Henry10STATE OF THE COMIC NERD ADDRESS
September 30th 2008 07:54
Heh. It feels like I'm doing these more now than the actual posts.
Anyway, I still have no internet access at home. To top it off, I don't even have my own computer at home at the moment, so scanning comics and making supposedly witty observations about them is right out. Not helping matters is the fact that I'm not really all that interested in comics at the moment. I'll probably cycle out of my RPG/fantasy phase at some point, but for the moment that's where my passion lies, and this site has fallen out of use because of that.
Still, I have the internet at work, which means I can probably squeeze in one hasty update a week, mostly in the interests of keeping this space under my name. So if I have read any comics during the week I'll comment on them, and if any news stories occur that grab my interest I'll give those a comment or two as well.
So what did I read this week? There was X-Men Origins: The Beast, recounting a hoary old tale from the 1960s, and X-Men : Legacy #216. (Note: About all I'm reading these days is X-Men, so expect to be really bored by a whole string of x-related posts.)
X-MEN ORIGINS: THE BEAST: Lo, back before the X-Men were popular, they were a second-string Marvel title with poor sales and five characters whose backgrounds were about as fleshed out as your average catwalk model. A series of back-up strips were run that detailed the origins of each of the X-Men in turn. They ranged from middling to awful, and have been duly ignored by everyone from Chris Claremont onwards.
Fast forward about 40 years to 2008, and we have this one-shot comic retelling the origin story of the Beast. Now the original was hardly a classic - the Beast, besides being the smartest guy around, becomes a star quarterback and garners huge media attention. So naturally some bad guy dressed as a conquistador kidnaps his parents to blackmail him into working for the guy. Blah blah blah, the Beast does it for a while, then turns on the Conquistador and beats him up with the help of the X-Men, who have come to recruit him. At best, it's a rudimentary superhero tale.
But this story has Mike Carey involved, and he's been able to weave some magic on the X-Men pretty frequently. He's telling basically the same story, but moving some of the trapping around so it works slightly better. The Conquistador, for example, was pretty hokey and nonsensical even by the standards of the Silver Age. While he may have worked at DC, at Marvel he really didn't. Carey's changed him from a guy that randomly dresses in Spanish armor to an immortal who was an actual conquistador. It's a cosmetic change, and it doesn't really change the fact that he's a one-dimensional villain, but at least he has a hook now. There are future stories that could be told with this version of the character.
As for the Beast himself, Carey plays up the angle that he is being deliberately normal in order to fit in better. The counterpoint to this is his girlfriend, who keeps telling he needs to embrace his abilities and be amazing. There's a kernel of interest here, but it's not quite enough to elevate this much higher than the source material. The ending unsurprisingly has the Beast joining the X-Men, and there's a surprisingly downbeat concluision after Professor X does his usual schtick by erasing the memories of all of the Beast's friends. A montage of him doing amazing X-Men stuff tries to make it a bit happier, but it's bittersweet at best, and that's fine by me.
But despite these good points, it's still a story built around the Conquistador kidnapping the hero's parents. Carey does his best, but there's no escaping the banality of the source material.
X-MEN: LEGACY #216: It's more of Mike Carey as he chronicles Professor X's quest to regain his memory. After almost being taken over by Mr. Sinister, Professor X has turned to Cyclops for help - but he finds that his former student is still holding a grudge.
Now it has to be said straight up that this is a title for the hardcore X-Men fan. Every issue is full of flashbacks and references, and it does more to make the X-Men titles feel like an ongoing saga than any other book in the last decade. And the references aren't just to iconic moments, things the casual comic fan might know about - there is some seriously obscure stuff being pulled up. Either Mike Carey is a rabid X-Men completist, or he's done a metric arseload of research.
I'm pleased whichever it is, because I am a sucker for continuity references. This sort of thing is my bread and butter, and it's hard for me to objectively review the book when I am basking in the glow of a comic that actually gives a toss about what has gone before.
The majority of the issue takes place in Professor X's memories, as Cyclops and Emma Frost do their best to determine whether Professor X is completely free of Sinister's influence. What this involves is a trip through some of the good professor's less savoury actions, as the semi-amnesiac Xavier is forced to confront some of the bad things he has done in pursuit of his dream.
What's really at stake here, though, is the father-son relationship between the professor and Cyclops. For those unaware, it was revealed a couple of years ago that Cyclops had a brother who had died on a mission with the X-Men; Cyclops had taken the death particularly hard, and so Professor X had erased all knowledge of his brother from his mind, thereby ensuring that the leader ofhis X-Men could function (and rescue the other X-Men from certain death in the bargain). Cyclops was pretty pissed about all this once it came to light, and thinfgs have been strained between the two ever since.
With this issue Carey tackles the job of reconciling the two, and pulls it off with aplomb. But as I've warned you above, this is hardcore X-Men territory. For oldschool fans it's like manna from heaven, but I would think many casual readers would be put off by the many references. Grab it if you know your X-Men, and avoid it if you don't.
