Nightcrawler is an airplane mechanic in his spare time they zoom off to help the other X-Men which they somehow know where they're going to be.
Meanwhile, Kitty is off helping Professor Xavier, who is acting completely weird and unlike himself. Kitty, apparently unfazed by this (seeing as how he's been taken over by aliens, replaced by Skrulls, had his evil side beat the crap of the X-Men while wearing a cape, and turning into Onslaught, what are the odds that that would happen one more time?) sets about trying to help him by vomiting out a lot of technobabble, and upon fixing him (by solving a computer problem--HINT) is captured and thrown in storage. This is supposed to be shocking, but really--as the first time we saw the X-Men they were fighting the other X-Men they were more than willing to kill the living hell out of everyone, so the notion they have some sort of sinister ulterior motive is not all that big a bombshell.
God, this is taking forever. I mean--The X-Men get shot out of their plane and have a big mid-air fight with the other X-Men, then get rescued by the Blackbird, which gets blown up because the X-Men can't have ever have anything nice. Spoiled brats. End Part One, and you'll never know how happy I am to type that.
Part Two, X-Men #80 is a big fight scene and should go faster. The mash-up X-Men let Shadowcat escape because the Grey King is a "formidable intellect," remember? Meanwhile, the X-Men having crash-landed and deciding the whole "flying in a plane thing" is not for them after having two of them destroyed from under them in 6 pages last issue, argue amongst themselves. Rogue is wearing a different costume for God knows what reason. As an aside, I became a Marrow fan for life after these two issue as she spent most every bit of dialogue she got calling them all idiots. She has a point.
The X-Men fight the X-Men over Cape Citadel because the space shuttle is carrying some mutant detecting McGuffin and it's all built up to be this decisive moment in mutant-human relations, but let's call it what it is--the X-Men vs the mash-ups and because the story's almost over, the mash-ups job like little bitches and the X-Men destroy the satellite and save the day. I guess. It's not made terribly clear. Perhaps if I had a "formidable intellect" like the Grey King I could work it out, since he acquits himself like a member of MENSA here.
Oh yeah, the mash-ups are fakes and Xavier is actually Cerebro, which has become sentient because, well why not. The Danger Room will become sentient in an echo of this story many years later. I think the lesson to be learned here is that Charles Xavier always needs the goddamn extended warranty, as X-Tech has a higher failure rate than, say, an X-Box 360. The mash-ups disappear, never to be seen again (more or less--I think they show up one more?) which means we spent two issues fighting fake X-Men who never got built property into real characters, or a credible threat, or much of anything, making the X-Men's victory over them essentially meaningless. And if you're me, you spent $8 to read this thing. Aren't you happy?
Despite the unmerciful epic curb-stomping I gave this story just now, I really do like the "new X-Men" in some strange way, and if given leave to write an X-Book I would probably bring them back but do them as a group of mutant player haters who go around hating on various X-characters.
It would look a bit like this:
But with more spandex.
The funny thing is, this might have worked with a little more space to breathe. You take the original X-Men off the board under mysterious circumstances, add in Professor X recruiting them over the next few issues while the Excalibur folks search for the X-Men and encounter the new X-Men, and then you get the big reveal with Cerebro, and you've set the stage for something with a little more weight behind it.
Instead, they rushed through it with all haste because they wanted Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Shadowcat and Professor X. It all feels a bit artificial really, and if we haven't been reading for years, we're given no compelling reason to care about them--we're just told we should because it's important they're there and they're X-Men, which is exactly the problem with the book now--with a cast of 200 and no set team, it begs the question of just who the X-Men are really supposed to be at the end of the day, because right now it's just Cyclops and Some Guys. If there's no core to build around (like say, a team of seven or so) what do the other hundred and change matter? Unless you have the amount of pages that Shonen Jump has every month, trying to make a 200 character cast work isn't going to, because in trying to make readers give a shit about everyone, they won't give a shit about anyone.
But that's the present. Back in 1998, this will lead to a competent but unexciting run of issues with a few good bits (Magneto getting control of Genosha) and a whole lot of bad bits (The Twelve, good Christ, The Twelve) that culminate with the return of Chris Claremont to the X-books. This goes . . .rather poorly, Chris Claremont's gone in a year and in between Grant Morrison's assumption of control of the book, there's some time to mark and tie up some old business.
And that's where we'll pick up. Join us next time for the X-Men as it was and will never be again, an issue so emblematic of where the book was before Morrison took over, that Morrison used it/parodied it. Next time--X-Men #113, the finale of Eve of Destruction and the end of the X-Men of the 90's. Is there an answer at the end of our nightmare?
Last time we had Operation Zero Tolerance kick off a whole new status quo for the X-Men in which they had new members some of the old guard had left, very few of which wanted to be there, all their fancy technology got taken away and clearly, plainly, nothing would ever be the same again.
It lasted roughly twenty issues or so, split between two books, then editorial got cold feet and decided to change their minds. This led to the writers leaving the books, or at least partially heading out the door. They stick around to script the next few issues of editorial's plots, but it's clear they just wanted a sweet little severance cushion, because they're basically willing accomplices to the dismantling of what they wanted to do.
And they do a right awful job of it. Not just because of the obvious--the characters who up and disappear off-panel, or the one who shows up for two pages and basically says "Yeah, I was a scrub, wasn't I? heh heh." Oh, and Colossus, Nightcrawler and Shadowcat join up with the X-Men again for reasons that can be best summed up as "Excalibur just got canceled and we have no place for them in any other book." Gambit will be showing up soon as well, since obviously after Uncanny X-Men #350, where they left him in Antarctica to freeze to fucking death left plenty of wiggle room for a quick return.
But that's next issue. Most of the heavy lifting for this new newer status quo takes place in the following two issues. They also set up a new storyline. They also introduce a new threat and his six minions. This is a lot to do in six issues. They have two double-sized issues. Will they succeed?
Will they hell.
Uncanny X-Men #360 and X-Men #80 are some of the least coherent books I have ever read, and I once read everything Rob Liefeld wrote and drew (I'm not proud, that's just what one did in 1991) They are big double-sized issues that have nice shiny covers, which I believe commemorates the 35th anniversary of the X-Men. There was a mania for this for a while at Marvel--they were forever inventing new occasions to do larger issues. I believe they did one to commemorate the 30th anniversary of when Chris Claremont his his head on the porcelain in his bathroom and had a vision of the Phoenix Force, which is what . . .makes . . .X-Men . . .possible.
