All Aboot the X-Men: Uncanny Avengers #2, X-Men Legacy #2, and All New X-Men #2

So first off, this is the most X-Men comics I've read in a single week in well, I can't even remember the last time I bought three X-Men related comics all at once.  And yet, here I am, absolutely loving the shit out of these books.

I know a lot of people were wary about Marvel NOW going into this relaunch, but if you're reading the same books I am, I don't know how you could not be excited about the future prospects of these titles, except perhaps if you're burnt out on superhero books altogether.  In that case, this week had a lot of alternatives for you, like: Nowhere Men #1, Prophet #33, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #1 if that's your bag.  But me, I'm gonna talk about some X-Men comics.

Uncanny Avengers #2
Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: John Cassaday
Marvel

Yes, this is technically an Avengers book, but come on, this post-AvX title is mostly about the mutants.  Even though the Red Skulls super-powered S-Men are explicitly "not mutants," they act like mutants. It's an X-Men comic with Thor and Captain America in it: deal with it.  This issue was delayed somewhat because that's how John Cassaday works, and I don't know why anyone should be surprised by this.  Was it worth that wait?  Well, that I'm not so sure about.    

John Cassaday was one of those artists, along with Brian Hitch and Greg Land, who was on fire in the early 2000s.  They were some of the major artists to pioneer the widescreen format, and when you first saw their work, it really stood out as being hyper-modern.  Their comics screamed: this is the future!  However, history hasn't really been kind to any of these artists.  Of the three, Hitch has been the most consistent, Land is mostly hated now due to his inability to draw people that don't look like porn stars, and Cassaday, well, he hasn't drawn an ongoing series since Planetary ended.  Cassaday's art is not what it used to be.  It's still very good, and he has an inimitable style, but his minimalist style has grown into the tendency to look static and flat, and even worse, are some of his costume design choices.  Does Captain America need chain-mail armor?  Why is Rogue dressed like she is on her way to Yoga class?  These are the questions I find myself asking as I read Uncanny Avengers.

This is too bad, because the story is actually a lot of fun.  A clone of the original Red Skull has stolen the body of Professor X, cut out his brain, fused it to his own, and has been using Professor X's mind powers to create an army of mutant haters.  There is a real Silver Age feel to all of the scenes involving the Red Skull, and it almost seems like this would be a great book for Tom Scioli to draw instead of Cassaday.

Uncanny Avengers is a fun comic, but not extraordinary.  Remender's story hits all the right notes for a book that combines Avengers with a throwback to the classic X-Men, but I wouldn't call it a return to form for Cassaday.  If you don't mind following a book that is likely to be delayed again and again until Cassaday is replaced or the title is cancelled, I'd say give it a chance.  That's a pretty backhanded recommendation, I realize, but really, the concept is here for a fun, entertaining comic book.  I just wish it was drawn by someone who can stick to a schedule.

Story 4 Art 3.5


X-Men Legacy #2
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Tan Eng Huat
Marvel

X-Men Legacy is a comic that I don't even want to talk about, because I don't want to spoil what's inside for anyone.  What can I tell you to expect without going into detail.  Well for one thing: X-Men Legacy is weird.  Weird in the best way.  It's weird in a way that will open doors to other ways of thinking.  You'll think: "I never thought about my own mind like that before, thank you Si Spurrier, for making me think about my own mind again."  Superhero books don't normally go in for complexities: thematically, linguistically, or emotionally.  X-Men Legacy is all about the messy complexities.  It embeds manifestos within dialogue, cloaks raw emotions and psychology within weird fiction, and it unsettles the way you read, by forcing you to read in Scots dialect, which no comic has successfully done in ages as far as I'm concerned.

People often like to talk about how they "only read the books that matter."  I understand this sentiment while I disagree with it vehemently.  The stories that matter are the stories that should have some greater meaning, convey some deeper emotion or theme, and maybe tell us something about what it means to be human.

X-Men Legacy is a vital addition to Marvel's lineup, and an argument for it's continued relevance in spite of increased corporatization and the increasing homogenization of their product line.

Story 4.5 Art 4

All New X-Men #2
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Stuart Immonen
Marvel

I have had a love/hate relationship with Bendis for years.  I've loved Alias, The Pulse, Powers, Ultimate Spider-Man, and his early runs on Avengers/New Avengers, and I've hated his Moon Knight, and later runs on Avengers/New Avengers.  I was completely prepared to hate his take on the X-Men.  I had no intention of even buying this issue after the lackluster debut.  I would have been so wrong.

