16 june 2002

CABLE takes the prize for this week's best X-book against very thin competition. Of course, by this point the book has drifted so far from its roots that it's more accurately described as a series about a middle aged soldier wandering the trouble spots of the world, who used to be in the X-Men but doesn't talk about it any more.

Consequently, it's understandable that a lot of the long-time Cable readers don't much enjoy the current direction, since it's a totally different book from the one they'd been reading in the past. However, Darko Macan's second issue shows again that he's attempting to strike a balance between pursuing the "world tour" aspect of the Tischmann run, and actually writing stories about the lead character (who for the last year or so had been relegated to a generic protagonist who wandered into situations he had nothing to do with and sorted them out before moving on).

As the book coasts towards the Soldier X relaunch, this is a second consecutive single-issue story. We're in Kazakhstan this month, and quite what Cable is doing there in the first place isn't really addressed. Maybe he's on holiday. In any event, he stumbles upon a scheme by two brothers to raise a quick buck by selling a cast-off Russian nuke to the USA, and a novice SHIELD agent sent to deal with them by... well, giving them the money and going home, really.

Needless to say, things don't go quite as straightforwardly as all that - and you may well be wondering what any of this has got to do with Cable as a character. The answer is, directly, not a great deal. But Macan is working on a subplot based on the idea he inherited from Tischmann that Cable's powers are dangerously out of control, and that continues to simmer nicely in the background. Rather than have Cable do the usual hand-wringing about the number of people he inadvertantly mind-wiped last month, Macan takes a more interesting route.

Igor Kordey is taking the month off, and given his cripplingly heavy schedule I can well understand why. Guest art instead comes from Mike Huddleston, who drew Oni's miniseries The Coffin. (Still available in trade paperback, by the way, and worth a look.) He inked that book himself; here, he's inked by Chris Stanisci, who gives the art a slightly crisper feel. Aside from the minor annoyance of Joy seemingly maintaining flawless make-up even while riding a horse over the Kazakhstan wilderness, the end result is some wonderful artwork which really adds depth to the characters.

The whole story is closer in tone to Queen & Country than to a traditional X-book, but that's no bad thing. Taken on its own terms, this is a very good issue.

SABRETOOTH: MARY SHELLEY OVERDRIVE comes nine years after the first Sabretooth miniseries, and at least five years after the last person ceased to give a toss about the character. Conventional wisdom has it that a large part of the reason for the character's decline over the 1990s was Marvel's mistaken desire to keep using him as a protagonist, when all the traits that made him a popular character in the first place only suited him for being a villain. (See also: Venom.)

Over the last few years, Sabretooth was reduced first to an angular cartoon in the not-very-good later period of X-Factor, before turning up of late in Wolverine, wearing the sort of clothing that suggested he had recently escaped from a 1970s theme party. That leaves Dan Jolley and Greg Scott with an uphill struggle in writing a successful miniseries with him in 2002.

While this issue could certainly be a lot worse, it never really manages to convince me that there's any particular point in the whole exercise. Faced with the obvious problem that Sabretooth is a directionless psychopath, Jolley attempts to give him a motivation to fight the villains by having him stumble into an attempted hit, be attacked by the villains, and then give him a desire to fight back. All fair enough so far as it goes, but it leaves the book with an unfortunate case of Generic Protagonist Syndrome. Sure, Sabretooth will fight the nasty gunmen who shot him in the throat, but then so would 99% of the Marvel Universe population. It doesn't exactly shed light on his character.

Then again, it's not like Sabretooth's really got much of a character. He worked as a Wolverine villain because he was simply a personification of the "berserker rage" tendencies which Wolverine spent most of the 1980s trying to overcome. That interplay made a strength of the fact that Sabretooth only had one dimension. Placed in virtually any other story, he falls victim to the same problem that most serial killer characters have - they just aren't very interesting people. Why do they kill people? Because they're violent lunatics. Can we go home now?

For that matter, the story which Sabretooth is plugged into isn't all that exciting either. A bunch of dead gunmen are trying to kill a blonde woman. The gunmen just stand around being mysterious and dead, and the blonde woman is a cipher whose only function is to alternately screw Sabretooth and protest her ignorance of the plot. I really don't care whether she lives or dies, which is a shame considering that it's the cliffhanger.

The art's not bad, although the narrative flow is choppy at times - the panel with Sabretooth finding the first gunman on the roof doesn't work, for example, because everyone seems to be standing in plain sight of one another. The colouring helps to build the mood, though.

Ultimately, this book has the same problems you'd expect from a Sabretooth miniseries - the character simply isn't strong enough or deep enough to carry his own story, and the plot itself isn't desperately interesting in its own right either.

WOLVERINE #177.

For the benefit of those lucky souls who have not read the book, I will summarise the plot. In so doing, I ask you to remember that this story is intended to be taken seriously. I know that in summary form, it reads like a cross between Howard the Duck and Battle Pope. Please bear in mind: there are no jokes. At least, none that are intentional.

Wolverine is invited to a bar in Greenwich Village by his friend Father Braun. Braun wants to have a secret meeting about a matter of grave importance, which is no doubt why he has turned up in the bar in full priest's robes, carrying a sword, and with a hairstyle so absurd that it would draw stares from four blocks away.

Father Braun explains that his old mentor, Cardinal Panzer, is leading a "small, terribly corrupt faction of the Vatican's power elite." Panzer, it turns out, is using an evil mind control device which produces "Extra-Low Frequency Vibration Emanations - also called Elves." He has begun using the Elves to brainwash the entire population of New York, and convert them to Catholicism.

