C2E2 Report: Marvel – The Next Big Thing

 

 

Not to be outdone, Marvel had me scrambling out of the Batman panel to secure a spot in Marvel: The Next Big Thing. While the X-Men, Spider-Man, and Batman still rule the roost, Marvel’s made huge strides with some of their less famous characters lately and this was the place to hear about it.

Nick Lowe, our moderator and editor of Spider-Man and Moon Knight, took a moment to thank the Chicago fans before introducing the panelists. The first was Mike Marts, an Executive Editor, newly returned from DC’s Batman office. Lowe asked him what it was like to be back. Marts replied that it felt like slipping on an old shoe. Lowe was not entirely thrilled with the analogy, leading Marts to amend his statement, “A shoe that makes a lot of great movies.” Next up was Joshua Hale Fialkov, the writer of Ultimate FF. After him came Charles Soule, the writer of Thunderbolts, Inhuman, and She-Hulk, the last of which received particular applause. Then came James Robinson, writer of Fantastic Four and All-New Invaders. A trio of artists rounded out the panel; Mahmud Asrar, Wolverine and the X-Men; Ryan Stegman, Wolverine; and Skottie Young, both writer and artist on Rocket Racoon.

My NYCC Experience

On my second day of New York Comic Con, I headed straight to the Empire Stage for my first really big panel: Marvel’s Amazing X-Men & the Marvel Universe.

Ushered into the room, I found myself surprised by the sheer scope of it. None of the other panels had warranted much more than a large classroom, this was more like a well-funded lecture hall. As we sat down a series of screens announcing the day’s panels sprung to life and subjected us to a loop of one of the most life-draining advertisements I’ve had the displeasure to view. I won’t go into the specifics too much, but, as the panel was sponsored by a certain drink company, we had to see their latest attempt at uncomfortable pandering: a lengthy commercial advertizing their “big cans”.

Amidst this sea of fandom, it was both uncomfortable and disheartening to see such corporate schlock on the screens. I couldn’t help wonder if this was just what they thought was funny or if it was trying to appeal to the con-going community specifically. If it was the later, I’m deeply saddened to know that this is what companies think of us, but I’m happy to say that, for the most part, there was universal mockery and scorn for the ad.

Thankfully, that only lasted a few minutes, and soon Marvel Senior Editor, Nick Lowe, took the stage to introduce our panelists. Though the architects of the current X-Men line, Jason Aaron and Brian Michael Bendis, were not in attendance, it was still quite impressive. The panel featured Gerry Duggan, the co-writer of Deadpool; Marjorie Liu, an acclaimed novelist who is just ending her run on Astonishing X-Men; Brian Wood, the writer of Marvel’s new X-Men; Dennis Hopeless, the aptly named scribe of Cable and X-Force and Avengers Arena; Charles Soule, the man behind Thunderbolts; Simon Spurrier, who writes X-Men: Legacy; and Peter David, who is finishing his lengthy run on X-Factor. The panel also included three editors: Jeanine Schafer, Jordan D. White, and Daniel Ketchem.

X-Men #22 – Review

By: Victor Gischler (writer), Will Conrad & Steve Kurth (pencils), Conrad & Jay Leisten (inkers), Chris Sotomayor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: A team of X-Men plus War Machine try to stop a Balkan leader from siccing a bunch of Sentinels on her neighbors.

Five Things: 

1. This is a well-scripted issue. – This is an issue where you really have to differentiate between the concept/script and the art because one is good and the other is not.  The idea of one of these wacko Balkan leaders modifying Sentinels so that they’ll attack neighbors is pretty interesting.  It’s also nice to see that the X-Men don’t moralize over it too much: They’re heroes so there is no drippy discussion of, “It would be wrong, but if we let the Sentinels kill those normal humans, maybe everyone will realize how dangerous the Sentinels are.”  Nope, Gischler is a better writer than to patronize us that way.  He also has a really good handle on all of the characters and works a lot of humor into this issue.  It’s a shame that Gischler is working with some inconsistent artists because I think he could do some really big things.

2. Hard to support this art. – I generally like Will Conrad.  I don’t think he’s “awesome”, but he does a page now and then that I wouldn’t mind owning.  He’s a very capable (if unflashy) artist and he draws an incredible Domino!  But, I got a few pages into this issue and said, “WTF?  Has Conrad lost it?”  I mean, there’s a fight between the heroes and a Sentinel that makes zero sense.  Look at the bottom panel of Page 1, what is Colossus doing?  Is the Sentinel sitting on the ground or has Colossus somehow grabbed it by the ankle and jumped into the air with it?  Does Colossus have enough mass to jump the Sentinel into the air?  Why isn’t the ground shown in the background to clarify the perspective?  If Colossus has merely tripped the Sentinel to the ground, why is Storm flying under its shoulder?  And if he tripped the Sentinel, what is the Sentinel doing on the next page (the epitome of an unnecessary splash page, btw) where it is falling down again?  So the storytelling of the art is all kinds of fucked up.  And we’ve got problems galore with depth in the splash page.  Or page 4 where Storm and War Machine are blasting the Sentinel in the face/neck and Colossus is punching him– in the ankle?  What’s with the ankles?  Then I turned the page and knew what happened.  I recognized these faces as the work of Steve Kurth, so I flipped back to the credits and saw Kurth’s name.  I hate to blast the guy too much (although I just did) because I’m sure he’s a nice guy and working hard AND he might have been working on a really tight deadline to fill in on this issue, but I really don’t care for his art.  Don’t like how we’re looking down on everyone’s face in these tight shots.  Don’t like the odd mixture of heavy blacks with overly highlighted color art.  Don’t like that Jubilee has breasts larger than her head (and is back in her thong uniform).  Heck, Storm also has breasts larger than her head.  I can’t believe that a cheesecake fan like me is complaining about breasts, but I don’t like it.  And the color art isn’t doing any favors either.  The depth is really screwed up in almost every panel and I’d expect a colorist as experienced as Sotomayor to be able to fix some of those problems coming from the inker.  Anyway, art is not great.

