|
THE CREATORS: David
Tischman writes Cable #101-104, with Darko Macan taking
over at Cable #105. Igor Kordey draws the lot.
THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT:
On an Igor Kordey book?! Zero, obviously.
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2002: The
storyline about clones in Albania; underground fighting in
Rio; a nuclear bomb in Kazakhstan; a surreal conversation with
Jackie Singapore; a transvestite sumo wrestler and some time
travelling soldiers; and bizarre events in Russia.
 Well.
If nothing else, you have to give
Marvel credit for trying some undeniably different with
Cable and Soldier X this year.
Experimentation is to be encouraged. It is a good thing
in its own right. It remains a good thing,
notwithstanding that sometimes the results don't work.
Artistically, the results have
been at best mixed. Commercially, they've been
catastrophic.
As 2002 began, David Tischmann
was writing, and continued the "tour the trouble spots of the
world" approach established in his 2001 storyline about
Peruvian terrorists the Shining Path. His final arc took
the book to the former Yugoslavia and an elaborately bizarre
storyline about a scheme to clone thousands of new Albanians.
The obvious absurdity of the whole scheme was clearly designed
to mock the ethnic obsessions that have done so much to wreck
that part of the world. It was a good idea, but dragged
down by ropey plotting - in this day and age, you can't get
away with expecting readers to accept that clones have all the
memories of their parents. It's too much of a leap of
credibility compared to what is now bordering on real-world
technology.
 Following Tischmann's departure,
Darko Macan took over, with what seemed at first like a fairly
innocuous beginning. And then, just before the book
received a relaunch as Soldier X (an attempt to boost
sales which simply didn't work in the slightest), Macan went
completely round the bend, producing a series of startlingly
eccentric stories. The central theme of the last six
months or so has been to place Nathan Summers in a
deliberately bizarre and absurd storyline and watch him
struggle to find some sort of meaning in it. The problem
is that often, it's just been too bizarre and implausible to
work as a straightforward story. I like the general
idea, but it hasn't quite clicked.
For all the book's ambition, and
Igor Kordey's consistently strong artwork (less rushed here
than on New X-Men), it hasn't found an audience -
indeed, it's driven them away. Robert Weinberg, who was
kicked off the book in 2001 to make way for Tischmann, has a
point when he grumbles that he was dumped to make way for a
new approach that, at least commercially, has failed utterly.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't worth a
shot, but it's hard to imagine who was ever expected to be the
target audience for a mildly surrealist approach to Cable.
Macan and Kordey have duly been
relieved of their responsibilities with effect from issue #9.
Their replacements? Karl Bollers and Arthur Ransom.
The art will be good, but for a book which is already
plummeting towards the cancellation mark, Bollers - the writer
of Muties - hardly seems like the man to turn things
around. Once again, the smart money has to be on a swift
cancellation for this title.
back |
continue |
