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 - 20 September 2009

After a couple of weeks away, there's something of a backlog building up. So let's start off by ploughing through the X-books and a bunch of debut issues.

Obligatory plug: don't forget to download this week's episode of House to Astonish, where Al and I talk about the big news at Marvel and DC, and review Beasts of Burden, Sweet Tooth and Vengeance of the Moon Knight. Download it here, or visit the podcast webpage, or subscribe via iTunes.

Beasts of Burden #1 - This is a four-issue miniseries - or, more accurately, an "at least four issues and then we'll see how it goes" series - for Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's stories about cats and dogs protecting their small town from mystic weirdness. Apparently they've been doing these in anthologies since 2003. It's a beautiful comic. Jill Thompson is a wonderful animal artist, and manages to get tons of expression into the cast with virtually no anthropomorphism going on. At first glance it might look a bit cutesy, but there's a dash of genuine nastiness in here which rears its head from time to time. Now, if it's done badly, that sort of thing can come across as a kids' story with some arbitrary adult content nailed on. But this book gets it right; it feels more like a fairy tale from the days before bowdlerisation. If I've got one criticism - and I do - it's that there's a lot of minor characters wandering around who seem fairly interchangeable. That aside, though, this is an excellent book.

Cable #18 - On this issue's thrilling cover: Cable holds a gun and clutches a child. Say what you will about Marvel, but god, they wouldn't know a decent cover these days if it kicked them in the face. Seriously, what is this meant to tell anyone, other than that it's another issue of Cable exactly like the last seventeen? Because there's already a perfectly good logo that says Cable. Use the rest of the page to say something else. Give people a reason to buy the comic. You know, like you used to do before Bill Jemas decided that every cover should be a generic pin-up shot. He's gone now.

Anyway. In the far future, Cable and Hope have fled into space, and Bishop has given chase. You know, Bishop really should have thought of this possibility when he started blowing up vast chunks of planet Earth just to box them in. And the plot problems don't end there, because even though Bishop is in possession of a nuclear device, and he's aboard the only ship in the universe where Hope might conceivably be, and the captain has even told him that Hope's on board, he's not prepared to detonate it until he has "visual confirmation." What? It's a fucking nuke! Just blow up the ship, you moron!

And that's the problem with this series. The characters are quite well written; Hope's starting to emerge as a decent character; in broad strokes, the story isn't bad; but the plot just falls apart on inspection. It's an infuriating book, because I can't help feeling it's only a couple of drafts away from being good - plugging the plot holes, giving Bishop some genuine reason for doubt. (Cable fires off an empty liferaft pod as a distraction, for example, so Bishop's not sure whether she's still aboard.) In the broader scheme, give Cable and Hope something to aim for so that it isn't just an endless parade of "Bishop chases them through a new environment, repeat until cancelled", and instead you have a macguffin providing the illusion of progress. (For example, what Cable and Hope really need is a replacement time machine - or the parts to repair Cable's.)

It exasperates me, this book. It would take so little to solve its problems... but it hasn't been done

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus - It may have taken until the last episode of the crossover, but at least the Dark Avengers finally have a role to play: they're needed to make up the numbers for Osborn's side in the big final battle. That's still a pretty minor role for a team who are supposed to be the co-stars in this story, though, and I can't help but feel that this story should have been simply an X-Men arc guest starring Osborn and his cronies. The upshot of this arc, if you don't know, is that we're moving on from the never-quite-worked San Francisco set-up already, and now the X-Men are living on an island off the coast. Apparently, for the purposes of this story, 1.2 miles off California is not American soil, which is news to me, since it's comfortably within US territorial waters.

The final issue is basically a big fight between everyone under the sun, with lip service paid to a couple of token subplots such as Dani Moonstar becoming a Valkyrie again. There's a rather good sequence with Emma Frost and the Sentry. But fundamentally, it's the same problem I've had with a lot of Matt Fraction's X-Men stories - the cast is too large, there are too many plots being juggled, there's not enough focus. And to be honest, the Utopia set-up doesn't really interest me. The X-Men in San Francisco could have worked (though it didn't). The X-Men on an island in the middle of nowhere is basically a return to the Mansion with more water and less context. I'm not sold.

Dark Wolverine #78 - This is the start of a second arc, as Daken causes PR problems for Norman Osborn, thanks to his overenthusiastic slicing up of baddies. I'm not sure I even buy that as a premise, to be honest. Yes, the Dark Avengers are meant to be bad guys posing as heroes. But they've never seemed all that bothered about using excessive force in public, and it seems to me that the none-too-subtle Bush-administration metaphor makes it something they wouldn't be ashamed about - if anything, they'd consider it a PR boon. "Yes, we torture and murder bad guys. We're keeping America safe. Got a problem with that, liberals?" Isn't that meant to be the story? Or shouldn't it be? For that matter, if Osborn doesn't want one of his heroes slicing up bad guys in public, why on earth did he recruit a Wolverine in the first place? Slicing people up is his only means of attack!

