The X-Axis - 1 November 2009

Right, then... I am honestly, definitely, genuinely going to catch up on reviewing some recently-completed storylines. There's a pile of them building up next to my desk, "The Adamantium Men" from Wolverine: Weapon X #1-5, "Romulus" from Wolverine: Origins #37-40 and the GeNext United miniseries being particularly overdue.

But first, let's round up this week's books. By the way, my copy of the X-Necrosha one-shot got delayed, so I'll review it next week. However, since Marvel saw fit to ship seven other X-books this week, I think I'll survive. (Marvel claim they try not to ship everything in a single week. Check the January 2010 solicits: week three features both Hulk and Incredible Hulk, both Uncanny X-Men and X-Men: Legacy, both Wolverine: Origins and Wolverine: Weapon X, and both Dark Avengers and Mighty Avengers. And you might have thought that Web of Spider-Man would ship in the one week of the month when Amazing Spider-Man doesn't... but you'd be wrong. If this is Marvel trying, I dread to think what would happen if they started phoning it in.)

Dark Avengers: Ares #1 - Intriguingly, this isn't a Dark Reign tie-in. Given that Marvel generally seem prepared to slap the logo on anything with a Norman Osborn cameo, this is remarkable restraint. Kieron Gillen and Manuel Garcia are responsible for this miniseries. It's a simple idea: Ares is the god of war, Norman Osborn asks him to train up some H.A.M.M.E.R. soldiers, and so Ares gets to play drill instructor. And since Ares is only marginally saner than Lobo, that's clearly a recipe for disaster. This first issue is mainly black comedy with the bemused soldiers trying to make sense of their maniac commander, with the plot rearing its head on the last two pages. And since it's only a three-issue miniseries, you might think that's leaving it a bit late. But the plot's secondary, really. The joke is Ares as drill instructor; the point is about the moulding of soldiers, and there's plenty of material about that. It's brazenly over the top, but so it should be - it's an Ares comic. Fun reading.

Dark Reign: The List - Wolverine #1 - The Dark Reign: The List one-shots are mildly bemusing. They were hyped as something important to the plot of "Dark Reign", but in practice they seem to be just filler stories, albeit by the writers of the characters in question. This one-shot, from Wolverine: Weapon X writer Jason Aaron and artist Esad Ribic, is barely even a Wolverine story. Norman Osborn, in full-blown raving maniac mode, decides to try and capture the World - the place from Grant Morrison's New X-Men run where later versions of the Weapon X Project were based. Marvel Boy, Wolverine and Fantomex head off to stop them. And then Wolverine gets mind-controlled almost immediately, so really, he's hardly in the issue.

Now, here's the odd thing. Aaron's Morrisonesque high concept is that Wolverine and the other inhabitants of the World have been brainwashed by a sort of artificial religion - "a virus that attacks the faith reserves." As such, it only works on people with existing religious beliefs, which is why the cynical atheists Fantomex and Marvel Boy are unaffected. The oddity here is that Aaron evidently sees Wolverine as being religious, even though he's claimed otherwise before. And in fact, the issue is rounded out with a reprint of "A Good Man", a back-up strip from Wolverine #175 which was Aaron's first published work. He won some sort of contest, as I recall. That story likewise hinges on the idea of Wolverine as religious, which makes it a smart pairing for the lead strip, but also results in two stories which, for my money, rather miss the point of the character. (To be honest, I have a sneaking suspicion that Aaron doesn't really understand the concept of idealism without religion.)

Still, all this is basically window dressing for a comic where sarcastic people run around fighting cyborg zombies, so let's not get too worked up about its shaky psychology. It's passably enjoyable, but it's hardly essential reading; Aaron's done better action romps elsewhere, and he's written a better Wolverine story this week.

Gotham City Sirens #5 - Well... hmm. The basic idea here is to pit Harley Quinn and co against a version of the Silver Age Joker, from back when he was goofy and ridiculous and essentially harmless. Which kind of makes sense, because Harley fits better with that version of the Joker. Except of course the Joker's been a cold-blooded psychopath for years, and so to square that circle, Paul Dini ends up reviving... a character from Batman #186 (November 1966). I mean, we're talking about a seriously obscure reveal here. And I'm not altogether sure it works, because part of the problem is that Dini still wants this version of the Joker to be a genuine threat rather than a cornball throwback, so he's trying to have his cake and eat it. I can see why the wider interests of consistency might rule it out, but I actually preferred the approach of previous issues, that the Joker was simply acting that way because Harley was involved.

Jack of Fables #39 - In which Jack Frost continues to become a proper hero, and our Jack continues to become even less of one. And... you know, it's a plot-advancing chapter in the middle of a four-parter, and beyond that there isn't a great deal to say about it. The basic idea of Jack Frost becoming a traditional fairy tale hero pretty much dictates that the story has to be somewhat predictable, which might be the problem with this issue. As a storyline, it really depends on whether they've got a clever idea to draw together the two seemingly unrelated plot strands in the concluding part next month.

Marvel Divas #4 - "Who cares what we're called?" someone asks in the final panel. Defensive much? And the reality is that somebody should have cared what they were called, because Marvel Divas isn't just a bad name for a miniseries, it's an embarrassingly, cringe-inducingly terribly name for a miniseries. The actual content has been much better than you'd expect. That's not to say that it's a lost classic which has slipped under the radar, but artist Tonci Zonic has done great work throughout. Okay, Daimon Hellstrom's acting a million miles out of character for the benefit of the plot, but I'm prepared to let that one slide. And yes, the cancer stuff was a bit disease-of-the-week. But it's had some good moments, the art is strong, the story is acceptable, and the whole thing comes in on the right side of average. Fans of the characters will probably have enjoyed this one.

New Mutants #6 - It's a Necrosha-X tie-in, which means that a dead hero rises from the grave as a mind-controlled zombie and fights... hold on, haven't I seen this somewhere before? Blackest Something? Anyway, the New Mutants don't have that many dead characters to revive, so naturally it's Cypher. And Cypher's been dead for... what, twenty years now? Seriously, if there's that many readers still out there who care about Cypher being brought back from the dead, it's probably time to close the shutters and move into a different line of work. Fortunately, Zeb Wells is smart enough not to peril his story on 80s nostalgia. Instead, most of the issue is devoted to Cypher stalking the New Mutants as they have their big reunion with Professor X, the idea being that the super-powered Cypher can interpret everything, and so offers a running translation on the subtext of everything people say and do. And that's a neat gimmick, well executed. I can't say I'm particularly grabbed by Blackest X as a concept - if there's any mileage in "heroes fight mind-controlled dead friends", DC already expended it. But this issue does manae to do something clever and worthwhile with Cypher's powers, which is about enough to justify the story.

