25 february 2001

GAMBIT & BISHOP continues on its painfully slow meander through a plot nobody seems to care about. Last issue, you will recall, our heroes spent the entire story travelling to New Orleans and squabbling a bit. This issue, they spend the entire story chatting with Stryfe and squabbling a bit.

It's basically an entire issue of Stryfe explaining his angst to us. This is a tough one to pull off, bearing in mind that virtually nobody gives a toss about Stryfe. He is, after all, one of the dullest major villains in the X-books' pantheon, with motivations that never made the slightest sense and a hopelessly convoluted back story.

Lobdell makes a brave attempt to give us a pared back version of Stryfe's history and put the character's actions in some kind of sensible context. The emphasis is put squarely on Stryfe's rejection by Apocalypse after he was exposed by a clone (in a miniseries several years ago), the idea being that Stryfe was raised from birth for a particular role and was then cast aside as worthless when he turned out to be a clone. Everything else is then explained as all-purpose lashing out at Cable in an effort to prove himself superior and validate his existence.

Well, okay, that's a reasonably sensible aspect of Stryfe's character to play up. But it doesn't really explain what the hell he's doing in this book. Although Stryfe's newly clarified motivations are perfect fodder for a Cable story, they don't have anything to do with either of this book's protagonists.

Moreover, the plot relies on Stryfe seeking out the heroes' help to defend himself against Cable. This makes no sense whatsoever, partly because there are tons of people Stryfe would turn to before a couple of second division X-Men, partly because Stryfe already vastly outpowers Cable, but mainly because it's so absurdly out of character for Stryfe. I never thought I'd hear the words "out of character for Stryfe" - it comes as something of a surprise to realise he actually has one - but the cowering twerp in this issue is almost impossible to reconcile with the ranting maniac that Stryfe's generally been written as.

Georges Jeanty's artwork is looking rather sketchy this issue, but he does do some excellent backgrounds. He plays up the dopey comedy routines for Stryfe quite well too, albeit that the comedy is hopelessly misplaced.

However... we're now halfway through this series. We've got two characters who don't like one another standing around on the periphery of a Cable storyline. We seem to have completely forgotten about the symbiote under Bishop's skin which was a key plot point at the beginning of the series. We've screwed up the Witness's continuity yet further for no discernible reason.

What exactly are we trying to achieve here, and why?

Over in the Ultimate line, ULTIMATE X-MEN is now up to issue #3 and... well, you know the Mark Millar routine by now.

For all the differences in the individual characters, the real point of departure between this and the mainstream X-Men is that Millar is taking a completely different approach from the last twenty-five years of X-Men comics. Under Claremont, the X-Men adopted something of a soap opera approach, which was maintained in the following decade as part of what the editors presumably saw as a magic formula.

Millar doesn't do soap opera, at least not when he's writing superheroes. He does action stories. So while his book has exactly the same starting premise of anti-mutant prejudice and Xavier and Magneto having different factions, the approach is jarringly different from what we're used to.

This is all well and good, and in fairness it's not as though characterisation is absent from Millar's writing. It's just not a top priority. However, even allowing for the different approach Millar's taking here, things may be a little out of whack here. It's become the trite observation for reviewers to make about Ultimate X-Men, but the characters just aren't very distinctive. His teenage heroes all share pretty much the same speech patterns, the same sense of humour, the same attitude. They do have elements that make them unique, but Millar could really do with playing up the character side further. Even without turning into a soap opera, there's plenty of scope to do it, and as it stands he's writing a team who are blurring into one.

The exceptions, naturally, are Xavier (all-purpose benign authority figure) and Wolverine. His approach to Wolverine is an interesting one, since where the Marvel Universe character simply had a history of slightly dodgy black ops work for a friendly government, the Ultimate X-Men version is being positioned as an out and out assassin. It's a foregone conclusion that he'll be turned into a hero in due course, but it lays the groundwork for a different approach to the character.

As for the story, this month the heroes rescue a hostage from the villains and they have a fight. A hero is seemingly killed at the end, although all rules of superhero formula say it's just a cliffhanger and he'll turn out okay. Basically a stock superhero plot done with a bit more attitude.

The book is an enjoyable read, but my reservations are growing. The strongest element of this book is the mutant concept, and that was there already. I don't really want to read a book where the anti-mutant paranoia is even worse than in the mainstream Marvel Universe (they've been doing that routine for years and it's a stripmined area), the characters really need some work, and the plots are a bit on the obvious side.

It doesn't worry me that, three issues in, Millar has yet to scratch the surface. What worries me is that I'm not sure he's even trying; he seems more intent on polishing the surface until it's all nice and shiny.

