30 september 2001

As the shipping schedule returns to normal, I've got an odd mixture this time which includes a few books that didn't make it over last week. But first, the X-Men.

DEADPOOL #58, or if you prefer, Deadpool: Agent of Weapon X #2, is pleasantly surprising. It's actually not bad. It helps that on this book, Tieri can play up the comedy, where he seems to be more comfortable. Not all of the jokes here are actually funny, but Tieri and artist Georges Jeanty have got some decent comic timing. And some of the routines here are geniunely amusing. Wade's ludicrous expense account has some cute items - "300 bags of Skittles, a stained glass window, 14 copies of 'Yoda Sings The Blues'..."

The storyline, as if you hadn't guessed, has Deadpool realising just how nasty the Weapon X project are as he tags along on a particularly excessive mission. The characterisation of the Just Plain Evil villains doesn't really hold up, and in particular Garrison Kane's inexplicable transformation into a murderous loonie makes no sense. With the tone of the story, it just about gets away with stuff for the moment, but only for the moment. Tieri then moves on to try and explain away Copycat's bizarre actions under the previous writers, and actually makes some kind of sense out of it.

Georges Jeanty's vaguely cartoon style fits quite nicely with this kind of material, and it's good to see him finding a better venue than the godawful Gambit & Bishop mini they had him on earlier this year. His redesigns of Kane and Deadpool are a bit shaky, but his storytelling is fine.

I'm somewhat surprised to be writing this, but we may actually have found an assignment that plays to Frank Tieri's strengths. Perhaps he should play up the comedy in future, since he's really not bad at it.

NEW X-MEN #117 finally lumbers out, over a month late, but once again it's difficult to stay annoyed for long.

Apparently this isn't the first part of the new storyline at all, but a one-issue break before "Germ Free Generation" starts. It's really the tail end of the first storyline, bracketed as a separate story in order to preserve the false ending of that story - which is helpfully explained this issue for those who didn't spot it.

Since the last issue, the X-Men have reopened the Mansion as a school and have picked up 152 pupils. Quite where all these people came from is a bit unclear, but presumably recruiting pupils is a damn sight easier when your number is in the phone book. Which tends to support the view that going public was the right thing. In the meantime, not everything from the previous storylines has been abandoned, as the obligatory lynch mob has gathered outside the gates. Mind you, this mob does include a rare sighting, by Marvel standards, of expressly Christian anti-mutant sentiment, which is something we haven't seen much of since God Loves, Man Kills.

This is largely the Beast's issue, as he settles back into his role as teacher (though really, how can five staff members be providing that level of hands-on care to 152 children?), gets dumped by Trish, and finds out what really happened at the end of last issue. Once again, Morrison does a wonderful job with Nova as a villain, as she completely demolishes Hank over several pages with some effective psychological cruelty. There's a real viciousness to that scene which creates a sense of menace we haven't seen in a while.

Fill-in art comes from Ethan van Sciver and Prentiss Rollins, neither of whom are familiar to me. It's not quite as distinctive as Quitely's work, but it's still strong work, particularly in the crowd scenes which are there to establish the range of students in the new school. Some of the Nova scenes are perhaps a touch too melodramatic, but it's a close call.

The idea of revealing villains as the long-lost relatives of major characters is not one I've ever been keen on, and I have some reservations about whether Morrison is going to be able to pull off this routine with Nova and Xavier, however convenient it may be to the plot. Still, as before, there's enough impressive material here to give me confidence that Morrison knows where he's going with the more questionable ideas.

Another very good issue.

And in stark contrast to both the above series, here's WOLVERINE, as Frank Tieri continues his rather pointless attempt to interest us in Wolverine fighting disposal villains in a wrestling-inspired martial arts tournament. This is deeply silly in all the wrong ways, and doesn't even have the merits of impressive visuals - while Dan Fraga's improved considerably over the years, he's still not the sort of artist who can draw a fight scene that I find visually interesting.

Not much else to be said about this, really, because there's not much to it. It's a rather dumb idea which doesn't work.

X-TREME X-MEN: SAVAGE LAND is a spin-off miniseries from my least favourite X-Men title, and I think by now we more or less know the routine.

This is more or less on a par with the ongoing title. Claremont seems to be making an effort to get his more irritating writing tics under control (this issue even features a rare sighting of three pages with only two captions, and it's not a bad scene). On the other hand, we get a page of Storm and Thunderbird discussing the concept at tedious length, so maybe it's not quite under control just yet.

There's an assortment of plot ideas here, none of which particularly engage my interest one way or the other. Rogue's got a whole load of personalities fighting in her mind, which is quite a nice visual in a way, but doesn't really take us much further. I'm not very enthused at the prospect of regular visits to Rogue's mind to see copied characters fighting one another, but it's okay for two pages.

