Astonishing X-Men #30

The Astonishing X-Men save the world (maybe) by phoning a friend with a space gun in the literally explosive conclusion to the "Ghost Boxes" story arc. And sadly, it's not nearly as ridiculous as it sounds.

Writer Warren Ellis, since taking over Astonishing from Joss Whedon, has had the X-Men's alpha team investigating a covert conflict between mutants from a parallel reality and artificial pseudo-mutants created in this one. (Still not that ridiculous. No, really. It's all about the hard sci-fi execution; Ellis is a master of semi-plausible technobabble.) By this issue, they've tracked the pseudo-mutants back to their creator: former teammate Forge, who has apparently fallen off the sanity wagon again. Having found an open gateway to the other mutants' parallel reality, he's been using his mutants to fight against the alternates, who he insists are scoping our reality out for conquest. He's gone so far as to build another gateway himself, and is preparing to send a whole army of his Nutrasweet X-Men through to the parallel world to wipe out the potential invaders. So Hank "Beast" McCoy calls his girlfriend Abigail Brand, a S.W.O.R.D. agent who lives on a space station and defends Earth against alien invasions for a living, and has her blast a superlaser through the interdimensional gateway just in case.

"Just in case," are pretty close to Hank's own words. They can't take the chance, he says, that Forge might be wrong. So rather than risk another invasion - and how many of those have the X-Men fought off in the last six months, let alone the rest of Marvel's heroes? - they shoot a space gun down the rabbit hole. A space gun, Hank explains, that will "turn to foam" every living being and building in a ten-mile radius around whatever's on the other side. Essentially, Hank's lady friend dropped an atomic bomb on the X-Men's problems. On the possibility of future problems, really.

The metaphor for current world events and military tactics is so obvious it's practically a Looney Tunes anvil chorus. In the age of terror, with modern technology and weaponry, we don't wait for the invasions any more. We commit terrible acts from afar in the hopes of preventing or forestalling even more terrible acts in the future. We make the hard choices, blah blah blah preemptive-strike cakes.

But this is NOT the X-Men's metaphor. Comic book superheroes in general, for all the problems they solve by fisticuffs, have been telling us for years that killing bad guys is unnecessary. That it's better to face the same rogues again and again than to give up on the possibility of human redemption. Because by killing the bad guys, we become no better than them. Because killing begets killing, and the cycle can only stop if we stop it. Because some rogues will see the light and become heroes called Rogue. They're ancient, tired, cliched ideals, but I still believe in them. That's why I'm a comic book fan. I like my superheroes old school, Gandhis who punch people really hard.

I'm not saying every superhero has to be a Gandhi, but the X-Men always have been. The X-Men are symbols of hope and evolution. They embody the idea that you don't have to get bitten by a radioactive plot device to be a Punching Gandhi, you might just have been born that way. Maybe you're a freak and nobody likes you because secretly you're that awesome. Awesome enough to love the world that hates and fears you, even if you have to punch it sometimes. Or at least, that's how it used to work.

Ever since Grant Morrison's New X-Men, the X-Men have been increasingly isolated from the world, finding less in common with the rest of humanity. They've been making darker choices. They've abandoned Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistance with humanity in favor of a war to survive. And that saddens me, because there are plenty of other superheroes out there to explore war-on-terror metaphors and issues of idealism vs. expediency. (The Punisher, for instance, or Ellis' own creations over in The Authority.) I'm not saying there shouldn't be X-Men stories about these things, but they shouldn't be at the center of the X-Men's ongoing mission. Marvel's mutants have a message of their own, a really special and important one.

If the X-Men are going to make these terribly dark, hard, "modern" choices, then they need to be earned. I should be convinced that there was no better way, rather than feeling like they took an easy out at the expense of ten square miles of possibly innocent alien civilians. Someday, I'd really like to see the X-Men acting like heroes again, not nuking other people's realities because they took the crazy guy's word for it.

