Wolverine: Origins #37-40

"Romulus"
Writer: Daniel Way
Penciller: Scot Eaton
Inker: Andrew Hennessy
Colourists: Andy Troy with Rob Schwager
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editors: John Barber and Jeanine Schaefer

More than three years into Wolverine: Origins, the great moment has finally arrived. It's time to unveil Romulus, the mastermind who's apparently been behind virtually everything in the series to date. Indeed, retroactively, he's been behind virtually everything, period.

And after such an extended build-up, does it deliver? Not really, no - but then most of us made up our minds about Origins a long time ago, and Romulus would have had to be something pretty remarkable to make us rethink it. After all, one of the central problems with this series is its attempt to subsume Wolverine's entire history into a monumentally complicated and wholly implausible conspiracy theory. Revealing who's behind it all doesn't make that any more or less of a problem.

Romulus may be the centrepiece of this story, but actually, about half the page count is given over to a plot where Wolverine gets suckered into fighting 90s villain Omega Red instead. And credit where it's due, that bit's quite good. It's an extended fight scene in a deserted prison, with some imaginative use of the setting. As so often with this book, the further it wanders from the main story, the better it gets.

Also in the plus column, this arc is drawn by Scot Eaton. He may not be the most distinctive superhero artist out there, but he's solid, he can tell a story, and he continues to improve.

But we come back to Romulus. What ultimately shows up is basically a big, burly, greying version of Wolverine, with his own artificial claws. Which... well, given the way he's been set up, what else was he going to be? Romulus is apparently dying, and wants the various super-soldiers that he had a hand in creating to fight each other to the death. The sole survivor will apparently inherit his position, whatever that actually involves. In fact, even within the story, some of them aren't interested.

This seems a good time to stop and wonder: what story does Daniel Way actually think he's telling with Romulus? I remember Way doing a Q&A a few months ago and getting a bit irritable at somebody who described Romulus as a plot rather than a character. But what's the idea meant to be?

So far, we have a big alpha male character who runs an enormous global conspiracy that appears to have no particular agenda beyond its own continuation. Romulus claims to be at the top of the food chain, and he's obsessed with creating an heir in his own image - though this apparently hasn't stopped him from also taking a hand in a bunch of other super-soldier types who don't look much like him at all, from Cyber all the way down to Nuke. (Incidentally, Way seems to have no interest in the "blond and dark-haired warriors fight throughout history" stuff from the notorious Jeph Loeb Wolverine arc where Romulus' name was first dropped. Given the highly selective way he's used the material from that story, I can't help wondering whether Way found it as bemusing as everyone else did.)

Romulus puts on a big show about his own power, but he's apparently on his last legs. And because it's supposed to be a metaphor about ancient networks of communication, he loves railways.

Does any of this add up to a very interesting character? Well, strip away the more absurd convolutions of the conspiracy theory, and there's something to be said for the idea of the secretive crimelord unable to deal with his mortality and trying to groom a doppelganger to take his place. Romulus is dying and he wants to "live forever" by creating a Romulus II. And because the new Romulus will actually have all of the qualities that the original Romulus merely claimed to have, he'll secure the legacy he wants. Alright. There's something in this. There's a tortuous metaphor here about father/son relationships which could actually make a story.

The problem comes when you do it with Wolverine, rather than a character created for the purpose. It casts Wolverine in the role of manipulated son trying to escape his father's shadow, and if you want to do that story, the Weapon X project already provides a more than adequate vehicle for the metaphor. Thematically, Romulus doesn't add anything to Wolverine's back story; and the insanely complicated conspiracy only serves to limit the sort of stories you can tell with him. He's a better character when he's just a victim of assorted and largely unspecified forces.

And the plot logic is tortuous. Romulus is going to crown an heir by getting everyone to fight to the death without telling them why or what they're fighting for? What? What does being the new Romulus actually involve, anyway? Nobody seems to think that's a point worth discussing, even though logically it ought to be driving the plot. The whole thing ends up working on a level of manipulation that seems to remove it from any resemblance to actual human behaviour.

