T.J. McLean Writes

A longtime showbiz journalist and fan's thoughts on comic books, movies and other cool stuff.

Tag: X-Men Page 2 of 4

Comic-Shop Memories: Comic Master, Edmonton, Alta., 1985-1986

By

On March 5, 2021

In Bags and Boards

Though Starbase 12 was the best stocked store around, Comic Master was the most convenient shop for me to get my comics fix from in the mid-1980s. Located at 201-10326 82nd Ave. in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Comic Master was found on the second level of a two-story building on the city’s cosmopolitan Whyte Avenue strip. You accessed the store by entering a door at the far left side of the front of the building and climbed the stairs, took a left into a small hallway and another left through the door into the store itself.

Comic Master was not a big shop, but it was open and benefited from a bank of street-facing windows that let in a nice amount of natural light (at least when there was some natural light to be let in). It had the usual racks for new comics with most of it space devoted to back issues. Comics of note were on wall racks for display purposes. And at the register, a large glass display case for more expensive books. I recall the layout of the shop changed more than once.

Star Wars 68 Cover
The cover to Marvel’s Star Wars #68 from 1982.

I recall stopping in one summer day to find the shop had found almost all of the remaining issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic I needed at that point. I think these were mostly issues from 1982 and 1983, and included my copy of Star Wars #68, which I wrote about here.

What made Comic Master convenient was its location. I was attending high school not far from Whyte Avenue, so the strip and its shops were a popular after-school stop. It also was close enough to home to be easy enough to swing by on weekends. I recall one day in the autumn of 1985 borrowing the family truckster (it was a station wagon with faux wood paneling, I promise) to head over and get the new issue of Star Wars — issue #103, I believe. I forgot, however, that daylight saving time had ended overnight and found I had to wait for the better part of an hour for the store to open.

Star Wars #103 (Jan. 1986)

At the time, I was looking for recent back issues to the series I liked. One of which was X-Men, and I distinctly recall feeling lucky to pick up for a couple of bucks a copy of issue #171, a key issue in which Rogue joins the team. At the time, it was the oldest copy of X-Men in my collection!

X-Men #171 (July 1983)

There was an amazing bonus to visiting Comic Master, in the form of a second comic shop located right next door. The name of the store escapes me. There was no sign, and the shop was essentially a narrow hallway with racks of old comics on one side of the store. They were racked in all kinds of strange bags and were generally cheap and perhaps of slightly lesser condition. But when looking for those back issues, I almost always found stuff there I needed but had eluded me at other shops in town. I specifically remember scoring my copy of Star Wars #61 there, which was one of the best of the Marvel series with a great cover by Walt Simonson.

Star Wars #61 (July 1982)

And if that wasn’t enough, another shop opened within a block of these two shops soon thereafter. But that’s another post.

Comic-Shop Memories: Starbase 12 Collectibles, Edmonton, Alta., 1985-1986

By

On March 3, 2021

In Bags and Boards

I don’t recall if this was the very first comic book shop I ever patronized, but it was the first one I remember looking forward to visiting. It was located at 10627-101st Street in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, just south of the big Brick furniture store, which remains a prominent local retailer.

The first time I visited Starbase 12, probably in summer of 1985, my dad was with me, and he thought it was the craziest thing he’d ever seen. Even the idea of a comic book shop was still a novelty back then.

I used to take the bus from school downtown to the shop, pick up some new and back issues, and then head to my dad’s office, on the 16th floor of what was once the CIBC building and is now known as Bell Tower, at 10104-103 Ave., and hitch a ride home.

  • Star Wars Annual #2 (1982)
  • Power Pack #15 (Oct. 1985)
  • Cloak and Dagger (2nd Series) #4 (Jan 1986)

The shop had a bi-level back issue rack in the middle, by which I mean there was a top level of comics and a lower level. They were all filed alphabetically by title, as is the norm. Back-issue comics were bagged but not boarded, and the shop would put the comics in the bags with the flap on the back side of the comic. The price tag was put along the top of the front side of the comic, and the flap taped over the price tag. I assume that was to prevent people changing the prices.

