12 march 2000

Bill something as the X-Men Revolution and you're almost crying out for reviews commenting that hey, it's not actually all that different from what we had before. So, with that in mind, CABLE. It's not actually all that different from what we had before.

By which, I should quickly emphasise, I mean the Joe Casey run, not the shortlived blip of Liefeld and crossovers of which we shall speak no more in polite company. And equally, sure, there's a noticeable difference in style. But if you were expecting a drastic change in tone or direction then no, we don't have one of those.

A pleasing note from the word go is that Weinberg quickly goes out of his way to establish that Cable's future timeline has definitely been averted and that that plot is unequivocally over. Yes, he ignores Marvel time travel rules to do it, but it's worth it to draw a line under this part of the character's history.

For reasons I can't quite explain, I have a compulsive urge to compare this issue to Silver Age Roy Thomas stories. I have no idea why I want to do that, since I've never read any Silver Age Roy Thomas stories, but the idea is bouncing around in my head and I simply must let it out. There is, to be sure, something very Silver Age about the story device where Cable is approached by some kind of mystical people (based quite openly on the three witches from Macbeth) who helpfully set up the plot by telling him that he's going to face three tests of unspecified nature and purpose. Maybe that's it.

Into this framework, Weinberg inserts a plot following on from what we saw in the subplot sequence last issue. That landing party group show up to fight Cable as one of the tests; another one involves an alien spirit possessing some poor innocent and carting him off to try and kill an inspirational speaker who has a similarly questionable background. Cable stumbles around the plot being rather puzzled and trying to keep some kind of control of the situation.

Weinberg has been a writer for over a decade but is apparently new to comics. He's lucky in having Michael Ryan to work with, not perhaps the flashiest artist in comics but a solid storyteller who's been churning out fill-in work for ages now and deserve to finally get a regular title. Weinberg seems to have a pretty good grasp on the comics medium - it's a well paced issue, despite some fairly dense plotting, and he does a good flashback montage to set up his possessed-by-evil stooge as a real character.

Whether the storyline is any good is really impossible to say at this stage, since this issue is basically a selection of impenetrable events and hinting at the meaning behind it all (including what its relevance to Cable is supposed to be). I'm happy to take it on faith that we're going to get an explanation in relatively early course, but we'll have to see what it is before it'll be possible to say whether the story works.

This is a promising first issue for the new creative team, so far as story execution goes. I'll have to reserve judgment on the ideas until a couple of issues down the road, but they've got my attention for now.

Counter-X is finally under way, starting with GENERATION X. Again, if you're expecting some sort of ultra-radical revamp of the book, think again. If anything, this is more of a back-to-basics attempt, trying to cut back to the core concept of Generation X as the teenage group.

One way of doing that is the full-scale school set-up with Jay Faerber went for. That's not the route we're going down this time, so the normal human pupils are gone and it's just the mutants left. Since we last saw our heroes, the School has been smashed up (a bit - nothing too extreme), Synch and Adrienne Frost are both apparently dead, and it's just M, Chamber, Husk, Skin and Jubilee left. But once you get past the scarring on the school and its grounds, which are really just there to emphasise that something nasty has happened, we're pretty much back with the original set-up for the book - small group of teenagers being taught by nice uncle Sean and slightly dodgy aunt Emma.

Warren's comments on this title suggested that he wanted to make the book a little more obviously teenage. There's certainly a degree of truth to his comments that Generation X have never really acted like normal teenagers, in that their characters have become so dominated by their mutant aspects that they've never really displayed much of an interest in more everyday matters. And equally, if what marks Generation X out as different from the other X-books is that they're teenagers, it makes sense that the book should do stories focusing on teenage issues.

"Teenage issues." It smacks of government education programmes and anti-drugs campaigns, doesn't it? It's a minefield. Put a foot wrong and you can end up with a risible mess. By way of illustration, I have before me a copy of the Official Teen Titans Index, showing what DC considered to be good teenage stories in the mid-sixties. I have never read any of the actual stories, but a quick look at the titles assures me that I am missing nothing. "Captain Rumble Blasts The Scene." "The TT's Swinging Christmas Carol." And - I am not making this up - "Large Trouble In Spaceville." I am reliably assured this did not sound any less stupid in 1966. Anyhow, this is the sort of thing that can all too easily happen when older people try too hard to write teenage stories. And let's be honest, Warren Ellis hasn't been a teenager in quite some time. It's the right approach, but a risky one. Screw it up and you end up with the sort of stories that people like me will be mocking in 2030.

For the first story arc, Ellis targets post-Columbine idiocy, which certainly is a teenage issue and certainly is worth writing about. The first half of the book introduces Warden Johnston Coffin, a superpowered bastard who is doing illegal work for the government involving all those kids who got taken out of school for dreadful crimes such as wearing black, not wanting to be a cheerleader, and having a sick sense of humour. Quite what he's doing with them, we don't see in this issue. Although it does seem to involve syringes.

