World Enough and Time

Frankly, just kicking ass is not what X-Men is about, and, somewhere amidst the flying debris made out of money, the movies have lost their more meaningful way. - Zoe Chevat

You know I have loved the X-Men since that fateful day in 1963 when I read the first issue by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. And then read it again, and again. I still have that comic. No, it is not in mint condition: no comic so read and loved as that one was ever could be.

The movies? Well, they have a few things going for them, most notably Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. (And if, in my heart of hearts, I still wish they'd made him look short, well, that's just me wishing for too much, right?) What else? Good production values. Great characters, though they really didn't make the most of them.

Now, there have been so many truly bad comic book movies in my life - I'm still trying to forget the nightmare that was Nick Fury: Agent of Shield, still blazing a trail of pain into my memory - that it's always a relief when one isn't embarrassing. So I am and was grateful for what I got, even if it wasn't what I really wanted. And hey, that first glimpse of Wolverine in the fighting cage... for that, I'll forgive anything. Well, not what they did to Rogue. But the rest.

Which all goes to say that until The Avengers and its related movies, I've felt that even the good movies didn't do justice to the comic books and the characters they were based on.

And when it comes to the comics, X-Men, which has been for decades my favourite superhero group, has lost it for me lately. Not that I'm not enjoying the storylines: A vs. X has been good reading, and I'm pretty much on the edge of my seat to see what will happen. (Not the destruction and death of Scott Summers! Oh, please, no!) But... what are the X-Men these days? They went from being a group of individual Marvel mutants from a school with a special agenda (to live in peace with humanity) to being... Well, first the unified remainder of the mutant race, and then several schismatic groups, and now... It remains to be seen what will become of X-Men after the current Phoenix war.

It wasn't that I was so attached to things the way they were. It was that I liked the group of protagonists we were dealing with, and their interactions. Any story is only as good as its writers and artists, and there are some fine writers and artists still on the X-Men stories. But it doesn't feel like X-Men to me, because the characters I have come to know and love - Scott, Emma, Rogue, Gambit, Storm, Xavier, Wolverine, Beast, Kitty Pryde, and so on - aren't interacting together. When we have a cast of 200 characters, my attention is just a little too scattered.

Wolverine as Headmaster just doesn't bridge the gap, for me. It's all a little too mind-boggling, and random new kids are hogging the story.

I want more coherence, more unity of storyline. In fact I'm getting it, short term, in A Vs. X, though with an even more expanded cast of characters, it's hardly a tight package. When it's over, what will we have?

Remains to be seen. I'm hoping for a status quo, that, whatever it becomes, doesn't change every few years.

Remember Jubilee? She used to be a great kid. Turned up back in 1989 in X-Men as a smart'n'sassy Los Angeles teen mutant 'mall rat', which confused me a little because I'd never heard the term before. She teamed up with Wolverine a lot and they had some wild adventured, Batman and Robin style.



Of course I remember Jubilee well: I named a budgie after her. But the latest appearance of Jubilee, in Wolverine and Jubilee #1, had me alarmed. It isn't the same old Jubilee I knew and loved.

At least they're doing something with her.

( Now Jubilee is a vampire... )

Today I picked up from the library, and read, Wolverine Origins: Dark Reign, which reprints Wolverine Origins #31 - 36, dated Feb to Jun 2009. Six issues, each one featuring both Wolverine and Daken. Except for random panels online, I hadn't seen those two together before. This is the storyline in which Wolverine and Daken go after Romulus, Cyber, and the Muramasa Blade, a mystic sword forged from Wolverine's own blood.



( Read more... )

Runaways: Rock Zombies by Terry Moore and Takeshi Miyazawa was fun. All the Terry Moore Runaway stories are. I was less charmed by the plot of the zombie story, but totally delighted by the characters.

What made the volume for me, though, was issue #10, in which Molly Hayes goes to visit the X-Men, who are hoping she will join them. "Can whoever is inside my head telling me to come to San Francisco please shut up now?" complains Moly, in her big-eared hat. "'Cuz it's giving me a really bad headache." Cyclops and Emma both have excuses for not showing Molly around, so Cyclops delegates the job to Wolverine. Wolverine and Molly don't get along. "Wolverine is a jerk!" screams Molly. "And he smells like beers. I want to go with the tall shiny metal guy. Or the cat monkey guy." But she's stuck with Wolverine.

Cyclops: What's he doing now?
Emma Frost: He's... he's actually visualizing disembowelling you. It's quite disturbing. And she's asking for ice cream.

The best moment is when Wolverine and Molly go to the Danger Room:

Molly: Well, that's the dumbest name ever. What's the dangerous part? Boredom?
Wolverine: It's not turned on, genius.
Molly: I knew that.

So then she gets the Danger Room programmed with pink butterflies and unicorns.

The climax of the story comes when a supervillain kidnaps Molly and Wolverine for revenge on Molly's parents, and, in a very well-written sequence, Wolverine and Molly end up as friends.

Terrific story.

I read Wolverine Origins: Born in Blood by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon.

The art put me off - lots of fighting, all very static, and most of the characters seemed to have the same face.

That being said, the story was rather interesting - with the flaw that nothing gets resolved, except that Wolverine gets even more angry and depressed. But at least now I know the origins of his son, and it's nice to know it's Silver Fox's kid. I liked the inclusion of Dum Dum Dugan (an old favourite from Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos days), and the secret voice on the phone directing the President, and the inclusion of Captain America - I liked the way Wolverine couldn't just cut him down, and Cap proves he can fight the toughest there is. I liked it that Cap calls Wolvie "punk", shades of Clint Eastwood, though I thought: "Shouldn't that be 'runt'?"

And I particularly liked the use of Emma Frost, prying (with a reasonable lack of success) into Wolverine's subconscious. Wolvie gives Scott Summers the only weapon that can kill him, with instructions to use it as necessary - cool. Very cool.

The story had too much violence for my tastes, but still had lots of interesting psychological material that further deepens Logan's tragic story.

Fanning my fannish excitement about the upcoming movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I was looking at screencaps of the trailer by mediocrechick. And I was thrilled to see this picture ( of Gambit... )

The stance, the motion, the staff, even the hair - perfect.

So I went to look at the IMDb entry on the Wolverine: Origins movie. ( A few interesting tidbits... )

Title: Snikt
Characters: Jack, Wolverine
Challenge: Crossovers - Torchwood/X-Men
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC and Marvel Comics
Notes: Cross-posted to my LJ and tw100.

( Snikt )

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