The back issues were the big draw. For someone just starting out, they had plenty of copies of recent issues of most books, going back a year or two. For some reason, I remember the rack as being orange in color. Prices were usually a dollar, or $1.25, for recent back issues, which wasn’t bad considering the cover price on Marvel and DC comics at the time was 95 cents in Canada and 75 cents in the U.S. On the plus side, there was no sales tax in Alberta, so you didn’t have to allow for that calculation when trying to maximize the $10 bill in your pocket.

New comics were on racks around the perimeter on about three sides in all. These were multi-level racks, so there were, I think, three rows of comics on the top level, and the same on the lower level.

The fourth side had a small glass display case for more expensive comics, and a rack for larger items like the old Marvel Graphic Novel books.

  • X-Men Annual #9 (1985)
  • X-Men #203 (March 1986)
  • X-Men #204 (April 1986)

I have strong memories of buying a number of comics there: Marvel Star Wars comics, early issues of Power Pack and Cloak and Dagger, as well as my first X-Men comics, which were issues #203, #204 and Annual #9. I also remember going in there the day Classic X-Men #1 came out in the spring of 1986, and also coming home that day with an Alpha Flight Annual #1 and X-Men #209. I also remember buying Marvel Age #36, with the David Mazzuchelli cover, and Power Pack #20 there around Christmas 1985.

  • Classic X-Men #1 (Sept. 1986)
  • Alpha Flight Annual #1 (1986)
  • X-Men #209 (Sept. 1986)

In 1986, the shop was celebrating Marvel’s 25th anniversary by having a drawing for a copy of Fantastic Four #1. I remember seeing that book in the display case, blown away that it was selling for a whopping $100! I don’t remember what condition it was in. I entered, but did not win.

  • Marvel Age #36 (March 1986)
  • Power Pack #20 (March 1986)

The last time I visited the shop, sometime in 1986, they had put a rack of discount back issues in the front lobby. (You came in the building’s front door into this small lobby, and opened the door on the right for Starbase 12 and the door on the left for whatever business was in that part of the building.)

I don’t know how long the store lasted, though I recall noting on a subsequent visit in 1988 or 1989 that it was no longer there.

But perhaps because it was the first really well-stocked comic shop I frequented, it set the bar for the many shops I would frequent in the future.

Reading Comics: Mr. and Mrs. X #1-8

By

On March 8, 2019

In Uncategorized

Mr. and Mrs. X is something rarely seen in the X-Men universe: a romance comic. (X-Force: Sex and Violence doesn’t count in my book, but Pryde & Wisdom I would say does.) The execution doesn’t always live up to the hype here, but at it does have its charms.

Kelly Thompson’s scripts on issue #s 1-8 are good, but I don’t think she’s doing enough to play up the personalities of Rogue and Gambit and give them some way to spark off of each other. The Rogue and Gambit miniseries that preceded this one was better in that regard.

Plus, the use of a power dampener collar on Rogue so that she can touch and be touched by Gambit — a necessity for newlyweds — really undercuts the forbidden nature of their attraction that made their relationship so interesting. “Solving” Rogue’s major problem like this feels like a cheat.

As for Gambit, he’s lost a bit too much of his scoundrel quotient here. He should be more trouble, one step ahead of everyone (at least he should think so).

I love the covers. It’s Terry and Rachel Dodson, so of course they’re terrific.

The interior art is by Oscar Bazaldua is solid, but he tends to use the same facial expression over and over for Rogue — and it’s one that doesn’t really look like the way she’s been drawn over the past 38 years.

A little editing would help too. Wasting panels and pages for setup shots is a writer and artist issue that’s too common in comics — stop trying to be a movie, folks.

