1 april 2001

This is going to take a while, but these things happen when a new publisher launches in the same week that Marvel finally make some headway on their backlog, which has been plaguing the entire line and not just the X-books. They actually shipped twelve titles this week, but let the record show that despite allegedly having been completed for months, Daredevil #16 missed shipping. Nice one, lads. Some would say that title could really have done with shipping on time in order to, oh, stop it being the laughing stock of the industry, but there you go.

Talking of running late, GENERATION X #74 finally lumbers out, over a month overdue. This is the final part of the Four Days storyline, and this time it's Husk's issue. Left alone in the mansion while everyone else is out, Husk gets to appear in a ghost story as all the lights go out, and she meets the ghosts of some of the school's earlier pupils. One of the kids has been abused, which is shocking, so for reasons I find difficult to comprehend, Husk decides to go and annoy some perfectly innocent old woman to remind her of it.

Hmm. This one nearly works, but not quite. It starts off pretty well, with some strong atmospherics and decent characterisation for Husk, and then falls into the old trap of just presenting us with something nasty, and inviting us to conclude that it's a bad thing. We already know that child abuse is a bad thing, and the story really doesn't go anywhere beyond that rather obvious starting point. Husk's closing actions, going to see the now- elderly sister of the ghost child, make very little sense, since it's far from clear what the old woman is meant to be getting out of this, and it leaves Husk looking like a complete bastard for needlessly dragging up somebody else's unpleasant memories just so that she can get some closure.

Child abuse is in danger of becoming the 21st century equivalent of the 1980s anti-drug story - gosh it's awful, thanks for your time. There's nothing tasteless or insensitive about this issue, but it just isn't enough to shove something like this out there and tell us it's awful.

MUTANT X continues to defy belief with its 2001 Annual.

Has there ever been a series so clodhopping? So inane? So poorly structured? So ineptly plotted? So downright stupid? The casual reader may persist in claiming that the world's worst series is something more prominent - say, Youngblood, which was indeed atrocious - but those of us who have sat open-mouthed through this increasingly indefensible parade of shite know in our hearts that we are experiencing the nadir of modern comics.

Pop quiz. You are the writer of Mutant X. (This may call for a stiff drink, but work with me here.) In the previous issue, perhaps due to some kind of aneurysm, you declared Havok to be the most powerful man on the planet, blew up the moon, turned Captain America into a raving semi-inflated lunatic, built an entire storyline around a war between Canada and the USA without ever explaining what they were fighting over, suddenly introduced the Beyonder into the storyline out of nowhere, and for a final flourish had Dracula turn up at the end to bite Havok on the neck.

What do you do for the next issue?

A. Attempt to give some kind of credible motivation to the Canadian and US forces; dispose of the Dracula plotline as quickly as possible; and get back to focussing on the world war storyline with the Beyonder as an all-powerful intervener, perhaps cribbing liberally from Nth Man. Ask whether the story could perhaps be credited to Alan Smithee.

B. Completely ignore the entire Canada/US plot. Have the Beyonder wandering around killing everyone in a laughably inept attempt to establish him as a villain (while never really explaining who he is and where he came from). Seriously try to sell us on the idea of Havok as a character of cosmic importance. Bring in Devil Dinosaur, Brother Voodoo and frigging Slapstick, and still expect the scene in question to carry some dramatic weight.

C. Flee the country. Let the editor worry about it.

Mackie has opted for B. The sheer stunning badness of this book really does defy description. Once again, Mackie shows us is total inability to follow through properly on a storyline, or indeed to competently structure a plot at all.

The "next issue" trailer informs us that in Mutant X #32, "Almost everyone else dies." Gosh, killing everyone in the final issue of an alternate reality storyline. Who would ever have expected such a radically off-beat ending from the searing imagination of Howard Mackie?

I try my best, I really do, to criticise books rather than creators in these reviews. I fully understand that all manner of outside factors can drag down the best intentions of any individual involved. But when you get a book this sensationally appalling, it really is impossible to vent the appropriate level of condemnation without it appearing to spill over into the sphere of personal attacks. Howard Mackie, I wish to emphasise, may well be a lovely and charming individual, fond of kittens, and a prominent anonymous contributor to charity. My criticism is directed solely at his writing ability, which, at the most tactful, could be described as egregious.