So... we've got a premise that I don't really buy into, and that's followed by a story Daken doesn't really appear in all that much. There's a convoluted conspiracy plot with Osborn, and some gratuitous lingerie scenes. What I liked about the previous three issues - Daken's playing both sides against the middle - isn't so apparent here, and instead it comes off as an exercise in killing time while the creators wait for Dark Reign to end. We all know Osborn's downfall can't come in this book, so where exactly can any of this be leading? On the face of it, nowhere, and that's a problem. If you want to read yet another Dark Reign conspiracy story, this is a decent one, but I think I'm bored of this set-up and I'm ready to move on, thanks.

Exiles #6 - Jeff Parker's relaunch meets with swift cancellation - though to be fair, if it wasn't for the renumbering, this would be something approaching issue #125. There wasn't a lasting increase in sales, so the decision to pull the plug is understandable; as I've said before, Exiles is a fairly narrow concept and probably due for a rest. Still, Parker had some interesting ideas; rehashing the original Exiles set-up with Morph playing the Timebroker, so that long-time readers knew from the outset that something wasn't quite right, was a clever twist on the formula. And Marvel have at least given him a double-sized issue to wrap things up. Inevitably, it still feels terribly rushed, but we do get a resolution to the Magneto storyline, and a head-spinning explanation of why the Exiles exist in the first place (which, basically, asserts that as different worlds get "fixed", the knock-on effects for the universe mean that the explanation itself is retroactively altered). With hindsight, it's a shame that they didn't give the series a proper rest and then relaunch it with Parker, since that might have worked. But it's probably time to put this concept to bed for the moment.

Magog #1 - From the pages of Justice Society of America, apparently. I've never been especially interested in this character, who always struck me as a slightly off-beam representative of "modern" superheroes when he debuted in Kingdom Come. But hey, it's Keith Giffen, so it's probably worth a look. And, well... it's not terrible or anything, but there's nothing much to grab me. Giffen writes Magog as one of those superheroes who spends his time grumbling about the fact that other heroes won't get involved with street crime or Sudanese child soldiers because they're too busy fighting aliens. So he's a sort of globe-trotting street-level superhero, who's very angry about stuff, and likes smashing up opposing henchmen. Nothing you haven't seen before. It's competent but not very memorable.

Models Inc #1 - At least it stands out on the shelf. The art itself is dreadful - it looks like somebody's put a photo through a blurry filter and drawn a black line around it, and frankly they'd have been better off just using a photo - but the cover layout is different from anything else, and that's something. (And if it's not a doctored photo... well, it looks like one, and isn't that the real issue?) As for the story... it's a revival of some of Marvel's 1950s model characters, written by Paul Tobin with art by Vicenc Villagrasa. And that begs the obvious question: why would you want to revive the 1950s model characters? Was the world really crying out for a twenty-first century take on Millie the Model? Even if it was, I doubt this will be the book to satisfy them, because it's excruciating. I have no idea who this could possibly be aimed at - a clumsy book about models having adventures on the fringes of the Marvel Universe. If it was vaguely witty and had properly defined characters, it might have a certain camp or cult appeal, but it doesn't really manage that either. Oh, and there's a back-up strip about some guy who's apparently on television abroad.

Nomad: Girl Without a World #1 - A four-issue miniseries for Rikki Barnes, the Heroes Reborn Bucky. Rikki's a tricky character - she's actually not bad in her own right, but she's tied to a notoriously awful series in Rob Liefeld's Captain America, and her back story, involving artificially created alternate worlds brought into our dimension, is practically impenetrable. Sean McKeever wisely cuts through all that, by stripping it back to a simple idea: Rikki is from a parallel Earth, she's stuck in "our" world which is familiar but different, and her story is about her trying to find a place. And in the first issue she tries to be Bucky again, only to be warned off by the Black Widow. Given that the series is called Nomad, I think it's pretty obvious where this is heading - but McKeever writes this sort of thing well, and he's keeping the series down to earth with a story about high school politics, of all things. This is a pretty good issue. (Oh, and although the cover is a straightforward pin-up, it's at least got some striking colouring.)

Strange Tales #1 - First of a three-issue anthology of indie cartoonists doing comedy strips with Marvel heroes. The main attraction here is the long-awaited appearance of Peter Bagge's The Incorrigible Hulk, which was completed years ago and shelved when Marvel had a panic about damaging the Hulk licence. It's being serialised over these three issues, and on the strength of the opening pages, it's hard to fathom what Marvel could have objected to. ("Second-hand smoke bad for Hulk! It violate Hulk's civil liberties!") All told, it's a pretty good package. Most of the strips are short enough not to outstay their welcome; Paul Pope's tongue-in-cheek semi-deadpan Inhumans story is quite charming, and Junko Mizuno's inexplicable "Spider-Man moves to a city of spider-people where he isn't very special" story is genuinely sweet. A lot of it's just silly, but that's no bad thing.

The Torch #1 - It's Marvel's 70th anniversary, so it must be time to revive the Golden Age Human Torch again! Actually, on the strength of this first issue, it seems to be more of a comic about the Torch's sidekick Toro - who was apparently restored to life somewhere or other, and if only they still did footnotes, I'd know. Avengers/Invaders? Just guessing. The angle is that Toro doesn't fit in anywhere, because everyone he knew has moved on. If you only read one comic this month about a Marvel superhero feeling that they don't fit in, make it Nomad #1. This is okay, but nothing much more than that, and feels like primarily an exercise in reviving a character for the sake of doing so.

