18 march 2001

Scott Lobdell continues to produce much more interesting work on X-MEN than he does in his miniseries. This is possibly because nobody can remember quite why they wanted to do Blink or Gambit & Bishop in the first place. The X-Men books, on the other hand, seem to have a pretty strong idea of where they're heading.

This issue is the prelude to "Eve of Destruction", the upcoming storyline which will be the last we see of the X-books before Casey and Morrison come in to give everything a makeover. The plan of action throughout Lobdell's interim run seems to have been to dispose of as many outstanding storylines as humanly possible, leaving Casey and Morrison with a nice clean sheet. If it can't be ignored, it has to be disposed of now. Frankly, as far as the X-books go, it's something of a novelty to see them recognising that plots ought to be resolved at all, so this alone is something to be welcomed.

But how to dispose of all those plots in so short a time? I rather suspect Lobdell is heading for the apocalypse approach, where a whole lot of stories are going to be rendered moot (and therefore disposable) by doing something really big that changes the landscape in preparation for Morrison and Casey. That's certainly the approach that this issue seems to be signifying, telling us that now the Legacy Virus is under control, Magneto is going to declare war on the rest of the planet with his army of mutants. It would seem surprising if they're actually going to do the human/mutant war at all, let alone in an interim storyline, but presumably this is heading towards disentangling Magneto from Genosha and doing something significant to change the face of the human/mutant relationship.

It would be stretching a point to call this issue a story. It's meant to be a news report on the position in Genosha as Magneto prepares for the war, but basically that means that it starts off by recapping major recent plot developments, and then heads on to updating us on the position of major characters. Normally I'd say this was a rather cheap way of fast-forwarding through all the set-up for a major storyline, and it is, but given the time available to send Genosha from third-world hellhole to credible world threat, this is a necessary evil. It's also reassuring to see that although Lobdell made a dreadful hash of Magneto in some of his original X-Men stories, he's pitched it about right in this issue. He's still a villain, but you can see his point of view, which is the key thing in making the character work.

Leinil Francis Yu seems more awake than he's been in ages. After months of rather disappointing work from him on the X-books, he seems to be finding something in Lobdell's stories to get his teeth into. It's rather irritating that he obviously hasn't been given any references to draw Trish Tilby from (although it's equally irritating that nobody took the obvious way around that by changing the character's name), and his style really doesn't fit for Captain America at all, but the issue scores highly on atmosphere.

The issue's biggest failing is that this really is just a prelude, and it's certainly not a story in its own right. But as trailers go, it's a very effective one. Event stories have never really been Scott Lobdell's forte - so far his run has kept to smaller scale stories which play more to his strengths - but this is a promising start.

X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS rumbles on towards cancellation, and by now you undoubtedly know the routine. Yes, it's the best thing John Byrne's done in quite a while; no, that's not saying much. It's a readable enough book, moderately entertaining in its own right, but thoroughly dispensable stuff.

This issue introduces the Promise, a group who are keeping themselves in suspended animation until after the war between humans and mutants is over. Quite what they're planning to do after that isn't awfully clear - they mutter something about the mutants needing voices of reason once they've won the war, but the logic of this escapes me, nor do they make it at all clear what they're planning to tell these victorious mutants after having slept through World War III. For that matter, their attempt to distinguish this philosophy from both Xavier's and Magneto's seems forced as well - Magneto apparently believes in conquest rather than war, but this is hair-splitting.

Anyhow, the Promise pop out of suspended animation every so often, recruit a new member, and go back to sleep. For some unclear reason they want Polaris (the entirety of humanity to choose from, and they go for Polaris?!), so they kidnap her. Meanwhile, the X-Men show up, are confused with a load of hallucinations and basically repeat the same "gosh, everything's an illusion" fight Byrne's already done once before in this series.

Byrne's a smooth enough storyteller to distract attention from the rather serious concept difficulties with this story, but the more you think about it, the more you realise it doesn't really make sense. Those of you who still think Marvel are out of their minds for cancelling this book will probably be very happy with it; everyone else can feel confident that they're not missing anything.

