20 june 1999

The Rage Against The Machine crossover continues in X-MEN #91, and cracks are beginning to emerge in this storyline.

Obviously the story has a difficult brief, since it has to work in three pretty much unrelated characters in order to trail their upcoming books, while simultaneously telling a decent story in its own right. The approach that's been taken is a reasonable one - keep the main plot to a minimum (and tie it up outside the regular books in an annual) and concentrate instead on the X-Men getting back to Earth.

But unfortunately so far the core plot isn't desperately interesting. I'm rather bored of rogue divisions of SHIELD engaging in mad scientific experiments, and I find the whole idea of a combination of Machine Man and Deathlok as some kind of ultimate weapon decidedly far-fetched. Neither of them is all that powerful, and in particular the story hasn't done the necessary work to convince me that a C-list hero like Machine Man is that much of a threat to anyone.

Since the X-Men don't do very much this issue ("Look, somebody's taken Douglock, we'd best go after them"), the real story is going on aboard the SHIELD Helicarrier, where with plot simplicity in mind the creators have ensured that Deathlok, Machine Man and Douglock are all pretty much comatose for the entirety of the story. Instead we have nasty people from SHIELD talking about stepping up production of Deathloks, and the Red Skull showing up at the end as the villain behind Douglock's capture. I just can't get very worked up about either of them. The Skull's a one-note character who only works in very specific stories (of which this doesn't seem to be one), and rogue SHIELD agents - again? At least this time the story isn't acting like this comes as a surprise to anyone.

Back at the mansion, the character material is patchy. Rogue has some good moments, as does Xavier (whose grouchiness is wisely played down this issue - no need to hammer the point). Wolverine has an over the top speech about how he's come to realise what a nice bloke Xavier is, which would have worked okay if it had had a more grudging tone to it. Marrow, on the other hand, seems to have undergone a Road to Damascus conversion. It's desperately implausible character development which seems to stem from a perfectly legitimate desire to change her attitude, running at far too fast a pace.

Guest art comes from Andrew Robinson, the cover artist on X-Man. His work on X-Man is decidedly more imaginative than what we see here, so either he's not a very good interior artist, or he's toning himself down in recognition of his status as a fill-in artist. His work here is rather patchy, particularly with some rather skewed faces, but it tells the story well enough. There's two pages at the end quite plainly by another uncredited artist which are utterly dreadful and suggest the whole issue may be something of a rush job. (Judging from the inconsistent way in which some of the characters are drawn, I strongly suspect there are at least different uncredited inkers on the three previous pages as well.)

This is alright, and it's certainly far from being the all-dominating trailer for the M-Tech line that I'd feared, but it's nothing particularly special.

NEW WARRIORS #0 was by all accounts something of a rush job and it's therefore desperately unfair to review it at all. But tough.

It's a nine page story which, let's face it, isn't really a story at all. There's no plot here, just a selection of character vignettes designed to introduce new readers (specifically, Wizard readers, since they're the ones who are getting the thing) to the New Warriors and give them a flavour of what's coming.

Read on that level, it's pretty successful. Of course, the heart sinks on the first couple of pages when it becomes clear that Rage is going to recite the team history with the aid of an awful lot of reprinted art. This is easily the weakest bit of the story, partly because of the poor quality of the reprinting, but partly because of the contrived nature of Rage's speech. He's supposed to be telling a class of schoolkids about his life as a superhero; his sketchy recounting of the team's history (including references to his teammates personal lives) makes this look all too much like a flimsy pretext. It is, of course, but the trick is to disguise it.

Speedball's section is him pondering how to reform the New Warriors. Having him thinking of the right people who are actually going to join would be boring, of course, so this scene works by showing up who he _thinks_ are the most likely members to rejoin.

Nova and Namorita get a nice enough little sequence which really just sums up their status quo over in his solo title, and that's fair enough.

Turbo's page is an attempt to justify her new costume as a matter of characterisation. Since I've never read any books where she had a speaking part, I'm not really qualified to say how well the explanation given works, but the character (and her relationship with her late brother) is sketched out effectively.

Aegis's origin page is, well, a kid finding a piece of armour, though it still manages to establish the character's background. After several reads, though, I still can't work out what that sound effect is supposed to sound like. Oooooommmmm. I suppose it's meant to be ooooommmminous, but it seems rather over the top to me.

Finally, Bolt, making a surprise transfer from the League of Cancelled Heroes' Sidekicks to the big time (well, at least he'll be a main character in a series, however things go for the title). Since this guy was hiding out in Florida on the witness protection programme, getting him back into circulation is rather tricky, and Faerber falls back here on the rather aged "I can't just hide while awful things are happening" routine. Hopefully this will get fleshed out a bit in the series, since at present it's rather contrived.

On the whole, the preview succeeds in what it's trying to do, namely parade its characters and persuade readers that they'd be interesting to read about every month. And Steve Scott's art looks much better than some of the shakier preview art already released might have made you think. Yup, a promising start to the new series here.

Incidentally, this is a giveaway with the Wizard Avengers Special, which due to an unfortunate quirk of scheduling has the misfortune to be interviewing an awful lot of creators about their upcoming plans for books they've subsequently quit. Which is a shame.