22 april 2001

Housekeeping...

Yes, I know I said I was going to review the Waiting Place trade paperback this week. I haven't got around to it. Probably next week. It's a good book, I'm not going to just plough through it for the sake of a self-imposed deadline.

Now, I will explain the damn rating system one more time. It runs from A+ to D-. The ratings are not an exact art, and yes, I know they fluctuate according to what mood I'm in when I write the reviews. As a very broad guideline, here's how it works:-

A+ - unequivocally recommended.
A - highly recommended.
A- - Could be better, but still recommended.
B+ - Worth a look.
B - Fine if you like that sort of thing.
B- - Passable.
C+ - Unsatisfactory, though not actively bad.
C - Badly flawed; for fans only.
C- - Bad; for completists only.
D+ - You'll wish you hadn't bought this book.
D - You'll wish you'd never even read this book.
D- - The creators wish they'd never even read this book.

Or if you want it even simpler: A is good, and I commend it to your attention. B is fine if you like that sort of thing. C is disappointing, but not disastrous. D is appalling and raises serious questions about what the hell they were thinking.

Are we clear? Right, on with the cynicism and negativity.

Regular readers will know that my main concern with ULTIMATE X-MEN has been that it's all flash and no substance. Issue #5 does something to address that point, but still leaves me with worries about just how much Millar has thought through the content of the book, as opposed to the big explosions.

Now that he's got Cyclops down to the Savage Land, Millar sets about fleshing out some of the Brotherhood of Mutants. His version of Magneto is obviously a lot less sympathetic than the Claremont version of the 1980s (still the definitive version, for my money). But unlike the mainstream version, who was turned into a raving lunatic in the name of making him a villain again, Millar sets out to make him a credibly sober character. This being Millar, he does so with crashing lack of subtlety, invoking the tired old "Hitler was a vegetarian" routine, but it's an interesting approach to the character, and certainly more promising than what we've been seeing in the mainstream books. Of which more later.

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch also get some screen time, establishing them as Magneto's spurned children, trying to impress a father who rejects them since their mother was human. This gives them some sensible motivations, as well as setting up the inevitable betrayal down the line, and opens some promising story possibilities.

Some decent ideas there, although Millar never really gets into the detail of what the mutants are doing in Magneto's Savage Land community. Magneto claims it's a paradise, but then he would. Since Cyclops is there, the heroes will now know what it's like, and it would have been nice if the readers could have had some clearer idea of how it's meant to be.

Unfortunately, Millar's overall plot still leaves a lot to be desired. The US government continue to display levels of absurd stupidity, by despatching the entire fleet of Sentinels to try and destroy Magneto. Having them make a strike against Magneto makes sense. Having them send a bunch of metal robots is unbelievably stupid. Even Magneto comments on how stupid this is. Millar might like to bear in mind that when the characters are complaining about the plot not making any sense, they do tend to be right.

This issue introduces a bit more substance beneath the flash, but only a bit. It still leaves us with a main story that makes little sense and is largely an excuse for some set pieces with big explosions. Millar's ability to deliver a solid story rather than a serious of set-pieces for Andy Kubert remains open to question.

Back in the mainstream continuity, UNCANNY X-MEN is continuing the "Eve of Destruction" crossover, a storyline which is dying on its arse.

The good news is that we have Tom Raney on fill-in art again, and his work is always pleasant to look at. He's given some extremely silly scenes to illustrate here, but he pulls them off as well as can be expected in the circumstances. As far as the writing's concerned, there's a decent flashback to start, and a couple of cute moments scattered through the issue.

Unfortunately, this storyline still shows no sign of having any kind of driving plot. Two issues ago, the plot was that the X-Men needed to stop Magneto from starting a war. Two issues later, Lobdell has been piddling about with the characterisation of Cyclops and some cannon fodder characters, and quite well too - but the actual storyline has barely been advanced a millimetre. It's all very well for Lobdell to write to his strengths, but this is meant to be some kind of epic conflict with Magneto, and Lobdell is writing it as an ensemble sitcom.