Sweet Tooth #1 - See the podcast for more on this. Jeff Lemire's new Vertigo series is definitely more of an indie title in sensibility, and I suspect it's going to be a tough sell, but all credit to Vertigo for trying it. It's a post-apocalypse story about a kid who's grown up in the middle of the forest alone with his father, and now has to go out on his own. Apparently all the post-apocalypse kiddies have animal characteristics, and Gus has antlers and the expression of a startled deer. In plot terms, all very familiar, but the execution is impressive - even if the metaphor of innocence might as well have a flashing neon sign over it. It's a quiet, bleak and brittle piece, which manages to keep up that mood despite fairly racing through the opening plot. From the preview pages, I had this pegged as likely to be irritatingly quirky, but at full length it turns out to be much more enjoyable than I'd expected. Worth a look, particularly given that Vertigo is still selling its first issues for a dollar.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #3 - This is a Banshee solo story, and it actually finds a relatively underused part of his history to work with. It's his wife Maeve, whose main function has hitherto been to spawn Siryn and get blown up by the IRA in an angstifying flashback. So, nice idea... but we end up with a rather awkward story about voodoo mutants and a bitter father-in-law. It all feels a bit contrived, and with both Sean and Moira featured prominently, much will depend on yuir tolerance fir the ol' Oirish accent. Adequate for what it is.

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #1 - Only in comics would a B-movie title like Vengeance of the Moon Knight actually seem like a good idea. Maybe the next relaunch can be Abbot and Costello Meet the Moon Knight? Anyway, Gregg Hurwitz and Jerome Opena bring Marc Spector back to New York, and he's out to make a name for himself as a proper, saner hero once again. The main theme seems to be Moon Knight's attempt to re-establish himself as an A-lister, which isn't a million miles away from what they've been doing in Ms Marvel. And although this isn't an official Dark Reign tie-in, there's the obligatory "renegade hero operating outside Osborn's control" schtick. It's all quite well done; the story is well paced, enough is done to acknowledge the previous stories without compromising the fresh start, and Opena's art is beautiful. The drawback is that the themes all seem a bit familiar; by this point in the Dark Reign storyline, we've seen pretty much everything. The back-up is a reprint of Moon Knight #1, not a particularly great story in its own right, but interesting for a chance to see Bill Sienkiewicz in the days when he was still finding his style.

X-Factor #48 - Are we nearly there yet? This storyline feels like it's been going on forever. Civilisations will die, continents will rise and fall, man will colonise the stars, and this storyline will still not be over. Apparently the book is heading for a relaunch with issue #200 (which, if you add up the first and second volumes, isn't that far away - though it's also rather meaningless, since the first 74 issues of volume 1 featured a different team of the same name). So presumably this has to end sooner or later, and I wonder whether it's being dragged out to fit that schedule. Anyway, this issue, the various plots shuffle a little further forward, and that's about all you can say about it. The story is over-long, and that's the bottom line.

X-Men Forever #6-7 - One issue drawn by Paul Smith, one by Steve Scott. And they're nice-looking comics, actually, even if Smith seems a bit sketchy at times. Claremont's characteristic juddling of subplots fits nicely with the fortnightly format, which keeps up the momentum while allowing him to pursue his digressions. Issue #7 is certainly something of a digression, as much of the issue is given over to a flashback story with the Howling Commandos. But it bounces along as enthusiastically as ever, and it's a strangely likeable comic for all its rough edges. As promised before my break, I'll come back to look at this series in a bit more detail... honest.

X-Men Legacy Annual #1 - Actually the first part of a four-part storyline which presumably continues in X-Men Legacy itself, although nobody seems to have thought it necessary to specify that in the comic. It's an Emplate story, which takes as its starting point the reasonable observation that the old Generation X villain was supposed to survive by feeding off mutants, so he's had a tough time since M-Day. For whatever reason, he's finally thought of visiting the X-Men to go looking for Penance - who, you might remember, he could feed on indefinitely because of her diamond body. Well, Penance isn't there, so he tries somebody else instead - presumably you're supposed to either remember Bling! from the Peter Milligan run, or figure out for yourself what her powers must be in order for the plot to work. That piece of exposition aside, it's a solid story which seems to be having fun with Emplate's all-round weirdness - though I wonder whether Acuna's art is too realistic to quite pull him off. There's also a back-up strip, picking up on the "Gambit joins Apocalypse" subplot which we all thought had been abandoned; apparently Carey's going to do something with it after all.

The X-Axis - 16 August 2009

I'm still working my way through my backlog of comics, so let's have another batch of capsules to bring us a little further up to date. Actually, X-Men Forever is due for a full-length review by now, and it's turning out that there's quite a bit to say about that book. But we'll come back to that.

Don't forget this week's episode of House to Astonish, with reviews of Doom Patrol, Lenore and Ultimate Comics Avengers. Download it here, or visit the podcast webpage, or download from iTunes.

