21 July 2002

A bit of housekeeping to start, this week. I'm presently aiming to have the first phase of the website overhaul up at the start of August. Thanks to everyone who's made suggestions, most of which were to the effect of asking me not to clutter up the site with adverts. Don't worry, I won't.

Plenty of interesting comics to come. But first, MORLOCKS. Any of you still reading this? Anyone?

No, I didn't think so. Well, this is the final issue of the miniseries, in which the Morlocks gang up and defeat the nasty Sentinels. And if you're finding it a bit of a stretch that a handful of untrained mutants with unimpressive powers could march into a hangar full of giant killer robots and live, then so am I. But that's the way it goes.

While this isn't a fundamentally awful comic, it suffers from a lack of interesting characters. The Morlocks themselves are all rather watery, and the villains are sort of generic evil military types who stand around congratulating one another over "complete Morlock extermination." Which means that they don't have much more character than the Sentinels.

Like all too many X-office miniseries, this is an inoffensive comic which is totally missable.

Well, that's that out of the way. On to NEW X-MEN.

Grant Morrison is obviously having fun with this arc. Sure, it's a story about a human-Sentinel hybrid slaughtering people in the Channel Tunnel, but he's still having fun. In many ways this is the most conventional superhero story he's done so far.

It's really Fantomex's story. Although he's repeatedly described as a terrorist, there's actually no evidence of that - he seems more interested in theft and blackmail. Reading between the lines, my guess is that when Fantomex calls himself a terrorist, he's being sarcastic; when the authorities chasing him do it in order to have him handed over without explanation, it's a knock on the "War on Terrorism." His agenda is largely about undermining anti-mutant organisations, which is pretty much what the X-Men have been doing on and off for their entire history.

Fantomex has stolen a dossier of information about the Weapon Plus project, which includes the old Weapon X project as well as this arc's villain, Weapon XII. Weapon XII, unfortunately, is one of those vaguely described Morrison concepts amounting to a cloud of pseudoscience which doesn't actually mean anything if you stop to think about it. There's much blather about artificial evolution and such forth, but little in terms of concrete information. I realise he's being kept off panel in order to build mystery, but a bit more information about what the hell the guy's supposed to be doing wouldn't go amis. After all, if we're going to have two pages of exposition on the subject, it may as well be exposition that makes sense.

Still, the focus this month is on Fantomex, and he's an entertaining character. He's amusingly laid back and seems like a hangover from a more openly ludicrous age of comics, when people regularly lived in vast and absurd houses and flew around in flying saucers. He ought to seem ridiculously out of place, but instead he comes across as if he's faintly taking the piss out of everyone around him and generally enjoying himself. I like him.

Some of this story pushes at the boundaries of acceptable silliness, particularly the funny but utterly ridiculous sequence with the idiotic Corporal Animal. ("I'm a highly trained death machine with no human feelings! Sir!") It worked for me, though, because I was too busy laughing to have any complaints about the logic. A lot of this issue is played for laughs, and I have no problem with that when it works.

Igor Kordey is definitely coming across better in this story arc, no doubt because he's had more time to draw it properly. His designs for Fantomex's ludicrous equipment and home are suitably over the top without completely abandoning credibility, and personally I prefer it when the characters don't all look like models.

It's a fun issue, and a nice change of pace after the Shi'ar Empire stuff from the previous arc.

I much prefer Mark Millar when he's willing to be sentimental. Most of the time he seems to prefer to keep at a nice, safe ironic distance from that sort of thing - such as last week's Ultimates, in which a perfectly straight character-driven build-up suddenly turns into a comic romp through New York placing great stress on a running joke about Freddie Prinze Jr.

ULTIMATE X-MEN #20, in contrast, is prepared to run with the sentimentality, and it's all the better for it. This is the fallout issue from the previous storyline, and after the death of his son and hospitalisation of Iceman, Xavier is having second thoughts about the whole X-Men idea.

