24 february 2002

On to books which Diamond somehow managed to successfully convey to the shelves, and EXILES #10.

This three-part storyline really hasn't done a great deal for me. I'm bored of Galactus and I wish writers would stop wheeling him out just because he happened to be in this really great story almost forty years ago. Yes, it's a great idea, but there's only so much you can do with a character whose primary motivation is to eat the planet.

As a result, most Galactus stories end up casting him in a variation of his role in this story - namely, Generic Plugin Threat. Sometimes he also gets to deliver words of wisdom because he's cosmic and all. But not in this issue. Now, some stories call for a generic plug-in threat, and that's fair enough. But familiarity breeds contempt, and I'd rather the generic plug-in threats were original ideas rather than old ones being recycled simply to save space on establishing the macguffins.

While the throwaway character moments and the artwork remain as excellent as ever, I can't really get into this storyline. The horde of cameos is also a difficulty for me. I can just about live with the genre convention that alternate realities have the same people in them when the point of divergence is relatively recent. But when you have a reality which diverged over a century ago, and yet everyone has still ended up with the same powers (even though most of their origin stories were surely invalidated), my suspension of disbelief takes a hammering. Since nothing remotely similar to Spider-Man's origin could have happened on this world, what the hell is he doing there? Why is there a Dragon Man at all? The idea that everything somehow comes back to the same point by different routes makes this whole world seem incredibly contrived. I don't care whether it gets eaten.

Anyhow... since the main plot is just something for the characters to kick against, the real interest here is in the subplot where Nocturne turns out to be pregnant by T-Bird. The idea that he then gets stuck behind on this planet while the rest of the Exiles are dragged on ahead is well handled, and has some potential for future issues. It's just a shame that he wasn't injured in a story that was stronger in its own right.

One very good idea in there, and it has some scattered moments throughout, but overall, it's not great.

UNCANNY X-MEN is on a bit of an upswing with the current X-Corps storyline. Not that it's particularly good, but at least the characterisation is in the right ballpark, the artwork is consistent enough, and the basic ideas (now that the Nazi regalia has been stripped out) aren't as glaringly horrible as the Church of Humanity.

The latest in this title's seemingly endless stream of fill-in artists is Aaron Lopresti, who I haven't seen in years. I assume he's ben working for DC or something. In traditional fill-in artist fashion, Lopresti does a perfectly straight rendition of the story, vaguely reminiscent of Tom Raney. His Iceman is a bit shaky, but other than that it's perfectly good storytelling.

As for the story, we're still on the X-Corps, and the plot continues to focus on very heavily dropped hints that all is not well in people's heads. Much will depend on whether Sean himself is meant to be under outside influence (because this whole plot makes little sense as an organic development of the character), and the unfortunate failure of the previous issues to properly communicate the Lady Mastermind subplot damages the ending. But at least there's the spine of a half decent story this time round.

To an extent, Casey is trying to explore the theme of how the mutant population ought to be presenting itself to the wider culture and why the X-Corps don't work. To that end, it's a good thing he got rid of all that swastika nonsense, which would have prevented the argument ever getting off the ground by resolving it against the X-Corps in the first panel. But ultimately, the X-Corps are still given such an unsympathetic quasi-fascist portrayal that it doesn't amount to much of an argument. Their opponents - yet another generic group of anti-mutant gun-toters - don't advance matters much one way or the other. Think Friends of Humanity, only exactly the same.

Really, we're back to the level of Casey's first couple of issues here - it isn't appalling, it's just a bit obvious. But at least now there's no longer any hype to live up to.

CLA$$WAR is the latest book from London's Com.X, which will presumably be reaching you colonials some time soon, if previous Com.X shipments are anything to go by.

This book was originally meant to ship last year, but was postponed after September 11, despite having nothing in it that even vaguely resembles a terrorist attack. Presumably the thinking was that the general anti-government rhetoric (and it's emphatically anti-government rather than anti-American) would not go down very well in that climate. Mind you, the anti- capitalist movement seems to have dropped off the radar these days, so maybe they had a point.

Anyhow, here's the high concept. It's a superhero book, and in this version of the USA, a chap by the name of "American" is the national superhero. He's kind of a cross between Captain America and Superman. (I wouldn't have used that name, by the way - the themes are perfectly clear enough without setting up a neon sign over the main character's head.) So what if he wakes up one day and decides that the anti-capitalist movement was right - that the entire government system is basically corrupt, and that all that stuff about freedom and idealism which he believes in can only be achieved by tearing it all down?

Now, this is a rather good idea. Of course, a lot depends on how uncritically the book buys into the whole anti-government approach, which will only become apparent over time. Much of American's rhetoric in this issue is glaringly flawed on a casual inspection. He's portrayed as harking back to some kind of fabulous past era of American freedom - "the foundations that America was built upon" - which the capitalist establishment has dragged the nation away from. This would presumably be the fabulous American golden era of mass slavery and genocide, then.

But then, we're not necessarily meant to buy into this stuff. While most of this issue is devoted to portraying American as a lovely chap - still a boy scout, but on the other side - and the government as assholes, there's a subplot sequence which seems to be suggesting that the people he's now allying himself with are a lot more morally flexible than he seems to think. And there's the ever-familiar criticism to be made that the anti-government characters here seem to have an entirely negative political agenda - they want to get rid of the current system but we're given absolutely no indication of what they'd like to replace it with.

So it remains to be seen just how clearly this book has thought through its politics - and whether it's going to have a proper argument on the subject, or just be a piece of simplistic flagwaving. There's enough here to be encouraging, though.

Trevor Hairsine's artwork is impressive - his designs for the superheroes have a suitably iconic feel to them, and the "widescreen" moments have the intended impact. He's pretty strong on the subtler pieces of characterisation as well. Com.X have had a good track record when it comes to their artists, and this is another good choice.

Com.X also have a terrible track record when it comes to lettering. This issue is a notable improvement on their earlier books in that the vast majority of the words are correctly spelt. Sadly, this newfound talent has not yet extended to learning the rules of punctuation, with a lot of dialogue reading oddly thanks to some missing commas. This isn't just nitpicking - the punctuation is there for a reason, and that reason is to give rhythm to the dialogue. Mispunctuated lettering is the comic book equivalent of stilted acting, and when Com.X are so strong on most aspects of their production, it amazes me that they still seem to have so much trouble with this.

Nonetheless, as a whole, it's an impressive package, although I reserve the right to turn violently against it in future issues if this is as deep as it gets. Worth a look.