Maybe that's why it doesn't work. Romulus personifies a standard theme of Wolverine stories: the hero tries to escape the influence of his brutalisers, and assert his own identity and independence. But he doesn't personify it very well, because the overwrought complications of the plot and the nonsense about food chains and trains and deaf-mute henchmen distance him so far from reality that he just doesn't ring true as a human being. And that makes him less effective to tell the story than the faceless military-industrial organisations that served the same purpose before him.

The X-Axis - 25 October 2009

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written one of these, so we've got something of a backlog to get through. And of course, as always, don't forget to check out the podcast for more talk about Anchor, Sugar Shock and Azrael.

I'll come back, I think, to Chew #5, Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #6 and GeNext United #5 once I've had a chance to re-read the whole storylines. But for now...

Anchor #1 - This is a new ongoing series from Boom Studios by Phil Hester and Brian Churilla. Hester has written some interesting off-kilter high-concept fantasy comics in the past, such as The Coffin. This is a more straightforward action set-up, but it's still a pretty weird central idea. There's this big guy, right, and he exists both on Earth and in Hell. In Hell, he's singlehandedly holding off armies of demons who are trying to escape; on Earth, he's a confused guy who feels obliged to fight giant Kirby-esque monsters. It's the sort of idea that could easily be a mess, but actually, it works pretty well - it's got the sense of mythological scale that allows it to get away with such an odd premise.

Azrael #1 - DC have just reshuffled the Batman books again, and so they've dug up this concept for another shot. This isn't the original Azrael - it's a guy called Michael who's picked up the identity somewhere along the line. But writer Fabian Nicieza is sticking with the theme of cults and zealots. Basically, the idea is that the comic cuts back and forth between the present day (where Azrael's a fairly normal vigilante on the fringes of the Batman family) and six months time (where he appears to have gone stark raving mad). A nice enough idea. Granted, Michael's not a hugely interesting character in the present day sequences, and the first issue is an "abusive Catholic priest" story, territory which has surely been stripmined by now. And Ramon Bachs' art doesn't seem entirely comfortable with the action scenes. But nonetheless, there's something interesting in here.

Beasts of Burden #2 - Ah, this is good stuff. Pets fighting mystical evil is an okay concept, but it's all in the execution. Jill Thompson's art brings out the characters without anthropomorphising them too much, while Evan Dorkin's script manages to balance the suburban setting with a lingering sense of threat. This series could easily have been gimmicky or cutesy - or gone the other way and tried too hard to be "serious" - but it's a beautifully judged piece of work.

Cowboy Ninja Viking #1 - Now there's a title. It's a very tongue-in-cheek action/conspiracy story, starting from the intentionally ludicrous premise of an attempt to create government super-agents out of people with multiple personality disorders. Because they've got three personalities, you see, so that's three times as many useful skills they could have. Did it work? No, of course it didn't. But there's still a deranged cowboy/ninja/viking out there as a result. I love the idea, but I'm a bit more lukewarm about the actual comic. The plot's a bit opaque, and at times it feels like it's trying too hard to be clever. The biggest problem, though, is that the lead character has three personalities all of which seem to be essentially the same in different hats, which feels like a waste of the idea.

Dark Wolverine #79 - Boy, this feels like filler. "How many months of Dark Reign left to go? Six? Yeesh... uh, Daken has a fight with some minor villains?" I was more or less behind this series with the first arc, but it's losing me now. One problem is that the plot depends on you accepting that Norman Osborn can't allow his Dark Avengers to be seen beating up villains in public because of the PR consequences. But I don't really see what his problem is. Again, if "Dark Reign" is supposed to be an ersatz Cheney-verse, Osborn wouldn't be concealing the abuse of prisoners, he'd be trumpeting it as a tough-on-crime virtue. It's not as if Daken's even done anything particularly groteque. And when the whole "Dark Reign" set-up requires us to accept that Norman can hold a position of public trust despite a well-documented history of villainy and madness, you can't turn round and expect me to believe he's losing sleep over something like this. It just doesn't work. Oh, and there's a cringingly adolescent bit with a creepy store manager hiding cameras in women's changing rooms, which is just eye-rollingly terrible.