Back in the mainstream universe, Scott Lobdell continues to play to his strengths on UNCANNY X-MEN by giving us our third consecutive issue to be filed under "Character studies (somewhat bittersweet)". Not that I'm complaining - this is his forte, and if we're going to have to tread water until May, we may as well do it with character pieces.

This issue brings Cyclops back into the book. Eagle eyed readers may have noticed that the X-Men: The Search for Cyclops miniseries isn't actually finished yet. This is not Lobdell's fault - the miniseries is running over a month late and you can't hold up the core books forever. In any event, this issue doesn't actually blow the ending of the miniseries. Yes, it establishes that Cyclops gets returned to normal, but we always knew that was going to happen. It doesn't tell us how it happened, which is the only point of tension in the mini. A reasonable compromise.

The story is Scott spending a weekend camping with his estranged father Corsair, illustrating their strained and distant relationship and getting them to talk about it. It's a simple affair, but a 22 page story is about right for this sort of material. Scott's relationship with his father has never been given all that much prominence, and Lobdell's interpretation makes perfect sense.

Some criticism has been made of this issue on the basis that Scott is presenting himself as the perfect father in comparison with Corsair, when in fact his track record with Cable wasn't all that great. I tend to the view that that's the point (Scott does feel guilty about the state of his relationship with Cable and he's venting it at Corsair without explaining it openly), but in any event Scott still has a fair case.

Scott gets a curious redesign from Salvador Larroca this issue. Apparently he's now Tom Cruise, and purists will doubtless be distraught to see that he's wearing a costume blatantly influenced by the film's character design. I think it works, particularly when this issue doesn't really want to make Scott look uptight.

This is the sort of issue Lobdell excels at, and while it's perhaps a bit saccharine for some tastes, I'm always happy to see one of these stories.

X-MAN rounds off the Fearful Symmetries storyline this issue, leaving us with one issue to go before cancellation.

Ariel Olivetti is absent this issue for some reason, and his replacement is one Quique Alcatera, who I've never heard of. His style is much more to my tastes that Olivetti, who I still find rather awkward. Alcatera does a great rendition of the Brilliant City, and an excellent double-page spread near the end showing the higher-level alternate worlds. Unfortunately he seems to be drawing Nate about ten years too old, but I can live with that given the quality of the rest of his work.

The point of this issue is to take us to the Brilliant City and establish that it isn't perfect after all. Rather, it's just the highest world in its particular part of the spiral. The storyline is much stronger when it's focusing on this aspect - it's a shame the book felt the need to throw away two issues homaging the Authority when it could have been developing its themes, since they're rather interesting.

The Brilliant City is fairly obviously intended to evoke Heaven. That means that you can read the inhabitants' intolerance of anything below them as a criticism of religious zealotry, as well as seeing the revelation of higher worlds as a suggestion that this whole religion thing is based on a false premise anyway. Regular readers will know that this sort of thing appeals greatly to my empty atheist soul. In any event, it works as a straightforward story without Grant needing to hit you over the head with his symbolism.

You could argue that Grant is cheating a bit by writing the Brilliant City as such a completely intolerant and unsympathetic group of people, which isn't really consistent with having set them up as the epitomy of perfection. I'm happy to let that slide as being part of the point, although since the Brilliant City has been unsympathetic throughout, it might have been nice to see a bit more of the place in the course of this storyline so as to flesh them out a bit. On the other hand, perhaps that would just detract from the attempt to present them as ersatz angels.

I've been rather disappointed with this storyline so far, and I still wish it had got to some of this stuff earlier on. Still, this is a strong ending.

As regular readers may be aware, I absolutely despise CAPTAIN AMERICA as a character. I think he has about as much to offer to the twenty-first century as the steam railroad. This review of issue #40 is not going to be a scathing attack on the character's very existence, since there's more than enough to attack even if you start from the premise that the character is a good idea; but best to have the cards on the table from the outset.

Irrespective of what you think of the character, Dan Jurgens' ultra-simplistic take on the book seems wildly wrongheaded (not to mention completely out of kilter with what the Quesada/Jemas regime is trying to do to the Marvel line). Supporters of the character are usually keen to stress that the character doesn't have to be a flagwaving propaganda tool, but Jurgens evidently disagrees with them. There's nothing in this issue quite as appalling as the Maximum Security issue (in which Cap allowed a villain to die and then delivered a monologue about how that was okay, because he'd preserved the Statue of Liberty as a result), but these things are relative.

