Too serious about comics.
The slightly late, never lamented Chapter Seven of the Book of Hope, our weekly look at the current X-Men crossover, Second Coming. These posts have been making our webhost weep every time they look at the traffic, so from now on the posts are going behind a cut. Click through to read more!
Just in time for Chapter 4 of second coming – my review of the events of Chapter 3, as seen in New Mutants #12.
Synopsis: The New Mutants pre-emptively attack Cameron Hodge and The Right in their own base to prevent them providing reinforcements to the Sapien League. Meanwhile, the Sapien League is doing reasonably well without backup, managing to take Magik off the board with a weaponised ritual that shunts her into Limbo. To turn the tide of battle, Angel switches into Archangel mode and slices Stryker in half, scattering the League’s forces – but Cable and Hope have already scarpered, unsure of the situation. In San Francisco, Rogue experiences something strange, while back at the Right’s facility, Hodge gets into his giant spider body and corners Karma.
Mini Review: The bulk of this issue is a largely off to the side, focusing on the New Mutants at the expense of Hope, Cable and the Alpha Team. While that’s good for New Mutants readers, I’m less sure it’s a story I want to read. Although I enjoy seeing Cameron Hodge in a nostalgic way, I’m not sure he’s contributing anything to the plot. Karma’s plight, in particular, feels a little bit too falsely engineered. Cable’s decision to flee the X-Men is close to baffling, and the scene itself continues poorly from the previous issue, which ended with a mexican stand-off and opens with the X-Men charging into battle and Cable & Hope pinned down behind a car. In fairness, there is a lot more momentum in this issue than Chapter Two – it just feels like the plot’s going sideways rather than forwards at present.
Commentary
It’s good that someone appears to have noticed that Cyclops has been acting like an insane person for months now. It’s just a shame that someone has to be Sunspot, not Cannonball.
As we saw early on, the pressure does appear to be getting to Cyclops, and scenes like this point to a schism in the X-Men coming sooner rather than later. Magneto would be the obvious choice to step in, having recently “proven” his loyalty by bringing back Kitty Pryde and allying himself with Namor, so look for that to be the events suggested by the “One Will Lead” promo.
And off Illyana goes, presumably into the Second Coming: Hellbound miniseries. This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I said the plot had sideways momentum.
I don’t think it was Wolverine’s intention, but Archangel takes this order literally.
More angst heaped on Nightcrawler = even more likelihood that he’ll die. As sometime Comics Daily contributer Julian recently remarked, you can tell they’ve got plans to kill off Nightcrawler because he’s actually had some lines. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Ah, good. Ariel’s arrived. Wait, who?
Don’t feel bad for not knowing this one. We’re not quite on the level of “Which of these dead mutants is Meld?” hilarity, but Ariel’s pretty close to that. She’s an alien whose race has the ability to open teleportation portals, but only in existing doorways, if you can believe that limitation. And she was once on a team with Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy called the “Fallen Angels”. With the power of persuasion, she’s also the sole mutant member of her race (much like Warlock, and Longshot, and various other characters who appeared during the 80s and were tenuously defined as mutants so that they could join the X-Men without violating the core concept).
Although Cable’s actions are irritating in terms of the plot, they could be justified in part by the fact that last time Cable was in this time period, the X-Men was full of ex-marauders and villains, so he’s got good reason to be suspicious of the team. On the other hand, a quick conversation could have sorted this out.
The X-Men’s prisoners here are Sebastian Shaw (The Black King), captured by Frost in a recent Uncanny annual, Donald Piece (The White King), who was captured in the short-lived Young X-Men series, and John Greycrow (Scalphunter) who was last seen being forced to fly a plane-load of Predator X’s to Utopia during the crossover of the same name. The pointed shot of Pierce suggests that he might somehow be Bastion’s “man on the inside” that Cable was speculating about, since he is, after all, a cyborg.
Rogue’s apparent connection to Hope, meanwhile, follows up on a dangling plot thread from Messiah Complex where the infact Hope, rather than being killed by Rogue’s “death touch”, cured her of it. The two seems to have a psychic link as a result, and though it isn’t yet clear what those events imply about Hope’s mutant powers, it seems we will get a proper follow up on it. And probably quite soon, given that the next chapter of the book is in X-Men Legacy #235.
Predictionwatch
In which I catch up with some of the predictions I made in Chapter Zero of this article series.
