X-Men #47

X-Men #47
Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: The X-Babies find themselves in Little Italy after running away from Gog and Magog last issue. A priest stops to help them and this affords them a chance to recap the plot. Gog and Magog show up, and the X-Babies keep running.

The club from last issue has been completely destroyed, but Bishop and Gambit were somehow able to survive and blow themselves out of the rubble. Gambit reasserts that he would never willingly hurt the X-Men, but Bishop brushes him off so they can go look for the X-Babies.

At the bookstore, Baby Storm and Baby Iceman are fighting with each other, but Jean uses her powers to hide them from the crowd. The X-Babies convince the two X-Men to help them; Iceman mentions that they aren’t real, but Jean detects psionic imprints, so even if they started out as artificial lifeforms, they are alive now.

The rest of the X-Babies hide in a carnival stuffed animal shelf while Gog and Magog tear the carnival apart. Gambit and Bishop show up to save the day, but the fight ends with the X-Men pinned. The X-Babies decide to help fight back with water pistols and a mallet. Then Jean and Bobby show up with rest of the X-Babies to help out. They freeze the bad guys, but the bad guys break out. Magog is about to eat all the X-Babies when a blinding light interrupts him. The light came from former X-Man and current co-leader of Mojoworld, Dazzler.

Gog and Magog refer to her as “your majesty” but Dazzler insists that she has no role in the new political structure; she teleports the two minions away after chastising them. Dazzler then tells the kids that they can live with her and Longshot until the political situation stabilizes in Mojoworld. The X-Men share pleasantries with Dazzler, and Jean interrupts Iceman from asking about all the mouths to feed. As the X-Babies teleport away, Jean tells Iceman that she didn’t sense any life within Alison, inferring that she had a miscarriage. At the mansion, Xavier summons Tabitha Smith, aka Boomer, to explain to her that he is turning Sabretooth over to the government in Uncanny #328.

How It Was: Well…this is something different. Scott Lobdell tries to lighten things up a little with the X-Babies, but the problem is that none of the humor is particularly clever, or for that matter funny. All of the jokes revolve around the cuteness and immaturity of the X-Babies, which can be hilarious when done right: see Runaways’ Molly Hayes. But none of these jokes are really funny, although Kubert’s representations are cute enough to make you smile when you see them.

As for the rest, well we’ve dumped most of the characterization for faster paced action, but it’s action against Gog and Magog, so I can’t imagine anybody caring. And the whole thing resolves itself anti-climactically when we learn that the two minions mixed up their orders. Seeing Dazzler is kind of neat, except it’s only for about three pages—enough time for the X-Men to say hi real quickly. And I never understood why Jean assumes Dazzler had a miscarriage; she hasn’t been seen for thirty-six issues, surely that’s enough time in comic time for a pregnancy to come to term. Heck, Ka-Zar and Shanna’s pregnancy happened almost entirely off-panel, and then that baby just kind of disappeared. But I digress.

This is a very weird story that doesn’t work because it isn’t all that funny and it wraps up a little too neatly for its own good. Really it’s a bit of a disaster, but the art is nice.

D

Amazing X-Men #1

Amazing X-Men #1
Writing: Fabian Nicieza
Art: Andy Kubert

What Went Down: We start off with a prologue following a group of vagabond humans in Maine. They are traveling to a meeting where they are hoping to be transported to Eurasia, since Apocalypse has taken over the United States. A hooded figure is talking with a family about the trek. Afterwards, the stranger walks off into the woods and reveals herself to be the shapeshifter Vanessa Carlyle—Copycat in the standard universe. Vanessa informs other agents of Apocalypse—this universe’s version of the Brotherhood—about the humans’ hope to escape.

At the mansion in New York, Bishop watches while a team of X-Men performs a training exercise. This team includes leader Quicksilver, second in command Banshee, Dazzler, Iceman, Storm, and Exodus. The goal of the exercise is to get a control disk inside the Sentinel to reprogram it to recognize the X-Men as friends. The team completes the exercise, but Quicksilver’s time is a tenth of a second too slow. In actuality, the team is preparing for a real life mission where they will have to accomplish the same goal, using Dazzler’s hard-light holograms as a pseudo-Danger Room. Magneto shows up to caution his team about neglecting a fallen opponent; many members of the team show concern about the fact that Bishop is holding Magneto’s son, Charles.

Magneto takes the time to explain what is happening in all of the other AoA books, and tells the team that they need to leave. Iceman offers to invert their molecules through moisture, but there is concern that this will leave the X-Men weakened. Instead, Magneto tells Exodus to teleport the team to Maine, even though this is his first time using that power.

In the humans’ camp, the young boy and girl from the family earlier are chasing each other; the boy bumps into Quicksilver and apologizes. Out over the ocean, Storm flies through Apocalypse’s defense field to disable its sensors with electricity. Just when the tower is about to detect her, Sentinels burst through and destroy the tower. Fortunately Storm is cloaked with her electricity powers.

