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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #32 4 Sept 04 |
Confessions of a New X-Men Reader |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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Grant
Morrison made me care about the X-Men for the first time. Oh,
I’d read the X-Men. I liked
the ideas behind “Days of Future Past” and “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” I just didn’t care. |
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If comics fans are stereotyped as obsessive continuity
quizmasters living in their own world, X-fans were the worst. |
And
it didn’t help that X-fans weren’t the most appealing group one could
consider joining. If comics fans are
stereotyped as obsessive continuity quizmasters living in their own world --
not unlike trekkies or people who dress up in wizard costumes to see Lord
of the Rings on opening day -- X-fans were the worst. No one, it seemed, could penetrate an
X-Men comic: most were unfathomable
fare, full of characters and references and 100 or so ongoing threads of
story featuring every character, none of which really sounded
interesting. But every week at the
comics shop, here were these people.
The ones who looked like you were an alien if you talked about Alan
Moore or Neil Gaiman or Cages or Palestine -- or, say, anything
outside of comics that wasn’t on TV and similarly embarrassing to admit
watching -- but would launch in a 30-minute rant at the mention of an
X-character. And these weirdos bought
every X-title, ones I couldn’t imagine anyone justifying as having a premise
for a separate book, let alone anyone understanding in relation to a dozen
other titles. But there these people
were, at the counter, with a pull list of 30 or so titles, none of which I
read, complaining about some X-book but utterly on Mars when I suggest -- I
don’t know -- dropping this hated book. Because
there could be no thought of it.
Despite such a person never having read, say, Watchmen. Which
brings me to Grant Morrison. I
picked up his New X-Men not for the characters nor even, truthfully,
for his name. Warren Ellis had done
several X-books just previously and I hadn’t budged. A writer could be great elsewhere, but on
X-Men they were subsumed into the lucrative business of supplying yet more
product for this incestuous microcosm.
Genius got processed on X-books like American cheese -- it all came
out tasteless and inedible, leaving me to fathom why people would read it. |
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It took nothing less than a world-class writer and artist
to get me to budge enough to try X-Men. |
It
took nothing less than a world-class writer and artist to get me to
budge enough to try X-Men. I
liked Frank Quitely from The Authority and remembered him from Flex
Mentallo before that, which he had done with Morrison. And the newly retitled New X-Men,
with its new smart logo and with Morrison talking it up, got just enough of
that doing-something-radical-with-super-heroes shimmer from The Authority that
I broke down and bought it. Morrison
was talking about doing the X-Men right.
He wanted the comics to be as sleek and sexy as the movie -- which I’d
surprisingly liked, though not loved.
He was taking the team out of spandex and into leather. Giving the book movie-like title
sequences. And injecting a
low-to-middle dose of radical ideas, much as he’d done on JLA. And
then he wiped out Genosha. I
followed “E is for Extinction,” liked it well but didn’t like that fill-in
artists followed. So I stopped
reading with the storyline’s conclusion.
Every jumping-on point is also one of jumping-off. But I’d pick up the trades -- to my surprise,
really, on the day they came out, so eager was I to get my fix of
entertainment, even if less than artistic masterpiece. And
the fill-in art did chafe -- Kordey worse than Van Scriver. And, while I liked Cassandra Nova fine,
her replacing Charles Xavier didn’t thrill me. Still, the alien landing amidst cows and relaying his message
for Earth was a nice touch. I liked
Weapon XIII and that Wolverine wasn’t Weapon X the letter but Weapon X the
roman numeral, though the issues were uneven. Still, Jean Grey not stopping Weapon XIII’s escape due to
perceptible but unmanifested sexual attraction was another nice touch
(especially given events to come in the comic). I liked the introduction of a veiled Arab woman, though the
execution disappointed. However
uneven, the trades were still coming home with me on the day of release. The
Genosha issue with Phil Jimenez art and a beautiful cover and the promise of
dealing thematically with 9/11 got me to buy a single issue for the first
time since “E is for Extinction.” And
“Ambient Magnetic Fields” was good, solid if not perfect. |
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“Riot at Xavier’s” wasn’t a masterpiece, but its ideas clearly
were masterful. |
I
didn’t read “Riot at Xavier’s” until the trade, but it struck me well. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but its ideas
clearly were masterful. Here were
students at Xavier’s misbehaving -- challenging their teacher as he had
taught them to. Here were people
saying that Xavier had failed -- that he’d had all this time to achieve