In my review of the last issue, I gave it a D in sole recognition of the fact that the art could be worse. James Fry draws this issue, and he is worse. In fairness, the art is merely a bit below average - it's nowhere near as poor as the writing. There is still considerable scope for the art to fall. I was sorely tempted to make the same allowance again in this issue, and give the book a D. But on mature consideration, that would be inappropriate. The writing is so bad as to bury any merit that the other contributors may bring to the proceedings. The book COULD be worse, but for practical purposes, this is as bad as comics get.

I believe this may be the first time I have given out the minimum rating of D-. Hopefully it will be the last for a long time, but with the final issue due out next week, I fear it may not.

Back in something approaching sanity, UNCANNY X-MEN kicks off the "Eve of Destruction" storyline with a gathering-of-forces issue.

This issue runs into rather glaring conceptual problems from the word go. Professor X has been captured by Magneto, and the X-Men need to rescue him. Fine. But the only X-Men around are Phoenix, Wolverine and Cyclops, so Jean has to go off and recruit a makeshift team of complete strangers.

Er... right. Did I miss the issues where Gambit, Bishop and Cable left the team? Maybe it's coming in the Gambit & Bishop miniseries, but it's not out yet, and it calls for an explanation. Where's the Beast, who evidently didn't leave with the rest of the Claremont team, and if nothing else was still publicly contactable as of last week? What about Archangel, Iceman or Nightcrawler - don't any of them have telephones? Meggan? Jamie Madrox? Polaris? You can track down a bunch of complete strangers but you can't find these guys? Since when?

Now, I'm not a subscriber to the school of thought that says you should never introduce a new character when an existing one could be forced into the slot. But for the X-Men to resort to drafting in a mobster and a man with transparent skin (and if that's his only power, why bother bringing him at all?) simply makes very little sense when there are many more obvious ways in which they could put together an interim team.

The recruitment scenes are okay for what they are. Joanna Cargill's role on the team does actually make reasonable sense, since she's got some kind of knowledge that the X-Men could make use of. Northstar's book signing is a reasonably good power- demonstration sequence (and since his role as a prominent gay celebrity is relevant to his relationship with one of the other characters later in the book, it was worth establishing). Hector Redonza, the transparent guy, gets a fairly generic "saved from lynch mob" scene. The mobster, Paulie Provenzano, gets another power demonstration scene, which is okay if a bit obvious. And Sunfire's previously unmentioned sister turns up from nowhere, which had better be a plot of some sort, since for her to turn up from nowhere at this point is just too contrived.

It's not as strong as Lobdell's character pieces - his major crossovers never have been - and as with some of the other recent issues, it's marred by exceptionally contrived plotting to set up the story they're trying to get to. Nonetheless, as gathering-of- the-team issues go (and it's not a great formula), this isn't too bad.

Given the volume of material to get through, I'm going to skim through the rest of this week's X-books...

Frank Tieri and Sean Chen start their second WOLVERINE storyline this week. It looks to be continuing the pattern set by the first one - hitting the right kind of tone for the book, but let down by shaky plotting.

The issue gets off to a bad start with a particularly clunky use of a TV news bulletin for exposition. What Tieri's trying to set up is that there's been a series of seemingly unrelated murders, but that the characters know they're really connected. Since the journalists can't know that the murders are related, this makes the news bulletin device the wrong choice, as it ends up with Trish Tilby having to solemnly inform the reader that tonight's top story is that a man has accidentally fallen down a lift shaft in Connecticut. A slow news day indeed. She then has to go on to tell us that "in unrelated news" (!), Senator Drexel Walsh has been missing for a month. Well, how is it news if he's been gone for a month?

Anyhow, where all this is heading is that Walsh is killed by somebody appearing to be Wolverine, and Wolverine experiences all this as a dream before being very worried to learn that it might really have been him. The issue does well when it comes to the action sequences, with Sean Chen doing strong work throughout, and it's got a decent premise for a story, but it never really clicks. Tieri has some sound ideas, but he's not there yet. I could go on, but we must move on...

