Ultimate Comics X-Men #14 Review

I’ve been away for awhile…again. Let’s blame it on computer problems and not on me being lazy or distracted or anything. Minor update: earlier today I also got my wisdom teeth pulled so I’m writing this review with a mouth full of bloody gauze and a head full of Vicodin, but I won’t let that stop me! The Freeze Ray will continue to uh…fire? Freeze things?

Never mind.

Today were are taking a look at the recently released Ultimate Comics X-Men #14 by star writer Brian Wood(of Northlanders and DMZ) and artist Paco Medina. If I had to describe Ultimate X-Men #14 in one word it would have to be: brooding.

Yeah, Ultimate X-Men #14 is really, really brooding. Most of the issue is set up, dominated by Kitty Pryde’s internal monologue as she explains the current situation to the reader. Basically America is ****ed-up. Reed Richards has turned evil and bombed Washington DC, New York is in ruins, and Stryker’s Nimrod Sentinels have carved out a big chunk of the South Western United States for themselves, launching a campaign of hate and violence against Mutants. Most of this exciting stuff happened in issues of other series and is simply told to us rather than shown in any interesting way, but that’s how it goes in big event comics. You make the best of what you can fit in a single issue.

Kitty Pryde and her band of mutant rebels are road tripping their way into the heart of Striker’s territory in an attempt to take him out and cripple the anti-mutant forces.

Besides all the set up and exposition-ing not much happens in this issue except for Kitty getting groped by some rednecks at a militia checkpoint.

Yeah…and then the comic takes a brief stop in kinda/maybe/pseudo rape territory. And that’s always a fun place to be.  On an intellectual level I can appreciate the nudge toward realism. These are four teenage kids traveling alone in a very hostile environment and the scene afterward between Kitty and James Hudson is very touching. On the other hand…this scene was not fun to read and made the entire comic not fun to read. Especially because, when I start thinking about it the whole scene doesn’t seem all that necessary.

When the guard gets fresh I find myself wondering why Kitty doesn’t just break his jaw. I don’t feel any tension when a gun gets pointed at her head because this is a character who can phase through bullets. She can turn super dense and break his hand. Maybe she’s protecting her friends in the car but then I actually think about who’s in that car. Jimmy Hudson, who’s got a healing factor, Iceman who has survived gunshot wounds in his ice form several times, and Rogue who I’m pretty sure is still cranked-up on Juggernaut powers. Every single one of theses characters is bullet proof.

There are no Nimrod Sentinels hanging around. Why exactly can't they just blow through these guys?

Using my awesome powers of logic, I can deduce that they’re trying to keep a low profile because if they power up and beat the snot out of these guys they’re going to make a scene and have Nimrod Sentinels chasing them all the Way to the Gulf of Mexico. But if that’s the situation than it should have been explained that way instead of Kitty just saying,” We’re going to save the fight for later.” Or whatever it is she said.

The whole thing is especially pointless because the rednecks just end up catching up to them at the end of the issue and forcing a confrontation anyway.

Everything aside, Brain Wood is a good writer and I bet he’s got an interesting resolution up his sleeve. Even if he doesn’t I have a feeling that once the plot actually gets going this will just be the necessary slow issue in an otherwise exciting run. There is a lot of stuff going on that I like. I like the new, take charge Kitty Pryde and I like that Jimmy Hudson is getting set up to be more than just a blonde version of Wolverine.

Paco Medina’s art is a bit darker and much stronger than it was just two issues ago, telling the story succinctly and delivering smooth, unique character designs on each page. It also helps that there’s some digital work involved in the coloring, giving the images a great feeling of modernity that is vital in any Ultimate book.

I let the groping scene take over this review because it really kind of took over the comic for me. Maybe I’m reading too much into it?

So to wrap everything up I want to say that Ultimate Comics X-Men #14 is a good read and I’m looking forward to the next exciting chapter in a series that has always had a special place in my comic book stash.

- Oh…also Johnny Storm gets abducted protecting the Morlock kids back in New York! I kind of like the idea of having the Human Torch hanging out in an X-Men book so I hope this isn’t just an easy way to get him out of the spotlight and replace him with Nomi, who feels a lot like the Ultimate Universe version of Zee from DMZ.

  

But I wouldn’t be surprised if that phone call wasn’t quite what it seemed, what with all that suspicious static…

And now, I’m done. Review…complete. You may return to your lives citizens.  

JLX-Avengers Amalgamated!!