The book is taking on a bizarrely flagwaving tone of late. It's the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a Silver Age parody, not something you can imagine a publisher being happy to put out in this decade. Since I don't credit Jurgens with the wit to be doing this as a clever set-up to undermine the character by taking him far enough right wing to make him a controversial figure (thereby destroying his raison d'etre as the universally-adored hero of the Marvel Universe), I can only assume that all this junk is intended to be taken at face value. Which, to be honest, is faintly creepy and makes me grateful for the Atlantic Ocean. Jurgens clearly has a vision of America, and it's one I'm relieved not to be a part of.

This issue, Cap is appalled to learn that a villain he captured last issue is going to go free because of lack of evidence, and sets out to do something about it. He obtains some evidence by slightly underhand means, and the trial duly proceeds.

Now, the big issue in this story is clearly meant to be the tension between law and justice. Cap is understandably perturbed by the fact that a man he knows to be guilty is going to go free, and by the fact that his girlfriend is the defence lawyer. Let's leave aside the legal technicalities of all this and focus on the theme, namely the tension between law and justice.

Jurisprudence 101, kids, and here's a shock for those of you who haven't figured it out yet. The legal system is not designed to achieve justice. It is designed to approximate justice. It is recognised from the outset that this will involve some of the decisions being factually or morally wrong. Legal systems work through rules and, while rules can be more flexible than you might imagine, nonetheless that still leaves restrictions on what the court can do.

The great virtue of a rule-of-law system is meant to be that it generates certainty and predictability by which people can organise their affairs. The benefit to the public is meant to be that they have a reasonable degree of certainty as to what the law is. This is much better than the alternative, which is to leave it up to judges to make their own decisions based on their own moral principles. That approach fails for three main reasons. One, you haven't got a clue what they're going to do. Two, morality is subjective and it's unfair to leave everything up to the whim of individual judges. Would YOU trust most of them to make up their own laws? Three, democracy can only function if the electoral body is able to issue rules for the judiciary to enforce. The benefits of democracy can only be enjoyed at the cost of leaving you with a rule-of-law system which, from time to time, will get things wrong.

In short, this is an acknowledged failing of legal systems, but the benefits to society are considered to outweigh the cost, not least because nobody's ever come up with a better solution that didn't involve totalitarian government. All lawyers (or at least the ones who weren't asleep during their constitutional law and jurisprudence classes) understand this. It is not exactly an original observation.

Now, that doesn't mean it's not something that merits a story, but Jurgens' approach to this well-worn area is so trite as to boggle the imagination. Our hero goes out and uses very mild trickery to inveigle his way into an AIM base, where he recovers some evidence. Jurgens attempts to insinuate that this is some kind of radically different approach from the good Captain and that his commitment to truth, justice and the American way justifies him in breaking the rules in obtaining evidence without a warrant. This is drivel for two reasons. One, Cap's method of obtaining the evidence is pretty much standard superhero territory (and thereby very dull, but that's another matter), and so the presentation of the character as pushing the boundaries is false. They wouldn't have trouble getting this evidence into court. Two, and rather more disturbing, Jurgens actually seems to believe that violations of human rights are okay as long as you're doing the right thing. Good old Dan doesn't seem to have noticed that morality is a subjective and grey area, which is probably why all his villains are such dull charaters. As far as Dan is concerned, there is Right and there is Wrong, and god bless the Daily Mail.

Dan Jurgens really makes me rather uncomfortable.

Even if you agree with good ol' Dan (in which case, please stop voting), it's a very badly constructed story. Danny Boy is desperate to keep his love interest lawyer morally pure. Since Dan cannot comprehend that decent people might believe in defending people they suspect are probably guilty, he ends up writing her as an idiot who seems to genuinely believe in her client's innocence. This would take a degree of wilful blindness which is simply unbelievable in a character who's supposed to be an effective trial lawyer. While Ferrari might credibly be open to believing that Madden is innocent of the present charge, the idea that she finds nothing suspicious in his being arrested while wearing an AIM uniform and fighting Captain America is laughable and makes her look a fool. If Dan had the courage to write her as the mouthpiece of the opposing view, knowingly defending Madden even though she had her doubts over her story, then the story would be all the better for it. But that would suggest that there are different moral viewpoints, and clearly that would be wrong.

The credibility of Cap and Sharon Carter getting into an AIM base in the way they do is, to put it mildly, stretching a point, and the moments of flagwaving ("Betray SHIELD and you betray America, mister!") are both embarrassing and slightly unpleasant. The characterisation is simplistic, the villains are one-dimensional, and the obligatory monologue about how Cap's unstoppable because of what he believes in is tiresome at best. And it would help if Jurgens had ever bothered to establish what Madden was actually charged with, bearing in mind that the story seems to proceed on the basis that AIM membership is not a crime in itself.

