year in review 2001 - part 3

Any look back on the year wouldn't be complete without trudging our way through the one-shots and miniseries. So, without further ado...

SENTRY/X-MEN was one of a string of issues produced to tie in to Paul Jenkins' Sentry miniseries, and I'm really only including it here to be a completist. It's one of the less successful tie-ins - the attempt to evoke a simpler period of superheroes is overplayed, since the X-Men never fought comedy DC Silver Age villains, even back in the sixties, and Mark Texeira is somewhat miscast on the art.

X-MEN: MAGIK, which tied up in the first week of January 2001, was a thoroughly forgettable series. It was meant to establish Amanda Sefton as the new Magik, but didn't really get anywhere with that. Instead, it contained some unsuccessful surrealism (the heroine summoning her army by blowing on a tuba was a particularly stupid image), some inconsistent artwork by Liam Sharpe (who was trying to do two art styles simultaneously, but they clashed hopelessly), and a plot that didn't have much of a pay-off.

About the nicest thing to be said about GAMBIT & BISHOP is that, if nothing else, it was better than Mutant X. Apparently this series suffered from multiple rewrites in an attempt to get it to fit in with the ever-changing plans for the X-Men relaunch. Despite generally likeable artwork, the story here was all over the place, and this one is best forgotten.

EXCALIBUR was in fact a Captain Britain miniseries which served to put Brian Braddock on the throne of Otherworld, for... well, I'm not quite sure what the long term point of the exercise was, if any. The series ended with a teaser for a Kang storyline, which would suggest that there was meant to be some other story following, but it shows no signs of actually appearing. This one was passable enough, but still seemed unnecessary.

The last sighting of the continuity-laden X-Men story was in X-MEN FOREVER, which had the misfortune to come out at precisely the time when that sort of thing was becoming dreadfully unfashionable. It also, admittedly, had an incredibly dense plot, and has ended up looking rather inconsequential because all of the protagonists' character development in the series has been aggressively ignored by future writers. Nonetheless, I've got some affection for the book, partly because I helped check the continuity on it, and partly because I enjoy Kevin Maguire's artwork and the skim through the history. In the circumstances, it may work better viewed as a door being closed on the past.

X-MEN: SEARCH FOR CYCLOPS was the miniseries that Bill Jemas singled out as the sort of thing he'd rather Marvel didn't publish becuase it was so pointless. This was really a bit harsh on a basically okay miniseries - Jemas' point was simply that this was an entire miniseries dedicated to hitting the reset button, and that if Marvel weren't planning to leave Cyclops dead, then they damn well shouldn't have killed him off in the first place. And I'd agree with him wholeheartedly on that. As it is, this was a noble attempt to try and find something interesting to do in the course of hitting the reset button, but when all's said and done, the book is what it is.

BLINK was an unimpressive miniseries which was meant to be trailing Exiles, but if anything served to dampen interest in the character. Largely missable stuff.

CYCLOPS was the first of the X-Men Icons miniseries, in which Marvel have unfathomably decided to revive the ever-hated solo minis. These books were only sporadically competent back in the nineties, and while the Icons books have certainly hit a higher level of quality, they've still been largely forgettable. Cyclops was an oddly structured book in which the title character lurched from unrelated peril to unrelated peril before bumping off the villain in issue #4. It was okay, but it still didn't answer the question "why?"

ROGUE's second miniseries was a disaster, largely because of the woefully misguided decision to do an out-of-continuity story with a weird hybrid version of the comic, film and TV versions of the character. But these versions of the character have little to nothing in common besides the name - the film version is just an ingenue who serves as the audience's point of identification and has powers largely dissimilar from the comic version. Ending up with a Rogue unrecognisable as Rogue (any of them), this miniseries is an object lesson in the outer limit where the continuity-hostile approach falls flat on its face. Do it properly, or don't do it at all.

ORIGIN, now halfway through its run, is the long-awaited history of Wolverine. It spent its first three issues in a mansion in Alberta, and you might have thought that the decision to play the book as a costume drama would be a crashing disappointment to the character's fans. However, it continues to fly off the shelves. I'm not convinced by this book - it looks to me like it's trying far too hard to persuade us, and perhaps itself, that it's a real work of art and not just an exercise in milking the fans.

X-TREME X-MEN: SAVAGE LAND is like X-Treme X-Men, but significantly worse. Clunky artwork, an uninspiring plot, and poorly defined characters make this a thoroughly missable title. Even the hardcore Claremont fanbase seem unenthused by this one.

ICEMAN is my favourite of the Icons miniseries so far. It's not particularly stunning, but it does have some nice ideas floating around, and Karl Kerschl's artwork is frequently very impressive. Another two issues still to go on this one. If we must have the solo miniseries back again, at least they can be readable.

ELEKTRA/WOLVERINE: REDEEMER is a serialised illustrated novel, and not strictly a comic at all. The official party line, judging from other reviewers, is that this is a staggeringly good comic. I quite liked it, but I have some reservations - the illustrations just don't mesh with the image I'm getting from the text, and really the illustrated prose story is never a format I've particularly liked.

NIGHTCRAWLER, finally, is two issues into a miniseries about the slave trade. It has some reasonably interesting things to say about slavery, but it's not quite so clear what it's got to say about Nightcrawler. The book still gives the impression that the writer wanted to do a story about slavery, and has chosen to bolt it onto Nightcrawler since that's the character he was offered.

So, that's 2001. Having had most of the upheavals already this year, there doesn't seem much point in doing a look ahead to 2002 - with no creative changes announced aside from Deadpool, we can presumably look forward to more of the same. And with 2001 as a generally good year for the X-books, that's a good thing.

