11 november 2001

Well, god. Not a good batch, to put it mildly.

To start with the relatively innocuous, the CYCLOPS miniseries finishes this week after a rather undistinguished run. All X-Men solo miniseries face one basic question that they need to give a clear answer to: "Why are Marvel bothering to publish this, other than to screw us out of more money?" While this has never been a particularly bad comic, it's never come up with an answer to that question, clear or otherwise.

Brian Vaughan has adopted a very odd story structure here. In theory this miniseries contained a four-part miniseries called "Odyssey", but in fact what it contained was a disconnected and free-standing fight scene in every issue. The events of issues #1 and #3 were both more or less irrelevant to the rest of the series, while this issue gives Cyclops a rematch against Ulysses, the villain from issue #2.

Ulysses sounds like he ought to be an interesting antagonist for Cyclops on paper, being another leader figure. But this issue ends up positioning him as a lunatic with an irrational grudge, who is defeated after one of his men realises this. That leaves us with a reasonably well-executed fight scene running from pages eight to twenty, but no real sense that any of this matters. Cyclops may return to the X-Men at the end saying that he won't look at himself the same way again, but for the life of me I can't understand why.

Mark Texeira and Jimmy Palmiotti's art has turned out to be a slightly ill-fitting combination, with a rubbery exaggeration that seems out of place against a fairly conventional story. Texeira's layouts work better with a darker inking style; Palmiotti's style ends up making it look faintly humorous.

All of these issues have been passable in their own right, but the miniseries as a whole falls down due to the lack of any compelling story arc and the all-pervasive feeling of inconsequentiality.

EXILES #6 is the best of this week's X-books, although this isn't exactly against exalted competition.

The strengths and flaws of this book remain the same as ever - the characterisation is strong, the comedy banter clicks, the art is nice and clean, but it's incredibly formulaic. Winick plays this issue to his strengths by putting the focus on T-Bird talking with his counterpart from the alternate reality du jour, which neatly draws out some interesting character material.

On the other hand, the actual plot ends up seeming like something Winick begrudgingly tacked on out of a sense of duty. Last month, most of the story was spent on persuading us that the Hulk was a terrible threat and that all the Canadian superheroes were going to die in defeating him. The Hulk then gets pummelled into oblivion by the T-Bird without a great deal of difficulty, which is a bizarrely abrupt ending to the storyline. The Weapon X group who turned up as last issue's cliffhanger only play a token role in the plot.

However, the Weapon X group also turn out to be there to put the first twist on the formula. As we really should have twigged from his choice of costume, that's the Age of Apocalypse Sabretooth leading the Weapon X faction. Quite why they're being called "Weapon X" is a bit of a mystery because they turn out to be a rival group of Exiles, with a competing mission. Yes, it's the same variation on the format that Quantum Leap used. Still, at least it allows for some kind of ongoing storyline to emerge, and it does beg the question of how two teams of Exiles can HAVE competing missions without the book's set-up turning out to be a hoax of some sort. Fortunately, Winick gives the impression that this is a deliberate plot point rather than a hideous plot hole.

The book still needs serious work on developing its plots beyond the current rudimentary level, but Winick and Calafiore give us enough of a feelgood factor to (just) carry themselves past that.

It's all downhill from here, I'm afraid.

WOLVERINE 2001 is nothing short of painful. While I'm coming round to his Deadpool work, Frank Tieri's Wolverine stories seem to continue their decline into a mixture of obnoxious shock violence and downright stupidity. The lead story here is a set-up for Tieri's next storyline in the monthly book (always good to use the annual as a glorified advert, I say), in which Wolverine stumbles across Bloodscream and Vermin abusing the homeless and heroically goes to the rescue.

Again, this issue raises fascinating questions as to quite what Marvel were smoking when they came up with the post-Code classifications. Having Wolverine deliberately cut off his enemy's hands in battle is apparently just fine within the PG category. There's a corpse on the last page with its brain hanging out. I appreciate that the PG age range are probably about the only people operating on the same intellectual level as the plot, but I have grave doubts as to whether such a liberal definition of "PG" is going to be shared by any of the parents it's meant to be guiding.