human-mutant harmony and things were no better. Here was Magneto, lionized in his death as he naturally would
be, exposing that Xavier the angel needed Magneto as demon to define himself --
to rally the troops like we did against the big bad Soviets, an observation
of the mutual necessity of opposites that remains undiminished by the fact
that both the Soviets and Magneto were indeed big and bad. And there was the mutant designer drug
“kick” to boot. I
got it. Liberals are taught to be
contrarian but end up agreeing with themselves. People’s revolutions often lead to tyranny. Non-conformists wind up wearing the same
clothes. And those facts don’t
diminish the need for real contrarians, movements against oppression, and
non-conformists. I got it. Xavier
was presiding over a sinking dream, and he resigned. After
that, I was reading the single issues again, rationalized by the fact that I
was buying them for my friend’s kid who I’d got into reading comics. But we’d both read them. “Murder
at the Mansion” left me fairly cold -- I loved the Cyclops / Emma Frost
relationship, and Morrison had succeeded in humanizing the normally toadyish
Scott Summers. But, outside from
Beast putting Emma’s pieces back together and Jean Grey -- the other woman --
reanimating them, the storyline didn’t offer much. Nor
did “Assault on Weapon Plus,” though it had its moments: Cyclops drinking in a decidedly sexual
sequence, Wolverine reading his files in a moment reminiscent of “Project
Zarathustra” in Miracleman, and the notion that Captain America was
Weapon I. Still, Wolverine’s epiphany
had none of the dramatic effect of Miracleman’s -- or Swmp Thing’s for that
matter -- short of Wolverine blowing himself up. I didn’t care, but there were enough ideas to keep me
going. |
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Fans reacted well to Xorn really being Magneto. I thought it forced. I didn’t buy the egotistical Master of
Magnetism hiding as lowly Xorn. |
“Planet
X” was a mixed bag. Fans reacted well
to Xorn really being Magneto. I
thought it forced. Xorn was his own
character, as Magneto himself pointed out, and an interesting one at
that. I didn’t buy the egotistical
Master of Magnetism hiding as lowly Xorn.
And, what was worse, I thought it a betrayal of Morrison’s central
tenant of the series: not to do as everyone
before him had done. Morrison had
promised that Magneto’s death -- while never shown, a dramatic error I felt
-- was real and that deaths would mean something. Joe Quesada had made that into policy across the Marvel
universe. Didn’t
every major X-Men writer have to bring Magneto back for yet another final
bout? A lot of what Morrison did
wasn’t new at all, but we’ll get to that later. Still,
if you’re going to bring back Magneto, Morrison did so with style. The destruction of New York, the putting
of humans in camps, the pulling up of the bridges, the mass execution of
humans -- all of it was appropriately dramatic. As was the X-Men lessened and on the outside, their leader
naked and imprisoned in a vat, many of the newer students siding with
Magneto. |
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This should have been a crossover event: where were you, Marvel universe character,
when Magneto took over New York.
Seeing the tie-ins for and the hoopla over “Avengers Disassembled” --
which is a story of virtually undeniably lesser magnitude and craft -- only
makes me wish “Planet X” had gotten that treatment instead. |
The
fact that none of the other Marvel titles -- most of which still take place
in New York -- let alone the other X-books -- didn’t reflect these events
somewhat lessened the drama, however.
This should have been a crossover event: where were you, Marvel universe character, when Magneto took
over New York. Seeing the tie-ins for
and the hoopla over “Avengers Disassembled” -- which is a story of virtually
undeniably lesser magnitude and craft -- only makes me wish “Planet X” had
gotten that treatment instead. Still,
the story had its touches beyond all the melodrama. There was Magneto, prone to old school speeches, unable to
address a crowd used to soundbytes and multimedia. There was Magneto wrestling with the good side of himself as
Xavier had wrestled with his inner tyrant.
And there were Wolverine and Jean, alone together as they hurtled into
the sun, old friends who had loved and chosen otherwise, nor resigned to
death. And there was Wolverine
running her through, an act of compassion and love in their final moments of
life, only to have the fiery Phoenix reborn against the sun itself. The
conclusion felt rushed and left me fairly flat. Magneto died again, and though his suicidal pathos was nice,
his head getting sliced off by Wolverine meant less than if he had
died on Genosha. Phoenix died again,
though the reason why seemed strained and I hardly cared. And
then we jumped forward to the future.
We should have stayed in the present and seen New York City
rebuild. We should have seen Cyclops
and Emma Frost go on without Xavier -- as Morrison would have done it, not as
the costumed escapade Joss Whedon gave us, whatever else that story’s
merits. We needed to pull back and
breathe, to take in the damage to the city and to these characters lives. To
not do so is to miss the real story.