Wolverine: First Class #20 - Talking of pointless nostalgia, this issue guest stars Captain Marvel. It's a two-parter with Skrulls, and while the first half was good, this issue just gets distracted by a guest star who we're obviously meant to think is pretty cool. And it never really persuades me of that. It comes across as a story where we're all meant to go "Ooh, Captain Marvel" - but if this is an all-ages comic then it should hardly be counting on familiarity with a character whose heyday was in the mid-seventies. Decidedly underwhelming.

Wolverine: Weapon X #6 - The book begins its second arc, and weirdness abounds. Logan's in a mental institution, being treated for his delusions that he's a superhero. Now, obviously, we all know that the Marvel Universe won't turn out to be a hallucination. That's not the point. The trick with a story like this is to make it as weird as possible, and generally maximise the WTF element. Jason Aaron and Yanick Paquette pull that off - the institution is done in a way that's so obviously bogus that it only serves to heighten the creepiness, almost as though the characters are wandering around a half-finished set. I do wonder whether four issues is a bit long for a storyline like this, but we'll see how it goes.

X-Factor #50 - Only Marvel would try to get away with publishing two anniversary issues in a row. Yes, this is issue #50, and the next one is issue #200. I know it doesn't really matter, but if you're going to use it as a marketing tool, don't draw attention to the fact that it's all bullshit! Conceal it at all costs! Anyway, this is the long-awaited conclusion of a complicated time-travel storyline that's been going without a break since issue #40. Like a lot of people, I rather lost patience with this arc a while ago, but I'll settle down and re-read the whole thing to see if it works any better as a collection. As for this final issue, I'm mainly just relieved that it's over, but there is a clever twist to explain Layla's "knows stuff" schtick. The series seems to have completely forgotten that her original original mutant power was to advance the plot of House of M, but hey, I wouldn't be reminding people about that either, if I was them.

X-Force #20 - The final part of "Not Forgotten", and again, I'll review the arc once I've re-read the whole thing. Basically, it's another issue of X-23 solving problems with ultraviolence. But then that's her thing. I do wonder whether it's time to advance her character arc and humanise her a little bit more, but then again the idea that X-23's been programmed to kill and has no real-world life experience is what makes her distinctive. Tone it down too much and she becomes Wolverine Lass, something that she presently manages to avoid. (Come to think of it, why doesn't X-23 figure into the plot of Wolverine: Origins? Not that I want her to, but logically, she should, shouldn't she?) The action is endearingly over the top, and it works in large part because Mike Choi and Sonia Oback's art manages to prettify it so much - though it's unfortunate that they make X-23, Morales and Kimura look so similar.

X-Men Forever #10 - What on earth...? This is the funeral of Wolverine, who apparently really is dead in Chris Claremont's alternate reality series. And so a bunch of heroes show up to tell us what a great bloke he was. Much as you'd expect, really. What's puzzling is that Claremont seems to be straying even further from the original premise of the series. Officially, the idea is that Claremont is picking up his original run on Uncanny X-Men from where he left off in 1991. So he's ignoring revelations that appeared after 1991, which is fair enough. And he's doing things like killing Wolverine which would never have been allowed in 1991, which is arguably against the spirit of the series, but still kind of acceptable. But now it turns out that this world doesn't have a Cable, and that a whole bunch of New Mutants stories apparently didn't happen either. Oh, and Warren isn't blue. At which point, not only are we contradicting stories that came out before Claremont left the series, we're contradicting stories that were acknowledged in the pages of Uncanny X-Men. This is all very weird, and it appears to be deliberately confusing - the closing scene contains no intrinsic drama whatsoever, but serves as a cliffhanger by foregrounding what otherwise seems to be a ginormous continuity error. We seem to be on a tipping point where the book either becomes horribly self-indulgent, or turns into a bizarre metatextual game, both of which bear little resemblance to the supposed concept of the book. Curiouser and curiouser... and yet I can't help wondering where on earth Claremont could be going with this. So he's still got my attention.

The X-Axis - 27 September 2009

Thank heavens for Diamond UK. This would have been a rather heavy week for me, but fortunately the brave distributors have managed to lose Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine: Origins (along with six other Marvel books). Apparently we'll get them next week, once everyone at the warehouse has had a thorough search behind the sofa. But for once, Diamond have actually done Marvel a favour, since that still leaves us with two X-Men books and two Wolverine books. Three of each seems a touch excessive even by Marvel's notably unrestrained standards.

Anyway, the blog should be back to something approaching regular service now. So that long-promised X-Men Forever review will be on its way shortly, as will the round-up of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's "Old Man Logan" story, which ended with this week's Giant-Size Wolverine: Old Man Logan one-shot. I might also do a full-length review of the "Utopia" crossover - by which I mean, I can't honestly think of much more to say about it, but I'll read it again and see what comes to mind.

Also out this week...

Dark Reign: The List - X-Men - Now, I haven't ordered any of the other List one-shots, but I could have sworn I remember some hype suggesting that they were meant to be important to the plot somewhere or other. What actually happens here is that Norman Osborn throws a tantrum about Namor's betrayal, and sends a big monster to kill the Atlanteans, leading to the obligatory fight. And naturally, it all ends in another stalemate, since nobody can win outright at this stage. (Which is turning out to be the big problem with most Dark Reign stories: the creators are having tremendous difficulty convincing me that something might happen.) To be honest, it all feels a bit peripheral, as if somebody wanted to pump out a few more one-shots based on the Dark Reign set-up - and since we've just come out of an X-Men versus Norman storyline, it seems premature to do it again.

That said, this is more of a Namor story than an X-Men one, so the emhasis is slightly different. And it's got art by Alan Davis, which is a selling point in my book - especially because he's one of the remarkably few artists who's figured out that Atlanteans don't walk, they swim, and whose Atlantis is interesting to look at as a result. As a fight story where the X-Men and Namor battle a sea monster, it's pretty good - but if this is typical of the List books, I don't see how they're advancing the wider plot, except perhaps by having Norman be slightly madder than usual.

Dark X-Men: The Confession - This rather odd one-shot is the pay-off for a long-running subplot about Scott and Emma keeping secrets from one another. I say "rather odd", because you'd expect this story to be written by Uncanny X-Men writer Matt Fraction - it even picks up directly from one of his scenes. Instead, for some reason it's been assigned to X-Force writers Craig Kyle and Chris Yost. Granted, that series does play into the subplot, since X-Force are one of Scott's secrets, but this is still primarily a Fraction plot. So it's rather jarring when the big conversation suddenly starts picking up on plot threads from the tail end of New X-Men and apparently laying the groundwork for the "Necrosha-X" crossover.

