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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men #137

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Matthew Fluxington

15:09 / 16.11.02

(There was once an image of the cover here.)

Quentin Quire has Xavier in a headlock, with a silly helmet on no less! They're pulling Scott's hair and has phased her head through his head! Scott's either hugging or strangling a Cuckoo! Craziness.

18:20 / 16.11.02

And yet the most shocking thing about it all is still Wolverine's beard. What is he playing at? Does Dust convert him, or something? (now there's a thought. Wolverine becomes a devout Muslim and renounces alcohol. Moo hoo ha ha!)

And is it me, or does this 'Quentin Quire' (now, there's a Kirbyesque name) remind anyone else of Morrisey?

Yes, it's 'Morrison in character-who-looks-a-little-bit-like-Morrisey non-shock!' time again...

yawn - thing's buddy

18:21 / 16.11.02

look out for a new interview with GM regarding this riot.

coming soon.

13:28 / 17.11.02

Maybe the students are rioting over Logan's crap "nu" look?

Matthew Fluxington

13:37 / 17.11.02

Yes. The mandatory-pointy-goatees-for-all-students rule was the breaking point.

The Natural Way

09:17 / 21.11.02

I reckon it's a "shut yr fuckin' telepathic head" helmet.

10:41 / 21.11.02

look out for a new interview with GM

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

The Natural Way

11:33 / 21.11.02

Well, considering yawn conducted the bloody thing.....

uncle retrospective

11:41 / 21.11.02

Keeping the thread rot going.

--
The concept of secondary mutations will be a key factor in upcoming New X-Men stories. Plus, the issue of the Beast's sexuality will be resolved soon.

Artist Phil Jimenez has been named as the new main artist on New X-Men, scheduled to produce 8 issues of the series next year.
--

Yea! Happy Dance! that's from X fan

yawn - thing's buddy

11:46 / 21.11.02

yeah and 'someone dies' in ish 140.

13:00 / 21.11.02

>>>Artist Phil Jimenez has been named as the new main artist on New X-Men, scheduled to produce 8 issues of the series next year.<<<

Gnnng....enthusiasm...fading...must...struggle...to keep...interest...

The Natural Way

13:02 / 21.11.02

So, is the lack of a consistent art-style fucking it for you, Cam?

Matthew Fluxington

13:27 / 21.11.02

Ah, I'm happy about Phil being on the book for all the issues that Quitely's not doing. He's a lot more competant than all the other fill-ins, I was afraid that we'd be seeing more of Keron Grant.

Frank's still going to do 4-5 issues a year, as per usual. Nothing new.

16:08 / 21.11.02

It's not the lack of consistency so much as the lack of Quitely. When Frank draws the book I'm totally absorbed in it, when it's anyone else I just sort of skim through and read the word ballons, not really paying attention to the drawing.

Jiminez's fill-in issue a few months ago felt like a crappy 1980s superhero comic. It utterly failed to engage me on any level. He's a talented guy, I like his work on The Invisibles and what I've seen elsewhere, but I think he's the wrong choice for X-Men.

Only my opinion...

The Natural Way

08:26 / 22.11.02

No, no, I understand that completely - Jimenez is such a Perez clone. He is a bit too superheroey for X Men. But, as Flux points out, he is a competent artist, he can tell a story. And, TBH, I know I'm in a minority here, but I really liked the Genosha story and that included the art: Quicksilver darting around the dormant Mega-Sentinel ("What" "Is" "This place?"); The ruined city; The towering monument to the Master of Magnetism...mmmm... At least I know with Jimenez my eyes won't skim the art, so I'm happy. It's like NXM's been cursed, though, isn't it?

Matthew Fluxington

11:22 / 22.11.02

I really like Phil's work from the Invisibles, and I think he and Grant are a good team. I think part of the reason why #132 felt like a "crappy 80s superhero comic" was because of the fact that it was an extremely weak issue, it wasn't compelling at all, and most of the characters were straight-up superheroes from other comics. There was a lot of spandex in that issue, and it shows.

And like I said, as an artist, Phil towers over his immediate NXM fill-in competition.

11:29 / 22.11.02

I'll miss Quitely's (Vince?) mesmerizing art too. Its not just the faces and heads, its also the attitudes he gives to the characters when they are either walking, standing, fighting, or in bed, watching TV, the rather sided position of the heads in some occasions, the hands, sometimes grabbing casually the opposite arm, the protruding lips of others, its all this that makes Quitely's characters amazingly immediate and close, distastefully fleshy for most of readers, as devoided of the classic pumped chests and biceps, but undeniably legitimate, breathing in amazingly detailed backgrounds. I showed NXMen to many people who couldn't understand that it was a "super-hero" book under Quitely's pencils, simply because the characters look like the people you see walking in the street.

Not for every die hard comic-book reader, we have to admit.

The Natural Way

11:51 / 22.11.02

Yeah, I love the way Quitely makes the X-outfit look like a uniform as opposed to a superhero wrestling getup.

Thing is, I'm not entirely sure Jimenez is aware of what Grant's trying to do with the book. He may not be up on the "anti-spandex" thing.... Might email Grant just to make sure....

Quitely'll be back for the (debatedly) final story line. The comic'll go out with a frankgasm.

14:09 / 22.11.02

>>>Yeah, I love the way Quitely makes the X-outfit look like a uniform as opposed to a superhero wrestling getup.<<<

Nobody seems to understand what he's done with the costumes. I haven't seen a single artist other than him who's drawn them properly.

14:10 / 22.11.02

Actually, scratch that, EVC got it.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:55 / 22.11.02

Let it be said that Quietly is heavily influenced by Dudley D. Watkins. Manc artist (but resident in sunny Helensburgh - now dead of course) of tres scots' strips, Oor Wullie and the Broons.