3. Fun to see the X-Men interacting with other heroes – It is fun to see the X-Men playing with War Machine.  I don’t know if that’s ever happened before, but sometimes it get’s a little dull to just see the mutants dealing with their own little cast of characters.  This is also a great use of War Machine.  Since he can’t sustain his own series, he might as well serve as a kinda linkage between various parts of the Marvel Universe.

Uncanny X-Men #2 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Carlos Pacheco, Jorge Molina & Rodney Buchemi (pencils), Cam Smith, Roger Bonet, Walden Wong & Molina (inks), Frank D’Armata, Rachelle Rosenberg, Jim Charalampidis & Molina (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White & Sebastian Girner (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Mr. Sinister has created an army of clones of himself.

Five Things: 

1. Enjoyable Mr. Sinister story. – I’m not usually a fan of recycled villains in superhero comics because they become as predictable as the heroes, but this is a pretty nifty Mr. Sinister story.  The idea that he’s been chasing perfection for over a century and now finally thinks he has things in place to act is pretty cool.  It reminds me of something someone said about cottage cheese once: the first time someone made cottage cheese someone opened up the vat and said, “It’s ready.  Let’s eat it.”  How did they know that the goopy white stuff was ready to eat?  That’s kinda what Sinister has done here: He thinks he’s perfect and he’s ready to clone himself and control the planet.

2. A little talky. – Man….there is a lot of Mr. Sinister talking to hear his own voice in this issue.  Gillen manages to power through it in this issue just by being a gifted wordsmith, but there will be fans that groan any time they see such big word balloons.  The trouble with lots of words is that it sometimes slows the tempo of the comic down more than it should by making us linger too much on panels that should be fleeting.

3. Art manages to be okay in spite of a huge cast. – There’s no art in this issue that is “bad”, but anytime you have 3 pencillers, 4 inkers and 4 colorists the issue will look like a bit of a mess.  On a positive note, the storytelling remains intact and all the pages are professional.  I don’t want to bang on the art too much, but it just kinda bums me out that we’re already running into this problem on issue #2 AND that comes on the heels of a pretty average first issue.  Damn it, Uncanny is supposed to be a flagship book!  The art shouldn’t have to be workman-like and professional.  It should be awesome and with the exception of Terry Dodson, this title hasn’t had “awesome” in a long time.

Wolverine and the X-Men #2 – Review

By: Jason Aaron (writer), Chris Bachalo (pencils & colors), Tim Townsend & Jaime Mendoza (inkers), Rob Steen (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: How long did you think it would be before the new mutant academy got trashed?

Five things: 

1. Go Iceman! – One neat thing about getting a new writer on an X-Men title is that most of them pick a pet character.  It gives you a little insight into the pitch they must have made to get the writing assignment in the first place.  They’ve all got interesting ideas about some of these characters and schemes that no one has tried before.  So, it’s really cool that Iceman is stepping up in this series because he’s always been the lame hero who wasn’t quite sold on even being a hero.  Mostly he was just the guy who wanted to be an accountant who slid around on ice slides and fired snowballs at Magneto.  Haha!  Jason Aaron obviously thinks that Iceman can be a major difference maker and this new manifestation of his abilities where he creates multiple snowmen and then controls them all is super-cool.  Oh yeah….and he impulsively plants a kiss on the lips of Ms. Pryde.  I LOVE that!  Even though the Kitty-Colossus thing is kinda a staple, I get sick of seeing them just pining for each other and continually ripped apart by fate.  Maybe it’d be cool to see Kitty (who has always been practical) decide it just isn’t in the cards for her and Peter and go in a more practical direction?

2. Love /Hate the new Hellfire Club. – On one hand, these kids are really funny because they’re a perfect canvas for Aaron’s black sense of humor: hearing such nasty things coming out of such young mouths.  One the other hand….I just cannot buy kids as a threat to the X-Men.  I really don’t care if they’re super smart.  It just flies in the face of my experiences with kids in real life.  Sure, adults will humor them and laugh at their jokes and sometimes act like we believe their white lies, but even average adults are usually 10 steps ahead of smart kids and the X-Men aren’t average adults.

3. LOTS of newness in the character line-up! – Other than Wolverine and Kitty, almost all of the characters in here are either new, updated versions of older characters or characters who have been underused.  A quick list:  As mentioned above, we have a new Iceman.  Rachel Grey has been off the board for a long time.  Idie is a new creation in the last year.  Broo the Brood is new from Astonishing X-Men.  Quentin Quire hasn’t been used in forever.  And this Kid Gladiator and his bodyguard Warbird I think are 100% new.  Coming off an era in X-Men titles where it felt like every story featured the same ten characters, this is SOOOOO fresh.