Deadpool #900 - Well, it's an anthology of Deadpool stories. Or rather, half of it's an anthology of Deadpool stories, and the other half is a reprint of Deadpool Team-Up #1, a James Felder/Pete Woods one-shot from years ago which wasn't especially memorable in the first place. A little Deadpool goes a long way, and to be honest, seven consecutive Deadpool short stories is a bit much. Fred van Lente and Dalibor Talajic do a good story with evil mimes, while Mike Benson and Damion Scott turn in a visually interesting conversation piece between Deadpool and a psychiatrist. On the other hand, the Joe Kelly/Rob Liefeld thing is like having sugar injected into your eyes. And Kyle Baker turns in some thoroughly odd-looking art for the last story, which I'm not at all sure works. It's like the comic book equivalent of a low-budget Adult Swim clip-art animation. Mainly, though, it's not that the individual stories are bad, just that it's hard to take this much Deadpool in one go.

Liberty Comics #2 - This year's fundraiser anthology for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which is of course a very good cause. Themed anthologies tend to be hit and miss, and to be honest, this is more miss than hit. There's a lot of creators taking a few pages to inform us that free speech is good, which... well, we knew that, right? I mean, yes, you like free speech and you don't like censorship, and that's awesome, but a lot of the contributions are rather clodhoppingly literal and not especially insightful. Mike Allred does a passably amusing short, and there's a Painkiller Jane strip which gets the theme in quite well. Jason Aaron's opening strip isn't exactly subtle, but it's quite funny. But then there's also stuff like an overearnest, preachy Channel Zero four-pager, of which the less said the better. All in a good cause, but frankly not a great comic.

Sugar Shock #1 - This is the print edition of Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon's online comic, which originally appeared on Myspace Dark Horse Presents. It's actually only 24 pages long - the rest of the issue is filled out with sketch art - but at $3.50, that's still not bad value these days. We talk about this more on the podcast, but if you haven't seen it, the title pretty much tells you what to expect. It's a freewheelingly mental strip which cheerfully digresses all over the place, as an insane rock band (one of whom is a robot, and one of whom insists that she's not a Viking) go off into space to fight weirdness. It's a gag strip rather than a proper story, but Whedon is a good gag writer, with some great non sequitur cutaways. And thanks to Moon, it looks fantastic.

Uncanny X-Men #516 - In which Magneto shows up on Utopia, Xavier protests that the arch-villain can't be trusted, and everyone ignores him. Meanwhile, working through his short list of available remaining villains, Matt Fraction ends up using Scalphunter and a bunch of Predator Xs on a plane, which doesn't seem like that much of a threat to an entire island of X-Men, but okay. This isn't bad, actually. I like the idea of Xavier being sidelined while everyone else is cheerfully inviting Magneto in for coffee. And Greg Land's art is actually less irritating than normal this issue - partly because it looks a little less Photoshopped than normal, partly because there aren't many women in this issue.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #4 - Storm and Phoenix hook up with the Daughters of the Dragon to fight Nightshade, of all people. I've never much cared for this mid-seventies villain in her leather bikini, and First Class stories are usually at their weakest when the writers seem to be indulging personal nostalgia. Nightshade's plan, it turns out, is to steal a mind-reading machine so that she can give kung fu skills to her robots. Um... yes, maybe if this had actually come out 35 years ago. But reading it in 2009, it just seems to date the creative team.

Unwritten #6 - This looks to be the start of the second arc, as Tom Taylor finds himself in jail awaiting trial for the murder of all those genre writers who got killed in issue #4. Unwritten is easily my favourite Vertigo book right now. It's got a strong, intriguing central idea. And it's turning out to be more than just a gimmick about a character escaped from fiction - it's a vehicle to do stories about genre, and the rules of fiction, and the way a story is experienced by its audience. All of which I find rather fascinating. But it's also got a strong plot as well, and I love to see Mike Carey stretching himself like this.