The books pivot on a couple plot points left over from Onslaught and Operation Zero Tolerance--namely, Professor X has been out of the book since Onslaught (because of the whole "unleashing a psychic monster on New York who killed the Avengers and Fantastic Four" thing. See, this is what happens when people snitch) and Bastion stripped the mansion of damn near everything during Operation Zero Tolerance (presumably even Wolverine's pile of fap pics of Jean Grey) including, it is assumed, Cerebro, their mutant detecting system that, if it worked would have YELLED that there was mutant attacking them constantly because it happened ALL the damn time.
Okay, now I can finally get to talking about the books, though I will inevitably drift off. Uncanny X-Men #360--there's a new group of X-Men in town, all of whom are recruited by Professor X in very rapid quick-fire vignettes. Let me tell you something, you've never lived until you've seen Chris Bachalo try to get stuff across in tight-grid panels. It's uh, something to behold. Yeah.
Anyways, the curious thing about this group of X-Men is that they are less real characters in their own right than mash-ups of other characters. This proves to be a plot point, sort of, but no real recognition of this point ever happens on the part of the characters or the narration, so you're kinda on your own. But generally, as Mighty Boosh taught us, mash-ups, being a combination of elements from the past and elements from the future coming together to make something not quite as good as either are a bad thing. As are eels.
Ok, so, X-Men roll call!
The Grey King --I keep misreading his name as "Asinine" instead of "Addison." The Grey King has some vague Phoenix esque powers mumble mumble telepathy mumble mumble power dampener. He's the leader of the X-Men and I'm very glad that Professor X tells us that he has "a formidable intellect" because I would have not guessed it considered what a fucking moron he acts like in this issue. He is hated and feared by people who play chess and people who think wearing a ponytail in 1998 is totally stupid (this is, BTW, said by a guy who was wearing a ponytail in 1998)
Rapture --
Rapture is blue, has wings and carries a sword. Practically speaking this gives her all the powers of a human-size pigeon who could shank your ass. Rapture is hated and feared by those who walk beneath her when she's barely continent.
Mercury -- Would 90's comics have survived had Terminator 2 not invented liquid metal? Probably not. Mercury is made of liquid metal. He shoots down the X-Men once and gets sliced open by Wolverine and uh . . .that's it? Weirdly enough, an X-Man will pop up a decade later with the same powers & the same name, but some attempt is made at making an actual character out of them. Mercury is hated and feared by Robert Patrick.
Landslide --Landslide is supposed to be a mash-up of The Blob, Sabretooth, and the Beast, but he doesn't really do anything except stand around and look big, so I can only assume that Landslide has all the superpowers of a big fat guy who wants to beat everyone up. Also, if the opening of the story is to be believed, Landslide is hated and feared by proprietors of "all you can eat" restaurants.
Chaos/Xaos/Kaos/WILL YOU PLEASE DECIDE HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE SPELLED, MARVEL --Seriously, they change his name like twice in as many issues. A mashup of Cyclops and Havok, Daniel Dash is autistic, which means in this case he just says random words and doesn't react to anything (Just like Grandpa!) and along with M, this means Marvel is 0 for 2 in writing credible autistics. Oh, and he can fire Havok's blast out of his eye.
His eye. Singular. Phenomenal destructive power, and he can apparently only shoot it out of one eye.
You know what? I don't often say this, but I could take his punk ass down in a hot second (Yes, I know he's a fictional character, this is not a cry for help) Come on, all you have to do is stay away from that eye that shoots stuff (no big thing, as his depth perception's probably shit) and he can't touch you. You know how easy it is to screw up your eye? This isn't like punching out Thanos or anything--hell, I could take him down with a sharp stick.
Just -POKE- and then I can gloat: "AH HA HA HA CHAOS YOU TOTALLY LOST YOU POWERS YOU PUNK BITCH! WELCOME TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL M-DAY, ASS CLOWN! YOU! ARE! POWERLESS!" And then I would laugh. On into the night. I am a poor winner.
Chaos is hated and feared by the proprietors of airshows, which were probably having a bad year anyway.
Crux --Crux is French and as such has all the powers of being an asshole or a slut, as all French characters in comics must. Despite being named "Cristal," (No she's not a stripper) she is more on the "asshole" side of the range (also, she's underage, which means the other option is off the table, provided Colossus leaves her alone) Crux can project fire and ice from opposite parts of her body, and she is also a figure skater, which means she has all the powers of Brian Boitano.
Crux is hated and feared by French comic fans who wonder when America's going to stop casting them as the team goon already.
They refer to Xavier as "The Founder" which gives me a small hope that they're referring to the Dominion. Alas, this is not to be. Xavier is rendered in show looking all sinister, which is again supposed to be a clue, but really, Bachalo draws everyone that way.
That was a very long roll call. Thankfully, nothing much happens in this issue. The Excalibur expatriates are on a ship which soon gets attacked by the New X-Men, who announce themselves with a huge explosion and the following quote from the Grey King (remember--he has a "formidable intellect")
"HEAR ME! We are POWER and MIGHT, sent to collect the one who can save the FOUNDER. Those set against out mission will PERISH in fire or water."
The following quote is what I'm going to use next time I go to the grocery store:
"HEAR ME, FARM FRESH! I am POWER and MIGHT, sent to collect sodas at 3 for $6 and hamburger meat for .63 cents/lb for my DINNER. Those set against my mission will PERISH when I run them over with my SHOPPING CART!"
The X-Men are after Shadowcat by the way. Naturally, the best way to get her to go with you is to sink the boat and jeopardize a ship full of tourists and threaten to murder everyone when you really didn't have to at all. What else would you do--ask her?
Anyways, while this is going on, the X-Men (the ones who aren't mash-ups) fight their way through sewers to get to the Lincoln Memorial, where Val Cooper tells them they have to go to Cape Citadel (because it's a callback to Uncanny X-Men #1, y'unnerstand. They had to justify shiny double sized issues somehow) and learn that Xavier's missing and . . .uh . . .wow, Steve Seagle is verbose as hell here. I don't know if this intentional or not that one caption seems to sag and hang off as if about to fall from the amount of verbiage, but I like to think they meant to.
Meanwhile, Nightcrawler and Colossus turn up at the X-Mansion which is deserted except for Cecilia Reyes who threatens them with a gun and exposits at them. So obviously, they entrusted the protection of the X-Mansion to Cecilia because they really didn't give a shit what happened to it. Could be worse, I guess--they could have let Maggott look after it. Anyways, they unearth the Blackbird jet (the old one) and because Nightcrawler is an airplane mechanic in his spare time they zoom off to help the other X-Men which they somehow know where they're going to be.