That aside, though, I quite liked this. Artist Bing Cansino isn't familiar to me, but his work is reminiscent of Georges Jeanty, and he has the subtlety to pull off a decent conversation scene. His Emma isn't quite as imposing as she ought to be, but in the context of the story it largely works.In the angst-ridden world of the X-Men, it's rather nice to see that Scott and Emma never actually have the big screaming argument depicted on the cover - instead, they sort of look a bit embarrassed at one another, apologise a lot and make up. And, admittedly, they recap the plot a lot - in some very choppy flashback scenes where the narration loses all sense of actual conversation. But I'm pleased to see these two acting like adults, since there are plenty of other characters in the X-books to take the adolescent role. It's the way I wanted to see this story pan out, and it's a welcome surprise to get my wish.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #5 - Oh, we're back with the fill-in art again. Not often you get a six-issue miniseries with two issues of fill-in art. Luckily, Eduardo Pansica turns in a decent job here - the style shift from ChrisCross is noticeable, but it's more than acceptable work in its own right. As for Joe Casey's story, it certainly looks like we're heading for the natural climax where the Super Young Team finally emerge from being pretend superheroes to become genuine ones. Like a lot of Casey's superhero work, this is all terribly postmodern and satirical, but with a seemingly genuine desire to emerge on the other side with an updated, fit-for-purpose genre. Yes, it's got some serious credibility problems if you try to take it at face value, but there are more than enough interesting ideas in here to justify letting Casey run with it, no matter how absurd the notional plot may be.

Hellblazer #259 - I can't quite believe I'm writing this, but guest artist Simon Bisley shows unexpected restraint in this issue. Yes, Simon Bisley. Restrained. I know. But there's a point in the story where everything is supposed to go mental, and a slow build leading up to that, and much to my surprise Bisley plays it straight and makes it work. To be fair, it's been a few years since I've seen his art, but there's a lot more range here than I was expecting. Meanwhile, in the story, it turns out that Peter Milligan's not finished with Phoebe just yet - after all, this is Hellblazer, and just because a character is comprehensively dead is no reason to write them out. There's a good case to be made that John Constantine is basically just a superhero without a costume, and that nothing here is particularly outwith the range you'd expect from a regular Marvel or DC Universe title, but as long as Milligan continues to write the genre well, I have no problem with that.

Spider-Woman #1 - Ah, the Motion Comic. Now, the Motion Comic isn't available in the United Kingdom, for some unfathomable reason, so all I've seen of it is the clips on YouTube. And it's certainly entertaining to hear an actress wrestling with some of Brian Bendis' most overwrought dialogue. But from what I've seen, I can't imagine this being the way forward. As with many earlier attempts at "enhanced comics", what they've ended up with has ceased to be a comic at all, and become a piece of low-budget animation instead.

Anyway, here in Britain, we just get the plain old regular comic. And the art is certainly lovely. Maleev makes great use of colour, and does a fabulous Madripoor. (And thankfully, despite the excruciating cover, this turns out not to be Spider-Woman and her Amazing Friends.) But as a story, it's all rather dreary. Jessica is very unhappy because she's been replaced by a Skrull; SWORD offer her a job hunting down Skrulls; she mopes around for the better part of an issue feeling sorry for herself in moody lighting. It's all terribly ponderous and gloomy, and there's really no obvious reason why you'd want to spend time in the company of this whiny character. With a premise that boils down to a straight revenge plot, it ought to be more of a B-movie romp, but instead it seems to take itself far too seriously (an amusing comic relief cameo from Abigail Brand notwithstanding), and it simply isn't much fun.

Underground #1 - A miniseries from Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber? It's bound to be good. And it is. Yes, the set-up is pretty familiar: businessman wants to turn local cave into a tourist attraction, our heroine is a park ranger who wants to protect it. Nothing particularly new there. But it seems to be mainly a device to get the characters into a cave setting, and the real measure of this book will be what Parker does with them once he's got them there. In the meantime, Lieber is on the usual excellent form. He's always been a great character artist, and the cave scenes allow him to play with shadow and colour in all sorts of fun ways. Even if this does turn out to be just a stock plot in a cave, it'll be worth reading for Lieber's art - but I have faith that we're going to get more than that once the plot hits its stride.

Wolverine: First Class #19 - Peter David is reunited with former X-Factor artist Dennis Calero - which goes to show that the all-ages titles seem to be more of a priority for Marvel than they used to be - as Kitty and Wolverine go into space and fight Skrulls. Now, after Secret Invasion, I've had enough Skrulls to last me for a long while. But this is good fun regardless - the aliens are really just foils for Kitty in space, and David comes up with plenty of little details to make the story work. As usual with this book, it's a straight story aimed at the younger end of the market, but with plenty to enjoy if you just want to see a more traditional sort of X-Men story - besides which, Peter David is writing some of the best Kitty Pryde scenes in years.

The X-Axis - 30 August 2009

Well, I was planning to write something about X-Men Forever before heading off, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get round to it. (Which is another way of saying: barring a last-minute cancellation of tonight's Book Festival show, it ain't happening.) With that in mind, I'll hold off on reviewing this week's X-Men Forever #6.

So, after this, I'll be away for two-and-a-bit weeks. In the meantime, don't forget to download the latest episode of House to Astonish, where we talk about the rumoured management changes at DC, digital comics, the November solicitations, and other stuff, and review 2000AD, Fantastic Four and King City. Download it here, or visit the podcast webpage, or subscribe via iTunes.

(Oh, and I'm told that, contrary to what we assumed when we recorded the show, the 2000AD strip "Kingdom" has actually been running for long enough to pre-date the current Cable series. Just so you know.)

And while I'm away, you should also keep up with Al's blog at HousetoAstonish.com.

Now, then...

Batman & Robin #3 - This is the final part of the Mr Pyg storyline, which could probably have sustained another issue if they'd wanted. But there's nothing wrong with being concise, and this arc has worked very well, setting up the new Batman and Robin, and giving them an appropriately grotesque villain to fight. Frank Quitely's good at grotesque - he's good at everything, actually, but he certainly knows how to draw a maniac in a pig mask wielding household appliances. And Pyg is a well-pitched character; not a traditional spandex supervillain as such, but comfortably in the familiar Batman territory of lunatics with themed henchmen. It's what you want from a Batman comic.

Dark Avengers #8 - Part five of "Utopia", and by this point I'm really starting to wonder why on earth they're running this story as a crossover - besides the obvious point that it boosts sales. The Dark Avengers are in a whole three pages of this issue, squeezed out entirely by an X-Men-versus-Dark-X-Men story which doesn't seem to have a role for them. In fairness, Matt Fraction is telling a story here which does seem to have some significant ramifications for the X-Men - it looks like we're going to do the "man-made island in international waters" routine, so apparently the San Francisco base is being dropped already. Frankly, if this is where they were heading, it's a shame they got rid of Providence, the man-made island in international waters from Cable & Deadpool - but maybe they weren't planning that far ahead. So far, "Utopia" seems to be suffering from a problem that afflicts a lot of Matt Fraction's X-Men stories: it's a good idea in theory, but it's cluttered up with vast amounts of superfluous characters who are just distracting from the real story. Less is more!