Millar's version of the character is clearly rather less saintly than the original. He's still got the political agenda and the will to pursue it, but he's rather more easily thrown off course, and decidedly more morally flexible. The centrepiece of this story is Xavier being talked out of shutting down the X-Men by Magneto. Except, of course, it's a brainwashed Magneto, and really Xavier is just having a conversation with himself.

Scott and Jean's romantic subplot is advanced in this issue, but immediately followed by a panel of Xavier concentrating. I'm starting to realise that Millar is actually heading somewhere with Hank complaining that Xavier might be manipulating them - this version of Xavier quite probably is. Even when he's not being gratuitously adolescent about it, Millar likes his flawed heroes. It's difficult to see quite where this arc can lead other than a paranoia storyline - or everyone just arbitrarily deciding to trust Xavier after all - but presumably Millar has a plan in mind.

There's enough undercurrents of all not being quite what they seem to make this issue more interesting than the feelgood story it first appears to be. I really wish Millar would place more emphasis on this side of his writing. He's good at it.

UNCANNY X-MEN #409 finishes Joe Casey's run on the book. As tends to be the case with these issues, it's an attempt to touch base on as many of his subplots as possible and bring some closure to the run - which is presumably why it bears the very odd title "Rocktopia, part 8 of 5." For what it's worth, eight issues would be the four chapters of Poptopia, and four subsequent issues of Casey's run - which would only add up if he's not counting the X-Corps storyline or the silent issue. Perhaps he didn't like them either. We'll never know.

The main plot is the second half of the Vanisher drugs arc. I realise Casey has decided to call him "Porter", which is the real name he was given back in the sixties. But I'll stick with Vanisher, thanks, since it's actually less silly than a teleporting character whose real name is Telly Porter. It's the sort of silliness that Marvel generally managed to avoid even in the Silver Age, but everyone has their lapses.

Anyhow, Warren's strategy works out rather well - he buys out the drugs gangs and forces out the Vanisher. It's quite nice to see the X-Men just outwitting the opponents rather than beating them up for once, although this is one of those plot points that becomes more and more unsatisfactory the more you think about it. Can it really be as simple as offering all the drug dealers a shitload of money to stop dealing in drugs? It seems awfully unlikely.

Stacy's arc, such as it was, gets some degree of closure, as she gets to use her skills in a way everyone approves of and inverts the prostitute tag. It's not an arc that's worked very well, but it wraps up reasonably enough. Casey also touches base on Kurt's crisis of confidence and the Church of Humanity plot, although thankfully he doesn't try to cram them into a major role as well. Something tells me we won't be hearing of this storyline again.

These last couple of issues have contained easily the most persuasive character work of Casey's run, as reasonable directions have emerged for most of the characters. Sean Phillips works well with Casey on these relatively normal story arcs, and if Casey had taken this approach from the start things might have worked out better.

Casey's run on Uncanny X-Men has to go down as a bit of a misfire, when all's said and done. Even this issue features some ideas which really stretch the suspension of disbelief - do you really buy into the idea of people taking drugs to turn them into monsters? But at least it's ended in a fairly solid way, with some degree of closure.

And before we go on, a big welcome to everyone who clicked on the link in this week's Article 10 column at Ninth Art. Hello, and if you haven't been here before, this is the X-Axis. Do stick around.

Now, it would be fair to say that some reviews for AUTOMATIC KAFKA have been rather scathing. This book is illustrated by Ashley Wood, and we all know what that means. It's caused a sharp division of opinion between people who loved it and people who claim it isn't even comprehensible. It's been said that you will struggle to find anyone who thought was middling.

I'm middling, leaning to the "pro" camp.

The number of intelligent and experienced comics readers who've professed to find the book incomprehensible genuinely surprises me. Leaving aside whether the plot is actually any good, it doesn't strike me as all that hard to follow. I don't generally include plot synopses in these reviews, but - in general terms, at least - here's what's happening.

Automatic Kafka is a robot who used to be a superhero in the 1980s. Unable to experience many human emotions for himself, he's attracted by word of a new drug ("nanotecheroin") which offers mind-expanding experiences for artificial lifeforms. Meeting with a dealer, he takes the drug. But the dealer is actually one of his old supervillain enemies who (presumably on purpose) overdoses him.

