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 - 23 August 2009

I know I said I was going to do a full post on the first arc of X-Men Forever. And I will, honestly... it's in the queue. But I'm going on holiday in a week's time, so there's a lot of stuff to get done.

Which is as good a time as any to explain what's going to happen for the next while. Next weekend I'll be doing reviews and the podcast as normal. After that, I'll be off to spend a couple of weeks in New York and Philadelphia. So if you've any suggestions for what Susi and I should do there, post them in the comments thread. And that means three weeks between podcasts, though I might post from time to time while I'm away. (More likely, I'll set some posts to appear on delay... if I have time.)

And no, I will not be wandering the streets of Manhattan with a copy of the map from the mid-eighties Official Handbook trying to work out which flat belonged to Peter Parker. Although it's tempting.

In the meantime, let's run through this week's books...

Ex Machina #44 - Well, it's a key plot issue, that's for sure. We're clearly building towards the climax here, as Brian K Vaughan starts explaining all sorts of things that have been mysteries up until now, and in doing so, throws in a rather clever twist which I should probably have seen coming, but didn't. I've always liked the visual style of this book, which gives the superhero elements a rather homemade look, as if Mitchell was making his best effort to look the part, instead of being a proper hero. It pays off here, as one of the B-movie story elements turns out not to be quite as B-movie as it first appears, in a lovely piece of misdirection. A really good issue, and rewarding for those of us who've followed the story to this point.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #4 - It's such a shame they advertised this book as a Final Crisis tie-in, because it's no such thing, or at least only in the very loose sense that the plot involves a recent catastrophe. And I suspect the crossover billing is just putting people off. It's actually just a Super Young Team miniseries, about the group of Japanese celebrity superhumans who have all the trappings of a superhero team without actually going out and fighting evil. At all. Basically, it's another of Joe Casey's deconstructions of the superhero comic, which comes full circle as its characters try to escape all that and be proper superheroes after all. Heavily tongue in cheek, and generally pretty funny, but there's actually a good superhero comic in here too. Fundamentally, it manages to make the Super Young Team quite likeable, because they're not complete narcissists - they're just rather shallow and naive, but with the potential to improve. The book still seems to be having all sorts of trouble with the art, though - after missing issue #2 entirely, ChrisCross also skips half of this issue, though at least this time we get Eduardo Pansica, whose style isn't miles away.

GeNext United #4 - In order to escape the mystical baddie, GeNext use magic to scatter themselves around India and disguise themselves as ordinary Indians. There's actually some potential in that concept, if you want to do a story about the diversity of modern India - although come to think of it, even that concept is somewhat misplaced in GeNext, a series set in the near future. But it's the execution that leaves most to be desired. The whole thing is rushed through at insane pace. The survey of Indian diversity somehow manages to avoid mentioning religion at all (even though the villain is an Indian goddess!). And artist Jonboy Meyers just isn't ready for prime time. His characters look awfully similar when he doesn't have race to tell them apart, and there are some shocking pieces of storytelling in this issue. A character somehow drops a heavy bag on a leg which is nowhere near it. A dancer is already placed in the front line of her group before the director moves her there in the next panel. This is clumsy, and it really doesn't do the book any favours at all. But the concept is so heavily compressed, I doubt it would ever have worked.

Hellblazer #258 - Peter Milligan's doing something quite interesting with this storyline, giving John Constantine a relationship with somebody utterly normal. The thing about Constantine is that he lives in a sort of genre landscape which is labelled as the real world, but is actually just a collection of stock characters wandering around darkened alleys and so forth. So if you put Constantine in a room with normal people (and allow them to be something other than just foils for him to trick), then there's quite a fun little dynamic there. And one of the questions is whether Constantine is being utterly selfish by dragging this woman into his life, and trying to justify it to himself as some sort of love-fuelled altruism. I'm not sure it's technically a horror comic so much as a smart superhero comic without the spandex, but it works for me.

