yurt. i'm liking it far, far more than i first expected. set piece action with the kind of chunko muscularity that the hairy little canadian should always have. that new villain, the gorgon, is one of the first all-new characters who i can remember comng from marvel since xstatix - they're so happy with spin-offs and revamps lately that i'm hard pushed to think of a new character in recent years who has even a small smell of greatness about them. how to fix that? so you take a stock manga-lookin baddie, give him all the powers that your super people get these days (there's potentially a bit there - powers reflecting characteristics happens less now - supertypes seem to be more about how generally special they are - they're like folk, younme, but slicker, tougher and with no sense of how silly they look in their chosen clothes) to make a fine full package: undead anti-life psychic mutant ninja allied to hydra, and the hand, (kicked out of the brotherhood for being too nasty) with 'class 2(?) strength', swords and a killer mutie power. his first appearance was properly nasty and dramatic, one to remember, and his fight with elektra in the latest issue actually felt painful, lingering and frightening - feelings baddies just don't conjure that often. he's also got a sneaky new behind-the-scenes type baddy, baron strucker's wife, a horribly simple and inspired idea. friends with mme blavatsky, funding hydra herself since ww2.
and the series generally has some kind of iconic strength to it that's got me totally hooked. there are problems when the story rationalises itself awkwardly in order to accomodate the set-pieces - hydra have given wolverine 'implants' (though his cleavage looks much as it ever has, heeho) which can do almost anything, he's got goons on standby helping him teleport out of trouble, and millar is using that very simple second-guessing technique where it looks like the goodies have won, only for wolvie to go 'hah, of course i've planted the bomb already': this is cheating and requires a correctly-stimulated fanboy in order to overlook it as a dramatic fault.
it's the hush strategy to a large degree - throw it all in the pot, but we have got a decent new villain out of it, potentially a stayer. it could be the palpable sense of sadistic villainry about the place - hydra feels real and dangerous in a way that it hasn't before - hydra used to be even less scary than al-qaida, now they're scarier than living next to a US army base.
but, we hear he's killed off the only gay xman - i think if i had, through neglect, childishness or lack of imagination, written a body of work which could, to say the least, be used to demonstraste that my attitudes towards man on man bumsex are a bit 'prison', then i'd try not to pick a gay man for my gritty silly 'someone dies this issue' moment.
his spidey run is very similar to this in a lot of ways, enjoyable in the same way but not as enjoyable, and with the odd dreadful howler. but even there he's combined venom and scorpion into a single baddy - not sure if venom's going to have a tail and claws, hope so of course. if not for the fact that this obviously leaves us a villain-down in spidey town, it feels right. so how do you write an exciting superhero? write exciting supervillains.
so why didn't he do that in wanted? |