Adventure Comics #... um... - This would be the first issue of the relaunched Adventure Comics. With Superman himself off in another storyline, the series has been turned into a Superboy title with a Legion of Super-Heroes back-up strip, thus satisfying the nostalgia cravings of people who live in the past. But you can ignore that if you want. It's actually a single book with a parallel structure - both strips are set in Smallville, both are written by Geoff Johns, there's a degree of plot crossover between the two, but rather niftily it provides an excuse to use two artists on the book. And you get thirty pages of story for your $4. The book also manages to set new standards in bizarre numbering: although solicited as Adventure Comics #1, the cover actually has the number 504 superimposed on the number 1, and the indicia identifies it as "Adventure Comics #1/Adventure Comics #504 (variant cover)". Yes, it's full-scale parallel numbering, a system designed to cause maximum confusion!

As for the contents: the Superboy strip plays off the idea that this version of the character is supposed to be the cloned son of both Superman and Lex Luthor. He's come to Smallville to try and emulate his father... or possibly his fathers. Remarkably little actually happens in this first issue, but Johns gets away with it by providing a sustained piece of misdirection and an effective twist. The idea of the character comes across without heavy exposition, and the book looks great - artist Francis Manipaul and colourist Brian Buccellato do some great farmland.

The Legion, on the other hand, have always struck me as a clumsy idea from the Silver Age who have not adapted terribly well to modern conditions (which is to say, the last few decades). They're passably entertaining here, but I just get the feeling that Geoff Johns is in love with these characters and is not really selling me on why I should share that view.

Battlefields: The Tankies #3 - This is the concluding part of Garth Ennis' Battlefields project for Dynamite Entertainment: a trio of three-issue miniseries, allowing him to indulge in his favourite genre, the war story. There's nothing to link the three stories, but a bit of branding can't hurt to raise their profile. In a closing essay, Ennis announces another nine issues, in the same format, for 2010 - including a direct sequel to one of the first Battlefields arcs. Presumably it's this one, since "The Tankies" comes across more as an introduction of some characters for use in further stories. (And the other two don't really lend themselves to sequels at all.) To be honest, though, this struck me as the least successful story of the three. It doesn't have the emotional hook of "Night Witches" or "Dear Billy", and comes across as a rather generic exercise in dark humour crossed with war-is-hell. It's not bad, mind you - the other two Battlefields arcs were exceptionally strong, and even Ennis's weaker stories are miles ahead of the pack. But he's done better.

Cable #17 - As if to prove that nothing, but nothing, can put an end to this "Bishop chases Cable through time" storyline, with the whole world on the verge of destruction, Cable flees into space... and Bishop gives chase. Again. In itself, it's a perfectly good story, but the broader problem is that the book seems to be going round in circles, and there's no real sense that it's building to anything. Of course, if we drag it out long enough, then I suppose eventually Hope gets her powers and something will come of that... but for the moment, we seem to be stuck on a merry-go-round of chase stories. Presumably the idea is to keep increasing the stakes, but I think they peaked on that when Bishop started blowing up whole continents, and the fate of a couple of spaceships seems relatively inconsequential in comparison. That said, these problems are with the broader picture. As a two-parter, this is perfectly decent - veteran artist Paul Gulacy humanises it all, and there's a nice little scene where Hope is reunited with Cable and figures (after getting it wrong in the recent crossover) that this time she's recognised the impostor. All this is fine, but the series as a whole really needs to get to the point pretty soon.

Citizen Rex #1 - Every so often I pick up a book because the creators are acclaimed geniuses, and then it just washes over me without leaving much of an impression at all. This is a six-issue miniseries by Mario and Gilbert Hernandez, and while I'd love to say that I had some great insight to offer, to be honest, I just though it was self-consciously quirky in a mildly irritating way. Let's just say there's an entire sensibility going on here which doesn't do much for me. I can sort of see the appeal - it's got a strong creative voice, and it's certainly different - but it never really connects with me either intellectually or emotionally.

CyberForce/Hunter Killer #1 - Mark Waid relaunches early Image team CyberForce (and some other Top Cow group you've probably never heard of) in a miniseries which the cover optimistically bills as "summer's hottest event series." Good luck with that. It's a perfectly straight superhero book, loosely themed around the power that technology has in our lives. So there's a too-good-to-be-true new mobile phone on the market, and if you can't figure out where that's heading, you're clearly new around here. It's fine, though; Silvestri's characters fit with Waid's style, and Kenneth Rocafort's art is flashy in a rather enjoyable way (and has some great colouring, too). Better than you're probably imagining it was.

Dominic Fortune #1 - A four-issue miniseries for Marvel's Max imprint, in which Howard Chaykin returns to his cynically amoral 1930s adventurer Dominic Fortune. Chaykin is one of those creators who acquired an indestructible critical reputation for his work in the eighties, when he doing all sorts of experiments with storytelling. He also tends to churn out rather uninteresting sex-and-violence fantasies like this, books which just seem terribly old fashioned, as if they're still rehearsing the stuff that would have been transgressive when the creator was 18. That said, there's something curiously compelling about Chaykin's awkward, blocky artwork, which makes up in presence for what it lacks in elegance. But ultimately it just feels like a stock adventure story with some gratuitous censor-baiting.

Doom Patrol #1 - We talk about this on the podcast, but basically, it's a revival of the original Doom Patrol by Keith Giffen and Matthew Clark, with the three founder members back to being used as a field team by a dubiously unsympathetic chief. This first issue is mainly character bits, hung on a fairly basic plot, but it hangs together quite well, and there's certainly a lot in there. The back-up strip, reuniting Giffen with the rest of the creative team of Justice League International on a suburban-sitcom version of the Metal Men, is great (and makes up for its lack of page count by doing ten-panel pages to squeeze in the content). Giffen is hit or miss - as the closing preview for Magog proves - but this is one of his winners.