Reading Comics: Iceman (2018) #1, 3

By

On March 6, 2019

In Uncategorized

Bobby Drake has always been a bland character, all the way back to 1963’s X-Men #1. But, boy howdy, there’s been no shortage of writers who’ve tried to rectify that, with often strange results. Roy Thomas sent him off in suit with his pal Beast to haunt 1960s coffee shops full of beat poets and pretty girls. Chris Claremont sent him off to college to study accounting, not even bringing him back into the X-Men fold for the death of Phoenix in X-Men #137. Louise Simonson gave him a bunch of girlfriends in X-Factor, including Opal Tanaka, which began the first of many plots about how much of a bigot Bobby’s father was. And Scott Lobdell amped up his powers, had his body taken over by Emma Frost, and then gave Bobby’s dad redemption when he was nearly killed by the Friends of Humanity.

But nothing’s raised Iceman’s profile as much as Brian Michael Bendis revealing Iceman to be gay in 2015’s All-New X-Men #40.

That brings us to Iceman #1 and #3,  part of a five-issue series following up the 11-issue 2017 run, both from writer Sina Grace and both focusing on Bobby sort of learning to live life as a gay man who’s also a superhero. The problem with these stories is they’re way too on-the-nose. You can almost line up the expected plots and watch them get knocked down one by one: How does Bobby find a date? How does he introduce his boyfriend to his parents? Does he move out west to be with his new beau? Of course, there’s some superheroing in the mix, but the focus is clearly on the personal drama, which unfortunately reads like Bobby’s got a new job and has to figure out where the lunch room is.

Issue #3 offers a bit of fun in that it brings in the amazing friends of long-ago Saturday mornings: Firestar and Spider-Man. There’s a superhero thing to do, but it’s more about the three friends all dealing with the dates they’re on when the villain attacks. Maybe it’s just me, but everyone is so interested in getting along that none of the characters feels like a real person. The art is okay, but stiff — it feels like something a fill-in artist would have done in the 1980s.

If Marvel’s going to stick with Iceman being gay, it needs to come up with better stories that don’t hinge just on the fact that he’s gay. While I know there are fans who will eat this up right now as being very in the moment, it’s too one-dimensional to be remembered for any thing but that.

Reading Comics: Domino (2017)

By

On March 5, 2019

In Uncategorized

Domino never stood out as character worthy of her own series, but Gail Simone has changed my mind after reading Domino #1, 2, 5, 6, 7 and Annual #1.

Most of the Simone-scripted comics I’ve read were from DC; I’ve never really read her Marvel work, and it’s clear from this she’s a much better fit at the House of Ideas. I actually want to read more about this character, whose previous most memorable comic book moments involved her being Cable’s sidekick in the early days of X-Force and the unfortunate X-Force: Sex and Violence miniseries, for the final scene in issue 3 involving Domino agreeing to give Wolverine a blow job after they successfully saved the day. (Yes, it’s as gross as it sounds.)

Here, Domino is much more interesting: she gets a dog, goes on missions with her pals Diamondback (formerly a villain in the Mark Gruenwald run of Captain America in the 1980s) and Outlaw, who’s so much of a hoot that I’m amazed I missed her completely until now.

Together, these women are fun, funny and get into a really solid superhero story involving some nasties from Domino’s past. (Not sure I knew Domino’s origin, but it’s recapped nicely here, so I got everything I needed to know without the story slowing down.) The art by David Baldeon is terrific — light, funny, nicely rendered and it tells the story.

I really like this version of Domino and look forward to filling in this collection and reading more as it continues in the upcoming Domino: Hot Shots miniseries.

Reading Comics: Astonishing X-Men (2017) #13-17

By

On March 5, 2019

In Bags and Boards

Astonishing X-Men #13-17 is a very flat story with some nice covers. Check ’em out.

Matthew Rosenberg does something here that is increasingly common: He’s focused more on the bits and on trying to write flashy dialog than he is on telling a clear story. It’s a bit of a disease, one that I think you could lay at the feet of Joss Whedon. There must be a lot of Buffy fans out there wanting to write comics.

