26 december 1999

X-MEN: TRUE FRIENDS #3 - "Claiming The Crown": by Chris Claremont, Jim Cheung, Mark Morales, Rob Stull, Scott Koblish and Mei

I reviewed the first issue of X-MEN: TRUE FRIENDS on 18 July, and the second issue on 12 September. Now here comes the third issue. The pace has suffered a bit.

I gave the preceding issues fairly favourable reviews, albeit suffused by a warm pink glow of nostalgia. This is, after all, the sort of stuff that got me into comics in the first place. It's always nice to be reminded of the sort of things Chris Claremont was doing in the 1980s. Somehow, I'm feeling a bit more uncertain about this issue.

Things get off to a pretty decent start with Rachel and the Shadow King (who I'm relieved to see isn't being shoved in as some kind of cause for the rise of Nazism, but instead is used here as a camp follower; a more interesting approach to his character). It's the battle on the astral plane routine, of course, but solidly done. And the reference to Sienkiewicz's classic New Mutants splash page of Xavier being blasted backwards in his wheelchair goes down nicely.

The stuff with Shadowcat trying to get in touch with her Polish relatives to warn them about World War II is also a good idea, at least at first. I think Claremont pushes the thing a bit too far by having Shadowcat announce her intention to go off and murder the Nazi high command, though. It's not so much the scale of the endeavour - it's certainly possible she could do it. It's the fact that it's the old "Would you kill Hitler if you had the chance?" dilemma, and it's been done.

Matters aren't helped here by Destiny's conversation with Wolverine about whether they should intervene. Although it's a nice idea that Destiny is looking out for the obviously and undeniably bad timelines and doing her best to quietly avert them before they come along, and that World War II didn't become so obvious until it was too late for her to stop it, the bit about why they shouldn't stop Shadowcat is poorly thought out. Having put in the moral dilemma, it at least needs to be addressed. But what we get here is a load of meaningless platitudes masquerading as a message.

Brilliant example: "We all of us have learned to kill, Logan, but more importantly, we have learned not to kill. And to know the difference." Oh, come ON. Kitty must learn the difference between killing and not killing? What's that supposed to mean? I'm not at all convinced Claremont knows either, especially as this plot thread doesn't go anywhere - Shadowcat gets returned to the present before it gets the chance.

Now then. If you've read the book, and you come from Britain, you can probably guess what's coming next.

The Queen.

Pretty much everybody had worked out that Lillibet is meant to be the young Elizabeth II, and so far, no problem. Seemed a bit pointless, since she was just being used in a generic plucky youngster role, but there you go. This issue, however, takes a brave step forward and plummets headlong into the Chasm Of The Fucking Stupid.

Allow me to explain this clearly. The idea of the Queen as repository of some magical force of Scotland, as channelled through the Stone of Scone and what's presumably meant to be the Scottish Crown Jewels, transformed into some noble and heroic mystical hero... Dear god, this is crap. I mean, the Queen's a lovely old dear, done her job well, nothing against her. But I can't buy into this at all. It's silly. And it's so obviously not meant to be, which is why it's so cringe-inducing.

For one thing, the Queen is of mainly German descent. For another, I simply cannot take seriously the idea that anybody other than the true heir to the throne of Scotland would die on attempting to use the Stone of Scone. For god's sake, it's been stolen by students in the past. Perhaps one of them dropped it on his foot, but it's not quite the same thing. It's just a bloody rock. For a third, this whole ancient-Scottish-magic stuff irks me since it's another example of Claremont's apparent insistence on portraying Scotland as a nation of noble savages.

And this is before I even get onto the nonsensical decision to have the closing sequence (which has two pages the wrong way round, incidentally - good to see all those months were put to good use in proofreading) at the opening of the Scottish Parliament. This story has to take place at the very latest around about Excalibur #40. The Scottish Parliament opened in the spring. That's far, far too recent an event for a story set so far back. It's jarring.

Sorry. I did want to like it, but this time round the nostalgia is outweighed by the sheer crushing stupidity of large chunks of the plot.

C-

Also this week:

ACTION COMICS #762 - Superman goes Christmas shopping. It's the sort of idea that ought to be just pathetically obvious, but Kelly and Garcia make it work. They're actually managing to make Superman an engaging character to read about it. Who'd have thought it was possible in these cynical days?

A-

AUTHORITY #10 - More big outrageous stunts with big outrageous art. Utterly delightful.

BLADE #3 - A definite improvement on the first two issues, as it finally drops the virtual reality stuff and develops a coherent plotline. Unfortunately, it's still not a terribly good plotline, and Sears is still cranking up the purple prose to the degree where it's not even intelligible. Hell, I've read the first two issues, and even I can't understand the recap. ("Our slayer last played deadly in the home of the dead, calmed by the weirding most strange of the eye of silver, friend among friend with all of Hrolf, the red. Woe?") The art also takes a turn for the better, as Sears stops drawing his characters in such ridiculous poses, and Bill Sienkiewicz turns up inking. But there's still nothing here that makes it even remotely fathomable how this book was green lighted. Questions really should be asked.

CAPTAIN MARVEL #2 - It's Peter David doing what Peter David does best. So one for Peter David fans, then. The title character is still being eclipsed by Rick Jones, which is something that's really going to have to be sorted out soon. And David is doing his occasional routine of acknowledging rather than explaining the ridiculous bits of the plot. But it's fun. Which is what's important.

CLERKS: THE LOST SCENE - Exactly what it says on the tin. It's the missing scene from Clerks, and it really is just a missing scene rather than a story. Consequently, it's not likely to make much sense if you haven't seen the film. (Although if you haven't seen the film, stop wasting your time on the Internet and go and rent it. It's a thousand times more entertaining than I'll ever be, and I have ex-girlfriends who will testify to that.) If you've seen the film, then yes, it's funny and worth checking out.

JLA #38 - There's an awful lot of fighting. You can get away with this if you have Bryan Hitch. This book doesn't, yet. It has Howard Porter, who can't get away with this. It's not even particularly full of interesting ideas, either. It's just a load of fighting. Oh well.

C+

THUNDERBOLTS #35 - Whether Jolt's death in this issue is real or not (and that's not a spoiler, the story opens with her funeral), the really impressive thing is that it doesn't read like a cliche. More insanely complicated plotting in the proud tradition of the title, and deserving of your support.

A-

X-51 #7 - A slight upward turn, but still pretty dodgy. On the bright side, we finally get a story where Machine Man gets to do something instead of just get taken over by Sentinel programming, but he's just not a very interesting character. Worse, the creators have unfathomably decided that the Sentinels would be more threatening if they had human operators. Of course, the reason the Sentinels are threatening at all is that they're big bloody robots and you can't reason with them. So much for that idea.

C+

Next week: Well, again there's so much running late that listing what's meant to come out seems a bit pathetic. But in theory, we're looking forward to Wolverine #147 (more of the Death fall- out) and X-Force #99 (Dani and Arcadia). More likely, though, is that we'll be seeing one of the late books - we're still waiting for Bishop #5, Gambit #13, Mutant X #17, Uncanny X-Men 1999 (which had really better come out next week) and X-Men: Phoenix #3.