G-Man: Cape Crisis #1 - This is the Image series by Chris Giarusso, the guy who used to do those Mini Marvels strips that cropped up randomly at the back of Marvel comics and were frequently the best thing in the issue. This is on somewhat similar lines; while Giarusso doesn't have the opportunity to play off familiar characters, the style is much the same, set in what seems to be a world where some of the kids are superheroes, none of the adults are, and actual villainy seems to be a very low story priority. Giarrusso's comic timing has always been great, and he knows how to play off the genre cliches - I love the scene of G-Man trying to explain his power to the other kids and being cut off with objections that you can't be "kind of invulnerable." (I always wanted to argue that point with Rogue. I mean, I knew what Claremont was getting at by "partially invulnerable", but seriously...)

The Marvels Project #1 - Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting begin a sort of shared origin story for superheroes generally in the Marvel Universe. Presumably. I'm a bit wary of books like this, because overarching conspiracy theories rarely fit neatly with every concept. But we're off to a promising start; from the look of it, it's not so much that there's a single cause for everything, as that the US government is giving things a nudge along, with an eye on the upcoming war. Wisely, Brubaker steers clear of the major Golden Age characters, and opts for the Angel as his protagonist - one of those all-purpose vigilantes who's enough of a cipher that you can impose pretty much any role onto him. Basically, it's Brubaker and Epting doing Marvels in the Golden Age, and as thoroughly readable as that implies.

Ultimate Comics Avengers #1 / Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1 - Again, check the podcast for more on these. By the way, despite those being the official titles, the logos just say Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Spider-Man, so evidently sanity dawned somewhere along the line. From the look of these books, neither Millar nor Bendis is really all that interested in Ultimatum and its deck clearing exercise - they just want to put it behind them and get back to business as usual. Avengers comes across as essentially a continuation of Mark Millar's Ultimates, but somewhat more restrained and with the bombast toned down a bit. It actually works quite well; Carlos Pacheco does a wonderful job with some of the action scenes, and personally, I always thought Ultimates was the sort of book that would benefit from dialling it back a bit. Spider-Man is more or less what it always was - New York City has been entirely rebuilt in six months, which is pretty obviously the book's way of saying "Let's just pretend that didn't happen." New artist David LaFuente has done some great work in the past, and has some great moments here, but he still seems to be settling on a style; there's a flirtation with manga here that doesn't seem altogether consistent throughout the issue, and makes the book feel a little rough around the edges. But it's refreshingly light on angst, and that's something to be welcomed.

Uncanny X-Men #514 - Part four of the "Utopia" crossover with Dark Avengers. I can see why Matt Fraction was talking in interviews about needing a flowchart to keep track of his cast. At this point, we've got a cast of thousands wandering the pages of the book - the regular X-Men, the "dark" X-Men, Norman Osborn, the Dark Avengers, X-Force, the Science Team... Come to think of it, there's also an entire subplot about Professor X and the Beast in prison which doesn't even make it into this issue. The Dark Avengers seem, at least so far, to be surplus to requirements, in that their role could have been filled perfectly adequately by generic HAMMER troops, thus paring back the cast list to advantage. I can't help wondering whether this story started off as an X-Men "Dark Reign" tie-in and got turned into a Dark Avengers crossover somewhere along the line, complicating it further. It's quite good fun - the Dark X-Men team are quite well balanced, in that most of the team are actually perfectly decent people, and there's nothing really all that dark about them aside from their connection with Osborn. And Terry and Rachel Dodson have always been great superhero artists. But there's probably too much going on here, and it feels like it'd be a stronger story for thinning the herd of characters and focussing on fewer people with more screen time. That said, Fraction is finding the space for Scott and Emma, who are rightly his top priorities, so it works to that extent.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #2 - Nightcrawler gets into an argument with the Inhumans over an issue of cultural relativism, and the X-Men have to get him out of trouble. It's okay, and perfectly acceptable so far as it goes, but it doesn't have the charm of the Jeff Parker issues, and some of the team (Jean in particular) feel decidedly out of character.

X-Men Forever #5 - Officially the end of the first arc, "Love -- and Loss!" (yes, with that punctuation), although if there wasn't a "part 5 of 5" on it, you'd probably never know. What a strange book this is becoming. I'll write about it in more detail later, but X-Men Forever has turned out to be a strange hybrid of, on the one hand, ideas that Claremont might conceivably have used if he'd stayed with the X-Men in 1991 and, on the other, stuff that would clearly never have seen print in a 1991 X-Men story in a million years. (Wolverine's dead! SHIELD's run by a second generation staff!) This issue even throws in a weird new spin on the entire X-Men concept, which would have dragged the entire franchise away from the "next step in human evolution" premise. Basically, the idea is that mutants burn themselves out by using their powers, so they're pretty much doomed to die young - making their powers a different sort of mixed blessing. Now, obviously, if this was the regular Marvel Universe, or even the diverged-in-1991 version X-Men Forever was supposed to feature, you could cite tons of obvious counter-examples (Magneto and Wolverine, for example), but this is a parallel universe, so Claremont can do what he likes. And hey, it's something different. The book is all over the place, but with a sort of manic enthusiasm that makes it unexpectedly hard to resist.