Nominally, X-FORCE #113 is the final part of the Rage War storyline, but in fact it ends on a cliffhanger. I'm assuming that this is the result of a last-minute rewrite to enable everything to be tied up suitably in the next issue, clearing decks for the new direction.

Whatever the reason, the result is decidedly confused. The book seems to spend the first half of the story under the delusion that it's The Authority (yes, just what we need, another book that thinks it's The Authority), before going onto an absurdly implausible "everything you know is wrong" routine of which the less said, the better.

This really doesn't work. "Rage War" had looked like being the story that would redeem the Counter-X X-Force, the one failure of the Counter-X line, but this sends it skidding off the road. Not a good story.

X-MEN FOREVER concludes its trip through the history of the Marvel Universe and sets itself up for the big concluding fight. As always, the strength of this series lies in Kevin Maguire's consistently excellent artwork, and the character work that Nicieza has been carrying out on characters like the Toad.

The main criticisms of this series have been that it's been just too densely packed with continuity (which I can understand, but it's no longer an issue by this point), and that it just hasn't been clear what the characters have been trying to achieve. I'd tend to agree in retrospect that the structure of the first few issues would have been helped by making it somewhat clearer to the readers, if not the characters, what the imminent threat was meant to be. By this point, however, the test will be whether the final issue works to draw together the innumerable points Nicieza has raised into a coherent whole.

As always, I'm not going to rate this book, since I did some of the continuity research for the series and I'm hopelessly biased. I've been enjoying it, though I recognise that at times it will have been heavy going for readers less familiar with the X-Men mythos.

The new British publisher Com.X launches this week, to what seems so far to have been a resounding chorus of indifference. Since there was a signficant level of advance interest in the books in places like the Warren Ellis Forum, actually, I'm wondering whether they somehow turned up in my store a week early.

Anyhow, whatever the story is, there's three new books here, so I'll review them. Two of the books are going for the dark, surreal and mildly confusing angle. They're coming up later. But first, BAZOOKA JULES, the book that Com.X would like to assure is not Tank Girl. Honest. Nothing like her.

It might legitimately be questioned whether comics really has a need for another book with a female protagonist who carries enormous guns and has absurdly large tits. In fairness, though, the absurdity here is deliberate. The gag is that Jules starts off perfectly normal and gets transformed into a "bad girl" character through a variation on the old "phrasing your three wishes wrong" routine. In theory this might mean that the book is going to actually be a commentary on the bad girl genre. In practice, I suspect it's going to be nothing of the sort - it's a book with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek.

Com.X, for those of you who aren't aware, belongs to Neil Googe, Russell Uttley and Ed Deighton, comics fans whose background is in graphic design or something along those lines. (Certainly their books, and their website, score very highly in design terms.) This makes them either self-publishers with an unusually large amount of money to throw around, or the most expensive vanity press exercise in recent comics history. Bazooka Jules is almost all the work of Neil Googe - it's all his work aside from Leonard O'Grady's colouring (which is suitably bright).

The artwork is pretty impressive. It's a nice balance between cartoon and realism, with a good solid feel to it, and sound storytelling. Googe apologises in the editorial for the continuity errors, but since these are mainly on the level of teleporting wristwatches, it's hardly distracting. He does insist on giving Jules a drastically excessive smile from time to time, which really doesn't work at all and gives her an inappropriately masculine chinline to boot, but aside from that the art's very solid.

The writing needs a bit more work, as Googe seems to be falling into the trap of hammering home his story more blatantly than he needs to. This is a simple story, told in a parallel structure. Jules lives normal, teenage girl life. Meanwhile, superhero-type thief Eddie Daytona steals a thingie, and gets chased by the baddies as a result. The two plots intersect, Eddie gives Jules the thingie, and things go off the rails for her as a result. The point is to contrast Jules having a normal life with Eddie having a superhero-type life, and the parallel structure works well to get that across.