Wolverine: Origins #41 - Guest starring Skaar, Son of Hulk. Which isn't gratuitous at all, you see, because this series is about Wolverine and his son Daken, so they're going to contrast that with Bruce Banner and his son Skaar... No, I don't really care either. Frankly, even the plot recap on page 1 is enough to make your head bleed. And then we get one of those stories where Wolverine knows Romulus can second-guess his every move, so decides to beat him by taking random advice from a bloke in a bar... Nice art, though, I'll give it that, but the plot has now strayed so far from any sort of logic or common sense that I can't even be bothered being irritated with it any more.

X-Men Forever #9 - Well, my copy has a printing error that makes two pages largely unreadable, which is unfortunate. But mainly, this is the story of Ziggy Trask, the latest member of the Trask family, who's spent her life trying to redeem the family name by building some Sentinels that actually work. Silly woman, hasn't she read Essential X-Men? The Sentinels never work. Actually, there is something interesting about the character - Claremont works hard to present her as somebody basically normal who's grown up seeing the X-Men as the baddies and who isn't evil so much as obsessed with the family business. Also this issue: we get to find out who one of those people in the shadows is! (It's nobody we knew.)

X-Men Legacy #228 - This is part two of "Devil at the Crossroads", the Emplate story that began in this year's Annual. Emplate has kidnapped Bling, because although she's terribly obscure, she also happens to have very handy powers. So this is a story where Bling is held prisoner in a weird interdimensional haunted house by a guy wearing a gas mask, and Rogue has to go after her. Artist Daniel Acuna makes this one work; his self-coloured art has a weirdly oversaturated feel to it that doesn't always click, but turns out to be perfectly at home doing stories about a mad pervert in an interdimensional house. This version of Emplate isn't a mastermind so much as a weirdo, but then creepiness was always his strongest feature, so why not push it to the limit?

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 - 21 June 2009

I know, I know, there's still a backlog from last week. And I will, honestly, get around to Wolverine #73-74 and Uncanny X-Men #508-511. Joining the queue this week is X-Men: Legacy #225, a single-issue story which seems to round off the "Professor X revisits his past" direction by coming full circle again.

But in the meantime, you can always check out the latest episode of House to Astonish, where Al and I look over the latest news and solicitations, and review Captain America, X-Men Forever and Booster Gold (the first DC Universe book to introduce its new back-up strip, if you were wondering why we cared).

Download the episode here, or visit the podcast webpage, or subscribe via iTunes.

Next week, by the way, there's an absolutely insane quantity of X-books. Even ignoring Timestorm 2009/2099 X-Men (which everyone will) and Wolverine Magazine #2 (a reprint book), Marvel are dumping all of this on the market simultaneously: Astonishing X-Men #30, Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia, Dark Wolverine #75, Uncanny X-Men #512, Wolverine: First Class #16, Wolverine Noir #3, Wolverine: Weapon X #3, X-Factor #45, X-Force #16 and X-Men Forever #2.

I really don't understand the logic behind this sort of scheduling. Yes, it drowns other publishers who are trying to ship in the same week - but surely, when you flood the market with this many X-books, you just end up cannibalising your own sales. What's the point?

Anyway. Out this week:

All-New Savage She-Hulk #3 - Very much a guilty pleasure sort of book - it's Lyra, the daughter of Thundra, fighting the Dark Avengers, for heaven's sake. But thanks mainly to writer Fred van Lente (with solid support from pencillers Peter Vale and Michael Ryan), it does work, partly by revelling in the sheer inanity of Thundra's - and by extension, the new She-Hulk's - origin story. If you don't know, Thundra is the heroine of an alternate future where men and women are at war. It wuzz lyke a metafawr, y'know? The unspoken joke is that the characters take it all deadly seriously, and the clever bit is that Lyra somehow still manages to be three dimensional enough for the story to work. Acknowledging the idiocy of Thundra's world and still making to switch gears long enough to get some drama out of it is actually quite impressive.

