2 april 2000

This is the quietest week in ages. I know it's a five week month, but even so, this is bad.

Anyhow, the Revolution continues, as Steve Skroce takes over as writer and penciller of WOLVERINE. Normally the arrival of an untried writer would be cause for concern, but let's face it, it seems unlikely he could do much worse than Erik Larsen did. Ironically, Skroce's storyline now looks like it'll be sandwiched between runs by two other artists who do have a track record as writers, and from the look of this issue he's going to do a better job than either of them.

The art is wonderful, obviously. Once he'd sorted out his problems with narrative clarity, Skroce turned in some magnificent issues of Gambit, and this is no different. It's almost unbelievable how far he's come on since his early issues of X-Man (when, let's face it, pretty much every character looked like they'd taken a severe beating with the ugly stick). His fight scenes are suitably crowded without losing the narrative, and his characterisation is excellent.

Nor does he give in to the usual writer-artist temptation to load the issue with pin-up shots. Even with a double-sized issue to play with, the panel count remains pretty high by any standards. Skroce is obviously concentrating on telling the story rather than showing off his pretty pictures, which is just as it should be.

The initial publicity for this storyline didn't sound all that exciting, as Skroce declared his intention to take Wolverine back to Japan. Again. The Wolverine-in-Japan story has now been done so often that it almost counts as a sub-genre. Traditionally, it involves squabbling martial artists, people trying to kill Wolverine, "ninjas" who don't appear to remember any of the basic principles of assassination, and at least five ludicrous plot developments explained away by reference to Japanese concepts of honour. ("For the honour of my family, I must pour a bucket of custard over my head and dance an Irish jig. You would not understand, gaijin." "Oh, well if it's your CULTURE, I'll accept that in lieu of actual characterisation or plot. Fair enough.")

Some of those cliches are admittedly duly present. We've got the squabbling crimelords, and with an admirable disregard for the invention of firearms, they're still fighting with pointy sticks. Nonetheless, by comparison with most of these stories (Hama's as well as Claremont's) the cliche count is remarkably low. No drivelling about ninja rituals, no nonsense about honour, and - something almost always lacking from this stuff - villains who actually come equipped with personalities, comprehensible motivations, and a general sense that they're people rather than cyphers.

Skroce also does excellent work with supporting characters Yukio and Wolverine's long-forgotten foster daughter Amiko. At some point somebody really needs to address Amiko's situation properly, because it's absurd for Wolverine to continue purporting to be this kid's foster father when she only appears once every five years. Hama's thoroughly stupid subplot about her being brainwashed to kill Wolverine is ignored this issue, and instead Yukio and Amiko are used as a vehicle to show us a slightly more credible version of Japan than we normally see. No doubt still miles off, but at least Skroce's Japan looks like it's populated by human beings rather than by Inscrutable Foreigners.

Nothing here is breaking new ground, but it does revisit old themes far more successfully than most of the original stories. Certainly the best issue of Wolverine in a couple of years, and well worth a look.

The story in Wolverine a couple of years ago, if you're wondering, was Warren Ellis' "Not Dead Yet." After Transmetropolitan, Authority and Planetary, expectations have been running high for Ellis' return to the X-books with Counter-X, which does its third and final relaunch this week, on X-FORCE.

It's not very good.

The concept for the X-Force relaunch is a slimmed down team acting as a more proactive group (at least compared with the recent "slackers in San Francisco" incarnation of the team), led by Pete Wisdom, and policing nasty stuff done by the government - "a dark place of secret histories, alternative truths and unknown crimes against humanity." And if you're thinking, hold on, isn't this Authority crossed with Planetary, you're half right. It IS kind of like Authority crossed with Planetary, but nowhere near as good as either.

This is cynicism on autopilot. Sections of the government are up to no good. Well, there's something I've never read before. The government up to no good, you say? Lawks, and in every other book they're the heroes, too. This time, it's some project to create a spore that creates, well, meat robots. It goes wrong in Russia, X-Force beat up the monsters, X-Force decide to investigate.

Whatever. I'm just not interested. I've read this a thousand times before and frankly, in a much hyped relaunch to take the book in a new direction, I was expecting more. It's not the fact that it's dark and cynical. It's the fact that it's dark and cynical in an unoriginal way.

It also falls down on a writing fundamental - write stories that are specific to your characters. X-Force are completely generic in this story. So much of the issue is given over to setting up Pete Wisdom as their new leader (and he at least has some reason to be there) that there's no scope for the team themselves to come over as anything more than typical superheroes. James doesn't even get a line of dialogue, and when you've only got four team members to fit in, that's just silly.

Wisdom gets plenty of space to establish himself for readers who aren't familiar with him, and most of the good moments in the issue come from him. The idea that he only started wearing the eyepath to help him pull is a great one. Equally, the fact that Wisdom's actually got a clear motivation for being here gives him a distinct advantage over everyone else. Having said that, the last thing he needs is pompous dialogue like "I am personally offended by the crimes against mutant humanity, which are committed with ABANDON!"

I've never been particularly attracted to Whilce Portacio's artwork, although it certainly has a nice dynamism to it. Nonetheless, this issue is just far too dark for a story that simply doesn't have the weight to justify it. On top of that, the new costume designs leave more than a little to be desired. James's is alright in theory but looks clunky and awkward on the page. Much the same goes for Sam. Jesse and Tabitha's are both ugly and silly. They'll look terrible under any other artist; they look pretty bad even now. I hate them.

It's not a dreadful issue, but it's nothing even close to what Warren's capable of. Even if you charitably assume that he's being dragged down by his choice of collaborators, it wasn't a great concept to start with. And let's be honest, it's not as good as the tail end of the Moore issues (which were tailing off themselves).

And as proactive superheroes go, it looks pretty damn lame next to... well, hold on...

...next to THE AUTHORITY. Yet more proof that irony is a fundamental force of the universe.

This is the first issue by the new creative team of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, following on Ellis's year of ever escalating lunacy. Plainly there wasn't any more mileage in trying to raise the stakes even more, and so Millar opts for a different, although not unrelated, approach.

The angle is based on the old question of "Why do the superheroes never go in and sort out all the world's problems?" It's not an original observation, and mainstream superhero books have done it on plenty of occasions in the past. Usually it boils down to the hero telling his impetuous chum that they don't have the right to change the world. Very rarely somebody does a story where the superhero goes ahead anyway (the two most obvious examples being Watchmen and Squadron Supreme), in which as a general rule it will all go horribly wrong, as a chastening reminder that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Authority is aiming for the latter camp. This issue, with no alien invaders around, they decide to have a go at smashing up a corrupt government in South-East Asia. And succeed. Of course, this attracts plenty of favourable media attention, and complaints from the government. Which they just ignore.

Apparently early previews identified the country specifically as Indonesia, but it's been made generic in the published version. Whoever's idea it was, it was the right decision. It doesn't matter which country it is. That's not what the story is about. This issue is about setting up the plot with a recognisable "real world" situation for which no reader could conceivably have any sympathy. Everyone knows there are bad people in south-east Asia. If you narrow it down to Indonesia, chances a fair proportion of the readership will just find themselves realising they know next to fuck all about Indonesia, they don't know whether the Authority's actions are even remotely justified, and the point gets lost. At this stage, it needs to be kept generic so that we can all accept without question that the corrupt government are definitely in the wrong.

Presumably Millar will be dealing with the counter-arguments later on. For all that it's a cliche, there's some merit to the viewpoint that the Authority don't have the right to smash up any government they don't like, and that their ability to get away with this sort of thing is disturbing. Somebody will have to turn up to put that viewpoint, and normal plot logic dictates it's going to be the antagonist. That would make it the shameless Avengers pastiches who turn up as an opposing team towards the end of the issue. On the one hand, this is a situation where a pastiche team is a good idea, since a classic superhero team is the obvious choice to put forward the classic viewpoint on this whole theme. On the other hand, by setting the Avengers up as such unrepentant bastards in this issue, Millar may be crippling their ability to put their side of the argument effectively, and really, somebody needs to.

Frank Quitely's artwork has cropped up in a few superhero books in the past, but mainly strange novelty projects like Offspring, Flex Mentallo and that vastly expensive JLA thing that seventeen people on the planet could afford. Despite a few rather distorted physiques cropping up from time to time, he's an excellent artist - a beautiful storyteller, whose pages are filled with wonderful little details. And as you'd expect from somebody with a background in humour comics, his comedy is magnificent. It's great looking stuff, and worth buying for the art alone.

It could potentially all go horribly wrong when Millar gets around to grappling with the issues, but this is great epic stuff, and definitely worth your time.