Nightcrawlerwatch: As noted, a little more time for Nightcrawler, building him up for the death that I’m massively convinced will happen. (Side note: mentioning to British comic creators who are privvy to Marvel’s plans that “It’s a shame about Nightcrawler, isn’t it?” will not trick them into giving confirmation. We tried it.)
Magnetowatch: There’s no sign of Magneto at all yet, but let’s face it, people are unhappy with Cyclops. That narrows down “One Will Lead” to either Frost or Magneto, and the former wouldn’t be much of a twist.
As you’re probably aware, the next instalment of these features might be a little disrupted due to the volcano (yes, that old chestnut) but, let’s face it, I might just find a way to get hold of the issues in time, if you know what I mean. Then again, there wasn’t any volcano eruption last Thursday and it still took me 6 days to write it. But I got there in the end. Back here next week (ish) for X-Men Legacy #235!
There are some strong similarities between New Mutants and the present iteration of Detective Comics, with some slightly average writing buoyed by an artistic tour-de-force. Unfortunately for Marvel, however, their eighties revival comes across as the weaker book. While I wasn’t as impressed as Seb by the first part of Kate Kane’s origin story, there was little actually wrong with it, while the first part of Zeb Wells’ Necrosha tie-in suffers from trying to implement a storytelling gimmick which goes against the grain of much of the medium’s recent development.
Continuing on from his short story in the Necrosha one-shot, Wells shows his team’s downtime bring rudely interrupted by the return of an extremely old friend. Much of the issue is narrated from the point of view of Doug Ramsey, and it’s here that the main problem lies. In an attempt to may Cipher a significant threat to his core cast, Wells has expanded his mutant translation ability to encompass body language, giving him an unassailable combat advantage. It’s a bit of a stretch to see the unarmed zombie bringing down Sunspot and Cannonball, but the greater difficulty is the box-out summaries of the subtext of each conversation which Ramsey witnesses. These captions are slightly overwrought on their own terms, and derail the storytelling more generally, breaking up the exchanges. It’s a nice idea, but not even the likes of Chris Claremont have asked readers to continually jump between third person narration and dialogue, and it leaves the book stiff and unnatural. This may be a deliberate attempt to mimic the semi-digital mindset of the resurrected Cipher, but it hardly makes for an enjoyable read.
It’s returning artist Diogenes Neves who saves the day, although after his solid work in drawing each of the cast in civilian outfits in the previous arc, it’s a shame to find the cast in their rather generic uniforms for what is supposed to be their time off. Otherwise, it’s a superb showing, despite the penciller being rather hampered by the generic Utopia interiors in which the story is set- hopefully Matt Fraction will soon find a way of furnishing the new X-base with a more distinctive atmosphere. Despite having grown during its first arc, new Mutants still suffers a variety of niggles which mute its charm.
It’s hard to shake the impression that at some point last year, Brian Bendis broke a mirror. One instance of parallel plotting by writers who seed their stories far in advance might be dismissed as unfortunate, but with the arrival of Necrosha, there definitely seems to be a curse at work here. After both Bruce Wayne and Steve Rogers were catapulted back through time by their apparent deaths, the similarities between Blackest Night and Chris Yost & Craig Kyle’s X-Force epic means that we now have two major event comics satirising the comics staple of restoring dead characters to life. Thankfully, the storytelling here is strong enough to justify the duplication, even if this opening chapter is a slightly murkier brew than expected.
Artistic delays on the regular X-Force ongoing means that this one-shot opening chapter follows on directly from this week’s conclusion of ‘Not Forgotten’, with the undead making their long-trailed assault on Utopia. Meanwhile, Archangel and Warpath go in search of their book’s forgotten plot thread and Selene indulges in a considerable amount of exposition. Returning X-Force artist Clayton Crain brings his usual combination of strengths and weaknesses to the book, with an overly dark atmosphere more than compensated for by his truly spectacular splash pages- the cliffhanger scene is a particular highlight. This opening chapter’s greatest success is in the portrayal of the main villain, and the creative team make a very good fist of building up a half-forgotten X-enemy into a significant threat. The writers obviously have a considerable amount of ground to cover here, having to cater for new readers at the same time as keeping the attention of those who have followed the story’s build-up. It’s possibly this challenge that leads to the slightly fragmented feel the book possesses, with many strands being juggled. In contrast to the unremittingly focussed X-Force #20, Necrosha feels a little scattershot at times, with almost too much happening to take in. Hopefully the story will streamline itself as the threads spun out to New Mutants and Legacy go their separate ways.
