Wow. Three months in a row! You like me, you REALLY like me!
Ahem. Sorry. Glad to have everyone back here, and greetings to
all the new readers that I blackmailed into reading the column!
For those who were here, you remember that last month, I gave my
opinions on Steve Seagles run so far on Uncanny X-Men. For
those of you who are new, you dont remember, but now you know.
This month, Im gonna continue that a bit, and then poke around
in Joe Kellys issues of Adjectiveless X-Men.
The most recent issue of Uncanny was a spotlight issue on
Bishop, who was lost a year ago, and barely seen since. It
tied up his plotline of where he has been, and moved it forward
a bit, leading into a one shot special later this year.
The art was far more cartoony than Chris Bachalo has been
doing lately, and there was a lot of pasting of images from
earlier issues. The story was subpar, and often cliché. Still,
it refreshed our memories on a plot that had been languishing
all year, so at least thats over with. And so are my comments
on UXM. For now.
I was going to dig up my issues of Kellys run on X-Men for
this, but that was gonna take too long, and I wanted to have
these comments free flowing from a faulty memory. More
interesting that way.
Joe Kelly was a relative newcomer to the world of comics,
and got a shot at a Deadpool ongoing series. It was, and
continues to be, 20 or so issues later, a critically acclaimed
series. He managed to land the job on X-Men when Scott Lobdell
dropped all things X and went on to write Fantastic Four.
Kelly gets much of the same comments from me as my comments
for Seagle. He took these three characters, Marrow, Maggot,
and Cecelia Reyes and made them interesting. He actually gave
Maggot an believable, and undoubtedly highly different, origin
than what Lobdell probably had planned. Hes given Marrow a
personality, and a somewhat believable reason for joining the
X-Men after being one of their enemies. The interplay between
Reyes and the Beast has been nothing, if not amusing.
But then came the recent two issue story arc in X-Men.
The Shadow King, an old enemy of the X-Mens, returned from
the dead, again, and tricked the X-Man Psylocke into
releasing a psionic pulse that had various effects on the
telepaths of the world. It appears to have affected
everyone differently, which doesnt make much sense to me,
but maybe that will be described later. Psylocke was left
as a gooey mess in the psionic plane.
The second part recently came out (with preview copy
stating it would have the return of Xavier, but it didnt)
and dug the hole even further.
Psylocke was saved from evisceration a few years ago
by exposure to the Crimson Dawn. Please dont ask, I
dont even really know what it is. She was graced with
unexplained powers, which today are still unexplained.
She has become a Deus Ex Machina because of these powers.
Her psionic form was destroyed, and the Crimson Dawn
somehow pulled her back together as a black shadow of
herself, and she could spread this shadow over people
and ended up saving everyone. How convenient.
She then continued to use these powers to ensnare
the soul of the Shadow King, when he became stupid
and tried to reach out and touch every mind at once.
Which another character does every day of his life.
Why was this a problem for the Shadow King? Psylocke
was forced to sacrifice her powers to constantly keep
the Shadow King trapped, and she left the team, since
she no longer had her primary abilities.
Questions. What were the Shadow Kings motives?
These were never truly stated. Where did he get the
idea for the pulse? What was the point of this story?
That I can answer. To get Psylocke off the team
because of the editorial mandate to make a smaller
team. This could have been done so much easier.
"Well gang, Angel and I want to take a little
vacation, and are gonna go off across the pond to
Merry Olde England, pop in at my brothers wedding,
and take some time off. Pip pip, cheerio!" Instead,
they give her new powers, instead of clearly defining
what she can and cant do, take away the last bit of
her character that remained after all the changes
shes been through, and add angst to her character,
by making her responsible if the Shadow King escapes.
Kelly does an excellent job on Deadpool, and
his problems in X-Men mainly revolve around
editorial strangleholds, so I cut him some slack.
Lets have the editors stand back for a bit, and
let Kelly do his job in his own way, OK? And I
do understand, that occasionally, even the best
writers put out total bombs; be they because of
time constraints, or just bad ideas, or good
ideas executed poorly.
Joe Kellys work has been mostly good, and
I do look forward to reading his take on the X-Men
month after month, and I am not condemning him,
just bummed and upset that he slipped down a
few notches with these two issues.
And I can hear the hate mail coming at me already,
so Ill shut up now, and let all this stew in your
minds. Until next month, stay frosty!