This series wraps up this series of Astonishing with a limp tale about Alex Summers, recently freed from being falsely turned into a bad guy in Uncanny Avengers, trying to form a new team of X-Men. Of course, he can’t call them X-Men because Kitty Pryde owns the trademark to that name with Xavier dead, and explicitly tells him not to use it. They try to make that a recurring joke, but the artist’s limited ability to draw human facial expressions gets in the way.

The threat this time out is O.N.E., a generic government agency out to do something bad to mutants. Havok tries to recruit Beast, who’s teaching at Harvard until the Reavers show up and wreck the place. Also, Kitty has Warpath follow Havok to keep him out of trouble — and to keep him from calling his group X-Men. (Still not as funny as it wants to be.)

They all crash Dazzler’s third-rate anniversary tour for Sounds of Light and Fury looking for Forge, who’s running her light show and, I assume, doubling as her roadie. He says no to the offer and vanishes from this arc, but Dazzler is desperate for something to and signs. Then, the group finds Colossus drinking away his pain in a dumpy apartment after Kitty walked away from him at the altar. Piotr is easily the most interesting character in this weak bunch, which ends up with a strange showdown at the Xavier Academy that resolves nothing and has no impact. This is five issues of treading water at the most basic level and it’s pretty depressing to read.

A brand-new era? Not quite.

Bonus comic: Dazzler: X-Song #1 (2017) by writer Magdalene Visaggio and artist Laura Braga. This issue ties into the Astonishing X-Men run, with Dazzler going on tour incognito as part of a band with the groan-inducing name Lightbringr, that brings out fans in both the mutant and inhuman communities — often with conflicts popping up at the club venues. There’s some mutant jerks who are showing up at the concerts to buIly the inhuman fans that show up. And of course, Alison has to step in and stop it. There’s some strange scenes with Colossus trying to get Alison to come back to the X-Men. And if there’s a story in here, it’s very slight.

The art fares slightly better, but the interior is sketchy in that storyboard style and doesn’t match the promise of the cover, by Elizabeth Torque and Ian Herring. Dazzler remains a tough character to crack.

Lot of people love the character’s premise and look, but solid stories for Ms. Blaire have been hard to come by, with Chris Claremont’s run with her in X-Men from 1986 to about 1990 standing out as the real exception.

‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Leads 2014 Comics Movie Pack

By

On January 3, 2014

In Bags and Boards, Uncategorized

Original art for X-Men #141 by John Byrne and Terry Austin, as it appears in
 Fantagraphics’ The X-Men Chronicles II from 1982. 

2013 was a pretty good year for comic-book movies in particular — and movies in general — with 2014 also looking sharp.

Top of my list to see is, not surprisingly, X-Men: Days of Future Past, due out May 23 and looking to have the same sort of big Memorial Day box-office debut as X-Men: The Last Stand. This is adapted from one of the most influential and beloved X-Men stories, published long ago in 1980 in The Uncanny X-Men #141 and 142.

I remember being a new X-Men fan in the mid-1980s and realizing the importance of this story was second perhaps only to the Dark Phoenix saga in the mutant mythos. I scored my copy of #141 at a long-gone comics shop in Phoenix for something ridiculous like 50 cents back in the fall or winter of 1986-87. The following summer, I bought #142 at All About Books and Comics for an amount I can’t even recall. I took #141 to my first Comic-Con in San Diego in 1993 and got it signed on the first page by John Byrne and on the cover by Chris Claremont. The story — in which an adult Kate Pryde psychically travels back in time from the desolate future of 2013 to her younger self in 1980 to convince the X-Men to stop the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants’ planned assassination of future president and anti-mutant activist Sen. Robert Kelly.