Consequently, the book does not benefit from giving Jules dialogue like "I'm Jules, 16 year old schoolgirl, and my life's pretty much the same as every other 16 year old. Boring." The book was already showing us that, far more subtly and effectively, and clubbing the reader over the head with it doesn't help. The basic rule, even in a book as fundamentally unsubtle as this, is "Show, don't tell." Googe is showing everything perfectly well, and he need't tell us this stuff at all - let alone set up an overhead projector and deliver a lecture about the plot, which is what dialogue like that amounts to. There are worse things to do than err on the side of caution, but Googe should have more confidence in his storytelling abilities, since they're actually up to the task on their own.

There are a couple of forced moments that don't sit quite well with the structure. Having Jules wear a miniskirted schoolgirl uniform when her school doesn't have a uniform isn't a very good joke to start with, but moreover it doesn't fit the idea that she's normal until she gets dragged into the plot. Also, Com.X still don't seem to have sorted out the proofreading problems that plagued their Zero Issue last spring - punctuation errors abound. Punctuation affects the pacing of dialogue, so it's not just a nitpicking point.

Despite its flaws, and the fact that it's in possibly the most low-rent genre in comics today, this is actually a rather endearing book. Shamelessly adolescent (and let's be honest, even with normal size breasts Jules is a total geek fantasy figure), but if nothing else, it knows the tone it's aiming for and it hits it nicely. Energy carries it past a lot of its problems.

PUNCTURE is Russell Uttley's contribution to the Com.X starting line-up, with art by Ben Oliver. The general reaction to this one in the Zero Issue was "What the hell was that meant to be about?" The first issue of this series does actually clarify matters considerably, but remains skating on the verge of being off-puttingly hard work.

This is a particularly designery comic. It opens with three pages of semi-abstract images in limited colours, complete with the sort of typography you see in design magazines. The content of the text is practically begging me to describe it as pretentious ("Insidiously she whispes, tickling awareness, tendrils chattering amongst the night. Trickling amongst her children, undermining the comfort of a defined existence."), but oddly it more or less holds together with the stylised art.

The concept - which is more hinted at than explained is something to do with there being an enzyme in the human bloodstream, put there by some creatures we did a deal with in the seventh century BC. The first issue is split between the present and the past, and the relevance of the present sequences to this concept isn't altogether obvious. They mainly concern the lead character wandering around a rather unpleasant looking city using unexplained superpowers to make people bleed.

This is one of those book's that's next to impossible to review on the strength of the first issue alone, since at this stage it's a deliberately confusing tone piece, and whether the story works will depend largely on whether there's a decent explanation in store for down the road. The mood is established effectively, though the book teeters on the verge of taking itself far too seriously. This is a (consciously) humourless story, and stories like that always carry the risk that if they don't come off, they look really dumb. It's a risky approach and you've got to admire the nerve in trying something as odd as this as a launch title. Whether it works remains to be seen.

I'm going for a conservative rating with this one, but bear in mind that with books like this, rating them is an even more pointless exercise than usual.

RAZORJACK is the third Com.X launch title, but it's actually by John Higgins. It previously appeared, with a totally different story, in an abortive self-published book from a few years back. This time, it's a two-issue miniseries in prestige format.

This one's rather heavy going as well, not because the story is particularly complex so much as because Higgins has used an enormous amount of invented jargon to explain the plot, and it takes a bit of effort to decipher. Lots of babbling about dims, twists and veils here, which more or less makes sense after a few readings, but makes it a hell of a job on the first time through.

More parallel structure here (obviously something that Com.X are unusually fond of). The story takes place simultaneously in the Core Dim (that's Earth - see what I mean?) and the Twist Dim (a more surreal world which is kind of like hell). There's apparently another ten Dims out there, which we don't get to see. Razorjack is a satanic figure in the Twist Dim who's looking to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, some police officers investigate a series of killings, and there's a cult involved somewhere.

To be honest, even after a few reads, it's still something of a blur to me, though you get the general idea. There are some nice ideas here - there's something suitably alien about the Twist's inhabitants being depicted as celtic figures with Jamaican accents. Higgins has also given his villains an uncomfortably misogynistic streak which is actually rather more unsettling than any of this stuff about with bone castles.

Horror isn't really my thing, and I can't really get into this - not that it's a particularly easy book to get into anyway. Interesting if you like that kind of thing, but it doesn't do much for me.