6 january 2002

Well, back to normal after the christmas period.

In 2001, the first review of the year was an issue of Mutant X, surely some kind of grim omen. This year, it's EXILES, so 2002 is already looking like a great improvement.

Exiles #8 proclaims on its cover that it was named "best comic of the month by Wizard." The more I think about this plug, the weirder it seems. The best comic of which month? This month? How do Wizard know? When did they acquire these precognitive reviewers?

Anyhow, this issue kicks off which a four page montage of alternate realities, which seems a touch excessive just to establish the series concept, but it's presumably meant to be throwing in some comedy to establish a contrast with the rest of the story. Yes, the Exiles are having a stab at being grim and depressing, which isn't the book's natural mode.

Rather than draw on the X-books' extensive history of grim and depressing stories, Winick has instead opted for a Skrull invasion several centuries ago, meaning that this planet is now a backwater outpost of the Skrull empire. In one of those odd sci-fi cliches, the Skrulls are in the habit of getting superhumans to fight one another in gladiatorial combat. I've never really understood why it is that all space opera alien races feel the need to organise their society along lines abandoned by humanity when the Roman Empire collapsed, but that's genre conventions for you.

Loosely, the plot is about Blink and Morph trying to rescue their colleagues from gladiatorial slavery, and once again the Tallus is being conveniently relaxed about telling the cast what they're meant to be achieving. Most of this issue is really just about establishing how thoroughly unpleasant this world is, which it does quite effectively, albeit that the basic idea is nothing new. Galactus turns up towards the end, which is nice in that it means we're not heading for the most obvious plot (heroes visit the world and inspire heroic revolution against evil masters).

Winick includes just enough of his usual comedy routines to stop the issue being grindingly depressing without breaking the mood altogether. It's not bad, but it doesn't really play to the book's strengths as a more lighthearted series, and the central idea isn't one I find particularly interesting.

ICEMAN #3 is labelled on the cover as having artwork by Karl Kerschl, but it doesn't. This is unfortunate, since Kerschl's art has been one of the real strengths of this book.

What we've got instead are Skott Young (well, that's how the credits spell it, although they're in one of the least legible fonts I've seen in a while) and inker Greg Titus. Young is a jarring change from Kerschl's nice smooth lines. His style is closer to Jim Mahfood, and while it would probably be all very well on a book that had been written to his strengths, it looks extraordinarily out of place in this title. It does have a certain charm to it, I'll admit, but as a choice of fill-in artist - and since when do we need fill-in artists on miniseries, anyway? - it's just plain wrong.

I know I say this often, but that's because it's so often true: the trade paperback is going to look incredibly bad. If Marvel are serious about developing their trade paperbacks, they need to start making a bit more effort towards stylistic consistency within storylines.

Anyhow, the story... Opal isn't a baddy after all, the baddies are in league with the U-Men (which looks like it's been shoehorned in to develop a spurious link with the core X-Men or to cover for the fact that this book has a suspiciously similar concept, because it isn't a very good fit with the plot), and there's a contrived plot explanation of Iceman's importance in generating superconductors which is there to provide a semi-credible explanation of why the villains are interested in him to begin with. It's an inoffensive story, and that puts it at the better end of the X-Men miniseries.

Judged in isolation, this issue isn't bad. In the context of a miniseries, it represents such a jarring style change that it seriously detracts from the story.

NEW X-MEN #121 is the silent issue. Well, close enough to the right month, I suppose. (We're still waiting on X-Force.)

Grant Morrison is one of the writers who's made an effort to accommodate the gimmick into his storyline by writing an issue where the distancing effect of total silence seems natural rather than ridiculous. In this case, the entire issue consists of Jean and Emma psychically entering the mind of Cassandra Nova to try and rescue Charles Xavier. This provides a perfect excuse to do most the issue in a dream-like surrealist tone, and Morrison wisely emphasises this by including normal dialogue in his closing page, where silence would have served no function whatsoever. Rules are there to be broken, especially when they're as inane as these ones.

Given the inherent limitations of the gimmick, there isn't a tremendous amount of plot here. We get to see Xavier being imprisoned by Cassandra, but then we already established that a couple of issues ago. We get a flashback showing Xavier in the womb trying to kill Cassandra, but then that was established a couple of issues ago as well. The flashback here remains conveniently vague as to the circumstances - one foetus attacks the other unprovoked, the other one fights back, but it's impossible to tell which one is supposed to be Xavier and which Cassandra. That's undoubtedly deliberate - they're drawn as identical - but it means that the scene's purpose in the wider plot is to provide a degree of verification for Cassandra's earlier claims, but still not give away the context. (Quite how identical twins can be of different genders, unless you want to start burbling about dramatic licence and superpowers, remains unaddressed.)

There are a couple of subplots thrown in - a reminder of the Jean/ Phoenix material from last issue, and a degree of tension about Emma's loyalties - but basically Morrison is cheerfully wheeling out the symbolism for an issue, content in the knowledge that this issue does not really advance the plot very much at all, and consequently there is little to explain. Everything else can afford to remain ambiguous, since even if they'd tried to explain it, it probably wouldn't have made all that much literal sense anyway.

