At the start of this week's
X-Axis Reviews, long-time X-critic Paul O'Brien has this speculation/rumination to offer on the matter of the upcoming 'Reload' event:
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Well, we now know what's involved with the X-Men Reload event, and I've got to say I'm underwhelmed. In fact, semantically, it's doubtful whether I'm whelmed at all.
Of course, we're getting twelve issues from Joss Whedon, which is the big news here. It has to be, because there's not a huge amount to get worked up about further down the list. There are people you've slightly heard of working on books you probably don't read - books which might well be perfectly good, but hardly set the pulse racing. New Mutants is getting an overhaul, seemingly designed to make it more like the original title, but I'll come to that later. And we're getting two Claremont books and an Austen one.
Now, up to a point, I can see where they're coming from here. Coming out of the Morrison run, you've got three options. You can try to clone Morrison, but that's a recipe for disaster. You can try to do something equally radical, but who's going to do it? (Given his influences and his usual style of writing, Whedon is unlikely to be particularly radical.) Or you can go back to the old formula. And Claremont is arguably the best choice for that, since at least it's his formula in the first place. Claremont is claiming Excalibur to be a core book as well, so leave aside the window dressing of twelve issues by Whedon - effectively, they're building the line around Claremont.
And yet... for the last few years, Marvel have had four regular X-Men titles - New X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, Uncanny X-Men and X-Treme X-Men. Leaving aside for the moment questions of which is best, Claremont's title has consistently sold worst (and it's dropping at the moment). Austen has consistently come in third. Of course, third and fourth places still do pretty well - but it seems a little odd to take them as the template for relaunching the line. With the obvious exception of X-Men, none of the books sound bad, exactly - it's just more of the same, only safer.
Marvel have had most of their success in recent years by going in the exact opposite direction and moving away from traditional superheroics. So are they anticipating a pendulum swing back in the other direction, or have they just lost their minds? Quite honestly, my money is on "lost their minds."
In the meantime, the message from Reload is loud and clear: Everything Old Is Old Again.
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Dicuss. |
We have high expectations when those two are involved. Even with silly-looking spandex costumes, they could kick ass on X-MEN. The other books can go fall off a cliff for all I care.