It is to tell the tale of 9/11 and end with the skyscrapers
collapsing. Morrison was smarter than
his choice in this case, but there would be no real dénouement, no fifth act,
no story that filled the need tfor New York and the X-Men that “Ambient
Magnetic Fields” did for Genosha and its residents. “Here
Come Tomorrow” -- Morrison’s last four issues -- were hyped like there was
no tomorrow. Marc Silvestri would
illustrate. Forget that he was no
Phil Jimenez -- an absolute master.
Forget that Silvestri’s work is out of proportion and confusing and
doesn’t flow. Because, you know, the
X-fans do love those thousands of lines going nowhere and communicating
nothing. |
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“Here Comes Tomorrow” reminded me of X-Men before Morrison: confusingly written, filled with insular
references, irrelevant except for fanatics -- and poorly illustrated to boot. |
So,
while sales went up, I skipped it. I
read it when the third and final hardcover came out and was glad I did. Ostensibly an homage to “Days of Future
Past,” it actually had little in common with that very readable tale. “Here Comes Tomorrow” reminded me of X-Men
before Morrison: confusingly written,
filled with insular references, irrelevant except for fanatics -- and poorly
illustrated to boot. Its
sole saving grace was Cyclops and Emma Frost over Jean Grey’s grave, with
Emma asking him to carry on the school together now that Xavier and Jean are
gone, and him refusing -- only to, with the timeline changed, say yes instead
and kiss her. It was a nice final
image, even if preceded by some 87 or so rather dubious pages. Looking
back, Morrison hadn’t been that original at all. His stories even had characters, in postmodern fashion, poke
fun at the regurgitated plotlines.
Magneto dies, returns in a climactic final battle, then dies
again. A teenage soap opera inside
the school. Cyclops and Wolverine in
a love triangle with Jean Grey, now with Emma Frost thrown in the mix. Xavier tested, departed. Cyclops running off. All of it hardly new. It
was the way Morrison did it that was new, and the way he did it was
with intelligence. Oh,
not Watchmen intelligence. Not
The Authority’s intelligence.
Not Planetary’s. Nor
his own Flex Mentallo’s. But
with intelligence nonetheless. Not
to mention a good bit of panache -- which had always been Morrison’s point
anyway. It was the movie-like title
sequences. The smooth, Matrix-like
talking replacing the Charles Bronson posing of old. Sure, Morrison was posing too. But he was good at it, and he brought the
franchise’s posing up to date. What
Morrison has done for the franchise cannot fully be estimated, perhaps, until
a decade or two has elapsed. But he
gave it intelligence and panache. And
he made many sophisticates -- perhaps comics snobs to most X-fans, who
notoriously felt very uncomfortable with Morrison’s run throughout, many
openly complaining that he was strange or used ideas -- not
embarrassed to read the X-Men for the first time since the title’s heyday in
the early 1980s under Claremont (work that, while strongly influential, has
not aged particularly well). |
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Morrison’s run does not really stand on its own in the way, say,
his JLA one does. He probably
should have written Ultimate X-Men or some other continuity-free
version of the characters. |
Of
course, those classic Claremont years were one in which the X-Men were not
yet burdened by the accretion of continuity and spin-off titles. It is for this reason that Morrison’s run
does not really stand on its own in the way, say, his JLA one
does. While complete, his run was one
of the many ongoing in the frighteningly large X-Men franchise. One has the sense that there are these
other teams of characters out there but they never seem to properly
interact. And his run is still filled
with references to the past -- less confusing, perhaps, but nonetheless
present and distracting. Nothing is
as awkward in this regard than when Bishop walks on during “Murder at the
Mansion,” combining the two: who he
is and where he’s been goes unexplained, though we can piece together just
enough to understand the tale, however lesser our emotional investment. But
this is, perhaps, all not his fault.
He probably should have written Ultimate X-Men or some other
continuity-free version of the characters, unburdened by a dozen other titles
and the weight of so many years.
Certainly, Morrison’s work is better than Mark Millar’s on that title,
which ran simultaneously and carried similar themes: Millar may have a more proactive Xavier,
but his own Phoenix and Magneto storylines pale by comparison to Morrison’s,
despite being freed from the X-Men’s convoluted continuity. |
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Morrison charged the title with more powerful images and ideas
than it had possessed for some time. |
What
Morrison did was give us a monument not unlike that to Magneto in Genosha --
large but fractured, iconic but incomplete.
He charged the title with more powerful images and ideas than it had possessed
for some time. If he gave us great
ideas and images more than great stories, we fault him for it at risk of
missing the importance of what he has done.
And it is, in its way, awesome. He
has made me care about -- not love but nonetheless actually care about
-- the X-Men. And
if I’m out there... |
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