In this issue, Phoenix's makeshift team of X-Men turn up in Genosha, still with no coherent explanation of why she bothered collecting them in the first place. Northstar, bless him, acts in character and complains that it's extremely stupid. Everybody else responds by glossing over the question and saying it's worked before. It did, but it was contrived then as well. Giant-Size X-Men #1 got away with it because it was introducing a new regular cast, but it's hardly a story you'd put forward as a model for the future.

As the plot simply calls for the X-Men to arrive in Genosha and get themselves beaten up by Magneto (with Dazzler seemingly being killed, in what's either a trick cliffhanger or a really pointless death), Lobdell has a lot of time to fill with people talking to one another. So we get Magneto ranting at Xavier in full-blown lunatic mode, precisely the sort of thing that's made the character so thoroughly uncompelling for most of the nineties. If you want to make him a villain, do so by all means, but at least make him sane. The point of the character is that he's the figurehead for an alternate viewpoint sincerely held, and writing him as a nutter prevents him from properly serving that role.

All of this is merely below par, but the story goes hopelessly off the rails with an appallingly misjudged explanation of what Dazzler's been up to. This is meant to be a serious story, and if there's one thing a serious story does not need, it's the X-Babies paying tribute to the Age of Apocalypse. The X-Babies are a one-trick pony who should have been put out to pasture after two or three stories. They're simply not funny any more, because the joke has been ridden into the ground. They're too absurd to be seriously threatening, they have nothing to do with the storyline (such as it is), and they're grindingly out of tone with the rest of the story. This issue was heading for a "mildly disappointing" review until I hit this scene, at which point it crosses the line into "What the hell are they thinking?"

Let's just get this over with and move on, shall we?

Authorititis: an affliction suffered by comics writers that makes them unaccountably convinced that every book would be improved if only it was a bit more like The Authority. Warren Ellis only had three stories for the real Authority before wisely quitting while he was ahead. But that hasn't stopped a gaggle of imitators from welding the ethos of widescreen violence onto books where they don't fit in the slightest.

Talking of which, X-FORCE #114. This was always the runt of the Counter-X litter, since Warren Ellis appeared to have conceived the new direction in the middle of a fit of Authorititis himself. The supposed concept was that the heroes would go and investigate underground nastiness in which people did unpleasant things to mutants. This was a perfectly sound concept, completely buggered by the decision to execute it in the widescreen style, with big public fights and property destruction that were completely at odds with what the storyline seemed to be trying to head towards.

The series had been drifting towards something a bit closer to the underground conspiracy theme in the last storyline before making a total hash of it in the final issue. This time, however, the book goes totally off the rails, as Ian Edginton lumbers the characters with a new story direction that makes absolutely no sense for anyone involved.

Having somehow survived the big explosion at the end of the last issue (Edginton chooses not to share how), X-Force are now believed dead (by who? By the handful of people who knew they were there in the first place?) and are touring the world making terrorist attacks on organisations that are exploiting mutants. They kick off the story by blowing up an entire office block in New Orleans on the grounds that it belongs to a company who are involved in exploiting mutants.

The obvious problem with this scene is that the characters display total disregard for the people killed in the crossfire - as well as anyone who might arguably have deserved it, they've also presumably just killed a whole load of secretaries, switchboard operators and people in neighbouring buildings. They don't seem at all bothered about passers-by being hurt.

This is stunt writing. There are certain characters who might be credible in this role - Feral, perhaps Shatterstar with a bit of work, assorted former villains. There is a good story out there to be told about obsessive activists who value their political beliefs above all else, and if we're lucky, The Brotherhood might tell it.