Let's take a trip back in time shall we? Does anyone here remember a little something that popped up in the 90's called Amalgam Comics? I do.
Is there any event more shallow and gimmicky in the history of American comic books? Probably, but I don't remember it. For one month every writer at DC and Marvel  would stop whatever storyline they were working on and write a one-shot where two characters from each company would be combined. For example Spider-man and Superboy become... Spider-boy!

I distinctly remember sitting down to write out my birthday list, still a small child in the 1990s. I asked my parents for an Amalgam toy which would include two separate Spiderman and Superboy action figures that could be taken apart and reassembled to create a single, fully functioning Spider-Boy action figure(along with small, dejected pile of dismembered plastic limbs).
I gave the list to my father and he asked," ....Is this a real thing? Does this toy exist?"
At which point I realized, No, it didn't actually. But it should have.

The idea of Amalgam was so cheesy I just naturally assumed, even as a child, that there was a toy to go along with it.After all, every time Batman put on his Aqua-Bat armor in the animated series a new toy came out.

Okay, so when I was a kid the stuff was like crack to me and I squandered my allowance on books like Super Soldier, Bruce Wayne: Agent of Shield and JLX. But looking back, it's so obvious it was a gimmick. Many modern writers struggle to keep their series from getting strangled in a single character's tangled mess of back story and continuity. Amalgam forced writers to combine two incredibly complex histories into one over the course of a single issue, all while following a standard super hero plot through from start to finish(find the lost city of Atlantis, fight the super villian, save the day ect). It's too much to handle in a normal series much less one or two issues.

Still, when I was digging through one of the many piles of comics I own, I pulled out an issue of JLX and was surprised to see it was co-written by Mark Waid. The guy who wrote, among many many other things, Kingdom Come, The Flash, Daredevil and Irredeemable.

Someday, once I have bought all the trades and actually finished the series I will write a long post on just why exactly I love Irredeemable so very much but that day will have to wait.


Waid is probably one of my top favorite comic book writers, maybe even my number one. He creates comics that I just LOVE to read. Even the books he puts out that I don't think are the greatest are still just solid, well done comics.
Waid gets superheroes. He knows how to make them fun, exciting, relatable and inspiring all at the same time.

So I decided to dig in and give the issue a try. It actually wasn't too bad. JLX combines the X-Men with a couple Justice League extras like The Ray, The Creeper, Fire and Aquaman. The plot isn't anything groundbreaking but it is kind of interesting. A group of Mutants break away from their jobs as a big time super hero team as a sort of political statement and decide to go looking for Atlantis, the original birthplace of the mutant race.
Instead of getting lost in it's own non-existent back story the issue does a pretty good job of grabbing a concept and letting it lead the story. Waid gives us a team of characters that are heroes at their core but each one is still weighed down by the emotional burdens of a life on the run, constantly persecuted and hunted and dealing with it in their own way. The adventure ends in disappointment as JLX finds Atlantis abandoned after centuries at the bottom of the Atlantic. But there is a glimpse of silver lining, the shared experience bringing the group of misfits closer together as a team.

Behold the power of teamwork!

Howard Porter does the art for this issue. It's definitely in 90's style but I can see it fitting in to a modern comic with just a few tweaks. Maybe tone down the eyebrows on Aquamariner.I'm not sure what Porter is working on now but I hope he's still around.

What my point? I guess I just wanted to say yeah, Amalgam was a gimmick. But I it was a fun gimmick...as long as I don't go into my comic book shop next week and find Daredevil has been put on hold for a month so Marvel can bring back Blades and Bullets.

DC Presents: Challengers of the Unknown-

Ah, now this is a fun one. An anthology for some of DC's lesser known heroes is a great idea and I hope DC Presents sticks around.
The Challengers are such a classy, old-school concept. They're more a group of adventurers than they are a super-hero team, exploring ancient ruins, fighting living statues and recovering lost artifacts.

That's pretty much the gist of this issue, actually. The team check out their new home base on Challenger Mountain for awhile before jetting off to recover an ancient artifact buried in lost ruins which, of course, just happen to be guarded by living statues! But an old enemy may just drop in while they're out...

Challengers of the Unknown is done in what feels like a very classic style. Instead of using heavy close ups and superhero style action scenes this issue reads more like a 1950's serial adventure or an old issue of Fantastic Four.  Instead of focusing on one or two individuals, most panels are devoted to group shots and the characters fill the upper half of the panel with back and forth dialogue. It makes things feel pretty cluttered at times but it's also kind of refreshing. A lot of modern superhero comics feel like they are divided into just two parts.

