| |
|
Well, I’ll admit I enjoyed that more than I expected to on the basis of the past few issues.
God knows about additional cuckoos and Weapon XIV and qabbalistic elements, but it was better – and certainly better-written than the rest of this arc, though I had problems with the art (more on that in a mo). It was rather exposition-heavy, though I guess that was a necessity (and didn’t that page with Logan semi-summarising what had gone on break Marvel’s recent rule about no flashbacks, or am I imagining that rule?), though The Beast/Sublime’s talk to Appolyon rather reminded me of the old 80s JLA jokes about Manga Khan talking out loud; rather melodramatic, and occasionally a bit too comic-book clichey for my tastes.
The art, though, I had quite serious troubles with, as Silvestri’s stuff is so ‘old school’ or whatever you want to call it, that the actual flow and choreography is quite hard to follow: examples would be the page where Logan attacks Sublime – we see Logan running towards him from behind and to the side, and then in the ‘Stitch this, Bub’ panel he’s in front of him… or kind of to the side, but with no sense of how he got there. In the same panel, incidentally, it’s far from easy to tell which of Sublime’s legs are which.
Speaking of far from easy to tell, I had absolutely NO idea what was going on in the panel where Tito/Beak was lying dying, and had to stare at that for a few seconds to make out what was going on. Sometimes Silvestri’s art looks like he’s just done the outlines and left it to the colourist to make items and dimensions distinct, which seems a bit cheeky.
More examples :
- In the two panels of Logan dying, there’s virtually no way to tell who he is. The close-up on his face doesn’t look much like Logan at all (what is this, the end of ‘Jagged Edge’?), and in the next panel, the distance and lack of, for example, claws, doesn’t help.
- I have absolutely no idea what or who kills Martha and Cassandra. Do they just explode or something ? Who does it, Beast or Jean ?
- Skylark says Sublime’s huge/gigantic/whatever (working from memory), but in the panels before and after there’s little indication of this, Sublime looks to be about 8-9 feet tall. Not THAT big, especially as Skylark’s used to hanging around with a Sentinel.
- Oh, and the panels depicting Sublime losing his head are very poorly done - again, the actual choreography doesn’t flow at all.
I appreciate that Silvestri’s art has a kind of nostalgic appeal for many, and whilst it never did that much for me, I wasn’t anti- going in. The story’s just made harder to follow by the way he’s drawn it, and that isn’t a good thing, right ?
Speaking of the story, whilst I’m not entirely convinced by the RNA thing, it did at least go some way to explaining why Magneto was acting as he was, and why Quentin Quire was essentially about conflict – or, rather, just opposition to Xavier’s approach, without any bigger agenda. The problem I have with the RNA thing is that it’s just SO big it can never really be resolved – it’s like saying that the X-Men face an enemy so prevalent that they’ll never defeat it. Which arguably gives an emotional and more noble edge to their ongoing struggle, but it means the tale could go on for… well, ever. Which is good news from a frequency-of-publication thing, but not so hot for anyone who wants to read the whole story, which seems to be quite a few people posting on Barbelith.
Speaking of the story, bit unclear : so Jean’s cauterisation of the wounded universe takes it back to the point of her funeral (well, her latest funeral, anyway)? So New York’s still been decimated by Magneto, who’s been decapitated ? And Xavier’s still going to step down as head of the school and all that ?
Oh, and had Henry figured everything out – as he appeared to have done when he was afloat with Emma a few issues ago – why would he take Kick ?
I rather hope that these comments don’t just get dismissed or ignored, as I was very hopeful about Grant’s run on the title, but I think it just ran out of steam (or perhaps he ran out of interest: I heard an interesting rumour that he decided on the Xorn switcheroo after Jemas nixed Marvel Boy II, almost as a lashout, which would explain why the Xorn thing doesn’t REALLY work and is laden with plotholes, interesting as it was). I think it compares unfavourably with, say, his JLA work (trying to do a like-for-like comparison there), the main weakness being that there are large plotholes, characters who don’t really go anywhere (Dust, Mer-Max, etc – there was a good column by Steven Grant at http://www.comicbookresources.com the other week about comic characters with costumes and names and little more in terms of characterisation, and a lot of the characters in ‘’Planet X’ and Here Comes Tomorrow’ suffer this way), and that a lot of the stuff appears to be happening off the page.
Long and rambling post, but in summary : might not be a bad run as X-Men comics go, but pretty disappointing for Grant work. I appreciate that a lot of people have strong affection for the characters and the series, but without that… well, bit of a wasted opportunity. |
|
|
Not a single one. 