Dark Wolverine #77 - I'm pleasantly surprised to say that so far, I've actually enjoyed this series quite a lot. Now, frankly, in part that's because this version of Daken seems to bear little or no resemblance to any that we've seen before. But until now, Daken has been stuck in the leaden Romulus storyline from Wolverine: Origins, and once you remove him from that context, some rather more interesting sides of his character emerge. In this book, Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu (primarily Liu, judging from the interviews) are writing Daken as a schemer whose main concern is to secure his position and to be in control of his own life. So his main concerns are to make sure he's hedging his bets against the fall of Osborn's empire, and to subtly ensure that everyone around him knows he's not under Osborn's thumb, even if that means unwisely needling his own colleagues. This version of Daken is actually quite interesting, and certainly a viable anti-hero. This three-parter, with Daken playing off the ersatz Avengers against the Fantastic Four, and outwitting everyone in the process, is unexpectedly good fun, and suggests that perhaps Daken actually does have some sort of future as a lead character - in fact, he might even work better in that role.

Dark X-Men: The Beginning #3 - The final issue of an anthology series about Norman Osborn recruiting the Dark X-Men. And like its two predecessors, this too is talk-tastic. Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk's Namor story at least breaks from the usual format, as it's Emma Frost rather than Norman Osborn who gets to do the questioning. But there's some interesting ideas about Namor's character, and at least they liven things up with the old "journey through the mental landscape" routine - sure, it's a cheap trick, but it does give the artist an excuse to draw interesting pictures. Jason Aaron and Jock do a rather nice intro story for Mystique, which says not a great deal about the character, but does it with suitably outrageous levels of bloodshed and firepower. And having run out of Dark X-Men, Simon Spurrier and Paul Davidson round things off with Norman making an unsuccessful attempt to recruit Aurora; this is the closest thing in the series to a proper story, though it runs into a common problem with split-personality characters, namely that they effectively cease to be characters at all. Still, even if this is a series for completists, there's certainly some entertainment to be had here.

Incredible Hulk #601 - Last month's Incredible Hulk #600 was effectively issue #12-and-a-half of Jeph Loeb's Hulk, so in effect this is the first issue of a new ongoing series. Basically, the new status quo is that Hulk gets the Red Hulk storyline (and it can keep it), while Greg Pak and Ariel Olivetti inherit Bruce Banner and Skaar from the Son of Hulk series. The high concept is that Bruce Banner, one of the cleverest men in the world, is in some ways even more dangerous now that he doesn't have to worry about turning into a musclebound thug at inconvenient intervals. And he's decided to try and do something to steer his son in the right direction. It's not bad at all, though Skaar's motivations are a bit obscure - he apparently hates the Hulk and is indifferent towards Banner, for reasons that were presumably explained in an earlier storyline, but aren't recapped here. Ariel Olivetti's art has the usual issues; his characters are nicely three-dimensional, but they don't always mesh neatly with the scanned-in backgrounds that he uses for outdoor sequences, and so sometimes the characters just look like they're standing in front of a backdrop. Generally fine, though.

King City #1 - We talked about this on the podcast; it's a story originally commissioned by Tokyopop, which is now being reprinted at Image over the course of twelve issues. Or, more accurately, they're reprinting the Tokyopop material for the first six issues, and then creator Brandon Graham is producing six more issues to complete the story. It's one of those books about a thief/spy type in a consumerist future city, and if you were looking purely at the plot, it'd be rather familiar. But there are some engaging quirky bits to liven things up, such as an inexplicably omnipotent cat (which, nonetheless, insists on acting like a normal cat). The real selling point, however, is the artwork, which makes incredibly effective use of negative space, unusual framings, and imaginative ways of implying action - plus crystal clear storytelling. It really is a class above most comics, and the book is worth picking up for that alone.

New Mutants #4 - The concluding part of the first arc, and I'll do a full review in due course (by which I mean, in several weeks time, but hey, maybe it'll be out in time for the collection). It's the end of the New Mutants' fight against Legion, and if you don't know who wins, you obviously haven't been reading this series for very long. Wells has a decent handle on all the characters, and makes imaginative use of Legion's gimmick that each of his split personalities has a different superpower. But on the other hand, it's still fundamentally ended up as a straight hero-versus-villain fight, and while Wells has some good ideas for the team dynamic, it's still not exactly clear what the premise of this series is supposed to be, beyond "reunite the cast of New Mutants". It's good as far as it goes, but it's missing a big central idea.

Wolverine: First Class #18 - Madrox shows up to visit, and Peter David takes the opportunity to do an all-ages version of some of the ideas he's been exploring with the character in X-Factor for a few years now. It's a good little story in its own right, but fans of X-Factor will probably want to pick it up too, to see David writing a younger version of the character and retroactively planting the seeds for some of his recent stories. Francis Portela's artwork is excellent, particularly when you consider that he's saddled with the gaudy green-and-yellow costume that Madrox used to wear in his early appearances - yes, it's striking, but it doesn't exactly blend in. I'm quite impressed by the way he manages to make it work.

Wolverine: Origins #39 - In which Daniel Way attempts to explain what the hell Jeph Loeb was banging on about in that Wolverine arc, and kind of sort of gets away with it. Basically, the idea is that Romulus wants to crown a successor, so he's getting his various pawns to fight one another to the death. And part of Way's explanation is that Wolverine was freed from Romulus' influence when Xavier wiped that part of his memory, so that restoring his memories after House of M actually restored Romulus' influence... hence random fight scenes written by Jeph Loeb. Alright, fine... but what's this successor going to be in charge of, if he's already killed all of Romulus' other pawns? A vaguely frustrating mixture of neat ideas and apparent logic holes, though it's worth noting that artist Scot Eaton is doing some excellent work on this story. Oh, and Romulus actually shows up at the end. He's basically an older vsion of Wolverine, although I have a sinking feeling he might be intended as the brother from Paul Jenkins' Wolverine: The End - and that's another story I was hoping never to have to think about again.

X-Force #18 - Well, you can never accuse X-Force of being subtle, and the closing pages of this issue are about as far removed from subtlety as it's possible to get. We're talking really absurd levels of gore here, although they're so absurd that, combined with some appropriately woozy camera angles from artists Mike Choi and Sonia Oback, the scene actually works on a vaguely surreal kind of level. The rest of the issue feels a bit like an obligatory wrap-up for the "exploding mutants" two-parter, but there's some promising material in the subplots, and somewhat against my better judgment, I rather liked this. The art has a lot to do with that, though - it's a rather more palatable series when Choi and Oback are aboard.

The X-Axis - 6 August 2009

Okay, then, let's make a start on the backlog. I'm not exactly racing through my pile of comics, partly because I've been kept busy with other stuff this week, and partly because I'm confidently expecting this week's books will be late too. Still, let's at least catch up on the X-books.