Bloodscream is a passably interesting late-1980s villain whose gimmick is meant to be that he wants to get Wolverine's blood in order to cure himself of his vampiric curse. Tieri handily reminds us of this plot point before comprehensively ignoring it for the rest of the issue. Vermin is brought in for no discernible reason. Both villains end up as interchangeable muppets who are only there for Wolverine to slice up, and this makes for dull storytelling.

Tieri really excels himself, however, with his set-piece defeat of Bloodscream. Bloodscream, you see, can't be harmed by weapons forged by mortal man. Lucky chap. Wolverine correctly guesses that Bloodscream's own sword would be able to hurt him. Well, that makes sense. I mean, if you had one of a handful of weapons on the planet that were capable of hurting you, you'd carry it around with you as well, rather than, say, getting a different sword.

And how does Wolverine get the sword? Why, he severs Bloodscream's hand with his claws.

Which can cut him. Which means he didn't need the sword in the first place. Which makes the entire set-piece pointless and idiotic.

Art comes from Matthew Marsilia, who seems passably competent, and three inkers with hilariously inconsistent styles who seem to have had the pages doled out to them in a random draw. The end result is a terrible mess. Really very bad indeed.

In the back-up strip, Wolverine visits Canada and fights an obscure Alpha Flight villain along with a lunatic priest. Killian Plunkett's art looks quite good, but the story is one step above incoherent, with a variety of characters acting in irrational ways simply to further the plot. Why, exactly, is the local priest a sword-wielding loony? Why was everyone worshipping a monster?

A really dismal package this year, and another annual to make us thank god it's the last.

Somebody once said that the thing about a dancing bear isn't that he does it well, it's that he can do it at all. Unfortunately, much the same applies to many artists who are allowed to write. Carlos Pacheco's writing on FANTASTIC FOUR has increasingly been in the "dancing bear" category - it makes you wince to see it, and you feel it probably shouldn't be allowed.

In all fairness, Carlos Pacheco and his co-plotter Rafael Marin are not native English-speakers and are relying on Jeph Loeb's script to convey their insanely complicated plot to the hapless reader. Loeb can normally be relied upon to convey key story elements, if nothing else, and his failure to do so here may well reflect a serious breakdown in communications somewhere among the creative team. Whatever the reason, this is a painfully impenetrable issue which fails totally in its intended role as a payoff for the Abraxas storyline.

I don't normally trawl through the plot of an issue in full, but sometimes it's the best way to illustrate just how seriously a story has gone awry. So here we go.

We're on the roof of the Fantastic Four's headquarters, and our heroes are under attack from Abraxas and a horde of Novas. Quite why there's suddenly a horde of them is a bit of a mystery, because up till this point in the storyline there had only been one of them. Abraxas addresses them in the singular, which does nothing to simplify the situation. Abraxas tells Nova to destroy the Fantastic Four, so at least one character in this scene has a discernible objective. (It's still not at all clear to me what Abraxas is trying to achieve in this whole scheme, nor how exactly the Fantastic Four are hoping to defeat his vaguely defined scheme.)

Now, Abaraxas has just instructed some twenty Novas to attack the Fantastic Four, but notwithstanding this we have time for a nice chat between the Human Torch and Nova. The Torch tells Nova that she shouldn't trust Abraxas because he's a madman. Come to think of it, no clear explanation has been given of why Nova is siding with Abraxas at all, other than to allow her to do a shocking double-cross in the last issue. Maybe this will allow her to explain herself?

Nova (all of her/them) respond to these advantages by using never-previously-seen superpowers to bring a dead Kymaera up through the roof of the building (where we'd seen her die an issue or two back). For some reason, the Torch recognises her as a dead Namorita even though she's clearly somebody else. Yes, I know they're linked characters, but when the entire story has surrounded the cast with alternate-reality counterparts of existing characters, why does the Torch assume that Kymaera is HIS Namorita when they look nothing like one another?

