29 july 2001

Some downright odd stories this week, but before we get to that, WOLVERINE finally winds up the Hunted storyline.

As a conclusion, this suffers from the same problem as Tieri's last storyline. Wolverine gets some reasonable explanation of what's going on, escapes, and goes home. The villains remain intact for further stories. It's all just been an overlong introduction of a character for future stories, rather than adding up to a satisfying storyline in its own right. Worse yet, in this case the villains are being set up for Deadpool to use, making the story feel particularly pointless from this book's point of view.

The payoff is that the storyline's purpose was to reintroduce the Weapon X project into the Marvel Universe. Explanations are provided for most of what's been shown in the storyline so far, but often they're problematic. It poses serious strains on the credibility to suggest that the Weapon X project could, at any point since he escaped, simply turned his mind-control implants back on. Particularly as he's never previously been shown to have any such implants to begin with - earlier stories just showed them trying to brainwash him.

Equally, while there's a rational explanation given for Wolverine being packed off to jail en route to being taken to the Weapon X base, it isn't one that merits having spent two issues there. Nothing in this issue changes my view that we've been reading a jumble of disconnected story ideas, most of which had little or no connection to the central plot. There was a reason for sending Wolverine to a jail. There was no particular point to doing two issues of "nasty redneck jailer" cliches, and the decision to bring two incongruous mystical characters into the storyline remains utterly inexplicable. Tieri should have saved them for a story where they would have fitted in.

There are some moderately interesting ideas here - the new Weapon X project being run by an aggrieved henchman from the original, who was carved up by Wolverine on escaping from the project first time around, for example. But they do not add up to a story. Tieri has some reasonable starting points for stories, and can put together some decent individual scenes, but he's still not putting them together into a story that works as a whole.

X-FORCE is now carrying a "mature content" warning, the first X-book to so since Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown in 1989. Oddly, despite last month's scenes of mutilation and cannibalism, Wolverine is still considered suitable for all ages - I'll be fascinating to learn what exactly Marvel's standards are meant to be here, since I have absolutely no clue what about this issue is meant to make it unsuitable for kids. Marginally graphic burns on Bloke? A passing mention of periods?

Surely not the fact that two gay characters kiss? Right?

Right?

Anyhow, after spending their first two issues hammering home the premise, Milligan and Allred pack their team off to a thinly disguised Cuba to rescue a mutant who's a thinly disguised version of... whatever that kid was called. (What, you thought we gave a toss about that story over here? Count yourself lucky I've heard of it.)

The focus shifts in a slightly more conventional direction, as there's less emphasis on the obnoxiously commercialised aspects of the team, and they get presented in a more sympathetic light this time round. U-Go Girl remains utterly unlikeable, but is at least coming over as a rounded character who has some decent reasons for her bitterness.

Milligan bumps off another of his team members this time round, except this time it's one of the sympathetic ones - presumably he figures that having spent two issues trashing all the superhero cliches, he can stand to spend a bit of time building the characters up again.

The Orphan continues his uncertain role as the closest thing the book has to a normal hero, trying to establish some kind of credibility in his role as team leader and going through some of the usual hero material (worrying about bystanders and so forth). The character is still trying to hammer his team into genre conventions where they often don't want to fit, and even in the sections where the book lapses into normal superhero material, Milligan keeps up the reminders that these characters are not particularly nice.

Still far and away the weirdest of the relaunched X-books, and the most interesting. A superhero book only in the most superficial sense, given that on virtually every point the characters turn out not to be playing along with the rules of the genre. Great, intelligent stuff.

X-MEN UNLIMITED seems to have decided that the way forward is to go from having one story about a second-division character where nothing much really happens, to having three stories about third- division characters where nothing much really happens. I am sceptical that Marvel Comics Presents offers the best template for this book to follow, but Marvel would seem to disagree.

Will Pfeifer and Jill Thompson provide a Dazzler story, which is a rarity in itself. The story is a send-up, as assorted characters watch a documentary recapping Dazzler's career. Some of the linking jokes are amusing. This does not, however, get away from the fact that it's a clip show. There comes a point about halfway through this story when the sinking feeling hits that you have paid good money for a recap of the Dazzler solo series that ended in 1986. After realising that, I had to really force myself to even bother finishing the damn thing.

Really, who cares? Dazzler was a book held in such low regard that its own final issue had a sign on the cover saying "Because you demanded it." Yes, it was in some respects amusingly crap, but I've already got far more laughs just by reading straight recaps of the damn thing. I'm utterly at a loss as to who is meant to be interested in reading a recap of a series cancelled fifteen years ago and featuring a character who's only made about four appearances in the last decade, no matter how many jokes they've put in the framing sequence.

It is conceivable that you will like this story if you really, really like its sense of humour. I couldn't stand it.

James Pruett and Mike Deodato Jr do a Nightcrawler story, which features some of the best art I've seen from Deodato. When he focusses on telling the story rather than doing bad pin-ups, he's really quite good. This comes as a surprise to me, as from what I'd seen, he'd degenerated into self-parody years ago.

The story, though, is utterly conventional. It's another "Nightcrawler finds strength in faith" job. Granted, as an atheist I'm intuitively hostile to this kind of thing, which probably explains why I got bored halfway through. It's done perfectly well, if you like stories about how nice religion is. Does nothing for me.

