Monthly (Comic) Book Club - April - New X-Men17214
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I know the reveal also and am trying to keep an eye on what they do with him to see if it makes sense. The Wiki article for Xorn says the reveal was later retconned. From what we've seen so far, I don't see how the reveal would be plausible (keeping the reveal quiet in case there are lurkers who don't know what it is). But maybe there will be an opportunity for a swap in the middle. |
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| I thought 121 was an ambitious story to tell without text and I think it mostly worked except for the couple of cheats with the floating letters and the very last panel. I feel the floating letters were a little unnecessary since Jean’s expression definitely gets the idea across. The star is definitely in the abstract, surreal, and sometimes disturbing compositions and imagery. I wonder how much of the weirdness was there for the sake of being weird and how much has hidden meaning to it. Emma with the door seems mostly for comic relief and to show less capable or less focused than Jean. In the dungeon you have male and female figures flanking Xavier, representing Xavier and Cassandra, and an undeveloped fetus that was never born. I feel like the letters blocking the entrance to tower should mean something but nothing stands out to me. There’s also the hanging brick-a-brack in the next frame that I can’t find a reason for. |
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| 122 starts off almost like a horror story. The monster is out there and the survivors are trying desperately to warn the outside before all is lost. I think we see some of Morrison’s unnecessary complexity seep in with Cassandra Nova’s origin. Her simply being Xavier’s killed-in-the-womb twin wasn’t enough there’s the layer of her being a formless energy entity that tried to be born but was “killed” but also didn’t die… Morrison’s mission to inject weirdness continues. We don’t see them but Jean mentions a mutant boy whose skin is super sensitive and has to live in a force field and Beast mentions someone that mutated into a bug/virus. I guess in the past we’re used to seeing mutants where mutation was simply a shortcut to giving them a superpower. Some had drawbacks like Cyclops’ eye beams and Rogue unable to touch people but they were still essentially human. Less human characters like Beast and Nightcrawler were exceptions. Morrison seems to be focusing less on the superpower and instead focusing them on making his new mutants less human, maybe to emphasize them as a different species from humans. It seems Xorn has healing powers now that others have observed. This makes the reveal later less plausible without some major loose ends to explain |
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| It feels like a lot happens in 123. It feels a little odd after the previous couple of issues but I really enjoyed how much of the issue was just hanging around the school. I agree that we do see a lot of character work being done. We’d only seen the Cuckoos briefly before but here we see them reacting to one of their ranks finding a boyfriend. We also get to see Emma Frost’s more maternal side. She’s often very outwardly cold and uncaring. We certainly get to see some of that here as well, but she speaks frankly to the Cuckoos about dealing with one of them having a boyfriend and even at the end hopes it didn’t put them off boys while shielding them all with her own body. Of course she also explodes at the reporter for being rude to Beast. Again, a very protective reaction. The idea of a telepathic press conference was really neat. Though did they have to wipe the entire viewing audience’s memory after Emma blew up at the reporter? And what about the recordings that will show 30 seconds of footage nobody remembers? The revelation of microbe-sized sentinels was foreshadowed way back in the first issues of the run but the reveal remains frightening and unexpected. We get more strange mutants in the background scenes. Someone that looks an awful lot like Nightcrawler. One mutant with a gaseous, genie-like appearance, a tree-like mutant and more. I don’t know if he’s a new character but STUFF’s microbial appearance is also fairly strange. I am not too familiar with the Van Sciver stuff and from the little I’ve read it’s not something I care dig into anymore deeply. It seems like though his political leanings have always leaned one way, the batshit craziness is a little more recent. Looking just at the work, his opening splash page certainly makes a statement with it’s intricate details. That continues throughout the rest of the book though I’m not sure what is happening in that last frame of Xavier plugged in to Cerebra |