He has a near-death experience in which his life flashes before his eyes, accompanied by a woman who may or may not be death, in a sequence which may or may not be entirely hallucinatory. That bit is deliberately ambiguous at this stage. He sees Ashley Wood drawing him, so we're presumably heading for a metafiction plot at some stage. And he doesn't die, but decides to continue using the drugs to explore his mind.

Now, I grant you, there's a fair amount of this story which turns on the question of whether or not it's really happening. But that's what we're meant to be asking ourselves, so I don't see that as a storytelling problem. The basics are clear enough - man takes drugs, has epiphany.

In fact, this issue features some of the clearer visual storytelling I've seen from Ashley Wood. He seems to have finally got past his phase of drenching everything in fog and haze. He has discovered the joy of lines. Wood always did have decent drafting abilities in that area, he just didn't display them very often. There's much more range being shown in this story than in much of his previous work, and that's a very welcome development.

Having said that, there ARE a couple of spots where the narrative is dropped badly. The most obvious is a panel which is supposed to show a scythe cutting through the living room door in preparation for Death entering on the next page. With the door itself missing from the artwork, and the scythe not immediately identifiable given that it comes as a completely new element out of the blue, I wasn't able to decipher what was in that panel until a second read through (when, in fairness, it's relatively clear). But "door is smashed down by a scythe" surely is the sort of thing that ought to come across on the first reading.

Nonetheless, overall this issue makes a massive leap in the direction of decipherability for Ashley Wood. Or at least, I thought so - clearly there are a number of people who still found it insuperably difficult to follow, and they're not exactly novices to comics either. But for me, this is a great step in the direction of reconciling Wood's style, which I like, with relatively coherent storytelling.

Okay, what's the catch?

Well, while I can follow the story, and I like the way it's being told, I'm rather less enthused by the storyline itself. There are some very interesting ideas in here - the central concept of an artificial character who's inherently distanced from society by his inability to experience their emotions has a lot of potential. But - as the editorial jokingly acknowledges - there are numerous elements here which seem to have come straight from the "How to produce a Mature Readers comic" checklist. I groan inwardly at the prospect of another story about the glories of mind-expanding drugs. I bang my head against the wall at the numerous topless women, much more so when used for a character who symbolises death. Sex equals death? Haven't we pensioned off that metaphor yet?

On the other hand, the book is plainly playing around with audience expectations. Billing itself deadpan as "a superhero comic" is plainly a joke. It's true only in the sense that the lead character is a superhero. But the first issue, at least, comprehensively fails to adopt the vast majority of superhero genre conventions. This is not a superhero genre comic. It adopts far more of the genre trappings of the "mature readers" comic, particularly the Grant Morrison/Vertigo type. With the hints of meta-plots to come, I reserve judgment on whether the inclusion of these elements is a deliberate attempt to invoke that genre. For the moment, they still strike me as tired.

So should you be buying This Superhero Comic? Well, at best, a book this offbeat is going to be a cult success. If you really despise Ashley Wood's style (as opposed to just wishing he'd make it clearer), then you're not going to want this book. It's off in relatively experimental territory, although I still maintain that it's nowhere near as cryptic as it's been made out to be elsewhere. It's got definite potential, but it's certainly a minority appeal book. But if it connects with you, chances are you'll really like it.

Give it a try if you think the style might be for you.

More of Joe Casey in a minute, but first Scott Morse, and ELEKTRA: GLIMPSE AND ECHO. Oddly, this is a mature readers book, despite being not very graphic at all in any department. Perhaps the label's just there to push the book's arthouse credentials. Or maybe the reason will be apparent in future issues.

Anyhow, Scott Morse is writing and painting this series, and it goes without saying that the most immediately noticeable feature is the artwork. Morse's geometric and angular shapes give the book a highly distinctive and stylised look. Everything looks a little flattened, but the 2D figures in their three dimensional settings work surprisingly well.

