I'm now mirroring all of my reviews at NuMutant.net [/subtle plug], so I've started putting recaps and writer/artist information at the beginning of each review. As always, reviews are written in the order each book is read...
Let's start this week off with a bang...
X-FACTOR #39
Writer: Peter David
Penciler: Valentine De Landro
Publisher: Marvel
In this issue's recap/credits page, writer Peter David issues a "personal plea" to all readers. He urges us to fight all temptation with regards to spoilers. Don't give up any spoilers. "Speak in broad strokes." He says not to even use spoiler warnings.
No dice, David. I'm telling everyone. To be fair, I'll black out this review. Anyone who wishes to read it can highlight it with their mouse.
[blackout]For those of you just joining us, let's recap: With the X-Men now in the San Francisco Bay, X-Factor Investigations found themselves the target for every two-bit anti-mutant group in New York. Not wanting to join Cyclops' herd, X-Factor spirited themselves away to Detroit, where they are working as normal private investigators. Secretly, team leader Jamie "Multiple Man" Madrox has been working with government agent Val Cooper, and passing off her assignments as regular gigs. A few months later, Darwin and Longshot joined the team. But none of that is important. Approximately nine months ago, Jamie got Siryn very very pregnant. When we last left off, Siryn entered labor.
This issue begins with Darwin, who hasn't seen his father in years. Darwin recently found out that his dear old dad sold him to some mad scientists for a little DNA experiment (causing Daddy Dearest to get injured and hospitalized during the kidnapping). X-Factor helped Darwin escape, and Darwin is pretty much ready to forgive... and forget his dad ever existed.
Meanwhile, in the same hospital, Jamie is sitting by Siryn's side while she tries her damnedest not to let out a sonic scream during labor. She fails, and everyone in the hospital hears her, including the rest of X-Factor in the lobby. The doctor comes in, and decides to drug the hell out of Siryn, and give her a cesarean. One spank on the ass later, and the beautiful Sean Madrox is born! Scared that the government might swing by and snatch their child, Jamie follows the baby to the nursery to keep an eye on him. Jamie has a brief conversation with Val Cooper, who offers to relocate Siryn and Sean to a safe place, not snatch him. Later on, we see Siryn holding her son. She asks Jamie to hold him, who's afraid he's going to drop him. Not going to be an issue.
As soon as Jamie held his son, their bodies began to merge together. Jamie unintentionally absorbed his son as if he were one of his duplicates. And he can't un-absorb him.
Needless to say, Siryn was pissed. She pounced on Jamie, and tried to beat the living crap out of him until he gave her back their son. She popped her stitches, and had to be sedated by a doctor. Jamie found himself crying in a closet, unable to cope with what he'd done. Strong Guy came for him, and brought him back to Siryn. When Jamie tried to hold Siryn's hand, she broke one of his fingers. The issue ends with Siryn's last line: "Next time I see you... it'll be your neck."[/blackout]
This issue was a definite shocker. I have to say, I didn't see any of it coming. Peter David promised that this and the next two issues would be the definite must-read issues, and I can see why. It looks like a whole new status quo is being established for this book, and I wouldn't be surprised if things only got worse for Jamie Madrox.
Valentine De Landro delivers some of the best art this title has seen in a long time. His pencils are clear, but also capture a bit of this title's old noir feeling. De Landro also renders quite possibly the best Darwin I've seen since the character's introduction in 2006. Most artists have a habit of making Darwin look like a Roswell Grey, but De Landro gives us what I can only describe as a bald albino Darwin, which looks a hell of a lot more human. Colorist Jeremy Cox gets bonus points for giving Monet St. Croix a darker skin tone than Siryn (an awkward mistake he's made in the past, as Monet is of African descent and Siryn is practically ginger), but loses points for making her eyes blue instead of their usual brown.
----------
ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL #16
Writer: Brian Lynch (plotted by Joss Whedon)
Penciler: Franco Urru
Publisher: IDW
The recap: Following the cliffhanger at the end of season 5 on television, this comic has followed Angel's mission to reassemble his team after all of Los Angeles was transported to Hell by Wolfram & Hart. Recently, Illyria (who still inhabits the body of Fred) has found herself incapable of reconciling her own personality with the memories and personality she inherited from Fred, and has transformed into her true "big blue monster of death" form in an attempt to destroy the world. Meanwhile, Wesley is a ghost, Gunn is a vampire whose dialogue hasn't made any sense throughout this entire comic, and Angel has seen a vision of the future in which he somehow works with Wolfram & Hart in bringing about a different end of the world in which Angel has slaughtered countless humans. With that, Wolfram & Hart is determined to keep Angel alive at all costs, even though they are more than willing to kill and torture his family and friends. Oh, and the previous issue ended with Angel's son, Connor, dead.
This issue begins with Angel holding Connor's body, as a crowd of bystanding humans and demons watch silently. The disembodied voice of Wolfram & Hart then tells Angel that he's free to go back to his hotel base, where they will ship "the carcass" of "the offspring" as soon as possible (they're so sensitive, those demonic lawyers). When Angel decides to just lash out and kill as many demons as possible, Wolfram & Hart tells him to go ahead, as they'll simply create more minions to replace the slain ones. Wesley's ghost asks to make sure the demons won't harm Angel, and Wolfram & Hart assures him that if anything should happen to Angel, they'll simply pluck a better version of him out of his personal timeline. That's when Angel gets an idea. Angel grabs a sword, and attempts to coax the psychotic vampire-Gunn into killing him. When Wolfram & Hart's demonic army try to interfere, Spike and the crew hold them back until Gunn succeeds, and Angel dies.