Cable #15 - The penultimate chapter of "Messiah War", which started strongly but seems to be degenerating into filler to justify its seven-issue length. Granted, a crossover is a de facto fortnightly comic, and it can afford to be more relaxed than a monthly in its pacing. But at this point we're just getting a lot of running around and fighting, and the story still hasn't really tried to explain why Hope is supposed to be so important. (If she was in the present day, I could buy her as being symbolically imporant and a political football. But I simply don't understand why we're supposed to assume that she's personally significant. For all we know, she could have the mutant power to levitate paperclips.) Ariel Olivetti is in very hit-and-miss form this month - there's a very good, dynamic sequence of Hope on the run, but also a lot of characters standing stiffly and floating in space. Not a great issue.

Captain Britain and MI-13 #14 - The Dracula storyline builds towards its conclusion, as Paul Cornell unveils a string of twists, and sets up for the big climax. If I'm being honest, I'm in two minds about this vampires-in-space concept - an army of vampires kind of misses the point of what vampires were originally about, and risks making them just another bunch of invading aliens. At the very least, it's a bit of a balancing act, and I'm not quite sure this manages to be the big, crazy idea it presumably wants to be. But it's a well-paced superhero book, tightly plotted, and has a lot going for it.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #2 - Oh, apparently we don't get ChrisCross drawing this miniseries after all. We get Andre Coelho and Eduardo Pansica splitting the pencils instead. And while they're perfectly acceptable, they're not up to the high standards of the first issue. Shame, that. Joe Casey's story remains promising, though, as the Super Young Team, who started out dressing up as superheroes to play the part, now belatedly have to figure out what their role actually involves in practice. Their problem seems to be that they're trying to express their individuality by copying other people and by trying to plug themselves into some pre-defined role, and the story is really about them trying to wrestle back control of the situation and make the team what they want it to be - once they figure out what that actually is. Decent reading, and it's a shame that the Final Crisis Aftermath banner will probably put off people who would otherwise enjoy it.

Hellblazer #256 - Peter Milligan goes old school, as John Constantine tries to hold on to his girlfriend using a love potion. That plot's been doing the rounds for centuries, but somehow earlier generations don't seem to have found it as creepy as today's readers do. Strangely, it's drifted from "harmless fairy tale plot element" to "overtones of rape" without the content really changing that much. Naturally, that's the tension that Milligan is keen to play up here. Phoebe's an unusual love interest for Constantine, too, as her defining characteristic is normalcy - and Vertigo characters tend to keep their real-world interactions to subcultures. You never know quite what you're going to get with Milligan writing a title; with Hellblazer, it's a fairly straight take on the character, but one that seems to work.

Jack of Fables #35 - In which Bigby takes on the anthropomorphic personifications of genre fiction and, presumably, condemns Earth-Fables to a few years of experimental writing. This is the penultimate chapter of "The Great Fables Crossover", and I like the audacity with which they're foreshadowing the finale: the embodiment of Deus Ex Machinas pops in from time to time during the crossover to assure us that he'll be there at the end. It's the sort of glorious illogic that really shouldn't work, and come to think of it, a case could be made that the oddity of the Literals undermines the "reality" of the Fables characters. Somehow, though, it seems to click. Oh, and Jack isn't in it at all.

Phonogram: The Singles Club #3 - This time, it's Emily Aster, the girl so determined to get away from her own previous persona that she literally sold that part of her personality for power. (Good choice of wording, by the way. Most stories would say she sold that part of her soul. But "soul" doesn't really mean anything, and when people hear it, they think of old stories. "Personality" is more meaningful, and forces people to stop and think about what you mean by it.) It's a story about people in denial about their past and trying to construct a new identity which seems self-contained, but turns out in the end to be defined by a reaction against what they were before. Emily thinks she's a different person now, and in some ways she's right, but not as many ways as she'd like to think. Great work from Jamie McKelvie, too - the body language is spot on, the final panel brilliant.