Dark Wolverine #76 - That title, that title... It's the sort of title so embarrassingly bad that you almost feel compelled to apologise for writing it down. Like I'm doing now, really. I wonder how long you have to spent saying "Dark Reign" fifty times a day before it all just becomes meaningles noises, and calling a book Dark Wolverine starts to sound like a good idea, rather than a skin-crawlingly awful one? But actually, Daken's kind of growing on me. There were a whole bunch of problems with the character in Wolverine: Origins - not least that he was connected to the Romulus storyline, which is an absolute lost cause. If nothing else, "Dark Reign" has got him away from that quagmire, and given him a better context. The story's pretty straightforward: it's Daken politicking within the Dark Avengers, and the basic question is whether he's trying to expose Bullseye as a traitor or set him up - and vice versa. It's nicely ambiguous about everyone's motives, while still making perfect sense. But I'm actually starting to see something promising in Daken here, as a guy who clearly fancies himself as the smartest guy in the room, and whose main concern in life is just to prove that he's in control of his own life. He likes the fact that his teammates don't trust him, because it means they don't believe they can control him. There's something in there, you know. I'm not sure where you go with him as a lead in the long run, if they're even planning to - he seems like more of a supporting character - but I'm coming round to the guy.

Dark X-Men: The Beginning #2 - Fans of pulse-pounding negotiation-packed talking won't want to miss this issue, which features three thrilling stories of non-stop conversation. Oh, all right, that's a bit harsh. But this issue, we get the recruitment scenes of Cloak & Dagger, Michael Pointer and Daken - and despite the best efforts of the writers, that's really just three scenes of Osborn making people an offer that they can't refuse. Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk (who seems to be channelling Rick Leonardi) have a stab at giving C&D a plausible reason to join the team, and kind of get to the right ballpark. But they rush through it in a way that doesn't give the duo much chance to put up any resistance, and they end up coming across as a bit timid. The Weapon Omega piece is a contrived blackmail scenario that makes you wonder why Osborn would possibly expect this guy to have the slightest loyalty to him. And Daken... well, there's a couple of nice ideas about his character, as he regards himself as the only sane one in the Dark Avengers. But it really is just a conversation. It's pretty clear that this is one of those series they commissioned first, and figured an idea for the content would come along later.

Wolverine: First Class #17 - This issue, Peter David digs up Patch, Wolverine's old disguise from the Madripoor stories. And then doesn't go to Madripoor. It was David who torpedoed this idea in the first place, during a short run on Wolverine where the supporting cast finally got to roll their eyes and make clear that of course they recognised the guy with the really distinctive hairdo. ("But if the psycho with the claws wants to think he's fooling people, hey, let him...") That's kind of the approach here, with Wolverine evidently convinced Patch is an awesome persona, and Kitty finding it all a bit bizarre. It actually comes off pretty well, getting the basic idea to work, without getting into the continuity. The story itself is about a politician from a dodgy Madripoor family; Kitty thinks he's great, and Wolverine's convinced he must be crooked because, well, he's dodgy, isn't he? David manages to tie up the story without giving a clear answer to that question, and still make it satisfying. There's also strong artwork from Ronan Cliquet, who has more than a hint of Darick Robertson. This is a good issue.

Wolverine: Noir #4 - It's the final issue of the miniseries, and I suppose at some point I should go back and re-read this just to see if it works any better as a whole. But at first glance, it's just another tread through the usual noir cliches mixed with recycled X-Men plot elements, and I still don't see why that's supposed to be a worthwhile exercise. At the very least, the front-and-centre artifice of it makes it impossible to get into the story as anything other than a pointless parlour game. I see they've commissioned another X-Men: Noir miniseries, but I don't plan to bother with it.

Wolverine: Origins #38 - Wolverine and Omega Red have a big fight in a prison. It's a pretty good fight, too. And Scot Eaton continues to get better as a superhero artist. Of course, it's all supposed to be building up to some revelation about Romulus, which is the point where my enthusiasm runs out. But he's not really in this issue much - it's more a stalling device to drag it out a bit longer, which happens to pick up on a more interesting subplot from earlier in the series. There's not much to say about it beyond "it's a fight scene", but at least it's a decent one.

X-Force #17 - Ooh, nice cover. I don't normally much care for the generic pin-up covers, but that's a nice X-23 picture. Anyway, if you were expecting Elixir to explain who the baby was, well, think again. We're back to the Leper Queen storyline which the crossover interrupted in progress, so apparently that's going on the back burner for now. That irritation aside, it's not a bad issue - the good guys get to do some heroism, and there's a promising subplot with Wolfsbane that suggests the book might be planning a story which isn't quite as depressing as its usual fare. And we've got Mike Choi and Sonia Oback on art for this arc, whose art is much more enjoyable than Clayton Crain's murk. On the down side, the book is still going for eye-rollingly gratuitous violence in an effort to justify its brand, which I could live without. But, hey, not a bad story.

X-Men Forever #4 - You'll be pleased to hear (unless you're indifferent, which come to think of it might be more likely) that despite the cover, this story does not unveil Dark Shadowcat. Instead, we get Kitty Pryde with one of Wolverine's claws, which doesn't make a lick of sense, but Claremont just about gets away with it by having people act astonished throughout the issue. X-Men Forever is off to a very odd start; in theory, this series is supposed to be picking up where Claremont's original X-Men run left off in 1991, but even if you leave aside the difference of tone between Jim Lee and Tom Grummett's art, it's hard to believe that a continued Claremont run would have featured anything like this. On the one hand, you've got stories he'd never have done at the time - teasing the death of Wolverine, going back to the Kid Storm period from the late eighties. On the other, you've got things like Sabretooth reverting to his late eighties persona and disregarding the way he's been written for the last twenty years. It's all very strange. But there's a certain enthusiasm to the book that carries it along. I'm not sure how much sense any of this will make to readers who don't have a fairly detailed knowledge of X-Men stories from 20 years ago, but somewhat to my surprise, it's proving oddly compelling.

The X-Axis - 5 July 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The X-Axis - 31 May 2009

Well, heavens, there's just a ton of X-books out this week, isn't there? Next week is a bit quieter, with just Exiles, New Mutants, and something called Wolverine: Revolver. But this week, Marvel are in the mood to drown us.

Three of them, however, are the concluding parts of storylines, so I'll give them full reviews in the next couple of days. That would be Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, Wolverine: Origins and X-Men: Legacy. (Although I might as well point out now that if you're a Rogue fan, you probably want this issue of Legacy, because it's quite important for her.)

Also out this week...

Battlefields: The Tankies #2 - Garth Ennis's latest war miniseries has a rather uneven tone. It's obviously going for black comedy, but seems to waver back and forth between grim and slightly too silly. That's not to say it falls apart - Ennis is too good for that - but it does feel at times as though two slightly different stories are fighting for space, instead of complementing one another. Even the art seems unsure how graphic it's supposed to be, which means that at times we get fairly innocuous drawings drenched in blood-red colouring in a way that doesn't altogether work. But there's some good stuff in here as well, with Ennis' usual eye for detail, and a rather sweet scene where, for once, the obligatory hesitant, nerdy officer turns out to be talking sense after all.