X-Men #20 – Review

 

By: Victor Gischler (writer), Will Conrad (artist), Chris Sotomayor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Folks are still trying to acquire Sentinels.  The X-Men can’t have that.

Five Things: 

1. A unique team.  The team we get in this issue consists of Storm, Psylocke, Jubilee, Warpath, Colossus and Domino.  Other than Psylocke (and to a lesser extent Colossus), these are X-Men who we haven’t seen a lot of recently.  Sure, they pop up from time to time, but they usually haven’t been too central over the last few years.  This title is also notable for who isn’t in it.  There’s no Wolverine in this title.  No Emma Frost.  Even Cyclops’ appearance is limited to his sending the team on a mission.  If you keep this team line-up, this title really can have a purpose and not just another excuse to see the same cluster of X-Men every month.  One of the great things about the X-Men of my youth was the concept of the team.  You could point to an issue where Rogue or Psylocke “joined” the team.  Too often today’s stories descend into a gaggle of mutants who get forced into a mission.

2. A team with an attitude.  The attitude for the Team Cyclops in this Regenesis time is really great.  They’re willing to be heroes, but they’re also going to look out for mutant issues and they aren’t too concerned with political correctness or whether they are causing an international incident.  So, in this issue when they find some people trafficking in Sentinel technology, they send the team to take care of things.  Along the way, they run into War Machine who wants the X-Men to lay back, not cause an international incident and allow diplomatic channels to have their chance.  In the past, the X-Men might have walked away at that point to avoid pissing off the Avengers, but not now.  Nope. Their attitude is that they’re on a mission and War Machine can help or get out of the way.  Bonus that they pounded on War Machine who has been turned into such an unlikeable character recently.

3. Pretty nice art.  No one is winning an Eisner for this issue, but this is pretty solid art.  Good storytelling.  Good characters.  There are a few really nice panels in here too (the early half-splash of Domino is very nice).  Now, there are also a few panels that kinda get away from Conrad where the faces start to look like modern Deodato, Jr. (and that isn’t a good thing).  But, overall I think Conrad did a very solid job.  I’m not quite as on board with the coloring choices.  Conrad’s art is very heavily inked and he’s already indicated his shading with his blacks.  I just don’t think it’s necessary to also add highlights to this type of art.  It just looks wrong, like the coloring is too bright for the linework.  But, that doesn’t make the overall art experience “bad”.  Just not as good as it could be.

Uncanny X-Men #1 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Carlos Pacheco (pencils), Cam Smith (inks), Frank D’Armata (colors), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: We’ve seen Team Wolverine’s light-hearted high school.  Surely Team Cyclops will be up to more adult things.

Five Things: 

1. Really like the more adult tone of this title.  It’s too soon to really tell, but it seems like Uncanny X-Men will be a lot more serious than Wolverine and the X-Men.  That’s great because the world isn’t served well by having 4-5 roughly similar X-Men titles as we’ve endured the last few years.  So, while Wolverine is putting up with the hi-jinks of Iceman, Rockslide, Gambit, Rogue, Kitty, etc., Cyclops is going to deal with real mutant issues by setting up an uber-team of mutants who can tackle any problem and scare the pants off anyone who’d think twice about crossing the mutants.

2. Speaking of super-teams.  He calls them the “Extinction Team” and it consists of Cyclops, Magneto, Storm, Namor, Hope, Juggernaut-Colossus, Danger and Illyana.  Oy vey!  That really is a pretty horrifying concentration of power.  Just dealing with Magneto, Namor and Super-Colossus is pretty scary.  Oh, and Danger now has some kinds of super battle modifications which is pretty interesting given how formidable she was already.  And, then you’ve got Storm whipping up a hurricane and Cyclops shooting energy bolts and Hope copying whatever mutant’s powers would be most convenient.  Holy Hell!  I also really liked how Cyclops compared this team to a weapon of mass destruction and pointed out that Iraq (who didn’t have WMDs) got invaded whereas North Korea (which does have nukes) just got economic sanctions.   Then later when the Dreaming Celestial goes nuts, he says not to bother calling the Avengers because if his Extinction Team can’t manage the problem, what are Cap and Hawkeye going to do?  Totally badass and he’s right!

3.  Also deals with other mutants on Utopia.  This was great too.  While we thankfully didn’t dwell on these other mutants, it was nice to see that everyone has a role on Cyclops’ team.  There’s the science team, the security team, the street team, the clean-up crew and Hope’s crew.  Each has distinct jobs and the young mutants like Loa and Surge get folded in wherever they make sense as part of their training.

Uncanny X-Men #544 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The end is here!  Uncanny X-Men ends its long run of continuous, mostly monthly publication since Giant Size X-Men #1.  Of course, this is just before there is a new #1 next month, but I digress.  Things end with the team splitting up and a familiar old villain rearing his head.