But it makes absolutely zero sense as a character arc for these characters. Cannonball? Meltdown? Killing anyone, let alone bystanders, without being concerned about it? Whatever you think of that as a modus operandi - and it positions X-Force as more extreme than the Punisher - it's absolutely cretinous as a character direction for these particular characters. What we have here is a third-rate shock value story being welded onto a bunch of characters who don't suit it in the slightest.

The most charitable thing to be said about this story is that at least Milligan and Allred will be here in two issues time to put an end to it.

DISCIPLES #1 is a new ongoing series from Image (although god knows what the genesis is, given that this issue carries a copyright warning in favour of Caliber). The writers here are Colin Clayton and Chris Downs, who I've never heard of. According to their editorial, they've done some work for Marvel UK, which isn't something I'd shout about if I were them.

This is a magic story. The protagonists are a group of magicians who, according to the back cover, are banded together "to fend off a potential supernatural holocaust." The actual story suggests it's more of a mutual get-together and exchange stories arrangement, but maybe this will become clearly. Anyhow, in an obvious echo of the Magic Circle, Myron has been kicked out years ago for revealing some of their secrets, and now turns up every year to try and get back in. Meanwhile, one of the members is killed, and the group are looking for a replacement.

It's an interesting enough start to the book. The story looks to be a superhero team book in disguise, but they're not being too obvious about it. There's some nice clear artwork from Laurence Campbell and Larry Shuput, and the central characters are reasonably well established, although the peripheral members of the group are still ciphers by the end of the issue.

There's a hell of a lot of exposition required here, given that they've got nine central characters to introduce in the first issue, and the story mostly works it in reasonably well (though they do go for the cop-out approach of having an introduction to the characters at the end of the book). The one glaring exception is a scene in which Psiren has to be told by her teammates why they kicked Myron out in the first place. From the way they're acting, you'd have thought it would have been hard for her not to have picked up that information already.

A solid debut issue, with at least the potential to go further.

OBERGEIST: RAGNAROK HIGHWAY is the debut from Top Cow's mature readers imprint, Minotaur Press. Dan Jolley and Tony Harris have apparently had this story in mind for a decade, and it's a project that was allegedly knocked back by Vertigo on the grounds that the material was a bit controversial for them.

Which confuses me on the basis of this issue, though maybe their reasoning will become more apparent in time. The premise is basically this - what if Josef Mengele had his sense of morality switched back on, and had to deal with what he'd done?

Of course, they're not using Mengele himself, which would be exceptionally tasteless. The protagonist is Jurgen Steinholtz, who's presented as one of Mengele's assistants. The project he's meant to be trying to achieve is an attempt to generate telepathy in soldiers, using captive Jews as experimental subjects. Given that some of the Nazi high command were into mysticism, this is actually just about credible. It also allows for a genuine telepath to come along and reset his moral standards to something closer to the social norm, which is handy for plot purposes.

Prior to this point, Steinholtz isn't portrayed as evil so much as amoral. He doesn't come across as malicious so much as completely unconcerned about what he's doing, which he sees as having a valid scientific purpose. This works pretty well, since the switch from amoral to moral is a lot easier to swallow than a 180 degree turn in his moral compass.

There's an obvious risk in this kind of material that the series can come across as extremely insensitive. The premise, presumably, is to raise the question of whether it's even possible for Steinholtz to redeem himself from a starting point as appalling as this. The answer to that question is not necessarily going to be "yes", and much will depend on where the story goes with this. There will, of course, be those who are mortally offended by the suggestion that "yes" might even be a conceivable answer, and if you fall into that category, you can take it that this is not a book for you. If the answer turns out to be "yes" in the story, then there's going to have to be a damn good explanation of why and how.

In my view, this first issue stays on the right side of the line. Far from belittling the holocaust, the whole point is to emphasise its awfulness. There is, however, the obvious potential to cause enormous offence depending on how the material is dealt with in future, and at this stage I would simply note that this is a very brave choice of subject matter. An interesting and effective start.