Meanwhile, Kitty is off helping Professor Xavier, who is acting completely weird and unlike himself. Kitty, apparently unfazed by this (seeing as how he's been taken over by aliens, replaced by Skrulls, had his evil side beat the crap of the X-Men while wearing a cape, and turning into Onslaught, what are the odds that that would happen one more time?) sets about trying to help him by vomiting out a lot of technobabble, and upon fixing him (by solving a computer problem--HINT) is captured and thrown in storage. This is supposed to be shocking, but really--as the first time we saw the X-Men they were fighting the other X-Men they were more than willing to kill the living hell out of everyone, so the notion they have some sort of sinister ulterior motive is not all that big a bombshell.
God, this is taking forever. I mean--The X-Men get shot out of their plane and have a big mid-air fight with the other X-Men, then get rescued by the Blackbird, which gets blown up because the X-Men can't have ever have anything nice. Spoiled brats. End Part One, and you'll never know how happy I am to type that.
Part Two, X-Men #80 is a big fight scene and should go faster. The mash-up X-Men let Shadowcat escape because the Grey King is a "formidable intellect," remember? Meanwhile, the X-Men having crash-landed and deciding the whole "flying in a plane thing" is not for them after having two of them destroyed from under them in 6 pages last issue, argue amongst themselves. Rogue is wearing a different costume for God knows what reason. As an aside, I became a Marrow fan for life after these two issue as she spent most every bit of dialogue she got calling them all idiots. She has a point.
The X-Men fight the X-Men over Cape Citadel because the space shuttle is carrying some mutant detecting McGuffin and it's all built up to be this decisive moment in mutant-human relations, but let's call it what it is--the X-Men vs the mash-ups and because the story's almost over, the mash-ups job like little bitches and the X-Men destroy the satellite and save the day. I guess. It's not made terribly clear. Perhaps if I had a "formidable intellect" like the Grey King I could work it out, since he acquits himself like a member of MENSA here.
Oh yeah, the mash-ups are fakes and Xavier is actually Cerebro, which has become sentient because, well why not. The Danger Room will become sentient in an echo of this story many years later. I think the lesson to be learned here is that Charles Xavier always needs the goddamn extended warranty, as X-Tech has a higher failure rate than, say, an X-Box 360. The mash-ups disappear, never to be seen again (more or less--I think they show up one more?) which means we spent two issues fighting fake X-Men who never got built property into real characters, or a credible threat, or much of anything, making the X-Men's victory over them essentially meaningless. And if you're me, you spent $8 to read this thing. Aren't you happy?
Despite the unmerciful epic curb-stomping I gave this story just now, I really do like the "new X-Men" in some strange way, and if given leave to write an X-Book I would probably bring them back but do them as a group of mutant player haters who go around hating on various X-characters.
It would look a bit like this:
But with more spandex.
The funny thing is, this might have worked with a little more space to breathe. You take the original X-Men off the board under mysterious circumstances, add in Professor X recruiting them over the next few issues while the Excalibur folks search for the X-Men and encounter the new X-Men, and then you get the big reveal with Cerebro, and you've set the stage for something with a little more weight behind it.
Instead, they rushed through it with all haste because they wanted Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Shadowcat and Professor X. It all feels a bit artificial really, and if we haven't been reading for years, we're given no compelling reason to care about them--we're just told we should because it's important they're there and they're X-Men, which is exactly the problem with the book now--with a cast of 200 and no set team, it begs the question of just who the X-Men are really supposed to be at the end of the day, because right now it's just Cyclops and Some Guys. If there's no core to build around (like say, a team of seven or so) what do the other hundred and change matter? Unless you have the amount of pages that Shonen Jump has every month, trying to make a 200 character cast work isn't going to, because in trying to make readers give a shit about everyone, they won't give a shit about anyone.
But that's the present. Back in 1998, this will lead to a competent but unexciting run of issues with a few good bits (Magneto getting control of Genosha) and a whole lot of bad bits (The Twelve, good Christ, The Twelve) that culminate with the return of Chris Claremont to the X-books. This goes . . .rather poorly, Chris Claremont's gone in a year and in between Grant Morrison's assumption of control of the book, there's some time to mark and tie up some old business.
And that's where we'll pick up. Join us next time for the X-Men as it was and will never be again, an issue so emblematic of where the book was before Morrison took over, that Morrison used it/parodied it. Next time--X-Men #113, the finale of Eve of Destruction and the end of the X-Men of the 90's. Is there an answer at the end of our nightmare?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Reign of Error
Or, "Random thoughts I had whilst reading X-Men #69 and #72 about the general direction of the X-Franchise from 1997-1999. SPOILER: Down a hole."
Everyone agrees, seemingly, that whatever their feelings about the state of X-Men comics post Chris Claremont, the Age of Apocalypse was a great summer event. And who could blame them? It was an inspired concept, done in the most gutsy way possible (canceling the books and re-launching them under their altered names really carried the spirit of it along) and it had a certain thematic unity that these summer crossover events--requiring as they did an entire legion of creative types to stay on the same page. In all senses of the word, it was a triumph.
And they were never able to do it again.
"Onslaught" came next year, and as previously mentioned it was the kernel of a good idea, which was then walked back, and then the whole thing got hijacked to do Heroes Reborn, and . . .yeah. It was a big awful mess, but on the plus side, it got rid of that imbecilic teenage Iron Man. Unfortunately it replaced it with Whilce Portacio's Iron Man and so it wasn't a perfect turnaround by any means.
But compared to 1997's installment: "Operation Zero Tolerance," it looks like a tightly plotted masterpiece. Oh lord, where do we begin? Shall we begin with the bewildering scheduling that essentially meant that one core book (Uncanny X-Men) pretty much sat the whole thing out, plot points that should have happened in the X-Men books get shunted over to Wolverine and . . .well, let me slow down.
X-Men #69 is the final chapter of "Operation Zero Tolerance," and a perfect distillation of everything that's wrong with this damn crossover. For it is a conclusion that mainly exists as a conclusion in the sense that this is the last time the OZT logo shows up on the cover, as most of the dangling plotlines won't get resolved until next issue.
But sure this will at least provide a climactic battle that will give us a sense of catharsis and so the follow-up story will seem more like a coda after the finale.
