12 september 1999

MUTANT X #14 returns to the main storyline by bringing in its version of Cyclops, a cavalier adventurer leading his reality's version of the Starjammers. As so often seems to be the case with Mutant X, what we have here is a few good ideas poorly explored and draped over a plot so slight that it needs lead weights to stop it drifting away.

The good idea is, perhaps, playing Scott as a devil-may- care swashbuckler. This is so wildly out of character for a hero best described as dull but dependable that it raises some interesting ideas in itself. A key point here is that in most of the realities we've seen before, Scott was raised by people with strong philosophical views (Xavier, Sinister etc) and consequently grew up as a good little stormtrooper. In this reality, he may not have had any of that, and so the question of how Scott ended up so different is interesting in itself.

The subsidiary good idea is the line-up of his Starjammers, who include Nova, Binary and a bizarre and unexplained Silver Surfer. None of this is really addressed at all, but there's some story potential in explaining how they got there. Notice that, again, the quality of these ideas lies more the potential they hold for future stories rather than in anything particularly exciting about this story.

And that's about it for the good ideas.

As for the rest, we have the plot. Various alien races have discovered the return of the Goblin Queen and have come to Earth to capture and interrogate people close to her. This they do in an exceptionally half-arsed way before Uatu the Watcher inexplicably intervenes in a ludicrous speech (clue: when writing cosmic entities, avoid contractions) and sends everyone home. The end.

This doesn't really seem to have been thought through. The Skrulls send one of their top admirals to Earth, only to get their entire force beaten up in one panel by the Starjammers. The aliens have no apparent strategy or intelligence in their attempt to capture Alex. And Uatu is in full-on deus ex machina mode, inexplicably deciding that the mere fact that somebody's giving Alex a bit of hassle is enough to abandon his vow of non-interference and declare himself Earth's protector.

Some good artwork from Cary Nord fails to save this downright feeble story. Next time, perhaps somebody would care to give some thought to the plot. As it stands, give this one a miss.

WOLVERINE/CABLE: GUTS AND GLORY has the questionable distinction of being the first X-book in years which I nearly changed my mind and left on the shelf, because the art was just so horrible. I mean, Rob Liefeld... I'm braced for that. There's nothing he can do that can surprise me any more.

But this... Steven Platt's not an artist I have much time for, but usually he at least manages a certain degree of competence. He's just boring rather than anything else. In this issue, his Vulture is perfectly good, and his scenes with Cable trying to assimilate into the present day have some okay moments. His villain is a generic sub-Liefeld design. But his Wolverine. My god, his Wolverine. It hurts to look at. And once the pain stops, you laugh.

Perhaps it's a defence mechanism.

Anyhow. The story. This is supposed to be the first meeting of Cable and Wolverine. You may remember that this is supposed to be a hotly anticipated story because when we first saw them together in New Mutants, they obviously didn't like one another. Is that addressed? No, not really. Which kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?

What we actually have here is a story about Cable's arrival in the present day. Wolverine's in it as well, and gets a lot of screen time, but don't be fooled. He doesn't do anything important. This is a Cable story.

And so long as Joe Casey keeps the focus on Cable's reactions to a new world which he doesn't know, and his first meetings with members of the public, he does pretty well. There's a decent enough sense of disorientation and culture shock, which seems the appropriate response.

Unfortunately, there's also a deranged villain wandering around and some stuff about Department H (and hey, did we mention Department H aren't very nice? No? Well, come over here and let me shout it in your ear again). And, as I said, Wolverine's in it for no terribly good reason. So while it does have some good scenes, on the whole it's just a rather weak and contrived story with art that is frequently downright terrible. Not terribly interesting.

X-MEN: TRUE FRIENDS #2 finally shows up, which is nice since it's much better than anything else the X-office has to offer this week. Minor quibbles aside (Wolverine was using that codename in the early thirties?), this is a pleasantly entertaining little story which would have fitted in very nicely with the other early Excalibur stories. And of course, that's no bad thing.

Surprisingly, Claremont has chosen to base his plot on the might-actually-be-true legend that Mary Queen of Scots real child was stillborn and swapped with another baby, who would become James VI and I, thereby disrupting the succession. The villain claims to be the woman who would be queen if the succession had followed the proper line.

Now, what this means in practice is that some deranged aristocrats, a couple of Nazis and the Shadow King camp it up to the rafters as they race around 1930s Edinburgh generally being marvellously over the top. Sure, it's silly, and perhaps in the circumstances a little diversion into the Holocaust is ill-judged, but it's an entertaining romp.

Admittedly, it's still got some of Claremont's weaknesses clearly visible - wordy narration being one of the big ones here. We may, arguably, need to devote a caption to explaining what a mutant is. We certainly do not need to tell the audience what a superhero is, but Claremont does it anyway.

At any rate, like issue #1, it's a pleasant reminder of the sort of stories that got me into comics in the first place, so that'll do me.