The issue looks lovely, of course, as Frank Quitely's art seems at home with the weirdness. The bridge-building scene is a lovely piece of visual storytelling, and the scenes in the womb - which do actually have to make some kind of literal sense - are excellently handled. Given that Morrison and Quitely have chosen to play this issue as a load of deliberately ambiguous symbolic scenes where very little in fact HAPPENS, they've succeeded on that level. What's a little more questionable is whether this issue really adds anything in the long run or whether it's just treading water in a very flashy way because of its forced inability to explain any complex concepts, devoting an issue to something which could quite happily have taken place off panel.

Since I love Quitely's artwork and he gets plenty of opportunity to show off here, I quite like the book - but while it's one of the stronger Nuff Said books, it's still really a month where not much happens.

X-TREME X-MEN: SAVAGE LAND #4 ends the miniseries. Well, every cloud has a silver lining.

This miniseries has been grindingly dull at the best of times, largely due to the complete absence of any interesting characters (other than the X-Men themselves) or any interesting conflicts. None of that changes here. The Savage Land Mutates still lack any particular motivation other than generic revenge for some story so inconsequential that Claremont has never actually bothered to remind us of what it was. Despite being the main antagonist for the series, Brainchild is never equipped with any personality beyond the single word "villain", and as a result he's utterly boring.

In this series, however, Brainchild is in good company, since the human/Saurid is also utterly boring, inhabited by a variety of characters who serve no purpose other than to hammer home that it's a microcosm for Xavier's dream.

Having set up this completely uninteresting theme, Claremont turns to an idea he's already run into the ground over the years, namely characters being possessed and made to be evil. Storm is duly possessed, duly freed, and duly delivers the obligatory closing monologue about how she quite liked it.

Utterly tiresome. And incidentally, there is no excuse for writing a non-ironic story entitled What Price, Freedom? What Price, Humanity? It sounds desperately arch,

Jay Faerber has very kindly sent me a preview copy of NOBLE CAUSES #1, which I believe is out the week after next. Since Faerber himself has given away large chunks of issue #1's plot in at least one interview, it's tempting to follow suit, but I'm going to be good and not spoil it for you. To be honest, I think it'd be much better if you didn't know it was coming.

Noble Causes is meant to be a soap opera with superheroes, with all that annoying action material fixed firmly in the background. Obviously, this plays to Faerber's strengths, since he was always more of a character-driven writer. Rather less conventionally for soap opera, the structure of the series is to have an ongoing lead story and a back-up strip covering various points from the lives of the characters.

Following on from the First Impressions one-shot, this issue contains the wedding of Race Noble and Liz Donnelly. Since the one-shot already gave her an opportunity to do her "fish out of water" routine, this issue allows Faerber to set up more clearly how she's going to interact with the rest of the cast. While the Nobles are all nominally superheroes, the soap opera genre requires them to be a thoroughly flawed bunch, and (with the arguable exception of Zephyr) the only one who really comes out of this issue looking thoroughly nice is Race.

In fact, Race even gets a back-up strip devoted to his birth, the main point being to establish that his birth bonded the family at a time when it was on the verge of collapse. There's a very good reason why Race is being portrayed in this saintly light, which will be manifestly obvious when you read the book.

For the moment, the issue does a nice job of setting up all manner of uncomfortable latent divisions, as well as adding a few dimensions to the characters. Gaia, in particular, gets fleshed out considerably here. There's also a nice tension between Doc Noble's positioning in the public image as a father figure, and his total refusal to perform that role properly behind the scenes. And the bit of the story that I'm not going to spoil serves neatly as a piece of misdirection as to which way the plot had been planning to go.

On the minus side, the wedding sequence is a little too syrupy at times ("He'd find true love with a bookseller from Georgetown who's more special than anyone he'd ever met"), and Liz's side of the family - albeit that they're minor supporting characters at this stage - are still too busy reeling from the exalted company to make much impression as cast members. Also, this is a bimonthly title, and six issues a year may be a touch slow for the soap opera format - we'll have to see how that one pans out. Plenty of possibilities here, though.

So far as the art is concerned, I'm reviewing this from a black and white copy with slightly reduced resolution, so it's probably best to revisit that once the final product's available. Patrick Gleason's work on the main story has a nice clean line, and while there are a couple of panels that look a bit cluttered in this copy, there's nothing wrong with them that a solid colouring job can't sort out. Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti do some good work on the back-up strip, and hopefully the colourist will resist the temptation to go too garishly overboard on the 1970s design features.

This is Faerber's first creator-owned work, and since most of his previous writing seems to have involved at least some degree of compromise with the editors, it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. His Generation X run had a strong handle on the characters but a certain lack of direction. New Warriors never quite got off the ground. Noble Causes is an interesting choice of direction, bearing in mind that when DC tried a similar soap opera/superhero crossover formula in Young Heroes in Love, it got pretty good reviews but sold bugger all. Then again, that book had a chronic image problem stemming largely from the appalling title, so hopefully Noble Causes can avoid the same pitfalls.

Fun, and worth a look.