29 october 2000

Before you ask, no, Ultimate X-Men didn't turn up at my store this week. My guess is that Diamond are crap again. Hell, even if this one wasn't their fault, they're still crap.

Anyhow, never mind, because that gives me a chance to write about some more interesting books instead. But first, the one X-book that did actually turn up - NEW X-MEN. And a moment of silence to acknowledge an astonishing turn of events: New X-Men ships on time. In fact, there's even an apology on the letters page for the pitifully bad scheduling of the last year. Well, better late than never. Which, come to think of it, has pretty much been the X-books' philosophy for the last year or so.

A more realistic approach to scheduling means, thank god, they've finally realised that the idea of having Frank Quitely as regular penciller is a sad joke at best. Apparently the plan is that Igor Kordey is doing this issue, issue #125, issue #127 and, uh, issue #128. Which kind of sounds like he's the regular artist to me. Quitely, in the meantime, will be doing issue #126 (which, in fairness, is 30 pages), and will then be doing "five consecutive issues later this year." Given that that would require him to do issues #129-133 and have them all ship on time - since otherwise he'd be slipping into 2003 - you'll forgive my mocking laughter. I'll believe Frank Quitely can do five consecutive issues when I see the fifth issue in my hand.

But for the moment, we're temporarily back on schedule, and here's Igor Kordey. Good though Kordey is, this is obviously a storyline which was written with Quitely in mind. Kordey's looser, less epic style isn't the ideal style for this particular issue, and even allowing for that, this is not the strongest work I've seen from Kordey. Frankly, there's a certain awkwardness to sequences that ought to look majestic, and some of the closing scenes look rushed. This being a fill-in job, by a workhorse artist who is pencilling and inking two books a month, it probably IS rushed, and that most likely isn't Kordey's fault. Nonetheless, it's not quite showing the story off at its best.

Plotwise, Morrison is keeping it nice and simple again. The Imperial Guard have been tricked by Cassandra Nova into thinking that the mutants of earth have been infected by some kind of virus, and have been sent here to kill them all. Cue the obligatory carnage until everything gets sorted out. As is often the case with Morrison's stories, the plot is simply a handy framework to let him throw in some more interesting ideas.

And that means that this is largely the Imperial Guard's issue. Or rather, as we're apparently now going to call them, the Imperial Superguardian Elite. Against my better judgment, I rather like that name change - it makes them sound less like an honour guard and more like some the heroes of some kind of bizarre fascist Japanese cartoon. And I'm sure that's deliberate. Although he isn't taking the piss, Morrison's always had a healthy sense of the ridiculousness of what he's writing.

Not that he's abandoned the original concept - several of the new Guardsmen introduced this issue are obviously the latest iterations of the running joke that all Guardsmen are ripped off from the Legion of Superheroes. (They even have thinly disguised flight rings in this issue.) However, Morrison's spends as much time throwing in weird material to establish how alien some of these throwaway characters actually are - a bizarre piece of dialogue from Manta to the effect that she doesn't really understand the concept of memory is a nice touch. Given the effort put into making the Guard seem alien (rather than just like superheroes with oddly coloured skin, which has tended to be the case in the past), the character design for the Shi'ar priest is a little odd - you'd have thought if they wanted to play up the alien nature of these characters, then crucifixes were precisely the wrong choice of religious imagery for them. Even inverted ones.

By my count we're now halfway through this story, and this is a bit of a slack issue in the middle of the arc - some necessary plot material happens, some amusing ideas dance around to distract us from the shamelessly formulaic plot, and the art isn't the best I've seen on this book by a long way. Morrison has enough good ideas to keep the title entertaining even when the story's a bit dodgy, though, and even on an off day, Kordey is largely solid. Not the strongest work either of them have done, though.

Anything from Oni Press is worth a look, and this week that means (deep breath) COURTNEY CRUMRIN AND THE NIGHT THINGS, written and drawn by Ted Naifeh.

Actually, this is a bit of an all-ages title, which means that I'm not the target market. But it's really quite good. I'm struggling to find an easy way to sum up the premise, because it's difficult to avoid making it sound like a rather trite collection of stock plot concepts. Let's see...