Nova finally gets around to explaning her motivations. Apparently this plays off some Fantastic Four story I've never read in which Mr Fantastic gave the original Nova to Galactus in exchange for sparing the Earth. In her world Galactus doublecrossed the Fantastic Four and destroyed the Earth anyway. Okay... now, why does this give Nova a motivation? Is the idea that she hates the Fantastic Four, and sided with Abraxas because he was going around killing the Galactuses of various universes (for reasons still never clearly explained)? A bit tenuous, isn't it? Doesn't she understand this "alternate reality" thing?

The horde of Novas - all of them - have handily stood around while this conversation takes place. If they're all the same Nova, we're not told why there's suddenly twenty of her. If they're all different Novas, we're given no indication of why the others are siding with Abraxas, unless we're meant to infer that the same explanation applies to all of them.

Reed finally announces that in order to win they need to recover the Ultimate Nullifier from Abraxas. Still no explanation, of course, of what either party is planning to do with the bloody thing, and I assume we're all meant to just be familiar with it from some Lee/Kirby story which, again, I've never read and isn't explicitly referenced anywhere in this issue.

The Novas finally get around to attacking two pages after the order was given, and make some headway. A bunch of random alternate reality superheroes show up to fight the Novas, for no explained reason. One of them, rather unsportingly, asks why there's a bunch of Novas flying around. Nobody explains. The battle continues with the villains getting the upper hand. Abraxas does a cutesy power display on the Thing in a nice moment. Abraxas declares that as Reed dies on Earth, so do his counterparts across the realities. No explanation of why this should be so, and no particular reason why we should care.

Throughout this story so far, Sue has been busy hugging Franklin, so it's good to know she has a clear understanding of her place. Franklin finally decides that he should do something about this, and delivers the usual pseudo-childspeak babble that passes for characterisation whenever he's required to do something cosmic. So what does Franklin do? Advance the plot?

Why, of course not. Franklin spends two pages rewriting the origin of Valeria von Doom, a character whose role in this story so far has been utterly peripheral. Valeria is a Claremont character who came from an alternate future where she was the daughter of Sue Richards and Dr Doom (or, possibly, a version of Reed trapped in Doom's armour). This was a bit contrived, but basically comprehensible. Evidently it's nowhere near convoluted enough for Pacheco and Marin, who bizarrely retcon Valeria into being Sue's miscarried child from - what, ten, twenty years ago? In some way, Franklin has saved the miscarriage and turned it into Valeria. We have just crossed the rubicon into "Fucking Stupid." The relevance of any of this to the plot remains thoroughly oblique.

Valeria's response to this bizarre revelation is to tell Franklin that "we've got to make a wish upon a special star" and "you know who we've got to bring back." Eternity crops up overhead, for absolutely no discernible reason. Valeria announces that Franklin has to show them the reason why he saved her. Apparently now buying wholeheartedly into her completely rewritten history, Valeria suddenly announces that Roma tended to her for years "in the heart and soul of Eternity", which means bugger all to me.

Franklin, through some vaguely defined mechanism, then brings back the original Galactus. Who, of course, is dead. Which was the springboard for this entire plot. How did Franklin bring him back? Why? Not explained. How does this amount to a justification for saving Valeria? Not explained. Galactus announces that "I am that I am." What the fuck is that meant to mean? Not explained. Why didn't Franklin do this five issues ago? Not explained.

The plot has now entirely departed the rails and is plummetting groundward.

Galactus teleports the Ultimate Nullifer out of Abraxas' hands and into his own, declaring it to be "as much a part of me as my heart itself." Abraxas is now crapping himself and is presumably defeated. Galactus gives the Nullifer to Reed. Why? Not explained. Reed says that he can now understand what is going on. Well, that makes one of us.

