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Yes you are. Otherwise, you wouldn't be complaining about the evolving characters. o.o I mean, if it has too little plot movement, you'll complain, but you don't want great plot movement?
I didn't say I didn't want great plot movement. I said that great plot movement is not what I'm talking about when I talk about a series' "direction," which means that I don't need an Infinite Crisis or a Blackest Night or a Messiah Complex to feel that a series has direction.
I tend to view it as basically a series about Madrox with the others as supporters. He's had a pretty clear character arc so far in that he's searching for his identity. John Maddox, the baby, Cortex, etc. all seem to be pointing out that Madrox is his own worst enemy, no matter what he does, either literally or in the sense of a dupe going rogue. Since the move to Detroit, the series has been a long slide into despair for him which has only recently abated because of his reconnection with Layla. Once he gets back to the present and the team moves back to New York, I'm expecting another shift and a new character arc for Madrox. It seems like PAD's got a plan to me.
Perhaps. I feel like in all forty-nine issues of this series, the only real bits of significant plot payoff we've ever had are A)the return of Layla and B)baby Sean, who I'm not naive enough to think isn't going to come back into play in a big way someday.
This is pretty standard for PAD, to be honest. He gave Genis one big status quo shift--being bonded to Rick and actively trying to fulfill his father's legacy--and then spent years examining how his personality grew and changed as a result of it. Then he did it again--Genis losing his mind--and spent years examining that shift's effect on his personality. Did you feel like those years were just rambling excuses for PAD to write a crazy guy and have even crazier stuff happen to him for no reason?
Granted, I will admit that the content of his explorations into Captain Marvel's character were better than his explorations into Madrox's character.
To be honest I didn't read much of PAD's Captain Marvel
before the whole "went crazy" storyline happened, so I wouldn't be the greatest judge of that. Did it have direction and feel well-plotted? I don't really remember, though the parts did read felt like a ironically cogent story about a crazy person, if only a bit filled with obvious and not-so-obvious bouts of PAD using Genis as his mouthpiece. Those issues with Genis trying to take over Asgard? Yeah Pete, tell us how you
really feel about religion.
Which reminds me of what is possibly the greatest counterpoint to PAD's X-Factor: namely, PAD's Supergirl. Ah, Supergirl. The labyrinthine cast and backstory and plots are the stuff of fanboy notoriety, and never let it be said that it didn't also include PAD's tendency to go off on tangents that were often weird or outright
stupid. And yet, all that being said, it remains one of the most focused, tightly-written series I've ever read. At no point would you question what the series was "about," every single arc felt like it had a very good reason for existing, and you always feel like it was all moving forward to a rewarding place.
And when major status quo changes occurred in the setting, character, and tone -- I'm thinking specifically of when Linda lost Matrix along with most of her powers, changed her appearance completely, and went on a twentysomething-issue road trip to find them -- the shift was clearly understandable, flowed thematically, fit naturally, and tied very well to all the pieces that had already been set on the board. Fifty issues of the series had been set in Leesburg and now all of sudden it simply
isn't, and yet in no way did it feel awkward. There is no, okay we're in New York, wait now we're somewhere else, okay let's go to the future, wait let's go back to New York.
I mentioned "rewarding place" for a reason. This is a series. It's serialized. If all goes according to what both the writer and I want, I'll be reading and buying twenty, thirty...fifty or sixty or
seventy ****ing issues of this b**** when all is said and done. Judging a series and its writer by the merits of individual issues or arcs is okay, I guess, but if I'm going to put in the effort for seventy issues of a series, years upon years' worth of money and time, well, it sure as heck better
try to hang together at least pretty well. Looking back on a writer's run, what am I going to want to remember more? That it all fit together well and told a solid, focused saga with a well-deserved cap-off? Or that it had...good banter?
Wasn't it made clear from the beginning that X-Factor was going to pick up where his Madrox miniseries left off?
Hell, I got into X-Factor
specifically because I loved the Madrox miniseries so much. It had -- wait for it -- a clear, fantastic direction from beginning to end.
Man, you must've really hated X-Files and Lost after they each got a few seasons in. Me too.
Well I didn't hate either one of the shows, but otherwise that's a pretty accurate summary. I stopped watching X-Files a couple of seasons in, because clearly no one had any idea what they were actually doing with the 58493 plots going on. And I couldn't finish even the
first season of Lost.
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