The part where characters talk to each(usually set in a base).
The part where characters punch each other(usually set in a street).

Using this style we get to see the Challengers travel, explore, and solve problems which should be the focus with a team of science adventurers.

The issue has weak spots of course. Like I said before many of the panels feel a little cramped and the characters could use some fleshing out. I found myself having serious trouble remembering which one was which and there are couple scenes where I'm almost sure the artist drew in some random extra person by mistake. Just a small box with each characters name thrown in somewhere on the first two pages would have been enough.
Overall, though, a good issue and a very fun read!

X-Factor #236 Review

X-Factor # 236 review

On to the good comics! X-Factor #236 is written by Peter David with pencils by Leonard Kirk. In it Jamie Madrox is investigating a group of superhero wannabes who keep getting killed. Pretty good story idea on it's own, however most of the issue is taken up by one big long fight scene between Shatterstar and some guy named Scattershot.

I am totally okay with this.

Hey, It's a really well done fight scene! Kirk does a great job of showing off Shatterstar's ninja warrior skills as he squares off against a much larger, much more heavily armed opponent. And, forgive me, but I just love how outrageously 90's Scattershot is. Huge guns? Check. Ponytail? Check. Weird eye marks? Check. Superfluous chest belts? Check.

I love that David has  Madrox stomp on the ground to create duplicates of himself instead of having them just appear. It's a minor thing but little details like that add a bit of spice to a characters powers and it makes me happy that someone remembers.

 There is not a whole lot for me to say except that this issue is solid. David writes Madrox as witty, the Lord Defender as a glorious tool bag and manages to keep the banter between Shatterstar and Scattershot going for most of the issue without getting stale.
Kirk's art stlye reminds me a bit of Stuart Imonnen's. The characters are all drawn lean and in a way that allows for lots of dynamic movement but without losing any detail in the process either. Everyone has a unique look that makes them instantly distinguishable and the backgrounds aren't short changed either.

I guess the plot is that Scattershot is from Mojoworld and someone is killing the pseudo heroes but honestly, I didn't read any of the previous issues so I can't tell for sure which plot elements are important and which ones aren't. All I know is that this issue was FUN and I plan to pick up the next as soon as possible.

Ultimate Comics X-Men #12 Review

Just got four new comics so that I could read them and post reviews for all you guys. I did it because I'm such a nice guy and not because I wanted comic books. I swear. It was all for you. A friend suggested that, instead of picking up Ultimate X-Men I should pick up X-Factor, because one sucked and the other was good. Thanks to the power of compromise I got them both.

*SPOILERS BELOW*

Ultimate Comics X-men #12 is written by Nick Spencer, with pencils by Paco Medina. The best way to describe this comic is...frustrating. This comic is very frustrating to me. For one, It has absolutely nothing to do with the previous issue. Oh what's that? Riot at Camp Angel? Colossus murders somebody? Nimrod Sentinels take over the entire Southwestern United States?! You want to hear about that story?

Too bad.

This issue begins with Alex Summers, apparently holed up in a mental institution. Do you want to know how he got there?

Too bad.

 However we do know that he is apparently being advised by the ghost of his dead brother, Scott a.k.a Cyclops. That might have something to do with people thinking he is crazy. Then a mysterious man in a suit shows up, draining the life out of everybody who tries to stop him from freeing Alex. This mysterious man then turns Alex over to Layla Miller who apparently is the head of Roxxon Industries. 

Layla talks to her executives about acquiring the M-Serum, a super-soldier serum recently acquired by Nick Fury that creates artificial mutants. Layla and the suit guy have some dialogue where they talk about mysterious things like, "The White Hot Room" and "The Fourth" without really explaining their significance. None of which help me understand what is happening in the comic book I am currently reading.

In the end it is revealed that the mysterious man in a suit is...Mr. Sinister. Back from the dead for the second time.

So yeah. Frustrating. Spencer sets up several plot points that look like they will make up the next arc however he does so in a very vague and unclear way. Not to mention the fact that half the plot threads from the last arc haven't even been resolved yet! The villains motives remain unclear to the point where I wouldn't be sure that they were villains if one of them wasn't named MR SINISTER.

The writing and art in this book are both solid, however it feels unbelievably short. I put it down feeling unfulfilled. Trapped in an existential quandary, I felt shallow and empty, wondering what meaning or purpose my small life could have?