Anyway, I still have no internet access at home. To top it off, I don't even have my own computer at home at the moment, so scanning comics and making supposedly witty observations about them is right out. Not helping matters is the fact that I'm not really all that interested in comics at the moment. I'll probably cycle out of my RPG/fantasy phase at some point, but for the moment that's where my passion lies, and this site has fallen out of use because of that.
Still, I have the internet at work, which means I can probably squeeze in one hasty update a week, mostly in the interests of keeping this space under my name. So if I have read any comics during the week I'll comment on them, and if any news stories occur that grab my interest I'll give those a comment or two as well.
So what did I read this week? There was X-Men Origins: The Beast, recounting a hoary old tale from the 1960s, and X-Men : Legacy #216. (Note: About all I'm reading these days is X-Men, so expect to be really bored by a whole string of x-related posts.)
X-MEN ORIGINS: THE BEAST: Lo, back before the X-Men were popular, they were a second-string Marvel title with poor sales and five characters whose backgrounds were about as fleshed out as your average catwalk model. A series of back-up strips were run that detailed the origins of each of the X-Men in turn. They ranged from middling to awful, and have been duly ignored by everyone from Chris Claremont onwards.
Fast forward about 40 years to 2008, and we have this one-shot comic retelling the origin story of the Beast. Now the original was hardly a classic - the Beast, besides being the smartest guy around, becomes a star quarterback and garners huge media attention. So naturally some bad guy dressed as a conquistador kidnaps his parents to blackmail him into working for the guy. Blah blah blah, the Beast does it for a while, then turns on the Conquistador and beats him up with the help of the X-Men, who have come to recruit him. At best, it's a rudimentary superhero tale.
But this story has Mike Carey involved, and he's been able to weave some magic on the X-Men pretty frequently. He's telling basically the same story, but moving some of the trapping around so it works slightly better. The Conquistador, for example, was pretty hokey and nonsensical even by the standards of the Silver Age. While he may have worked at DC, at Marvel he really didn't. Carey's changed him from a guy that randomly dresses in Spanish armor to an immortal who was an actual conquistador. It's a cosmetic change, and it doesn't really change the fact that he's a one-dimensional villain, but at least he has a hook now. There are future stories that could be told with this version of the character.
As for the Beast himself, Carey plays up the angle that he is being deliberately normal in order to fit in better. The counterpoint to this is his girlfriend, who keeps telling he needs to embrace his abilities and be amazing. There's a kernel of interest here, but it's not quite enough to elevate this much higher than the source material. The ending unsurprisingly has the Beast joining the X-Men, and there's a surprisingly downbeat concluision after Professor X does his usual schtick by erasing the memories of all of the Beast's friends. A montage of him doing amazing X-Men stuff tries to make it a bit happier, but it's bittersweet at best, and that's fine by me.
But despite these good points, it's still a story built around the Conquistador kidnapping the hero's parents. Carey does his best, but there's no escaping the banality of the source material.
X-MEN: LEGACY #216: It's more of Mike Carey as he chronicles Professor X's quest to regain his memory. After almost being taken over by Mr. Sinister, Professor X has turned to Cyclops for help - but he finds that his former student is still holding a grudge.
Now it has to be said straight up that this is a title for the hardcore X-Men fan. Every issue is full of flashbacks and references, and it does more to make the X-Men titles feel like an ongoing saga than any other book in the last decade. And the references aren't just to iconic moments, things the casual comic fan might know about - there is some seriously obscure stuff being pulled up. Either Mike Carey is a rabid X-Men completist, or he's done a metric arseload of research.
I'm pleased whichever it is, because I am a sucker for continuity references. This sort of thing is my bread and butter, and it's hard for me to objectively review the book when I am basking in the glow of a comic that actually gives a toss about what has gone before.
The majority of the issue takes place in Professor X's memories, as Cyclops and Emma Frost do their best to determine whether Professor X is completely free of Sinister's influence. What this involves is a trip through some of the good professor's less savoury actions, as the semi-amnesiac Xavier is forced to confront some of the bad things he has done in pursuit of his dream.
What's really at stake here, though, is the father-son relationship between the professor and Cyclops. For those unaware, it was revealed a couple of years ago that Cyclops had a brother who had died on a mission with the X-Men; Cyclops had taken the death particularly hard, and so Professor X had erased all knowledge of his brother from his mind, thereby ensuring that the leader ofhis X-Men could function (and rescue the other X-Men from certain death in the bargain). Cyclops was pretty pissed about all this once it came to light, and thinfgs have been strained between the two ever since.
With this issue Carey tackles the job of reconciling the two, and pulls it off with aplomb. But as I've warned you above, this is hardcore X-Men territory. For oldschool fans it's like manna from heaven, but I would think many casual readers would be put off by the many references. Grab it if you know your X-Men, and avoid it if you don't.
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