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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men 135 available online at Marvel site

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16:48 / 18.10.02

Matthew Fluxington

17:36 / 18.10.02

That's fantastic. It's just the first few pages, but it definitely starts moving the story along, FINALLY.

21:00 / 18.10.02

Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh Quitely Quitely Quitely Quitely Quitely

Makes

this

book

GREAT.

I cannot BELIEVE how amazing it feels when he draws it.

I've waited so long...

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:21 / 19.10.02

In addition to being the best art on this book, I think it is Quietly's best work to date.

uncle retrospective

07:13 / 19.10.02

Wow! How much comic can you put in a preview?
So is the purple haired kid our first invisibles crossover? Seem to be very like the one from V3.2.
Hum, I like the look of this new story a lot. Looks like a school of brilliant children isn't really a safe thing to have.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:36 / 19.10.02

Quentin Quire - fucking yes. I've really been getting sick of Xavier's brand of politics over the last couple of issues, and I was hoping 'Riot of Xavier's' would, as promised, introduce some young smart mutant kids who find him just as smug and annoying... It's all about to kick off. Pick a side!

The Natural Way

13:00 / 19.10.02

My computer is as kanckered as an old fart. Can't download flash.

Any way of scanning these beauts?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:31 / 19.10.02

Stopped reading after the first few pages to avoid spoiling the issue totally, but looks very exciting, all the things I felt were missing from the first half of the second year look set to be very important in the second half.

Weeeeeeeee!

The Natural Way

14:48 / 19.10.02

Got it! Wow.

Quitely's crisp detail, layouts and scene-setting work so well w/ Morrison's dense dialogue, pace and plotting. Grant flies off all over the place and he needs a solid artist (literally, a wispy line free zone [listen up, Ethan!]) to ground the thing, and Frank's stuff does the job sooo well. Phil's good for this shit, too, but, in the end, a little too super-heroey.

Yeah, it's age vs youth and Grant's got Quire and co. all set up to challenge the ancient, farting, limping dream, but, when Xavier's spouting pure Anton Wilson, category error stuff all the time, how far can we really expect him to go... Afterall, RAW's Korzybski (sp?) inspired rantings are very close to Grant's heart - these are HIS opinions... I'm not holding out for any great self-critique. Esp. if the kids opinions and aggression are influenced by a dangerous, head-fucking narcotic.

But, then again, Jack was all radical and shit and then Reynard showed up w/ a whole new take on thing.... P'raps, by the end of the story arc (or possibly Grant's run) an entirely radical synthesis of old and new ideas will inform Grant's X-verse.

Actually, this IS fucking interesting. Ignore the first half of my post - I have no idea what's going to happen. Grant does lurv his "pretty things". Check out that Horus kid fr a start....

hypersimulation

18:41 / 19.10.02

"So is the purple haired kid our first invisibles..." Nice one,
Uncle Retrospective. Great name too. Though I also think Morrison-era Jean Grey is just Ragged Robin in a different suit (or, uh, submersive tank, or simply all things in all places after entering the super context). And even Robin was just Crazy Jane post-planet love at first, right? according to interviews?

To cheese the fuck of everone for a second: some days I'm just beside myself how happy I've been Growing Up Grant. Filth 5, NXM 133, and this
preview all the same week completely reenergize every part of my life.

Does anyone know why the clothes Quintin's wearing are controversial,
beside the Jumbo Cornonation thing? Was there some overwrought Mutant
Concentration Camp storyline in 1983 or something with black and red inmate uniforms?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

21:58 / 19.10.02

Maybe it is confrontational because Xavier knows that Quintin means it to be.

11:23 / 20.10.02

well, i guess with that it's just that he's got some straight out of animal house nerd getting beat-up outside porky's look about him which is gonna make things hard when tony blair shows up and xavier trys to convince him all the kids are just fun and normal.

13:15 / 20.10.02

This looks astonishingly good, and frankly about time. I've been wanting more information on the kind of politics that Professor X was expounding all along. After reading the one in the shops at the moment I started thinking about a couple of things - why Professor X has not been considered and treated as an intellectual and philosopher before - one would think he'd be a superhuman pro-mutant Germaine Greer or Mary Woolstonecraft Shelley crossed with a bit of Derrida or Baudrillard - and what his specific politics and beliefs surrounding these issues would be... My particular interest is in his use of his telepathy - and the extent to which gifts like his don't often seem to be used to break through psychological problems with his students, don't help them make unusual connections - in essence why he hasn't helped his students reform themselves mentally.

This combination of 1) intellectual stance, 2) specific politics and 3) the co-operative enhancement / fixing of the people that surround him seems to be something that's very quickly coming to the fore in X-men at the moment, and this particular sequence of issues looks like it's going to bring it out even more. Woo!

The Natural Way

13:22 / 20.10.02

Yes, it is interesting that Quire looks so similar to Reynard... They both serve a similar function: a new, youthful perspective; ideological change and upheaval. Wonder if it was just a coincidence.

13:31 / 20.10.02

PS - doesn't his outfit resemble those weird sentinel/people hybrid things? Can't remember what they're called...

18:10 / 20.10.02

Well, isn't the whole red/purple/black thing a bit Magneto, a bit sentinel, a bit punk/straight-edge, yadda yadda?

He seems like an unpleasant little revolutionary, doesn't he?

Human hostages at the open day, methinks.

Ethan Van Sciver

19:59 / 20.10.02

I know why Quentin is dressed that way....bwa ha ha. It has to do with some ooooooold Uncanny X-Men iconography. Something very obscure. You'll like it.

Ethan V.

22:05 / 20.10.02

Prof X hates horizontal stripes, they make him look bloated.

00:47 / 21.10.02

It has to do with some ooooooold Uncanny X-Men iconography.