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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - May - The next Crises  Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #4-0 Identity Crisis #1-7 Week 1 (5/2-5/8): Zero Hour #4-2 Week 2 (5/9-5/15): Zero Hour #1-0 Week 3 (5/16/-5/22): Identity Crisis #1-4 Week 4 (5/23-5/29): Identity Crisis #5-7 Discussion topic ideas: * Thoughts on the story or artwork * Details in the story, artwork, or presentation * References to outside events or other works of fiction * Making of/Behind the Scenes details * Editions you will be reading from * Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I agree. Especially with the weird psychic (I assume?) shape around Xavier's body, and the panel with his head to the side and red eyes. Quote: Originally Posted by dielinfinite Yeah. I think there's a little bit of a practical reason, in that Cassandra couldn't do all the things that she's done (especially the attack in the mansion a few issues back) if she's "just" Xavier's twin. So she has to be something else. But Morrison indeed goes over the top with it. Quote: Originally Posted by dielinfinite I didn't read much of the Generation X series, which I assume developed Emma quite a bit from the villain/side character she had been, so this is where you really learn about her as a reader from my perspective. She seems to have that fake British vibe and definitely has a protective streak. She was the teacher for the Hellions, who all died, and then Genosha happened, so it's a theme in her story. Maybe I should read some of the Generation X stuff to see if she had the aloof Britishism going on then or if it's a Morrison development. Quote: Originally Posted by dielinfinite You mean the last of the sequence of three, where Jean has walked away but there's like a floating blue thing? Yeah, I'm not sure either. |
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| It's a quiet day so let's finish this puppy up. 124 picks up with Cyclops and Xorn captured on the Shi'ar ship. Cassandra, in Xavier's body, has convinced (telepathically or not) everyone that Cassandra has actually gone back to Earth and infected all the mutants with a psi-plague. So the Imperial Guard is attacking the mansion. I think Morrison has expanded his weirdness to the Imperial Guard. There's been an established core of Superguardians that's already pretty big: Gladiator, Oracle, Starbolt, Smasher, Neutron, Warstar, and a number of others. They go back to the original Phoenix saga. Morrison introduces (as far as I know) some more Superguardians but they're like STUFF or Squorm, or whoever the guy made of bio-helium is. They might have shown up in other places before this but Wikipedia says that a number of them appear for the first time here in 123 and 124. The Imperial Guard, for the most part, are based on the Legion of Superheroes. So it's kind of a nice touch for them to mention a flight patch (that Wolverine steals) as an analogue to the Legion flight ring. The news is good and bad at the end of the issue. Smasher arrives just in time to tell Gladiator that the mutants aren't a plague, but Cassandra's nano-sentinels are wearing on Jean and Beast. And Cyclops and Xorn free themselves on the ship. |
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| 125 starts on the Shi'ar ship again. I feel like there's a little oddity in Cassandra's choices. She doesn't seem to be mind controlling everyone, even though she took Xavier's body because of its power. She's controlling Lilandra and using her authority to get other things done. But she doesn't seem to be controlling G-Unit or the sage or much of anyone else. I'm sure the Shi'ar have psychic protections but it seems like she should be able to control more of them, which would make things easier for her. I enjoyed Beast's description of Wolverine as their 'most shadowy and mysterious member of the staff'. This issue felt like a quick read, moving the plot along. Jean has been planning to move Xavier into her mind so that when Cassandra comes back for her body, it has died and she has nowhere to go. The underwhelming team of Emma, Beak, Angel, and the Cuckoos have gotten Beast's sample of Cassandra's DNA. And Cyclops and Xorn maybe blew up on the Shi'ar ship. |
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| 126 harkens back to an earlier issue where Wolverine appreciates Cyclops' "icy calm lunacy under pressure". He's running through an exploding spaceship but he's certain that he'll live because he's carrying Lilandra and he has to. Since 126 pretty much just wraps up things in a practical sense, I'll note that Quitely decided to put Wolverine in some kind of overalls outfit. I don't know what that's about. And the exoskeleton thing around Xavier the past few issues was apparently Cassandra's mummudrai form. I guess it makes sense in retrospect but since it was never around her or Xavier before it was kind of confusing. |
