11 march 2001

Face front, true believers, for another week of Mighty Marvel Mediocrity. Lord knows I sit through some bad comics for the X-Axis, but this week's X-books are a particularly feeble collection.

I'll come back to them later. In the meantime, I'm going to break with the usual format and lead off with BERLIN: CITY OF STONES. This is because it deserves the prominence far more than that bloody Blink miniseries.

City of Stones is the first Berlin trade paperback; ultimately, it's apparently planned as a trilogy. It's a historical drama set in the Weimar Republic. Time's review on the back cover proclaims that Berlin will be "the longest, most sophisticated work of historical fiction in the medium." This is one of those claims that's rather less impressive on further consideration (how many long-form works of straight historical fiction in comics ARE there?), but even if there was more competition out there, Berlin would still be staking a pretty strong claim to that title.

The central storyline is the romance between journalist Kurt Severing and art student Marthe Muller, but the focus goes wider than that. Lutes allows the focus to drift from his central characters to follow characters from around Berlin, showing all the factions that would shortly become invovled in rather unpleasant upheavals in German society. The book is impressive in large part because of the way it simultaneously brings out the wider political picture and narrows in on human characters from all the factions. (The Nazis get a rather less sympathetic view than everyone else, but one with understanding of their position.)

Lutes' characters are the followers rather than the leaders, people being dragged along by the forces of society. The two central figures are remaining on the sidelines of all this for the moment, declining to ally themselves with anyone and trying to get on with life as normal; future volumes will presumably show why that ceased to be an option. At this stage, Kurt's role is to be the journalist observing the political forces, while Martha's function is to be an observer of the parallel debate in the Berlin art world (the rise of objectivism as a reaction against impressionism).

The book's not entirely flawless - sometimes the exposition of 1920s German history is worked in rather obviously. There's also a rather glaring "let's celebrate the history of sequential art" moment where a debate on art is illustrated by reference to Franz Masereel's 1926 graphic novel Passionate Journey. (Yes, it's topical and relevant - Masereel was banned by the Nazis as denegerate art - but it's such an obscure reference that those points get overshadowed.) These are nitpicking points, though. Given the immense amount of material that Lutes needs to get over, the exposition is generally handled well, without reducing the characters to mouthpieces for history lessons.

Lutes is an excellent visual storyteller. I reviewed his work on The Fall a couple of weeks ago and made some vague comment to the effect that he was quite good in an understated way; after reading him in long form, I'm far more impressed by the subtlety of his work here. The atmosphere and pacing are impeccable. He even has a stab - more or less successful - at doing a song and dance sequence, something that's incredibly difficult to pull off in comics (which can't do music, can't do rhythm and can only do movement at one remove).

This is a marvellous piece of work. Screw all the rubbish I'm about to talk about. Go and buy this instead.

From the sublime to the X-books. God, three miniseries and Mutant X in one week. What have I done to deserve this?

BLINK is onto its third issue, and still shows no signs of having any real point. Blink's still in the Negative Zone, having hooked up with armed forces of the deposed Annihilus in a bid to depose Blastaar. Eventually it turns out that her lover from the last issue is actually Annihilus in disguise.

Thre are a couple of pages with Blink rescuing children of Annihilus' royal family (uh, right) and remembering the abuse she suffered as a child which are actually quite effective. Other than that, we're in paint by numbers territory. The story never makes it particularly clear why we ought to favour Blastaar or Annihilus, or indeed care one way or the other. Those familiar with the characters know that they're both bastards; those unfamiliar are given no reason to be interested.

Artist Trevor McCarthy is still amusing himself by playing "how contrived can I be in covering up Blink's crotch", and vaguely emulating Adam Pollina. He's okay, although he does some really quite bad exaggerated perspective at points.

This book is doing nothing to build interest in the Exiles series, which is presumably the justification for publishing it in the first place.

The parade of lame ducks continues with GAMBIT & BISHOP, which has now crossed the magical line between "Well, maybe it'll make sense in the end" and "What the hell are they thinking?"

This issue, Gambit & Bishop chat to the Witness and Stryfe for half the story. Then Stryfe gets carted off by Cable, and our heroes trot off to stop Cable from killing him, on the grounds that killing would be bad.

This has all the hallmarks of a rush job. Over on the X-Men proper, Lobdell has been producing fairly sound stories. This, however, is a train wreck. Things get off to a bad start as we get a lengthy explanation of why X-Men don't kill. Lobdell dutifully reminds us of the time Bishop was talked out of killing Trevor Fitzroy. Good old X-Men, says Bishop. Stopped me from killing someone, which would have meant sacrificing everything I ever believed in.

Now, the point of that story was in part that Fitzroy was the last surviving escapee from Bishop's timeline, because Bishop had killed all the other ones. You can portray this as a turning point where Bishop adopts the X-Men's moral standards, but the attempt to suggest it was a momentary aberration on Bishop's part is ludicrous to anyone who remembers the actual story. There are ample reasons why Bishop would be opposed to killing Stryfe which don't involve dredging up ten-year-old stories for the sole purpose of misquoting them.

We then get a chat about how the Witness is transchronological. This is a pointlessly complicated way of justifying him as a wise old man who can make cryptic comments for the purpose of advancing the plot. It doesn't work.

But the book hits the point of no return when our heroes have failed to stop Cable from capturing Stryfe, and wonder where to go to find him. Out of nowhere, Gambit produces the following jaw-dropping piece of pseudo-logic (dire accent erased for purposes of sanity):-

"Okay, let's think about this for a minute. Suppose Stryfe's right and Cable is out to finish off Stryfe once and for all. That being the case, he's going to have to kill him at a nexus place in time, or else Stryfe'll always have the option of returning before or after his death like he did the last time we all thought him dead."