Jack of Fables #37 - After abandoning his own series for the duration of "The Great Fables Crossover", Jack returns... for a few pages, before the story moves on to his son. Jack Frost got to be a sort-of-hero at the end of that story, but now he's decided to be a proper hero, and get away from the unfortunate and embarrassing legacy of his parents. However, while he may have the basic decency, he doesn't have any other sort of clue. It looks like we're going to get Jack Jr and his new sidekick on the rise, while "our" Jack and his old sidekick, having completed their big story, start to go into decline. Might work, although Jack Jr's relentless sunniness is already starting to get a bit grating.

Wolverine: Weapon X #4 - Good solid stuff here. It's nothing fancy and nothing particularly clever; Wolverine fights baddies for a whole issue, and they're an evil corporation who want to create more Wolverines for use as military weapons. There's kind of a theme (corporations evil!), but no real pretence that writer Jason Aaron is doing anything more than gleefully putting the boot in, with clear self-awareness. It's a fun romp, well paced, with some inventive sequences, and good powerful artwork from Ron Garney. There's not that much to analyse here, but it's an enjoyable back to basics affair from creators who clearly understand what works about Wolverine, and know how to avoid all the usual junk that drags his stories down.

X-Factor #47 - Oh, so that's what Peter David was going for. I've got to say, the recap page for this issue sheds a ton of light on how the plot is meant to fit together. I'd have preferred to pick that up from the actual stories, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. I'll have to see how it works when I re-read the whole thing. Anyway, the problem I had with the last couple of issues was that the story never quite seemed to be coalescing into anything in particular. Now that the structure of the whole story has become clearer, that's not an issue any more. And there's some great Peter David moments in this story, both in the throwaway comedy moments, and as the plot continues to thicken yet further. And it's a generally strong effort from artist Valentine de Landro, though the penultimate page features perhaps the least flattering picture of M I've seen. Surely the script said "angry", not "hag"? For the most part, though, he gets the subtleties right. A good issue; I'm reassured that the series is still on track.

X-Men: Legacy #227 - The second half of a "Utopia" crossover arc, mainly devoted to Rogue, Gambit and Danger rescuing the thoroughly obscure character Trance from nasty Hammer soldiers. Rogue gets to fight the ersatz Ms Marvel from Dark Avengers, in a scene that surely should have had more potential. After all, they're both vaguely connected to Carol Danvers, even if Rogue's current arc is about putting all that stuff behind her and moving on. You'd have thought there was something to be done with that, but what we actually get is a fairly standard fight scene. It's perfectly okay, and I can see how this story sets up Rogue's future role as the protector of the trainees (which is apparently where Legacy is going next), but I can't shake the feeling that more could have been done with this story.

The X-Axis - 12 July 2009

I have a pile of comics sitting by my desk, comprising the "Ghost Boxes" arc from Astonishing X-Men, the "Messiah War" crossover from X-Force and Cable, and the entirety of "The Great Fables Crossover". At least two of those are a couple of weeks overdue for a proper review. and one of them I'm hopefully going to get done tonight.

So, since none of this week's releases really merited a full review anyway, let's just run through the capsules.

Dark X-Men: The Beginning #1 - Two of this week's books are satellite tie-ins to the "Utopia" crossover between Uncanny X-Men and Dark Avengers. This is the first, a three-issue miniseries where Norman Osborn chats with each of his new recruits in turn.

There are three strips here, but frankly it'd be stretching a point to call any of them stories. In the first, Norman Osborn chats with Namor the Sub-Mariner about why he agreed to join the team. It's by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk, so the art is just fine and the dialogue hits the mark, but it's still basically 11 pages of dialogue, much of which seems to be referring to a story I don't recognise at all, possibly from Dark Avengers. There's actually a half-decent idea in here for the character - Namor has never previously made a big deal about being a mutant, but now that his own people have more or less been wiped out, is he latching on to these guys as a surrogate community to save?