Abraxas tells Reed to put down the Nullifier. Reed says that Abraxas never intended to fire the Nullifier. (This contradicts Abraxas' stated motivations for the entire storyline, but there you go.) This is for "the very same reason I must." Sadly, Reed chooses not to share this reason with us. That's a pity, because it does seem to have been something of a key plot point.

Reed fires the Nullifier and we get a double page spread of Eternity shattering. On the next page, New York reappears as if nothing had happened. Namorita's back to normal and alive again, Valeria and Sue have disappeared. The Human Torch is now in his normal costume and not on fire, despite the fact that in an ongoing subplot we'd been told that he couldn't actually control his flame any more and was on fire at all times. That wasn't even in the same storyline, but apparently it's been conveniently resolved here as well. The Thing finally twigs that the cosmic reset button has been hit, and complains about the plot. Damn right. The Watcher broadly agrees.

Reed tells us that "In order to realign all that is, we needed to end all that was." This is, of course, meaningless gibberish. The Watcher handily tells us that Franklin's cosmic powers are gone forever (what, again?!), and that there is "one final gift." Sue enters - incidentally, nobody commented on her absence from the reboot, although they did notice Valeria's - and she's heavily pregnant. She seems baffled that everyone finds this odd. End of story.

So. What a fucking mess.

This was all over the place. Abraxas' scheme is indecipherable. The reason for the horde of Novas is never even addressed, let alone explained. Valeria's continuity is shot to hell in the name of retconning her into an abortion. And the protagonists' contribution to saving the day consists of standing around politely while waiting for Franklin to do something incomprehensible that he presumably could have done at any point during the story had it only occurred to him.

No matter how good the art may be, it can't get around the fact that this is incoherent nonsense. As a bare minimum, the audience needs to be able to comprehend where the plot tension is meant to be coming from. This story fails even on that most basic level.

JLA/HAVEN: ARRIVAL is a prestige-format one-shot kicking off the new Haven concept. Oddly, this is a high-profile debut assignment which DC have given to two completely untried writers, Ashley-Jayne Nicolaus and Matthew Schuster.

The Haven concept is that an entire alien city crashes in California and is then installed as a part of the DC Universe. This issue contains the crash, with the JLA and the Haven superheroes joining forces to stop the giant spacecraft from skidding across California and crushing everything in its path. There's an obvious widescreen influence on much of this issue, and indeed it's absolutely astonishing that DC would allow this to see print while still maintaining that Authority: Widescreen is too offensive. On page three, an alien aircraft crashes into a populated town and kills twelve thousand Americans. Personally, I say publish the lot of it. It's the lunatic inconsistency of DC that incenses me.

The basic idea is somewhat interesting, although it's the sort of plot idea that marks a serious parting of ways between the DC Universe and planet Earth. It does sound in principle like the sort of idea that would be better off in its own universe, but no doubt DC have thought out the impact of the concept on their universe with the same thorough consideration they usually adopt.

Unfortunately, while the potential remains somewhat interesting, this isn't a terrible good start. A large number of Haven characters are introduced, with none of them really leaping out as distinctive. They've got Ariel Olivetti character designs which at least makes them look alien in comparison with the rest of the DC Universe, but also makes them all look a bit samey. The Haven heroes come across as basically generic superheroes with odd taste in costumes, and their villains seem equally conventional. One of the characters is given a particularly unfortunate combination of white skin and a pink afro, which makes her look like a clown.

Given that the point of this issue is to introduce the Haven characters, I ought to be leaving it with a few clearly defined cast members in mind. But I didn't - five minutes after reading the book, I couldn't remember the name of a single new character. That's a really serious problem.

Ariel Olivetti wouldn't be my first choice of artist for a widescreen story about a giant city skidding across California. Olivetti has a fascinating sense of design, if not always a successful one, but his art has always suffered from a tendency to look awkward and static. This issue doesn't really manage to get across the basic concept that the giant city is moving. It wasn't until several pages into the plot, when somebody handily explained it in dialogue, that I realised the city hadn't simply come to a halt on landing.

This series could still work - the premise has some potential. But this is not an encouraging first issue.