31 october 1999

Absolutely tons to get through this week (it may not look it from the contents, but check the capsules). So I might be a bit more sketchy than usual on the core books - those that could be bothered actually coming out, that is.

GAMBIT #11 is an adamantium story which looked in the solicitations like it might be tying in with the ongoing Wolverine plot somewhere. It doesn't, or at least it doesn't yet. What we have here is a self-contained story guest starring Daredevil (who crops up surprisingly rarely in the X-books, considering that he's a flagship character) and making rather surprising use of old third-rate Power Man and Iron Fist villain the Constrictor.

Basically, the Constrictor has nicked something for reasons that turn out to be pretty good ones, and Gambit and Daredevil fight over him for equally good reasons. It's pretty much one big chase scene taking full advantage of both characters' tendencies to fight in suicidal and acrobatic ways, and looking excellent thanks to Steve Skroce's artwork.

It's not a particularly deep issue - the dilemma turns out not to really be a dilemma at all since everybody can get what they're looking for at the same time. Having said that, there's a nice twist in that the two supposed heroes are trying to save the lives of people who arguably don't deserve the help and even after everyone goes home happy, they're left feeling a bit hollow about the whole thing.

For all that, though, this is a good example of how to write a one-act action story (a story format which has been falling flat over in Wolverine in the last few months - this is how to do it right). There's not much to say about it other than that it's rather good.

X-MAN #58 is one of the stronger issues the title has had lately. Admittedly that isn't saying a great deal, but there are a couple of moments in this issue where the story works.

This is the reunion of Nate and Threnody, serving partly as an opportunity to tie up old plot threads (Nate finally finds out that Madelyne Pryor tried to kill Threnody back in issue #24), and partly as an opportunity to establish Threnody's new status quo. Although Nate doesn't find out about it this issue, there's a pretty obvious implication here that he's fathered a child by Threnody, which could certainly generate some interesting plots in future. Having said that, I suspect the plot is heading somewhere else entirely - they're taking too many pains not to show us the kid to do it straightforwardly.

The gimmick is that Threnody's malfunctioning death-related powers now mean that she's followed around by a load of baffled but rather annoyed zombies, and she can't really get rid of them. Since they're really just a load of shuffling corpses, they're not particularly exciting to look at, but there are a couple of moments where the story manages to get the force of nature thing to work. (The other bit that really works is Nate's reaction to finding out about Maddie's attempt to kill Threnody, by the way.)

There isn't a great deal to it, and it's still some way off deserving actual enthusiasm. But it's not such a bad issue.

With Children of the Atom, X-MEN: PHOENIX and Hellfire Club, soon we'll have three X-Men miniseries running. You may recall that the last time the X-office was putting out that volume of miniseries, 99% of them were shit. When they eventually dropped off the schedules, most fans weren't mourning them.

Children of the Atom got the current batch off to a good start, but X-Men: Phoenix stumbles a bit. Not only is it a continuity gap plugger (what happened to Rachel Summers after she left Excalibur), but it's a continuity gap that didn't particularly need filled.

Cable's home timeline, where this miniseries is set, is a boring place. Post-apocalyptic feudal society... mad bloke running everything... everyone looking a bit miserable... I'm bored. Apocalypse, a one-dimensional twat if ever there was one, bores me. His timeline bores me. His storylines bore me and his thugs bore me.

So what is John Francis Moore going to bring to this series to liven things up? What's the angle?

There isn't one, really. Rachel arrives and, predictably, finds it all awfully distressing. Something must be done. She tries something, it doesn't quite work, and she is picked up by a stock unconventional-type character from the anti-Apocalypse underground. Pretty much nothing surprising happens in this story. It's difficult to think of a way it could have, given how much of the future is already mapped out here. A story about how Rachel came to found the Askani is potentially interesting. A story about Rachel seeing something outrageous and being outraged by it, isn't. This is the latter.

The series might still have got away with it if it had drawn me in to Rachel as a character, but it doesn't. She doesn't even feel to me particularly like the character I remember from Excalibur. I don't feel any real sense of empathy with this woman, and I do not find her actions particularly engrossing. Consequently, I am bored.

Oh, and I don't find the art particularly interesting either. It's alright, a bit sketchy, occasionally mucks up the storytelling, but alright. I am still bored.

In conclusion... I am bored.

PROPOSITION PLAYER is a new Vertigo miniseries about a professional poker player who inadvertantly gets involved in dealing with souls. It's pretty good.

Our hero, Joey, is the sort of mildly unpleasant but still generally sympathetic kind of guy conventionally played in films by John Cusack. (And hey, wasn't Pushing Tin so not as good as Grosse Point Blank? I digress...) Despite falling into a fairly well-trodden character type, he's still a well-drawn character, and creator Bill Willingham sets him up well in a strong opening sequence showing how the guy works.

The obvious difficulty with a story like this is how you get your lead character to start dealing in souls without a really contrived plot twist. Willingham opts for the ever reliable approach of a heavy night's drinking, but again handles the scene brilliantly, allowing his unlikely plot idea to emerge entirely naturally from the scene.

The same applies generally, in fact. None of these are dazzlingly original or insightful ideas, but they're still firmly on the right side of cliche, and excellently handled. Admittedly you can question the logic of the central idea (if drunk people signing souls to one another for a joke counted as violating the laws of heaven, aren't they taking it a bit literally?), but it's a wonderful read.

Willingham turns in most of the art - pencilling half the issue, and inking the rest over Paul Guinan's pencils. It's all very solid stuff, vaguely reminding me of Mark Buckingham's art on later issues of Shade. Granted, the big angel guy who turns up at the end is just crying out to be drawn by John McCrea, and doesn't quite work. But other than that, good stuff.

Okay, so it's nothing new. But it's a very good read, and I recommend it.