Next up is a Mimic piece, which doesn't really work at all. The basic idea is that the Mimic has started taking the meds and got his mood swings under control (an ever-popular device for settling down a character whose personality changes with the weather), but what we actually get is an extended flashback to the highlights of the Mimic's career, in such scattershot terms that it won't mean much to anyone who doesn't already know the character's history. Superfluous at best.

Finally, Shane McCarty and Ibraim Roberson give us Osborn recruiting the Dark Beast. This one probably works the best, since even though it's another conversation piece, there's a bit of plot to go with it, and the conversation does something with one of the key ideas of Dark Reign, namely that Osborn honestly sees himself as someone who's doing the right things, even if that means stuff the public doesn't need to know about. (He's Dick Cheney, in other words.) The Dark Beast gets to play a twisted sort of conscience, since at least he's more honest about why he's getting involved: a nicer place to live. There's some potential in this duo.

All told, it's an acceptable book for completists, but nothing you need to go out of your way to see. Certainly it gives the impression of being created to milk the crossover rather than because anyone had any particularly powerful ideas about stories they wanted to tell.

Genext United #3 - Usual drill, so far as the writing is concerned. It's fairly average Claremont; there are a couple of half-decent ideas, but it's nothing particularly compelling, and oh god, here comes the mind control again. Still, his hardcore fanbase will like it. Actually, what mainly sticks in my mind about this issue is Jonboy Meyers' art. There are plenty of good points - there's a nice, spiky energy to his action sequences - but some of the fundamentals really need a bit of work. He's not good at expressions in quieter scenes, and some of the transitions between panels are very odd indeed. Take a look at page 4 of the story, if you've got a copy to hand, and see if you can figure out where the characters are standing relative to one another, and how they'd have to move between panels in order for this scene to work. No, really, try. The simplest solution is that the entire GeNext team cross the room off-panel somewhere between panels 1 and 4, but since they leave Sophia behind, it's terribly confusing. And then gawp in amazement at the final panel of the next page, where everyone teleports around the room. This is pretty basic stuff, and though in fairness it's generally clear enough what's happening, it still undermines the suspension of disbelief when the characters seem to have no consistent relationship to one another in space. It's really the sort of thing that artists should have knocked out of them before getting pro work for major publishers. Meyers does have plenty of ability, so it's odd that he does things like this.

North 40 #1 - Might do this on the podcast next week, but let's mention it in passing. It's a horror series from WildStorm, by Aaron Williams and Fiona Staples. Ancient magic tome is opened in small American town, surreal and horrible events ensue. It is, in fact, pretty creepy, mainly because it pulls off the tricky balancing act of having a basically normal world with truly bizarre and unpleasant elements thrown in - the art, in particular, pulls this off impressively. My problem with it so far is that it lacks strongly defined characters, so I don't really care all that much about the people this is happening to. But it's certainly got something.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #1 - There's always one comic that I pick up to review and find myself thinking, "Oh yeah... what happened in that again?" And this week, it's the first issue of Uncanny X-Men: First Class, which so far seems to be not much more than a miniseries set some time shortly after X-Men #100 or so. Nightcrawler is upset about not being able to fit into the normal world, and so he jumps at the chance to visit Attilan, the home of the Inhumans, where everyone looks weird. And, of course, then he finds out that Attilan's not so great either. It's perfectly okay, but where Jeff Parker's X-Men: First Class generally felt like an updated Silver Age X-Men for younger viewers, this just feels like a slightly old-fashioned fill-in story.

Unwritten #3 - Tom Taylor continues to investigate his past, while a bunch of horror writers from assorted sub-genres show up to discuss Frankenstein. Cue a squabble between a thinly disguised version of the writers of Saw, and a character who doesn't seem to be a million miles from Laurell K Hamilton. Now, there's nothing particularly enlightening here about the nature of horror, though the run-down of sub-genres on page 2 is a great scene, but from the way this issue is going, it certainly looks as though Carey is starting to develop Unwritten into a wider discussion about the structure of stories, with genre plot elements (or, perhaps more accurately, plot elements from other genres) starting to invade the "real" world. All very interesting.

Wednesday Comics #1 - We'll be talking about the first two issues of DC's new weekly project on the podcast, so I'll leave the details till then. For now... a page is a very short space, and it's a format that few creators are used to working in. Actually, given the fold-out format, each strip really gets four pages a week, but only Ben Caldwell's unusual take on the origin of Wonder Woman goes that way. Realistically, the stories are going to take a little while to get going, and with hindsight, it's perhaps unfortunate that DC didn't include a couple of comedy strips to provide more instant gratification in the early weeks. A lot of the artwork is excellent, and it's an interesting experiment in format, but as somebody who's interested largely in story and character, let's just say I'm reserving judgment for now. This issue strikes me as more of a technique showcase than a piece of storytelling - I kind of respect the book but I'm not sure whether it actually does anything for me.

X-Men Forever #3 - You know, somewhat to my surprise, I'm actually quite liking this. Chris Claremont writing a "continuation" to his original X-Men run could have been rather depressing, but there's a genuine sense of enthusiasm about this book, and more focus than we've seen in some of his recent work. It's unfortunate that issue #1 was a bit plotless, since the subsequent stories have been tighter. Granted, a 1991 Claremont X-Men comic would have been nothing like this, but without having to accommodate other people's takes on the characters, he really does seem to be enjoying himself, and that comes across on the page.

X-Men: Legacy #226 - This week's second "Utopia" satellite book brings Rogue, Gambit and Danger back to San Francisco to help out with the riots. It's a two-parter and I rather suspect it's here mainly to try and give Legacy a much-needed sales boost, which they'll presumably use to try and springboard the next year's stories based around Rogue. This issue, people run around San Francisco and fight, and some very obscure mutants make cameo appearances. It's all quite well done, and the riot is actually a lot more real here than it was in the main crossover (where Fraction tended to assert it as a fact of the plot, rather than making it viscerally convincing), but whether it's actually about anything, other than reminding readers that Legacy exists, I'm not sure. Dustin Weaver's art is a little inconsistent around the edges, but generally solid.

X-Men: Legacy #225

No capsules this weekend, because, well, I haven't read any of the books yet. But there's always this to tide you over...

X-Men: Legacy #225 (untitled)
Writer: Mike Carey
Artist: Phil Briones
Colourist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Nick Lowe

The X-Men books don't do single issue stories very often. But Legacy #225 is one such story. At first glance you'd think it was an epilogue to Professor X's world tour. But really, this is finale - this is the story which brings some closure to the whole thing, as Xavier returns to the Acolytes (who were in the first arc), and basically tells them what he's learned.

Having spent the last year visiting old characters, having flashbacks, and generally coming to terms with his past, Xavier's message is, of course, that it's time to move on. The Acolytes are a relic from an earlier incarnation of the series, still obsessed with factional in-fighting and the future of the mutant race. But after Decimation, there are no factions, and there is no race. They're just wasting their time, and Xavier is there to persuade them to go and do something more productive.

If nothing else, this answers the question of why Mike Carey was assembling a rather unlikely batch of characters into a new incarnation of the Acolytes: the pointlessness of the team pretty much was the point. And as usual, Carey makes this work with the small character details. The remaining Acolytes may be mostly D-list obscurities, but they still get more personality than usual. And since Xavier isn't trying to beat them so much as persuade them, Carey gets to use his telepathic powers more imaginatively than usual.

The story makes unusually good use of Exodus, too. As a zealot, he's always been a somewhat interesting character, but one who can easily end up one-dimensional in the hands of the wrong writer. Here, he's a somewhat well-meaning character who's been holed up in a secret base with a bunch of henchmen because it's all he really knows how to do; Xavier prompts him to go and do something more constructive instead, and there's certainly some potential in having Exodus wandering around as a loose cannon trying to find a new role for himself.

So it's a decent issue, well paced, very readable. But the big question, of course, is where this is all heading. The X-books have been struggling to find a workable direction and gain any traction since M-Day, and that was four years ago now. By spending the last year revisiting old Professor X stories and drawing a line under them, Carey has dodged that problem rather than actually answering it. Nor does he offer any particularly concrete answers here. Yes, the situation has changed, the Acolytes and the X-Men need to do something else... but what? The last few years of stories rather suggest that nobody knows.

Carey's approach is to make the problem into the solution - to do stories about the characters trying to figure out what they're going to do now. That's fine as far as it goes, and it's certainly a phase that the book needs to go through. But at some point they need to come up with an answer, and really, that point should have come a couple of years ago. The San Francisco set-up doesn't seem to offer an answer so much as an attempt to ignore the problem.

And that's my reservation, I think. Carey is saying all the right things, and doing all the right things (or rather, the things that should have been done in 2006, but he wasn't here at the time, so it's not his fault). He's saying that the characters need to come to terms with their past, accept what has changed, and find a way to move forward from there. All well and good, and if I had faith that this was heading anywhere, I'd say this was a very good issue. But after four years of watching some of Marvel's best writers repeatedly fail to find that way forward, in favour of ducking the issue time and again, I long since stopped believing that it's ever going to happen. Maybe this time it'll be different, but I'd have to be some sort of sucker to have any faith in that until I see it on the page.

X-Men Legacy #220-224

"Salvage"
Writer: Mike Carey
Penciller: Scot Eaton
Inker: Andrew Hennessy
Colourists: Brian Reber and Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Nick Lowe

Continuing our tour of dangling Professor X subplots in need of resolution, Mike Carey and Scot Eaton come to Rogue and Danger. With Rogue, he promised to cure her uncontrollable superpowers, and never got round to it. With Danger, his super-duper hologram suite became sentient, and he kept it locked up in the basement for training purposes.

What do these two stories have in common, I hear you ask? Well, not a huge amount, really. But "Salvage" brings them together as A- and B-plot, in a story which also takes the opportunity to revisit that ghost town the X-Men lived in back in the late eighties. It's not a location with any great significance for Rogue, and it's got nothing to do with Danger, but hell, it's a bit of colour.

As you can probably guess by now, I'm not sure all these elements really fit together into a single story. It ends up as a story where Professor Xavier and Gambit go looking for Rogue, and end up trapped in a malfunctioning Danger Room simulation along with a bunch of Shi'ar salvagers. Rogue wanders through a series of flashbacks from her past - well, that's what happens in X-Men: Legacy - while the rest of the characters try to sort Danger out.

The Danger plot works fairly well. The Shi'ar scavengers make good comic relief, patronisingly talking down to the backward locals even though they're clearly the stupidest people in the room at all times. And at times, the art achieves a surprisingly respectable impersonation of the original Danger storyline from Astonishing X-Men (not least because of Brian Reber's colouring). Since that original story had Xavier holding a slave in his basement, Carey wisely retcons it to tone things down - in this version, he was trying ever so hard to free Danger, but just never achieved it. Redemption is duly achieved, and Danger's storyline gets some sense of resolution.

And then, alongside this, there's a bunch of Rogue flashbacks that don't really lead to anything much. At the end, Xavier comes up with the solution he was looking for all along and... cures her, more or less out of the blue. That's potentially an interesting step forward for the character, who's been circling around the same angst point forever (though to be fair, it's not the first time that writers have tried to move her on). But in this storyline, her plot seems to meander around for the middle three issues before stumbling onto a random finale.

It's a good enough read; the salvage crew are great characters, and keep things lively. As a turning point for Rogue, though, it's an odd thing.

The X-Axis - 19 April 2009

See below for Rampaging Wolverine #1, and I'll come back to Wolverine: Noir #1 later. But also this week...

