X-Men:First Class: Finals

Jeff's Parker's four-part X-Men: First Class: Finals miniseries bids a fond farewell to a classic Marvel flashback, fills in a long-neglected gap in X-history, and neatly sets up Scott Gray's upcoming Uncanny X-Men First Class. In the days just before Wolverine, Storm, etc. burst onto the mutant scene in "Giant Size X-Men #1," the original five X-Men are preparing to leave Xavier's School with college degrees and head out into the real world. But wouldn't you know it? Some mysterious adversary is forcing them to confront old foes (all from Parker's series) one last time.

Along the way, Parker drops in answers to questions fans have been asking since the 60s and 70s. Presumably. I wasn't born then. We find out why the X-Men switched to more individualized uniforms, why Professor Xavier went from running a school for "The Strangest Teens of All!" to overseeing a pseudo-military team of adult mutants from around the world, and even how a classy girl like Jean could possibly have designed the suspendered nightmare that was Angel's first attempt at a unique costume.

And in the end, we learn that the bad guy bombarding the team with Parker's greatest hits is none other than Jean Grey, and I discover a facet of my favorite relationship in comics that I'd never quite caught on to before. I'd always seen Scott and Jean primarily as two straight-arrows, wanting nothing more than to do right and take care of their great big X-Men family. Less important, I thought, were the very different ways they experienced and dealt with power. Scott's struggle was with a physical handicap, Jean's with a metaphysical question of how much power she can use before it must corrupt her.

Finals showed that both Scott and Jean's power struggles are ultimately emotional. Here we learn that as Jean's telepathic abilities grew, her subconscious fears and traumatic memories began to manifest as what Xavier called "ambient dreams," forcing themselves on those around her. The Professor explains, "As a mentally enhanced mutant, it's important that her mind be disciplined. Objective," meaning that Jean's power demands a figurative clarity of vision, just as Scott's does a literal one. And for Jean, just as much as for Scott, power has always been overshadowed by childhood pain. Scott lost his parents in the plane crash which also deprived him of the ability to control his optic blasts; Jean first experienced telepathy in the moment her friend was killed in a car crash. One lost a family, the other a best friend, and they found both again in one another - making their continual efforts at control a little less burdensome.

And those who say Scott Summers wasn't "a real grown up" or "free" or "truly happy" until Emma Frost came along can suck it.

The first 3 Finals issues also feature a back-up story by Parker, irresistably drawn by Colleen Coover: "Scott & Jean Are On a Date!" Honestly, they had me at the title, but you have to love a Marvel series that manages to work a playful newspaper-style comic strip into its continuity, and in the oh-so-angsty X-verse to boot.

- JC

Iron Man: Armored Adventures

As with most comic book heroes, there's always been a distinct element of power fantasy to Iron Man. But it's not just the fact that Tony Stark has a cool suit of armor and gets to fly around and blast robots. The fact that he's a billionaire inventor with his own company has always been just as important to the vibe, to making readers and moviegoers not just want to hang out with Tony, but to BE him. He flies around the world on a whim, vacations in exotic locations, and gets the babes wherever he goes. He runs a business, has lunch meetings with the movers and shakers of the world, and then runs back to his garage to tinker with the next high-tech toy. He's Steve Jobs as James Bond.

Not so in Marvel Animation's new Iron Man: Armored Adventures cartoon. Here Stan Lee's famous billionaire industrialist/playboy Tony Stark has been redesigned as a sixteen-year-old who first puts on the Iron Man armor after his father's murder. Tony's still rich, but his company's being run by the man he's sure killed his dad (ostensibly until Tony turns 18 or exposes Obadiah Stane for the villain he is). When he's not flying around town in his new armor, he's struggling through high school with his friends Jim "Rhodey" Rhodes and Pepper Potts. It's cute, sure, watching the rich genius kid trying to cope with the banalities of his classes and being badgered by the more down-to-earth Rhodey and Pepper. But is it Iron Man?

At one point in the 4th episode, as Tony angsts about finding evidence against his father's murderer, Rhodey points out that his dad would just want him to live and enjoy a normal life. And therein lies the rub. In the comics and the movie, Tony Stark never had any problem enjoying his normal life, even with all the superheroics going on. This isn't to say it made him happy, that he didn't still internally monologue in grand Stan Lee fashion about the life and the relationships he REALLY wanted, but he still always found time to go to the parties, to date the girls, to at least enjoy the surface pleasures his money made possible. So who is this Tony?