Not this comic, folks. What we get is one of the most bewildering, perfunctory, endings to anything ever, and I've read those issues of West Coast Avengers where the Scarlet Witch turns evil, acts all scary, and then in-between issues is all like "Hey guys! I was evil and then I remembered I'm not!" And then they all traveled through time and fought Oort the Living Comet.
So, here's what happens: Iceman leads the most ad hoc team of ad hoc X-men ever (mind, this is including that time when it was Forge, Banshee, Legion and . . .Sunder from the Morlocks?!?) and Sabra, who you will remember from Contest of Champions is Israel's national superhero and has all the powers of a porcupine with a jetpack.
Iceman spends the first page of this issue looking mournfully ahead in the distance as he ice-slides past a positively staggering amount of narrative captions. Accompanying him on his ice-slide are prospective X-Men Ceclia Reyes (who has the twin mutant powers of whining about being a mutant at a rate of 3.0 Claremonts on the Claremont Scale) and also a force field) and Marrow (who pulls out sharp stabby things from her back and is a lower-tier character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2) More on Marrow later.
Anyways, the main reason Iceman's angsting (beyond the fact that Iceman was Scott Lobdell's pet character) is because these four people are all he has for his final strike against Bastion, OZT's incredibly vaguely-defined villain who was supposed to be all mysterious and had a previous connection to the X-Men which was supposed to be this big secret but was something you could piece together fairly easily if you started reading X-Men books in 1988. Bastion is guarded by a whole lotta Prime Sentinels, which are Sentinels, but normal sized and function as sleeper agents.
Let's examine that for a moment: Iceman makes things cold, Cecelia has a force field, Marrow can stab people, and Sabra can shoot little darts at people. They're going to go fight a guy with a bunch of robot good that are presumably heavily armed and armored. All things being equal, if their ambition was to toilet paper Baston's house they'd be set, but anything else . . .man, I dunno.
I'm selling Sabra short. She actually is an agent of the Mossad, which makes her a badass. Her son was killed in a terrorist bombing and . . .y'know, I wonder, looking at this and Contest, I wonder if that's all American comics writers really knew about Israel: Terrorist bombings and the Mossad, full stop. I'm sure more goes on there, it must do--for instance, I bet it rains from time to time, not that we ever hear about that in comics. Contest, with all its heavy-handed stereotyping was published in 1982. This book was published in 1997. Please note how much has changed since these two points in time, won't you?
Anyways, they get to Bastion, fight a little, and talk a LOT. Sweet shit, for all Chris Claremont got shit for character speaking reams of dialogue in the split-second of throwing a punch, get a look at this. Iceman gently knock him around while relating his story of how caring for his father, who was beaten by mutant-hating mobs, the #1 killer of X-Men supporting characters behind pork chops and FEMA.
Then SHIELD shows up and tells Bastion to stand down, and Bastion does. He gets arrested. The end.
No, really, that's how it goes down. Does this seem somewhat hollow? It is. When you combine a hopelessly muddled crossover that has totally blown its schedule written by a writer who didn't want to be there and would quit the X-Books altogether over certain points in the new direction he wasn't crazy about, and add on a resolution that doesn't really solve anything, you end up with the story equivalent of what the kids call today "a big hot mess."
But with the crossover out of the way, the new direction takes hold. One of the baffling ironies about the new direction is that two points in this new direction are Lobdell's (he wanted to see the X-Men stripped of their cool house and Shi'Ar tech and other bits of infrastructure that had, in his regards, moved the X-Men away from what he thought they should be. Plus, Roy Thomas did it back in the Factor Three days, and how much could tastes have changed in 30 years?) and Joe Madureria, who wanted to add a character he'd come up with called Maggott to the team. You can read more about him at the link, but suffice it to say Maggott is probably the most poorly thought-out character in the history of the X-Men, and would be for the entire Marvel Universe, if Rage didn't exist. Maggott can kiss my ass, is all I'm saying.
Anyways, where Lobdell disagreed was with the addition of Marrow to the team (Madureria, who as Paul O'Brien once observed, treated getting out of bed as an option he could take or leave was already off the books having moved to Image to not do Battle Chasers, and probably wouldn't have cared one way or the other even if he wasn't leaving) because Marrow was an avowed terrorists who killed the living shit out of people and terrorists didn't belong in the X-Men.
And this is where I ask, as askingly as I can ask, "Mr. Lobdell, are you out of your damned mind?" Or, to be more succinct--Fucking Magneto, who is like the god damned Bell X-1 of mutant terrorists, who on numerous occasions killed people in cold blood on-panel, sank a nuclear submarine with all hands, and threatened the entire world with a ring of nuclear missiles, and he got to lead the damn X-Men for about twenty issues or so. Or Rogue, who was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who actually took down a superhero with something you could equate to psychic rape (mind you, they did try to finesse that Rogue had never straight up killed anyone, but is that at all plausible?) and did god knows what other damage before she went straight. Jesus, Claremont would have given his eye teeth for a character like her--it was his bread and butter for most of the 80's.
Or, and let me see if I can get this clear in my head. You can willfully screw with people's minds and unleash some freaky psychic entity that kills the Avengers and Fantastic Four; you can run out on your wife and child chasing your back from the dead girlfriend; you can blow up a freaking planet with millions of people and claim it wasn't you by virtue of a dodgy retcon; you can be a former assassin for the government; you can bang an underage girl; you can dress up in a leotard and legwarmers and claim you're a ninja to the laughter of many; you can be a former member of the Marauders who slaughtered tons of mutants; you can be a forever member of the freaking Brotherhood of EVIL FREAKING MUTANTS; You can even be a god damned former pickpocket . . .but Marrow cannot join the X-Men. She's done too much bad shit.
[Hey kids! Match up the moral lapses in the above paragraph with the corresponding X-Man. It's fun, and interactive. Plus, first one to get all of them will get a favourable mention in the next post here at the Prattle]
Never mind the whole idea of the X-Men being moral guardians is a bit dodgy by this point. Prep schools don't usually have strike teams and stealth jets, that's all I'm saying.
Anyways, this causes Lobdell to leave and X-Men gets Joe Kelly as writer, who is busy earning lots of goodwill over on Deadpool that he will spend the rest of his career squandering when he gets to DC and won't shut up about the god damned Elite. Kelly will give it his damndest to make a silk purse out of all this (and annoy me unceasingly with Maggott's Claremont-esque relentless South African slang, which is the thing that finally made me hate Maggott, actually--Lord, do I hate Maggott) and, until his plans are neutered and he eventually departs the series, he actually makes it work.
