Wake Up And Taste The Ashes
You didn't think we'd be gone when there's a whole new era of X-Men to talk about? Did you? DID YOU?
Yeah. I know. I haven’t done this in a hot minute. So, before we get into the reviews, I’m just point blank gonna give you a list of all the comics that were too self-evidently great for me to dig into, and that’s how we’re going to catch up. Deal? Don’t answer, this is still my newsletter.
- Juni Ba’s The Boy Wonder! Wonderful little study of all the Robins, to the point where I’d call it an essential document if you’re interested in ever getting what these characters are about! Plus it looks cool as hell!
- Zatanna: Bring Down The House! I think it should be fairly obvious why! It’s Mariko Tamaki and Javier Rodriguez doing what they do best! Zatanna is probably the DC character with the most out of wack coolness-to-solo-starring-comics ratio out there and I’m glad we’re fixing that, and that we’re doing it in that way
- All of the Energon Universe GI Joe comics have been bangers in some way (except Cobra Commander) but have you seen Scarlett? Scarlett rules! It’s the high stakes spy action you’ve been missing since Marvel fumbled the bag on THE EISNER AWARD WINNING Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande’s Black Widow, but a little bit more, and instead Marco Ferrari draws it!
- We can debate the business model all the live long day but it can’t be denied that DSTLRY have put out some kickass comics, but the one I’m gonna highlight is White Boat, because House of Leaves on a boat is a perfect vehicle for Scott Snyder’s very personal and obsessively detail-oriented style, and Francesco Francavilla can serve mood until the cows come home.
That’s it, now you know all that was worth knowing since last we met; onwards!
Let’s be honest with ourselves: this review of X-Men #1, the long-dreaded opening number to the post-Krakoa era of X-Men comics, was unlikely to ever be an unabashed rave. Obviously, the frustration of seeing a promise squandered until it died its disappointing death lingers, but to be fair, the incoming administration, and its “Conductor of X” Tom Brevoort have also done nothing whatsoever to make the transition back to business as usual feel any less painful. There are the many outright counterfactual pronouncements the former Avengers editor made about the outgoing status quo, whether it’s about the comics themselves or the relationships between the characters in those comics. But, and maybe most importantly, there is also Heir of Apocalypse, a mediocre beyond mediocre display of 90s crossover slop, utterly shameless in its attempts at shock value through the implied death of fan-favorite characters and yet so void of any tangible stakes it feels really really dull. (Plus no one even dies, spoilers for #3)
And then it gets worse, because it is exactly the comic that you expect it to be: it’s a throwback, in style and in substance. But, to its credit, it’s not exactly the one you thought you were going to get. It’s not the school, and it’s not Claremont and Lee. Instead, it’s a rather savvy blend of Schism-era Gillen, for the imaginative problem-solving, Aaron, for the callback-laced action-comedy (which was a staple of his Wolverine and the X-Men) and Morrison, both for the callbacks themselves and for the approach to the big ideas. Now, don’t go in there expecting something with the same bite as New X-Men, or something with its kind of contemporary sense of cool (This is in fact a comic so fine with being uncool it put Quentin Quire in what can only be described as a ska costume), but MacKay finds the interesting take in there, and runs with it in a satisfying done-in-one.
The real surprise in all of this is that Ryan Stegman, of all people, ends up being the weak link of the operation. In a vacuum, he should be the perfect artist for the occasion, having mastered that classic 1990s hyper-kinetic and always leaping at the reader style of action. But this isn’t that kind of comic. Hell, its secondary story is just a tour of the team’s facility, in which nothing dangerous or aggressive even happens. And the action that is there isn’t particularly novel; you might not have seen this particular team of X-Men dispatch goons in matching suits before, but you have surely seen its component parts do much of the same somewhere. What’s new is the costume design, and it is shockingly garish for a book so steeped in practicalities. This is an obvious miscast, and I’m putting the blame squarely on Editorial for that one.
At the end of the day, loath as I am to admit it, keeping things simple, and returning to some manner of winning formula, isn’t a problem in and of itself. Many of the best comics currently being published, whether that’s Ryan North’s Fantastic Four run, King and Sampere’s Wonder Woman, or, most obviously of all, Fleecs and Seeley’s Local Man, are, in one way or another, playing the classics. But all of them come at their subject matters with one weird twist, a little trick that makes the old seem new. X-Men #1 doesn’t; and that only makes it a good comic, when it needed to be a great comic. Better luck next time, gang.
If you know anything about Deniz Camp, and at this point you should, or else what have we tastemakers of the world to show for our work, you know that he’s more than capable of delivering genuinely provocative work no matter the circumstances, through carefully chosen imagery, and a commitment to interrogate the parts of his big science-fiction premises that aren’t fiction at all.
For instance: despite taking place on an Earth where a megalomaniac hypervillain has destroyed the nation-states as we know and understand them and replaced them with feuding fiefdoms run by a cadre of carefully selected associates held together by converging political and economical interests, the question at the heart of The Ultimates #2 ultimately boils down to something very understandable; America is possibly the most fucking evil nation on the planet. And that’s a pretty big problem if your name is “Captain America”, isn’t it?
What follows from this is a two-fold approach to the question; on one front, the newly formed Ultimates attack the White House, and if you think that statement is loaded, wait until you see who’s sitting at the Resolute desk. On the other, a silent history of what was at one point the United States, loaded with pictures that wouldn’t be out of place in 20th Century Men, each telling a story that really gets the gears going.
Speaking of, one can’t help but notice a pattern here. Last issue was about Tony Stark having to deal with the fact he can’t impose his vision of the future on everyone around him without reality pushing back. This one is about Steve Rogers standing up for America when “America” is all but meaningless. If this holds, we’re in for more of these direct attacks on the very premises of the founding Avengers; if this doesn’t, well, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. This is one of the most clever books currently going on.
That’s right: against all odds, it’s another one for the books. This is a weird time to be into comics, and I hope that things pick up with the Comic Con announcements that have already been revealed by comics’ least scrupulous. If it’s cool enough, and it sure as hell looks like it’s gonna be cool enough, we’ll be there, ever vigilant, and ever ready to drop bombs. In the mean time, I’m here, I’m there, I’m anywhere. And in case you forgot, ALWAYS. ALWAYS. HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!