Speaking of which, the book is bulked-up by two short stories from Zeb Wells and Mike Carey, designed to act as preludes to their tie-ins. You can understand Kyle & Yost’s desire to keep hold of all the threads in the first of their two parting shots to X-Force, given the line-wide nature of the Second Coming crossover. The move, however, undeniably weakens these spin-off tales, leaving them entirely dependant on the reader’s affection for the figures featured. As someone who has read little of the original New Mutants series, I found the vinaigrette featuring the Joss Whedon-created Blindfold more compelling than Doug Ramsey’s return from the dead.
Against my better judgement, I’m actually starting to enjoy what initially seemed like a massive nostalgia-fest. Illyana’s characterisation is especially engaging, with a genuinely sinister undercurrent to an apparently well-intentioned exterior that’s far more nuanced than her recent portrayal as a ranting and insane villain over the last few years. I’m still not convinced she should be back at all, but at least Wells is finally giving me a version I can enjoy. Elsewhere, Cannonball gets given some good material where his perfectly valid attempt to protect a powerless Moonstone backfires on him massively. It’s small moments like that which display how perfectly-pitched Wells’ take on the team is.
Similarly, despite an initially confusing introduction, Legion’s appearance is working quite well now that we’re a few issues into it. It’s interesting to see him able to manifest an even wider variety of powers than before, and especially good to see the matter of his death given an oblique reference. Even if they don’t follow it up any more than that, it’s enough to satisfy me as to where Legion came back from.
Although Wells is a generally above average superhero writer by himself, there’s a definite sense that the book could feel a little generic without the fantastic art of Diogenes Neves, who, paired with a decent inker and colourist, has been punching way above his weight. The team is definitely bringing out the best in one another – although I’m not convinced by the X-Factor-meets-Blue & Gold-era uniforms. The only worry is that when a mid-tier book looks this good, there’s a fair danger that the team is going to be promoted to something much more high profile. If that can be avoided, it looks like New Mutants might actually succeed where its predecessor, Young X-Men, failed. Although if that’s the case, it’s hard to chalk it up to the strength of the brand – it’s more about the quality of stories on offer.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before (a scheduling error on our part saw James taking a quick look at this issue in The Sunday Pages), but the ongoing saga of the “Junior” X-Men book continues with a strongly back-to-basics approach. The last few years have been a rude awakening for Marvel, after both the original New Mutants and its successor Generation X effortlessly lasted for over seventy issues apiece. This success appears to have lured the company into a false sense of security, overlooking the A-list creatives that fashioned the dawn of those titles. The last few years haven’t been as kind to the concept, with the crushingly dull New Mutants Vol. 2 needing a rebuilt from the foundations up at the hands of Kyle & Yost before it became interesting. Its follow-up Young X-Men was pretty much dead on arrival- it’s all very well having an interesting twist up your sleeve for the end of the first arc, but only if the superficial situation is enough to sustain interest on its own. This first instalment of New Mutants 3 is a much stronger effort, but there’s not much sign of a hook apart from the cast presented.
Following on from the recent Illyana-based limited series, the plot presents the demonic mutant roping in her former classmates for a rescue mission, but is worryingly vague about the menace in question. While it all sounds like a fairly conventional plot, Zeb Wells does find a source of interest in his unconventional presentation of the characters. The writer takes Cannonball’s loyalty to his friends and uses it to create an unexpectedly unlikeable figure, too wrapped up in his own status to concede the validity of the younger mutants’ hostility to Illyana. As for the sorceress herself, Wells abandons the schizophrenic presentation of the character in favour of a far more subtly insidious side, as she plays with Magma’s weaknesses.
Artist Diogenes Neyes makes a reasonably strong contribution, although John Raunch’s pastel colours probably aren’t presenting the pencils in their best light. Unfortunately, Neyes appears to be struggling with the ‘homage’ uniforms that his heroes find themselves wearing, as his work is noticeably more confident when presenting the New Mutants in their street clothes. There’s potential here, but the book feels somewhat hollow, with a lot riding on Wells’ introducing a more plot-driven direction over the next couple of issues.download american swing free free before the devil knows you re dead
Garth Ennis & Will Simpson, Hellblazer #50, 1992.