Welcome again, to the first anniversary of Great X-Pectations! And
boy, do I have some big news for y'all reading this.
First off, I'm sure everyone by now has heard about the creative
changes in the X-Books that have swept through in recent months. From Rob
Liefeld return to the character he (arguably) created, Cable, with writer
Joe Pruett (Magneto Rex) co-plotting with him, ousting the team of Jose Ladronn and Joe Casey, as they were nearing
the climax of the storyline they had been preparing, to Terry Kavanagh
taking over as the scripter over Alan Davis' plots for the two main X-Books.
Let the rant begin.
I've been absolutely loving Casey and Ladronn's work on Cable. It
was spotty in places, but that happens with everyone. They were just
starting to hit their stride, and BOOM they're off the book. Ladronn's last
few issue have been phenomenal, and Casey brought in Rachel Summers. Now we're getting Liefeld, of all people?
They wanna increase sales on the book, and the sad thing? That will
do it. You'll have the completists still buying the book, the rare Liefeld
fans, and the masochists who wanna read it to experience great eyestrain.
Among others.
Well, I won't be one of them. I've dropped the book like a hot
potato. Although, the first issue has me interested. Rachel will be
appearing again. I'll probably check it out on the stands, see how bad it
is, and write more angry things. I'd say that's better than killing things.
And Terry Kavanagh? From all my experience, he's always been a
very...vanilla writer. Plain. Not quite boring, but nothing spectacular
about his work. That's not my complaint though. I'd been contemplating
dropping X-Man after the Blood Brothers storyline, and when I heard of Kavanagh coming into the X-Men, I winced. The
books had been declining as well, and had decided to quit them in January
2000, if things hadn't shaped up.
One of Kavanagh's plans is to bring X-Man more into contact with the
team, which is something that the character has been against since issue 1.
Well, not exactly, but close enough. With everything else that was coming
up, and my decreasing satisfaction with the books, I decided to drop these three as well. X-Man wasn't quite
bad enough, but if he was going to have interactions with the core books,
which I would not be getting, I saw no point. Not to mention the upcoming
summer crossover introducing three new books.
So now, after all is said and done, I am down to reading three
x-titles. Gambit, X-Force, and Mutant X. What does this mean for Great
X-Pectations? For now, nothing. I'm still filled with enough piss and
vinegar, along with a backlog of rants, that I can play with for awhile, along with some reminiscences about the good old
days. And there is always a new miniseries or two coming out I can bitch
about. I'm still gonna be here for awhile. I'll give plenty of warning
before this place closes down for good.
And that is about it for this month. Hard to believe I've been
doing this for a year now. Oh, and if you're wondering about the title for
this month's column, I express my deepest apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.