The Literals #2 - Part 6 of The Great Fables Crossover. You know, I'm a little vague about how these Literals characters are supposed to work. Obviously they're some sort of personification of abstract literary concepts, but what does a personified genre actually do all day? And if they're elements of fiction, in what sense did Kevin "write" the real world? Probably best not to think about it too much, because they work best as a vehicle for a series of jokes, rather than as proper characters. And while that means the stories from their perspective have an uphill struggle, it still largely works. After all, they're the villains of the crossover, and they function rather well as obstacles for the Fables cast to deal with. Besides, the jokes at the expense of the genres are funny.

Rapture #1 - As the week's only significant new release , I imagine we'll probably talk about this on the next House to Astonish (that okay, Al?). But for the moment: it's a six-issue miniseries by Taki Soma and Michael Avon Oeming. It's an unusual collaboration; as well as co-writing, they've shared the art, with Oeming working over Soma's layouts. The result has some of Oeming's usual stark, angular approach, but a bit less stylised and a bit more cartoony. To be honest, the resulting art hovers somewhere between Oeming's usual work and Philip Bond, but that's no bad thing. The story is a sort of post-apocalyptic love story set in a world recently devastated by a war between rather generic superheroes, a premise that seems a bit forced at this stage - not least, the plot-convenient but enormously implausible idea that people are still taking commercial flights during this ostensible global catastophe. That's such an odd feature that a bit of me wonders whether it's deliberate weirdness. Like the art, then, not so sold on the story.

Wolverine #72 - The penultimate chapter of "Old Man Logan", which will be wrapped up in a one-shot at some point down the line. And yes, you guessed it, Millar and McNiven have taken seven issues just to get to the point where Wolverine finally snaps, pops his claws, and goes out to take on the bad guys. It's the sort of lightweight throwaway thing that will probably work well enough as a mildly silly graphic novel, but can't help feeling massively overextended in serial form at eight issues. I realise that this sort of story requires a long build-up for The Big Moment, but again, it's a question of whether you're pacing in page count or publishing schedule. In a big hardback slab, the build-up is probably about right. But in serial terms, we've taken the better part of a year to reach a moment that everyone saw coming last autumn, in a basic story with no real twists along the way, and that's too long to get to the point.

Wolverine: First Class #15 - This month's guest star: Thor. Kitty wants to meet him to impress her friends; Wolverine helps out because he thinks it'll be funny. All good straightforward stuff, but it's very solidly done. Scott Koblish provides art this month, and it's got a comedic quality I don't recall seeing from him before. (With Skottie Young scheduled to do Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, there are some interesting art choices afoot for the all-ages titles.) One other thing: I like the way David has found a new angle on early Kitty Pryde by seizing on a lacuna in the original stories. Those stories made a huge deal about her ballet classes (and even pointed out that she enjoyed them because she got to hang out with normal kids), yet we never actually saw any of her classmates. It would be stretching a point to say that we desperately needed stories about Kitty's dance classmates, but if we're going to have a Kitty and Wolverine series set at this point in history (and despite the title, it is a Kitty and Wolverine series), I'm glad they've found a legitimately underused angle.

X-Force #15 - Messiah War, part 5. Everyone hits one another. Punchy punchy. That's about it, really. So far this crossover has exceeded expectations, but I'm afraid we've finally reached the obligatory mid-storyline punchfest - not really something that plays to the murky strengths of artist Clayton Crain, either. Just to test my goodwill a little further, the story also makes Bishop look like a moron. Not only does he get the chance to kill Hope twice and fail to take the shot, but the second time he actually pauses to say that he won't hesitate. What a dimwit.

X-Men: Future History - The Messiah War Sourcebook - Completist fodder if ever I saw some. It's basically Cable explaining in nice short chunks about the various characters and concepts that have surrounded Bishop and Cable over the years (though Cyclops gets a few pages to tell us about X-Force too). As a catalogue of discarded concepts and aborted interpretations, it's actually quite readable and somewhat interesting. It does pick up on ironic contrasts with earlier stories, and I believe it may be the first comic to acknowledge openly that X-Treme X-Men was the most embarrassingly awful name in history. ("Storm claims it was an inside joke, and blames Gambit. Gambit blames Rogue. I blame society.") So I don't want to be too harsh on it - for what it is, it's entirely fine. But what it isn't is anything much to do with Messiah War, and there's the rub.

The X-Axis - 26 April 2009

It's Sunday! Check below for this week's podcast, and for those of you so inclined, there's also a preview for Backlash.

I'm planning full-length reviews for Wolverine: Noir #1 (which came out last week, but honest, I'll get to it), Detective Comics #853 (the second half of Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert's "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?") and X-Men: The Times & Life of Lucas Bishop. But first...

Astonishing X-Men #29 - Lord, this is slow. This issue, more thrilling exposition, as the mutants from the hidden city explain why they don't like Forge. I suspect it's been made more complicated by the need to cover a continuity glitch: the other X-Men books have been claiming that mutants lost their powers in every reality after M-Day, and since this whole story is about mutants from another reality, that leaves Ellis with some unwelcome and awkward explaining to do. (It doesn't fit with Exiles either, come to think of it. But then it's more important for the X-Men books to be consistent among themselves.) Conceptually, it's all fine as far as it goes, but the pace is sluggish. Simone Bianchi's art is a mixed blessing, too. The individual pictures are often beautiful, and there's a certain grace to the book, but the narrative flow is dubious. Just look at the first scene with Storm and Emma - this is supposed to be a fight scene joined in progress, but there's nothing to indicate action until panel three! And then, at the bottom of the page, there's a random picture of Emma's face, utterly disconnected from anything around it, and without dialogue. There's a lot to like about Bianchi's images, but they often seem haphazard and disconnected from the story - beauty for its own sake.

Fantastic Force #1 - We talk about this in the podcast, but suffice to say it isn't very good. Although it's not quite the atrocity that some reviewers have suggested (like Al), it's certainly mediocre. The book is a spin-off from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's Fantastic Four, and a storyline in which the entire population of a dying future came back in time and took over a duplicate Earth originally built as a back-up in case of ecological disaster. The Fantastic Force are their local superheroes. So: fine, you've got a duplicate Earth with a transplanted population. There's something in that. You could do stories about people fighting to control this new world, stories about people trying to set the agenda for a world given a second chance... there are parables to be done here. Instead, the story glosses over all that by playing the new Earth as paradise. It tries to focus on the Fantastic Force themselves, which is a mistake, since they're not very inspired characters, and writer Joe Ahearne doesn't bring much to them. As for the art, it tries for a Bryan Hitch feel and can't really bring it off - though to be fair, colourist Chris Sotomayor does some very good work which elevates the art to a degree. Originally intended as an ongoing series, this has been scaled back to a five-issue mini, and subsequently to only four issues, which suggests that Marvel are well aware that they have a dog on their hands. Take the hint. (However, I'll give them credit for effort on the extra material that's been used to pad out the book - instead of regular script pages, there's an extract from an earlier draft with annotations explaining why things changes. If we're going to have these features, that's the sort of thing I'd like to see.)