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| Looking back on our Batman & Robin thread, it looks like the most consistent things I noted were finding Robin insufferable and not enjoying Pyg. There was also, of course, Morrison's penchant for weirdness. I didn't find anyone in this X-Men run intolerable, so that was nice. Cassandra Nova is something of an odd character but I didn't find her over the top or obnoxious. Everything is weird and elevated though. We also noted a number of different artists. This arc also had a few, although they seemed to work in rotation rather than just doing a couple a piece. Toward the end of the Batman arc I thought they were just throwing stuff at the wall, plot-wise, whereas the X-Men arc seems more planned. There was a lot going on but it all comes together at the end. Maybe a little too neatly; introducing the nano-sentinels to ramp up background tension but then just having Xorn show up and fix it seemed like kind of a waste. |
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| Also in the Batman thread @dielinfinite noted that Morrison's Final Crisis set the stage for DC for a while afterward. Morrison wrote nearly another 30 issues of X-Men after what we've read, so the comparison isn't 100% fair, but a lot of what we've already seen shows up in future X-Men stories. The Necrosha event involves Selene resurrecting the dead mutants on Genosha with the transmode virus. Genosha is also a general reference for one of the times that someone has tried to commit genocide on mutants. Cassandra Nova shows up in X-Men Red. There isn't anything flashy in it and no big first appearances, but I really liked that series as a good example of a thematic X-Men story. She uses a nano-sentinel technology again, but to control humans. In the end Jean gives Cassandra a sense of empathy, giving her some complication instead of just being an evil force. And Cassandra has just shown up again in the Marauders relaunch the past couple weeks. A number of the students shown in the background, like Glob, became fleshed-out main characters in later series like Wolverine and the X-Men. The Cuckoos become much more major characters. Emma Frost has become a core X-Men member since this run. She and Cyclops were a couple basically all the way from here until the Hickman reboot. In contrast, Beak and Angel have shown up outside of Morrison's writing but have faded much more to the background. Sublime appeared in a later X-Men arc that I read but I don't think has been very prominent. It's a minor point toward the end, where Beast is about to try to cure Xavier's body, but Jean tells him that he doesn't have to prove himself and it was going to play into Cassandra's plans. One of Beast's character flaws is his need to prove himself and solve things. It shows up a lot in All-New X-Men, where current Beast tries to fix things by bringing the past original X-Men forward in time. That was a mistake, and we also see a future Beast who's basically become a bad guy, and we see it in the young Beast who turns to magic when he realizes that his scientific mind is useless since he's suddenly been thrust into the future and he doesn't understand any of the technology. Moving ahead even more to the current stories and Beast is basically a mad scientist anti-hero at this point. The arc hits on a few key X-Men themes. Humans hating and fearing mutants. Mutants trying to establish their own place to live. Humans joining with technology or using technology to evolve in order to keep up with or surpass mutants (which @dielinfinite noted earlier in regard to humanity's impending extinction). Hickman's reboot pulls on a lot of X-Men history but those are all heavy parts of the current status quo. I also mentioned previously how Hickman used the silent issue (121) as the basis for a recent issue. Cyclops' comment about humanity viewing mutants as a master race in 122 is also relevant. In the current status quo, (most) mutants have come together to live on the mutant island Krakoa as an independent country. Humans are still wary of them, but mutants have bought some goodwill and the recognition of their country by developing medicines from Krakoan flowers. Mutants view themselves as superior on the whole. There are conflicts inside Krakoa since a bunch of villains live there, but the more existential threat is a group of humans who formed an organization called Orchis, dedicated to advancing human technology and countering mutants. |
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I’ll be completing the reading tonight. I had planned to read it over the weekend but had a bit of a panic when I couldn’t find my Marvel Spotlight 5. I had conflated it with Marvel Preview and when I couldn’t find it with my magazine-size books I panicked and searched everywhere a larger book would fit. I finally calmed down enough to realize it was a standard sized comic I had to go through all my books to find it just to set my mind at ease  |
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| I agree that it feels like Morrison is extending his weird X-Men to the Shi’ar as well. Every one of them is just so different, some even seem biologically incompatible with the environment they’re sent to operate in. We do see the Cuckoos and Angel making nice enough to fight back against the attack together. I’ll say that I’m not super enamored with Kordey’s art in the issue. It’s fine for the most part but I feel like most of the character art here feels like the background art you’d see in other books. Everything just lacks that focus and detail that you expect for the main action. In some shots Wolverine looks like an angry squirrel as well. Finally on Xorn. If Xorn is not Xorn, would he have been able to incapacitate G-Type the way Scott suggested when they escaped? |