Five Things:

1.  It’s kinda sad to see this end.  I’ve just ignored all the hoopla over other long running titles getting renumbered recently, but this series was the one I really loved since I was a kid.  So, it is sad to know we’ll have a new #1 issue next month.  There’s a lot of history and tradition in the preceding 543 issues and most of it was pretty good.  But, I guess the real reason it makes me sad is that renumbering is the publisher’s way of telling you “it isn’t working and we don’t know what else to do to increase readership other than renumbering.”  Hopefully it’ll work out for Marvel.

2.  Mr. Sinister is going to feature prominently as a villain.  This really isn’t a good thing.  There is a generation of fans who grew up with Sinister, but he’s a tedious villain.  Creating a new villain for each arc would be much preferable.  Old villains are boring because we kinda know what to expect AND we know that they’re as safe from permanent death as the heroes.

3.  Gillen writes really well.  Gillen does write really well and that goes a long way to making a comic enjoyable to read.  There are some writers out there who have decent ideas, but just don’t string words together all that well.  Or they can only write in “witty banter mode”.  Gillen can actually crank up a word balloon that is longer than a sentence fragment and not have today’s impatient comic reader getting itchy.  This is a really useful skill because sometimes you can’t tell the whole story with 5 word sentences OR there might be an artist on the book with significant limitations.

X-Men: Regenesis #1 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Billy Tan (artist), Andres Mossa (colorist), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor), Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: It’s the Harry Potter Sorting Hat episode of the X-Men as all the mutants need to choose whether to be on Team Wolverine or Team Cyclops.

What’s good: This was probably an important issue to have.  I could bemoan the fact that they didn’t just do this in the actual issues of the new Uncanny X-Men #1 or Wolverine and the X-Men #1, but this way all the team formation is out of the way and those issues can just get on with the story.  There are just so many mutants that it’s going to take a lot of pages to address them all.

Actually, in some ways, the sheer length and bulk of this issue show why it probably wasn’t great for storytelling to have all the mutants on Utopia.  Storytelling should benefit by splitting them up.

There might be some who are bothered by some characters acting out of character in this issue, but it didn’t really bug me that much.  They’re not real people after all and there is nothing grossly out of character.  The scenes at the beginning of the issue were longer as Iceman, Psylocke, Colossus, Kitty, etc. get extended scenes explaining their decisions.  Here Gillen has a coherent reason why the sides are being chosen and they pretty much make sense and some of the scenes are even kinda cool.

X-Men Schism #5 – Review

By: Jason Aaron (writer), Adam Kubert (penciler), Mark Roslan (inks), Jason Keith (colors), Jared K. Fletcher (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The final issue where we see how the X-Men split up and why.

What’s Good: It’s always nice to jiggle the status quo.  The X-Men have spent the last ~3 years living in San Francisco with a big “Welcome” sign hanging outside for any mutant who wanted to join them.  That was fun and enjoyable, but now we’re going to get something new and that’s a good thing.  As long as the status quo is constantly shifting under the character’s feet, the writers and artists always have new things that can help to inspire them.  There are all kinds of cool possibilities from the X-Men splitting into two groups.  In some ways, it can be a small microcosm of the superhero Civil War and in others, it’ll just be fun to see how the two groups respond differently to external events.  Like, what happens now if a mutant baby is born: Do both sides send a team?  Do they consult each other first?  Do they fight?  Movement forward in the story is almost always a positive.

The other neat thing in this issue was that the young mutants made good and helped to take down the super-Sentinel.  Even though the story of the teenage hero taking down a Big Bad who seemed to tough for them is not new, it’s always one of those things that make me smile.  Always…

Uncanny X-Men #543 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Fear Itself-bedazzled Juggernaut battles the new champion of Cyttorak.

What’s Good: It was kinda fun to watch Colossus beat down Juggernaut.  There’s gotta be a lot of penned-up frustration in the big Russian from all the beatings he’s endured from Juggernaut’s fists.  Even Greg Land did a pretty nice job of capturing these two behemoths smashing the crap outta each other.  That’s really the one cool thing that happened in this issue and it was cool enough to make up for a lot of the other stuff that was annoying.

X-Men: Schism #4 – Review

By: Jason Aaron (writer), Alan Davis (pencils), Mark Farmer (inks), Jason Keith (colors), Jared K. Fletcher (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The Cyclops/Wolverine split finally comes to the forefront and the ultimate danger to the mutants is revealed.

What’s good: Anytime an event has had as much build-up as Schism, it’s nice to finally get to the destination.  Seriously, Marvel started teasing this with promotional images of Cyclops’ visor sliced up into Wolverine-sized pieces back in January and in the last month, we’ve gotten images of how the mutants will pick sides in the months to come…..so, it was nice to finally see what they’re fighting about.

I kinda liked the central conflict: Cyclops thinks that every mutant needs to be a warrior whereas Wolverine wants to do the dirty work so that the younger mutants can have a normal life.  This has potential to be the updated version of the classic struggle between Xavier and Magneto.  And, I really hope that future creators continue the momentum in that direction.  To do so, they’ll have to (a) keep Xavier and Magneto on the sidelines and not thrust them back into primary roles and (b) continue with Cyclops’ transformation away from the guy who used to lecture Wolverine on how “X-Men don’t kill!”.  For me, that type of longer term plot development is precisely what I want out of my super-hero books, so let’s hope Marvel sticks with it.