IM: Armored Adventures is an entertaining enough superhero cartoon, with likable characters, witty dialogue, and some slick computer-animated action sequences, but it it feels more like an amalgamation of Batman ("I'm rich, and I will avenge my father!") and Spider-Man ("aww, man, how do I juggle the responsibilities of my power with a normal teenage life?") than a story of Stark. If I have some free time and a hankering for a generic superhero show, I'll catch up on the episodes, but it doesn't have the intrinsic Iron Man quality that makes me look forward to it as I do the next Matt Fraction issue, or even Iron Man 2 on the big screen.

- JC

Astonishing X-Men

The X-Men have long been my favorite characters in comics. Yet I've had a hard time really appreciating the main X-books since about 2001, when Grant Morrison began his run on New X-Men. The plots were needlessly convoluted and the characters seemed to be alienated from each other, but the biggest reason for my dislike came down to his treatment of just two characters: Scott Summers and Jean Grey. Morrison took Cyclops, the X-Men's ultimate idealistic boy scout, and turned him into a wimp-ass wannabe bad boy. He took Jean, who had emerged from the shadow of the Phoenix entity in the 1990s to become a truly formidable leader, rebonded her to the Phoenix, and reduced her to the fanboy distortion of "that chick who dies a lot." And in the process, he tore apart their marriage, which I would still argue is the greatest love story in comics.

Now, I'm not saying there haven't been great X-Men stories told since Morrison's reign. But without Scott Summers and Jean Grey at the center of them - with Scott instead shacked up with Emma Frost, with whom he had a psychic affair before Jean's death - they just haven't been my X-Men.

Which kind of makes Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men live up to its name all the more. I've just finished reading it all, start to finish, for the second time, and I still don't hate it.
Joss immediately sets right a lot of what Morrison muddled. He puts the X-Men back in spandex, gets them back in the game of reaching out to the human community by being superheroes rather than holing up in the mansion and teaching mutant kids how much better they are than humans. He gives Cyclops his idealism back, and shows us the X-Men actually enjoying each others' company again (even as they wind up in fist-fights every other page). They're a family. An endlessly squabbling family that expects the world of one another, but what family doesn't?

What's more, the Whedon issues of Astonishing X-Men offer some of the finest visual storytelling in comics. The "camera angles," the intercutting between parallel scenes, the characters' body language and blocking, it's all brilliant. The scene where Colossus returns from the dead is a perfect example: the guards' bullets pass through Kitty Pryde and ping off something in the shadows; Colossus steps out; Kitty freezes, Colossus running right through her to take down the guards, but the view remains locked on Kitty and the shock on her face. It's perfect. I'd love to get my hands on some of the scripts, and really pick apart how much of this was planned by Whedon and how much was the genius of artist John Cassaday.

But the really weird part? When Joss is writing them, I don't even hate Scott & Emma as a couple. Don't get me wrong; I still hate how it started and the revisionist writers who try to suggest Scott & Jean were never good for one another. (Joss has Emma suggest it, but Scott clearly isn't buying in.) But Joss emphasizes two people with ridiculous cases of survivor's guilt - for different reasons, from different pasts - coming together, each seeing the other very differently from how they see themselves, and trying to be better together. It's almost kinda cool. I still want Jean to come back, I still want to see her and Scott put back together, but I don't have to hate the Scott/Emma relationship as a step along Scott's journey.

- JC

Detective Comics 853

Detective Comics 853, part 2 of Neil Gaiman's "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" is exactly the conclusion I was expecting, and nothing like it at all. The funeral, the parade of Batman's friends and foes telling contradictory versions of his life and death, does indeed turn out to be a near-death experience. Bruce Wayne may not yet be deceased, but "very close," and it's not just his life flashing before his eyes, but all the lives he could've lived. Together, the stories show him that no matter what else may change, the Batman will always be fighting the same fight, and the only way he'll ever quit is to die, which was the same theme I picked out in my review of part 1. The woman heard talking to Bruce in the story's first half, it turns out, is Bruce's mother. She's shows him one more life he lived, for far too short a time: the life of an unusually happy child (Bruce Wayne? Who'da thunk it?), taking great joy in a simple picture book. And she hints that he's about to live that life all over again, to enjoy those too-few happy years once more, as the cycle begins anew.

Is Bat-continuity headed for another reboot or retcon? Is Bruce Wayne somehow being reincarnated into his own former life? Or is it all just a story being told and retold? In the end, as Mrs. Wayne encourages her son to tell the tale himself in the form of the classic children's book "Goodnight Moon," I realize that "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" is less of a plot and more of a graphic poem. And it all leads up to a truly stunning transmogrification of the Bat-Signal, a two-page spread that alone is worth the price of admission.

