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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men #134

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Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

12:19 / 23.11.02

I gathered that the thugs shoved a molitov or something down jumbo's throat. So he cooked from the inside even though his skin held in the blast.

"Homocide Superior..."

-Kevin

12:46 / 23.11.02

Leigh Bowery was the inspiration behind Minty; the pre-Fischerspooner of the early/mid-90's. He's dead now.

I read the internal cooking as some kind of mutant power/'Kick' side-effect; the humie thugs wanted to beat him up, but he died by accident. Could be wrong, though.

How catty is Hank this issue? Rrrowrr. Talk about moodswings!

As regards the Quire looks like Peter Parker stuff, I think he's a deliberate analogue of the teenaged Spidey. P.P./Q.Q.? Status, technical ability, etc. God, 'Riot...' is going to be tragic. I like Quire, but I'm sure he's doomed. Classic X-Men, though!

One for the Buffy crowd, this. Nice comedy undertone, school ethos, and that. Poppy, too.

16:41 / 23.11.02

Those murdering kids definitely shoved something lethal down Carnation's throat.

Q.Q. = P.P. ? Yeah...right down to being adopted/orphaned (sort of).

Tragedy looms...

That Officer Foster guy seemed way too friendly with Hank. Overcompensating for some murderous thoughts? Hank cracking jokes while Foster's pregnant wife is dying. Wifey survived, but no word on el bambino... LOSS! PAIN! HATE! REVENGE!

And anyone else think that there's not nearly enough fucking going on at this school? Maybe it's just the art, but everyone seems so stiff and uptight. No wonder a riot is brewing - those poor kids need release.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:53 / 24.11.02

Yeah, "all you need is fuck."

Quite fun, but then as Charles has taken advantage of what Cassie did it's quite nice to see the effects coming back at him, in the past he only wanted a nice quiet school for middle-class white kids, now he's had to open the doors to any little scumbag with a mutant power than can be condensed into a cool catchphrase.

So Quire is, what? 15, 16? I guess that makes sense with how Grant has written the X-Men as being in their mid-to-late thirties, though I thought they were 'supposed' to be late twenties, but then ages in comics can be whatever you want them to be, I guess.

Not sure if I've seen any of Keron Grant's work before, looked fairly similar to Ethan's style I thought. Wasn't too keen on his version of the Beast though, bit too thin, lacked solidity. He's supposed to be about a quarter-ton in weight after all.

I just hope that the 'Riot At Xaviers' is a real clash of ideas and not a 'Quire vs. Xavier -> but Quire takes drugs -> Ah that means we can automatically dismiss everything he believes in because he's on crack!' story.

Matthew Fluxington

15:43 / 24.11.02

Re: the kids and sex.

I think that this is something that should come up, that it's maybe a LOT harder to get laid if yr Glob Herman than if yr, say, the Cuckoos. Being freakish and ugly is something a lot of these kids have to deal with, and no matter how much of a mutant you are you're still unlikely to be attracted to people who look like monsters. They should deal with this.

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:10 / 24.11.02

Bit confused and disappointed by this issue. It's still the best one since the last one that was mainly about the school and the kids and the X-folks' personal lives though. But here are my complaints:

1)Seeing as how I really dug Quentin Quire in the preview of #135, there are loads of things about him here that don't seem to make sense. I'm not talking about the writing on his forehead (it seems to me clearly done by somebody else after the Slick incident), or even how he actually does that to Slick (he has some powers we don't know about exactly, we'll find out, presumably) - no, what I mean is, why does he already seem to be wearing clothes that later seem to be part of his 'mutant slavedriver' costume? Why does he claim that the outifit is based on Jumbo Carnation's designs next issue when here he doesn't seem to care all that much about the guy, and it seems the idea is all his own? Isn't "And the drugs can't hurt me... Can they?" the worst line of dialogue Grant Morrison has ever written? It could be we're being set-up for something else here: the drugs won't hurt Quentin... I hope so. My feeling right now is that Quire's 'origin' isn't that dissimilar to 'supervillains' we've seen in the past, and I really hope we get some twists and turns here.

On the plus side, the way Quire talks in general is actually pretty great (love the repeated "insane pop art masterpiece", Grant understands how geeks seize on phrases like that), and I really like the idea of him just having a crush on a specific individual member of one of the Cuckoos - this just about forgives that cringeworthy "Sophie... Sophie..." line.

2)I would have really liked the whole "Beast sort of pretending to be sort of gay" thing if as simple a change as using the word 'queer' instead of 'gay' had been made. Hank is a smart guy, he should know the generally agreed differences. It would be quite cool for him to be trying to educate the public about why mutant sexuality is inherently queer sexuality; that would rock my world. But Scott's right, really: Hank's not gay, so what is he on about? Hmmm...

Nevermind, I'm sure once Quitely's back it'll all fall into place: that seems to be how this title works.

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:18 / 24.11.02

One more thing: that summary page at the front goes on about how some of the kids have started getting restless whilst Prof X and co have been jetting round the world - unless this is a reference to Angel's snipping at Archangel (and cool if it is, I'd love to see her interacting with Quire), where have we seen this? It would have been nice to...

00:35 / 25.11.02

It could be the synopsis page for *next* issue, accidentally run this month...

Clumsier things have happened at Marvel.

Matthew Fluxington

01:03 / 25.11.02

Like, say, splitting up a double page title spread with a Noxema ad, right?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:25 / 25.11.02

I agree with what Fly said re; The Beast. He is NOT gay, but obviously queer by choice. Now all he needs is some Morlock tiger-man to get him to put up or shut up.

I think queer would be a more accurate description of what Hank is doing, but is there perhaps some editorial thing that would say such a word couldn't be used?

09:42 / 25.11.02

Maybe the recap at the beginning was just filling in stuff that we haven't seen (kinda like the intro to each Star Wars movie). Although why we've been subjected to lots of padded, go-nowhere issues and not been included on the rising tension is beyond me. This comic is really poorly paced.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

23:31 / 25.11.02

Re: Fucking Mutants

I got a lot of this in the Beak/Angel scenario. That's really the last kiss that kid is ever going to get. And it's typical for this book to cover everything that it's going to cover about a certain aspect of mutant culture (how do cops feel about mutants, what about corporate mutants, et al) in the span of a page or two. I think that's Grant acknowledging how fucked many of these kids are when it comes to fucking. Maybe they need to organize a trip to that Mutant Cat House and get some of these freaks laid. Heh. I ought to fucking pitch that story.

20:33 / 30.11.02

I check out Barbelith from time to time, but I've never posted before.

I've read several people commenting that Nex X-Men seems fresh and exciting while The Filth seems like Grant treading old Invisilbles water. So, I got a big kick out of seeing Feely looking like a dirty old, washed up version of Grant in the new issue of Filth while New X-Men 134 has this great exchange:
"So...What's it gonna be, kid? The shaved look's big on the streets."
"Forget it -- that's so out of date. There's this new thing. You see this insanse pop art masterpiece?"

21:45 / 30.11.02

Because, after all, many of us don't need a retreat, we need a haircut.

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