Then Wolfram & Hart does exactly what they said they would do if Angel died: they find a better Angel from a previous point in the timeline. Specifically, they physically reset the timeline back to that cliffhanger fight at the end of season 5, with Angel's crew fighting an army of demons in an alley. Angel is alive--er, undead again, Illyria once again looks like a blue Fred, Angel's pet dragon (named after Cordelia) is alive, and Gunn is still a human under attack by a gang of vampires in a dark alley. Angel breaks up the fight before Gunn can be either sired or killed, and rushes him off to the hospital.
One thing that is very clear is that Angel, Spike, Gunn, and Illyria remember their time in hell. However, upon checking Gunn into the hospital, Angel discovers that everyone else in Los Angeles remembers their time in hell as well. Also, they remember Angel facing demons to defend them for months on end. The secret's out, and Angel has just gone from a lowly private investigator and urban legend into a full-blown legend. Of course, this issue wouldn't be complete without revealing that, with time reversed, Connor is once again alive.
In a way, this is the penultimate issue of Angel: After the Fall. Starting with #18, the title will change to Angel: Aftermath. I wasn't quite sure what other ground they could cover with this book upon leaving Hell, but it looks like a whole new can of worms have been opened this month. Aside from the continuous fact that Gunn's dialogue never makes any sense, this was a pretty solid issue for Lynch. The story was easy to follow (for once), and the characters spoke like real people. Urru, however, has once again delivered a set of underwhelming pencils. His characters pretty much never resemble the actors they're based on, the eyes are inexpressive 70% of the time, and the faces are somewhat flat. That's not to say his art is terrible, but I'm definitely not a fan.
----------
ASTONISHING X-MEN #28
Writer: Warren Ellis
Penciler: Simone Bianchi
Publisher: Marvel
When we last left our heroes, they were investigating a mysterious man known as Subject X, who used a kind of fire power to kill a man in San Francisco before running away to Asia. When the X-Men followed, he killed himself and left behind a strange electronic device that S.W.O.R.D's director Abigail Brand (who is also Beast's bedroom partner) identified as a ghost box. A ghost box is apparently a gateway between parallel universes. As we learned in the Ghost Boxes miniseries, Subject X's goal was to scope out the X-Men's universe, and report back to his superiors so they could begin annexation. The X-Men decided to continue their investigation by heading to a radar blackspot in China, which led to an uninhabited hidden city known as Tian.
Emma Frost and Storm begin to make their way down stairs, where they discuss the theory that half of the city may have fallen apart because it might have been held up by the willpower of a mutant or several mutants who lost their powers. Emma suddenly detects the somewhat shielded mind of someone trying to hide himself, and telepathically warns Cyclops. Cyclops sends Wolverine and Armor out to look for any signs of life, while he and Beast check the city's computers. Beast mentions to Cyclops that he and Forge discussed parallel worlds before, as Forge had been searching across different universes to see how many people lost their powers on M-Day. Turns out it's a lot. Before something large and invisible can attack them, Cyclops and Beast feel its presence, and face it head on, knocking it the hell out.
Meanwhile, as Emma and Storm head further down stairs, they begin to feel their powers weakening. Storm assures Emma that if their powers become inhibited completely while in the city, she'll have no problem coping without them. After all, anyone who remembers the crazy leather-clad mohawk Storm from the 1980s knows that she spent practically that entire time leading the X-Men without her powers. Storm tells Emma this, and mentions that her powers were taken back then when she was shot by a device made by Forge. When Emma and Storm's powers completely fade out in a dark hallway of the city, a large beastie emerges from the shadows and attacks. Storm takes out her knife, and dispatches it.
Around this same time, Wolverine and Armor are attacked by a mysterious man who shoots lasers from his fingers. The lasers are partially capable of piercing Armor's psionic neon noodle armor, causing her shoulder and foot to be run through. Wolverine then stabs the man in the chest, causing him to slowly bleed out. Possible at the same time, all three dispatches attacks relay the same message to the X-Men duos that defeated them: they attacked because they mentioned the name Forge.
Ellis appears to be doing what he does best, and that's delivering a science fiction and mystery story. However, this story is rather decompressed, and it's still not quite clear what the X-Men are up against. The pieces will probably all come together toward the end of this story, which means there's probably a good chance this will read better as an all-in-one graphic novel months from now, rather than as month-to-month issues.
Simone Bianchi... bless Simone Bianchi. He's a talented artist. He's clearly capable of so much. However, I'd dare say his problem is that he tries too hard. His backgrounds are highly detailed and textured, and likely take forever to both pencil and ink. He goes out of his way to draw nearly every strand of hair on each character's heads (and Beast's entire body), which (when combined with the wrinkles and seams of everyone's costumes) causes the character designs to appear too busy. Colorist Simone Peruzzi is going for a kind of noir look, but the dark colors combined with highly rendered shadows result in pages of dull scenery where the characters stand out from the background very little. This art style would be great for a comic book cover (in fact, the covers to this book are usually spectacular) or a typically/intentionally dark comic like Grant Morrison's recent Shining Knight miniseries, but it doesn't really work for something as bright and vibrant as the X-Men. Also, I don't like the way he draws Storm's face half the time, the odd emphasis he puts on Cyclops' lips being so shiny, or the strange "model" poses he occasionally puts people in.