One of the problems with Elektra as a protagonist is that she's pretty much just a silent weapon for the most part. In the regular series, Greg Rucka is addressing that by shaking up her status quo to dislodge her from the assassin role. This story evidently takes place before that, and Morse takes the other approach - bringing in the Hand, playing off the death of her father, and softening the character a bit. To be honest, Morse's take on the character feels just a bit too normal in comparison with the way she's been written in recent years.

The story sees Elektra being hired, via a Hand ninja who won't stay dead, to carry out a hit on a character we're told nothing about. This brings her into a bar where her father used to drink, and where ten years ago a jazz trumpeter was also killed by the Hand. Quite what that has to do with anything isn't made clear at this stage, so we're really left to take it on trust that all this is going to fit together. The issue would probably have benefitted from a bit more detail on the actual hit, since that's what's supposedly driving the plot. We're left with a first issue that contains a lot of set-up, albeit quite interesting set-up, and a mystery about why the Hand guy won't stay dead.

It's a lovely visual style, though, and the story has possibilities. The take on Elektra's character seems a little too soft for me, but not bad on the whole.

HIP FLASK: UNNATURAL SELECTION is Joe Casey's other project this week, although that's actually a dialogue credit. This story is plotted by Comicraft's Richard Starkings and artist Jose Ladronn, and it's probably not what you might have expected.

Hip Flask is the private eye hippo who crops up in Comicraft adverts from time to time. This book has been in the pipeline for ages, and the obvious thing to expect was a novelty funny animal book pastiching the noir genre. That's not what they've produced.

In fact, this isn't really a Hip Flask story at all - he's barely in it. It's a story about evil scientists creating human/ animal hybrids and abusing them hideously. It's basically a cautionary sci-fi tale about genetic modification. It's incredibly melodramatic, of course, with villains who teeter on the edge of pantomime. But then again, the book does bill itself as "Pulp Science Fiction", so it's unlikely that we're expected to take it entirely seriously.

If you're willing to take it on its own terms, it works surprisingly well. It's Jose Ladronn's art that really raises the book above the corny central idea, though. This is fully painted work, further developing the European influences which Ladronn has shown in books like Inhumans. Ladronn is able to draw humanoid rhinos and zebras which don't just look like cartoons. He makes highly effective use of a blue and grey dominated palette, opening up into brighter colours near the end.

It looks wonderful. The book's worth picking up for the art alone, in fact. I wasn't expecting to be recommending this book, but then the book isn't anything like what I'd expected.

Y: THE LAST MAN is a new ongoing series from Vertigo. Vertigo have been in a bit of a slump in the last year or so, but this is definitely more like it.

This is one of those high concept series: every male on the planet has suddenly dropped dead, aside from Yorick and his monkey ampersand. They are now the last males on Earth.

Granted, when you put it like that it sounds uncomfortably like a B-movie pitch. This first issue is largely about introducing the cast and showing what happened to all the men, but it also shows clearly that the book is aiming a little higher than that.

The usual rule of thumb with stories like this is that readers will allow one huge leap of disbelief, just so long as everything else flows logically from that premise. And that's what seems to be happening here. The series isn't going for anything as crude as Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. The female cast are a varied bunch and are evidently there to represent a wide spectrum of viewpoints, including those which are neither conventionally feminine nor feminist.

Instead, the focus is more on the places of men and women in society - or societies, rather - and the impact of all the men simply disappearing overnight. The final page, a list of statistics, is an intriguing reminder of the vast chunks of society which are still male-dominated. Catholicism, Islam and orthodox Judaism have just collapsed as organised religions, for example, since nobody left alive is qualified to hold office. It's not a crusading tone, more an interest in exploring sex and gender relations by removing almost all the men and seeing what happens.

Art comes from Pia Guerra, and this is easily her most prominent assignment to date. According to her website, Pia got into comics through the X-Men, just like all the best people. It's attractive, straightforward storytelling which reminds me somewhat of Steve Yeowell. That's a good thing. This is a story which spends much of its time jumping around the planet, and she's good at establishing locations rapidly.

This is a very promising first issue, which looks to be taking the concept in interesting directions. Worth buying.