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Underground > Comic Books >

X-Statix: Back And Still Dead

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16:31 / 30.03.06

I like that theory. I think it's pretty much unquestionably the best Marvel has out right now. Daredevil was super-sweet this month, but that's a bit more... dark age. Street level. I dunno, I want to say trad, but I think Allred homages Kirby('s spirit) more adeptly than any number of would-bes, John Byrne et al.

There is a Doctor Strange series coming out, by Ex Machina's Brian K. Vaughan and the extremely talented Marcos 'Breach' Martin - kinda Pulido/Chiang school art. I think around October. (I'm rather excited: Strange has always been one of those characters that really appeals, but has rarely had a book out in the last ten or more years, and if there has been one, chances are it sucked.) I just want DG cemented by his side by then, really.

17:15 / 30.03.06

Unbelievably in all my sledgehammer rantings, I forgot to mention the sensational character find of 2006: Ducky-Wucky, Mr. President's aide de camp.

20:05 / 30.03.06

I keep thinking that this mini should really be called "Back and Still Dead."

Regrettable Juvenilia

06:45 / 31.03.06

Only when Joey Q starts paying me the big bucks, FinderWolf. Only then.

I love this too. In the immortal words of Alex's Grandma like to think that Dead Girl, if she were real and we were to meet, is the sort of person who would... like me.

09:11 / 01.04.06

This is definitely an excellent comic. I'm loving the cameos (Osbourne as the elevator operator), the Pitifull One's eyes rolling as he dealt with Ducky-Wucky & Dr Strange and Dead Girl's developing relationship. I did like the notion that in Hell even sex is bad and how they got round that. Having the fight occur off panel and then cutting back to them lying together was a nice way of showing that.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:52 / 01.04.06

issue 3:

Dear ultra-beings,

thank you for allowing me to live on planet earth at the same time as pete milligan and his artist mates.

yawnnui

D Terminator XXXIII

15:39 / 11.04.06

This is, unquestionably, one for the ages. So smart, so clever, so funny; words that normally doesn't sit too well together unless it's done just right, like it is here.

So, I'm reading a lot of sexual things into my comics nowadays -- is the comment by the Phantom Rider about the Piano Player in ish 3 a sly dig at the Gay Cowboy thang? Not that I'd think that the Piano Player is exclusively gay-looking, but, er..

Any takers on the identity of the Pitiful One?

D Terminator XXXIII

22:46 / 22.04.06

23:44 / 22.04.06

Out and very good. We get more exploration of the Guy/Edie relationship (Venus seems to be getting the Afterlife Shaft). And more exploration of the relationships between Dead Girl/Strange and Phantom Rider/Horse.

02:40 / 23.04.06

This issue kind of... threw me.

The Pitiful One's speech patterns have rather radically changed, from a kind of subdued eloquence to using terms like "then we gotta go back to Hades" and "Shake it".

It could be that his exposure to the Ancient One's composure and the home stretch of finding Dr. Strange's body have kicked the planks out from under his personality and he's regressing to a more natural, less dignified state.

I might be giving Milligan too little credit, or too much. The Pitiful One has been an anchor character for me in this. and man, it was jarring.

Cowboy Scientist

04:52 / 23.04.06

Phantom Rider/Horse?!?!?!
I'VE GOT TO GET THIS NOW!

13:45 / 23.04.06

is the comment by the Phantom Rider about the Piano Player in ish 3 a sly dig at the Gay Cowboy thang?

I'm almost certain it is, although I'd likely never have clocked it with comics gaydar apparently suffering major malfunction; such a total Milligan move, really - Colluding Brokeback with Quesada's statement that Marvel could only publish gay characters in MAX books henceforth.

I'd agree the latest ish was a slight fall-off, possibly due to the character axis shift away from Strange/DG to Edie/Guy, but - you know - still best-Marvel-ever kinda standard.

13:58 / 23.04.06

(Venus seems to be getting the Afterlife Shaft)

I thought the point of that was that Venus wasn't and isn't dead - her molecules are scattered over a wide area, but she isn't dead...

17:06 / 23.04.06

I see that as the optimistic interpretation, with the pessimistic/cynical one being that Milligan just thinks that Edie's more popular with the readership than Venus ever will be.

17:12 / 23.04.06

Well... she is.

D Terminator XXXIII

17:22 / 23.04.06

I concur. See also: Dead Girl. But I must say that she's succesfully escaped my connotations of her as the poor man's Edie with this mini.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:29 / 24.04.06

okay, a little less magnifique all in - but still utterly brilliant.

no comments really - just . . . .

just that this is where I expect superhero comics to be after reading them for 29 years.