Forget Windsor McCay - it's Dudley D. yer wantin.

17:25 / 22.11.02

I used to have an Oor Wullie t-shirt. I miss it.

12:56 / 23.11.02

I agree with the vast majority of what you said, Cam, but I think Kordey, regardless of his detractors, did get the costumes right. I found his art very textural.

Jiminez got #132 wrong; it's the only point I've felt bad about reading this book, like: "What am I doing reading this book?" In retrospect, it's not as bad as all that, but far and away the worst issue thus far. However, I do have belief that he can turn it around.
I was just looking at Planetary/Authority, which isn't a particularly good comic, writing-wise, but Jiminez is great on it. I think he's excellent, super-detailed, and will 'knock it out the ballpark', as our American friends are wont to say.

16:26 / 23.11.02

Jiminez needs a better inker. I think he'll be great - right after Quitely I'd say he's the best at interpreting Grant's scripts.

20:45 / 23.11.02

Phil Jiminez - in my opinion - is a stunning comic book artist, who's utterly familiar with doing super-hero books to the extent that they actually don't look like anything other than super-hero books. I'd rather he was off X-Men because that issue he did was kind of uber-generic, rather than the just-a-bit-edging-towards-high-tech-reality that we need for the book.

The best art I've ever seen Jiminez do was the Invisibles stuff in the past with young Edith - and I think that's directly associated with his ability to make everything look glamourous - stick him on super-heroes and he produces anatomically correct super-heroes, stick him on real people's clothing and period detail and freakish monsters and surrealist imagery and he produces stunningly visualised, detailed and elegant work. Find a title Vertigo title that needs a little glamour and he'd be perfect for it. But on a super-hero book he's just too at home to do anything deeply thrilling...

Matthew Fluxington

04:43 / 24.11.02

I would say that Tom's got a point, but I maintain that it seems unfair to judge Phil's NXM work based entirely on the single worst issue of Grant's run. I think Grant's uncharacteristically weak writing on that issue did more to shape how Phil drew it than anything else. It looked like a lame superhero comic because it was one.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:39 / 24.11.02

You know how some people were saying that they hoped 'Riot At Xavier's' was a a clash of ideas rather than boiling down to "Xavier is right. Quire is wrong. Because he's a drug-crazed extremist."? That cover doesn't give me much hope - suddenly Quire and whoever the guy is with the same haircut look like members of the Hitler Youth...

Matthew Fluxington

19:54 / 24.11.02

Hmmm. Do you think Morrison would betray himself like that? Because that would be quite a reversal for him.

Regrettable Juvenilia

20:16 / 24.11.02

I know, but think about this: if the story's about youth vs. experience, on which side of the line does the writer feel he falls?

But maybe I'm wrong - there was that interview where GM said he'd be dealing with the idea that Xavier's ideas might need challenging, that there other, valid points of view... I guess he's quite successfully made me unsure as to how it'll all play out, and feel like I have some investment in how it does - that's the purpose of foreshadowing: mission accomplished.

01:20 / 25.11.02

I don't think the story will go that way, painting Quire as clear-cut 'BadGuy', unless Grant finds a way to go utterly Osiris, which seems counter-intuitive to all of his work thus far.

I really felt he was critiquing himself heavily in the scene w/ Quire in Xavier's office, or at least challenging his own ideas/encouraging others to do so. "You're always selling the future that never arrives, you preach Utopia but you never deliver on this 'dream' we all keep hearing about." "I live in the brave new world and it's not as shiny and perfect as you'd like to think."

It's possible that statements like that could get cast down by story's end, but it seems a rather lucid skepticism, if misguided.

I've gotten the impression for awhile that Mr. Morrison was moving toward identifying with the Osiris/Establishment figure, if only to encourage the new age to rise against him and his rich ilk. His comments from the disinfo con a few years back, and his statements on grant-morrison.com(RIP) about becoming a corporation, not a man, sort of stirred up some bizarro mindwork in me. I don't think he's serious about a lot of it, but it got me challenging those ideas of his, trying to figure out what sense they made, which reminds me of what Quire's doing with Xavier, minus the malice.

It makes me think Xavier will be the one to bite it, though, perhaps as some transformative effort on Grant's part, though I could be way off base.

Regardless, I'm very excited to see how the war of ideologies plays out this run.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:27 / 25.11.02

What Tom said about enjoying Phil's work on the 'Sensitive Criminals' storyline, didn't Phil just do the layouts with Chris Weston drawing over him. Cameron, how does that work?

15:10 / 25.11.02

A "layout" artist is usually one who draws out the issue in very basic detail - all the panels are broken down and designed, all the shapes are there, but there's very little rendering. Ovals with crosses on them for heads, that sort of thing. Then another artist will "finish" the artwork. I've worked over another artists layouts before (on the Dreaming #51), and it's an interesting way to work - all the stress of planning out the pages (usually the hardest part of the job, although often the most satisfying) is relieved, allowing the artist to focus on the actual drawing. You often get strange results though, such as Philip Bond's finishes over Warren Pleece's layouts in the beginning of The Invisibles Vol. 3 - at a casual glance it looks like lovely Bond artwork as usual, but if you study it you can see that it's missing Bond's usual storytelling flair.

01:59 / 06.02.03

Reckoned it was time to bump this. When's it due out, again?

yawn - thing's buddy

19:57 / 06.02.03

next week or something.

But, reckon harsh words said bout pleece. I reckons the force resides in his ink too. Won't go into details cept I loved true faith's graphics way back when....

Matthew Fluxington

20:00 / 06.02.03

Not next week, but the week after that.

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