Since I criticised last week’s Uncanny issue for not being a more direct sequel to Messiah Complex, I should probably praise X-Force for being just that. Cyclops comes to Wolverine and asks him to reassemble X-Force and go after the Purifiers - definitely a dangling plot thread from the crossover - and reluctantly, he does. The idea is that they’re going to be the kind of team who go out and attack their enemies before they become a problem, staying true to the X-Force name.

Yost and Kyle do spend considerable time addressing the issue of why Wolverine would lead such a team at all, and I did come away from it believing that it’s possible - he’s essentially been maneuvered into a situation where if he doesn’t lead them, they’re still going to go ahead as X-Force, but they won’t be half as effective without him. While Rahne’s motivations are something of a mystery right now, Warpath’s reasoning feels most suspicious of the group. I know Caliban saved his life and he feels he has to repay that debt, but were they really the close buddies he’s making out? Still, the scene of him burying Caliban with his brother and tribe is a nice nod to the history of the character.

Thanks no small part to the amount of murder and bloodshed in this issue, Clayton Crain’s art is utterly ghoulish in places, with Rahne’s wolf-form feeling slightly too reminiscent of the kind of demons he drew in his Ghost Rider arc. He does give the characters brilliant acting, though, and imbues Wolverine especially with a kind of Clint Eastwood-esque swagger. There’s masses of detail in his work, but the computer painting makes it look a little too glossy and sterile sometimes. There’s also at least one scene where the storytelling’s slightly unclear - has Nimrod’s body just transformed into Bastion’s? It’s not really obvious, and if I have to question it, there’s a problem.

Oh yeah, that’s right. Bastion. Seems the Purifiers have his head and Nimrod’s body, and they’re using the latter to bring the former back. If it sticks, it could definitely work - Bastion would certainly be an effective replacement for the original, now-dead Purifiers leader, William Stryker, and it’s good to see someone getting use out of the character. That’s actually the part of the book that interests me most.

But here’s the kicker - I’m not actually planning on picking up X-Force. I can recommend it to anyone interested in a different take on the X-Men, but it’s fallen prey to that age old problem - too many mutant books. I’m already buying Uncanny, Legacy, Astonishing and X-Factor, and I want to give Cable a try. Even though it’s far more good than bad, X-Force isn’t more essential than the mutant books I’m already getting. For now I’ll be leaving it on the shelf - but I’ll be keeping a close eye…

When a big-name writer/artist team takes over a long-established book, it’s always important to strike a balance between keeping the existing fans happy, but making the series accessible for the spike in new readers that their appointment will bring, in the hope of keeping as many of them as possible. As someone who’s never really engaged with the Fantastic Four at any point, but drawn by the curiosity of Millar and Hitch tackling a monthly, main-universe title together for the first time, I naturally fall into the latter camp. So as far as I’m concerned, there are two questions – is it accessible enough to enjoy without prior knowledge, and will it keep me around beyond the first arc (or even the first issue)?

The answer to the first is a resounding “yes”. Say what you like about Millar, but he’s a good storyteller who can be economic with the necessary bits of exposition – even a reader unfamiliar with the most basic tenets of the FF setup is informed, over the course of the issue’s dialogue, that the family are beloved celebrity superheroes, Reed and Sue are married, Johnny is Sue’s brother, and Ben is “that guy [Reed] disfigured in that cosmic ray accident”, in simple and effective fashion. Beyond that, the issue feels like something of a slate-clearing – I had no idea of the team’s post-Civil War status (the last I’d seen, Sue and Johnny were leaving), but beyond a token mention of the marriage being on rocky ground, this is very much a jumping on point with the status quo as “classic” as can be. I guess this might be as galling to long-term readers is Brand New Day is to Spidey fans (well, not quite as galling, but you get what I mean) – but for a newbie like me, it works just fine.

Admittedly without being particularly up on my FF knowledge, I’ve always seen the inherent style of the book as revolving around comedy/drama family interactions, and… well… fantastic scientific wizardry and concepts. Millar may not exactly be Warren Ellis when it comes to technobabble, but he certainly squeezes in plenty of the latter, from a time-travel opening scene to the arc’s main plot of a “nuclear bunker”-esque second world for the planet to be evacuated to. And there are enough smirksome moments to carry it along – a couple of good lines from Ben (although, why is he the only person in the entire Marvel universe to have that particular accent?) and a brief appearance from Johnny the main highlights. Millar even gets to indulge his customary habit for redefining the role of a “superhero team”, with the subplot of Sue (and the Wasp and She-Hulk) setting up a group to deal with the aftermath of “superhuman incidents”.

Hitch’s work here, one of the other main draws beforehand, is solid rather than spectacular. There’s something of a rushed feel to quite a few panels, meaning that even though the character design is strong all-round (particularly with regards to Reed and Sue), it suffers from inconsistent application. You get the sense that he’s aware that, on a book like this (i.e. one which has to come out every month), people would rather have his work be a little off-key than suffer through lengthy delays for Ultimates-level precision. His real strength, though, remains in his ability to draw the “big” images with a good level of technical detail - and you suspect Millar will be giving him plenty of those in the coming months. Speaking of Ultimates, meanwhile, purists may scoff at the redesigned costumes, but I think they work well; and the same can be said for the new cover dress, its “magazine”ish stylings well-suited to the FF’s status as celebrities.

All-in-all, it’s a decent first issue, that never blows you away but gives you enough to keep you reading (I wonder, though, if subsequent issues will feature movie references as blatant as the Back To The Future III-style opening sequence, or indeed a closing page that seems to owe more than a passing debt to the Hitchhiker’s Guide film). Like I say, I can’t speak for the die-hard FF fan - but they’ve at least succeeded in making me vaguely interested in the characters. I don’t know if it would survive the sort of delays that plagued this team’s last work (and I know everyone keeps mentioning that - but it is a point worth making), but for now, it’s got an old-fashioned, Marvelish superhero feel to it - perhaps moreso than anyone who underestimates Millar might have expected from him - that’s enough to keep me onboard.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue at random, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published. 

Friends, cast back your minds to a time when the X-Men had disbanded and gone their separate ways. A time when villainous Skrulls threatened to infiltrate the Marvel Universe by masquerading as heroes, stealing their identities in an almost undetectable manner. Hey, wait a second…

Here’s the thing about any serial medium - eventually, certain stories are going to come back around. And sometimes they’re going to come back around together.

Following a visit to the skrull homeworld where they fought Skrull doppelgangers of the Marvel heroes, the X-Men were disbanded by Xavier after an apparent breakdown. For a couple of months, the X-Books contained solo adventures, and a 3-issue miniseries, Astonishing X-Men (Volume 2), featured an interim team lead by Cyclops attempting to save the Mannites (a race of man-made and powerful children) from Apocalypse’s new horseman, Death. At the climax of the series, Death killed Wolverine by stabbing him with his sword.

Which is where #375 picks up. The X-Men re-convene to autopsy Wolverine, and realise that he has been replaced by a Skrull - something Xavier suspected, hence his decision to disband the team. Preceding that revelation, though, is a fairly decent, if overly-long illusory fight scene involving the whole team where a bunch of characters die, and both Onslaught and Dark Phoenix return before it’s revealed as being a psychic illusion (well, duh) cooked up to try and flush out any infiltrators. The main problem is that when certain characters start lashing out insanely and dropping dead like flies, it becomes fairly clear to the reader that something’s up and it’s always a problem when the audience recognises something that the characters don’t, because you feel like you’re reading about a troupe of morons. The issue ends with the lingering question of where the real Wolverine is, a question fully answered in X-Men #95 when it’s revealed that Wolverine is the new Death.

At this time, Alan Davis was writing the X-Men. His run culminated with The Twelve - a storyline that had been hinted at for years by various writers (following their predecessor’s lead) who each had their own idea what it was, the only certain fact being that it involved Apocalypse. Davis used his run to finally tell the story, and the skrulls were prominent throughout. Claremont’s return immediately followed The Twelve, however, you only have to look at the first page of #375 to see why some people were speculating that even now Claremont already scripting Davis’ plots, rather than the credited Terry Kavanagh.

It’s unclear whether any elements of this story will get a mention during the course of Secret Invasion - it is basically built around an identical concept, and a team of mutant skrulls that span out of the X-Men’s involvement with them, Cadre K, did stick around for a while afterwards. Despite Davis’ remarkably tight plotting, it wasn’t a particularly great era for Marvel or the X-Men (though it did actually get worse when Claremont took over)  so chances are, they’ll want to leave the past where it is.

Download Uncanny X-Men #375 in .cbr format here for a limited time, and there’s always more Uncanny X-Men available to view online at Marvel Digital Comics.

While it’s remarkable for any comic to make it to it’s 24th issue these days, Ms. Marvel is doubly surprising because it’s got a female lead, which can amount to industry suicide, and because it wasn’t launched by a name writer. That said, I originally bought the title out of a desire to see more of Brian Reed’s work after he had co-written the entertaining Spider-Woman: Origin series with Bendis, and since then he’s only gained popularity, so his willingness to stick with the title can only be good thing.

In the issue, Ms. Marvel faces the brood queen. A fairly obvious choice of villain for the character, that’s for certain, though it’s also an entertaining one, because it means lots of action and the knowledge that the villain is an amoral killing machine. A far cry from the muddyness of the Civil War days. Ms. Marvel herself is having difficulties with her powers - first because she accidentally bonded with the alien Cru, and now that’s over, the unexpected (and so far, temporary) re-emergance of her binary powers. As a character who’s always had identity issues - especially with her audience - it’s an appropriate topic.

