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Mutation - it is the key to our evolution. It is has allowed a no hit
wonder to become the dominate franchise of the Marvel Universe. Every few
months or so - Evolution leaps forward.
Seriously folks - now that I really think about it, it would have made more
sense to run this column last month and just done 'Don't Blame Me' two months in
a row. After all - last month was the tenth installment of this series. Mutants
are a key feature of the X books. Even if you haven't seen X-Men: Origins:
Wolverine, you're probably aware that X is the Roman numeral for 10. Then again
that would be predictable and that's one thing I try really damn hard not to
be. That being said the first up to the plate on our mutant hit parade is . . .
Essential X-Men Classic Volume 3: It is rare that a book can lose its
writer mid-storyline and only be noticeable because the story quality actually
improves. Verner Roth left the Havok storyline after one issue and the title was
handed over to Roy Thomas. At first I was scared, considering I actually bothered
reading Thomas's first stint on the book. This time he almost treats it with
the finesse of his runs on Avengers and Fantastic Four. I mean, he only got
mixed up on our hero's real identities once in the entire trade. The art on
many of these issues was spectacular especially for the late 60s and early
70s. Neal Adams brought a fresh look to the X-Men at a time where it really
needed something - anything - to distinguish them from every other book Marvel
was publishing at the time. The were some really odd crossovers - mostly with
Marvel's two standby characters of the period - Spider-Man and the Hulk.
Spider-Man is actually a nice match for the X-Men. He's powerful enough that in
the inevitable opening where the 'heroes fight each other' he is a credible
threat to a smaller group of X-Men. He was also a young man who was misunderstood
by society. It's easy to see the thematic comparison. Hulk was a bit more
problematic. Hulk team ups with any hero in those days had two basic plots. We
are unfortunate enough to get two 'Hulk goes on rampage and the heroes fight
Hulk only to discover Hulk isn't the real problem' stories. We only get one
'Hulk goes on rampage stopping heroes from doing something very important'
stories and tend to have a bit more drama to them This collection also
includes the often clumsily constructed but still humorous Beast feature from
Amazing Adventures. Was it great? No. In fact some of them were just awful.
Especially the Mastermind issue. Nowhere near as bad as the first few issues
of a certain feature that replaced it, but won't mention by name because I'm
afraid Sheryl will stick another worm from Ceti Alpha V in my ear. Overall was
this trade worth it? At $8.65, I'd have to say yes but it is a bit of a
squeaker. I already had the issues of Marvel Team-Up in two other essentials.
One of The Beast stories was also in one of the Essential Avengers. The issues
with Hulk were a bit grating.
X-Men vs. Apocalypse Volume 2 - Ages of Apocalypse: The first few issues in this
trade, before the crossover enters full swing, are quite strong stories. While
I haven't read much of any of the runs of X-51 (aka Machine Man), the story of
the government agent trying to find out his final fate was an interesting one.
Machine Man and The X-Men both seemed almost tangential to the story which makes
its inclusion in the trade a bit of a mystery. Especially since Apocalypse and
his minions aren't in it. The X-Men annual included is sort of the same. The
rivalry between Kitty Pryde and Jubilee is always amusing. Then the crossover
kicks in and things go haywire. Each chapter is a different alternate Earth
manipulated by Apocalypse. The first one sticks somewhat closely to Stan Lee's
first X-Men story (at first) and the differences quickly mount. It was
entertaining but not quite a winner. The Cable story was like all Cable
stories - bleak and depressing for the sake of being bleak and depressing.
Really - who is the ghost writer for this character - Ingmar Bergman? No wait -
then you might at least get character development. Surprisingly, the Wolverine
story - an alternate universe where Logan reformed The New Fantastic Four was
energized and exciting. It was fun and almost goofy if it weren't all the death
and destruction. Then again - death and destruction can be very funny. It is
probably the high point of the trade. The Shi'ar team up with the Apocalypse story
was also a serious disappointment. The final alternate world was a strange
alternate future story as X-Men stories go. It was vaguely utopian. The
closest thing to war that exists in a huge number of planets where humans,
mutants and aliens live in harmony are some outlying colony worlds settled by
Magneto and his followers. Then Apocalypse shows up to ruin it. While not as
fun as the Wolverine story - it was worth checking out even if it is only for the
art. It looks great. Dollars to donuts Jason Bourgeois thinks I'm saying that
because Alan Davis drew Kitty Pryde as twins. The Search for Cyclops miniseries
could have been a nightmare. In the early days of this column I probably would
have made some really nasty comments about it but I won't. It wasn't as bad as
the horror stories I had heard made it seem. I've read worse. Much, much
worse. In fact, I'm about to say something almost complementary about it. In
some ways it was a nice companion to The Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga only this
time Jean had to risk her soul and sanity to save Scott. This is pushed
slightly further when Scott asks Cable to kill him before Apocalypse can take
control again, echoing a key Jean and Logan moment Okay - I said something
nice. Now I can get away with saying something that really needs to be said
about the entire crossover: 'The whole plot was overly clichéd, the book was
confusing even to a long time X-Book fans and only two issues in the book didn't
feel like a complete waste of the time I could have spent watching Coleman
Francis movies.' Now that I have that off my chest I can say - no, I didn't get
my money's worth.