When I closed the comic, I thought all that was missing was a punchline for the gag in part 1 about the kid who parked the Joker's car. And then things got interesting.

I put the comic aside to take a nap. And as I slept, I dreamt that I flipped back through the comic again, certain a master like Gaiman wouldn't have set up such a great gag in part 1 and failed to follow it through in the finale, sure that I must simply have missed that page or panel. And sure enough, in my dream, I found it: a page where that kid grows up with that fear of the Joker, that certainty that death is waiting for him around every corner, and the fear turns him into Joe Chill. He murders Bruce's parents, becoming part of the endless cycle. Was this page somehow real? Could there be a secret piece of "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" that can only be read between falling asleep and waking? If any comic creator could craft such an experience, it would be Gaiman, wouldn't it?

- JC

another station break

Pardon the span of time between posts; RD is the one who usually edits and uploads JC's blog entries and she's been in Australia and New Zealand for work for the past couple of weeks. JC forgot the password to post to the blog himself. We've got three great posts in the works, so stick around.

- JC & RD

New Avengers: The Reunion #2

There's not a lot of action in issue 2 of New Avengers: The Reunion (Jim McCann). It's primarily the infodump issue, answering a number of questions that have built up in the few months since Mockingbird's Secret Invasion return. And it's still completely enthralling.

Ronin (Clint Barton, formerly Hawkeye) and Mockingbird (Bobbi Morse) hop a plane to Europe to stop some super-terrorists from taking out a world scientists' convention, and we finally learn who Bobbi's been working for since her comeback: herself. Turns out she's the one who rounded up the former Skrull captive S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and started a brand new counter-terrorism agency, complete with flashy new James Bond style toys and a nerdy support staff. (Who needs a H.A.M.M.E.R. when you've got a blonde with a big stick?)

At the same time, flashbacks reveal just when in 1990s Marvel continuity it was that Mockingbird got nabbed by the Skrulls. These scenes could have been full of horrible fanwankery, but instead they served to ratchet up Reunion's emotional stakes beautifully: Bobbi had been on her way to inform Clint she'd just filed divorce papers. It's not melodrama for the sake of melodrama, either, but grounded in the relationship's own tempestuous history. Granted, it's a history I only know from Wikipedia entries, so I can't say how much of the flashback dialogue is lifted directly from old comics and how much is reinterpreted. But either way, the basic events are well-established, and McCann does a great job weaving the relationship's past and possible future into one cohesive tale.

He also packs a lot into the details. At one point, getting ready to infiltrate a swanky party, Clint goes off on Bobbi for the blue and purple outfit she's picked out for him. Ronin may finally have moved beyond his 1960s-1990s colors, and Bobbi may be the one insisting they're no longer a couple, but part of her is still looking for Hawkeye and the years the Skrulls took away from her.

More subtle is the page on the plane where, though Clint and Bobbi in fact sit facing one another, a simple panel reversal makes them appear back to back, turned away from each other and isolated. It's one of those simple visual tricks that only really work in comic books. Film and TV can use a split screen to similar effect, but split screens always look like gimmicks. It can never look as natural as it does on the page.

Clint and Bobbi's story moves one step forward and two steps back in this issue, but the reader's ride just keeps getting better.

- JC

House of M

I've just read House of M (Brian Michael Bendis) for the third time, and I'm still not sure what I think of it.

The miniseries picks up more or less where Bendis' Avengers Disassembled arc left off. Wanda Maximoff (the Avenger Scarlet Witch, and daughter of X-Men arch-foe Magneto) has been driven mad by her reality-altering mutant powers. Several of her Avengers teammates have died because of her breakdown, and the remaining Avengers and X-Men are no longer sure they can help her. Just as the two teams come together to decide what can be done for their friend, the world goes white, and suddenly everyone's living in Magneto's world. The war Magneto foresaw between men and mutants has apparently come and gone, and now the Earth is one big shiny-happy mutant-friendly society run by the "House of M" - Magneto and his children.

The heroes of the Marvel universe have all been given the lives they've always dreamed about: Peter Parker is married to Gwen Stacy and his Uncle Ben is still around, Captain America never got frozen in the ice and got to grow old with his own generation, Wolverine is a top S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and now remembers his entire life. Yet this also makes Wolverine one of the few who remembers the real Marvel universe, and realizes that he's starring on Extreme Makeover: Planetary Edition. He hooks up with a human underground movement - it turns out not everyone's happy with Magneto's leadership after all - and together they set out to wake up the heroes, find the Unwicked Witch of the Crazy, and Put Things Right.

