50,000 Orchis Operatives Can't Be Wrong
New Books Emerge
There came a time when the X-Men died. And then, we learned that Jordan D. White, who had been editing the line for all of the Krakoan experiment, was about to depart on a new venture, to be replaced by Avengers editor Tom Brevoort, under whose watch the Jason Aaron run happened. (Welcome to DC Comics, by the way! It can only be better from there.) Clearly, then, this is the endgame for this era of X-Men comics, and, as ever, it comes with its fair deal of launches, new directions, and assorted festivities. So, one last time, for posterity's sake, let us do the grim business of taking on a lot at once. It's not the whole line, because, for once, I wanted to get some writing out, and quite frankly, you don't really need me to let you know that Ben Percy's X-Force is exactly as it has always been. All that said, let's drop it like it's about to stomp on Jubilee's face.
Remember when we met last, and I said all those things about the limits of using mutants as a metaphor for specific minority groups in specific situations? And no one yelled at me, so I guess I must have been right about this one somehow? Well, as you know if you've been following the half-dozen interviews he's done since, Gerry Duggan has decided to double down, and he keeps bringing up real instances of industrialized prejudice on the way to X-Men #25. The earnestness would be admirable, in a way, if the argument had been fully thought through. (As an example: consider the fact the issue's big action setpiece takes place in Jerusalem, and what the political situation is over there.)
And all of this is a shame, because the drama at the heart of it completely lands; this is the X-Men in their most desperate hour in a while, full of grief and anger and unleashing cool violence (and boy is the violence ever cool when Stefano Caselli draws it) on the deserving. The previews of coming attractions are unobtrusive, and the quick fixes to continuity are inelegant but brief. The character beats are strong, and Duggan's execution of the more complicated figures, the villainous monologues and the ever-so-Claremontian third person narration, makes for a great showcase of his growth as a writer. It's a good comic! As long as you don't think too hard about it.
Same goes for Uncanny Avengers #1, except slightly worse; first and foremost, it's a less interesting retread on the ideas of Duggan's other books in the lineup, less melodramatic than X-Men and less consequential than Invincible Iron Man. The tone is all over the place; the bright colors and the cackling villains scream "Saturday morning cartoon" (and the setup of the story, where our heroes get caught in a fight against a team of "mutant extremists" that happens to feature the Blob, is very deliberately playing into that), but it's all in-between pictures of some of the most ludicrous gore you'll see in a non-horror comic, and it is set in a world that constantly wants to remind you of days of fascism past.
And there, what had just been a flaw becomes the book's undoing: it wants to be serious, it wants so specifically to be about nazi atrocities that it features Captain America, the Fenris twins, and possibly the nazi Captain America from Secret Empire, I mean it would make sense, there are signposts pointing at that particular reveal, but its take on these things is criminally undercooked, and yet it is so essential to its substance that it renders the whole enterprise spectacularly shallow. None of this is new, not really: Duggan's take on Orchis has always been the weakness of his X-Men work, and every single volume of Uncanny Avengers has been a mess. Ah well, better luck next time.
Immortal X-Men #14 is a bummer. There's the tragedy of it all, absolutely, carried with aplomb in deliberately-paced flashbacks full of all the anguished emotions Lucas Werneck can put on a page. But there is something happening, deeper in the structure. It's a weirdly passive issue of Immortal, in which most pages are spent contemplating the crisis rather than navigating it -- or indeed causing it, because that's how that book has always rolled -- and as such it doesn't have the sense of momentum of the issues previous.
The part of the book that is machinations, posturing, and the hubris of their protagonists, is still there, and it is as enjoyable as it has ever been, but there is too little of it. In its big twist, it still carries the title's grand metaphorical ambition, but doing the work to sell that moment meant losing itself in the thrill of its imagery rather than launching the reader on any particular line of thought. And the remaining parts, the opening volleys in the battle to define or defile the memory of Krakoa, lack any kind of tension and resolve far too easily for something taking this much real estate. So, in the final analysis, this is a comic that had far too much to pursue, and far too little space to pursue it in. That's the easiest kind of flaw to bounce back from, and I have no doubt in my mind that things will turn around.