What is it? Give us another clue? Something to do with the Beast? Iceman?

01:25 / 21.10.02

I can't help but think, armed with this new info, of some Stan/Jack villain (everyone knows Morrison loves Kirby, right?)

Vanisher?
Lucifer?

I'm stumped.

Ethan Van Sciver

04:38 / 21.10.02

No, it has to do with the mass media's hysterical outlook on what may happen if mutants are kept unchecked...from a 1960's point of view. You'll...oh you'll see. It's Morrison at his best.

-Ethan Van Sciver

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

10:26 / 21.10.02

Throw me your idols, I throw you the whip.

Ewwww. That was a terribly cheesy thing to say. But, yeah. It's gotta be the whip.

Benjamin.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

10:28 / 21.10.02

It's also on the cover. Look closely at the article about Bolly.

Benjamin.

The Natural Way

13:06 / 21.10.02

Yeah, I was thinking the mutant slaver's outfit looked similar, but I wasn't sure....

14:36 / 21.10.02

Did anyone have a look at the Uncanny X-Men dotcomic as well? I wasn't keen on the Manga art but the writing was pretty damn good! Never thought I'd read the the line "Maybe I'm a closet necrophiliac." in a non-Morrison X comic. I think I'll pick up Uncanny as well this month.

15:11 / 21.10.02

Ah, Bolivar Trask, eh? Well, he was referenced in the first story arc. Interesting.

Chubby, Austen's okay, from what I've read on the dotcomics. That sort of wry comment is very Morrison-influenced, I feel. As for Asamiya's art - is that how Western noses appear to our Oriental cousins? They're massive!

Matthew Fluxington

15:50 / 21.10.02

perhaps it would be a good idea for Tom to add this thread into the pre-existing NXM 135 thread...

17:28 / 21.10.02

Yes, hearty agreement here.

17:36 / 21.10.02

when Xavier's spouting pure Anton Wilson, category error stuff all the time, how far can we really expect him to go... Afterall, RAW's Korzybski (sp?) inspired rantings are very close to Grant's heart - these are HIS opinions...

Some clarification here, please...

Is this just the 'some/all birds' bit yr. talking?

19:58 / 21.10.02

Tom Wrote: This combination of 1) intellectual stance, 2) specific politics and 3) the co-operative enhancement / fixing of the people that surround him seems to be something that's very quickly coming to the fore in X-men at the moment, and this particular sequence of issues looks like it's going to bring it out even more. Woo!

Okay, for one voice, being mine, I have to say that for an X-Men comic book I really don't expect to find this within its pages. Of course, we are discussing a single issue, not even the whole issue, and I expect to enjoy the whole year-long run of the story where everything will fit nicely with bombastic fast-paced action, but common, its just a super-hero franchise. And so it happens I find these isolated pages in particular too grandiloquently ambitious, hungrily looking for the sophisticated critique review.

And you may start firing your heavy ammo.

21:17 / 21.10.02

Well, okay, Sebastian, but just because the story doesn't use big words, doesn't mean you can't use them to describe it.

You can apply post-structuralist critique (specifically Derrida) to Winnie the Pooh, as the Guardian did this week, if you really want to.

And if you read a Morrison interview, I think he thinks in 'advanced' terms about these high-bombast (formerly) 4-colour heroes - I remember him discussing an underlying class differential between Sue Storm and Alicia Masters in FF:1234.

Plus, it's good fun.

00:53 / 22.10.02

just because the story doesn't use big words, doesn't mean you can't use them to describe it.

Ur right Duncan, that's Morrison's own manneristic finesse, which I don't know why but I find it pretty recognisable nowadays. And I've also read way too many Morrison's interviews.

Anyway, this is just another title that I personally read better as graphic novel, as single New-X-Men episodes generally drive me nuts.

The Natural Way

07:36 / 22.10.02

If I understood yr response to Duncan, Seb, I'd probably have an opinion, but I don't....

But that "it's a superhero book, it can't be thoughtful/challenging/etc" 'argument' is just crap; esp. in relation to someone like Morrison who uses his books as a vehicle for his favourite memes, and loves the idea of pumping them into the minds of poor, unsuspecting teenagers.

Dunc: yeeah, the blackbird thing, coupled with Morrison's (whoops! I mean 'Xavier's!) rambling about people mistaking their ideas for things, etc.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:39 / 22.10.02

Am I really the only person finding X-Men generally to be better and more intelligently written than The Filth?

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:47 / 22.10.02

Skipping neatly over the issue of whether Morrison should be polluting good honest X-Men comics with his poncey too-clever-by-half ideas, I'd just like to rant a bit more about why Quentin's outfit/'look' rocks so much. Quite aside from the reference to obscure X-history, it's subtly evocative of other things: as someone mentioned, it's a bit straight-edge, a bit emo... but it's also parodically geeky (which is arguably what being a mutant has always really stood for), and more than a little dykey, actually - almost transboi-ish (look at his hair!). These elements have to be deliberate, I think, especially when you consider how well his name suggests these sort of themes as well - 'Quentin' is real spod-who-gets-kicked-in-the-playground stuff, his surname is almost 'queer'. QQ's look also reminds me of Grant Morrison's predictions for fashion around the time of the Invisibles - that everything was going to get tighter and more repressed... It's just perfect, really.

I like the suggestion that Xavier may be a bit out of touch with mutant youth culture: it stands to reason that there are kids into thinkers/artists who he's never even heard of, kids who probably think Magneto is an irrevelant (not to mention dead) old fart as well. Also good is the way that Quentin's class aren't all that impressed with his weirdo theories and confrontational grand-standing distracting them from, specifically, more red-blooded pursuits. I wonder what he makes of Beast's experiments with language, species and gender?

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