Hellblazer #254 - The plague and the Olympic Games. Not obvious ideas to connect, but Peter Milligan is having a go. There's an interesting attempt to argue that the Olympics aren't such a good thing - each new city embarks on a program of reconstruction which ends up displacing tons of people for the sake of a few weeks' television and a bunch of new civic buildings. It's a nice starting point for a story, but Goran Sudzuka's art doesn't have quite enough bite for this book. That's particularly apparent when a lacklustre piece of graffiti is solemnly presented to us as a masterpiece by "the new Banksy." Unfortunately, there's an aching gap between what the characters seem to be talking about, and what we can see.

Jack of Fables #33 - Jack is reunited with the cast of Fables proper, and they're about as delighted to see him as you'd expect. Meanwhile, the story gets on with establishing Kevin Thorn as a threat. From what we've seen so far, there's a risk of this guy becoming a cavalier omnipotent in the mould of the Beyonder. I suppose the idea is that Thorn doesn't care about people around him because he sees them as all just part of his fictional creation, but that would suggest he created everything, not just the Fables - in which case, um, isn't he God? Anyway, it's well paced and witty, which makes it as thoroughly readable as ever.

Skrull Kill Krew #1 - See the podcast for more on this. But in a nutshell, it's a seemingly pointless revival of a nineties miniseries which, despite the stellar creative team, was more of a curio than a lost classic. It's not offensive, it's entirely competent, but ultimately it's just there, and doesn't have the sort of hook that would make you go out of your way to read it.

Viking #1 - Again, see the podcast. But Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein's outsize album - priced at a remarkably generous $2.99 - is definitely worth your time. Instead of the usual raiding parties, these Vikings are a couple of Norse thugs preying on their own people, which is an underexplored angle. The art is the star attraction, though, giving the book a powerful and distinctive feel.

Wolverine: First Class #14 - This is the concluding half of a two-parter guest starring Elektra and Daredevil. I'd normally give it a full review, particularly since it's the first story by Peter David - but it's a busy week, and there's nothing unexpected to say about it. It's a straight-down-the-line superhero team-up story, by a writer who knows how these things work. Nothing innovative, but then it's not that kind of book. Ronan Cliquet's art is nicely dramatic, but aside from Elektra, all his women look alike (to the point where the letterer and colourist were evidently relying on clothing to tell them apart - when faced with head shots, they can't keep track of who's talking).

Wolverine: The Anniversary - Yet another Wolverine one-shot. The "anniversary" of the title is apparently something to do with the death of his beloved Mariko Yashida back in the nineties. But the main story, by writer William Harms and artist Jefte Palo, is actually a straightforward fill-in piece with Wolverine on a plane to Tokyo when a bunch of hijackers try their luck. From there, it's pretty much what you'd expect - but it's done well, and the stripped down art is quite striking. There's also a short back-up strip by Jonathan Maberry and Tomm Coker, in which Wolverine fights off a bunch of ninjas and then wonders, for no readily discernible reason, whether they might be ghosts. No, Logan, they're probably just ninjas again. It's Wednesday. Coker's art is lovely, but the story is a confused mess which seems to think it's making some sort of terribly profound point. Overall, though, this is one of the better Wolverine one-shots, thanks to good artwork throughout and a well-executed, if familiar, lead story.

Wolverine: Origins #35 - This is billed as a "Dark Reign" tie-in, but it's a bit of a red skies issue. As near as I can make out, the connection is that regular supporting character Daken is in this issue, and he's also in Dark Avengers. To be fair, though, the storyline's not finished yet, and the link might be stronger when you take it as a whole. Readers who were annoyed to see Daken beat the X-Men singlehandedly last month will no doubt be even more irritated to see him do it again in the opening pages of this issue, but hell, they're only the guest stars. More ludicrous is the idea that, instead of stealing the entire sword when he had the chance, Daken simply cuts a bit out of the blade. Um... how? What was he carrying on his person that enabled him to nick this supposedly indestructible item? I honestly don't get it. Still, there's a neat idea in here somewhere: like any father, Wolverine is trying to live vicariously through Daken, by redeeming him. And he doesn't want to know that this might not be possible. I quite like the basic story Way is trying to tell with these two characters (at least when they stop banging on about Romulus); it's the details that can grate a bit.

X-Force #14 - Part 3 of "Messiah War", and it's a lot of running around and fighting in the far future. Clayton Crain's art is downright murky, but the script is kept bouncy enough. Even though we're off in another dystopian future, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost have steered clear of hammering the angst. Instead, there's actually some genuine humour in here - I rather like the future Deadpool "helping" his old friend by wandering around shooting dead baddies to make sure they're not zombies. More fun than I'd have expected.

Here's the thing I don't understand about this story, though. The whole thing hinges on the idea that because Hope is the only mutant to be born since M-Day, she's the only hope for mutantkind. But... why? They don't know what her powers are, so they have no reason to think she'll be able to change things. She's just one more mutant. If she's a one-off, her birth changed nothing; if she's the first of many, then mutants are already saved. Unless she's actually going to do something, what's the point of rescuing her? Why is she supposed to be so important?

The X-Axis - 29 March 2009

Wouldn't you just know it. I go away for the weekend, and there's a whole ton of D-list X-books to write about. Oh well.

I'll come back to the X-Infernus miniseries later, I think - it's a lead-in to the upcoming New Mutants series, which makes it somewhat significant. And don't forget the latest episode of House to Astonish (download here, or visit the podcast webpage, or download via iTunes), for reviews of Invincible, Top 10 and Dark Reign: Elektra.

As for the rest, capsules ought to do it, I think...

Battlefields: Dear Billy #3 - You'd think that by now Garth Ennis would have said everything it was possible to say about war, but he keeps finding new angles. This three-issue miniseries for Dynamite has been one of his strongest miniseries in a while. It's a love story about a nurse and a pilot; she hates the Japanese, for understandable reasons, while he kills them for a living. But beneath it, they're not really on the same page at all. Ennis explores the tension between the nihilist destruction of seeking revenge for everything that happened in the war, and the distasteful realpolitik of letting it all go. Smart stuff, and definitely worth tracking down in the collection.

Jack of Fables #32 - Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham tie up the Bookburner storyline and clear decks in preparation for the Fables crossover starting next month. Jack of Fables, as a spin-off about the most obnoxious and superficial character in fabledom, is fairly superficial in its own right, but usually good for a laugh, especially as it has the patience to spend months setting up a punchline, and the audacity to use blatant deus ex machinas at the same time. This is fairly typical; there's not a huge amount of depth there, let's be honest, but it's enjoyable silliness.

Umbrella Academy: Dallas #5 - Hmm. Not sure about the massive detour to Vietnam. Yes, it's quite funny, but it spoils the momentum of the main story. Still, I can't be too harsh on a bunch of American soldiers led by a superhero and a monkey trying to steal a mummified emperor, even if it's got nothing to do with the rest of the plot. Gabriel Ba's art is spectacular as always, but it's the deadpan embrace of utter absurdity that really makes the book work.

Wolverine: First Class #13 - Peter David takes over as writer, but apparently we're still going with the format of a guest star for every story. This time it's Daredevil, who's an unusually good fit. Not only are they about the same power level, but they both love fighting ninjas. There's nothing particularly new to be found here, but it's a solid, old-school superhero story by people who know what they're doing, and that's what people buy this book for.

X-Force/Cable: Messiah War - This is the lead-in issue for the "Messiah War" crossover, and it's actually quite decent. X-Force writers Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost get the job of introducing the story, and they dutifully devote a fair chunk of the issue to recapping the plot from Cable. If you've been reading that book already, you might find yourself getting restless, but it's a necessary evil. Mike Choi and Sonia Oback are largely on form with the art, and there's some neat comic relief with a future Deadpool - who, thanks to his healing factor, is still around a thousand years in the future, and madder than ever. If we're going to have X-Force as an ultra-violent black ops team, then you really need some humour as well, and they've struck the balance quite well here. Bishop seems unusually sane for a change, and there's even a somewhat promising scene for Cable's other arch-enemy Stryfe. (And you don't see many of those.) Much better than I was expecting, to be honest.

X-Men: Kingbreaker #4 - This, on the other hand, is pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Everyone shows up, yadda yadda, big fight, Starjammers get their win back but the bad guys escape, pieces are duly shuffled into place for the start of War of Kings. I'd normally do a full-scale review of the completed miniseries, but really, what is there to say? It does its job as a set-up, if by that you mean it moves characters from point A to point B. Oh, and it gets rid of That Idiotic Sword, which has to be a good thing. Otherwise, though, it's just a series of events in a row, hoping that nobody will notice it isn't a story. Fine if you want to see these particular characters in action, but there's not much else going for it.

X-Men: Sword of the Braddocks - Not an X-Men story at all, but a New Exiles special, in which Chris Claremont and Scott Clark tie up the stray plot thread about Slaymaster travelling from world to world, killing off the local version of Psylocke. The resolution is exactly the one you were probably expecting (our Psylocke finally beats him in single combat), but hey, it does tie up a plot thread left dangling when New Exiles was cancelled. I'm in two minds about the art; there's some grating T&A elements, but there are also some attractive graceful panels.

The book also provides this week's misleading-the-customer alert, as the four dollar book only contains a 26 page story. What's in the rest of the book? Why, a reprint of "Bloody 'Ell" by Adam Warren and Rick Mays, originally published in X-Men Unlimited #47 (cover date July 2003) - not that the book actually mentions anywhere that it's a reprint, which makes me wonder if they're trying to palm it off as new material. Then again, maybe they just forgot to label it, since the story makes little sense unless you know it was published at a time when Psylocke was supposed to be dead. Either way, it's not in the solicitations at all. Mind you, at least it's a decent story - not a lost classic by any means, but typically bouncy Warren nonsense.

X-Men: The Times & Life of Lucas Bishop #2 - This wholly unnecessary spin-off from Cable seems to consist of little more than a recap of Bishop's origin story modified to fit the current version of continuity. A couple of scenes serve to explain why Bishop hates Hope so much, but that's not the focus of the series. Nor is anything else, really. It's just a bunch of stuff happening, as if somebody had decided to take a perfectly serviceable five-page flashback and expand it into a three-issue-long Official Handbook entry. I haven't a clue what the point of this was supposed to be, but it doesn't work.

The X-Axis - 1 March 2009

Well, it took me forever to get around to reviewing the concluding issue of NYX: No Way Home (which came out last week), but it's finally up. As for the last issue of New Exiles (also out last week)... um, in the next couple of days. Hopefully.

Fortunately, it's a singularly uneventful week for new releases. Check the podcast to hear Al and me discussing Duncan Rouleau's The Great Unknown, the final issue of Blue Beetle, and the Obama issue of Youngblood (everything you feared and less). Download it here, or visit the podcast web page, or subscribe via iTunes.

And that just leaves three X-books that came out this week...

Wolverine: First Class #12 - This has always been more of a Kitty Pryde book than a Wolverine comic, but never more obviously than here. The story is set in the aftermath of Uncanny X-Men #150, and I can hear the collective mumbling of "So what?" already. Ah, but you'd be mistaken. Because this is a terribly useful point in continuity. It's the first time Kitty meets Cyclops after joining the X-Men, and so the first time she's exposed to his awkward relationship with Wolverine. And that's the story: the other alpha male in the team is back, and Kitty gets to spend an issue in his company and see how he compare. (Wolverine? He's barely in it.) Where Cyclops is concerned, writer Fred Van Lente evidently subscribes to the "uptight emotional cripple" school of thought, but he does a nice job of contrasting the two without actually undermining Cyclops' credibility; more than anything, we're invited to feel sorry for the guy and to dismiss him as far too screwed up to be anyone's mentor, and that's certainly a valid take on the character. It's also nice to see the series move away from the random guest stars, and back to focussing on the cast themselves.

Wolverine: Origins #33 - Do you like exposition? Then you'll love this book, which features fifteen gripping pages of Nick Fury explaining the plot. To be fair, at least it's a new explanation, with plenty of new information to back it up... but still, it's fifteen pages of a guy explaining the plot. Considering the languid pace that this book has taken in the past, you almost wonder whether Way has been politely encouraged to get a move on. As for the content of the explanation... well, this convoluted conspiracy theory has been nothing but a lead weight for Wolverine, so officially dragging James Hudson from Alpha Flight into the mess is a bit like the slow spread of gangrene as far as I'm concerned. It's also a "Dark Reign" tie-in issue, and with some justification, since supporting character Daken has been hauled off to appear in Dark Avengers - leading Cyclops to decide that the fake Wolverine in the Avengers needs to be taken care of. Now this bit, I'm in favour of. "What do the X-Men think about this fake Wolverine?" is not a story that Dark Avengers wants to tell, but it's also territory that really ought to be covered - so if Daniel Way thinks he can get a story out of it, everybody wins. That part of the issue is quite good; but god save us from more of this conspiracy gibberish.

X-Force #12 - This is the first part of "Suicide Leper", an arc based on the Leper Queen character from Peter Milligan's brief run on X-Men. She's not an immediately obvious character to revive, but hey, I suppose they're starting small and working up. It's also a lead-in for the "Messiah War" crossover with Cable, though on the face of it that just means there's a few pages of subplot about time machines. It's... okay, but too violent for its own good (which is to say, it's done so casually so that it doesn't mean anything). Clayton Crain's artwork is patchy. He seems to be lightening up the colours, and there are some nice dramatic explosions. But there's something lacking in his characters, who don't have the expressiveness to bring them to life.