This story fully brought the Holocaust themes Claremont had been hinting at into the X-Men, and the future timeline in which Sentinels rules America and had hunted down or imprisoned in work camps all known mutants was startling in its boldness. Not only were bunches of X-Men already dead, but we saw a glimpse of the future reformed Magneto, the then-mysterious redhead Rachel, and the gruesome deaths of Wolverine, Storm and Colossus. Even though it was copped from an episode of one of the Brit sci-fi TV shows like The Avengers or Doctor Who — favorites at the time of both Claremont and Byrne — the story really works well as the ultimate expression of everything that the X-Men are fighting for going wrong. The movie version will be quite different, with Wolverine reportedly put in the main role of time traveler instead of Kitty, but it’s exciting to see the X-Men movie series move forward with a kind of merging of the best parts of Bryan Singer’s original films and Matthew Vaughn’s First Class crew. I expect big things for this movie, and for the Apocalypse follow-up Singer teased for 2016.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is due out May 2 and I expect to like it much more than the first installment in the series, which spent so much time retelling the origin story that it was hard to figure out what made Marc Webb’s version very different from Sam Raimi’s. I like Jamie Foxx as Electro and Paul Giamatti as The Rhino, but I’m not looking forward to playing out once again the inevitably tragic fate of Gwen Stacy. That’ll probably be saved for part 3, but we all know it’s still coming.

300: Rise of an Empire, due out March 7, makes me scratch my head a bit. I don’t think we really needed a prequel or sequel to this movie, which I think got a bit of a bad rap when it came out from critics. It was a cool exercise in style that paid off extremely well for Zack Snyder et al., but I suspect there will be little here to make the sequel stand out and stand up on its own.

The same could be said for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which really should have been made about five years ago. Due out Aug. 22, this won’t have the same “wow” impact that the first Sin City did, but the stories Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller have to work with are pretty good and should make for a fun movie and a modest hit if it turns out comparable quality wise to the original.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, out April 4, looks very good. The opportunity to see Cap working in the modern world will help keep things fresh after the obligatory World War II outing in the first movie. I haven’t read Ed Brubaker’s run and am not familiar with the specifics of the Winter Solder storyline, though people whose opinions I trust assure me it’s good, so I’m thinking this will be another hit for Marvel.

And then there’s the big wildcard and gamble of the year: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, due Aug. 1, right after Comic-Con. Marvel’s obviously putting a lot of muscle into this one, with some interesting casting and a more movie-friendly take on the franchise already tested out as a comic. I expect this gamble will pay off for Marvel, especially in the usually sleepy movie month of August, and show the studio’s savvy at turning even its C-list and D-list characters into hit movies. I wish they’d lend some of that knowhow to DC, which still is having a hard time getting B-list characters off the ground in theaters.

And that’s just the comic-book movies. There’s also cool stuff like Transcendence, Interstellar, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Hobbit: There and Back Again to look forward to.

‘The Wolverine’: A Lot More Good Than Bad

By

On August 13, 2013

In Bags and Boards, Uncategorized

I’ve been thinking about The Wolverine, which I caught at a morning screening — it’s what you have to do when you have a toddler! — on opening weekend.

There’s a lot to like in this movie, but it’s far from perfect. The movie’s been out a few weeks now, so I’m going to talk about stuff that qualifies as spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
Here’s the pro side:

  • This is the most faithful adaptation of a Marvel comic-book story to come to screen so far. There are deviations from the 1982 Wolverine miniseries it’s based on, but I was surprised by how much of that story was kept intact. 
  • I liked that the female characters were interesting. Yukio in particular is a favorite of mine from the original comic. And while she’s not quite the same character here, she played a major role in the story and held her own quite well. Mariko didn’t fare quite as well. I never fully bought the romantic connection between her and Logan. The comic version, despite its hokey elements, is a bit more convincing. 
  • The end tag previewing next summer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past was terrific. Patrick Stewart is back! So is Ian McKellan! I am now very much looking forward to that pic and find myself hoping Bryan Singer can really pull off an amazing movie that not only heals some of the wounds left by X-Men: The Last Stand, but also unifies the whole franchise and gives it an exciting way to go forward. My biggest concern is living up to the impact of the original comic book story, which has to be significantly fleshed out for a feature film.
  • I liked that there was a lot of Japanese spoken in the film, both with and without subtitles. 
  • While Viper was probably the least necessary addition to the movie, I really liked Svetlana Khodchenkova in the role. She had just the right amount of sexy sinister for a character like that.
  • The posters with the Japanese style artwork are great.
Here’s the con side:

  • After a very satisfying and interesting set up, the final act is so conventional as to be boring. The Silver Samurai, as done in this movie, was far less interesting than in the comics. The big reveal of Harada as being inside the big robot suit is just plain dull and has almost no emotional impact.
  • I wish more had been done to play up the love triangle of the original comic, with Yukio being an obvious and very willing match for Logan, who just can’t get over Mariko. That was a nice touch in the comic that this movie could have used a bit more of.
  • Viper is not well integrated into the story. She seems pretty unnecessary and her power is oddly portrayed and never explained. I don’t recall Viper having any powers in the comics. But I do remember she somehow convinced Wolverine to willingly marry her for some reason. (I remember it was in Chris Claremont’s return to the character in Wolverine #125-128 or so, but not the reasons behind that twist.) That might have been a more interesting element to play with here.
  • I hate the ripping out of Wolverine’s claws. The bone claws, in a word, suck. I always thought the bone claws were the lamest thing ever done to the character. My problem with it is it makes absolutely no sense. We were told for decades that the claws were housed in some kind of bionic mechanism, which must have been confirmed by all the medical exams done on Logan by everyone from the Sentinels (as far back as The Uncanny X-Men #98) through the Shi’ar and onward. Even in the original Days of Future Past storyline, when the Sentinels burn off Wolverine’s flesh, you can see the manmade mechanism that operates his claws in his bones. Of course, that’s a future timeline Wolverine, so it’s easy to explain away. But that doesn’t mean it’s still not a stupid idea.
  • No credit whatsoever for Chris Claremont, Frank Miller or Josef Rubinstein for coming up with the original comic-book story. Even more interesting, it appears Claremont doesn’t get even a token payment, while Len Wein, who officially created Wolverine but had little to do with the character as he exists today, did.   
The Wolverine looks like a solid but not spectacular hit. So far, it’s made about $113 million at the domestic box office and about $195 million overseas, for a decent total of $308 million on an estimated budget of $120 million. Anticipation for X-Men: Days of Future Past is running high, and it’s clear Fox is going to continue to develop and release X-Men movies on a regular basis, thus preventing the rights from reverting to Marvel. The series appears to be on the upswing, with the well-received X-Men: First Class and now The Wolverine getting fans past the disappointments of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. 

I would love to see the franchise move past prequels and into new, fresh territory with new characters, new villains and new scenarios. After The Wolverine, it’s looking more likely than before, and I think fans of the comics and the movies can be glad of that. 

The 2013 Comic-Con Takeaway Post

By

On July 24, 2013

In Bags and Boards, Uncategorized

It’s been a week, and I finally feel like I have recovered from my one day at San Diego Comic-Con.

Visiting the show for the first time in three years, it was interesting to see how little had changed. Most of the booths were the same, offering much the same kind of material. It made me feel less like I had been missing out by not being at the show every single year, and that in itself was a relief.
Marvel Team-Up #74

With only one day, I cruised around the floor most of the time and hit some key booths, including my pals at Animation Magazine. I did a tiny bit of shopping, picking up an advance copy of Alter-Ego #120 from TwoMorrows, featuring a cover story on the Silver Age X-Men. I also picked up a Wonder Woman bendable figure for my daughter, who’s become a big fan thanks to DVDs of the old Lynda Carter series, and a few inexpensive back issues, including Marvel Team-Up #74, featuring Spider-Man and the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Players (a.k.a. the original cast of Saturday Night Live). I’ve always been interested in this comic, but never had a chance to pick it up until now. I hadn’t realized Chris Claremont wrote it, making it an even more interesting oddity from the late 1970s.