Meanwhile, over in Uncanny X-Men, Steven Seagle will write a lot of comics about birds, and Chris Bachalo does a mighty good job of making it . . .well, borderline readable on a good day.
But back to Kelly. X-Men #72 is one of those moments where it actually works, because it straight-up addresses the Marrow problem, but not in the expected way of "we will harp on Marrow until she believes in Xavier's dream and joins the X-Cult with all her heart." In fact, the overall conflict is a bit more nuanced than that. It's not a minor classic or anything, but it's that brief moment where this whole "new direction" had a glimmer of possibility.
It's basically one long fight between Wolverine and Marrow, wherein Wolverine's goal is to beat the wiseass out of her--up to this point Marrow has quite enjoying being the shit-stirrer among this X-team and relishes her role as the ugly outsider amongst all the pop-sexy mutants.
To make a long story short, Wolverine finally beats her down and tells her she can stay, but she'll be playing the role of buck private to his drill sergeant (we've seen Wolvie be all alpha-male like this so many time it's a cliche in itself) and after beating her to the floor and taunting her mercilessly about what a failure she is, he reaches out to help her, and you're like "Oh, well, I guess Marrow's turning over a new leaf."
And then she stabs him in the throat.
This naturally causes Wolverine to go utterly apeshit and try to straight-up kill her bony ass, and all the X-Men get involved and Cannonball (who is just about to the point where the whole "he finally joined the X-Men but seemed to get a partial lobotomy off-panel" is wearing off) nails everyone assembled to the wall by saying "uhm, how stupid is it that the best way to sell Marrow on Xavier's dream of integration, peace and tolerance is by having Wolverine kick the shit out of her?"
No one really has an answer, and by this time, Marrow's not there to hear it anyways, having run back to the sewer for a sad little coda that lets you know that she really does want to belong, both with the X-Men and with humanity in general, but hasn't the first clue how to accomplish that.
I'm not saying this redeems the whole Kelly run (which has a slightly inflated relationship in retrospect, but . . .really, guys. It was better than what preceded it and way better than what followed it, but it wasn't really good. Kelly thought bringing back the N'Garai was a good idea, for God's sake and I can't imagine one can be that mistaken about anything) but it did point the way forward and suggest some interesting directions that hadn't been tried for awhile.
Couldn't have that. Kelly and Seagle quit the books and basically script the books on the directions of the editorial office, which culminates in one of my favourite bad stories of all time--The battle with the Cerebro X-Men. I am saving that for its own entry, because it was such a gloriously dumb pair of books and I read them now and laugh and laugh . . .and I would totally bring them back in a hot second if Marvel ever let me anywhere near the X-Men, which all the reason in the world to ensure it never happens.
Nevertheless, I hope you've enjoyed this little peek at one of the most muddled moments in the X-Franchise's history. If ever you needed proof of just what a road paved with good intentions but leading to hell all the same looks like, well . . .I actually have a few more of these to get through, heh heh.
Everyone agrees, seemingly, that whatever their feelings about the state of X-Men comics post Chris Claremont, the Age of Apocalypse was a great summer event. And who could blame them? It was an inspired concept, done in the most gutsy way possible (canceling the books and re-launching them under their altered names really carried the spirit of it along) and it had a certain thematic unity that these summer crossover events--requiring as they did an entire legion of creative types to stay on the same page. In all senses of the word, it was a triumph.
And they were never able to do it again.
"Onslaught" came next year, and as previously mentioned it was the kernel of a good idea, which was then walked back, and then the whole thing got hijacked to do Heroes Reborn, and . . .yeah. It was a big awful mess, but on the plus side, it got rid of that imbecilic teenage Iron Man. Unfortunately it replaced it with Whilce Portacio's Iron Man and so it wasn't a perfect turnaround by any means.
But compared to 1997's installment: "Operation Zero Tolerance," it looks like a tightly plotted masterpiece. Oh lord, where do we begin? Shall we begin with the bewildering scheduling that essentially meant that one core book (Uncanny X-Men) pretty much sat the whole thing out, plot points that should have happened in the X-Men books get shunted over to Wolverine and . . .well, let me slow down.
X-Men #69 is the final chapter of "Operation Zero Tolerance," and a perfect distillation of everything that's wrong with this damn crossover. For it is a conclusion that mainly exists as a conclusion in the sense that this is the last time the OZT logo shows up on the cover, as most of the dangling plotlines won't get resolved until next issue.
But sure this will at least provide a climactic battle that will give us a sense of catharsis and so the follow-up story will seem more like a coda after the finale.
Not this comic, folks. What we get is one of the most bewildering, perfunctory, endings to anything ever, and I've read those issues of West Coast Avengers where the Scarlet Witch turns evil, acts all scary, and then in-between issues is all like "Hey guys! I was evil and then I remembered I'm not!" And then they all traveled through time and fought Oort the Living Comet.
So, here's what happens: Iceman leads the most ad hoc team of ad hoc X-men ever (mind, this is including that time when it was Forge, Banshee, Legion and . . .Sunder from the Morlocks?!?) and Sabra, who you will remember from Contest of Champions is Israel's national superhero and has all the powers of a porcupine with a jetpack.
Iceman spends the first page of this issue looking mournfully ahead in the distance as he ice-slides past a positively staggering amount of narrative captions. Accompanying him on his ice-slide are prospective X-Men Ceclia Reyes (who has the twin mutant powers of whining about being a mutant at a rate of 3.0 Claremonts on the Claremont Scale) and also a force field) and Marrow (who pulls out sharp stabby things from her back and is a lower-tier character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2) More on Marrow later.
Anyways, the main reason Iceman's angsting (beyond the fact that Iceman was Scott Lobdell's pet character) is because these four people are all he has for his final strike against Bastion, OZT's incredibly vaguely-defined villain who was supposed to be all mysterious and had a previous connection to the X-Men which was supposed to be this big secret but was something you could piece together fairly easily if you started reading X-Men books in 1988. Bastion is guarded by a whole lotta Prime Sentinels, which are Sentinels, but normal sized and function as sleeper agents.
Let's examine that for a moment: Iceman makes things cold, Cecelia has a force field, Marrow can stab people, and Sabra can shoot little darts at people. They're going to go fight a guy with a bunch of robot good that are presumably heavily armed and armored. All things being equal, if their ambition was to toilet paper Baston's house they'd be set, but anything else . . .man, I dunno.