All New X-Men #2 is the proper debut of Bendis' all-new direction for Marvel's mutants, and it is a great start to what I'm optimistic will be a very interesting year for the X-Men.  In another writer's hands, this hackneyed plot of Back to the Future style time-travel would fall completely flat, but Bendis plays it all up for big emotional payoffs and fantastic dialogue.  Every one of the original five X-Men has a great moment, and their encounter with both the realization of their future selves as well as their increasing understanding of the future itself is beautifully realized.  I would never have thought that Bendis would make a great writer for the X-Men, but here he is, in all his Claremontian glory.

This is another book that I  really don't want to spoil for any potential new readers, which might seem like a lazy and impotent gesture when you can just go to any number of more popular blogs to spoil it for yourself, but let me just say this:  this was the best book I read this month.  If you ever loved the X-Men, and have been wanting the opportunity to start over with the mutants.  NOW is your chance.

Story 5 Art 5

Christian's Week in Comics 11/14/12: Saga, Thor, Bloodshot and more!

OK.  Holy hell did I ever buy a bloody lot of comics today.  Right.  So instead of doing three or four mini-reviews in my "Week of Comics" thingy, I'm going to try and keep my thoughts on each book to a minimum, and assign a little number rating out of five (people apparently like numbers- I am allergic to mathematics).  Alright, enough with the preamble!

Batman #14
"Funny Bones"
Writer: Scott Snyder
Artist: Greg Capullo
DC

I'm just going to say it right now, this is the best Joker story in years.  Snyder and Capullo have stepped out of the shadow of Heath Ledger and a delivered a chilling new version of the Man Who Laughs that has more in common with Freddy Krueger than any former incarnation of the Clown Prince of Crime.

This isn't an issue you want spoiled, so go to Comixology or your local comic shop and read it for yourself, or else the Joker is going to keep hitting Alfred Pennyworth with his hammer, and God only knows what he's done to Alfred's eyes.   Story: 5 Art: 5

X-Men Legacy #1
"Prodigal"
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Tan Eng Huat
Marvel

People (if they can be so generously described as "people") like to complain a lot about how the Big Two never take risks, and then proceed to not support the books that Marvel and DC publish that challenge this preconception.  I hope I am wrong, because X-Men Legacy is one of the riskiest damn books Marvel could have decided to publish as part of its Marvel NOW event.

For starters, it's a book by a relatively unknown writer from the UK, Si Spurrier, drawn by another unknown artist, Tan Eng Huat, and stars David Haller, a mentally ill mutant with a serious case of disassociative identity disorder otherwise known as Legion.  It's also as mad as Spider Jerusalem's acid flashbacks.  Although careful readers will be able to make sense of what's going on inside and outside of Legion's crazed head, Spurrier and Huat seem determined to blur the lines between reality and the Qortex Complex, the brain-jail where Haller has locked up all the deviant psycho-personalities lurking in his skull.

This is a great book for new readers to get into, and if you find yourself pining away for the days when crazed men from across the pond like Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison used to scribe for Marvel, this is the X-book for you. Story: 4 Art: 3.5

Saga #7
"Chapter Seven"
Writer: Brian K. Vaughn
Artist: Fiona Staples

Ah, can you feel that? It's the collective sigh of relief from thousands of readers who can finally breathe easy because the greatest comic being published right now is back from its three-month hiatus. Yes, Saga is back, and despite the break, this book hasn't missed a step.  Picking right up from where issue #6 left off, Marko's parents have arrived and are not very pleased with his choice of life partner.  After a masterful look into the war-torn past of Marko's father, which really serves the anti-war metaphor that underlies the entire book, Vaughn and Staples split the parents up with the newlyweds, leading to some great moments between characters.

I'll admit I was little worried when Saga first went on hiatus, but now that it's back, I realize I had nothing to fear. If you haven't read the first 6 issues of Saga yet, you'll need to pick up the first trade before jumping on with this arc.

Also: giant swollen alien testicles.    Story: 5 Art: 5

Bloodshot #5
"The Rise and Fall Part 1"
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artists: Manuel Garcia Arturo Lozzi
Valiant

Bloodshot is not everyone's cup of tea.  I get that.  It's full of blood and nastiness and mixes its hard military SF with real sociopolitical overtones that can be hard to swallow.  But me, I like my tea bitter (which is kind of apt, since if Bloodshot were a tea, he'd be Earl bloody Grey). This issue finds Bloodshot storming the secret base of Project Rising Spirit, but finds more than he bargained for in the special ops nightmare that is Chainsaw: an early project of PRS' that also attempted to fuse human beings with sharp cybernetic objects.