Every time I've read this story, I've found it gripping. It begins and ends with a surprisingly down-to-Earth family drama. Beneath the capes and masks, it's a story about a family coming together in despair, struggling to cope with a loved one's mental illness. The issues in the middle, in the world Wanda creates, are on the surface a fairly standard heroes-trapped-in-fake-reality adventure, the kind we've seen in any number of comics as well as on Star Trek and in movies like The Matrix or Dark City. Yet it's also a story about Wanda's response to her family's and friends' grief and her attempt to repair the pain she has caused them all and give them the world they deserve. The dialogue is clever but heartfelt (it's Bendis); the action is big, brassy and exciting.

But House of M raises several huge, intriguing questions, and I find myself wanting more, or different, answers than Bendis gives us. Upon realizing reality has been changed, the heroes have only one short debate about whether or not they should try to change it back. Kitty Pryde and Jessica Drew ask why it isn't just as wrong to unmake this reality, to take away these lives people are living - why, in a world of fantastic superhuman powers, this change couldn't be something that's supposed to happen - and are immediately shot down by Wolverine and the rest on sheer principle. No one talks about how life is worse for some in this reality, or about the racism of mutant rule, or about the people who are dead in this world but alive in the other (or vice versa). It's just taken as a given that when someone magically changes the world, it's your job to change it right back. And maybe that is a given - in America, at least. In our democratic society, we tend to hold free will above all other virtues. The idea that one single man, or family, could enforce a whole new reality on the world, even a reality that made most people's lives better, is anathema to most of us.

Yet Wanda didn't impose her own ideas on the world, or even her father's. Supposedly she linked with Charles Xavier's mind and got him to tap into everyone's dreams and hopes and wishes, and used that to give people the lives they all wanted. It's a brilliant storytelling device, exploring the characters in the regular Marvel reality by seeing the lives they would have chosen to live in this one. It was great fodder for other Marvel writers, too, who followed these lives in tie-in stories. But like Jessica Drew asks, if everyone got what they wanted, not just Magneto, than why is it necessarily wrong to just let it go?

Of course, not quite everyone got what they wanted: while some of the dead have risen again in this new world, others alive in the regular Marvel U are deceased here. Was it because people like Charles Xavier and Reed and Sue Richards would've figured out the truth too quickly? Or were some people's dreams were granted primacy over others, meaning that Magneto and Doctor Doom really don't see the world as big enough for themselves and their superhero nemeses?

It also seems as though Wanda plays favorites - or at least I prefer to think so rather than suggesting that Bendis' own power couple Luke Cage and Jessica Jones got separated in this new reality because of some relationship angst from one or both of them. It's implied that Jessica Jones is with Ant-Man Scott Lang in the M-verse. Scott was one of the Avengers killed during Wanda's Disassembled breakdown, so I think giving Scott back his ex was Wanda's gift to him.

I also really wanted to know - or wanted a character to ask - why Magneto's world had to turn out like it did. Wanda blames her father near the end, suggesting that his petty and cruel nature made a petty and cruel world, even when he ruled it. But is Magneto so petty and so cruel? I've always thought that Magneto believed he had to be a harsh man in a harsh world, but that did not mean he would choose it. I've always believed he wanted the same world of harmony and cooperation Charles Xavier wants; Magneto simply didn't believe it was a realistic goal. If Wanda is reaching into her father's head and remaking the world for him, why couldn't she create the kinder, gentler Xavier version of reality? Do her powers, or her madness even, demand a certain amount of logic and consistency, a world the inhabitants can still believe is real? Does this mean that she changed only history, not human nature, and that Wanda couldn't believe in Xavier's dream any more than Magneto could?

I could answer all these questions myself. I could spend days answering them, really. (I have a BA in English Lit, I'm marrying a woman with a BA in Philosophy, we write this blog, hi!). But I wanted the characters to put a few more of them on the table themselves before they rushed into their big fight scene. Yes, great drama sets up a debate and lets the audience answer, but if the characters don't ask enough of the questions for themselves, then they start to feel a little too much like plot devices rather than people. It's a very tricky tightrope to walk, and I don't think Bendis got it quite right with House of M. Still, there's a lot to be said for any story that lives so vividly in my head for days after a third reading.

- JC

this would have had more impact 5 days ago

I went to the comic store after work on Wednesday to pick up The Wonderful Wizard of Oz #5 (Eric Shanower, who is pretty good, I guess, and SKOTTIE YOUNG, who is basically the best artist ever). JC didn't have anything in his file (for once), so it was me on my lonesome with my monkey-face change purse in an effort to avoid putting my one teeny issue on my debit card. I don't carry cash, for those of you stalking and/or planning to mug me on my way to the comic store next Wednesday.