Wolverine and Electra: The Redeemer: Rucka and Amano put together a gorgeous
looking highly entertaining thriller. It's a midtown Manhattan ninja noir.
(Try saying that three times fast.) This book is a not a comic per se - rather
an illustrated novella. The visuals are stunning. Rucka has a real grasp of
who the characters are and pulls out all the stops. Considering it is of the
action and adventure genre, the pacing is slow but deliberate. It plays well
with Amano's art. Am I not a major fan of either character so when I found
this on a one for $12, two for $20 table I almost passed on it. I'm am really
glad I didn't. Any of you thinking this would be another East meets West
experiment that attempts to rope American readers of Manga into an American
comic only to fall flat on its fat ass should give this book a chance. It more
than proves the synthesis can work. Revealing too much about this story would
only serve to ruin it. I will say this much - if you're expecting a classic
Marvel Team Ups style story this isn't it. It's almost as if Rucka wrote
two simultaneous stories that intersect a few times and share an ending. I
can't say much else other than, yes, at $10 I really got what I paid for with
this book.
X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire: I'll say this about Ed Brubaker - it
takes cajones to write a sequel to one of the widely bashed X-Men stories of the
decade. It takes more than skill to take a broken concept and make it work.
For years it seemed the distinctive story characteristic that separated the
Shi'ar Empire from the various other empires across the Marvel Universe had
been this unending 'Lilandra is Empress, no Deathbird is Empress, it's a floor
wax, it's a dessert topping' holding pattern. Something had to be done or
people would stop caring entirely if they had bothered caring in the first place.
Since Brubaker had already established a psychopathic mutant with a grudge
against the Shi'ar heading their way - the solution was to just let him run hog
wild. The story itself is action packed, charged with energy and is really
fast moving. Most characters chosen to be on the squad for this storyline make
sense, even if they aren't given much to do. The reason for Nightcrawler's
presence doesn't become a key plot point until the very near the end. The story
has no clear winner. It does however revitalize many aspects of the Marvel
Universe that had seemed creatively dead 12 issues before. There is plenty of
character development and not all of it where or with who you would expect.
Dollars to donuts Jason Bourgeois is jealous of Korvus. There is a healthy
enough number of twists and turns that I didn't lose interest. At $10 (from
the table mentioned above) I'd have to say I got my money's worth on this
hardcover.
X-Men: Manifest Destiny: This anthology package suffers from the fate of poor
quality control. Wolverine: Manifest Destiny had so much action you needed a
shoe horn to pack it all in. Logan behaved just the way the reader would expect
him to behave. The thing stopping any sort of interest on the part of the
reader is that the number ninjas and shaolin warriors Logan has killed over the
years is probably greater than the number of ghosts Velma has unmasked and the
number of doughnuts Homer has eaten put together. After years of Claremont
and Hama there is nothing left on the subject of killing masters of ancient
martial arts left to be said. Even the ending - where Logan becomes the new
crime boss of San Francisco's Chinatown doesn't have the impact that it
should. It should seem like Logan is betraying the very principles of his
established honor code. Somehow - it doesn't. If feels sort of been there and
done that. I have mixed feelings about the Nightcrawler story. On the one
hand, Kurt Wagner so rarely gets the spotlight in anything. He's always been
one of my favorite X-Men. The problem is that whenever he gets a showcase the
stories usually end up like this: not horrendously bad but not remarkable
either. An attempt is made to redeem the works of Chuck Austen. I'm not
saying if they succeeded in doing it, I'm just saying an attempt was made. Read
in to that statement what you will. The big surprise of this book was the
Iceman and Mystique story. I didn't expect anything resembling depth of
character from Iceman. Every once in a while a writer will come along and try
to get you to take him seriously. This is the closest anyone has come in some
time. It actually works. You almost buy him as an adult now. Almost. The
Boom Boom story was fun but not laugh out loud funny. A draft or two more and
it could have been a contender, instead of a bum which it is. The second
Nightcrawler story - where he mourns the thought to be dead Kitty Pryde was much
better. Previous writers have already gone into Colossus and Logan's reaction to
her death, but seemed to ignore the how close she was with Kurt. It might not
have had quite the punch it could have but it was nice to see the attempt. The
final story where the X-Men track down retired villain Avalanche at the bar he's
running just make our heroes seem like school yard bullies asking for lunch
money, who then fly their victim's underwear up the flag pole while he's wearing
them regardless of the fact that he already paid them. It's the least heroic
any X-Man has looked since the time Hank McCoy stole a Tootsie Roll from the
pediatric wing of the hospital. Overall - was it worth my $10? Only if I lived
on Bizzaroworld.