I'll say that again in case you couldn't quite believe it the first time round. Evil Cardinal Panzer, the Anti-Pope, is using super-scientific Elves to turn all of New York into Catholics.

Stick with me, we're only on page four. Wolverine and Father Braun are attacked on the street by a sub-ninja villain in a bad costume. Braun identifies him as "Dogma, Bishop of Assassins - the Enlightened Soul!" Yes, that's right - the Marvel Universe Vatican apparently has its own in-house supervillain bishop.

After several pages of poorly choreographed fighting, Wolverine and the sword-wielding priest manage to jab him with something or other, which apparently causes him a lot of pain. Dogma then runs away, and Braun again helpfully explains the plot by exclaiming "He flees to avoid the authorities!" Um, what authorities would those be? Oh yes, the non-existent ones who aren't in the story at all. Those authorities.

Wolverine uses his superhuman senses to trace the Elves back to the Brooklyn Bridge. Braun says he can't believe this is actually happening. Nor can I. A group of top secret anti- Vatican commandos attack, and Wolverine and Braun get captured. Well, actually, Wolverine doesn't get captured, he just gets knocked off the bridge. But he's captured in the next scene we see him in, so presumably that's how we were meant to take it, even though "hero gets knocked off the bridge" normally just means he swims to the bank.

Three days later in the Vatican, Panzer has Braun tortured by a woman with big tits. The, uh, Catholicism motif looks to have gone out of the window at this point. But "later, on the streets of Rome", we get an outside shot of a transit van, and we're told that inside, some gunmen are pointing guns at Wolverine with a view to shooting him in the head "if he so much as blinks." Well, that's not going to do them any good, the bullets will just bounce off. Besides which, he's inevitably going to blink when he wakes up, so that's a pretty stupid order by any standards.

That was the end of the story, by the way. You might not have noticed due to the lamentable pacing and inability to build any sort of tension whatsoever.

So let's sum up. We have a dreadful story, based on the ludicrous premise of a supervillain Cardinal who wants to mass- convert New York with mind-control Elves. We have a supporting character in Father Braun who has no personality and simply spends the entire story wandering around dressed like a twat, waving a sword around, and delivering expository dialogue. We have a spandex-clad Bishop of Assassins. And we have a tacked-on ending that completely fails to generate any interest at all. Plus, some ugly and unimpressive art from Dan Fraga.

Oh, and there's no actual point in all the Catholicism stuff, by the way. It's not like the story actually has anything to say about religion. Or about the characters. Or about anything.

This is a staggeringly terrible comic. Believe me, the reason why this review is unremittingly negative is that there are simply no good points to identify. It is literally laughable - I burst into fits of giggles several times while trying to read the book.

And god help us, it's only the first half of a two-parter.

X-TREME X-MEN is still in the Khan invasion plot, and it still isn't finished, and I'm still not desperately interested in it.

We kick off with Rogue still in Madripoor, being confronted by Vargas. That gets a splash page and a sideways-on double splash, which seems a touch excessive given that the plotline is then forgotten about for the rest of the issue. The idea seems to be that Vargas is coming after Rogue again because Psylocke saved her the first time round, although quite why Vargas is bothered hasn't really been addressed so far. I have a nasty feeling that this character is on the fast train to mouthing platitudes about honour and taking random but plot-convenient actions on that basis. We shall see.

A reporter spends a thrilling page recapping the plot for newcomers. (For god's sake, what's wrong with text recap pages, people? Same amount of space, more info, less intrusive.) And Khan wonders where the X-Men is. In short, not much happens for a while.

Cut to a group of Khan's soldiers, who spend another page recapping the Khan/Storm romance subplot before the X-Men turn up disguised as other soldiers and the plot finally gets started (on page 8). They react to Lifeguard as a Shi'ar Princess, and then rumble the X-Men, so we get a few pages of fighting. When the dust clears, Bishop concludes that Lifeguard must apparently be the child of Shi'ar royalty, on evidence which would have to be regarded as tenuous by any standards. (So she looks like a Shi'ar princess. Maybe that's just her powers disguising her. Maybe her mother's only royalty in another dimension. Maybe if this plot made sense, I'd care.)

Meanwhile, as I progressively lose interest in even reviewing this book, Sage reveals that she was once sold to a harem, and Storm seduces Khan before being attacked by jealous members of his own harem.

It's largely inoffensive but unexceptional, which means that the existing Claremont fans will be content enough with it, and the rest of you need not trouble yourselves.

I nearly batted 100% down to the capsule reviews due to time constraints, but it's way too good to leave down there.

100% is a five-issue Vertigo mini by Paul Pope. Unusually, the format is 48 pages black and white, which makes that six dollar price tag a little more palatable.

It's a sci-fi book of sorts, although really it's a character driven book which just happens to be in a sci-fi environment. Thankfully, it isn't a dystopian future, but instead comes across as a more hi-tech, and somewhat more exaggerated, version of the present. Pope may be stretching credibility, I admit, in positing a future America which has banned guns and legalised marijuana, but hell, we can all dream.

The parallel stories follow various staff of the Catshack nightclub as they buy illegal firearms, plan to start their own businesses, try and get laid, or just generally display pretty much the same sort of universal concerns they'd have had in any other time period. Pope's characters are believable, and their world feels like a fully rounded society. The inside cover notes make it clear that the world is caricatured to some extent, but in the story itself, it feels right.

The standout sequence is the gun-buying chapter, which includes ten pages without dialogue. Yes, it's the same trick I hated when Marvel inflicted a whole month of it on us, but this time it's used properly, for effect, and it works wonderfully.

I know it's expensive, but you really should pick this up. It's a great book.