I love Wolverine and The Punisher, but it seems absolutely redundant reading those books in a world where Bloodshot exists.  Here, you get the best of both worlds.  Bloodshot is basically an indestructible cybernetic Punisher with a head full of secrets that would make Julian Assagne blush.  If brutal, bloody action and modern day military SF sounds like your thing, read this book. Even though this is #5, the helpful back matter on the first page of the book will fill you in on everything you need to know about the series going into this new arc.  Valiant has been doing a great job of making each issue friendly to new readers, and Bloodshot #5 is no exception to that. Story: 4 Art: 3

Thor: God of Thunder #1
The God Butcher, Part One of Five, "A World Without Gods"
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Esad Ribic

Thor is a character who I've always liked as an Avenger, but haven't been interested in reading in his own book.  This changed when I saw preview pages of Esad Ribic's interiors for this new series.  The painterly quality of Ribic's art seems like it was transported out of the pages of some forgotten issue of Heavy Metal and into my Marvel comic, and I absolutely love it.  Sometimes art drawn in this fashion doesn't work as well sequentially, but Ribic's strength as a visual storyteller shines here. He and Aaron make an excellent pair, as Ribic's visuals compliment Aaron's story of Thor across three time periods.  The mood of this story is foreboding, and often eerie. Thor's anger and confusion when he arrives at the atheist planet is palpable, and his dismay when he finds the butchered corpses of the Sky Lords fills the comic with a overwhelming sense of dread and despair.  Epic is a word that gets tossed around quite loosely in geek culture, but in the case of this story, it thoroughly applies.  If I had to pick a favorite moment, it was when the old God-King Thor (heretofore known as O.G. Thor) asks for someone to bring him his metal arm, only to remember that all his servants are dead. Story: 4.5 Art: 5

Extermination #3: Mad Like an Eel's Elbow

Extermination #3
Writer: Simon Spurrier
Artists: Jeffrey Edwards & V Ken Marion
August 15, 2012
Boom! Studios

This review is coming in a little late so rather than do my usual review style I'm just going to give a few thoughts of mine on this issue and what I think of the series so far.

I read Simon Spurrier on Twitter describe this series as "douchebags with capes," and this issue explores that premise as we learn more about what an asshole the Superman-analogue Absolute is and Red Reaper does something entirely icky to the Promethean.

It was clear from the start that Extermination is definitely approaching its "douchebags with capes" from a Warren Ellis-like approach to deconstruction, but after we learn the full scope of Absolute's crimes against women, Spurrier's story is shaping up to be much more mean-spirited and darkly satirical than Ellis' work has been of late. I don't want to push the Ellis/Spurrier comparison too hard, but Ellis' Wildstorm work seems to me to be a key influence here.

This issue continues to flashback between the present post-apocalypse scenario and the past, which is now illustrated by V Ken Marion in a style that reminds me of 90s Image or, wait for it, early Wildstorm comics. I'm not certain that's intentional or not, but the difference between Marion and Edwards art styles creates a jarring contrast that works by highlighting the essential difference between the post-apocalyptic present and the adolescent superhero fantasy of years past.

The flashbacks in this issue seem to serve as a way of filling in the reader on what happened to these characters before the EDDA invasion, and as a caution against nostalgia and a critique of the simplicity of American superhero comics. Again, there's that Ellis connection.

Even though the contrast between art styles works, it doesn't mean I am a fan. In fact, I think most of Jeffrey Edwards art in this book sucks. Sorry to be blunt, but his figures are often misshapen or awkwardly proportion, and the faces of his characters often lack detail and consistency. Edwards' pages looks they were all drawn on a computer, and lack any fine attention to detail. The only good thing I can say is that the EDDA look really otherworldly, although I'm not sure how much of that has to do with Edwards' art or the fantastic colouring in this book. Seriously, there are THREE different colourists on this title and the overall effect is eye-popping.

There hasn't really been any noticeable improvement in Edwards' art since the first issue, and I couldn't blame someone for picking this title up off the shelf at their local comic shop and putting it right back down because 70% of the art looks like computer-drawn shit and the other 30% looks good for 1992.

I know that Boom! Studios isn't Marvel or DC, and is one of the smaller publishers out there, but I've seen better art in self-published titles sold through Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. The colouring in this book is PHENOMENAL, but the art looks completely amateurish, and for a professional title is just unacceptable. Even though I'm not a big fan of V Ken Marion's style, I would be more okay with his taking over art duties on this title than Edwards continuing to draw this book.

I feel really shitty being so negative with regards to the art on this title, because Extermination is a comic you SHOULD be reading. The story is great, the dialogue is bat-shit crazy, every issue feels like a completely satisfying read that moves the plot forward while introducing new elements, and the
characters are not the standard popular superhero analogues that the first appeared to be. Si Spurrier has the imagination of a barking mad dog and Extermination reads like a DC/Marvel book infected with his super rabies. Read it.