So I waved to the comic store guy (who looks nothing like the one on The Simpsons), and I waved to the other customer, who just happened to have WWO #5 on top of the stack in his hand, and I went to the Great Wall O' Comics and looked through the W section (Wolverine, Wonder Woman, and WWO are pretty much it) to find - GASP - issues 2, 3, and 4, but no #5!

THEY HAD SOLD OUT. ON THE FIRST DAY.

I went up to the counter guy to ask if they had any more, and he said NO THEY DID NOT. BUT IF I WANTED THEY COULD CALL THE OTHER STORES AND ASK IF THEY HAD COPIES. I was all, but this is on my way home from work! If I go to another store, I'll have to make an extra trip and then I'm actually going out of my way to buy a comic and that's just TOO GEEKY FOR ME I'M SORRY. NOT EVEN FOR SKOTTIE YOUNG.

So I was telling the comic book guy and the other customer, "Well, fiance didn't have anything else in his file this week and I was being all self-sufficient and getting my own beautiful SKOTTIE YOUNG."

And the other customer said, "Gee, I wish my wife would do that! She made me add Wizard of Oz to my pull file so I'd get it for her."

So I said, "Oh, well sometimes I come by and buy my fiance's comics for him." And the customer and the comic guy went, "Oh!" as if to say, "You're clearly the perfect woman!" and I continued, "...so he does the dishes and laundry for me." And they both went, "Oh," as if to say, "Haha, that would never happen in our lives. Hm, possibly that is why our wives and/or girlfriends are not as perfect as you."

I still do not have WWO #5. However, I am two or three issues behind in JC's latest scripts (oops) so I shouldn't be reading such frivolous matter anyway. I think he keeps writing so fast to keep me from my SKOTTIE YOUNG. Because for some reason he is threatened by my love and devotion. OH SKOTTIE YOUNG YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. I don't know why.

- RD

station break

This has nothing to do with comics.

I just got an iPod Touch.

It's beautiful.

- RD

Eternals, "To Slay a God"

"To Slay a God," the first paperback collection of the new Eternals series by Charlie and Daniel Knauf, picks up more or less where the Neil Gaiman Eternals mini-series left off. Eternals - immortal, god-like beings created by an alien race to protect the Earth - are waking up around the world, regaining memories stolen from them by one of their own. Some prepare to defend the Earth from a vast alien Horde approaching from deep space; others are more concerned with carving out their own worldly empire. It's a great epic set-up.

But not a lot else. The Knaufs do a good job of developing the "great cosmic game" aspect of the series, building on foundations set by Gaiman and Eternals creator Jack Kirby. The various conflicts between the Eternals, the Celestials, and the Horde are intriguing and well thought out, but there just isn't enough characterization here to balance it out and really make me care what happens.

Kirby's Eternals were above all fun: extraordinary, thrill-seeking immortals who'd lived for thousand of years, experienced the best the Earth had to offer, and still weren't bored with crashing human parties. Gaiman's Eternals were a little more melancholy. Most of them had spent the last few years mind-wiped, thinking they were ordinary humans living ordinary lives, and several found that waking up to their true selves, to god-like powers and a multi-thousand-year perspective involved a certain amount of sacrifice. Friends, lovers, and simple joys were lost, and Gaiman left it ambiguous whether the Eternal life was really worth the cost.

But fun and ambiguity are both lacking in "To Slay a God." The Eternals of this new series tend to be very one-note: driven Ikaris, who would sacrifice anything to beat the Horde; protective mother Thena; protective girlfriend Sersi; existentially distracted Mikkari; evil facist dictator Druig, etc. There's little wit or ingenuity to their dialogue, and they never really feel like complete characters so much as chess pieces caught up in the great convoluted game of the plot.

At the end of each issue, we do get a nice, fun Kirby-style teaser for the issue to follow: "Be here next time, True Believers, as Ikaris grapples with his golden locks in: TO SHAMPOO A GOD!" (Not really. I'm riffing. But you get the idea.) You can almost hear Stan Lee in his best 1980s cartoon narrator voice. But I think a series as wild, wacky, and Kirby as the Eternals really needs such a voice throughout the story, not just on the final pages.

On the other hand, the art by Daniel Acuna is never short of spectacular. Acuna has a really unique style; he does his own inking and coloring and often uses color for his detailed line work where other artists would employ a fine point pen. It gives everything he draws a very distinctive texture, somehow both more solid and softer than your typical comic book art. That's how it looks to this writer, anyway; I'd love to hear what other artists see in Mr. Acuna's work.

- JC