X-Men Legacy #23 – Review

by Simon Spurrier (Writer), Tan Eng Huat, Craig Yeung (Artists), Jose Villarrubia (Colorist)

The Story: Forming the World Worm, David is unfortunately stuck in a form set out to destroy everything as Destiny needs to make everything happen as foretold.

The Review: To follow a story is to invest ourselves in its characters, setting and ideas. If a reader is able to follow everything and actually get interested in what the writer is willing to talk about, it becomes a wonderful synergy, a tale that becomes bigger and grander as the themes get more refined and clearer. Not every stories are equivalent of each other, but each has its own potential to hit a particular craving for someone.

The tale of David Haller, as told by Simon Spurrier, was one that was simply powerful in its message. Taking a relatively hated character and rebuilding him, Spurrier crafted a story exploring legacy, trust, potential, goals, belonging and many other such themes to bring out the best and worst out of David Haller and his vision of a united mutant world. However, like any good story, it always get every bit closer to its ending with every chapter released, with this issue being the penultimate one before the very end.

Painting this tale with a good lot of distress and despair, the writer continues his exploration of David Haller, playing up the prophecy in which he will end up destroying the world due to his powers, with naught but Blindfold being able to destroy him to save everyone. Lamenting his fate and how unjust and cruel the world can be at times, the narration carries on the desire for something better that David holds onto, putting forth the events in this issue in a light that is saddening. Playing up with the sympathy the readers have built for the main character, there is a heavy sensation of empathy thrown in for the actual injustice dealt to David, who sees his dreams and his desires being perverted by elements completely outside of his control.

It is precisely the way in which the issue actually shows the mistakes of David and the worst aspects of his faults that make this issue so potent in many ways. His vision for a united mutant kind, his desire to be respected and accepted and his growing control of his multiple powers and personas make for a culmination of the many concepts and ideas of the series that ends up being perverted in a rather surprising way.

Sandman: Overture #1 – Review

By: Neil Gaiman (story), J.H. Williams III (art), Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Sometimes, you can’t escape from your problems even in your dreams.

The Review: In the canon of great comic book works, Sandman must be counted among the very best, a masterpiece of storytelling that surpasses genre definitions, period conventions, and even the boundaries of its medium.  Given how pristine its quality, you have to wonder how wise it is for Gaiman to return to the project that made his name and risk disturbing its legacy.  Can anyone, even the master himself, really capture such fictional magic again?

That’s the question that runs through your head as, with both unbridled excitement and no little trepidation, we open the pages to Overture.  And it’s with enormous relief to discover that although the writer has aged, his voice is still young, the imagination as wondrously pure as it ever was.  Gaiman’s genius is quite different from the brooding inquiries of Alan Moore, or the conceptual ambitions of Grant Morrison, or any other writer of his level.  The brilliance he displays even from the first pages comes less from the machinations of his brain and more from the depths of his subconscious, as radical and breathtaking as dreams.  Listen to his description of the dominant species of a planet plucked at random in his universe:

“Small, mindless, insect-like creatures who swarmed when the mood took them, taking on shapes capable of making art or exploring the solar system, until they fragmented back into tiny flying cells interested only in egg-laying and food…  And, on the southern continent, a race of huge, carnivorous plants, with limited mobility, but beautiful minds.”