I didn’t buy much more because, well, everything was so expensive. It seems every booth is pushing an “exclusive” item costing anywhere from $20 to $75 and up, and very little appeared to be discounted. Perhaps that’s just a function of exhibitors needing to recoup as much as possible the rather expensive booth rate at the show. Either way, it put a dampener on my shopping interests, especially since almost everything I was interested in can be acquired via a local comics shop or online, often for less and without the need for me to lug it around the show. 
The highlight of the day was the Sequart: Advancing Comics as Art panel, during which I talked about my book, Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy from Comics to Screen, in conjunction with the upcoming documentary Comics in Focus: Chris Claremont’s X-Men run on the series. Director Patrick Meaney and producer/cinematographer Jordan Rennert showed some footage from the doc. It was cool to see how well the shots they took of my original X-Men comics collection turned out, as they were going for a different look when presenting the work from an older, more analog era. 
I also jumped at the chance to join Patrick, Jordan and Sequart founder Julian Darius as they interviewed Louise Simonson for the Claremont documentary. I can now check her off my very short list of comics pros whose work I admire who have not yet had a chance to meet.
If there is one reliable result of attending Comic-Con, it is for me a revitalized interest in comics. I’ve been pulling out stuff to read ever since and have managed to catch up on some of my immense reading backlog to very enjoyable effect. I’ll write about some of the more interesting stuff soon.

Catching Up with the X-Men, Part 1

By

On June 3, 2013

In Bags and Boards, Uncategorized

All-New X-Men #1

The most well-read post I ever put on this blog was one that went up Feb. 23, 2012, in which I talked about breaking my 26-year weekly superhero comic-book habit.

More than a year later, I find myself drawn back to superhero comics, though not as much as I have been. I’ll start by saying I’m just not into DC’s The New 52. I’m sure there are some good books in the line, but nothing I’ve seen inspires me to invest the time and money required.

Pretty much the only thing that can get me to plunk down my coins and invest my time are my two favorite Marvel franchises: X-Men and Avengers. For me, X-Men was always the best idea Marvel had. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: X-Men is at heart a science-fiction concept dressed up with superhero conventions. As such, it has a depth to it that straighter takes on the superhero genre generally lack. It certainly has helped it maintain a hold on my imagination and has the ability to suck me back in, repeatedly, throughout my life.

I stopped reading X-Men comics twice before. The first was in 1995, when the Age of Apocalypse came along at a time when my discontent with the X-Men titles in those post-Chris Claremont years was at a high. Like The New 52, it made a great jumping off point. It lasted a little more than a year before I was sucked back in around The Uncanny X-Men #332. And it didn’t last long — I was gone again by the time the Onslaught crossover arrived only a few issues later. This second absence lasted, again, about a year or so before I came back on board. The second return was aided by my move to California in 1996 and the discovery of numerous cheap back-issue sources that made it easy and fun to fill in the gaps in all the various series.

So it was again that, after the horrid event called Schism and the inevitable re-launch of The Uncanny X-Men after 544 issues, that it was again time to say good-bye. And, again, it held for a little more than a year before access to cheap back issues overcame my resistance and pulled me right back in.

The break has, overall, been good for me and I come back to the X-Men family of books with fresh eyes and a new appreciation for how much they’ve managed to improve in my absence. While they are in no way great works of art or classics of the genre or medium, the X-Men books have become a rather enjoyable line of comics. More than at any time in recent memory, the various books have — for the most part — a reason to exist, some kind of point to them, and are nicely executed in both script and, especially, art.

I have to give kudos to Marvel for double shipping series like All-New X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men. At first, I thought that would just be too much, but it turns out to make those series even more engaging because there’s a decent new episode coming out pretty much every week. I have heard some store owners complain how difficult it can be for them to handle orders on those titles, but overall they seem to sell well enough that no one’s nose is too far out of place.

Having recently read through pretty much all the Marvel Now! issues of nine different X-Men series, I’ll run though them all very quickly. This will take more than one post and spoiler warnings are in full effect for those who haven’t read these books.