Wolverine: Origins #37 - Hmm. Halfway through reading this, I was primed to complain that if it was that easy to track down Romulus, somebody would have done it by now. But then it turns out that it isn't that easy to track down Romulus after all, so fair enough. Except then I find myself thinking, well then, how dumb is Wolverine to spend the whole issue believing in a misdirection plot that I never bought? Still, it's well paced, and the subplot scenes in the prison with Omega Red are well done. I'd be inclined to forgive it its flaws and say it's a basically decent issue. Certainly Scot Eaton continues to get better and better; he improved noticeably during his time on X-Men: Legacy, and he's still improving here. Really, my problem with this issue is that it's all about Wolverine hunting down Romulus, and for reasons you're surely all more than familiar with by now, I don't think Romulus is a remotely interesting idea.

X-Men Origins: Gambit - Mike Carey recaps Gambit's back story, as drawn largely from the Fabian Nicieza stories in his solo series. It's a straight retelling, but this material was scattered over tons of flashbacks before, and there's something to be said for simply bringing it all together. Rather than force it into a artificial plot, Carey simply plays on a few parallels between different stories to give it all a sense of shape. For the most part it kinds of works, and it speaks volumes that Carey gives the individual Marauders more personality in a single page than most of them achieved in their first decade in print. But I have serious doubts about the final two page sequence, in which Gambit rescues an unidentifed little girl with white hair from some people in very strange clothes. This is him meeting Storm, during the period when she'd been turned into a child, and then helping to rescue her from the Shadow King's Hounds. But quite how you're supposed to work that out if you don't know the story already, I have absolutely no idea. Thematically, I can see what Carey's going for - he's trying to tie that scene back to a Fabian Nicieza flashback where young Gambit rescued his future wife Bella Donna, and create a (slightly specious) impression of starting anew. But surely it'll be a baffling non sequitur ending to any reader who doesn't know the original context of the scene - in Uncanny X-Men #266, a comic from almost 20 years ago. A strange choice, and I doubt whether it's a successful one.

Wolverine: Origins #33-36

"Weapon XI"
Writer: Daniel Way
Penciller: Doug Braithwaite
Inkers: Bill Reinhold, Cam Smith, Paul Neary, Klaus Janson, Jesse Delperdang, Andrew Hennessy, Kris Justice
Colourist: Andy Troy, Art Lyon
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: John Barber

Wow, that's an awful lot of inkers.

Officially, this arc is a Dark Reign tie-in. But Wolverine: Origins is a book that exists to tell a single huge conspiracy story. It isn't a book that does tie-ins. So, despite the banner, Way ploughs on with his story. The first two issues can broadly be justified as tie-ins. The second two can't, but they've got the banner anyway.

Here's the story. Daken wants to get hold of the Muramasa Blade (the magic sword made from Wolverine's blood or some such thing) so that he can have it melted down and grafted to his claws. Then, he'll have awesome metal claws too. So he lures the X-Men into coming after him, steals a bit of the Muramasa Blade (which, by happy coincidence, they decided to bring with them for the first time ever), and goes off to get two of his claws covered in metal by the Tinkerer. Wolverine goes after him, Romulus is hanging around, and... yeah, that's about it.

This isn't a Dark Reign story, but Way duly acknowledges Daken's inclusion in the cast of Dark Avengers. The problem is that he has to tack it on to the first act of his story, where it feels like it's been nailed on at the last minute.

More fundamentally, though, the story singularly omits to tell us why Daken wants to have part of this metal sword attached to his claws. All we're told is that Romulus wants it to happen, because this will make Daken the next generation Weapon X - somebody who can kill Wolverine. So far so good... but that doesn't explain why Daken, who is suposed to hate Romulus, would be willing to play ball. And when we get to issue #36, it turns out that these metal claws are crap, fragile, and have to be used with enormous caution. Which begs the question of why even Romulus would think this was worthwhile.

Perhaps there's an explanation in an earlier storyline that I've forgotten. If so, it would still have been nice - no, essential - to reiterate it in this arc, because it's the antagonist's motivation! And it's not as if the recap page is much help. Issue #36, for example, provides no explanation of Daken's plot (dismissing it as "mysterious" even though it was fully explained in issue #33), and offers no reason why Romulus' henchman is wandering around, all of which is essential information to understand the plot.