Ostrander and Gibson provide a Starjammers story which, again, is basically a space opera parody. This is a throwaway "rescue the princess" story with the fairly obvious twist that she turns out to be a villain. Some cute dialogue raises a smile, but other than that it's fairly standard. Mind you, after slogging through the other two stories I wasn't much in the mood for this.

I have no clue who this book is meant to be aimed at - except the old answer, "completists who'll buy anything." Despite the format change, nothing has yet convinced me that this isn't a totally superfluous title that should have been axed during the restructuring of the line.

FANTASTIC FOUR: 1 2 3 4 is a Marvel Knights miniseries in which Grant Morrison gets to do his version of the Fantastic Four.

I'm sceptical that there's much left to be done with the Fantastic Four, who've been running for forty years now and seem to have long since run into the law of diminishing returns. They are, however, a natural vehicle for Grant Morrison, whose utterly demented ideas and surreal extensions from Silver Age comic book science fit in very nicely, thanks.

Despite everyone's insistence on claiming that Morrison reinvents every series he touches in some post-modern way, that's not really the way it works. Morrison is writing a perfectly straight Fantastic Four here, going back to a fairly typical part of the team's history (Alicia's still around as the Thing's girlfriend, which is the only major difference from the present day) and doing the usual core routines his way. His way happens to be a bit distinctive, but less so here than elsewhere, given that the FF's home was already full of weird and bizarre stuff.

The structure of this series is going to be an issue focussing on each member of the team, and Morrison starts with the Thing. In the manner of these things, the Thing is talked into doing something very silly by Dr Doom, following promises of being returned to his human form. It's a nice touch that Morrison remembers that Doom and Grimm are meant to have been at university together, something that's usually completely ignored in favour of playing up Doom and Reed's relationship. Admittedly, it does strain credibility that the Thing is going to be that easily taken in.

Of course, Morrison doesn't take this stuff entirely seriously - note the throwaway villain complaining to the police about the Thing's unnecessary violence. ("You see also where this glass dome is cracked? That's my naked brain...") Even so, he's genuinely trying to just strip away the accumulated junk and do a straight rendition of the core concepts. And he does it very well.

Jae Lee is a curious choice of artist for the Fantastic Four, who are normally given very conventional superhero art. However, he works well with this kind of material, where distancing the book from its usual aesthetics helps Morrison in getting back to the core ideas. And he does do excellent versions of Reed and Ben.

It's not the greatest thing that Morrison or Lee have done, and ultimately it's not doing anything that out of the ordinary with the Fantastic Four. But it does do it rather well.

BANNER is the first product from Marvel's Startling Stories imprint, the imprint that's having difficulty explaining quite what the point is.

According to editor Axel Alonso, it's not going to do What If? stories, which just did spin-offs from existing stories. Nor is it Elseworlds, which is the usual characters in unusual circumstances (and, from what I can see, usually a justification for strained genre combinations). That's all very well, but it just tells us what Startling Stories isn't. There's no terribly clear explanation of what it is.

There's a comment about it addressing "nagging questions" that cut to the heart of the characters, but that doesn't really explain why an out-of-continuity imprint needed to be set up to address those questions rather than just doing them with the existing characters. As near as I can decipher, the logic seems to be that Startling Stories is going to be used to address the sort of questions that the monthly series has to gloss over, becuase if they were adressed and resolved, the series would end.

The premise of Banner is that given the amount of destruction he causes, the Hulk must inevitably have racked up a huge death toll by now. This begs the question of why he doesn't just top himself for the greater good, when he knows that his continued existence is going to result in people dying.

A perfectly reasonable question, and one that Brian Azzarello spends 21 pages asking before concluding that Banner would shoot himself in the head. He's got another three issues to go here, so hopefully he's got a rather good idea to explain why that isn't the end. Given the likely audience of this story, I'm not entirely convinced that the story wouldn't have been as well off just cutting to the gunshot and omitting the first issue altogether, but I suppose it does at least establish Banner's motivation as concern for others rather than self-pity.

Despite the number of people lining up to acclaim him, I have yet to be convinced that Brian Azzarello is particularly good. He spents an enormous length of time this issue setting up an entirely straightforward premise, although he does so well enough. There is a painfully awkward sequence saying that the Hulk's rampage is going to be explained away as a tornado. This seems totally superfluous, but perhaps it will gain significance later on. More to the point, it seems entirely ludicrous. I don't buy for a second that the US government is going to be able to retroactively change all the world's satellite photographs. It's quite plainly impossible. (Azzarello also adopts the hoary old device of having the usually sympathetic Doc Samson in the cliched nasty villain role, a pointless staple of alternate reality stories that surely should be pensioned off by now.)

Brian Corben's art is excellent when the Hulk isn't on panel, and a bit shaky when he is. His Hulk just seems a bit too rounded and cuddly for a supposedly unstoppable force of destruction, not to mention rather small scale. He does, however, do great facial expressions and a wonderful Bruce Banner.

The test of this series is going to be whether Azzarello has any worthwhile idea of what happens now that Banner has done the obvious thing and topped himself, and we won't know that until next month. For the moment, this is perfectly okay but nothing out of the ordinary.