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Finally, the miniseries that
shipped in 2002. Traditionally, the X-office hasn't had
a great track record with minis - they've never shaken off the
stigma of being pumped out purely to milk the franchise, and
2001's largely uninspiring X-Men Icons line did noting to
change that perception. So did they do any better this
time round?
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 First up
is the hugely underrated CHAMBER miniseries from
Brian Vaughan and Lee Ferguson. The book sold badly
- the previous Icons books had been poorly received, and
Chamber's parent title, Uncanny X-Men, wasn't doing
all that well either. But this is a good little
story, which raises some interesting themes about positive
discrimination in universities, a metaphor which has
become available in the light of the recent direction of
Grant Morrison's stories. It's also a
well-structured mystery story with a likeable supporting
cast, and generally attractive art from Lee Ferguson.
A shame that it didn't do better in terms of sales,
because it really deserved to.
Reviews: Chamber #1
| #2 | #3
| #4 |
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 ICEMAN
was another of the first wave of Icons books, and was
halfway through at the start of 2002. The best
description here is "inoffensive". It's an
inconsequential but broadly pleasant read, marred by
staggeringly out of place fill-in art from Skott Young on
issue #3. As the Icons minis go, not bad - but
entirely missable nonetheless.
Reviews: Iceman
#1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
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 MARVEL
MANGAVERSE: X-MEN was part of the "For god's sake
why?" line of Mangaverse one-shots, showing vaguely manga-inspired
reworkings of Marvel characters. In the case of this
book, at least, I use the word "inspired" loosely.
Godawful stuff which never seemed entirely clear even as
to the premise of its version of the X-Men. We're
getting another X-Men quasi-manga miniseries in the new
year - if nothing else, I suppose it has to be an
improvement.
Reviews: Marvel Mangaverse: X-Men
(one-shot) |
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 MEKANIX
is halfway through its run now, and despite an excessively
long rescue sequence in issue #2, I've been pleasantly
surprised by it. Yes, it has all the subtlety of a
sledgehammer to the face, but Claremont's tirade against
the erosion of civil liberties in issue #3 is still an
inherently good thing by any standards. Better than
X-Treme X-Men, in my view. Unfortunately,
sales aren't looking too good.
Reviews: Mekanix #1 |
#2 | #3 |
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 I suppose
MORLOCKS deserves some credit for trying something
different - an alternate reality story about a group of
completely new characters who've retreated to the sewers
to escape the Sentinels. But it didn't work - the
characters weren't very well established, the level of
Sentinel control was over the top. The fact that it
wasn't actually promoted as being out of continuity didn't
much help either. Hard to imagine who was the target
audience for this.
Reviews: Morlocks #1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
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|
 MUTIES
was a similarly unlikely project - six unrelated "real
world" stories showing mutants from around the world.
The quality was variable, although it did improve as it
went on. The book had a tendency to soapbox
politics, as most stories went out of their way to pummel
home rather obvious messages about global suffering.
But it did give exposure to some good artists, and there
are one or two good moments in here.
Reviews:
Muties
#1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
#5 |
#6 |
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 One
of the better Icons miniseries, NIGHTCRAWLER was a
reasonable story about slavery and religion. It's a
little questionable whether it was really a Nightcrawler
story, as opposed to a story that he just happened to be
in, and like most of the Icons minis, it was far from
essential. Still, it was at least trying to look at
some interesting themes. Better than average.
Reviews: Nightcrawler
#1 |
#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
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|
 ORIGIN
was one of Marvel's most successful titles of the year in
terms of sales, and continues to do rather nicely in the
trade paperback market. But it left me cold - it's
basically the origin of Wolverine done in the style of a
costume drama, it moves extremely slowly, and aside from
the rather nice misdirection as to which character was
Wolverine in the opening two issues, it's all rather
predictable. Moreover, it's totally inconsequential
to everything which has followed - Logan remains ignorant
of everything in this series, and it's not clear that any
of these events have had a particular formative influence
on his life. Crucially, and the reason why it
doesn't work as an origin story, we leave the story with
no greater insight into the character. No doubt the
sequel will be along eventually. It's not an awful
series, but it doesn't live up to the hype.
Reviews: Origin
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#2 |
#3 |
#4 |
#5 |
#6 |
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