Alan Davis is one of those pencilers who I wish could do a monthly book.  I thought he started out a little rough in this issue, but by about the 5th page, he was just nailing the scenes.  The great thing about Davis is that he’s so gifted that he doesn’t have to resort to tricks to have a visually impressive page.  Sometimes I love just watching a master like Davis draw a normal page with plain, old rectangular panels because it is so pretty.  I also rarely praise double-page spreads, but the image of Cyclops shooting that Sentinel across the Bay was great.  It was visually impressive and a climactic enough moment in the story to justify a double-pager.

Astonishing X-Men #41 – Review

By: Daniel Way (writer), Nick Bradshaw (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: X-Men versus Mentallo on Monster Island.

What’s Good: This was a very enjoyable finale to a storyline that has helped Astonishing get back on track after a couple of years of wandering in the wastes (Ghost Boxes, Ugh! and that MUCH delayed Ellis/Jimenez arc).  A lot of fans are fond of saying how Astonishing happens “outside of continuity” but I’m not sure that’s true anymore.  This felt like a story that could be happening in the current X-universe, but it wasn’t laden with all sorts of goop that would only make sense if you’re also reading all the other X-titles.

I’m often the first to complain about the overuse of Wolverine and Emma Frost on the X-titles, but this issue brought us something we don’t see that often: a Wolverine + Emma team-up.  Even though they certainly go on missions together, it was still neat to see the two of them alone and working together.  I’m sure it has happened before, but it hasn’t happened often.  So, bravo!  It was also great to see Armor get some page time.  I actually reread the Whedon Astonishing run a few months ago and was (again) surprised that so little has been done with the Armor character since Whedon’s run ended.  Any time Wolverine takes a young mutant under his wing, that character has a chance to shine, but for whatever reason she’s been shuffled to the sideline (with Wolverine even taking on a new pet teenage girl).  Even though Armor isn’t in this issue much, at least she is in the issue.

Uncanny X-Men #541 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The Juggernaut, complete with Fear Itself hammer accessory, is bearing down on San Francisco.  It’s up to the X-Men to stop him.

What’s Good: This was a pretty tight issue that was entertaining to read.  The story is pretty basic: Juggernaut is stomping towards SF and the X-Men need to stop him.  Of course, Juggernaut is difficult to stop on a normal day– now that he’s powered-up with his Fear Itself hammer, we really don’t know what his limits are, but we’ve seen both the Thunderbolts and a bunch of the Avengers Initiative kids take cracks at him in other Fear Itself tie-ins and no one has even slowed him down yet.  So, the X-Men are faced with a pretty tall task.

Gillen does a nice job of getting a lot of X-Men into the action and it isn’t just the standard mutants.  True, Emma and Cyclops feature prominently, but Wolverine is nowhere to be seen (Bravo!) whereas Iceman and Colossus get big roles.  Of course, any long-time X-Men fan gets gleeful at the prospect of Colossus v. Juggernaut tussle (think of Uncanny #183!) and it’s nice to see Colossus get in some good licks!  We even get a cool moment from Hope and it’s nice seeing Hope turn into a useful hero rather than the child in danger that she has been for the last ~4 years of comics.  Of course, this whole thing is orchestrated by General Cyclops…

Uncanny X-Men #540 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Greg Land (pencils), Jay Leisten (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Juggernaut (the hammer-wielding, leveled-up version) is coming to town.

What’s Good: There are a few little nuggets about the world of Fear Itself in this issue, and I guess that’s really the point when the big event crosses over into an ongoing series.  Of all the folks who have gotten hammers, it makes the most sense that the X-Men would have something to do with Juggernaut since he is really the only one with whom they have a lot of history.  So, it was kinda cool to see Juggernaut get a thrall to follow him around, crying to everyone that DOOM is upon them.  Still no explanation about why Juggernaut speaks in viking runes whereas most of the other hammer-wielders can speak English…

Even if Cyclops was being all kinds of evasive, it was also nice to see the little scene between him and the sexy Mayor of San Francisco (Would she really be that sexy?).  One of the plot threads I’ve always enjoyed about the X-Men’s relocation to SF has been their integration with the Mayor’s office.  It was just kind of a neat touch.  Steve Rogers and the Avengers get to talk directly to the President.  The X-Men are happy just to deal with a lowly Mayor after being complete outcasts in the NYC metro area for decades.  I have a feeling some of this will be going away in the near future with Schism, so we’ll enjoy it while it is here.

Oh, and it was kinda fun to see Namor get shot down.  The only reason I enjoy having Namor around as a character are for those scenes where a woman refuses to sleep with him or some bad-guy who he takes lightly kicks his ass.  Love watching that guy fail.

Uncanny X-Men #539 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Ibraim Roberson (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: A one-and-done story featuring Hope and Logan.

What’s Good: Let’s hear it for the done-in-one story!  In this era of 2-issue ideas that are milked into 6-issue story arcs (so that Marvel can sell a measly 1000 paperbacks), it is really refreshing to get a tight one-issue story.  Especially when you consider that it is easy to close your eyes and see how even this story could have been stretched across 6 months.  Hell, we’ve all seen X-events that had less meat on the bones than this one story.  Bravo to Gillen and the X-office for getting this one right.

