Random thoughts, questions, suggestions, ideas, criticism, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll.
Quick question from me: are the New X-Men posts changing anyone's mind on the status of Morrison's run as a whole? Am I preaching to the choir (which is not always a bad thing)? Or is this one of those "I see your points but I still love New X-Men."
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Grant Morrison's New X-Men 134
I think the only reason this issue is a prologue to the four part Riot at Xavier's and not part one of a FIVE part Riot at Xavier's is that Quitely could only do four and not five issues in a row, and Marvel had been promising that they were saving him for a whole arc.
Jumbo Carnation, a mutant fashion designer, is dead, found outside a club called The X-Factory, which is a great name for a mutant club -- Morrison is great at naming stuff. I don't know anything about this guy, and I don't really care that he is dead, but OK, fine. People in the issue claim this is important, and I have no choice but to believe them. Morrison is telling, not showing, which is not the best option. He should have had this character be in the news from issue one.
Quentin Quire, a elitist genius with a "see through mind", hangs out with an idiot, who makes crude jokes about whether a sexy mutant can get Sophie to drop her pants -- Quentin has a crush on one of the cookoo girls. That he hangs out with this guy makes a certain amount of sense, I guess -- he is looking for people he can control and he hates people who pretend to be what they are not. He has a newspaper clipping about the "Mutant Menace" that came out the day he was born -- apparently just about the time mutants first started appearing. He calls it a pop art masterpiece, and calls some random girl "Retarda". His immaturity is being established in these pages, and when he finds out he was adopted he will begin his teenage rebellion.
Meanwhile the Beast and Cyclops are investigating the death of Jumbo. A human cop assigned to a mutant crime division is very excited to meet Beast -- he calls him Henry, and tells a story about how the Beast saved him and his pregnant wife during a mutant terrorist attack, drove them to the hospital in a tank (this may be an incident from an actual old X-Men issue, I don't know). All the Beast has to say to the guy is the caustic "all humans look alike." The cartoon friendly art does not help here. This guy is being perfectly nice, even congratulating him on coming out of the closet, and Hank is just being petty and mean for no reason -- or as part of some idiot "performance art" prank, which might be worse. A professor at the school is just as juvenile as the students.
In a conversation with Scott it turns out the Hank being gay thing spawned out as "a cruel, calculated strike at Trish Tilby's fickle heart," but, as a reporter, she leaked it to the media, so he embraced it. I do not see how his being gay was supposed to hurt her feelings, but maybe I do not get it. The Beast makes a lame argument that he might as well be gay because he has been taunted his whole life for his individualistic looks and style of dress. Lame. The mutant-homosexual thing was always a great metaphor -- don't make it literal. Then we get a conversation about the old days at the school, references to 60s X-Men issues. It seems like this should have to do with the upcoming Riot, the old versus the new, but it does not work that well. We , however, get a nice bit of foreshadowing when Scott tells Hank he is on the road to apocalyptic mind loss -- in Morrison's final story the Beast will become a version of the X-Men villain Apocalypse.
This prologue contains the seeds of what will become, in the next four issues, the only Morrison-Quitely team-up that is less than perfect, that is actually lame: The story should be old versus new, an interesting theme in a book that launched as THE NEW, the posthuman, the edgy superhero book. Like most teenagers, Quentin wants to wipe away the hypocrisy and illusions others have -- he shows the true, ugly form of a mutant who looks sexy, a moment that would have been better if Morrison had stuck with the pop-sexy X-Men idea from the manifesto: Quentin could have torn them apart on this level. But Hank is being acting like a petty teenager, and that is just an emblem of the fact that Morrison failed to make this book as edgy and "post-human" as he intended. Quentin is a petty teenager having a stereotypical rebellion -- he starts doing drugs and gets a crazy haircut. When these two groups face off instead of being the ideological battle royale it should be, it becomes hard to tell who to sympathize with the least.
Jumbo Carnation, a mutant fashion designer, is dead, found outside a club called The X-Factory, which is a great name for a mutant club -- Morrison is great at naming stuff. I don't know anything about this guy, and I don't really care that he is dead, but OK, fine. People in the issue claim this is important, and I have no choice but to believe them. Morrison is telling, not showing, which is not the best option. He should have had this character be in the news from issue one.
Quentin Quire, a elitist genius with a "see through mind", hangs out with an idiot, who makes crude jokes about whether a sexy mutant can get Sophie to drop her pants -- Quentin has a crush on one of the cookoo girls. That he hangs out with this guy makes a certain amount of sense, I guess -- he is looking for people he can control and he hates people who pretend to be what they are not. He has a newspaper clipping about the "Mutant Menace" that came out the day he was born -- apparently just about the time mutants first started appearing. He calls it a pop art masterpiece, and calls some random girl "Retarda". His immaturity is being established in these pages, and when he finds out he was adopted he will begin his teenage rebellion.