Essential Wolverine Volume 5: Wolverine is the best there is at what he does.
Too bad what he does isn't avoiding having a consistently mediocre series.
Since the post Fatal Attractions Wolverine was slowly going feral, Larry Hama
and friends wisely switched Wolverine's format over to a team up book.
Unfortunately while emulating the strengths of such an anthology book - mainly
showing various X-Men and a few friends from around the Marvel Universe's view
on the more savage Logan it also mimicked the books biggest weakness. Those of
you who are fans of Marvel Team-Up or Marvel Two in One know what I'm talking
about. One minute our hero will be hanging with someone cool like Captain
America or knocking your socks off with sleeper hits like the cast of Saturday
Night Live. The next they're palling around with Brother Voodoo or somebody
from Alpha Flight. The inclusion of the Onslaught crossover issues were also a
major strain on this book. Not only do I have them in the Onslaught trades - the
stories weren't that strong the first time through. Whenever the book couldn't
get a guest star, they relied heavily on Wolverine's other standby - ninjas.
Lots and lots of ninjas. There have been so many Wolverine vs. Ninja stories -
and so few permutations on how they can end - that they've become like the
bloody, violent and more adult versions of Scooby Doo. Good story telling - no.
Occasionally entertaining - maybe but you'll rarely admit it publicly. Not only
that but there are only so many permutations of explaining how clichéd Wolverine
vs. Ninja stories are that I was forced to make the same Scooby Doo joke twice
in the same column. My favorite story in the whole book was Wolverine '96 (an
annual) where Wolverine fights a giant robot ninja. That's right - The Return
of Red Ronin. Any book that sneaks in references to Marvel's lamented Godzilla
comic - a not so secret love of mine no matter how inexcusably bad it sometimes
was - gets at least some acclaim in my book. It doesn't make up for Wolverine
issue #100. For months they were leading up to 'something big' was going to
happen. That generally happened in 90s comics around big round numbers. They
made you think he was getting his Adamantium skeleton back only to point at the
readers and laugh about 10 pages from the end. The Generation X story was
painful to read. Worse yet - Wolverine was barely in his own comic. What the
hell? That the story didn't as much end as it did run out of pages. To take a
nod from Jerry Springer of all people - now for my final thought: 'Maybe it's the
fact that these comics came out only a few years after I started reading super
hero comics but I don't think these comics have aged quite enough or are of the
quality to really deserve 'The Essential' treatment. They are only about 14
years old and still readily available in quarter boxes at shows everywhere. I
have sweatshirt older than that and it still fits. Not only that, upon
research, I discovered half this trade was available in various other trades.
It was not worth my $8.75
Young X-Men Volume 1: There have been several young mutant teams over the years.
The original five X-Men, The New Mutants, Generation X - all of which managed to
find something really basic within the first arc: find some distinct story
telling reason for the title to exist. This team consisting of various members
of the 198 mutants that were sitting around collecting unemployment checks fails
to do that. It fails at doing anything new with the X-Men concept. It even
fails at getting you to care about the characters. Sure, bad stuff happens to
them but if you don't know them it's hard give a crap one way or another. You
end up rooting for the supposed antagonists the original New Mutants - characters
long time X-Book readers know - than you do about the supposed protagonists of
the story. I haven't read an X-book this bad since that one I don't like to
talk about. (Long time readers know the one.) Needless to say, it was not worth
my seven bucks. I'm so infuriated that I didn't actually pay for it. Then I'd
feel a little more justified it trashing it so badly. I always feel kind of
bad about saying such horrible things when I didn't lose any of my money on
something. I just wasted some time I could spent building a life sized Big Bird
out of Legos.
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