I’m usually not a huge fan of having Wolverine be a central character in an X-comic just because I feel that he is overexposed and I get sick of seeing him hogging the spotlight (i.e. can’t someone else be the hero sometimes?).  But this story has an intelligent set-up and it makes sense that Wolverine is the one to save the day.  It’s a slight SPOILER, but the basic story is that some of Hope’s “Lights” (from the Generation Hope series) take Hope for a day on the town to get her to loosen up, but Hope is kidnapped.  And Wolverine is on the case to get her back.  See, doesn’t that make sense?  That’s what would happen. Wolverine would just go and get her back (although you might expect that Cyclops would be sending a back-up team 15 minutes behind him).

Continuing with the SPOILERIFIC discussion, the talk that Hope and Logan have after he saves the day is really good: He isn’t being standoffish toward her because he is angry about Nightcrawler’s death in Second Coming, it’s because he’s concerned that she might be a danger (i.e. something to do with Phoenix Force) and that if she is dangerous Logan knows that he’s going to be the one called on to kill her.

Neat idea, huh?  Ordinarily, Logan is all over acclimating the young female mutants, so it is a little odd that he has been so standoffish toward Hope, especially given that she embodies so much of his warrior attitude and was trained by Cable who Logan respects.  Now it makes sense. It’s the same reason that farmer’s don’t give all their chickens and cows names: because they’re gonna have to kill them someday.

New Mutants #26 – Review

By: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Leandro Fernandez (art), Andres Mossa (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Sebastian Girner (editor) & Nick Lowe (senior editor)

The Story: The New Mutants continue their first mission now that they’re on official mop-up duty for the X-Men: The search for Nate Grey.

What’s Good: As with X-Men Legacy this week, it is great that this X-comics has a unique cast of characters.  We have plenty of opportunities to see the exploits of the main mutants and some of those characters like Wolverine are so larger-than-life than they suck the air out of the room; it’s hard for a character like Magma to shine or develop much when Emma Frost is in the room.  I also really love that Abnett & Lanning have given these junior mutants a coherent mission: clean up the loose ends that the X-Men leave behind.  The mission the New Mutants are tasked with here is: Find Nate Grey.   And in finding Nate Grey, they’ll run across a leftover from Age of Apocalypse.  Funny how that story line keeps swirling around this summer, huh?

So, the basic set-up for the mission and series are solid.

The art is a positive from a storytelling standpoint.  There’s never much doubt about what is going on and the issue is nicely colored.

X-Men: Prelude to Schism #3 – Review

By: Paul Jenkins (writer), Will Conrad (art), Lee Loughridge (colors), Rob Steen (letters), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor) & Nick Lowe (senior editor)

The Story: Cyclops recollects a special woman in his life as he grapples with a momentous decision regarding the future of the X-Men.

What’s Good: By now, it’s pretty obvious what this miniseries is, so wishing for it to be more is unrealistic (although we’ll get into that below).  This issue feeds us a pretty strong dose of Cyclops and him missing his mother as he’s grappling with this HUGE decision that the X-Men are facing.  It shows how his mother was with him as a young boy who was starting to have issues with his mutant powers (nasty headaches) and how she sacrificed herself so that Scott and his brother could survive after the small plane they were flying in developed problems and they only had one parachute.

It also had a nice bookend to that situation by showing Cyclops talking with Emma before informing the gathered X-Men of his decision.  I liked how he asked her, “How sure am I?” and she probes his mind to see how many doubts and fears he has.  What an interesting way to spot-check your decision making process!

The art is effective.  It’s nothing awesome, but it tells the story effectively and all the characters look like they should.

Uncanny X-Men #538 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Terry Dodson (pencils), Rachel Dodson (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The conclusion of the deposed Powerlord Kruun’s attempt to get revenge against the X-Men.

What’s Good: This was a fun and quickly paced issue.  As I’ll get into below, I think it had some flaws in execution, but the flow of the issue was pretty strong.

The high point is that we have Kitty back.  Yea!  She’s such an important part of the X-Men and family of comic X-titles really suffered for her absence (first while she was in the space bullet and then when she came back but was stuck being insubstantial).  It’s also nice to see that she and Peter maybe have a chance to be together now.  If you’re remember, one of the cruel twists of the Whedon Astonishing X-Men run was that just as Peter returned from the dead and they began their relationship, Kitty got stuck in the space bullet and was gone.  Of course, I’m sure they’ll be stuck on opposite sides of the upcoming Schism storyline just to show how serious the Schism situation is. [NOTE to X-writers: That would be a pretty lazy story choice unless there is a really good reason for it.]

It is also pretty cool that San Francisco is continuing to get played up as the most welcoming city in the U.S.A.  I thought it made a LOT of sense when the mutants relocated to SF around issue #495 or so and it has been fun to see the mutants close relationship with the mayor.  So, pretty cool that SF is going to give a home to the Breakworld aliens.

Namor The First Mutant Annual #1 – Review

By: James Asmus (writer), Max Fiumara (pencils), Fiumara & Norman Lee (inks), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Jared K. Fletcher (letters), Jordan White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Cyclops, Steve Rodgers, Dr. Nemesis & Hope fight a Namor who is made insane by lack of water as they try to escape the Negative Zone.