I'm selling Sabra short. She actually is an agent of the Mossad, which makes her a badass. Her son was killed in a terrorist bombing and . . .y'know, I wonder, looking at this and Contest, I wonder if that's all American comics writers really knew about Israel: Terrorist bombings and the Mossad, full stop. I'm sure more goes on there, it must do--for instance, I bet it rains from time to time, not that we ever hear about that in comics. Contest, with all its heavy-handed stereotyping was published in 1982. This book was published in 1997. Please note how much has changed since these two points in time, won't you?
Anyways, they get to Bastion, fight a little, and talk a LOT. Sweet shit, for all Chris Claremont got shit for character speaking reams of dialogue in the split-second of throwing a punch, get a look at this. Iceman gently knock him around while relating his story of how caring for his father, who was beaten by mutant-hating mobs, the #1 killer of X-Men supporting characters behind pork chops and FEMA.
Then SHIELD shows up and tells Bastion to stand down, and Bastion does. He gets arrested. The end.
No, really, that's how it goes down. Does this seem somewhat hollow? It is. When you combine a hopelessly muddled crossover that has totally blown its schedule written by a writer who didn't want to be there and would quit the X-Books altogether over certain points in the new direction he wasn't crazy about, and add on a resolution that doesn't really solve anything, you end up with the story equivalent of what the kids call today "a big hot mess."
But with the crossover out of the way, the new direction takes hold. One of the baffling ironies about the new direction is that two points in this new direction are Lobdell's (he wanted to see the X-Men stripped of their cool house and Shi'Ar tech and other bits of infrastructure that had, in his regards, moved the X-Men away from what he thought they should be. Plus, Roy Thomas did it back in the Factor Three days, and how much could tastes have changed in 30 years?) and Joe Madureria, who wanted to add a character he'd come up with called Maggott to the team. You can read more about him at the link, but suffice it to say Maggott is probably the most poorly thought-out character in the history of the X-Men, and would be for the entire Marvel Universe, if Rage didn't exist. Maggott can kiss my ass, is all I'm saying.
Anyways, where Lobdell disagreed was with the addition of Marrow to the team (Madureria, who as Paul O'Brien once observed, treated getting out of bed as an option he could take or leave was already off the books having moved to Image to not do Battle Chasers, and probably wouldn't have cared one way or the other even if he wasn't leaving) because Marrow was an avowed terrorists who killed the living shit out of people and terrorists didn't belong in the X-Men.
And this is where I ask, as askingly as I can ask, "Mr. Lobdell, are you out of your damned mind?" Or, to be more succinct--Fucking Magneto, who is like the god damned Bell X-1 of mutant terrorists, who on numerous occasions killed people in cold blood on-panel, sank a nuclear submarine with all hands, and threatened the entire world with a ring of nuclear missiles, and he got to lead the damn X-Men for about twenty issues or so. Or Rogue, who was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who actually took down a superhero with something you could equate to psychic rape (mind you, they did try to finesse that Rogue had never straight up killed anyone, but is that at all plausible?) and did god knows what other damage before she went straight. Jesus, Claremont would have given his eye teeth for a character like her--it was his bread and butter for most of the 80's.
Or, and let me see if I can get this clear in my head. You can willfully screw with people's minds and unleash some freaky psychic entity that kills the Avengers and Fantastic Four; you can run out on your wife and child chasing your back from the dead girlfriend; you can blow up a freaking planet with millions of people and claim it wasn't you by virtue of a dodgy retcon; you can be a former assassin for the government; you can bang an underage girl; you can dress up in a leotard and legwarmers and claim you're a ninja to the laughter of many; you can be a former member of the Marauders who slaughtered tons of mutants; you can be a forever member of the freaking Brotherhood of EVIL FREAKING MUTANTS; You can even be a god damned former pickpocket . . .but Marrow cannot join the X-Men. She's done too much bad shit.
[Hey kids! Match up the moral lapses in the above paragraph with the corresponding X-Man. It's fun, and interactive. Plus, first one to get all of them will get a favourable mention in the next post here at the Prattle]
Never mind the whole idea of the X-Men being moral guardians is a bit dodgy by this point. Prep schools don't usually have strike teams and stealth jets, that's all I'm saying.
Anyways, this causes Lobdell to leave and X-Men gets Joe Kelly as writer, who is busy earning lots of goodwill over on Deadpool that he will spend the rest of his career squandering when he gets to DC and won't shut up about the god damned Elite. Kelly will give it his damndest to make a silk purse out of all this (and annoy me unceasingly with Maggott's Claremont-esque relentless South African slang, which is the thing that finally made me hate Maggott, actually--Lord, do I hate Maggott) and, until his plans are neutered and he eventually departs the series, he actually makes it work.
Meanwhile, over in Uncanny X-Men, Steven Seagle will write a lot of comics about birds, and Chris Bachalo does a mighty good job of making it . . .well, borderline readable on a good day.
But back to Kelly. X-Men #72 is one of those moments where it actually works, because it straight-up addresses the Marrow problem, but not in the expected way of "we will harp on Marrow until she believes in Xavier's dream and joins the X-Cult with all her heart." In fact, the overall conflict is a bit more nuanced than that. It's not a minor classic or anything, but it's that brief moment where this whole "new direction" had a glimmer of possibility.
It's basically one long fight between Wolverine and Marrow, wherein Wolverine's goal is to beat the wiseass out of her--up to this point Marrow has quite enjoying being the shit-stirrer among this X-team and relishes her role as the ugly outsider amongst all the pop-sexy mutants.
To make a long story short, Wolverine finally beats her down and tells her she can stay, but she'll be playing the role of buck private to his drill sergeant (we've seen Wolvie be all alpha-male like this so many time it's a cliche in itself) and after beating her to the floor and taunting her mercilessly about what a failure she is, he reaches out to help her, and you're like "Oh, well, I guess Marrow's turning over a new leaf."
And then she stabs him in the throat.
This naturally causes Wolverine to go utterly apeshit and try to straight-up kill her bony ass, and all the X-Men get involved and Cannonball (who is just about to the point where the whole "he finally joined the X-Men but seemed to get a partial lobotomy off-panel" is wearing off) nails everyone assembled to the wall by saying "uhm, how stupid is it that the best way to sell Marrow on Xavier's dream of integration, peace and tolerance is by having Wolverine kick the shit out of her?"
