Volume 37: Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous

Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous

Author: Joss Whedon  |  Illustrator: John Cassaday

"I want this thing off my lawn."

Dangerous picks up from where Volume 36: Gifted left off. I was hoping for more of the same quality as before, but it's different and not always the good kind of different. The story hits the ground running. Bang! Straight in. No foreplay! From then on it's a roller coaster ride of semi-exciting highs and face-palm lows.

The danger level is cranked to maximum. There's the feeling that we're getting something that could do some real and lasting harm for a change, but it shits the bed and delivers something that isn't very dangerous at all.

Five minutes after the initial battle everyone is fully recovered and ready for more. You were dead but you're okay now. Let's get snacks.

Whedon has proved over time that he gets it right more often than he gets it wrong, but he wrote himself into a hole this time. Either he got lazy or was busy with a hundred other projects and forgot how to 'astonish' with the X-Men. He even forgot that Professor X is paraplegic, or did I miss something prior to this story?

The plot's ridiculous. The ending feels like it was pulled from a hat. If Wolverine had started doing card tricks it wouldn't have felt out of place. What held my attention was the continued character development, particularly between Kitty and Peter.

I like Joss' ability to balance characterisation and action in the same instance; he doesn't need to stop one to focus on the other.

I also liked the role given to Beast and how artist John Cassaday translated that role to the page. Needs. More. Beast.

Volume I left me very eager for more. Volume II left me asking myself do I even want Volume III? If it’s on sale... maybe.

The book collects together Astonishing X-Men (Vol 3) #7–12.

Verdict:

Volume 36: Astonishing X-Men: Gifted

Astonishing X-Men: Gifted

Author: Joss Whedon  |  Illustrator: John Cassaday

"Maybe Scott and Logan could fight on the lawn again. The kids love that."

Astonishing X-Men is a continuation of Grant Morrison's New X-Men title, although it makes some big changes, not least in the costume department. Joss Whedon assumes writing duties. He's something of a comic nerd. He probably earned his hundred-metre nerd dash badge in high school. But such folks often write the best comics because they care about the material; it's not just a job, it's a passion.

For me, Joss' clever puns actually work better in written form. When Wolverine delivers a Whedon put-down it makes me grin insanely, but in live action they more often than not seem forced and immature.

The author's greatest strength as a writer, however, is the group dynamic. He strips away all the unnecessary action scenes that can plague a title like this and finds the real heart of the story by focussing almost completely on the character relationships.

Scott leads the team but is struggling to make his authority felt. With Jean gone he's lost in a kind of limbo. He tries not to show it for both personal and professional reasons. He needs the support of his friends but they're busy squabbling amongst themselves.

Furthermore, the discovery of a mutant "cure" puts the team on alert. The story studies the effect it has on the mutant population as a whole, and the tightly knit X-Men team as individuals. Yes, it's the story they took the idea from for the third film, but don't hold that against it; it shits all over the film from a very great height.

There's a purity and focus evident herein that team-based comics often struggle with. It's not bogged down by a convoluted continuity or filled with excessive characters that have no real agenda.

The book collects together Astonishing X-Men (Vol 3) #1–6.

Verdict:

Volume 35: She-Hulk: Single Green Female

She-Hulk: Single Green Female

Author: Dan Slott  |  Illustrators: Juan Bobillo / Paul Pelletier

"Your bed should come with air bags."

"Sorry, sweetie. Little involuntary muscle spasm."

SGF was my first, and to date only, She-Hulk book. It was less of a traditional superhero story and more of a self-discovery comedy, which is not at all what I expected. Based on the cover art I feared it was going to be just Hulk with tits, a prospect I was not at all excited by. (I'm not dissing Hulk, btw, but unimaginative gender swaps.)

But Shulkie isn't like her cousin Bruce Banner/Hulk at all. She can transform at will and afterwards keeps all her faculties intact; a situation that gives the writers much more leeway.

She uses her brain as much as her brawn to solve problems and defeat foes. It's nice to see a female character that isn't defined simply by her impossible cleavage and scant attire. Her sex appeal is still a factor, but it's addressed in a comical way.

Her human side is Jennifer Walters, a practising lawyer. Jennifer's a petite girl with a well-developed inferiority complex. When called upon by a prominent law firm to work for them she assumes it's the brawny She-Hulk they want, because it's always She-Hulk they want, never the brainy Jennifer.

There are some fun cameos from the Avengers. In fact, fun is what the book is all about. It recognises the absurdity that's a large part of the Marvel Universe and plays around with it. There's a progression arc that ties it all together, but mostly each story is self-contained.

The artwork is occasionally inconsistent, and I don't just mean the changeover from Juan Bobillo to Paul Pelletier. It's distracting but it doesn't interfere with the storytelling, and, to be fair, both artists provide some fantastic facial expressions.

It's not a AAA title and it won't send huge continuity ripples through the larger universe, but it's an entertaining read from beginning to end and a nice change of pace from the usual Marvel fare.

The book collects together She-Hulk (2004 series) #1–6.