What’s Good: Ya know what?  Bravo guys!  This three-part annual story (continuing from Uncanny X-Men Annual #3 and Steve Rogers Super Soldier Annual #1) was a really fun story that just about anyone with a passing familiarity with Marvel continuity can enjoy.  The very nature of this story meant that it isn’t meant to have long-term consequences and “change the way we look at the Marvel Universe forever” and Asmus used that nature to just nail the landing and give us everything you could really want in this story.

This is 90% a Cyclops and Hope story.  The central theme is that Cyclops wants protect Hope because of her role as the “Mutant Messiah” and how Hope chaffs at this because, while only a teenager, she has lived her entire life as a solider learning at the feet of Cable.  So, she isn’t some teenage mutant who is wetting herself because her powers are beginning to manifest, but a fully trained solider.  Even though some of this same ground is being plowed over in the ongoing X-books, it was still nice to see Hope and Cyclops team-up and have Cyclops trust her to go into a dangerous situation and help save the day.
Other highlights in this issue are Steve Rogers really selling his friendship for the X-Men (and Cyclops in particular), a really good Steve/Namor fight, Namor acting like an insane maniac and getting defeated (kinda) by Hope, and a lot of comic relief from Nemesis.  Good stuff.

Not everyone is going to love Max Fiumara’s art because it is different and his characters are very stylized, but that’s really what I like about it.  He’s one of those names that pops up in a Marvel book about once a year and it is always kinda a treat because he’s one of those few artists where even the untrained eye will spot him right away.  Let me put it this way, Marvel has quite a few artists who aren’t all that hot.  They don’t suck, but there’s nothing very cool about their art except that I presume they can grunt out a monthly book.  Well, when we have a story like this 3-parter, that I presume will have plenty of lead-time, I applaud Marvel for having someone different like Fiumara draw it rather than one of their competent, but unremarkable, C-list superhero artists.  Let’s have MORE non-traditional artists on Marvel books than 5th generation John Bryne wannabes.

X-Men Giant-Size #1 – Review

By: Christopher Yost (writer), Paco Medina and Dalabor Talajic (pencillers), Juan Vlasco and Dalabor Talajic (inkers), Marte Gracia and Wil Quintana (colorists), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor), Axel Alonso and Nick Lowe (editors)

The Story: First to Last, Part I: In this new arc, the Neos, another mutant offshoot of humanity (different from homo superior) is attacking the increasingly misnamed Utopia. The neo’s have lost the ability to reproduce, as homo superior had done for a while, and now that mutants are being born again, they want the secret to what’s up. This battle royale drudges up some buried memories in Scott, really old ones, from the original X-Men’s first year: He suddenly remembers a run-in with the evolutionaries that he was supposed to have forgotten.

The Review: My first reaction to reading X-Men Giant-Size #1 was: “That was pretty cool.” Superb art led the way, starting with a planet-scape, then dipping under the cloud-deck, and into a cave and some newborns. The detail, draftsmanship and colors were beautifully natural and the following action dramatic and clear. In the present-day, the clouds in the background of the giant neo were spectacular and the fight scene pretty awesome, although from time to time, the “cameras” zoomed in too close, and it was tough to follow the blow-by-blow. The shift in art teams between past and present was a useful tool to highlight the change in setting and there were some nice old-school touches to the scenes in the past. My favorites were the Kirby-esque action poses, Magneto’s not-form-fitting costume, Magneto’s general portliness (you get a no-prize if you remembered that he started off as a middle-aged man before being turned into a child by Mutant Alpha in Defenders #16 and then aged back to his prime adult strength by Eric the Red just before Uncanny X-Men #104), and even Wanda’s sixties sort of physique (instead of the ultra-svelte pneumatic women that populate comics since the 80s). All-in-all, some very fine artwork.

Writing-wise, Yost has brought a piece of high-concept sci-fi to the X-universe. The introduction of the mystery of the evolutionaries, the hurtling fight scene right out of the gates, and the neat resolution of the plot challenge of the neo’s all launched this arc strongly. I felt propelled along the story and wanting more of this *big idea*. The dialogue worked, and the characters were mostly honest. Where they weren’t honest (Bobby’s exaggerated quipping in two time periods, Wolverine’s idiotic back-stabbing on the neo and Emma’s inexplicable failure to wake up their best strategist while they’re being attacked), I could see why Yost had chosen to fudge a bit, for dramatic effect, but since I’ve read some pretty flawless books by this writer, I felt he’d cut a couple of corners he didn’t need to.

Astonishing X-Men #37 – Review

By: Daniel Way (writer), Jason Pearson & Sara Pichelli (pencils), Karl Story & Pichelli (inks), Sonia Oback (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: The Astonishing X-Men battle Fin Fang Foom in Tokyo.

What’s Good: Well, the basic part of the story: The X-Men battling Fin Fang Foom in Toyko with all the glittery neon signs is pretty cool.  There’s all the fun tropes of giant monster battles: stuff getting smashed, heroes hiding behind cars from the giant monster, Wolverine jumping on FFF’s back and looking about as big as an ant….  It isn’t real deep, but it’s still kinda fun and there’s promise of more monster battles next month (or whenever this title deigns to drop another issue on us) due to the reveal that the main villain is Mentallo and he has seized Monster Island and is controlling the monsters (including FFF).

It was also nice to see Armor get a little bit of time on the page.  Count me as a big fan of the Whedon Astonishing X-Men where he did a lot to establish Armor as a three-dimensional character.  It never made sense to me why Marvel would have a “name” writer develop a young character, make her viable and then just have her sit on the shelf for 3-4 years, so it’s nice to see her back in action (and with augmented powers to boot).

New Mutants #25 – Review

By: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Leandro Fernandez (art), Andres Mossa (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: A new creative team takes over New Mutants and sets them on a new direction.

What’s Good: It’s just so nice to see the New Mutants with something to do.  The action here seems to pick up shortly after the New Mutants return from Limbo, thankfully without mentioning Age of X.  So, we find Cannonball kinda out of action due to injuries and loss of confidence and Karma still reeling from the loss of her leg in Second Coming last summer, not to mention Illyana isn’t going to be trusted by Cyclops for a good long time after the end of the Limbo mission.  In the face of all that, is there even a need for the New Mutants team?  Who’s left?

We open with a fun and well executed opening showing the New Mutants + Wolverine, Kitty and Colossus smashing up a car factory where a piece of Nimrod (from Second Coming) seems to have taken refuge and has been corrupting the machines.  Once they get back to Utopia, Dani Moonstar gets summoned to Cyclops office and while she expects to hear that the New Mutants are being scrapped, he instead puts her in charge of the team and gives the team a mission: To mop up after the X-Men’s big events by taking care of things like the “piece of Nimrod”.

And, you know what….  That’s not a bad mission for these guys.  It makes sense that there will be loose ends after any big X-story and the New Mutants are an appropriate team to take care of those problems.  One of my problems with the New Mutants is that the writers are always devising threats for them that are too damn big. If the threats were really that big, they would be taken care of by the X-Men, Avengers, FF, etc… Not by a bunch of B-list mutants.  So, with this mission, Abnett and Lanning can just riff on whatever X-story has just wrapped up and give us a new and cool angle.  Furthermore, they can probably pick and choose which X-stories to play with and just skip the bad ones.  For example, I’d be surprised if they fiddle with that whole Lobe story from Uncanny X-men.  Why do that when the much more enticing Curse of the Mutants or Apocalypse stories are laying there?

X-Men: Prelude to Schism #1 – Review

By: Paul Jenkins (writer), Roberto de la Torre (art), Lee Loughridge (colors), Rob Steen (letters), Sebastian Girner (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Something is coming to Utopia that is causing the X-Men to contemplate an evacuation and (if marketing is to be believed) this will cause a SCHISM between Cyclops and Wolverine.

What’s Good: Roberto de la Torre’s art is really nice.  He draws with a style that looks like it is based in photo-reference and then gets all kinds of scratchy.  It’s almost like he is taking the accurate anatomy of photo-reference and then inking over the top to inject vitality to the characters.  Given that this issue consists mainly of characters standing around and talking, it really needed visually appealing and interesting art or it would have just been boring as hell.  I really enjoyed de la Torre’s work on Daredevil recently and I’d LOVE to see him stick around the X-titles for a good long time because I prefer his art to about 5-6 artists who have been getting regular work out of the X-office.  Lee Loughridge also does a very nice job coloring.  Almost this entire issue takes place in the shadows and he manages to do his part to keep a slow-paced issue interesting.

The story itself….  Well, there is some good here if you’re really into the Cyclops – Xavier relationship.  Jenkins does a nice background of the time the two of them have spent together as Xavier is recognizing that Cyclops/Scott truly has grown up and HE (not Xavier) is the leader here.  Probably the highlight of this story is the flashing back to the early years of Scott’s time with Xavier.

Uncanny X-Men #536 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Terry Dodson (pencils), Rachel Dodson (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor), Daniel Ketchum (associate editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Would you let the aliens from Breakworld sleep on the couch?

What’s Good: If you liked Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run from a few years ago, you should really enjoy this issue because Gillen is playing with most of Whedon’s stories from those issues.  Isn’t it funny that a series that was only marginally “in continuity” back when it was published has ended up being so influential today?  Just goes to show that there is a difference between “continuity” and “things happening simultaneously” and those things like really late issues don’t matter so much years down the road.  Time surely grants perspective.

Anyway, Gillen clearly has a good handle on all the characters at play here: Agent Brand is prickly, Emma is haughty, Cyclops feels responsible, Colossus is dutiful and loyal, Magneto is driven, etc.  As fans, we could rattle off the personality attributes of the core X-Men, but I think it is a lot harder to write dialog and pencil and ink the pages such that those characters we know and love come shining through.

The action in this issue is all good and I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise that the Breakworld aliens are not quite as benign as they make out and I’ll be very curious to see how [SPOILERS] them attacking Magneto with “the cure” will work out.  My recollection is that he isn’t really a mutant any more and that the High Evolutionary did something to him that approximated his mutant powers.  We’ll see, but Magneto clearly has a role to play in this story (along with the “space tin”) and it’ll be fun to see what happens.

The Dodson’s again do a great job with the art.  I really love artists who have a distinct style where you can open the comic and say, “This is drawn by Terry and Rachel Dodson.”  One thing that I find really impressive about their work is how much acting and emoting their characters do given their grounding in realism.  And, their faithfulness to human anatomy (beyond the huge boobs) is pretty uncanny.  I never get distracted by the length of a finger or a muscle that seems to be in the wrong place.  Very nice…