Then I remembered that I had three more comics to read. Instantly I felt better.

Inspired by The Ray

My last post I mentioned reading The Ray #4. It got me thinking about a lot of comic book stuff. Bear in mind this isn't a review, it's more of an editorial. As I type I've got a basic idea of what I want to say but I'm not really sure where this is going to go. So I'm just going to roll with it and I hope you will too.

Apparently, the new Ray is a Korean-American named Lucien Gates? Okay. I liked Ray Terrill but I can get behind DC adding a little diversity to the line-up, especially after Ryan Choi got the axe so that Ray Palmer could be the Atom again. I read an interview once where someone explained the need to attach minority characters to "Classic" titles. Like so.

African

African-American/Hispanic

Albino

                                                                            

I apologize for not being able to find the interview but the explanation given was that new characters simply don't last in the mainstream market. There are a few success stories but most of the time any title that doesn't star a character made in the 1950's has a very difficult time finding an audience. And y'know something about comic book characters made in the 1950's? Most of them are white guys.

White People: Saving the world since forever!

So the best way for a minority character of any kind to make it long term is if they are attached to one of the legacy titles.


Anyway, as I was looking around the internet for more info on the new Ray, I learned that DC also killed off Helena Bertinelli recently so the role of Huntress could be taken over by Helena Wayne. I can't help but scratch my head at DC's decision to off a character who has been around for more than 20 years and developed a strong fan base of her own just so they can replace her with a character that hasn't been seen since the Silver Age.
Now, I was never into the Huntress character and honestly, I'm not convinced she's really gone because-

a) If a character dies off-panel in a comic book there is a pretty good chance another writer will come along later and say it was "faked."
b) She was replaced by an alternate universe version of herself. In comic books that's doesn't necessarily count as being dead. I guess it's more like getting "rebooted."

But still, the decision seems weird. I'm a little worried the Ray #5 will come out and we're going to find Ray Terrill dead in a ditch somewhere. This got me thinking about what other characters have disappeared since the New 52.

Kyle Rayner, one of my personal favorites, is still ring-slinging in the New Guardians but Wally West is MIA. I loved both Connor Hawke(Green Arrow II) and Mia Dearden(Speedy II) but they don't appear to exist anymore. Neither do the two Batgirls, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain.
During high school when I first started buying comics myself, I got really into the Teen Titans. It was during the period right after Infinite Crisis when Ravager and Kid Devil were both on the team. Then the book got really bad...and stayed that way until the New 52 happened. Now I guess Kid Devil is dead.

I want you to know that the last thing I want to do is complain about the New 52. DC wanted to reinvigorate itself and you know what? It worked. There are a ton of great books out there right now! New readers are apparently finding their way into the comic book stores and DC is selling more copies than it has in years.
This isn't meant to be a rant where I come in rant and say,"Geoff Johns is trying to kill my childhood!!"
This is just what I was thinking about today.      

Jean Grey:Default Love Interest

As one of my first posts I talked about all the reasons I think Cyclops is awesome but it's virtually impossible to talk about Scott Summers without talking about his super heroic-other half, Jean Grey (sometimes Marvel Girl, sometimes Phoenix). Both characters have been with the X-Men since the very beginning, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were still pumping out superheroes in 1963 and their individual histories are so deeply entangled it's almost impossible to talk about one without talking about the other. This little number has been in my archive for awhile and I figured it was time to polish it up and trot it out. Please bear in mind that it is purely about personal opinion. This is important because...

            I don't like Jean Grey that much. Now I know she's got some fans and probably some haters as well but I don't fall into either camp. She's just not interesting to me  and she never has been. I've seen her in comics, in the movies, and in multiple television series. Each time I just pass right over her. Her stories typically eat up large portions of screen time yet always fail to grab me or make me care in the least bit about what happens to her.

            The only thing that keeps me from jumping full force into the "Jean Grey Haters" pool is this...I don't think it's really her fault. There are a number of reasons for this and I'll go into them below.

            See, Jean is your pretty standard, generic protagonist. First I want to lay something out. While she may be boring it is not because she's "too good" okay? Common misconception. She doesn't need a hardcore 90's style makeover to make her more "edgy" and modern. After all, the modern version of Emma Frost is really just a slightly bitchier version of Jean Grey and I find her even less interesting than the character she replaced. Jean Grey is boring because she has no personality, no defining character traits that separate her or make her unique from the rest of the team. A lot of people say Cyclops is boring but at least "uptight dick" gives you something to work with, you know? Unlikable as some readers may find him Cyclops has a personality that can be bounced off other characters to create tension or humor.