JUST A PILGRIM is a new series that Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra are publishing through Black Bull, which at least guarantees it tons of wholly impartial coverage. And, er... well, do you ever get the feeling Garth Ennis is stuck in a rut?

I have a theory that one day, Garth Ennis will publish the ultimate Garth Ennis comic, forever purging his obsession with certain repeating themes. The lead character will be a chain-smoking, hard-drinking, Irish-American, Catholic, ex-military western hero type. Every issue will be guaranteed to contain comedy gratuitous violence, at least one comedy anal violation, and at least one skewed and mildly blasphemous portrayal of Christianity. Every fifth issue will be a hard- bitten but touching story about the military mindset, particularly the mutual loyalty of the ordinary soldier.

The series will be promoted by the distribution of a DIY Garth Ennis kit, allowing you to replicate the unique atmosphere of a Garth Ennis story in the privacy of your own home. The kit will include a gun, a selection of western videos, a year's supply of fags and Guinness, and a set of anal rosary beads.

Until this blessed distillation of pure Ennis is released, devotees will simply have to make do with books like Just A Pilgrim, which don't quite fit into the pure formula, but are awfully close. Comedy ultra-violence? Check. Protagonist who looks like a western hero? Check. Twisted Christian imagery? Check. Cowardly ex-military type who will probably end up being shown up as a traitor to his regiment in a touching yet hard- bitten story about the mutual loyalty of the military mindset? Oh, probably. Scene of comedy anal violation? Check.

None of which is to say that this is a bad issue - it's a typically entertaining Ennis story - but it is, ultimately, Ennis doing some of his regular routines in a different setting. The premise is that it's a post-apocalyptic future, and a wandering group of travellers are rescued by a gun-toting, western-hero-type Christian loony. If you read Ennis' stories regularly, then you've seen much of this before. That doesn't mean you won't enjoy it here - he's an excellent storyteller, he doesn't produce bad comics - but you have seen it before. If you haven't read Ennis' stories before, you might as well buy a Preacher trade paperback and cut to the chase.

Ennis and Ezquerra work well as a team, and the pacing and timing here as excellent. The story itself is just fine, with the possible exception of the rather cloying brat who's being positioned as the audience's point of view. It achieves what it sets out to do. I just can't help feeling Ennis would benefit from trying something else for a change.

The POWERS COLORING/ACTIVITY BOOK is one of those things that sounded like an awfully good idea in theory, but turns out to be rather harder to make work as a full length publication.

The joke is that this is the colouring and activity book that they hand out to little kids in the Powers universe, telling them all about superheroes and how to deal with them. As it says at the beginning, "I will remind my relatives and friends how important it is to use safety all day long because this world is filled with super-powered maniacs and assorted radioactive menaces hellbent on destroying the Universe."

In theory this should be very funny, but the problem is that this book can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be a parody of an activity book, or a mock artifact from the Powers world. It kicks off with a series of "how to avoid being hurt by superheroes" jokes, which are funny if a bit repetitive. There's a nice routine on how to tell if your father is secretly a supervillain. There's a rather hackneyed, but still moderately amusing, sequence parodying superhero origins.

And then... there's a word search, which when all's said and done is just a word search. There's a join the dots puzzle, where the joke is presumably meant to be that it's incredibly simple. There's a "spot the difference" puzzle. This doesn't become a hilarious parody of a spot the difference puzzle just by virtue of having a Powers character in it. It's simply a spot the difference puzzle. This stuff isn't funny. It's accurate, but that's not really the point.

The end result is an uncomfortable hybrid, something you plainly wouldn't give to real kids (who aren't the audience for Powers anyway), and something that's half composed of material an adult audience isn't going to have much use for. Doubtless this seemed incredibly funny after a few pints, but in the cold light of day you have to wonder what the point was.