The X-Axis - 14 June 2009

Goodness, I'm drifting way behind schedule. Still haven't got around to doing a full review of last week's Exiles storyline, and this week we've got Wolverine #73-74 and the end of the Sisterhood arc in Uncanny to add to the list. I'll get to them.

But in the meantime, here's some other stuff.

Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #1 - Another four dollar miniseries. But this one has a stab at value for money, by throwing in a reprint of the character's debut in Thor #337. For some reason, that's not mentioned anywhere in the solicitations, so I'm not sure whether they're reprinting the whole storyline in the course of this miniseries. Seems like the sort of thing you'd want to draw attention to. As for the main feature, Kieron Gillen and Kano go all the way back to Beta Ray Bill's origin story to give him an agenda: he's going to singlehandedly defeat Galactus. I suspect this may be heading in the direction of asking whether Galactus is some sort of necessary evil - whether that works, depends on whether you can make him a metaphor rather than a big guy in purple. But it's a strong first issue, and I'm quite pleased to see Marvel doing more of these three-issue minis; it's punchier.

Fables #85 - More of Jack at the Farm, which is really something of a side issue in terms of the wider crossover. Really, the main story is going on in Jack of Fables and Literals; this subplot feels somewhat like an effort to get the overbearing Jack out of the way by keeping him occupied. It's okay, but it's not the strongest part of the storyline, and Tony Akins' art feels like it's working very hard to fit the house style.

Genext United #2 - Or GeNext or GeNeXt or GeneXt, or however it's meant to be capitalised - I'm never sure. Anyway, for those of you who can't keep track, this is Chris Claremont's second miniseries about the next generation of X-Men characters in (more or less) the world of his X-Men: The End miniseries. Which basically means it's a bunch of teenage heroes in the not-too-distant future. In fact, though, this series appears to be mainly concerned with introducing the heroes and villains of India, all of whom are mythologically themed. It's a nice enough idea in theory, but it's strangely charmless on the page - the characters aren't quite properly defined, and it never really comes to life.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class Giant-Size Special #1 - Following the well-received X-Men: First Class, which updated the Silver Age version of the X-Men, we're now getting Uncanny X-Men: First Class, a miniseries about the 1975 roster. (Between this and Wolverine: First Class, you can't help suspecting Marvel have rather lost sight of the original pun.) This issue is basically an anthology as Scott learns about each of his new teammates, through the medium of the flashback. There's a whole bunch of creators credited, although we're not told who did which bits. Heaven only knows when it's supposed to take place; you'd assume it was early in the day, but Moira's wandering around as an in-house scientist, so it can't be. If this is even meant to be in continuity at all. Who knows? Anyway, it's a mixed affair. The Storm piece is rather good, and Nightcrawler's segment has delightful art; Banshee's is pretty but rather vacant, and Colossus gets a bizarre scene which can't seem to make up its mind whether it's doing an Archie pastiche, and if so, why. But Wolverine spouting a load of gibberish about his past ("Hey, who let the radioactive wolverine out of its cage?") is very funny.

Unknown #2 - Mark Waid and Minck Oosterveer's offbeat detective story continues, and it seems we're doing the "weight of the human soul" idea. Specifically, Waid seems to be interested in the idea that, with quantum physics and so forth, there might actually be something to measure - as he mentions in passing, there's a guy at Duke University who apparently wants to do experiments about this. So while it's notionally a detective story, it's actually turning out to be more about mortality and the outer reaches of mystery. All blended with a Sherlock Holmes type of set-up. Unusual, but quite interesting.

Unwritten #2 - A high concept Vertigo series if ever there was one: Tommy Taylor thinks he was the inspiration for his father's highly successful books about a boy wizard of the same name, but it turns out that, unknown to him, he might actually be the character come to life. This being Vertigo, of course, we all know that some sort of magic is probably going to be involved. So, understandably enough, the story is already focussing more on the mystery of quite what Tommy actually is. The concept is certainly fascinating enough to justify it. Hopefully, with Carey's profile and the previous success of Lucifer, this title will attract a large enough audience for the story to run its full length, instead of being cut short like Crossing Midnight.

X-Factor #44 - Yes, the story really is called "Dirty, Sexy Monet." Groan now. But that aside, it's another good issue from Peter David, who continues to impress me by taking seemingly unpromising characters and making them work. He did it before by grafting a personality onto the cipher Layla Miller, and he's doing it again with Darwin from X-Men: Deadly Genesis. Oka, I'm not altogether sure we need more stories about dystopian futures, but hell, it's a subplot, and I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Lovely art too, even if Longshot feels a bit creepy.

