The Weapon X one-shots continue with Marrow, and once again the creative team of the regular series are nowhere to be found.  This time we have writer Christina Z, who's best known for her work at Top Cow, and artist Brandon Badeaux, a name which means nothing to me at all, although the work here is perfectly acceptable given the material.

Once again I'm left to wonder how any of this is supposed to be building interest in the ongoing Weapon X series.  We've now had two one-shots about sadists abusing the mentally ill and a third about a sadist being a sadist.  This fourth one-shot returns to Weapon X's predominant theme of sadists abusing the mentally ill, and leaves me with absolutely no desire to see any more of these characters.  At this stage, I would cheerfully shoot every character in this series.

With the possible exception of the Australian guy from the Sauron one-shot, there's nobody here who I remotely identify with.  Everyone in these stories is damaged and insane.  To write a compelling mentally ill character is exceptionally difficult.  Very few writers can do it.  I have never found Frank Tieri's characterisation to be particularly strong or convincing with sane characters.  Quite bluntly, I have no confidence that he can write a convincing mad one, and the stories which the one-shot creators have been called upon to produce - presumably under his general guidance - give me no reason to change that opinion.

Marrow has signed up with the Weapon X project in order to get her powers under control, so apparently we're all just going to pretend that the Spider-Man/Marrow one-shot from last year never happened.  Whatever.  I don't care about the continuity implications when I don't even care about the characters.  We're back, at least, to the standard theme that Marrow wants to be beautiful, which is generally consistent with her history.  Of course, she was beautiful in the Alan Davis X-Men run for about a year, but it seems that we're all going to conveniently forget about that as well.  I might rouse myself to be irritated about, I suppose.  But really, it's Weapon X, and I already have the entire series mentally filed under "who cares."  So whatever.

Having achieved physical beauty, Marrow ignores instructions to go and kill a character with no personality, instead going out to pull.  She gets shot at by Kane, and it turns out that the man she slept with was actually Mesmero in disguise, so it's effectively a rape angle.  Because, you know, this is how nasty government departments treat their staff.  They shoot at them and rape them.

And this makes them into strong soldiers determined to prove themselves.  Because you'd want to prove yourself to people who raped you and shot at you.  Who wouldn't?

Now, come on.  This is just melodramatic nonsense.

This has absolutely zero credibility as a way that any character would act - anyone involved.  I have no idea to what extent the plot originated with Tieri or with Christina Z - for what it's worth, given the dreadful plot she has to work with, the pacing and execution aren't too bad.  But I don't buy a word of this story.  It's just ridiculous.

Insanity, when written well, can be a fascinating theme.  When written badly, it's a cheap excuse to write clunky plots full of tedious shock value and gloss over all the inanities with the magic words "Oh, s/he's mad.  It doesn't have to make sense."

Downright tiresome.  The Weapon X ongoing series is looking more and more like a DOA dog.

Rating: D+

back | continue