Fables #83 - Part one of "The Great Fables Crossover", running between Fables, its spin-off Jack of Fables, and a miniseries, Literals, created solely for the purpose of this crossover. The Literals, who seem to be the personification of storytelling devices, strike me as the most interesting idea in this storyline. But they're not in this first chapter much, presumably because they're characters from Jack of Fables. Instead, most of this issue is devoted to pushing forward the Mr Dark storyline, about the Sandman-esque villain who blew up Fabletown a couple of issues ago, and presumably serves as the threat for everyone to unite against in chapter eight. I'm a little concerned about that, because so far he still seems a bit too generic for the major role he's getting. But that seems too obvious a trap for Bill Willingham to fall into, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. The issue also has a preview of Mike Carey and Peter Gross's upcoming series The Unwritten, which looks very promising.

Secret Invasion Aftermath: Beta Ray Bill - The Green of Eden - Yes, that's the full title. And yes, this is a belated Secret Invasion tie-in. The connection to the story is fairly remote, but writer Kieron Gillen picks up on one of the more interesting themes from Secret Invasion that went relatively unexplored. The Skrulls from that series were religious zealots, after all. And Beta Ray Bill is not just a Thor character, but an outright ersatz pseudo-Thor, an alien horse dressed as somebody else's idea of god. It's a neat angle, cleverly using Secret Invasion as a springboard for a story that's really about the character himself. Worth a look if you have any interest in Bill (and he does have his fans).

Uncanny X-Men #508 - Oh dear, Greg Land's back - although it must be somebody's idea of a rib to take Marvel's most enthusiastic light-boxer and force him to draw Spiral, a character with six arms. The big problem with Land, though, is that he can't act - there's no subtlety whatsoever in his expression or body language. He can pull off an expression that the script clearly asked for in terms, but left to his own devices it's crazy poses and manic grins all the way. I tell you, I can summon up some goodwill for Matt Fraction writing this book, but not when I have to read it through the prism of Greg Land. His scripts are always a bit self-aware and intellectually tongue-in-cheek; he needs an artist who humanises them, not one who laminates them.

X-Factor #42 - In which Madrox finds new reason to live by visiting a dystopian future, while Longshot makes friends with one of the firm's customers. Very much the middle chapter of a storyline, and you could criticise it for spelling out the character points a little more blatantly than was really required - but they're interesting character points nonetheless, and the book also pulls off a pretty good fight scene with the Sentinels, who usually suffer from overfamiliarity. Decent issue.

X-Men: Legacy #223 - When Joss Whedon introduced Danger as a character, the idea was that Professor X knew it was sentient, but kept it chained up in the basement anyway because it was useful that way. Mike Carey apparently has some trouble squaring that with his interpretation of Xavier's character (as do I), as a fair chunk of this story seems to be quietly retconning all that way. It was a total fluke that Danger became sentient; Xavier was trying ever so hard to find a way of letting it express itself, but wasn't quite sure how it all worked... you know the score. Blatant retconning, but I have no problem with it. The other half of this storyline, with Rogue confronting her past, doesn't feel like it's heading anywhere in particular, and seems a bit half-formed right now.

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 - 22 February 2009

It's one of those weeks where I don't really have time to do more than run through the capsules, I'm afraid. So we'll hold off for now on the final issues of NYX: No Way Home and New Exiles, and hopefully I'll get to them later in the week. Otherwise...

Birds of Prey #127 - The final issue of a once rather-good title that seems to have been getting by on sheer inertia for years - by which I mean, it already exists and despite a lack of particularly compelling ideas for new stories, nobody has hitherto felt sufficiently moved to actually cancel it. The final issue is a load of running about which kind of pays off a long-running storyline about supervillains in Silicon Valley, but also ends with a decidedly tacked-on "so let's break up" schtick. Not absolutely awful, but mediocre enough to make me grateful that the book has been put out of its misery.