14:36 / 24.04.06

This is still head and shoulders above anything else on the comic stands at the moment...

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

05:04 / 24.05.06

The zombie's out of the grave again this month. Next issue of Dead Girl is on the outs as of tomorrow. So: bumpage!

Professor Silly

16:30 / 25.05.06

AH--an answer to Dr. Strange's BURNING question in issue 5...heh heh...ha!...hee heee hee.

(I don't want to spoil it, so I'll leave it at that)

17:47 / 25.05.06

SO many great tidbits...

fabulous artwork.

Doc's turtleneck and medalion.

The piano player get's a promotion HAH!!!

I want to see the further adventures of a dead Mr. Sensitive.

03:43 / 30.05.06

GENIUS.

04:16 / 30.05.06

That single image is more pure Strange than all of JMS' recent revisionary miniseries. Of course, it seems like I've been dreaming the continuing adventures of the good Doctor under the pen of Milligan, since around the time Warren Ellis was wrote one or two issues of his last on-going.

15:26 / 30.05.06

The more I look at that art and those colours, the more I fall in love.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:41 / 30.05.06

O Woe, O Incandescent Woe~! This should have been a longer series.

yawn - thing's buddy

12:08 / 02.06.06

oh man, ant man scaling up and punching the piano kid guy - pure comics bliss! not sure why but I know its genius.

also love the paradox of a character who is being reborn due to popular demand seems to die or be killed off in Milligan's narrative.

anyway . . .

milligan can't keep up these kind of shennanigans for more than 5 issues - no one can - so we should be grateful for anything like this that blips our way.

the longest and most consistently funny series that milligan has done is Sooner or Later - it ran for around 30 odd weeks in 2000AD back in '86. (petition rebellion to publish as a gorgeous ultra glossy 'prestige one shot'....ta)

But sooner or later was just a page a week.

man, as a 14 year old, that single page a week meant so much to me, you can't imagine, like illuminated manuscripts tripping out a mediaeval brain - McCarthy was the artist see.

back on dead girl: best milligan outing since pop london...

...which managed 4 outings.

again, just right.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

14:47 / 02.06.06

yawn: milligan can't keep up these kind of shennanigans for more than 5 issues - no one can - so we should be grateful for anything like this that blips our way.

But what about Dead Girl Family, featuring the Piano-Player in back-up stories and the occasional Dead Baby adventure (the adventures of Dead Girl as a baby!)? What about Dead Girl's Boyfriend, Stephen Strange, with Wand of Watoomb phallic shenningans and good old "Mister Action" Wong? Or, or, Dead Girl's Pal, Guy Smith, fulla brooding, self-loathing Heavenly flail and tortured passages of longing for U-Go Girl against a grey background? What about my needs?

man, as a 14 year old, that single page a week meant so much to me, you can't imagine, like illuminated manuscripts tripping out a mediaeval brain - McCarthy was the artist see.

Nice description. Beautiful, actually; it reminds me of when I'd trundle to the one comic shop I've ever found with most of Shade in stock. I kept going back whenever to buy a couple more back issues...it had its highs and lows, but I loved reading each installment.

yawn - thing's buddy

17:18 / 02.06.06

hey dude - nice of you to say!

those guys conjure magic for sure.

and its all purple and yellow and poppy as fuck!!!

my kinda magic.

04:27 / 03.06.06

Waxing moons of the lilac planet...

He could put salt in my porridge...

He's Chinese. Is it alright to hurt him?

Through his aid-de-campe Ducky Wucky...

It was I who taught Strange... to have a small death...

Elevator shafts of Gehenna...

Which way is down?

Injuns!

More like the man your horse used to love...

You me and Dead Girl? Okay...

Grrr!

Naughty secrets, bitter old men, superfight sex-replacement, Dorothy Parker and Rod Stewart namechecked, and Moira McTaggert got Joyce to write out 'Ulysses' from memory! And Strange in a romantic relationship that's actually a little less condescendingly-based than his usual... yay! Yay! Double and triple yay, yippee, right on!

I actually liked this better than much of X-Force/Statix, truth be told. Just panel after panel of cute, of relevance, of emotional hoohaw and giggle-inducing trauma. And a better take on several characters than the last handful of their living appearances. Poor Scott Lang, ever since he left the FF, he's really just gotten no respect at all, has he? 'Alias' and 'Avengers' and now this.

But this clearly took, if not a lot of time to write, a good deal of gathering ideas and forethough. I don't know that a regular series could keep it up, but, really, I'd love to see Milligan try. If Marvel would let it be, and not turn it into the new Xornification.

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