What? What the fuck was that? Nexus points in time where you have to kill time travellers in order for them to stay dead? Coming into the plot with no warning? In issue #4? From bloody Gambit? This is drivel.

Art, incidentally, comes from the ever-competent Thomas Derenick. It's not really relevant, since the story is beyond salvage.

Surely it can't get any worse, you say? Oh yes it can.

MUTANT X is now just two issues from cancellation, counting the annual. I am grateful that the book is getting an annual this year. It means the end will come all the quicker. In the meantime, Howard Mackie is building to a climax.

Howard Mackie building to a climax is not a pretty sight. Never a subscriber to the "less is more" theory, Mackie is throwing in everything but the kitchen sink in haphazard style. The cookery equivalent would be a cornflake and soap omelette. The big plan, fairly blatantly, is to tease the destruction of the world. Fair enough - it's an alternate universe, and you can do that with the real threat that it might happen.

But what device does Mackie choose to start the war? Why, it's the risk of war with Canada. Dear God.

The root premise of threatening a war with Canada is not wholly without possibilities. Mackie laid some groundwork for this back in the early days of the series by establishing that there had been a war between the US and Canada, though he never established why. It didn't matter in that issue because the only relevance was to establish as a background plot point that Americans weren't welcome in Canada.

In this issue, however, the threat of war with Canada is right at the centre of the plot. This issue would fail in any event, because Mackie never establishes why a squabble with a few freelance superheroes on the border might start World War IV in the first place. But the failure is all the greater because, frankly, the threat of war with Canada is funny.

No disrespect intended to Canadian readers, but the threat of the world being destroyed by Canada is literally laughable. I can think of three stories involving war or military tension with Canada, all of which were satires (Infinite Jest, Canadian Bacon and South Park: The Movie). Nobody buys the Canadians as a threat to world peace, not even the Canadians. They're just too nice.

A war with Canada could work, but it would need a lot of set-up to convince the readers to take it seriously. Mackie has done none of that set-up, and so his story falls flat on its face. And then gets hit with a custard pie. Even South Park had some kind of rationale for a war with Canada. Mackie thinks it's sufficient to tell us that Canada is "the most militarily aggressive nation on the planet." He just doesn't seem to understand that this is funny.

But wait! The comedy escalates! Captain America turns into a steroid-swelled, energy-spewing mad patriot. No explanation is given of why he's gone off the edge. He just has. From being a bloke with a shield last issue (albeit that they'd suggested he had mutant powers), he's now apparently the most powerful man on the planet.

The sight of a partially inflated Captain America babbling about "our great nation" is funny. Dialogue like "I am the sentinel of liberty! The living embodiment of the American ideal! Let freedom ring!" is funny. This is what seems to pass in Mackie's writing for a portrayal of mental illness. Again, Mackie seems oblivious to the comedy of the situation.

Oh yes - and then, for an encore, Captain America and Havok have a big fight with energy beams. Their energy can't get through Iceman's defensive walls of ice, but is still sufficient to inadvertantly destroy the moon.

I'll repeat that again. Inadvertantly destroy the moon.

They're standing on the US/Canadian border. They can't get through the ice sculpture down the road. And they destroy the moon.

This is some kind of sick joke on me. Surely Marvel have published this special ultra-bad edition of Mutant X #31 and collaborated with my store to get it into my hands. Surely nobody in their right mind would publish this catastrophe. There is no such thing as an unbelievably bad comic, but this comes very close. I believe in its existence, but only because it is lying on my desk in front of me. It is certainly an incomprehensibly bad comic, in the sense that I cannot for the life of me comprehend why anyone would put their name to it.

Pity poor Ron Lim, who spent a month illustrating this nonsense. The terrible things that that must do to a man's soul do not bear thinking about. While he certainly has to take a share of the blame for just how badly the Captain America scenes come off, most of his work is okay. The rating for this book scrapes off the minimum of D-, solely to recognise the fact that the art could have been significantly worse.

This book is a fiasco. If this was the best finale the creators had to offer, Marvel should just have pulled the plug.

X-MEN: THE SEARCH FOR CYCLOPS concludes. It's the best X-book of the week by a country mile, but it's still an uninspiring package.

There was never any tension as to whether Cyclops was going to be freed from Apocalypse in this issue. Of course he was. Even before Marvel got bored of waiting for this issue and blew the ending in another book, that much was plainly obvious. (This issue is two months late, incidentally.)

Any interest in this story would have to come from the way in which the ending was achieved, and any character points which could be achieved along the way. The end result is sadly formulaic. Cable and Jean wonder whether they're willing to kill Cyclops in order to finally dispose of Apocalypse, but in the end Jean just tears the two of them apart and they kill Apocalypse. This doesn't really seem to be all that difficult for her, making the question of whether they would have killed Scott look entirely hypothetical.

There's nothing wrong with this book - it looks fine, everyone's in character, the desired plot result is duly achieved - but this really didn't need any more than, at most, a two-parter in the mainstream X-Men titles. Getting Scott back into active use as a character was something they needed to get over and done with. It didn't need a four-issue miniseries to do it, and the creators have understandably struggled to make this foregone conclusion interesting.

Bill Jemas is right; they shouldn't have killed Cyclops off in the first place if they were just going to bring him back, and if they were going to bring him back they didn't need a four issue miniseries in order to do it. Joseph Harris has done better work in the past and doubtless will do better work again; in the meantime, this is somewhat disappointing.