Meanwhile the Beast and Cyclops are investigating the death of Jumbo. A human cop assigned to a mutant crime division is very excited to meet Beast -- he calls him Henry, and tells a story about how the Beast saved him and his pregnant wife during a mutant terrorist attack, drove them to the hospital in a tank (this may be an incident from an actual old X-Men issue, I don't know). All the Beast has to say to the guy is the caustic "all humans look alike." The cartoon friendly art does not help here. This guy is being perfectly nice, even congratulating him on coming out of the closet, and Hank is just being petty and mean for no reason -- or as part of some idiot "performance art" prank, which might be worse. A professor at the school is just as juvenile as the students.
In a conversation with Scott it turns out the Hank being gay thing spawned out as "a cruel, calculated strike at Trish Tilby's fickle heart," but, as a reporter, she leaked it to the media, so he embraced it. I do not see how his being gay was supposed to hurt her feelings, but maybe I do not get it. The Beast makes a lame argument that he might as well be gay because he has been taunted his whole life for his individualistic looks and style of dress. Lame. The mutant-homosexual thing was always a great metaphor -- don't make it literal. Then we get a conversation about the old days at the school, references to 60s X-Men issues. It seems like this should have to do with the upcoming Riot, the old versus the new, but it does not work that well. We , however, get a nice bit of foreshadowing when Scott tells Hank he is on the road to apocalyptic mind loss -- in Morrison's final story the Beast will become a version of the X-Men villain Apocalypse.
This prologue contains the seeds of what will become, in the next four issues, the only Morrison-Quitely team-up that is less than perfect, that is actually lame: The story should be old versus new, an interesting theme in a book that launched as THE NEW, the posthuman, the edgy superhero book. Like most teenagers, Quentin wants to wipe away the hypocrisy and illusions others have -- he shows the true, ugly form of a mutant who looks sexy, a moment that would have been better if Morrison had stuck with the pop-sexy X-Men idea from the manifesto: Quentin could have torn them apart on this level. But Hank is being acting like a petty teenager, and that is just an emblem of the fact that Morrison failed to make this book as edgy and "post-human" as he intended. Quentin is a petty teenager having a stereotypical rebellion -- he starts doing drugs and gets a crazy haircut. When these two groups face off instead of being the ideological battle royale it should be, it becomes hard to tell who to sympathize with the least.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Comics Out March 28, 2007
Jodi Picoult and Drew Johnson's Wonder Woman #6. I picked this up because I was reading the (now aborted) Heinberg-Dodson Wonder Woman, and, after Metzler was such a surprise hit for me on JLA, I was curious about a female novelist taking over the book. I read the first few pages and got hit so hard on the head with the exposition stick I blacked out. Check this out for dialogue: Wonder Woman is in disguise as Agent Diana Prince, and her partner says
"I can't believe this is my job! I can't believe we have to baby sit some loser who won a reality TV show to become the new Maxi-Man! I can't believe you are my partner! I can't believe cotton candy costs four dollars now!"
Actual unedited dialogue. Only people in comics trying to get new readers talk like this, summarizing everything about their day to people who already know what their day is like. Maxi-Man, I can only assume, is some kind of feminine product superhero tie in. I did not read the rest of the issue to find out.
Action Comics came out today, but for some reason I cannot understand it does not follow where the last issue, written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, left off -- it features an unrelated story by a new writing team. I don't care enough to figure out what is going on.
Grant Morrison's new Batman issue is also out today but my comic book store experienced a problem with their shipment and are missing a bunch of books including this one, so I will have to get it later. I will get it this week, but after last issue I am not in any kind of hurry.
Quentin Tarantino will be at Jim Hanley's Universe in New York City for an hour on Saturday, but I am not going to wait in the crowd for that, even though I am practically counting the days down till Grindhouse.
Review, recommend, and discuss this weeks comics and comics news.
"I can't believe this is my job! I can't believe we have to baby sit some loser who won a reality TV show to become the new Maxi-Man! I can't believe you are my partner! I can't believe cotton candy costs four dollars now!"
Actual unedited dialogue. Only people in comics trying to get new readers talk like this, summarizing everything about their day to people who already know what their day is like. Maxi-Man, I can only assume, is some kind of feminine product superhero tie in. I did not read the rest of the issue to find out.
Action Comics came out today, but for some reason I cannot understand it does not follow where the last issue, written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, left off -- it features an unrelated story by a new writing team. I don't care enough to figure out what is going on.
Grant Morrison's new Batman issue is also out today but my comic book store experienced a problem with their shipment and are missing a bunch of books including this one, so I will have to get it later. I will get it this week, but after last issue I am not in any kind of hurry.