The next day as the group of people continues their journey, the young boy runs ahead, but he is captured by one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen named Abyss. The people reach the rendezvous point, and the Sentinels arrive to transport them to Europe. The X-Men install the disk in one of the Sentinels to reprogram all of them, but unfortunately the alternate version of Madison Jeffries has used his powers to reprogram the disk to target humans and X-Men as enemies. Iceman is blasted apart, but everyone notes that he will be able to pull himself together. A member of the Madri, Apocalypse’s cult-like soldiers, leads the AoA Brotherhood to attack the X-Men for the cliffhanger.

How It Was: All right, now we get to the adjective-less X-Men replacement. Actually, this issue follows the formula of Astonishing #1 pretty closely. Magneto shows up to explain the plot, the main players, the plots of the rest of the tie-in series, and the mission for the individual squad. Too bad this series isn’t quite as good as Astonishing, mostly due to the roster choice. Yes there are some interesting inclusions like Dazzler and Exodus, but nothing much is done with any of these characters. Exodus is still a zealot who will do anything Magneto wants, and the big twist on Dazzler’s character is that…um she smokes and acts cranky. Really that’s the only significant difference for most of the X-Men in this series; they’re the same characters, only angrier. As for the plotline of the series, the human exodus isn’t really that exciting, but that plot finishes up with issue two and then the really good action gets going.

Apocalypse’s Brotherhood also fails to inspire awe; who can say that they’d get really excited at the thought of a battle with Yeti, Copycat, Spyne, or Arclight? Nicieza is really scraping the bottom of the Marvel Universe Handbook with this book. Of course Abyss is the real antagonist, but whereas Holocaust wanted to murder hundreds of humans in Chicago, Abyss kidnaps a little boy to lure the X-Men into a trap. He’s not quite as menacing as most of the other villains in the AoA, which is a shame because to my knowledge he is one of the few original characters in this series.

There are a few good moments. I like how everyone mistrusts Bishop, and starts to question Magneto by association. Quicksilver is a much more likable character as a leader, and it’s neat to see Iceman demonstrate his full potential powers-wise. Regrettably, most of the characters don’t get a lot of room to develop, and a lot of ideas and plot points that get setup are pushed to the side or end up being forgotten about. Storm mentions that she is in love with Quicksilver, but nothing comes of it. The Sentinel redesigns look very cool, but they don’t get to do a lot either. The first half of this series does feel like a stall until we can get to the stuff with Apocalypse.

Well, the art is phenomenal with all of the redesigned costumes looking really great, except for Exodus’, which I always found kind of ordinary. Still, all the other costumes do a great job reflecting the characters' past selves while managing to maintain the darker tone. Kubert does some great work with what he’s given; the scenes with Storm and the Sentinels attacking the tower are particularly exciting. My only complaint is that Dazzler’s light blasts are rainbow-colored in this dimension, which always looked kind of silly to me. This is not a particularly gripping issue, but this book does improve over the course of the run.

C+

X-Men #11

X-Men #11
Writing: Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell
Art: Jim Lee and Mark Texeira

What Went Down: It turns out Dazzler did survive the fight from last issue…surprise. This issue opens with her discussing the plot with the leader of the resistance, Mojo II—the Sequel. Get it, it’s a media joke. His story is that he is a clone of Mojo with one flaw—he has a spine. After summarizing the events of last issue and dropping a few movie related jokes, the scene switches to half of the X-Men Blue Team fighting the other half (because they’re brainwashed).

Back at his evil lair, Mojo is gloating at the captive Professor X; apparently Mojo forgot that the Professor is a mutant because he does nothing while Xavier uses his powers to free the X-Men.

While everyone is watching the X-Men, Mojo II and Dazzler attempt to sneak into Mojo’s base, but they are ambushed. Jubilee snaps Wolverine out of his trance by making him mad, and he is able to weaken the wall made out of Mojonium.

Everyone bursts in at once and a fight ensues with Mojo; he holds his own and manages to kill a large group of rebels with an energy blast. Then Longshot takes a sword (which he got…somewhere?) and stabs the bad guy with it, theoretically killing him. Of course, he comes back later with no explanation of how he survived, but there you go.

Dazzler and Longshot give control of Mojoworld over to Mojo II, warning him that if he turns out to be evil, they will stop him. Some of the X-Men mutter that they don’t trust him, but nothing else ever happens with him that I know of, and Mojo eventually just reclaims the throne.

Professor X reveals that Dazzler is pregnant, and Longshot makes a joke about naming the kid Shatterstar; for a while fans were convinced that Shatterstar must be their child, but a different origin was later created for the character.

Bonus—What Else Went Down: Maverick shoots a lot of bullets at Warhawk; the problem is that Warhawk has omnium skin, which is yet another indestructible metal in the Marvel Universe. Also, Maverick mentions that he misses his mutant power and brings up a woman named Isabel…important clues to his backstory at this point in his career.

Dr. Ryking explains that he is responsible for Warhawk’s powers. Maverick shoots Warhawk with what appears to be a bolt gun. The bolts penetrate the villain’s skin, and he explodes, killing Ryking in the process. Maverick walks away and thinks about how he hates his job and himself.