No one really has an answer, and by this time, Marrow's not there to hear it anyways, having run back to the sewer for a sad little coda that lets you know that she really does want to belong, both with the X-Men and with humanity in general, but hasn't the first clue how to accomplish that.
I'm not saying this redeems the whole Kelly run (which has a slightly inflated relationship in retrospect, but . . .really, guys. It was better than what preceded it and way better than what followed it, but it wasn't really good. Kelly thought bringing back the N'Garai was a good idea, for God's sake and I can't imagine one can be that mistaken about anything) but it did point the way forward and suggest some interesting directions that hadn't been tried for awhile.
Couldn't have that. Kelly and Seagle quit the books and basically script the books on the directions of the editorial office, which culminates in one of my favourite bad stories of all time--The battle with the Cerebro X-Men. I am saving that for its own entry, because it was such a gloriously dumb pair of books and I read them now and laugh and laugh . . .and I would totally bring them back in a hot second if Marvel ever let me anywhere near the X-Men, which all the reason in the world to ensure it never happens.
Nevertheless, I hope you've enjoyed this little peek at one of the most muddled moments in the X-Franchise's history. If ever you needed proof of just what a road paved with good intentions but leading to hell all the same looks like, well . . .I actually have a few more of these to get through, heh heh.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
I Read This--X-MEN: THE SHATTERING
The conventional wisdom says that the X-Books went completely off the rails when Chris Claremont left. That any forward momentum in the story department had been sacrificed on the altar of the hot artists of the 90's who, ironically, almost immediately packed up and went to form Image, and proceeded to make lots of money doing terribly little.
The X-Books, meanwhile, in the hands on Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell (mostly) went in a more conservative and workmanlike direction. I've often wondered if the mostly status quo early to middle 90's for the books wasn't a reaction against what happened with the Image boys--perhaps handing over unchallenged power and profit to rising young stars who immediately bolted for greener pastures made them a bit gun-shy about creating new stars that might presumably follow in the Image founder's footsteps, and so Nicieza and Lobdell were seen as safe hands, handed the keys, and warned not to give away the farm or anything and off they went.
Not that this was a creatively flat period for the books--after all this was the time of Age of Apocalypse--but generally one could pick up an X-Book in those days and know what you were getting--able plotting that mostly kept all the big plots ticking over and character who were drawn to look like they were constantly in pain (Andy Kubert on X-Men) and characters who were drawn by whatever fill-in artist they could grab on short notice (Uncanny X-Men) For people who liked that sort of thing, they would find that it was the sort of thing that they liked.
Of course, as Lobdell's tenure was winding down, they were pushing against the grain somewhat. Onslaught was initially an attempt to bring some darker shadings to the previously saintly (more or less) character if Professor X before it was hijacked by Marvel editorial into something entirely else. Operation: Zero Tolerance was, initially and attempt to bring a little bit of jeopardy into the X-Men's world by stripping away some of the accumulated trappings like Shi'ar technology and fancy planes and shake up the team by introducing new characters. It never really came to much, but Lobdell did try to kick things into a new place on the way out the door.
But no one much worried. The replacement writers, Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle, had a tremendous amount of buzz from works elsewhere, and there was a real sense of anticipation to see what they'd do with a franchise that seemed resolved to play it safe whenever possible. Of course, that was more or less nipped in the bud by editorial and replaced with a bizarre, borderline incomprehensible storyline featuring Cerebro gaining sentience (this kind of thing happens a lot with X-Men tech) and creating his own team of X-Men who . . .look, it's really not terribly important. Suffice it to say, from 1998-2000 things will be, at best, a little confused for the books.
It's not all bad, of course, Magneto gets to take over Genosha (having long outlived its purpose as a rather obvious Apartheid metaphor, something had to be done with it) which leads to a great moment where the X-Men have an existential crisis, as having only a mansion to offer as a mutant sanctuary when the opposition has a whole damn country to offer mutants. But by and large, it's mostly just lurching from one thing to another. Paul O'Brien has a certain affection for the ascension of Alan Davis to writer of both titles, but I myself wonder if it wasn't just because things finally seemed to be on some sort of track and it wasn't just spinning wheels anymore.
Anyway, this all leads, more of less to The Shattering, a crossover that leads into another crossover (The Twelve) and is less a coherent story in its own right and a weird bit of sausage--half of it is occupied with the fallout of plotlines before (wherein the X-Men visited a planet full of Skrulls) and the rest turns on stuff that hasn't happened yet (Apocalypse is slowly gathering his forces in the background until about halfway through) Read as a whole, it doesn't make a terrible amount of sense, mostly because it's a deck clearing exercise. It would hardly be remembered at all (none of it's all that neccessary to understand The Twelve, which was a mess all its own, of course) That something like this would be published means almost certainly, other "barely there" crossovers like Dream's End (the 2000 crossover. A little footnote here--"Dream's End" was also the original name for this crossover, but it's now been renamed "The Shattering" because 1) this is all very confusing enough as it is and 2) "The Shattering" was on the cover of the first issue and hey presto, they had a title for this trade after all) and Eve of Destruction should be collected any day now. Lord, think of the poor trees.
Anyways, the Shattering features a lot of running hither and yon and some rather terrible artwork from Adam Kubert, who, it appears, was experimenting with drawing people as crosshatched gelatinous blobs, Alan Davis whose work is very reliably clean and pleasing to the eye, Brandon Peterson, who, it can be said, does the best with what he's got, as really it seems everyone is doing here.
To the extent that this mess can be termed to have anything approaching a coherent plot, it's this--Professor X is acting all paranoid and drilling the X-Men relentlessly, causing discord with the team. There's a guy named Death walking around killing people with a sword. Phoenix and Cyclops (in one of the few good things about this run of issues) begin to see the ship sinking and make arrangements to get off only to be dragged back in, Mikhail Rasputin shows up again for confused reasons (a leitmotif that's synonymous with the character, really) Professor X disbands the X-Men and Death kills Wolverine, who turns out to be a Skrull (the other good thing about this run--like the Thunderbolts thing, this was one of the few times Marvel managed to keep a secret successfully) and another ad hoc X-Team is formed so everyone can get together in time for the Twelve to start.
Ladies and gentlemen, if that sounded confusing, at least you didn't have to read the damn thing. Welcome, well and truly, to the nadir of the X-men as a franchise, wherein the powers that be will be so desperate that that Claremont returning to fix this mess will seem like a blessing (which creates yet another nadir, by the way) and finally, two or so years later, Grant Morrison comes in and makes something interesting happen.