That's going to do it for the known quantities, unless you really need me to tell you that X-Men Red is still just its beautiful cosmic sandbox self, full of cool characters telling you how cool they are and doing a bunch of cool stuff, which you don't. They have a Ghost Rider/Wolverine crossover out now. It's okay. The most interesting part of this final phase of X, to me, is how much success it finds in some of its weirder swings. Is a book like Alpha Flight #1 strictly necessary? No, and in some ways it does feel like the minimum viable X-Men adjacent comic, which is a bit of a step down when you're Ed Brisson and your work at DC includes two of the coolest superhero team books currently on the shelves. But it is working a cool angle, showing the inner workings of Orchis at a level that wasn't really seen before, and that does a lot to make it work.
For another example, check out Astonishing Iceman #1, which I'm going to call "the book about a gay Superman you knew you wanted from the moment it appeared obvious Jon Kent was leaving the Injustice universe with nothing more than a moral victory" just to be mean. Following up on Iceman getting melted down hardcore style during the Hellfire Gala, Steve Orlando turns in a wildly imaginative superhero comic that is actually about the dream of a gay Superman, proudly saving the day and making out with hot men.
There are twists in the tale, of course, but when you live in a great big polar fortress, and you have a lover basically telling your truth to the world, you are in most ways that count being the capital-S Superman. Which is not just extremely cool: it's also, finally, the kind of idea Steve Orlando can bring to the table when not burdening himself with relitigating X-Men comics no one in their right mind has ever cared about before. I have an idea of where things might go (it gets pretty Alec Holland in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing), and if I'm correct, it's going to be pretty great. If I'm wrong? Might be even better.
I expected very little out of Dark X-Men #1, because it was called "Dark X-Men", and it was following up on Dark Web, a certifiably bad comic book event. Turns out it's probably my second favorite book of the lot! I don't know how it happened, but I can try reporting the facts as I experienced them: they made an X-Men book full of freaks, villains and monsters from the most fun little pockets of the mutants' history, making it uncanny in a way few books had gotten to be since Krakoa happened.
It's a dark and violent book, but so is the rest of the line. What sets it apart is that it legitimately feels dangerous; away from mainline expectations, Steve Foxe gets to showcase the edge that had always been present in characters like Gambit, and its mission statement starts with an assessment of what happened on Mykines that is so blunt in its honesty it makes the other books feel lesser for not acknowledging it as fact. Oh: and it's funny, too, because there is nothing not funny about Alex Summers being the ultimate simp. With X-Force continuing its dark saga on the ethics of state-sanctioned murder, probably, a book on the lighter side of hardcore demon violence is more than welcome.
And finally there's Children of the Vault #1, a book that is so good it justifies on its own the whole enterprise. None of this is surprising in any way: Deniz Camp feels perfectly at home in the house that Hickman built, and his gift for devising big ideas and expressing them in ways that use style and formatting to make them make perfect sense is tailor-made for a story expressed in big blockbuster comic action with the occasional dive into found document prose. So, stylistically, this is already the coolest comic on the block.
But then, it pairs that flair with the kinds of provocative ideas that made 20th Century Men an instant classic, and everything kicks into overdrive. Like the greatest X-Men stories, this is about the future. Specifically, it's about the idea of the future as casus belli for conquest, as the Children take over the world with a promise to make everything better. To complicate things, it stars Cable and Bishop, who, as time travelers and icons of the 1990s, are men of the future from the past.
As ever with Camp, scratching even further brings forth more insights, and make what could have been a very abstract discussion all too concrete. Its action kicks off in a lithium field in northern Chile, the poisonous consequence of our very own dystopian future. That's one of many purposeful decisions in this comic that gets the mind racing. Another one of those is bringing up Hexus the Living Corporation. It's a feast for the mind, it's the kind of bold storytelling we need in our superhero comics, and if there was any kind of justice its remit would go beyond a five issue miniseries. Excellent stuff! Check it out!
Well, that's another one for the books, gang! Too many words, not enough direction, it's a classic for a reason. If you're looking for more of that, I am on Bluesky, which is okay. I'm also on Cohost, which is better (and on which I'm talking about Marvel's Star Wars comics, for some reason). And now I'm also on Tumblr, if you like pictures. If it turns out I was wrong about X-Force, we'll meet again, and even if I'm right, don't let that stop you from doing the right thing, which is to HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!