5 september 1999

The return of Rob Liefeld to CABLE hasn't been anything like as painful as I'd expected. People had been expecting something as dire as his Captain America or Avengers, and this is certainly a big improvement on either of those. Joe Pruett is writing okay-ish scripts, and Liefeld's art has at least raised itself up from being absolutely dreadful to simply bad.

So while it would be lovely to go off on a nice rant about the title being absolute rubbish, I'm just going to have to settle for saying that it isn't much good. The story heads off in all the right directions but never quite manages to make them work.

For example, we're supposed to be building up for the major event that defines Cable's life. In that case, having him pop off to visit X-Force make perfect sense. After all, they're the only characters he's got any strong connection with beyond the ones he already sees every day. And X-Force are written perfectly acceptably.

Equally, it's fine to bring back Caliban as one of the new Horsemen of Apocalypse - after all, it's what he was supposed to be until Casey dumped him unceremoniously, and it does pick up on the dangling subplot from X-Force where Cable was given false memories about what had happened to him. All fine.

So why doesn't it work? Perhaps it's the clunky exposition ("Boyd, are you SURE this is the hold with the Egyptian exhibit for the San Francisco Art Museum?" "The particular crate containing the Sapphire of the Sphinx should be right over here!") Certainly Liefeld's desperate lack of imagination and persistent reuse of the same boring old poses has a lot to do with it. Or maybe it's just the annoying little details (if Cable can detect Caliban telepathically from several blocks away, how come he can't tell Domino from ten feet?).

Whatever - it doesn't work. It seems, somehow, to be going through the motions, whether because the creators truly are or because they lack the ability to make the story seem more than that. It's not awful, not by a long stretch, but neither is it much good. It's just there. You can't even get that worked up about not liking it.

GAMBIT #9 comes out a week late after what looks like a rather troubled production (breakdown penciller, layout penciller, three inkers). May as well deal with the art first - it's serviceable, but a bit flat. The set pieces with the characters entering Sinister's base look pretty good, but Sinister himself doesn't look threatening so much as overdressed. You need a bit of bombast to carry off a character as ludicrous as Sinister, and this issue doesn't quite have it.

Never mind - the story gets told well enough, so we can leave the art aside and wonder about the plot. As always, a lot of the appeal is the way Nicieza packs in a lot of material while keeping a clear plot. The plot is extremely straightforward - Gambit needs a favour from Mr Sinister and goes to ask for it.

But the real interest comes from all the other little subplots being quietly developed. Who attacked Sabretooth, and why would they want to remove his adamantium skeleton (not that I'm complaining - it was a very bad idea in the first place)? What exactly does Gambit suspect Xavier is up to (it's clear he knows more than is being revealed to the readers)? What's in that vial which shows up again? And what's motivating Sinister to help anyway?

The key to making these things work is to make sure the audience is convinced that it really is all heading somewhere, and you aren't just making it all up as you go along. For most of the nineties, the X-books have comprehensively failed that test, largely because they really were making it up as they went along. Gambit is passing it with flying colours.

And of course, the story also has a useful reminder that Gambit is capable of being a total bastard. He's not willing to hand Sabretooth back to Sinister, since that would be awfully bad news for him. But cut off his mate's finger and hand that over instead? Without asking him first? No problem. Gambit is in full scale manipulative bastard mode this issue, and it's great to see.

Another very good issue that would only really be improved by having Steve Skroce drawing it.

The Shattering continues to be a pleasant surprise - both the best thing Alan Davis has done on the X-Men books so far, and a reassuring sign that actual storytelling is a top priority again.

UNCANNY X-MEN this week is the second half of Colossus and Marrow's two-parter, which really just uses the Shattering as an excuse to get on with a story for them. Other than the perhaps spectacular coincidence of Colossus and Marrow just stumbling across the one villain in the Marvel Universe who has personal links to both of them, it's hard to complain about this story.

Our heroes are in Mikhail's citadel somewhere in another dimension, and while Marrow goes off to relive bits of her childhood (in what might be some kind of weird time-warping effect or might just be a hallucination, it's not really clear which), Colossus and Mikhail have a discussion about the nature of art. And both are great.

Of course, this is all the more surprising because it's a Mikhail Rasputin story, and good Mikhail Rasputin stories could previously be counted on the fingers of one foot. So this story sets about a third task - rehabilitating the character and turning him into somebody workable again. Davis takes a rather slash and burn approach here, writing off much of Mikhail's previous stupidity as the result of outside interference from his powers, but also retains the best aspects of his characterisation under Scott Lobdell, as a man who failed so pathetically in his role as a Messiah that he's desperately trying to contrive some kind of situation where he can do it again, and get it right this time.

The story also goes some way to addressing Marrow's change of heart by confronting her with her old self. This is a pleasant surprise when many of us thought her history was going to be swept under the carpet. Admittedly the problem of her time as a terrorist has yet to be adequately addressed, but this story does manage to make her personality change much more plausible.

Pleasantly, we don't have to put up with a story about bringing back Illyana Rasputin, which last issue was edging vaguely towards. Instead, Colossus's part of the story is largely composed of him patiently explaining to Mikhail the difference between image and actuality, and precisely why his ludicrous scheme isn't going to work. Colossus is plainly right, and really the discussion itself isn't that exciting as a result, but it does help to make Mikhail look more sympathetic, and god knows he needs all the help he can get.

With most of the regular creative team missing for whatever reason, Jay Faerber does a perfectly good job of dialoguing the issue, and Tom Raney provides his usual excellent artwork. There's a few scenes which read distinctly as though they were written with Adam Kubert in mind (using some of his current signature gimmicks such as uninked art), but Raney makes the story work for him.

Given the high quality of all the Shattering stories (well, aside from Astonishing X-Men, which is just bad), it's impossible not to be optimistic about the X-books again.

DOMINATION FACTOR: FANTASTIC FOUR is one of two miniseries (the other featuring the Avengers) which will form an eight part crossover in which our heroes team up to stop an old woman stealing an apple, and thereby doing something horrible but as yet unspecified.

The words that spring to mind are "generic" and "serviceable." It's not so much a bad comic but nor, at any point, is it in the least inspired. It has an elementary plot (the heroes must obtain an object in order to avert a doom - neither the object nor the doom being particularly exciting in itself). It has a fight scene. It has villains who explain the plot to one another. It has a gimmick (time travel to an earlier story). It does everything by the book and adds little or nothing of its own.

When I was reading the thing, my first thought was how 1980s it seemed. Perhaps I'm remembering the Jim Shooter formula years of Marvel. Certainly, this is one of the most formulaic stories I've read in years. The heroes demonstrate their powers and trudge through witty banter establishing the most basic aspects of their personalities. Virtually every line of dialogue simply combines the bare minimum of plot exposition with a few key words like "bashful, blue-eyed, high-flyin' ace" to remind you which character is speaking.

It's almost surreal. I can't remember the last time I read a comic so thoroughly generic. It adds nothing whatsoever of its own to the superhero formula. It's not really about anything, it's got nothing new to add to the hackneyed ideas it's reusing, and if it's going to fill eight issues, it's going to have to come up with some better ideas very quickly.

Like I say, there's no specific aspect of this series which is bad. Its badness lies in its unoriginality and lack of ambition, but those two failings are so comprehensive that they sink it utterly.