25 april 1999

It is increasingly hard to believe that a year ago I was able to describe X-MAN as an underrated title. At the time, it was - it had interesting characters, unusual plot ideas and generally was rather better than its abysmal reputation would suggest. Now the book has the reputation it deserves.

This story is the climax, if you can call it that, of the Gauntlet storyline, in which Nate has been hunted by people in armour. How thrillingly original. But it gets worse - not only are they a covert government agency (yawn), they're also corrupt (yawn). Thankfully, a couple of them are decent types who try to stop the corrupt ones... all of which has been done to death before. Basically, this is a dreadfully uninspired cross between a SHIELD story and Operation: Zero Tolerance, and it's about as exciting as a narcoleptic coma.

This isn't a book where you can point at anything in particular that's obviously bad; it's just the overall crushing mediocrity of the thing. Despite having only three regular characters to work with, Kavanagh fails to make them convincing or involving. The decent member of Gauntlet, Cinder Fontaine, is pretty much colourless as well, even though Kavanagh seemed to have some interesting ideas for her in the past.

Luke Ross's art is alright, though nothing to write home about, and in fairness it's not like he's got much to work with here. But this really is dreary stuff, and we can only hope rumours of the book's cancellation are correct. Neither particularly popular nor particularly good, it's difficult to see a reason to keep this one around.

X-MEN is a rather different proposition. Of course, Kavanagh's just scripting this, but he's still doing a damn sight better job here than on X-Man. You could hardly say the scripting was a major selling point on X-Men, but it gets the job done. Of course, it helps that at last we have a story worth the read.

Following his two-issue jaunt in the Ditko Dimensions, Alan Davis takes the X-Men off to a city filled with imitation heroes dating from the Marvel Universe of the early eighties. Readers continue to wonder quite who's calling the shots on the X-Men storylines at the moment, but one thing is perfectly clear - this story screams Alan Davis. This is the first issue we've had from him that clearly evokes his Excalibur work, albeit that it's the Cross Time Caper.

Basically it's a comic relief story, and the effect is of a toned down version of the wonderful Excalibur story in which the Impossible Man populated an alternate earth with parody heroes. A threat pops its head round the door at the end, but for the most part this is the plot taking a breather and allowing a bit of humour back into the X-Men's world. I don't believe we've had a comedy issue since... Scott Lobdell's X-Babies two-parter, I suppose. Good to have one back.

On the other hand, I can't help thinking that having taken over the book at short notice, Alan Davis is playing for time while he works out a storyline. We've had several issues of the X-Men wandering around as a Greek chorus, although signs of individuality returned in the last storyline, and there's much more character work on show here. Then we've had a two-parter with really not a great deal to do with the ongoing storyline. And here we have another one. On top of that, the biggest problem for X-Men writers at the moment is what to do with Marrow. This is the third consecutive issue that she's spent unconscious, and it may be that Davis is simply incapacitating her altogether until he works out how on earth she can be made to work.

This story remains somewhat below the standards of Davis's best work, but his distinctive style is showing through at last. The all-important sense that somebody actually has a story to tell (as opposed to just a comic to fill) is back.

WITCHBLADE INFINITY. Well, it was a thin week, and it's by X-books alumni Lobdell and Pollina. But still... it's Witchblade, isn't it?

I've always tended to avoid bad girl comics. Largely this is because I am neither stupid nor twelve. I buy comics to be drawn in by the story, and I just cringe inwardly when I find I've inadvertantly bought a book that expects me to drool at the sight of a deformed Barbie doll in a chainmail bikini.

Consequently, Witchblade is a title I've always studiously avoided. I know it has a reputation for at least dignifying its lead character with a personality (and it says something for the genre that this is seen as unusual), but we all know the main selling point has always been the prominent appearance of a babe in an HR Giger-themed contraption that obligingly covers her nipples. So the point I'm trying to make is that Lobdell and Pollina were always going to have a hell of a job selling me on this story.

They did better than I'd expected. This is a self-contained story which as near as I can make out is intended to get the Witchblade back with the main character, who has evidently lost it at some earlier point in the series. Lobdell duly takes the opportunity to pretty much ignore his main character and do a story with an interim Witchblade holder.

[Since writing this review, I've been told it's actually an out of continuity story. Nice of the book itself to make that clear. -- Paul]

In what might just conceivably be seen as a tad exploitative, the interim Witchblade is a dominatrix working at an S&M brothel. Normally this is the point where I give up and do something more interesting instead, but amazingly Lobdell manages to get away with this. It works (for me, anyway) because the whole bad girl genre has always had rather naff dominatrix overtones. Shoving in a genuine dominatrix character - in other words, a rather bored and harassed teenager quite plainly playing the role for purely financial reasons, well written for the most part - works well because of the contrast between her as the actor and the dodgy Witchblade stuff as the role.

Admittedly, Pollina doesn't seem able to resist the cheesecake, but he does keep it to a manageable level - and unlike a lot of artists working in this sort of genre, he has the good sense to turn it off when something actually dramatic is happening. Still, there's a couple of cringe-inducing panels for all that. Also, there's some very dodgy storytelling at the climax, where Kimberley's death isn't really that clear.

Although the closing sequence with Pezzini reclaiming the Witchblade feels a bit tacked on (the story would be stronger if she was completely missing, frankly), overall this is a pretty successful story, which manages to work the dodgy bad girl conventions in as a real thematic and plot point.