X-Men Forever #1 - We'll probably talk about this on the podcast next week (bluntly, there's not much in the way of new releases). In theory, this is the series where Chris Claremont picks up the X-Men where he left off in 1991. In practice, it's already becoming a bit confused. The first issue is devoted to the X-Men hunting down Fabian Cortez, a loose end from X-Men #3 which would have made sense for the fourth issue. But half the team seem to have been quietly dumped, and Kitty and Kurt from Excalibur are back for no apparent reason. In fairness, I can understand why Claremont needs to slim down the team - the 1991 roster was designed to sustain two books with separate casts, and it's clearly far too big for a single team book - but this sort of wholesale reshuffling straight off the bat doesn't seem in the spirit of the gimmick. The story itself is a forgettable manhunt with an uninspired payoff, but there are a couple of potentially interesting subplots, as Claremont gets a chance to write that Scott/Jean/Logan romantic triangle that he kept hinting at, and to do the Rogue/Gambit relationship his way.

The X-Axis - 10 May 2009

This week's podcast has reviews of New Mutants, Power Girl and Fin Fang Four Return. And for blog readers, I'll come back to New Mutants later on. But first, here's some other stuff from this week's books.

Astonishing Tales #4 - More reprints from Marvel's digital comics service. I'm mentioning it here for the X-completists among you, since it's got a Wolverine/Punisher serial and a Mojoworld story both underway. I've written about them before, of course, and there's nothing new to report. The Wolverine/Punisher thing is a serviceable action story, but it does have some striking artwork going for it. Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra's Mojoworld story, though, is ridiculous but genuinely funny, with Cannonball and Sunspot pausing at the end to argue over how old they're actually supposed to be these days. ("We were first published in 1982... that makes us, what, 36...?") You also get a throwaway Iron Man 2020 story which spends most of its page count on fighting, and an atmospheric, virtually-silent Daredevil short with little plot but a cute use of his powers. It's not a bad package, as superhero anthologies go.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 #25 - If you're wondering how "Season 8" got up to issue #25, it's because the series is meant to have roughly as much story content as a full season of the TV show, and obviously that's rather more than 25 standard comics. Anyway, after 25 issues of subplot about Dawn being turned into a giant, this is the pay-off. Or, perhaps more accurately - after 25 issues of subplot about Dawn being turned into a giant, this is the pay-off? It's a story about an off-the-peg jilted boyfriend, who nobody really seems appropriately angry about, with a very odd B-story about a sort of abusive Gepetto in the Scottish hills, who rather gets forgotten about at the end. The ideas are fine, but the treatment doesn't fly.

Cable #14 - Part four of "Messiah War", the crossover with X-Force. And it's better than you'd probably expect, to be honest. There's some good material with Bishop trying to keep up his facade of loyalty for Stryfe's benefit - and I like the way the story is using Stryfe, as a guy who thinks he's Cable's arch-enemy, but is actually just a nuisance in the path of the other characters. On the other hand, there's a weird torture scene which manages to be simultaneously too graphic and not graphic enough, and a very strange subplot with Apocalypse that doesn't seem to achieve a great deal. But I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it pays off somewhere down the line. And there's a strong cliffhanger, taking advantage of the fact that Hope doesn't know all sorts of stuff which the readers are familiar with. Pretty decent, really.

Exiles #2 - Ah, a twist on the format. For some reason, even though they keep travelling between parallel Earths with counterparts of the familiar Marvel characters, the Exiles have generally managed to avoid bumping into themselves, or getting mistaken for a local. I'm surprised it hasn't been done more frequently, to be honest. But since this version of the Exiles is using high-profile characters like Wanda Maximoff and the Black Panther, I suppose we're going to get it more often. And indeed, we get plenty of scenes of the Exiles bluffing their way past the locals by crossing their fingers and hoping things generally played out like they did at home. The Blink subplot continues to build nicely, as well, simply by having her take a back seat in the story and gently nudge the characters now and again. Obviously it's a book for the devoted Marvel fans who get all the references, but that's fair enough in a parallel-worlds set-up. Good fun, and I'm pleasantly surprised that Jeff Parker has managed to reinvigorate the format.

Fin Fang 4 Return - We talk about this on the podcast, but it's a collection of shorts from the Marvel website (plus a reprint of the Christmas story, though they didn't mention that in the solicitations). If you haven't seen Scott Gray and Roger Langridge's strips before, the basic gag is that a bunch of monster characters from the fifties have been shrunk to human size and forced to live in the relatively prosaic setting of Marvel New York. So Fin Fang Foom is a chef, Gorgilla is just a well-meaning talking ape, the loveable Electro is a hopelessly out-of-date robot, and Googam, Son of Goom, still spends all his time scheming to take over the world. It's a simple set-up and the strips are generally very funny (the Madonna one is particularly good). Silly, but in all the right ways.

Power Girl #1 - Again, see the podcast, but I may as well reiterate my big question: what is the concept of Power Girl, other than that she's a Supergirl knock-off? The set-up in this series is that she's running one of those charitably-inclined technology companies that heroes tend to end up with (regular capitalism being a rather unfashionable occupation these days), but since there's no mention of any technical genius or vast wealth, I have no clue how she ended up with it. It's basically fine if you can live with the gratuitous T&A jokes, but the real problem here is that Power Girl comes across as a generic character.

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #2 - One part convoluted metaphor to three parts dreamy nonsense, but it's the sort of book where that's a ringing endorsement. Features perhaps the most unlikely bullfighting scene in history. A series this absurd won't be to everyone's taste, but it has a strong enough plotline to hang together through the weirdness. I love it, personally.