The glaring exception, of course, is Uncanny X-Men. Surely that book is going to see changes one way or the other in 2002. The question is who's going to be around to make them.

Now then... this week's comics.

AGENCY #5 - God's Man plays mind games with Virtual Jonez, in a story replete with deeply unpleasant images of fingernail torture. For my taste, this issue is just slightly too dark. I prefer the book when it's played more for black comedy. Rather good, in an oppressive way, even so.

B+

AVENGERS #49 - Kang invades Earth (for the nth issue running) and does rather well for himself. I fall firmly into the camp which finds that the silence detracts from the drama, rather than adding to it. I can see what it seems to be trying to do - air of sombre menace, etc etc - but it doesn't work for me.

B-

BLOODSTONE #3 - More monster fighting. Somewhere in here, there's an interesting premise, but the pacing is very odd. Last issue's cliffhanger is despatched in the first half of the book and we go straight back to the mansion to pursue the original plot again. I can see this working as an ongoing title, oddly enough, but as a miniseries it feels a bit awkward.

B-

CATWOMAN #2 - Catwoman investigates a serial killer who is going after prostitutes in Gotham. Some interesting panel layouts make the art seem a bit less retro this month, and while the villain is a bit generic, he's doing his job in establishing Catwoman's new direction for herself. She does seem to be going for a rather narrow niche in the market (she spends half a page giving a rather nitpicking explanation of how she differs from Batman), but it's a solid start. Just a shame that the last few years of Batman stories, even without having read them, have destroyed my ability to believe that anywhere in Gotham has any history. How many times have they rebuilt that damn city by now?

A-

DEADPOOL #61 - Various characters attend Deadpool's funeral, almost none of whom have any credible motivation to do so. The Constrictor, yes. Bullseye, yes. The Black Panther? I think not. Anyhow, Tieri plays off an old Joe Kelly storyline to revive Deadpool without seeming too absurd. Unfortunately, the issue reads largely as a reminder of characters from back when this book was excellent as opposed to merely passable.

C+

DEFENDERS #12 - Two stories, starting with a silent story by Larsen which takes an awfully long time to make its point, which wasn't exactly a killer point to begin with. The second story is a trailer for Order, and shows some definitive promise. The much smoother art style of Ivan Reis will be welcome to those who didn't care for Larsen's work (and there seemed to be an awful lot of them). A bit expensive to pick up just for the back-up, though.

B+

ELEKTRA #6 - Elektra visits New York and fights a generic martial artist who we haven't seen before. A bit dull, to tell the truth. A silent month story, as if you hadn't guessed.

C

JLA #61 - Joe Kelly debuts as writer, and sticks relatively close to the existing formula in this story. A bit more zing in the dialogue, but basically what you've come to expect. I think he's meant to have plans to shake up the roster a bit in due course, though, so I'll stick with it. Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen's art seems a bit cluttered on the busier scenes, but does the job the rest of the time. The back-up strip is a trailer for Kurt Busiek's Power Company, which sets out the concept neatly enough. Naturally, my anti- patriotism alarm bells are already ringing at the fact that the one character to express concerns about the commercial nature of the operation is wearing the stars and stripes, but I assume Busiek has a bit more subtlety than that, so we'll see how it settles down.

B+

JLA: INCARNATIONS #7 - On to the Morrison league, but Ostrander plays this as a sequel to JLA: Year One in order to try and bring everything full circle. Okay, but missable.

B

NIGHTCRAWLER #2 - Nightcrawler helps some slaves to escape and angsts over the difficulties of solving complex social problems. This still seems to cast Nightcrawler in a rather generic role, but Chris Kipiniak is dealing quite well with the issues he's chosen to raise.

B+

PROMETHEA #18 - Everything is red, and we get a lecture about some more bits of mysticism. Even Moore seems to find this issue's subject a bit dull, and consequently he goes off to tell us about demons and anti-magic or whatever it's called, and even remembers to include a bit of the plot. Consequently, this issue is less obviously lecture-based than we've seen for a while, and for my money that's a welcome step towards subtlety. Ideal for fans of the colour red.

A-

SPIDER-MAN'S TANGLED WEB #9 - End of the "Gentleman's Agreement" three-parter, and you'll be pleased to hear that everything works out okay in the end. I'm wondering whether this story might perhaps have been more effective in two issues, but then it might have been a bit of a crunch. Pretty good, but it goes without saying that you won't be wanting this unless you've read the rest of the story.

B+

ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP #11 - Spider-Man and the X-Men, with art from Chynna Clugston-Major. Since CCM is at her strongest on character- based work, what we have here is the X-Men and Spider-Man casts bumping into one another at the mall and having a chat. And yes, this is good, and you would like to read it. CCM's work seems surprisingly at home here, although her Wolverine looks at least thirty years too young. Well worth picking up, anyhow.

A

WOLVERINE #171 - Some characters fight one another for twenty-two pages. Cripplingly boring. A silent issue, of course.

D

X-TREME X-MEN 2001 - Rogue ties up the Shadow King storyline. Pretty much the usual Claremont material, and you undoubtedly know by now whether you like it or not. This one does suffer from a glaring plot hole - if the Shadow King is helpfully contained after all, then how exactly was he possessing all those people earlier in the issue, and what did the X-Men do to stop him doing it again? Nothing, from the look of it.

C+

And that's that.

Next week, Exiles gets back to normal; the Iceman miniseries continues; X-Treme X-Men: Savage Land concludes; and New X-Men's silent issue will be coming out.

That means the late books list will stand at: Origin #4 (should have been out in November), Uncanny X-Men 2001, Elektra & Wolverine #2, Brotherhood #8, X-Force #123, Origin #5 (all of which should have come out in December), and Uncanny X-Men #402 (missing its shipping date next week).

Now - drink.