The X-Axis - 1 February 2009
Round-up time. You'll find reviews of X-Men: Worlds Apart and X-Force #11 below, and you can check the podcast for full reviews of Dark Avengers #1, Battlefields: Dear Billy #1 and Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1. And that doesn't leave much, actually...
Umbrella Academy: Dallas #3 - Number Five explains what happened to him, and why he's a ten-year-old boy. It's another great issue; Umbrella Academy may be absurd, but it certainly understands what makes the superhero genre appealing, better than a lot of titles that get mired in the established trappings. There's a man with a goldfish tank for a head, for god's sake! Where else do you get that? Blissfully ridiculous in all the right ways, and still balancing that with enough of a dark undercurrent to make the story work. You've got to love it.
Wolverine: First Class #11 - This is the second part of a story guest starring Jack Russell, the star of short-lived seventies series Werewolf By Night. As I've said before, I fear this series (and X-Men: First Class) may be too over-reliant on guest stars in lieu of really telling stories about the characters. Still, it's Wolverine turning into a werewolf and harrassing Kodak, which is quite good fun. And it uses Kitty well as a teenage sidekick, with credit due to artist Hugo Petrus, who actually makes her look like a teenager. Perfectly fine.
Young X-Men #10 - The origin story of Cipher, who it turns out actually exists. Well, it's not really her origin story - it's an explanation that she's apparently been hanging around for ages, we just haven't been able to see her. It's a bit of a stretch, but the book just about gets away with the idea that she's a "need-to-know" character who the Young X-Men, well, didn't need to know about, because they don't much matter. Still, now that we know the book is being axed in two issues time, the fact that we're still at the stage of introducing the cast can only seem academic.
Umbrella Academy: Dallas #3 - Number Five explains what happened to him, and why he's a ten-year-old boy. It's another great issue; Umbrella Academy may be absurd, but it certainly understands what makes the superhero genre appealing, better than a lot of titles that get mired in the established trappings. There's a man with a goldfish tank for a head, for god's sake! Where else do you get that? Blissfully ridiculous in all the right ways, and still balancing that with enough of a dark undercurrent to make the story work. You've got to love it.
Wolverine: First Class #11 - This is the second part of a story guest starring Jack Russell, the star of short-lived seventies series Werewolf By Night. As I've said before, I fear this series (and X-Men: First Class) may be too over-reliant on guest stars in lieu of really telling stories about the characters. Still, it's Wolverine turning into a werewolf and harrassing Kodak, which is quite good fun. And it uses Kitty well as a teenage sidekick, with credit due to artist Hugo Petrus, who actually makes her look like a teenager. Perfectly fine.
Young X-Men #10 - The origin story of Cipher, who it turns out actually exists. Well, it's not really her origin story - it's an explanation that she's apparently been hanging around for ages, we just haven't been able to see her. It's a bit of a stretch, but the book just about gets away with the idea that she's a "need-to-know" character who the Young X-Men, well, didn't need to know about, because they don't much matter. Still, now that we know the book is being axed in two issues time, the fact that we're still at the stage of introducing the cast can only seem academic.
posted by Paul O'Brien at 9:49 pm
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