How It Was: There is still some media related humor to be had in this issue, but basically it’s just a big fight issue. It’s unfortunate because the story completely gives up on the somewhat clever Wizard of Oz parody and dissolves into a pointless hero vs. hero fight. Yes the title of the issue shows that the creators are making fun of this fact, but it still means a fight where you know exactly what to expect.

Also, this is an issue full of false starts and forgotten plot lines. Mojo II—forgotten and replaced by Mojo later. Longshot and Dazzler’s kid—drags on forever and ends up miscarried so the creators don’t have to mess with it. Mojo’s death—doesn’t stick, obviously. And I would still like to know where Longshot got that sword. Also, where the heck is Spiral? Wasn’t she in X-Men #5 building up to this story?

Looking at the back up strip: it’s complete crap. Maverick shoots Warhawk with a gun. It doesn’t work. Warhawk knocks Maverick away. Maverick shoots Warhawk with a different gun. Warhawk blows up. The end. The plot doesn’t even make sense on that simple level, but at least they got a proper inker for this issue. And the ending tries to make Maverick seem deep by having him act remorseful at the end, but that doesn’t work because in the beginning he was cracking jokes as he was killing people with a grenade and shooting at Warhawk.

Absolutely average, but a couple of the jokes (especially the Beast’s poetry quote at the end) saves it a little.

B-

X-Men #10

X-Men #10
Writing: Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell
Art: Jim Lee and Mark Texiera

What Went Down: Longshot awakens to find himself in a falling house. After it crashes, he walks outside to discover that he’s crushed a person and cannot remember who he is.

Cyclops, Rogue, Wolverine, and Beast emerge from some wreckage; it is at this point we learn that the X-Men are trapped in a parody of the Wizard of Oz. Cyclops=Scarecrow, except he has no confidence instead, Rogue=Tin Man, except she literally can’t feel because her hands are covered, and Wolverine=Lion, as in a total coward. Add in the Beast, who can only talk like Scooby Doo, as a fill in for Toto, and you just know this is going to be a wild ride.

Anyways, after meeting the X-Men, Longshot conveniently remembers everything. He tries to explain the situation to the X-Men, but they don’t get it, so they all decide to go off to see the Wizard.

Meanwhile, Mojo and more captive X-Men are watching the proceedings from his base. In case you don’t know, Mojo is a villain who lives in a dimension run by television where whoever has the best ratings is superior. The working class rebels are trying to end Mojo’s tyranny since they are forced to perform on these “shows” and most of them are quite dangerous. He reveals that his plan is to make the X-Men fight each other; everyone responds with self-aware jokes about how that always happens anyway.

The rest of the issue is made up of a flashback that reveals how the X-Men arrived in this predicament. Dazzler and one of Mojo’s spies go to the mansion to enlist the X-Men in helping to overthrow Mojo. The spy teleports the blue team to Mojoworld, weakening them in the process. Mojo’s forces, including a brainwashed Longshot, are able to completely subdue the Blue Team, and Dazzler seemingly gets killed and falls in the water.

After the flashback, we see that the remaining X-Men, plus Lila Cheney, are dressed as flying monkeys and attacking Longshot’s group. And finally, a mysterious character discovers Dazzler in a gutter and rescues her.

Bonus—What Else Went Down: This issue and the next include a seven page back up story starring Maverick, from issues 5-7. The story opens with a bunch of soldiers pointing guns at Maverick while he appears to be surrendering. To rectify this, he lobs a thermite grenade at them and reveals that he can seal himself in his armor.

It turns out that Maverick is hunting a man named Ryking—this is important for issues 12 and 13 although it is never made clear why. It also turns out that Maverick works for a guy named Barrington, which is the name Wolverine discovered on the computer in X-Men #8. Just as our hero is about to pull the trigger on his target, he is hit from behind. It turns out that Warhawk, an obscure X-Men villain who I’ll explain more about later, is protecting Ryking.

How It Was: Well Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell had fun with this one, didn’t they? While it’s kind of silly, the humor is self-aware enough to work; seeing Cyclops and Wolverine as complete opposites is worth a few giggles, as is the scene with everyone complaining about another X-Men versus X-Men fight. It’s a Mojo story, but it is one of the better done Mojo stories that I’ve read. As for Dazzler and Longshot, I’ve never gotten the appeal of the characters, but some fans go crazy for them, go figure. To each their own, I guess.

My only real complaint about the story is Longshot’s completely unnecessary amnesia that disappears within the first two pages. If I wanted to get picky, I’d complain about the character at the end, who later turns out to be Mojo II, but more on that later.

As for the back up strip, it’s pretty forgettable. It’s supposed to be setup for the next story arc, but that story never explains why this story is important, and then the whole thing gets forgotten. Maverick doesn’t really get any depth added to him; he is basically your average 90s hero with a machine gun and an ungodly amount of pouches drawn on his costume. And the inclusion of Warhawk, who hadn’t been seen in an X-Men story since Uncanny #110 back in 1978, is absolutely stupefying. Why anyone would want to read a story about Maverick fighting a bunch of nameless thugs and a D-list villain is beyond me. Also the coloring is really dark and muddy looking, and the inking is a little too thick for my taste; it almost looks like a coloring book.

A fun story brought down by a second, awful story.

B+