The Great Unknown #1 - I suspect we might end up talking about this on next weekend's podcast, if only because this was such a quiet week for new book. This is a five-issue miniseries by Duncan Rouleau, whose work on books like Metal Men has tended to feature very interesting ideas told in an insanely convoluted way. The Great Unknown marks something of a departure, because while the central idea is still refreshingly oddball, the art and writing are both stripped back and much more straightforward. Zach is an obnoxious genius who has inexplicably failed to achieve anything in his life; the story is about him finding out exactly why that is. And no, it isn't because he needs to be a nicer person. The book takes the high-risk approach of having a massively unsympathetic lead character, but he does have an abrasive charisma. Pretty good, and I'm pleased to see Rouleau taking a more direct approach with his storytelling - it's usually for the best.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #60 - This is the final issue? This? Half the team run around fighting Atlanteans for the whole story, and then a caption saying that the story is continued in Ultimatum and Ultimatum: Fantastic Four Requiem? Christ. With comics like this, it's no bloody wonder nobody gives a toss about the Ultimate imprint any more. Awful.

Uncanny X-Men #506 - In which ex-mutants start seeking refuge with the X-Men, Colossus rescues some women from slave traffickers, and the science team track down the guy who created Red Ronin back in those 1970s Godzilla comics. It's a pretty book, and Terry Dodson is doing some great work here, but there's still something missing. It's less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps the problem is that there's a bunch of Stuff going on, but I'm not getting the sense of a bigger picture or an overall direction. There are several plot threads in evidence, but nothing that seems to connect them. Now, sure, there are bits that look like they must be set-up for something, such as the ongoing theme of recruiting mad scientists from old comics. And I've no doubt that Fraction has a plan in mind - but it doesn't seem to be filtering through to give any particular structure to the stories I'm reading right now. I'm getting restless here...

X-Factor #40 - Once again, Peter David asks us nicely not to reveal the ending - not that I would have done anyway, since in this case it's the closing twist. Most of the issue involves a depressed Madrox going back to visit John Maddox, the stray duplicate who built a peaceful family for himself. As such, he now represents the embarrassing proof that the real Madrox didn't have to screw up his life quite so badly. Madrox has provided some of Peter David's best material over the last few years, as he's managed to take a mildly ludicrous gimmick superpower, and use it as an effective vehicle to tell stories about identity. This is no exception, with David and artist Valentine De Landro both at their best. Very good.

X-Men: Kingbreaker #3 - Sorry, but does this book serve any purpose at all, other than to get the Starjammers into position for War of Kings? I mean, is this story actually bloody about anything? Because it doesn't seem to be. It just seems to be some random action sequences designed to get the characters from A to B, and my interest is waning rapidly.

X-Men: Legacy #221 - It's one of those weeks when they deluge the market in X-books, in case you hadn't guessed. Of course, this is one of the better ones, at least for those with a decent knowledge of X-Men history. Professor X and Gambit are looking for Rogue, and they track her down in the X-Men's old Australian base - which is currently running a giant Danger Room simulation of stuff from Rogue's past. Great if you know all the references. But as so often with this book, I can't help but wonder what you're supposed to get out of this if, for example, you don't recognise re-enactments of scenes from the mid-1980s, or you've forgotten that Havok was briefly a brainwashed Genoshan guard for a handful of issues nineteen years ago. Legacy is very good at what it does, but what it does must surely be of niche appeal.

Young X-Men #11 - The penultimate issue, and apparently we're teasing the death of Dust. Actually, I strongly suspect they're not going to kill her - partly because the story has all the hallmarks of a feint, and partly because there's just no point killing off a perfectly decent character in the final issue of a third-tier X-book which bombed inside a year. The book isn't worth it. Anyway, the basic idea here is that Dust is dying and Donald Pierce claims he can help her out. It's an okay premise that doesn't quite come across. For this to work, we have to believe in Dust betraying the X-Men to try and save herself, and she just never seems desperate enough for that. Nice cover, though.