19 december 1999

This week, the X-books that actually shipped are outnumbered by the ones that are late by seven to two. But hey! An issue of X-MAN made it out. We're blessed!

Straight from the big book of Twelve Crossover Time Killing (see the last two issues of Cable for further details), this is a dream scene. It's actually trying to do something quite clever, by showing the lead-in to Nate's brief scene in this month's Uncanny X-Men and thereby placing his comments in a different light. The idea is that Nate's just been having a dream about what the world would be like without him, and as he delivers his dialogue to Apocalypse he realises that that was the point of the dream he's just had.

Which would perhaps work if the preceding dream had any real bearing on the Twelve storyline at all. But it doesn't. In fact, in an attempt to find anything at all of significance that Nate has done in the preceding five years, Terry Kavanagh gets pretty desperate. He hinges most of the dream on what the Dark Beast would have done with the Coldsnap-9 poison gas had Nate not stopped him from using it thirty issues ago. Two problems with that. One, it's not a particularly important storyline and only serves to emphasise how little has happened in this series in five years. Two, it fudges the fact that Nate helped the Dark Beast get the gas in the first place, which undermines the point that's being made.

The dream also runs itself into serious continuity problems by telling us that if it wasn't for Nate stopping him in the Blood Brothers crossover, Stryfe would be ruling Latveria. Actually, Stryfe IS ruling Latveria, because the creators on Fantastic Four completely rewrote the ending of that storyline to put him there. (And people wonder why I fear for continuity when Claremont comes back.) Gambit's just done a story with Stryfe on the throne as well. So even though this bit is entirely consistent with what this series showed up happening, it also runs into rocky waters.

What else? Well, Nate apparently stopped Morbius the Living Vampire from biting Spider-Man, but hell, even I don't remember that story. And, well, that's pretty much it.

The issue is mostly drawn by Ben Herrera, a patchy artist at best. Although his double page spread of the devastated New York is very good, his action sequences are awfully stilted, and he's totally failed to make Nate look like a cross between himself and Caliban (which, judging from the dialogue, is what the script requested). He does do a rather good Spider-Man, but overall it's an ugly looking issue that seems to be a bit of a rush job - aside from the fact that Herrera has done better than this in the past, there's three pages at the end that look like the work of a different artist altogether.

Throw in the fact that the dream plot calls for Nate to attempt to fight people physically before thinking of using his psionic powers (which of course he turns to first thing usually, but this time the plot needs him not to think of that until late in the story, so he gets to be a cretin for the day), and it's hard to get enthusiastic about this at all. Still, only another couple of issues before Counter-X, eh?

Over at X-MEN, the Twelve plot rumbles onward. It's still very well thought out and all, but I'm becoming rather concerned as to whether there's any point to all this. I mean, what's this Twelve story actually about, other than resolving the Twelve plot and making vague apocalyptic noises to coincide with the millennium? Seemingly, not a great deal.

It's still very well thought out, though, which is always a plus. Having packed the story with red herrings up till now (and used them to pad out the Twelve list into the bargain), Davis sets about clearing the decks, disposing of Bishop, Mikhail and the Horsemen almost as afterthoughts. This lets us get down to the more focused business of a small group of X-Men trying to stop Apocalypse.

And even if the story is all a bit pointless, you've still got to like Cyclops's supposed death scene (not that I believe it for a second), in which he nobly shoves Nate out of the way of becoming Apocalypse's host body, only for his sacrifice to be totally pointless, since Apocalypse takes him over instead. It's a nice twist on reader expectations, with brilliant visuals of the merged form.

But the doubts are starting to pile up. If the Twelve are just a bunch of twelve characters whose powers happen to serve the plot, isn't that a bit underwhelming for a plot with fifteen years build-up? Isn't the stuff about Fiz inciting dissension in the Skrull ranks all a bit obvious? Isn't Apocalypse's grand scheme, which amounts to little more than making himself very powerful, a bit unoriginal?

All these problems make it impossible to be truly enthusiastic about the way this plot is going. But it's still very well told, even if it is a bit soulless, and simply by virtue of being properly thought out it's a damn sight more entertaining than most of the crossovers we've had in the last five years. And it's got Alan Davis artwork, always a plus.

I'm still enjoying it, but I've got that nagging feeling that it's totally pointless.

BLAZE OF GLORY is a miniseries from John Ostrander and Leonardo Manco, dealing with the western heroes Marvel used to publish. Since it's subtitled "The Last Ride of the Western Heroes", I'm assuming this is intended as a resolution to their various stories - something a bit more final than the slow petering out that saw print.

Personally, I've never been a big western fan. Maybe it's a generational thing. To some people, westerns are great epic tales of manly adventure in the thrilling wild west. To me, westerns are those old films that Dad used to watch on BBC2 when I was eight. The magic kind of eludes me. To me, westerns will always be a Dad thing, a genre for the middle aged. Sorry. Oh, and I hate horses too.

I'm given to understand that what Ostrander is doing here counts as revisionist western - that is, chuck out the glamorous stuff and do something a bit closer to the way things really work. I am, of course, completely unqualified to comment on any of this, since I know bugger all about the genre conventions, and bugger all about the way things really were. For example, I've never even heard the word "Exoduster" before and I have no idea whether Ostrander made it up or not.

However, I do notice that this plot seems to involve nasty people harassing a town and a bunch of heroic gunmen being rounded up to help, which I have to say doesn't seem all that revisionist to me. Which is quite right. What would be the point in doing a final adventure for all these genre heroes that abandoned their genre altogether?

The main bit of revisionism seems to come in mucking about with the origin story of Reno Jones to get rid of the romantic idea that he was a slave who was treated just like a son by his owners. I suspect that's a rather problematic concept in the 1990s whether you're being deliberately revisionist or not, so I'm not going to read too much into it.

Leonardo Manco has given the character designs a total overhaul for this series, and they're all the better for it. There's something annoyingly clean about the Marvel western heroes. Manco's versions couldn't be said to be more realistic - the dark and moody meter hits 10 on the first page and stays there for the rest of the issue - but at least they're romantically cool in a different and more contemporary way. Manco's a wonderful artist for this sort of thing, piling on the detail instead of just indulging himself in chaotic action sequences and faintly silly S&M government agents like he does in Deathlok.

Manco's art is enough on its own to get me to stick with the series; the story seems like perfectly good western material to me, but nothing particularly beyond the norm for the genre. Not that I'd know, to be honest with you. Worth a look, anyhow.