Meanwhile, Rogue is having nightmares about being attacked by dinosaur versions of her teammates, and the team stumble upon a group of lizard people trying to escape to safety in the Savage Land. Yes, it's yet another hidden race in the Marvel Universe, and once again it isn't one that doesn't seem terribly interesting. They're given a back story which is a painfully obvious parallel to Xavier's dream, but doesn't actually make any of the characters particularly interesting. The idea of them trudging halfway around the planet on foot to get to the Savage Land isn't terribly credible, nor is the rather bizarre throwaway line that this hidden race learned about the Savage Land on the Internet.

So the X-Men hook up with the Saurids and take them to the Savage Land. Do you know, the more I put this down in writing, the more I'm turning against this issue? Anyhow, for reasons which are entirely unclear to me, they can fit them all into the Blackbird, but not with it flying at the time. (Since when does this team HAVE one of the Blackbirds, come to think of it? Are they back to borrowing equipment from the real X-Men? What happened to them having cut off ties?) So instead of flying, the Blackbird does... er... something involving a tunnel, which I've read several times and can't make head nor tail of. Nor can I understand what it's meant to have added to the book beyond just flying to the Savage Land.

Kevin Sharpe's art starts out quite promisingly, but starts to get sketchier (and more lacking in backgrounds) as the story goes on. Maybe that's due to a change of inkers, but there's a page of the Beast rescuing some kids from falling into a pit which looks quite awful, largely due to the art's failure to show us the damn pit, even though it's the central feature of the scene.

Really not very good. It's not a very interesting story idea, and it's still littered with irritants.

THOR: GODSTORM is written by Kurt Busiek and pencilled by Steve Rude. The astute among you will immediately realise that it likes the Silver Age a lot.

Now, as regular readers will know, I think the Silver Age its place. And its place is in history. If the readers who remember it want to engage in nostalgia trips that's up to them, but I don't find the prospect remotely appealing. The overwhelming majority of Silver Age material has aged appallingly, and is of largely academic interest these days. It's quite nice to know somebody still cares about it, but I'm not interested in joining them.

What we have here is a rather odd first issue, set in two different time periods. In the year 912, two Viking children listen to a story about Thor told by an elder wearing a costume that looks decidedly inauthentic. Chapter 1 is a Tales of Asgard type routine, in which Thor, newly appointed as God of Thunder, gets into a fight with the sentient Godstorm, and imprisons the Godstorm for not doing what he's told. Frankly the Godstorm seems to have a point here, as Thor is ordering him around without much sensitivity for the poor chap's feelings, but never mind.

The Godstorm duly swears vengeance and is ultimately freed during the Silver Age (this bit being told as a prophecy) by a minor villain. It is at this point that I tune out, since what started off as a somewhat promising piece of pseudo-folklore that was willing to play Thor as a bit of a bastard blurs incongruously into the Silver Age Thor.

I've never found Marvel's Thor very compatible with the mythology. The Vikings really weren't a very nice bunch, and nor were their gods. Marvel's version is an ultra-sanitised Thor, lumbered with a prettified Asgard and a code of honour which seems to have been borrowed from Camelot and attached with a rivet gun. He's viable as a character in his own right, but when you start contrasting Asgardian mythology with Marvel's Thor - particularly the Silver Age version - the joins stand out a mile. I just can't buy into this as taking place in the same reality. Even the Asgardian children are forced to complain about the absurdity of the Silver Age set-up, which is a bit of a tip-off that these two worlds just don't fit.

It looks lovely, at least up to the point where Rude stops being Silver Age influenced and slips into outright pastiche. But I just don't get how a folklore story is meant to be enhanced by shoving it in with the 1960s Avengers. At least leave the damn Avengers out of it and do it with Thor on his own.

There's a basically interesting idea in here, but for me it's dragged way down by miring it in the Silver Age. It's 2001, for heaven's sake. Let it go.

TRUE STORY, SWEAR TO GOD actually came out last week, but it's only just made it to the UK. It's not immediately clear from this issue whether this is a one-shot or whether it's the first issue of a series of indeterminate frequency; in any event, it's been around for a bit as an Internet comic strip.

And what we have here is an autobiographical love story. Single cartoonist Tom Beland heads to Disneyworld (for some reason never mentioned by name - you'd think they'd be glad of the unequivocal praise they get here) to do an article for a magazine, meets Lily from Puerto Rico, and they fall in love. Awww.

I'm kind of assuming there's something further to come here, given that this story ends with them both going home again, while the other strips and the editorial suggest that they're still together. Pet peeve of mine: periodicals that give you absolutely no indication of when the next issue will be out. But never mind, because this is a charming piece of work, in which Beland manages to spend page after page singing the praises of his girlfriend without at any point becoming annoying. Which is rare. The story hits the right tone of "universal experience" to avoid it coming off as a dazed tribute to somebody we've never met. Instead, it's a charmingly romantic piece of storytelling.

Autobiographical indie comics seemed to be drifting out of fashion in the last few years, but this doesn't feel dated. Probably because Beland wants to spend an issue telling us how happy he is, rather than sharing his cynicism or angst. Which is nice. And I'm in the mood for nice.

A lovely little book, worth picking up.