Wolverine's got a tortured past and a temper problem. Gambit has a tortured past but he's charming and roguish, Nightcrawler is fun loving and adventurous, Beast is smart but he's got the whole covered in blue fur thing working against him. Jean Grey has nothing. I tried to come up with a list to describe Jean Grey's personality and it goes like this:

1. Nice to people.

2. has Red Hair

3. Is a girl.

See? I think # 3 really sums it up, though. I've read and watched interviews with Stan Lee where he's talking about how he created the X-Men and when Marvel Girl comes up says he'd forget the character’s name or what her powers were when he had to write her. She was added in because it was decided that the team needed a woman on it to fill out the roster. She was just your stock female character armed with the bland, inoffensive personality most 1950's female characters were saddled  with. Jean Grey was just "The Team Girl." Now comics at this time were aimed at a much younger audience made up mostly of boys. Most characters, especially female, were pretty one-note so Jean's circumstance weren't particularly remarkable. However, the medium as a whole matured slowly over the years, the X-Men in particular. The characters and subject matter became more complicated, the storylines more structured as the audience they were marketed towards got older...but Jean Grey stayed the same. In the past she had a hint of the feisty, flirtatious contrast to her then boyfriend Scott's more uptight and withdrawn personality, but as time has gone by other characters have come into the field who have filled that role and did it better than she did. Rogue, Psylocke, and Emma Frost spring to mind.

            Now, some may argue and say," Maybe she started out like that but what about Phoenix?" See Chris Claremont was the man who first redefined the X-Men in the 1970's, overhauling the roster and playing with the themes after the books popularity had been steadily flagging for several years. He reinvigorated the series and many of the storylines that he introduced make up the backbone of what fans consider X-Men canon. Under Claremont, Jean Grey became "The Phoenix," gaining a significant power boost and a new costume to go with her name. Over time the "Phoenix Force" proved to be a potentially malevolent and destructive entity, a personality separate from Jean Grey's. This created tension in the character as she struggled to restrain the violent impulses of the cosmic being living inside her mind. At the same time the famous love triangle was introduced between Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Cyclops, cranking up the tension in her personal life. Later on Jean got brainwashed, became evil, killed an entire planet, died and then came back to life. These are the acts that have come to define the character of Jean Grey in modern comics and other adaptations.

            That’s pretty dramatic right? Lots of emotion and intrigue in those storylines. So maybe Jean Grey isn't boring after all right?

Drama!

           Nope. Don't get me wrong, those storylines are awesome...but Jean Grey as a character is still boring. I think Jean Grey is a character that stuff happens to. People fall in love with her. Evil cosmic beings take over her body. People she loves get killed. Things happen to her and she reacts and it's good for a couple storylines but in the end the issue gets resolved and then there's nothing left for the character to fall back on. She is affected and influenced by the stories of those around her but she has no core of her own. She's just there, hanging around the X-Mansion. Being pretty.

            Why do you think the same "stuff" keeps happening to her? She keeps losing the Phoenix Force, she keeps getting it back. She keeps dying. She's been bouncing back and forth between Cyclops and Wolverine for the last three decades, never really figuring out who she "truly loves" despite marrying and having a kid with one half of the love triangle(one third?) ages ago. The character has been stuck on repeat ever since the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1970. Writers can't figure out how to tell new stories with the Jean so they either rehash the same ones...or just KILL HER. I've watched her in the X-Men movies, I've watched her in X-Men The Animate Series, X-Men Evolution, and Wolverine and the X-Men. In each example I can't for the life of me care about the characters struggles or conflicts because I've seen this story a hundred times before! I know how it ends.

            Now it looks like Marvel is gearing up for a return of Jean Grey, after leaving her dead for a surprisingly long time. Despite this rant and my generally low opinion of the current X-Men titles I'm actually kind of excited for this. Maybe this will be the year someone finally writes a story that makes me care about Jean Grey. The lady just needs someone who really cares about her, y' know? :)

After all, I've always been of the opinion that any character can be interesting in the hands of a talented writer. Any character that is...except for Longshot.

Longshot can never be cool.

 So what do you guys think? What are your opinions of Jean Grey? Have I enraged anyone with my completely inaccurate analysis of the character?