Young Courtney Crumrin and her family have just moved to a new town (see?), where they move in to her mysterious grandfather's spooky mansion (see?). Courtney is having trouble fitting in at school (see?), and is being tormented by bullies (see?), while at the same time she learns about mysterious magical creatures in the house (see?).

Now, all of that is basically accurate, and yes, the underlying plot arc here is fairly standard. But then, first issues tend to have stock plots while they're more busy establishing the characters. And the presentation of the story raises it above the stock elements, giving it a bit more edge, and an identity of its own.

Part of that comes from Naifeh's stylised art, which is rooted in realism, but includes some odder elements that allow the supernatural characters to exist neatly in the same environment. Courtney herself is perhaps the most stylised character here, with seemingly no nose, an outsized head and black circles for eyes, but she still has a three-dimensional quality.

The book also takes a darker tone to some parts of the plot, positioning Courtney's parents firmly as self-centred and unsympathetic characters, and providing a cynical edge to some of the comedy. It's in the details such as the upscale local school solemnly giving its students the class assignment "Calculate your net worth."

Fun stuff, and well worth a look.

THING & SHE-HULK: THE LONG NIGHT: the creative process.

"Hey, Joe, you got a moment?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Well, I was cleaning out my office, and look what I found down the back of the radiator. It's some old art by Bryan Hitch!"

"Jesus. How long has this been there?"

"Well, it's written by Todd DeZago and edited by Jaye Gardner. Oh, and Hitch has drawn it kind of like Alan Davis. So I'd say we're talking a good few years."

"Who's Todd Dayglo?

"Before your time, Joe. Um... he does a book called Tellos these days. You heard of Tellos?"

"Is that one of CrossGen's?"

"No."

"Whatever. So what you're saying to me is, we've got a whole story by Bryan Hitch, who was a nobody when he drew this, but now he's drawing one of our top selling titles? And we could shove it out there for a quick buck?"

"Well..."

"Well what?"

"Well... it's not actually a WHOLE story. It's only half a story."

"How do you mean?"

"He only drew half the story. Then we decided not to bother with the rest. So he stopped."

"Shit."

"And it isn't lettered, for that matter. We'll have to do that too."

"Fine, we can do it with our new, way cool lower case lettering. Lower case lettering kicks ass. But why did we pull the plug on this book?"

"Well, it was the late nineties. Nobody gave a toss about the Thing or the She-Hulk. Or Todd DeZago or Bryan Hitch, for that matter. It probably wouldn't have sold very well."

"Is it any good?"

"That depends what you mean by good."

"Is it pretty?"

"Yes. It's pretty. Not as pretty as what he does now, but it's pretty.."

"Is it interesting?"

"Not really. I mean, it's got a beginning, a middle and an end. The basic stuff. And there's a bit early on where it does some parallel story structure to set up the main characters meeting, so it's trying there."

"But?"

"But it's got a whole load of totally unrelated plot threads - vampires, Roxxon Oil, Dragon Man, both heroes befriending nice but rather bland members of the public on tube trains. But they all just seem to be thrown in there totally at random. It doesn't really make much sense."

"Hold on. Hold on. This isn't another one of Howard's pen names, is it?"

"No, no. Todd DeZago is a real person. And when I say it doesn't make sense, what I mean is, it's got all these plot threads and I haven't got a clue why they're all in the same comic together when they've got nothing to do with one another. It's all kind of random and pointless. But sure, it makes SENSE sense. It's not riddled with plot holes, or anything like that. It's got some fun moments. It's just... kind of pointless and random."

"So it's not Howard?"

"No, boss."

"Howard likes vampires..."

"Joe, it isn't Howard. Easy there. Deep breaths."

"Okay, okay... So what you're saying is, it's not really any good, and it's only half finished, but it's not embarrassing either, and it's got quite pretty art by someone who's now quite popular."

"Pretty much. So should I get Bryan to finish it off?"

"Christ, no. I'm not taking him off Ultimates to work on something like this."

"How about Ivan Reis? The guy who did the back-up strip in Defenders #12. He'd be ideal."

"You mean he's an Alan Davis clone and we can get him cheap?"

"Exactly."

"Okay, go ahead. Just... don't publicise the fact it's been down the back of a radiator for several years, right?"

"You're the boss."