All-New X-Men #11

All-New X-Men is the book I was fearing the most. Why? One word: Bendis. As Marvel’s go-to writer, Brian Michael Bendis has had a pretty amazing run overall at Marvel, though I found his work on the various Avengers titles became too, well, cutesy, for lack of a better word. I’m not a big fan of the kind of rambling, pop-culture filled dialog that Bendis likes to fill entire issues with when he can. I thought that stuff worked great when Bendis did his own comics, like Goldfish, Jinx or Fortune and Glory. But he’s surprised me here with more action-oriented stories and a good focus on character.

The premise of the book is, however, pretty silly. It starts with Beast thinking he’s dying (he really just evolving again) and picking up on something Iceman says about how the young Scott Summers would never become the monster that the current Cyclops is. So he goes back in time and brings the original, teen-age X-Men into the present. What’s amazing is that this is nowhere as bad as it sounds, and is actually pretty good. The jokes about anachronisms are kept to a minimum, and the younger versions all come off as very interesting takes on the characters, especially Jean Grey. That last part is even more astounding given how long it’s been since the ever-morphing Jean has been interesting.

What really helps this book is the art, most of it by Bendis’ former Ultimate Spider-Man collaborator Stuart Immonen with inks from Wade von Grawbadger. The other artist in the rotation, David Marquez, is up to the task of keeping the book moving along at a quick pace and maintaining the slick look Immonen and von Grawbadger have established.

So far, the original team has met its older versions (the ones that are still alive — sorry, Jean!), the Avengers, as well as enemies like Mystique, who don’t always appear as bad at first to the young, time-displaced mutants. After 11 issues, I’m not sure exactly where this title is going or what its long-term prospects are because it seems clear the teenage X-Men have to return to the past at some point or else completely change the timeline and invalidate years of X-Men stories (not a good idea; see the Spider-Clone saga for reference).

Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 3) #1

The flip side comes in the relaunched Uncanny X-Men, known as Vol. 3. This book follows Cyclops’ team and features some interesting character dynamics, especially with Magneto. The art by Chris Bachalo, with help from Frazier Irving, is worth the price of admission all by itself. The stories are moving along slowly, but there is a nice counter point to this comic — it complements All-New X-Men without making either series redundant.

X-Men: Legacy (Vol. 2) #1

X-Men: Legacy is the one book I decidedly did not like after reading the first four issues. This series is about David Haller, a.k.a. Legion, the son of Charles Xavier whose mind is full of split personalities, each with its own power. While I like the craziness the cover designs promise, this is just not a character I’ve ever found interesting and an entire series about him battling with his inner demons — and is largely disconnected from other X-Men series — just doesn’t cut it for me.

X-Men (Vol. 4) #1

The simply titled X-Men (is this Vol. 3 or Vol. 4? I can’t remember!) from writer Brian Wood and artists Olivier Coipel and Mark Morales got a solid launch from the apparent novelty of it being a team of all-female mutants. Of course, Wood has his own fans and they bring some high expectations to this title, most of which he easily meets. The debut issue focuses on Jubilee, apparently no longer a vampire. She’s on the run with a little baby and turns to the X-Men for help. She gets it from Storm, Kitty, Psylocke, Rogue and Rachel Grey. That’s a good lineup for an X-Men book, no matter the gender politics, but that’s been the focus of a lot of the publicity surrounding this book’s launch. I happen to like all those characters (Jubilee can be a bit annoying, but she’s better by far than, say, Marrow), and it’s a solid book. I think Storm benefits the most from this title, being a character who really dominated the series back in Claremont’s days and has since struggled to maintain her popularity. I love the return to the old 1980s mohawk look, and the overall take on her is quite promising. Rogue, Kitty and Psylocke all have received plenty of attention in recent years, but I have to say I do like the new costume for Psylocke. Rachel has been a confusing character almost from the start, but I’d like to see what Wood can do with her.

Next: We’ll get into the X-Force and Wolverine titles.

Page 2 of 4

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén