5 december 1999

GAMBIT reaches its twelfth issue, and Steve Skroce celebrates by not bothering to turn up for work beyond, from the look of it, about page 11. Nice one, Steve, good to see you're thinking of us.

In fact, in the circumstances the issue isn't looking too bad. The three chapters (it's double-sized) have been divvied up among different artists, and while Skroce's chapter is looking pretty dire by the end (finisher Rod Ramos apparently working from something just this side of stick figures), the other chapters are perfectly acceptably handled by Kaare Andrews and Charles Adlard. Okay, so they're maybe not the flashiest artists in the business, and the shift to Adlard is admittedly jarring, but they'll do.

This is the beginning of a three-parter which ties up the long- running subplot about Gambit having been in 1891, and also takes in the history of Candra's relationship with the Guilds. Having already rectified the Guilds into something that sane people might actually want to read about, Nicieza is now attempting to do the same thing for Candra. The angle is that Candra has changed wildly since 1891 - which means that first, it's a plot point, but second, he gets to write a proper character instead of a generically nasty cipher.

And so far, it does seem to be working. There's more to this story than the usual time travel riff; the point is to cement the Thieves Guild as a genuine dynasty going back of the centuries. So far we've been told it, rather than shown it. But it works better when you actually see it - and of course, it also allows us to see quite how Gambit fits into the whole thing.

The opening section with Gambit trying to get access to Dr Doom's time travel machine so that he can get back to 1891 in the first place is a good read as well. Since Latveria is presently meant to be under Stryfe's control, you might think that was a bit difficult, but the Mengo Brothers - who now turn out to be Latverian for a reason - provide great dialogue throughout. ("Doom not old Hitler! Great man! Great leader! You know nothing, pretty boy." For some reason, I'm hearing them with a London accent now...)

Still one of the best X-books, even in art by committee mode. That's saying something.

Over in UNCANNY X-MEN, the Twelve story grinds ominously on. Again, Alan Davis is doing an impressive job of pulling all the various plot threads together, especially in view of the enormous number of characters now wandering around.

This main purpose of this story is to allow Apocalypse to capture the remaining people on his Twelve list. This is achieved by having the X-Men get stuck in a big fight with overwhelming numbers of Skrulls and Apocalypse cultists, who handily get to use their shapechanging powers to liven up what could otherwise have been an extremely dull fight.

We also get some kind of explanation from Apocalypse of quite what the Twelve are meant to do (broadly, to channel their powers through the Living Monolith and make him enormously powerful). The way in which it all fits in with some of the other titles is a bit dodgy, though. Nate Grey's already a captive even though his capture won't be seen for another month; and why does Bishop have to be taken from an issue of his own comic due to be published in March 2000 - blowing part of the upcoming plot in the process?

It's fill-in art, but fortunately the X-books now seem to have Tom Raney on permanent stand-by as their fill-in artist. Raney is more than up to the task of the complex and crowded fight scenes, and although it's a mystery to me why he isn't doing something a bit more high profile than fill-in work, it's good to see him here.

On the whole, it's more well executed plot development from what has to be the best worked out crossover we've seen in quite a while.

Actually, in fairness X-MAN has Nate Grey getting captured by Apocalypse at the end of this issue, but apparently there'll be more of it in next issue as well, so the reading order remains suitably out of synch with the publication order.

In any event, this is one of the better issues of X-Man in a while, since it actually has some kind of point to it. Nate spends a few days staying with the Fantastic Four, ostensibly so that they can try and analyse his powers, but mainly so that we get to expose Nate to a family environment that he can kind of empathise with. And of course, to expose him to Franklin Richards, who's a broadly similar character in some ways.

Unfortunately, the story never really gets around to saying anything particularly new about Nate. He's quite attracted to the whole family thing, but also feels driven to be a loner. There you go. Still, even if it is an established character trait already, the story does bring it out quite well, and anything that helps make Nate a more clearly defined character has to be a good thing.

Mike Miller does an excellent Fantastic Four, and really ought to be given a shot on their own book. He manages to make Nate look like a normal person as well, which is a plus.

Nothing particularly special, but a pleasant way to kill a month while waiting for the crossover to come along.

X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS is still in its opening Savage Land plot (and with no end in sight, either).

Ka-Zar shows up, which is kind of a given in Savage Land plots. Personally, I've never really seen the appeal of the character, and I can take or leave the Savage Land generally, so maybe I'm not really the person to ask about this story. Though personally, I wouldn't have other characters call Ka-Zar a "junior league Tarzan." Beacause let's face it, he IS, and you don't really want to draw attention to that.

Still, he seems to have a certain appeal to creators and fans of a certain age (there must be some reason why Marvel give him another push every few years). So I suppose it's understandable that he's turning up in this retro title.

Anyhow, this is still the best thing John Byrne has done for a while, with Lorna and Alex making an entertaining double act, and some great visuals on the Savage Land city. The double page spread near the end is excellent stuff. Aside from that, well, it's the Savage Land and if you like the Savage Land you'll probably be fairly happy with it.

After some fairly warm reviews for the first issue, online reaction to this series seems to have gone silent. That's perhaps surprising in view of the usual queues of people with baseball bats waiting for anything John Byrne publishes. It's certainly turned out to be better than people were expecting; the question now is whether it's finding an audience.