- JC

Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant-Size

Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant-Size, despite its unweildy title, is a fresh start for a classic era of X-Men adventure. It takes the First Class brand of X-Men action, with its done-in-one (or two at the most) plots, goofy comic-strip backups, and smiling mutants, and applies it to the team of the '70s. And it took three writers (Scott Gray, Roger Langridge, Jeff Parker) and five artists (Dennis Calero, Sean Galloway, Craig Rousseau, Cameron Stewart, David Williams) to do it.

Cyclops is the last of the original X-Men at Xavier's school (though Jean Grey promises to reappear as Phoenix in the next issue), and Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, and Banshee have just joined the team. It's a little unclear whether Sunfire and Thunderbird are still running around the mansion as well, off-panel, or if this issue is set after they've gone, but such continuity-cop details aren't really important to the story.

And there's a great story here. Or six of them, depending on your point of view.

A framing tale shows Cyclops struggling a bit with the fact that the New Team isn't the same as the Old Team. They didn't come to Charles Xavier as Gifted Youngsters, and they don't behave like students. When they're brought to live in a swank mansion with a cool Danger Room full of holograms and robots, they're not interested in running through a carefully strategized training exercise. They want to break stuff. That anarchistic spirit is a big part of why we fans love them, but it makes sense that Cyclops of all people would need a little time to adjust to that, which is something we don't see much in the original '70s stories. This is precisely why I love the First Class tales: they find all the cracks we'd forgotten were in the classic stories, and exploit them in the most fun way possible.

(I contrast this with some of the current continuity X-books, which find the cracks in classic stories and exploits them in the angstiest way possible. Oh, look, it's another Machiavellian shame in Professor X's past! How ever will the X-whoevers react?)

And as Cyclops tries to get to know his new team, Moira McTaggert offers him a set of taped "interviews" she conducted with the new X-Men, each describing an adventure they had in their teens, as they were first coming to terms with their mutant gifts. It's a blatant ploy to make the adult X-Men just as accessible and hip to younger readers as the original teenaged First Class, but the vignettes are clever and engaging enough to make it work. My personal favorites were Banshee's tale - in the form of an Irish folk song written by a friend of Banshee and performed in my head by Flogging Molly - and "Wolverine: Agent of S.N.I.K.T.." Since Wolverine can't remember his past, the idea of a "young Wolverine" tale is patently ridiculous. Wolverine himself knows that better than anyone, and thus gives us some glorious hogwash, lampooning everything from other Marvel heroes to spy fiction to Arthur Miller in the process.

It's not a perfect comic. The characterization in the framing story errs a little on the side of caricature in places. Colossus, for instance, is portrayed as provincial, naive, and comic book Russian enough to start planting crops in the school lawn, saying, "If we don't farm, how will we eat?" (It's funnier if I choose to see this as a fear that without home-grown veggies, his new life in America will mean all McDonald's all the time.) But there's far more entertainment packed into UXFCGS than even six initials should allow, well worth the cover price. Particularly when the cover in question is the Skottie Young masterpiece seen above.

- JC

Invincible Iron Man #14

Pepper Potts, Iron Man's ever-loyal Girl Friday, has high-tech armor of her own these days. Her boss left a brand-new tin suit for her when he went on the run from Norman Osborn, in Matt Fraction's epic "World's Most Wanted" storyline. But she's no "Iron Woman." She's got no plasma discs or repulsor rays, she's not rocket-punching bad guys. And this is a beautiful thing.

When Tony Stark gave Pepper her first cybernetic implant, saving her life in "The Five Nightmares," Pepper insisted she'd be no man's weapon. Tony honored that request when he built her armor; there's not a single piece of armament in its array. In the latest issue ("World's Most Wanted" part 7 of 12), we learn that the armored Pepper has taken the name "Rescue," and that's just what her suit is built to do. She's search & rescue extraordinaire. A friend asks her what's she's been up to. "Held up a stilt mansion in an earthquake. Stopped a few rockslides. Caught an airplane," Pepper says. "Two airplanes, actually..." And the list goes on.