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| So the final feels, again, a little like a monster movie with Nova pretty much unstoppable on her way to Cerebra. It does feel like it takes her a long time to get there given how easily she seems to tear through everyone. This predates it by several years but it reminded me a little of X-Men: The Last Stand when Beast swoops in to inject Charles’ body with the…healing agent? Like how Wolverine would distract Magneto so Beast can inject him with the mutant cure. Overall, I really enjoyed the story and agree that it felt much more planned than Batman & Robin. That said, I do think Morrison stuffs a lot into the story and as a result maybe doesn’t do them all justice. Despite the Geonoshan genocide having a major impact on the story, the immensity of the act I don’t think is fully conveyed compared to say the last issues of Watchmen. Similarly, Nova essentially burning the Shi’ar Empire to the ground basically happens in the background and of course the microscopic Sentinels are dispatched almost as soon as we learn that they exist. Each of these could’ve been the focus of their own major arc but they’re all used as window dressing for Nova’s assault on Xavier. Quietly’s return in the last issue made me appreciate his work after the two issues prior. While his designs and style don’t always agree with me his crafstmanship and skill is undeniable. Another major difference with the Batman & Robin reading is that the Batman run was kind of awkwardly fit in between two major events. Of course we only read a small part in the middle of a much larger run. Still, it felt like Dick and Damien were just starting to get comfortable in their roles when the story started to switch to the return of Bruce Wayne. Here we’re very much at a beginning. It feels like a trial by fire so we’re introduced to a lot of characters but don’t get to spend a significant amount of time developing them because the pace of the stories are so fast. What we do get are a few characters singled out as important that we expect will be important and developed in the future. Aside from the veterans (Xavier, Jean, Cyclops, Beast, Wolverine, & Emma) a few new characters (Xorn, Angel, Beak, and the Cuckoos). |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite Fair question. Magneto's powers always seem vaguely underdescribed (what *can't* you do with magnetism?) and variously leveled. I remember in an early Jim Lee X-Men, Gambit throws a card at Magneto and he redirects it. A letters page a couple issues later (I used to read the whole damn issue), someone writes in and says "hey, can Magneto do that?". And the writers admitted they goofed. I guess when you're telling the story you tell the story, and it's up to someone after the fact to own up to if they made a mistake or not. |
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| I believe a later writer would retcon the whole Xorn thing. Instead of having Xorn being an identity that Magneto assumed they made it so that Xorn was a separate character that Magneto then impersonated. I know a lot of people don’t look too highly on such retcons but looking closely, I think the change might actually make more sense than Xorn having always been Magneto. Also for further reading, Chris Claremont’s X-Men: The End is a fantastic capstone for the property, bringing back Cassandra Nova, among others, for a final conflict. It’s a story Claremont is immensely proud of. Where other The End books got either one-shot or a six-issue mini-series, Claremont knocked out three six-issue minis for a total of 18 issues! |
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| I think I've read part of The End before but I need to grab a collection. | ||
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| It looks like each volume can be found for about $10-$20 each. The asking price for the trilogy tpb collecting all three minis seems to be in the $70s but here’s one listing for $50 (along with the Deadly Genesis tpb) and is OBO to boot I believe I used the individual trades when I made my The End custom bind   |
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| I found a cheap auction on eBay, so I've got The End to read through now. Hooray! | ||
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| Were you the one that bought the End Trilogy for like $25? I’ve gotten lucky on a couple of recent tpbs recently. Just grabbed Bloodrayne Genesis and the Alien Dead Orbit hardcover |
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| Maybe $25 all-in. https://www.ebay.com/itm/134098643402 | ||
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| Oh nice! I saw some copies of the Trilogy TPB go cheap but that’s a nice score for the individual issues | ||
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