We're going to get four issues of this plot, involving Johnston and his House of Correction. Whether it works or not will depend heavily on what tone is taken. There's an obvious risk of writing Coffin as such a sadistic bastard that it eclipses any kind of point and ends up being just another "evil villain tortures kiddies" story with a topical hook. There's also an obvious risk that any story involving something called the House of Correction is going to end up unintentionally camp. Is the story going to find something to say about this subject that will go beyond "We're right and you're wrong"? We shall see.

The book is shifting back to a very much more 1980s take on Emma Frost which does come off as rather jarring in contrast to, well, pretty much all her appearances since 1991. It's a perfectly valid approach to the character, quite possibly one that gives the book a better dynamic, but it does come across as a rather artificial character shift.

Steve Pugh and Sandu Florea's artwork looks, to be honest, a bit rushed. It does get noticeably better as the issue goes on, though, and he's certainly the first artist to make M look like a teenager as opposed to, well, a superhero. Nice take on Paige as well, actually.

It's certainly an interesting start - not a reinvention of the book at all, but rather an attempt to get back to what the title seemed to be trying to achieve from the word go.

Rounding out the week's X-books, X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS. To be honest, I'm finding this as dull to review as Mutant X (it's a better book, but there's nothing to say about it). But I'll give it a bit more time yet before dumping it; after all, it's only had six months.

And yes, six months in, we are still in the sodding Savage Land. Most of the cast left last month, admittedly, but Alex and Lorna are still there, and Bobby has just arrived to stumble into a Sauron subplot. Dear god, not Sauron. X-Men villains don't come much duller. But no, obviously a Sauron plot is coming and obviously we're going back to the bloody Savage Land to do it. This book is rapidly losing my interest.

Meanwhile, off in Africa, Hank, Scott and Jean get to meet Storm for no particularly compelling reason. She's got a villain to fight, but he's not a very interesting one, since he doesn't seem to have any particular motive other than to make himself more powerful. And not in a very imaginative way, either. He's got a nice enough character design, but he doesn't interest me in the slightest.

In fact, about the only subplot here that's still holding my attention is Warren and his flying woman from the Savage Land, which could still conceivably go somewhere - although I have a horrible suspicion it's just going to be a device to get the X-Men back to the Savage Land to fight Sauron in another four issue snoozefest.

This is still the best work Byrne is doing at the moment, nicely structured (if slow) stories with the best art we've seen from him in years. But it's now into its sixth month of piddling around in boring continuity backwaters, and it's pushing its luck.

Ah, the lacerating self-hatred of comics fans. GEEKSVILLE.

This is a vehicle for the completely disparate interests of Rich Koslowski and Gary Sassaman, and its cover goes out of its way to inform me that it got nominated for an Eisner Award. Evidently didn't win one, which I can't say suprises me. By the way, the #0 issue number is simply a joke about this being their first Image issue and how they've sold out. Are you laughing yet? No?

With a questionable understanding of how to market your book to a hopefully increased audience, the issue starts off with the second part of a two-part story, the first half of which came out through a small press publisher you've never heard of three months ago. Oh, and it's a Y2K story, which you'd have thought might provide an incentive to get this issue out a bit quicker, but there you go.

It's not a bad story, but hell, it's three comic book geeks (you know the jokes) doing a Y2K story (you know the jokes). It's amusing, there's some well-timed gags, and the last page is genuinely funny in a ridiculous kind of way. But you know... this got nominated for an Eisner? Was there a shortage?

Pause for a couple of adverts for other Image small press titles (buy a small press comic, guv? Help the homeless?), and we move on to Gary Sassaman's story, a documentary feature - might be true, might not, I don't know - about 1920s silent movie stars Arthur and Elliot. Okay, this is more like it.

What we get here is a recap of the eponymous duo's silent film career, of which sadly only one apparently good film survives. Given that the story has to cover an entire career in eight pages, it's all montage storytelling, and it's not as if Arthur and Elliot seem to have had any particularly unusual career, but the story does give an effective portrait of 1920s Hollywood, so that's a plus. Now this, I can see getting Eisner nominated. Technical excellence combined with aggressively uncommercial subject matter. They love that.

More ads (Age of Bronze #7 actually looks vaguely interesting), and we're back to the comic shop stuff. "All for the Art of John Byrne" involves three schoolkids who fall out after one of them steals another's copy of "The Art of John Byrne", this being the early 1980s, when it was still acceptable to own such a thing. In the course of attempting to retrieve said book, thief displays homosexual tendencies. Our writer, Rich Koslowski, tells all of this to his guest artist, who replies that this is "the most amazing story I've ever heard", surely indicative of a deeply unexciting life. Again, it's alright but you're not missing much.

I'd happily buy an entire issue of Sassaman's stuff, but not as eight pages in the middle of this.