You could go on. What exactly does Daken do to lure the X-Men to New York? Nothing, really, but the story just asserts that he lured them. Why does Cyclops bring the Muramasa blade, which he doesn't normally carry around? It's essential to the plot, of course, but that's not a good enough reason, and none is offered.

The problem with Wolverine: Origins used to be that it was slower than treacle. It's sorted that out now; the pacing is fine. The problem now is that we've got a story stubbornly trudging from point A to point B without much obvious internal logic along the way, and characters acting irrationally because the plot demands it. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. It's good enough on a scene-by-scene basis, but the big picture - and this book is all about the big picture - is confused at best.

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 - 22 March 2009

Tons of X-books this week, as Marvel's ever-erratic shipping schedule strikes again. See below for reviews of Uncanny X-Men #504-507 ("Lovelorn") and the final storylines from Ultimate X-Men and Young X-Men. And that still leaves all this...

Wolverine #71 - The penultimate chapter of "Old Man Logan", as we reach the east coast. It's pretty much what you've come to expect by now: Mark Millar and Steve McNiven doing a dystopian post-superhero Marvel Universe future, with scattered cool ideas, and a serviceable road-trip plot to steer us past them. It's quite good fun for what it is, even if seven issues seems a bit self-indulgent for a fairly slight plot. Mind you, it's paced rather well, and it's not as if anyone buys Mark Millar Wolverine stories for the philosophical depth. It is what it is; you can probably take a guess whether it's your cup of tea, and you'll probably be right.

Wolverine: Origins #34 - The X-Men fight Daken in a serviceable enough story, though one which never really makes it terribly clear why Cyclops has bothered to take the vitally important magic sword into battle rather than just keeping it safe. If you're not following "Dark Reign", then the basic idea is that Daken has been drafted into Dark Avengers as an ersatz Wolverine, apparently to annoy dad. It's a shame that the story doesn't pick up more on the idea of Daken impersonating his father, which would seem to have more story potential than a fairly standard fight with the X-Men; but then, I suppose Way's hamstrung to some extent by the fact that he can't really resolve any of these issues decisively. It's an okay issue, and if you can live with him carrying the macguffin into battle for no obvious reason, Cyclops gets some good moments.

X-Factor #41 - Layla Miller is back, and as you'd expect, that means we pick up on the stories that were left hanging in her one-shot a few months ago. Peter David is still asking people very nicely not to reveal the plot, so I'll confine myself to noting that this issue has by far the strongest narrative of all this week's books, and the most effective twists and turns. There's some fill-in art on a scene near the end of the book, but it's perfectly fine fill-in art, so no problem there. Good issue.

X-Force #13 - Oh dear, we're back to killing characters for cheap heat. Actually, technically this is the second half of a two-parter called "Suicide Leper", so I suppose I should be reviewing it in full - but it's a very heavy week, and I can't really summon up the enthusiasm to talk about more murky bloodshed, so I'm going to rely on the fact that it's also a prelude to next month's crossover with Cable. Actually, the central idea is quite sound: the Leper Queen from Peter Milligan's X-Men run has been roped into a scheme of killing off humans to provoke anti-mutant backlash, she's not desperately happy about it, and she's trying to get herself killed. But it all comes down to the casual despatching of another character - one which, given the time-travel overtones, I suspect will be reversed with a reset button in a couple of months time. Still, the overreliance on killing characters is disappointing, and we're back to the murky and frequently stilted art of Clayton Crain. Not very good.

X-Men: Legacy #222 - Professor X, Gambit, Rogue and a bunch of alien scavengers all stuck in a giant Danger Room simulation. It has all the usual strengths and weaknesses of Carey's Legacy stories. I like the premise of Rogue being stuck with Mystique's voice in her head; it's an interesting variation on the old idea that she'd absorbed Carol Danvers, with some potential for conflict. And the Shi'ar pirates get some very funny dialogue. On the other hand, it's extraordinarily continuity-heavy, and seems to assume that we'll all remember the context of a conversation between Rogue and Gambit from Uncanny X-Men #350 (a mere 157 issues ago!) without it needing to be explained. I do, but I doubt how many other readers will. If you don't mind that, it's a fun issue.

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.