In a previous post I complained about Marvel's recent questionable practice of creating new female villains by reinventing old male ones. But Pepper Potts' Rescue identity is a counterpart heroine done right. Rather than being a pale shadow of her male predecessor, she has her own unique approach to super-heroism as well as an unique goal.

I shouldn't really be surprised. After all, Fraction began Pepper Potts' evolution into a superhero in The Order, and the Iron Man concept lends itself well to reinvention. Tony has space armor and undersea armor and Hulkbuster armor. Soldier Jim Rhodes is armed to his iron teeth and calls himself War Machine. Now there's Rescue, a great addition to the Iron family.

I can't wait to see where Pepper, Tony, and the clan go next. Well played, Fraction.

- JC

New Avengers: The Reunion #4

I have a little ritual, probably not an uncommon one; every week after I pick up my comics from the shop, I rank them for reading in the order of my excitement, from the least anticipated to the most. Every once in a while, though, an issue comes along that I am so eager to read, so nervous about its consequences for the heroes, that I just have to forget the system and throw it on the top of the pile. New Avengers: The Reunion #4 (Jim McCann) was such an issue.

Marvel's preview solicitation promised we'd see "an emotional choice [that] forever alters the course of both Ronin and Mockingbird's lives." But in just the few months since I'd read their initial reunion in Secret Invasion - and especially after 3 1/3rd issues of McCann's series - I wasn't sure I wanted the course of these lives to be altered. I wanted Marvel to put a marriage back together for once, instead of tearing it apart. Because apparently being married makes you automatically old and unhip or something.

I needn't have worried. McCann found the perfect way for everyone to have their cake and eat it too. At the end of all the fistifcuffs and fireworks, Bobbi (Mockingbird) and Clint (Ronin) acknowledge the legal dissolution of their marriage, the troubles in their past and the ways they've both changed in their years apart. At the same time, they recognize their obvious desire to be together, to fight side by side and work things out. A couple who were married nine days after their first meeting, they decide they're now dating for the first time.

It's a brilliant finale: upbeat, triumphant even, without being smug or pat or too easily come by. It doesn't try to paper over the problems Clint and Bobbi had in past stories, or wash away the psychological trauma inevitable after deaths and resurrections and alien captivity all at once. It takes the whole wacky, wild, and sometimes deeply flawed history of these characters into account, but keeps the hope that mistakes can be learned from. Not easily, not always quickly, but we can move forward, live better and love better, if that's what we truly want.

- JC

Thor 7-12 & 600[*]

I really want to like J. Michael Straczynski's current Thor series. There are some fantastic reworkings of Norse legend in these issues, really made to shine by Olivier Coipel's and Marko Djurdjevic's art, and great contrast and comic relief as the operatic Asgardians get to know their new neighbors in small-town Broxton, OK. Unfortunately, the book is hamstrung by two fatal flaws: wildly unbalanced characterization and rampant misogyny.

To his credit, JMS has come up with a genius twist on Thor's half-brother Loki. And I'm not talking about the boobs here. Yes, Loki now has the body of a woman, but that's just packaging to help the God of Lies sell his** newest scam: the trickster now speaks only truth. He's just as deceitful and manipulative as the Loki of old (however he may claim to have seen the error of his ways), but now accomplishes his ends by deploying the sharpest facts at the worst possible times.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that the writer finds Loki far more interesting than his actual protagonist. Thor spends way too much time (in the comic that bears his name) standing around, looking stoic, and failing to react as Loki schemes Asgard out from under him. Loki's truth-as-weapon schtick is clever, sure, but the execution is hardly so clever that Thor and his fellow Asgardians shouldn't see through it. They've endured how many of Loki's plots and betrayals by this point in their immortal lives? It's one thing to set your hero up for a thrilling comeback; it's something else again to make him look like a bland chump.