The supporting cast of the title is a fairly motley bunch - there’s Agent Sum, Carol’s (human) SHIELD liason, X-51, who’s in full-on nextwave mode and utterly hilarious because of it, the virtually-forgotten super-hero Sleepwalker, Arana, who ended up here once her solo series flopped, and the occasional appearance by Wonder-Man. Somehow, Reed does manage to pull the disparate personalities together. In fact, their own inadequacy seems to even contribute to Ms. Marvel’s overall feeling that she’s not quite as good a hero as she could be - the overarching theme of Reed’s run on the book.

With the brood plot wrapped up in this issue, there’s a two-page epilogue which promises to make the next arc very interesting, though it does come off as a bit of a sales bid (though arguably, the book could use one.) In the last scene, Agent Sum is called to Director Stark’s office, where he’s told about the “secret invasion” and informed that there’s a skrull in their team - the skrull in question? None other than Ms. Marvel.

Now, if true, this opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities - after all, we’ve been privy to Ms. Marvel’s inner-dialogue. If she is a skrull, well, that gives us a lot of information about how the invasion works. I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s the case, though. There’s definitely a fake-out happening somewhere in this situation, but as far as crossover tie-ins go, this one looks like it’ll have a strong tie to the book’s actual setup, so I can see it being an interesting story. Definitely, it’s a title worth a try anyway, so perhaps next issue’s the time to start.

The first X-title to come out after Messiah Complex has a lot of weight to bear in terms of setting the tone for the rest of the line in the post-crossover universe, so it’s a bit strange to see Uncanny X-Men not just ignoring, but almost contradicting large elements of Messiah Complex’s conclusion.

Firstly - it seems that Cyclops’ claim that “there are no X-Men” wasn’t quite as final as it sounded, because what’s actually happened is that the X-Men are all taking a holiday while they decide what happens next. Secondly, and rather more bafflingly, it’s made totally explicit in this issue that the X-Men don’t believe Xavier is dead and that Cyclops has sent Beast out to look for him. A strange thing to do, considering we last saw Xavier’s corpse slumped on the ground after being shot in the head (ah, but did you notice Xavier’s mysteriously disappearing body in that last panel?! No, me neither.) I suspect the cause the confusion is that the gap between the last panel of Messiah Complex and the first panel of Uncanny #495 is going to be filled in by X-Men: Legacy #208 which regrettably isn’t due out until later this month.

Those are two fairly big flaws, but it’s not like they ruin the comic. In fact, the globe-trotting structure of this issue really feels like a throwback to the X-Men’s heyday, where the characters were rarely in the same place together, and were usually investigating entirely separate plots - so we get Cyclops and Emma vacationing in the Savage Land, double-dating with Shanna and Ka-Zar while trying to decide where the X-Men go now that Xavier and his dream are no longer relevant, and we get Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler heading out to visit Russia. Meanwhile Angel turns up in San Francisco and discovers that it’s unexpectedly become the 60s, and manages to contact Cyclops for help just before he too succumbs to whatever’s going on.

What we’ve actually ended up with is a really decent issue that could slot nicely into any era of X-Men. The light-hearted road-movie feel of Logan, Kurt and Piotr pranking and brawling their way across Europe is pure 80s Claremont, in a good way. The Angel plot suggests that the other X-Men are actually going to do some genuine, non-mutant focused superheroics which hasn’t happened in years and might actually make a nice change of pace.

The thing is, as good as this issue is, after a massive crossover like Messiah Complex… it’s hardly the new direction we were promised. Perhaps it’s intentional - X-Men, Cable, X-Force, Young X-Men and X-Factor all appear to be dealing far more directly with the fallout, so perhaps Uncanny’s “place” in the X-Line is to provide a refuge from that. For now I’m just enjoying it as a nice, light X-Men story and assuming that the real meat of the post-Messiah Complex situation will be digested elsewhere.

So, it’s been a couple of months now and Seb and I have (mostly) kept our heads down, dutifully reviewing a comic a day for a fair few weeks with very little industry sarcasm and speculation. Well, not much anyway. Still, it’s not enough for us. We want a place where we can talk about the latest news and rumours, poke some fun, and generally talk about wider industry issues without the pretense of reviewing a comic to do so. And thus, The Sunday Pages is born, allowing us to indulge in editorials and commentary just once a week, giving us somewhere to put all those nuggets we think of which would otherwise end up unsaid.

For the inaugural column, you’ll be getting some news about the long-awaited reprint of Sam ‘n’ Max: Surfin’ the Highway, some information about a possible comics-based movie from Guillermo Del Toro that’s NOT Hellboy-related, a look at Marvel’s latest “Phoenix Rising” teaser, and some speculation about what DC’s forthcoming Trinity and Final Crisis might mean for the future of the shared DC universe… Continue reading »