14 april 2002

David Tischman ends his run on CABLE this month, although in fact the credits for this issue describe it as being written by "Igor Kordey with David Tischman", which makes it sound like he's already halfway out of the door. Despite some initially favourable reaction, this has been the most notably unsuccessful of the X-books relaunches, sending the book plunging in sales compared with Robert Weinberg's run.

Next month, Darko Macan will take over as writer (making this the first Marvel comic by an entirely eastern European writer/artist team, unless I'm very much mistaken). From what I've seen of his writing, I don't anticipate a major change in direction, but I would expect to more focussed storylines which don't flood the plot with undeveloped minor characters.

In the meantime, we have this final issue to wrap up the cloned Albanians plotline, which started off with a nice idea (the sheer lunacy of ethnic obsessions taken to their insane conclusion by mass cloning of replacement populations), but never really managed to add a great deal to it beyond that initial concept.

We kick off the issue with a commemoration of 200 days since the World Trade Center attacks, which makes for a nice piece of artwork, but I'm damned if I can see what the relevance to the plot is meant to be. (By the way, "War on Terror" is not a trademark, guys. You don't have to change it to "Fear War".)

The plot sets about getting everyone into the Albanian cloning centre, so that they can all ultimately get blown up aside from Cable and Viktoria, who escape. Goldberg sits around on the sidelines manipulating things and never gets all that involved; equally, Cable never truly engages with any other characters aside from Viktoria. My guess would be that Tischman originally intended this arc to introduce Goldberg with a view to building to a confrontation between him and Cable down the line, but presumably that's out on its ear following the change of writer. I can't say this story gives me any particular desire to see that storyline, in any event - Goldberg just isn't a very interesting character. He's a generic conspiracy villain, nothing more rounded.

While all this is going on, we have some subplots about the clones which never interact with anything else either. The creators seem awfully keen to encourage us to contemplate how the clones must feel about things, but since the entire arc is premised on ludicrous B-movie science, the answer is "I don't give a toss" even before we get onto the fact that they're all mad anyway.

Genre convention or not, I simply don't accept the proposition that clones retain the memories of their "parents" up to the point of death. Even the story itself seems hazy on the whole idea. Yacoubi and Gani both seem clear enough that all the clones have retained these memories, yet Gani seems surprised to find out that the clone of Ana has them too, and through some unexplained means, Samir has somehow managed to be a clone for the entire storyline without knowing it. How does that work, exactly?

Somewhere in there the story is trying to raise questions about individuality and identity which, I suppose, might charitably be viewed as intersecting with the racial identity theme of the main storyline. But since none of the characters are given enough space to be fleshed out as characters, let alone likeable ones, it's hard to care much either way when they all get blown up.

As with the last arc, since the creators can't show us Cable transforming the social vista of an entire country without straining credibility too far, his token victory is to win over another adherent, this time in the form of Viktoria. It doesn't work as well as it did with the kids in Peru, since we were shown that the kids had taken an interest in the philosophy in the course of the storyline. Viktoria, in contrast, seems to suddenly develop an interest three pages from the end for no very clear reason.

I want to like this story since the themes are quite promising, but unfortunately, the plot is too overloaded and complex to actually address the themes properly, let alone develop its characters. On the plus side, the art in this issue is excellent, and a welcome reminder of what Igor Kordey is capable of, coming after his awkward rush job on New X-Men #124.

Tischman had the right general idea with his approach to this book, but the actual storylines have landed frustratingly short of the mark.

X-FACTOR, on the other hand, is a pleasant surprise.

Ignore the title, which is presumably just being reused to preserve the trademark, since it has nothing to do with the actual book. This one did not sound very promising when it was first solicited - yet another X-Men spin-off miniseries with a little-known creative team. Marvel had a stab at the "teaser campaign" approach with this, but the fact is, after the X-Men Icons miniseries, they cannot seriously expect anyone to get worked up at the prospect of another X-books miniseries. The track record of quality isn't good enough.

But this is a bit more like it. In fact, the creators aren't unknown - Jeff Jensen has just been away from comics for a while, and Arthur Ranson has been working in the UK for ages. This is a nicely done book, which actually has a clear idea of why it exists. If all the X-books miniseries were this good, we'd actually welcome them.

Despite significant cameo appearances by Scott and Jean, and an allusion to Morrison's U-Men concept (played quite plausibly this time round), this is a free-standing book. The premise is straightforward - this is a book about two FBI officers who have been assigned to investigate crimes against mutants, largely as a public relations exercise. Both Kearse and Gray are decidedly ambivolent about the whole mutant concept, with Kearse in particular written as having an intense repressed hatred of mutants. But both set about their jobs professionally enough; what we have here, in other words, is an X-books police procedural.