Far more disturbing, however, is the portrayal of women in the book. There's not a single female character here that gets to be anything more than an object of desire for the men.*** Thor's warrior-beloved Sif is trapped and helpless, imprisoned by Loki in a dying woman's body while he himself wears her form. Nurse Jane Foster, one-time flame of Thor's alter ego Dr. Donald Blake, announces she filed for divorce "for no good reason" on the day Thor returned from the dead, and expects to lose custody of her son over this. Clearly JMS sees Foster's marriage and child as mistakes to be corrected; he probably sees this as a perfectly old-fashioned and romantic way of going about that. It's not. It's ridiculous.

The Asgardian Lady Kelda carries on what should be an adorable courtship with a Broxton mortal, but when she invites the lad up to her city, does they share in the wonders of an ancient city? No. She takes him back to her room, lounges in scant clothing, and hurls provocative entendre. And don't even get me started on the two page spread of Prince Balder on his throne, surrounded by bikini-clad Asgardian women who apparently have nothing better to do with their time than pose around the latest royal endowment.

I know some comic fans still have a soft spot for the Conan tales of old: when men were men and women were gorgeous, undressed, and wanting to be with men. The artistic merits of Robert E. Howard and his illustrators is a whole other debate, but I for one don't feel this kind of wholesale belittlement of women deserves a place in the modern Marvel pantheon. And I must admit, I'm rather astounded that it's Straczynski who is failing so spectacularly in this way. A man who wrote Mary Jane Watson and Aunt May so well; the man who created Babylon 5 and gave the world Susan Ivanova****. This is the same guy, really?

But then I remember, he is also the man who gave Gwen Stacy her "Sins of the Past." Oy.

- JC


[*JC proposed the subtitle "More Merry Marvel Misogyny," but then changed his mind. I think it's well earned. - RD]

** Yes, I'm continuing to refer to him as a him, because a) consistancy makes my head less hurty and b) gender and biology are not necessarily the same thing. Loki may have changed the latter, but I'd argue the former remains the same. So he's still a he.

*** And no, Boob-Loki does not count.

**** Ivanova is God.

House of M: Others

Since my original House of M post, I've been tracking down the various tie-in issues and miniseries from that event, to see how they might alter my impression of the story as a whole. And ultimately I've found it's not just the changes from the Marvel universe we know that make the House that Bendis Built so intriguing. Often it's the things that haven't changed at all.

Bruce "Hulk" Banner spends his alternate reality vacation (Incredible Hulk, Peter David) in Australia, bonding with Aborigines who are helping him make peace between his "two minds," and claims he's never been happier. So his dream reality doesn't involve a reunion with his deceased wife Betty?

Similarly, in the main miniseries, Jean Grey is still dead, and Scott Summers is instead married to Emma Frost - something even Emma wonders about when their memories are restored. I was all set to blame Jean Grey's "Live, Scott, live!" brainwashing from the end of Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, and then I read Christos Gage's House of M: Civil War miniseries, about Magneto's rise to power in the Houseverse. Here we learn that even in this Magnus family fantasy world, Magneto's first child (Anya) still died, his wife Magda still left him, and Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch still grew up orphans. And I started to wonder.

Perhaps the writers were suggesting that most of us, on a day to day basis, don't really wish for a life so different from the one we already have. The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver didn't sit everyone down and ask them for their alternate reality wish-list, they had a telepath scan everyone's minds. So the lives they made were just a little better than the ones people had been living before. Lives people believed they could have, with just a little luck, or a little more work, with a few telling exceptions.

