2 june 2002

I'm going to be in Bristol for the convention this weekend, so you get the X-Axis early this week. The fourth book I was going to review, by the way, was the Human Target graphic novel, but I changed my mind about that on seeing the price tag. Somebody let me know when it's coming out in a sensible format - I may have a relatively high budget, but I draw the line at spending insane amounts of money on slim hardback books.

Onto the X-books. WOLVERINE #176 is not terribly good.

Traditionally, critics and theorists would tell you that a good writer structures his stories in such a way that characterisation is revealed through a character's actions and choices. In this way, the plot exposes the character, and the character furthers the plot, and all is beautiful and whole.

Of course, writing stories in this way is tricky. Which is why we end up with issues like this, in which instead of illustrating the protagonist's character through his actions, Frank Tieri simply wheels on the ghost of the bint from Origin, who proceeds to deliver a monologue about Wolverine's character for thirteen tedious pages. This is not a story, it's a protracted essay of armchair psychology.

The upshot of which is, gosh, Wolvie really needs to get in touch with his feelings, and nothing whatsoever is resolved. Yup, it's another of Frank Tieri's radical story structures consisting of a beginning, a middle, and no end. This is bad enough at the best of times, but when you throw in dialogue as repellent as "Accept that it's okay to FAIL... okay to HURT... unlock the door to your mind, Logan", the book borders on unintentional comedy.

This story clearly wants to be deep and meaningful. In reality, it's about as deep as a duckpond in a drought. Awkward, poorly constructed, and just plain bad.

Meanwhile, X-FORCE is all about story structure, and largely about shamelessly cranking up the tension over which of the three main characters will die.

This storyline has walked a very fine line, in adopting the most blatant storytelling contrivances it can find. Milligan and Allred are toying with the readers. They know it, we know it, and there's an obvious risk that the story will cross the line into absurdity, with readers ceasing to care.

But somehow or other the story pulls it off, as all the lunacy about three people drawing straws to get into a two-man spaceship turns out to be a complete red herring. Having seemingly led the entire audience up the garden path for the last three months, Milligan then turns round and kills somebody off anyway, from an unexpected angle. And it works.

Again, it's striking here how a series which started off with a cast of thoroughly dislikeable caricatures has fleshed them out to the point where we do actually care about the cast being killed off in this fashion. No matter how frequently the book kills off cast members, it still seems to matter.

Granted, the farewell scene at the end does hover on the verge of becoming mawkish. But the closing sequence with Guy resuming his daily Russian roulette in despair at how an arbitrary plot element has undermined what had appeared to be a beautifully constructed story is much more effective.

The storyline as a whole may have been an issue or so too long, but this final issue is excellent.

X-MEN UNLIMITED #36 is certainly one of the stronger issues the series has produced in a while, although not so strong as to transcend its status as the eminently missable X-Men book for completists.

The lead story this month is a Shadowcat piece by Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca. Larroca is conventionally inked here, by the way, and it does undeniably look crisper and cleaner than his work on X-Treme X-Men. The story is largely a stocktaking exercise, in which Claremont attempts to make sense of Shadowcat's history and draw out some common threads on which to base the 2002 version of the character, in preparation for the upcoming MekaniX miniseries.

And it's fairly successful on that level. For once, this story references other writers' work on the character without giving the impression that Claremont is simply trying to sweep it all under the carpet. There are a couple of shaky elements - not least the absurd costume Larroca has given the character for her bar work, which makes her look like a Matrix-themed hooker - but on the whole, this isn't at all bad.

Story number two is Ian Edginton doing Magneto. It's one of those ones where Magneto is the quasi-hero saving innocent mutants from evil villains. Some distinctive artwork from Joe Chiodo, although the whole bimbos in bikinis thing does nothing for me. Passable as these things go, although it does have the unfortunate complication of a nasty continuity problem in the last page.

Finally, there's a Beast story by X-Factor writer Jeff Jensen. It's a fairly subdued affair, with the Beast stumbling upon what he thinks is a mutant woman with a similar mutation, only do discover that in fact she's a mutant animal. It's getting into the same sort of territory as the core book in questioning whether the Beast still identifies himself as human. Pretty good as twelve page stories go, with some nicely understated art by John Totleben.

Nothing "can't miss" in this issue, but certainly an improvement on the book's normal track record.