Comics Reviews: Supreme Power 8, Uncanny X-Men 437-441, Secret War 1, X-Statix 19

3/5/2004

Supreme Power 8: Somebody FIGHTS somebody! This issue brings us the first significant altercation between the "Supremely Powered" characters we've followed for the last 7 issues. John Milton, Hyperion, confronted the apparently deranged Doctor Spectrum at the cliffhanger close of last issue, and now we open to a battle of strength, endurance, and will. In other words, fairly generic superhero fare, about on the level of Superman's tussle with General Zod's gang of ex-cons in Superman 2. Normally, I prefer a more calculated, strategic combat where the foes use their wits and experience to trap or defeat their opponents in interesting or necessarily innovative means. This is pretty much the opposite. It's impressive from the sheer force of the attacks and their implications, however. Doctor Spectrum slams Hyperion around with the power generated from his crystal, while his foe simply endures the blasts and stands his ground. Having gone into this conflict with the intention to communicate peacefully, the aggressive attack by Spectrum marks a turning point for Hyperion: he feels pain for the first time (and seems to LIKE it) and loses his naivety over the peaceful path to overcoming conflict. This trial by fire of sorts sees Spectrum flee and soon Hyperion, devestated by the casualties of their battle, seeks refuge in the confession booth of a Catholic Church. The priest has sage words for Milton, and sends him off to seek answers, and retribution. This is the Hyperion I've been waiting to see. So the book continues to build the suspense and excitement of this slowly expanding confrontation between Hyperion and his handlers, with the other characters so far introduced not being clearly involved in the coming showdown. Yet. Frank's pencils are in fine form here, though the inking is a little shakey this time around. A standout panel is a shot of a nuclear-level discharge between the combatants clashing, where the brush and native trees surrounding them on the landscape cast radial shadows away from the combat, mirroring nuclear test imagery we've seen before. I'm delighted to see Straczynski ramp the action up this issue, and hopefully we will be introduced to more in the coming issues.

9/10 Clicks




Uncanny X-Men 437-441 : This arc by the possibly most hated writer in comicdom ends with little fanfair or consequence, ndleft me thinking that it had the flavor of a film script adaption of a popular comic, where several issues of continuity are smashed into a single thread, then the concept behind the book and the relationships among the characters is twisted and pulled in several inconsistent directions, then rewrtitten as a formulaic teen-oriented romance drama relying on platitudes and forced emotional drama to substitute for thematic content. Problem being, of course, this isn't a film script, or even a cheeky What If? or Exiles altenrate reality fable, but a slab of X-Men continuity that started and ended with nonsense, and was stuffed with nonsense filler in between.

Austen did a half-hearted homage (if you feel generous, rip-off if not) to Romeo and Juliette. Star-crossed lovers from rival feuding midwestern families form the core of the arc, with one family being very obviously prejudiced, hateful and ugly (which we know immediately because they tell us so as the violence begins to escapate almost immediately) and the other being hardened, enduring, sacrificial underdogs who happen to be living the dual legacy of having recently lost their patriarch to the evil spiteful machinations of the bad nasty family, but also being a breeding ground for muties, which seem to have it even harder in this lazy town than in Marvel's curious Ghetto X type enclaves of NY. So, youknow, it's all so terribly formulaic and awkward. Pages and pages of exposition and romantic dribble written with a heavy melodramatic hand, X-Men inserted into an inane conflict between sketchily defined new regular Joe characters with little explanation and virtually no consistency in terms of their experience, abilities, and high-profile appearances, with little or no distinct characterizations and mostly standing around while drama between these We Dont Care About Them third-tier temporary characters goes back and forth until the story is wrapped up and the X-Men move on as if nothing happened, because it didn't. Oh wait, I was talking about Chris Claremont's X-Men scripts! But this is Chuck Austin. Can't get much worse than this, right? Oh wait, Claremont's coming back.

Crap.




Secret War 1: It seems the premise of this revamp of the classic Marvel Free-For-All merchandise-spewing Burly Brawl book of the 80's is that the Tinkerer...I'm not kidding (Bendis loves to take C Grade baddies and beef em up)...has been connected by SHIELD to virtually every tech-based super villain, and in turn has been shown to be receiving funding from the current supposedly benevolen ruler of Dr. Doom's Latveria. The President wants SHIELD to back down, it's all told in flashback, and we're led to believe that perhaps Fury has lead SHIELD, and some of Marvel's finest supertypes, in a covert operation to remove the source of this funding, and by extension, the threat all these dopey villains present. As a skeleton plot, its pretty hokey. But Bendis has written a very thinly veiled parallel to current events, with a healthy dose of foreign policy and intelligence intrigue thrown in. SHIELD identifies the supervillains as terrorists, using this as a pretense to go after their financial backers in a remote country. SHIELD uses unlimited interrogation and detainment practices against their captives. SHIELD reports directly to the Pentagon, and is told to back off, evidence of a governmental level international relations conspiracy. The President seems completely motivated by croneyism and hidden alliances. Check! I get it! We get to see some interesting dynamics between Jessica and Luke Cage, which are flawless given they're written by the same writer who, you know, created Jessica and wrote the whole continuity for the pair anyway. the Bendification of Marvel, as I read it being decribed recently, includes writing the first vaguely plausible (with the exception of anchoring the Helicarrier literally ABOVE Langley, with a swarm of tightly banking F-14s) function for SHIELD: as a privatized military attache of the giovernment charged with homeland security. We get the clever verbal duel banter between two SHIELD agents interrogating a Bendisified C Grade villain, the Killer Shrike, who suddenly acts and looks like a real human. It's hilarious. I'm all in favor of full Bendification. His voice is a salve that washes away discontinuity and hammy comic dialog and coats everything in vernacular language and suspension of disbelief. It may sound like I'm mocking him, but I'm not. I think he's excellent at what he does. I'm amused that Marvel is letting him run wild with his writing style on everything he touches, so when, in a few years, he bails from the company, the return to the usual fare on these titles will be one hell of a buzz kill. In the meantime, keep writing it and i'll keep buying it.

8/10 Clicks




X-Statix 19: I'm still hanging on in hopes that Milligan is going to rediscover his voice on this series. The Princess Di thing kind of tainted the book, and now I find myself looking at the material and wondering if he's taking it seriously. It's not hard to argue that Milligan was having a good time with this series early on, skewering celebrity, pop culture and media satire on a monthly basis. But once editorial started monkeying around, I wonder if he's lost interest in putting out the effort. His work on Human Target remains excellent. But X-Statix is ringing hollow. This new arc seems to be ghosting the "Renormalization Programs" for homosexual kids sent off from their parents to be reprogrammed as good, conservative hetero teens. Vivisector is contacted by another of these vague Xavier-funded scientists, who claims to have developed a serum that will knock the gay, I mean mutation, out of the patient. Desiring some sort of normal life with his superstar celebrity boyfriend (gee, who is THAT do you think?) he takes the bait, and gets straightened out, taht is to say, de-mutated, only to discover his true love was only with him for the shock value. The other members of X-Statix inexplicably (even for cynics) ostracize him, and while he wallows in dispair, it appears the mad scientist joker has a secret agenda: to STEAL themutations for use on himself! And now, I must shut down my cerebral cortex from lack of interest.

3/10 Clicks

self is: wrongrobot #