X-Men: First Class Finals #4 - Um... more greatest hits from earlier X-Men: First Class stories, strung together with a loose "let's travel inside Jean's memories" plot. The pay-off is something about Jean dreaming about her fears, and frankly, it seems a bit of a weak justification for a four issue miniseries. Oh, and judging by the ending, we've also given up any pretence of First Class being more than a loose parallel to mainstream continuity (as the book apparently forgets to write out Hank before diving into Giant-Size X-Men #1). Anyway, it's perfectly inoffensive, but in its eagerness to remind us of First Class stories of yore, it doesn't manage to deliver a story on their level.

The X-Axis - 5 April 2009

Didn't get to X-Infernus last week, so I'll cover that in the next couple of days. Probably. I'll hold over Mark Waid and Peter Krause's Irredeemable #1 as well. And we'll talk about Flash: Rebirth on House to Astonish next week. But that still leaves plenty to talk about.

Oh, by the way, I've finally succumbed and started a Twitter account. I doubt it's of much interest to anyone who doesn't actually know me, but if you like reading periodic inanities that aren't long enough - and come to think of it, as a comics reader, you probably do - here's the link.

Meanwhile...

Astonishing Tales #3 - This is the anthology title that reprints stories from Marvel's digital service, in case you've forgotten. It gets a mention here because it's got two X-stories. The Punisher/Wolverine story is your typical Marvel Comics Presents filler, but the art by Kenneth Rocafort is quite good - if you can look past the stratospherically irritating levels of T&A. There's also a continuing Mojo story by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra, which is better than you'd expect. Mojo wasn't really created to be a media parody (that became the focus once Chris Claremont started writing him), and his schtick has become a little stale over the years, but it feels surprisingly fresh here. There's also a Iron Man 2020 story which is merely serviceable, and a throwaway but good-looking Spider-Woman eight-pager. Not a story-lovers' paradise, this issue, but the art's strong enough to make it worth a look.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #24 - My god, the letters page is still running mail about the lesbian scene in issue #12. A year ago! Meanwhile, this is a fill-in issue by Jim Krueger and Cliff Richards, with Giles and Faith visiting a refuge for ex-Slayers in another of those backwater Eastern European villages. Solid and well put together, but not especially inspired, and the art is a little variable, with some panels looking rather more directly photo-referenced than others. Okay, though.

Cable #13 - Oh, was that meant to be Apocalypse's ship at the end of the previous chapter? I completely missed that, due it not looking anything like Apocalypse's ship, and nobody saying "Look, it's Apocalypse's ship." Well, never mind. This is part two of the "Messiah War" crossover with X-Force, and so far it's better than I'd expected. Both titles have a tendency to take themselves far too seriously, so bringing in Deadpool to puncture the pretentiousness is a smart move. And here's something I never thought I'd say: I like the use of Stryfe. He's always been far too muddled to work effectively as an arch-villain. Here, though, he merely thinks he's the archvillain, when in fact he's a bozo being led up the garden path by Bishop. That's a smart way of turning his flaws into strengths.

Dead Romeo #1 - A six-issue mini by Jesse Blaze Snider and Ryan Benjamin, about a 1980s rock singer back from the dead as a vampire... or something. To be honest, it's not entirely clearly explained what the hell is going on (I had to check an interview to confirm that he was actually supposed to be a musician), but the gist is that he's been brought back with a bunch of nastier undead types, and he needs to kill an innocent if he's going to stay around. Otherwise, he's going back to hell. There's an awful lot going on, and it doesn't really work for me; he's obviously not going to kill the innocent girl, and beneath a barrage of endearingly crazy ideas, the characters seem a bit thin. It tries hard, though, and the horror fans will probably go for it.

Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular #1 - Another anthology book, with a bunch of stories about minor characters (some recycled from the website) linked by a framing sequence about Marvel's assistant editors. The tone is all over the place; the links are played for comedy, and so is a Mini Marvels piece with Hawkeye, but then there are American Eagle and D-Man stories played entirely straight. And the assistant editor sequences are a little too heavy on the in-jokes, but what did you expect? It's more hit than miss, to be fair, and there's something quite enjoyable about the evidently sincere enthusiasm for this pointedly uncommercial project. Yes, it's four dollars for an anthology of stories about obscure nonentities, but it entertained me.

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #1 - The long-awaited second series for Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart's Seaguy. The first volume came out five years ago, so it's unfortunate that this book clearly assumes you've only just read it. And there's no drastic changes here: if remember the first three issues, well, this is more of the same. Now, Seaguy was one of Grant Morrison's more divisive projects. Some people think it's a fabulous entry in absurd, demented world-building with a weird internal cartoon logic that holds it all together; some people think it's just gibberish. But ignore those people. They're wrong. It's a book with real vision to it, and while you need to read the first series to get it, I'm glad the project is finally going to be completed.

X-Men: First Class - Finals #3 - More fighting of random villains... and then, out of nowhere, the book throws an unexpected curveball, completely wrongfooting the reader in a great example of how to be confusing for the right reasons. To be honest, the central plot remains rather underwhelming - a bunch of old villains are wheeled out, presumably to give some closure to all the earlier First Class stories. But that gear change halfway through is a very memorable scene, enough to raise the story up.