In House of M: Iron Man (Greg Pak), Tony Stark's dead, demanding father is alive again, but a villian, so Tony can face and reject him on his own terms. And in Mark Waid's House of M: Spider-Man, Peter Parker was married not to Mary Jane but to his murdered first love Gwen Stacy (and they have a son!), and Gwen's dead dad and Peter's Uncle Ben were both alive again as well. The tragedy of Peter is that he lives his whole life in regret, carrying ghosts everywhere he goes. It's enough to bring Gwen, Captain Stacy, and Uncle Ben back to him in the House reality, but when the world is restored, Peter is left wondering what it means that Mary Jane was left out of his other life and mourning a son he never actually knew. Even Peter's dreams, in the end, are just another reason to be emo.

Wow. When I put it like that...I'm kinda depressed now. Get over yourself, Spider-Man! Go look at pictures of some Giant Flemish Rabbits: http://z.hubpages.com/u/109006_f260.jpg or something.

- JC

speaking of gender

There are probably many reasons girls don't read comics. For one, the stories get kinda samey, and it's a lot of money to spend each week that could better be saved for, I dunno, rent or groceries or ice cream. Better persons than I have no doubt explored all of the possibilities. But the one thing that makes me yell at the page and vow to swear off the entire genre? Boobs drawn by women.

I was reading the latest Runaways, which includes two short stories written and drawn by different people. The scripts are good to great; as long as you know the characters, Runaways isn't hard to write. Chris Yost ("Mollifest Destiny") threw a dozen X-Men/Molly gags together and had me laughing at every panel. James Asmus ("Truth or Dare") showed how much more interesting sleepovers might be if real teens had super powers. But the art in both stories didn't thrill me, and at one point was both annoying and disgusting.

In "Mollifest Destiny," the artist did a fine job with the boys, Molly and Klara, and most of the X-Men. Emma Frost, who is always drawn like a slut*, has a pose so physically improbable that I stared at the page, wondering if she'd had a few vertebrae removed for some reason. But the panel that made me scream and curse was a shot of Nico and her massive breasts, helpfully displayed by a corset.

What massive breasts, you say? Nico is a teenager. She doesn't have massive breasts. And even if she did, she's usually covered from elbow to knee at least. She makes her own clothes, remember? Her outfits often feature long coats, skirts with pants underneath, and big boots. I SAID BIG BOOTS.

So imagine my total dismay when I learned that the artist of this short piece is named Sara Pichelli. A woman.

It's bad enough that most comic artists pander to their audience, drawing women with impossibly large and bouyant breasts, painfully small waists, and body fat ratios so small they would never menstruate. (Not that geek boys, or any boys for that matter, think much of menstruation.) But when women do it, it's somehow worse. Especially for a book about young people, I would think an artist could say, for once I don't have to sketch proportions that would make Da Vinci cringe! Hooray! But no, Pichelli seems to think that it ain't a comic book unless it has boobs, so let's make sure the geek boys have something to think about later, in bed, alone.**

I'm not saying that images of beautiful women are bad or wrong or don't belong in comics. I can appreciate a good female form (and did so plenty before I hooked up with JC***), and I understand that a little cheesecake is expected in comics, even more so than on TV and in movies. But when even women bow to the convention of drawing characters with exaggerated features, what makes us think men won't have unreasonable expectations for women in their lives? When Wonder Woman, who has been wearing a bustier for almost 70 years, can't get a decent script or an artist willing to draw her some pants, where can comic fans who are more interested in the story than the skin find a decent book?

It looks like I'll have to raise my kids on old Power Packs and Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Even Archie screwed up by picking the wrong girl. And I trust that their father will stand as proof that not all men want the supermodel body type. Which is lucky for me, and JC seems to be happy as well. ****

- RD

*And that's a valid lifestyle choice, but f#ck Emma Frost. It's not necessarily about zomg she's taking Jean's place, it's just that I've never seen anything to make me think she doesn't suck as a leader.

**Which is also a valid lifestyle choice. And if they keep looking for women who look like the ones in comics, they'll stay that way for a very long time.

***A very valid lifestyle choice. Ask any of my ex-girlfriends.

****To be fair, I do have big boobs.