Verdict:

Volume 34: Avengers: Disassembled

Avengers: Disassembled

Author: Brian Michael Bendis | Illustrators: David Finch / Jim Cheung / Steve Epting / Gary Frank / Michael Gaydos / David Mack / Alex Maleev / Mike Mayhew / Steve McNiven / Mike Oeming / George Pérez / Eric Powell / Darick Robertson / Lee Weeks

"[W]e, as a group, have failed..."

It's become customary to do something special for a landmark issue, something memorable or celebratory. With Avengers issue #500, Brian Michael Bendis took over as regular author on the series and set about destroying everything – in a good way. In order to remake the team into something new he had to first tear down what was old.

In just four issues he puts them through hell in the hope that they'll emerge from the other side as better heroes, more aware of the consequences of their actions and more appreciative of what they have. Not everyone survives the Bendis assault.

The threat comes without warning, as something known but unknown, an unfamiliar thing in a familiar form, and death follows.

The team's feelings are thrown into turmoil as they try to make sense of something the human mind can't easily make sense of. The most common response is to lay blame, find a target for the anger and pain, but the target isn't in plain sight. The true enemy this time isn't one that can be easily punched into oblivion.

There's still plenty of action, if that's your main concern, but it's balanced out with plenty of text and a fair amount of standing around talking deductively; somehow it all works.

Many different artists worked on the miniseries, so the quality varies, but mostly it's very good. There's a superb page in #501 made up of just four horizontal panels, dialogue-free, that puts into perspective the emotions that the remaining team members have to deal with. Much later, near the book's end, there's an astonishingly good double splash page that evoked an audible "Wow!" from me while reading.

The final chapter (Avengers Finale) is a kind of coda in a form that many people will recognise, a post-tragedy event for which there are no hard and fast rules, but which everyone in attendance understands, nevertheless.

The book collects together Avengers #500-503 + Avengers Finale.

Verdict:

Volume 33: Secret War

Secret War

Author: Brian Michael Bendis  |  Illustrator: Gabriele Dell'Otto

"[L]et the last thing they see on this earth be the culmination of all your lies and betrayals!"

Not to be confused with the Marvel Secret Wars (plural) miniseries of the mid-1980s, Bendis' Secret War is very different. Firstly, and without a doubt the greatest thing about the book, there's fully painted art by Gabriele Dell'Otto. His use of colours reflects both the nighttime setting and the seriousness of the situation. It's a story that shook one of the pillars of the Marvel universe: S.H.I.E.L.D.

Colonel Nick Fury handpicks a small group of costumed heroes from different walks of life and throws them together on a covert mission of great importance. We're told that each one was chosen because of their unique attributes or abilites, but the reasons for each aren't explored in a satisfactory way. Perhaps Bendis assumed we'd be able to discern for ourselves based on our knowledge of their past adventures? I don't know, but I personally knew one of them by name only, having never read a single issue of his solo title.

The story itself would sound great when told to someone, abridged, but actually reading it isn't a very exciting process. It's confusing for a while, but it's supposed to be, so at the end of the day that isn't a problem. However, it's also contrived, with not enough distinction between characters' dialogue, and the nature of the work means that 90% of the exposition is clumped together in a single issue.

Between each issue are text entries that give background (or extraneous) information on people or events prior to the story's main event, in the form of transcribed interviews and S.H.I.E.L.D. operation database entries; the interviews are the most useful.

The book collects together Secret War #1-5.

Verdict:

Volume 32: Marvel 1602

Marvel 1602

Author: Neil Gaiman  | Illustrators: Andy Kubert / Richard Isanove

"Sir Nicholas is our intelligencer, Doctor. All the plots and counterplots, all the words whispered and knives in the dark are his to unravel and employ. He does his job well —"

Also known simply as 1602, the eight-issue miniseries places a number of Marvel's most popular (and overused) heroes in the year 1602; not in a dodgy time travel scenario, but in an alternative telling wherein they exist separately in various roles and across various lands, but mostly in Elizabethan England. It's how the beginnings of the extended Marvel Universe might've been had it happened in a more distant time period, a kind of comic book 'what if...?' story.

Not all reinterpretations of characters are instantly recognisable. Some of the names are even changed by various degrees of subtlety in a bid to keep readers guessing (e.g. Count Otto von Doom, although it's one of the easier ones). So as not to spoil the surprise for anyone who would rather not know which characters actually feature in the book, I've left off the relevant labels on this post, instead using 'Crossover' as a basic coverall term.

It's difficult to explain why the story bored me without venturing into spoiler territory, so I'll say only that the coming together of different parties and the uncovering of truths about each one weren't at all interesting to me, stretched as thin as they were... and I'm confused about why the flying reptiles were there. I know there are people who adore everything Gaiman writes, regardless of its quality, but more cautious and/or frugal fans of his work might want to attempt borrowing from a library before throwing actual money down.

This is the part where I once again wish that from day one of this blog I'd decided to give separate scores for story and art, because Andy Kubert's art and Richard Isanove's colouring are both wonderful, achieved in the same manner as it was in Volume 26: Wolverine: Origin (for the record, it'd get five big thumbs both times), but my scores need to reflect true feelings about the book's re-readability so that in the future it can be an accurate guide as to which volumes to keep and which to dispose of. With that in mind...

The book collects together the entire first Marvel 1602 story, i.e. #1-8.

Verdict: