21 may 2000

By now, Robert Weinberg is settling into his rhythm on CABLE, and the style is becoming apparent. Tons of seemingly unrelated plotlines fighting for space, and the links becoming steadily apparent as the story goes on, basically. It's a difficult style to handle, because when you've only got 22 pages to play with, the end result can easily look rushed. Weinberg is certainly managing to get the right pacing, though.

This issue starts pulling together four of the ongoing subplots, by giving us an origin for the Undying; linking them to Randall Shire; and showing us that Shire is obviously a key player in the history of both the Ranshi and Harmony timelines. So while the characters haven't achieved an awful lot more by the end of the issue than when they started out, there's a definite feeling of progress here. I've always argued that one of the key elements to a successful story is a sense of direction, and Weinberg seems to have worked out not so much a direction as a highly detailed street map.

What I'm not altogether clear on is quite what Weinberg's getting at here. When the story's been worked out this thoroughly you have to assume that a point is going to emerge in due course, but it's not immediately obvious. I would guess that we're going for the ending where Cable rejects the either/or proposition he's being offered and deliberately invalidates both the Harmony and Ranshi timelines in favour of an unknown alternative, but god knows where the Undying are meant to figure in.

Michael Ryan's art is good sound storytelling, although he could stand to turn up the drama a bit on some of the key elements. Cable looks remarkably unsurprised by Blockade's suicide, whatever the script may say.

My main reservation here is that it's not apparent whether this well-executed set of (often rather familiar) story ideas is going to be able to tie up into a satisfying payoff, but this issue suggests Weinberg's at least thought it all through pretty thoroughly. Still, somehow it doesn't quite leap off the page at you, and it's lacking the big idea that would really raise it above its influences.

Over at Counter-X, GENERATION X are still dealing with the House of Correction, and three months into the storyline, we reach our first fight scene.

It's an odd storyline, this, as Ellis and Wood seem to be aiming for two types of story simultaneously. On the one hand, we've got Generation X getting chatty character development scenes to try and build the idea of them as real teenagers. Not without success, either. On the other hand, we've got the House of Correction camping it up to the heights of lunacy.

The villains get the worse of it, as they're barely even one- dimensional let alone three-dimensional characters. It's understandable that Ellis and Wood wanted to use some kind of nasty authority figure for the villains in their first arc, and even more understandable that they would want to play off the Columbine aftermath. But the House are right on the verge of being too silly to take seriously as villains, and way, way over the limit for being any kind of worthwhile comment on Columbine. Surely the point of that was cultural paranoia. This isn't paranoia and fear, this is a bunch of nasty sadistic bastards in leather. That says nothing. Nothing that needed four months to say, anyway.

They'd probably work if the rest of the book was being played for laughs or black comedy, but it isn't, really. If this book is going to try to play Generation X as "real teenagers", they'll need better villains than these to play off. Or you can do what this book is basically trying to do, namely demonise everyone who disagrees with you, and end up looking a bit stupid.

Nonetheless, the airport fight scene comes off pretty well. Steve Pugh does some lovely panels with Skin, actually making his power look useful for a change. The black rubber version of Husk works well too, although I really question the idea of giving her superhuman speed with one of her "husked" forms. Changing what she's made of is a varied enough power as it is without extending it that far. If you pursue this line, you end up with Dial H For Hero, and we all know that's not a good thing.

So there's a tone problem here; two halves of a book, perfectly good in their own right, but certainly not complementing each other. Too silly to be dramatic, too dramatic to be silly, the balance needs to be found. It's still an amusing book, but it just isn't quite clicking.

Over on MAGNETO: DARK SEDUCTION, the ever-reliable Fabian Nicieza is quietly producing one of the best miniseries the X-books have put out in a while. The only thing it's really got against it is the art, which isn't as bad as some people have made out, but certainly lacks something in getting the characters over, and is damaged by often outrageously garish colouring.

Even so, while those could stand to be improved, they're no barrier to enjoying the story. Half of this issue is political manouevring as Magneto's various allies and enemies fight over whatever mysterious thingies are kept within the town of Carrion Cove; the other half is basically Magneto giving the Scarlet Witch a tour of Genosha to try to sell her on the wonderful country he's created.

What Magneto has produced, it emerges, is basically post- revolutionary Communism. Magneto refuses to label it as such, but that's clearly what it is, with workers being assigned jobs and paid in proportion to their sector's output. The nice touch, of course, is that it's not such an unreasonable response to the Genoshan situation, and that it does actually seem to be working. Things really could be a lot worse. Quite arguably, Magneto's still within the bounds of reason here. Or alternatively, he could just be taking revenge on the humans who used to rule the place.

Given the sheer size of the Genoshan cast, Nicieza is doing a great job on putting them all over as individuals, even formerly anonymous D-grade villains like Scanner and Pipeline. Everyone's got sensible motivations, and it's genuinely difficult to know which side we should be on. Magneto's the least sympathetic character here, mainly because he's actually getting the least screen time to make it clear what he's up to, but that's the strength of the book.

Live with the art and buy it anyway. This is good work.

CITY OF SILENCE, now coming out through Image, has apparently been on the shelf ever since Warren Ellis and Gary Erskine finished it off several years ago. It's a sci-fi book, and obviously there's a certain degree of interest to be had in seeing how similar it is to Ellis's later Transmetropolitan.

You can tell it's been sitting on the shelf a while. Part of it's the graffiti namechecking bands like Pink Kross who are barely remembered now, let alone in a century's time. But most of it is the fact that this is a rather less subtle Warren Ellis.

Where Transmet glosses over the logical problems with the sheer level of technology at play, City of Silence spins its premise off that same problem. The level of technology has become so high that new ideas need to be kept under strict control by the secret police. Otherwise, as the captain says, "in this day and age, one moron with secret power could kill us all with adulterated household appliances!"

It's an interesting idea, technology driving to the point where civil liberties can no longer be respected because the legitimate needs of the many have to take precedence over the enormous damage that could be caused by the unmonitored few. However, rather than play it straight, Ellis has reached for the surrealism, and laid it on thick.

Consequently, our three lead characters - Gitane, Frost and Litany of the secret police - spend the issue in increasingly lunatic costumes and situations, played deadpan, but blatantly absurd nonetheless. Why are they walking on crutches for two panels? Why turn up dressed as angels at the end? Why the shamelessly gratuitous nudity? Well, because they can.

It's not a story, it's a barrage of nonsensical ideas, neatly illustrated by Gary Erskine, who keeps the thing superficially grounded in reality while pushing the absurdity as far as he can go. Some of the more outrageous stuff (the infection of "chronal leprosy" in Halflife Square) has an almost Silver Age feel to it, and it's certainly funny, even if it pushes way too far to work as anything other than a dark gagfest.

Still, if you're going to read wildly incoherent splatterings of weird and entertaining concepts, rather this than JLA. This is outright surrealism, and it won't be to all tastes, but it certainly deserved to be lifted off the shelf as an intriguing curio for Ellis fans.