I'm not entirely certain why Marvel collected this, short of to cater to the market share of people like me who enjoy page after page of metaphorical car wrecks and find a peculiar fascination in watching venerable franchises stumble drunkenly down blind alleys like this. It's odd that in a time when the Heroes Return stuff was exhibiting a flowering of creativity that the X-Books sort of imploded like this, but given how much of it can be laid at the feet of editorial mandates, it's surely the end result of too many cooks making . . .well, something that can be published 12 years later and marvelled at as a living example of just how wrong-headed things were back in the day.
In short, while this thick volume is ideal for propping up wobbly tables, I wouldn't recommend reading it, unless you find self-flagellation fun, or you're a comics blogger or some other kind of highly-evolved neurotic.
The X-Books, meanwhile, in the hands on Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell (mostly) went in a more conservative and workmanlike direction. I've often wondered if the mostly status quo early to middle 90's for the books wasn't a reaction against what happened with the Image boys--perhaps handing over unchallenged power and profit to rising young stars who immediately bolted for greener pastures made them a bit gun-shy about creating new stars that might presumably follow in the Image founder's footsteps, and so Nicieza and Lobdell were seen as safe hands, handed the keys, and warned not to give away the farm or anything and off they went.
Not that this was a creatively flat period for the books--after all this was the time of Age of Apocalypse--but generally one could pick up an X-Book in those days and know what you were getting--able plotting that mostly kept all the big plots ticking over and character who were drawn to look like they were constantly in pain (Andy Kubert on X-Men) and characters who were drawn by whatever fill-in artist they could grab on short notice (Uncanny X-Men) For people who liked that sort of thing, they would find that it was the sort of thing that they liked.
Of course, as Lobdell's tenure was winding down, they were pushing against the grain somewhat. Onslaught was initially an attempt to bring some darker shadings to the previously saintly (more or less) character if Professor X before it was hijacked by Marvel editorial into something entirely else. Operation: Zero Tolerance was, initially and attempt to bring a little bit of jeopardy into the X-Men's world by stripping away some of the accumulated trappings like Shi'ar technology and fancy planes and shake up the team by introducing new characters. It never really came to much, but Lobdell did try to kick things into a new place on the way out the door.
But no one much worried. The replacement writers, Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle, had a tremendous amount of buzz from works elsewhere, and there was a real sense of anticipation to see what they'd do with a franchise that seemed resolved to play it safe whenever possible. Of course, that was more or less nipped in the bud by editorial and replaced with a bizarre, borderline incomprehensible storyline featuring Cerebro gaining sentience (this kind of thing happens a lot with X-Men tech) and creating his own team of X-Men who . . .look, it's really not terribly important. Suffice it to say, from 1998-2000 things will be, at best, a little confused for the books.
It's not all bad, of course, Magneto gets to take over Genosha (having long outlived its purpose as a rather obvious Apartheid metaphor, something had to be done with it) which leads to a great moment where the X-Men have an existential crisis, as having only a mansion to offer as a mutant sanctuary when the opposition has a whole damn country to offer mutants. But by and large, it's mostly just lurching from one thing to another. Paul O'Brien has a certain affection for the ascension of Alan Davis to writer of both titles, but I myself wonder if it wasn't just because things finally seemed to be on some sort of track and it wasn't just spinning wheels anymore.
Anyway, this all leads, more of less to The Shattering, a crossover that leads into another crossover (The Twelve) and is less a coherent story in its own right and a weird bit of sausage--half of it is occupied with the fallout of plotlines before (wherein the X-Men visited a planet full of Skrulls) and the rest turns on stuff that hasn't happened yet (Apocalypse is slowly gathering his forces in the background until about halfway through) Read as a whole, it doesn't make a terrible amount of sense, mostly because it's a deck clearing exercise. It would hardly be remembered at all (none of it's all that neccessary to understand The Twelve, which was a mess all its own, of course) That something like this would be published means almost certainly, other "barely there" crossovers like Dream's End (the 2000 crossover. A little footnote here--"Dream's End" was also the original name for this crossover, but it's now been renamed "The Shattering" because 1) this is all very confusing enough as it is and 2) "The Shattering" was on the cover of the first issue and hey presto, they had a title for this trade after all) and Eve of Destruction should be collected any day now. Lord, think of the poor trees.
Anyways, the Shattering features a lot of running hither and yon and some rather terrible artwork from Adam Kubert, who, it appears, was experimenting with drawing people as crosshatched gelatinous blobs, Alan Davis whose work is very reliably clean and pleasing to the eye, Brandon Peterson, who, it can be said, does the best with what he's got, as really it seems everyone is doing here.
To the extent that this mess can be termed to have anything approaching a coherent plot, it's this--Professor X is acting all paranoid and drilling the X-Men relentlessly, causing discord with the team. There's a guy named Death walking around killing people with a sword. Phoenix and Cyclops (in one of the few good things about this run of issues) begin to see the ship sinking and make arrangements to get off only to be dragged back in, Mikhail Rasputin shows up again for confused reasons (a leitmotif that's synonymous with the character, really) Professor X disbands the X-Men and Death kills Wolverine, who turns out to be a Skrull (the other good thing about this run--like the Thunderbolts thing, this was one of the few times Marvel managed to keep a secret successfully) and another ad hoc X-Team is formed so everyone can get together in time for the Twelve to start.
Ladies and gentlemen, if that sounded confusing, at least you didn't have to read the damn thing. Welcome, well and truly, to the nadir of the X-men as a franchise, wherein the powers that be will be so desperate that that Claremont returning to fix this mess will seem like a blessing (which creates yet another nadir, by the way) and finally, two or so years later, Grant Morrison comes in and makes something interesting happen.
I'm not entirely certain why Marvel collected this, short of to cater to the market share of people like me who enjoy page after page of metaphorical car wrecks and find a peculiar fascination in watching venerable franchises stumble drunkenly down blind alleys like this. It's odd that in a time when the Heroes Return stuff was exhibiting a flowering of creativity that the X-Books sort of imploded like this, but given how much of it can be laid at the feet of editorial mandates, it's surely the end result of too many cooks making . . .well, something that can be published 12 years later and marvelled at as a living example of just how wrong-headed things were back in the day.
In short, while this thick volume is ideal for propping up wobbly tables, I wouldn't recommend reading it, unless you find self-flagellation fun, or you're a comics blogger or some other kind of highly-evolved neurotic.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