Even if you believe it's possible to do intelligent, worthwhile stories with Captain America, this issue is neither intelligent nor worthwhile. If Jurgens is aiming for an audience over the age of ten, then he is insulting their intelligence. If he is aiming for an audience under the age of ten, then he's writing propaganda. This represents almost everything that is bad about Captain America as a character. Horrible, trite opinions expressed in horrible, trite stories. The sort of book that annoys me so much that I want to use it as kindling in my next flag-burning.

Given my reservations about the character, I am not sure it is even possible to overhaul Captain America in a way that would seem in-keeping with the Quesada/Jemas regime, short of dumping his "universally adored hero" role and allowing him to become involved in stories that would involve him adopting viewpoints on America that are not universally held. But it must, surely, be possible to produce something better than this.

(Calm down, deep breaths.)

Over at the other end of the creative spectrum, DEATH AND CANDY is a selection of strips by Max Anderssen coming out through our old friends and supporters of the avant garde, Fantagraphics.

And by god, this stuff is weird. Remember those scratchy eastern european animations that Channel 4 used to use as schedule fillers at three in the morning? The ones where you could never work out what the hell was going on, but it seemed to involve either a squiggly line or a lump of plasticene being really quite angry? This is kind of like that.

We are way, way into the territory of "dream logic" here. Of the three stories here, two of them are going for a dreamlike deadpan surrealism. The third one features a flat dog and a selection of people who have the front ends of various motor vehicles instead of heads and frankly, after several reads, I still haven't got a clue what the hell Anderssen's getting at. This may be because I am stupid, but I am not writing off the possibility that it may be because the strip is incomprehensible.

The other two stories work rather better, since although they still make no logical sense, the weirdness has more of a flow to it. "Sightseeing" is a particularly demented effort, in which a man is woken in the night by the visitation of his entire family, who have brought round a corpse with a severed face. Sadly this is visible by the neighbours through a window between the flats (?!). This is the point where the words "with hilarious consequences" would normally appear, but "with darkly surreal consequences" is probably more appropriate. Oddly enough, it's actually quite funny, but requires a very warped sense of humour.

"Bosnian Flat Dog" (look, I'm not making this stuff up) is more narratively coherent, in that it least gives the characters some kind of purpose to stick with. Granted, their purpose is to find a manufacturer of ornamental grenades in Sarajevo, but it's a purpose. This is a collaboration with one Lars Sjunnesson, incidentally. It's not apparent what their respective roles were, but this one does make a certain degree of sense, as well as tying its jokes slightly closer to reality.

Bear in mind that when I say "closer to reality", that means that they find a fridge containing several bottles of Slivovica and the corpse of Marshal Tito.

This is the sort of book that Fantagraphics exist to put out, and god bless them, but it goes without saying that we are looking here at something that will appeal to a rather limited market. In the two strips that I could actually follow, Anderssen does his black comedy surrealism very well, but whether that's something you'll actually feel like reading is another matter. The first strip seems to be weirdness for weirdness' sake.

One for the experimentally minded.

Back in sanity, THE FALL is a one-shot reprinting a strip by Ed Brubaker and Jason Lutes which, according to the indicia, was originally serialised in Dark Horse Presents. To be honest, I was rather surprised to learn that DHP is still going. I haven't seen a review of it in ages, let alone a copy on sale. Anyone out there actually reading this book?

But never mind. We're in one of Ed Brubaker's favourite areas here, the detective story. The protagonist finds a buried handbag complete with contents, and becomes obsessed with finding the owner, leading him to investigate an unsolved murder from nine years before.

This is not a particularly unusual storyline for this genre, and albeit that our hero isn't actually a detective this time round, he's still basically fulfilling that role. But Brubaker throws in some interesting oddities in his story, giving the hero a curious relationship with his boss's wife and opting not to go for the obvious ending.

He does, admittedly, end up resorting to a couple of plot contrivances - it's not altogether clear why the hero bothers investigating something as mundane as a lost handbag in the first place, and at one point the story brings in a highly unlikely chance meeting on the street in order to nudge the plot onwards. Nonetheless, for the most part Brubaker keeps his story nicely balanced.

With the story keeping at a suitably down-to-earth level to maintain credibility, Jason Lutes' art takes a nice steady approach, sticking with grid layouts and relying on some effective camera angles. It's understated, but that's the right approach for this kind of story.

Yes, it's ultimately a genre piece. But there's nothing wrong with that when they're entertaining, and this is a good self-contained one-shot that's worth your time.