You know how Brotherhood wanted to create a convincing ground level mutant rights movement, and failed dismally? Well, this issue achieves more in one issue than that book managed in its whole run, giving us a credibly half-witted anti-mutant terrorist group, a wannabe mutant terrorist, and an exploitative film-maker trying to leech off the back of the mutants the way he'd done in the seventies with his blaxploitation movies.

The format for this miniseries is apparently going to be three self-contained stories, and a fourth issue wrapping up an overall arc contained in subplots. That gives Jensen and Ranson an awful lot of plot to get through in this issue, but they manage it impressively. It means we get a lot of pages packed solid with panels, but the pacing is solid, and the artwork is good quality storytelling throughout. There's nothing flashy about it, but only in the sense that it's busy telling the story rather than doing pin-up art. Which is precisely the approach this book calls for. Paul Mounts' colouring job complements the art and helps the atmosphere tremendously.

This is a good issue, which is not something I had been expecting to say about it. Well worth picking up.

X-TREME X-MEN rounds off its first year, marking twelve consecutive issues of its protagonists Not Looking For The Diaries. Look, call me impatient, but a year into the book, shouldn't we have seen at least ONE story which actually has a bearing on the supposed premise of the book? I know Claremont loves his dangling plots, but aren't the diaries meant to be the focus of the book?

Anyhow, onto the story. The basic story here is that the charismatic warlord Khan has kidnapped Storm and decided that he's going to try to conquer the world and win her as his wife. And, uh, that's pretty much your lot. We're three issues into this arc with no end in sight, and if you ask me, it's dragging.

A curious opening sequence is apparently designed to sell us on the huge scale of Khan's base. What we get in practice is an impenetrable double splash page from Larroca which doesn't really look like anything much. I have a distinct feeling that Larroca intended this spread to be viewed at a 90 degree angle, where it at least makes some kind of visual sense, but for some reason it's been lettered in the normal orientation.

After this gloriously uninformative establishing shot, we get on to the plot, as Khan uses a handy plot device to get his lead thug Shaitan to impersonate Storm, presumably so that he can lead the X-Men astray. Shaitan not unreasonably protests that this is an extraordinarily silly plot, and that he'd be much better off as a big strong chap rather than a transsexual spy. Got to say, I'm with Shaitan on this one. Khan's got a thousand soldiers standing right next to him, doesn't he have anyone who actually specialises in this kind of thing, rather than wasting a perfectly good superhuman on an amateur drag job?

In any event, Khan proceeds to try and romance Storm, who plays along for all the obvious reasons. Claremont is clearly trying to sell Khan as a somewhat loveable chap, but I don't buy it. The guy conquers dimensions. The fact that he appreciates sculpture and likes riding horses does make him a romantic figure, and Claremont seems oblivious to the lunacy of having a character whose principal aim is to conquer dimensions as their absolute ruler solemnly explaining that he is not a tyrant.

Back on Earth, the X-Men fight people and advance the plot. Oh no, hold on, they don't advance the plot at all, although Lifeguard gets an "I'm LIFEGUARD" scene so that we can all grind our teeth in irritation. Slipstream runs through the same rookie dialogue that Thunderbird used to do every issue, Sage looks a bit sinister, and Rogue demonstrates her tiresome plot-device powers. With the possible exception of the Sage subplot, none of it is desperately interesting.

Not good.

DUMPED is a one-shot from the excellent Andi Watson. According to the blurb on the back cover, this is "an original work of graphic literature" produced in association with the Big Torino 2002 arts festival and the International Biennial of Young Arts. Good for them, but I feel obliged to point out that this is not an elitist piece of work aimed at people who sit around in cafes comparing beards. You will like this book. You should buy it.

This is a love story. It refers in passing to Watson's equally good miniseries Breakfast After Noon, but it's not a sequel - the main characters are new. Debs and Binny are both collectors of discarded possessions, in different senses. Debs runs a vintage clothing store which started off as an enthusiasm and is now becoming a bit of a grind. Binny, on the other hand, has the downright eccentric hobby of collecting books which have been annotated and otherwise mutilated by their previous owners.

Trust me, this all reads a lot more naturally than I'm making it sound.

It's a story about the nature of our attachment to material possessions, and also a neatly told love story which steers far enough from the genre cliches to avoid being overly obvious. As always, Watson's approach is low key, and this is very much a character piece rather than a plot-driven affair. But they're characters it's easy to identify with, and that's the crucial thing.

Watson's artwork is as minimal as ever, and he obviously subscribes to the school of thought that every line should serve a purpose. And he has the talent to pull it off - his comics aren't lacking in detail, they're simply focusing on the details that matter rather than distracting you with clutter.

Dumped is another great piece of work from this consistently impressive creator, and well worth picking up if you're not familiar with his work. (It's six dollars for fifty three pages, if you're wondering, which makes it better value than anything else I'm reviewing this week.) Go on, buy a copy.