Quentin Tarantino will be at Jim Hanley's Universe in New York City for an hour on Saturday, but I am not going to wait in the crowd for that, even though I am practically counting the days down till Grindhouse.
Review, recommend, and discuss this weeks comics and comics news.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
From Sharon Old's Sex Without Love (Commonplace Book)
I love to teach this poem; it always makes for a fun classroom. Here is the end -- she is describing the people who have sex without love:
These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health -- just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health -- just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Grant Morrison's New X-Men 133
[This post is part of a series of posts looking at Grant Morrison's New X-Men run issue by issue. For more posts like this one, just click the link at the bottom of this post that says "New X-Men".]
Morrison killed off 16 million mutants in Genosha right around the time of the World Trade Center attacks. In issue 132 he tries to do a heartfelt tribute to that real world tragedy with mixed results. It ends with a silent page of the team crying for what has been lost, a heartfelt attempt, if a failed one. The very next issue opens up with Wolverine slaughtering Arabs in Afghanistan -- he gives one guy a chance to put down his gun (which cannot harm Wolverine, so they guy poses no threat), and when he does not, Wolverine cuts his hand off. So much for the sensitive treatment -- you will remember how I pointed out how this book cannot find any kind of coherent tone. Van Sciver adds a further ironic dimension to Morrison playing with real world events -- one guy has a "Van-Sci-Ver" gun. Wow that is not clever at all.
And that is not the end of Morrison using the X-Men in this issue to do the kind of ham-fisted "real world relevance / wet dream revenge fantasies" found in Cassaday's Captain America in the days following 9-11. Only pages later, Xavier and Jean are on a flight to India that is hijacked and they mind control the terrorists to put down their guns and talk like bad L.A. pop psychology self-help books, just as they did with "Animal" a few issue back. It is a pacifist version of Wolverine's violent revenge, but it is still a fantasy about brainwashing the 9-11 terrorists and turning them into idiots. Ironically, Xavier says they "talked" to these guys, but clearly he and Jean rewrote their minds with a force they could not resist. I expect a guy as smart as Morrison to be more interesting or subversive or SOMETHING with his fictional take on real world events. With all this stuff about mind control and punishment I do not know what to make of the fact that, when the terrorists attack, Xavier is reading an airport or in-flight magazine about HIMSELF with the words "mutant philosopher" in French and an image of him looking like the French theorist of discipline and power, Foucault. (This magazine was pointed out a while back -- whoever did it should take credit for the grab in the comments below).
Are we done with terrorism yet? No we are not, as, when Xavier lands, someone tries to take him out with a head-shot from a long distance rifle with a scope. It turns out to be Lilandra, still crazy from Nova, but still -- why does the only way she can think to kill him have to look like the assassination of an American president? I do not even know what to do with all these images, except be surprised that Morrison seems to be drawing on them in a fairly uncritical way. He is channeling the voice of the culture or something, and it is very depressing. I certainly do not know what to make of Xavier telling Lilandra that everything will be ok, and how maybe she should look on the bright side of Nova breaking her mind -- maybe Lilandra is not broken, but dissolved, changed to new form. It is ironic that Morrison's response to real world violence is to go back to standard revenge fantasies, and not new forms.
A fascinating female Arab mutant is introduced dressed in the traditional black covering of Muslim Women -- talk about a commentary on the sexy-leather uniforms Morrison introduced. (Jean, when she meets her, is wearing a Tee-shirt version of her Phoenix outfit, which is great -- Van Sciver draws her with a tremendous natural beauty in this issue, something he was not doing in issue 117). This new mutant can become dust and clean the flesh off men's bones with a storm, but all she ever says is "Dust." With all the idiot terrorist revenge stuff, this comes across like a breath of fresh air, an interesting new character who could go in so many directions. This is a character and an idea with a huge amount of promise -- a new character in the tradition of the around-the-world-team of Giant Size X-Men. Unfortunately, Morrison virtually never uses her again, which is just a stupid fucking waste.
My main point about Morrison's run as a whole is that it is uneven in the worst way, brilliant one moment, awful the next. So it is no surprise that this issue features on of my favorite bits in the run, A GREAT detail: We see a few more X-Factor and X-Whatever mutants working at X-Core India in the kind of superhero outfits common in the 90s -- because of Bollywood, they say, people love all the tassels and colors. What a FANTASTIC way to imaginatively salvage a bad moment in superhero costume history by finding a proper context -- there is the Morrison I know and love.
The issue ends with nonsense about the Phoenix hatching and how the planet has toxic levels of aggression and nature is dealing with the mutant threat through violence. Apparently the "toxic levels of aggression" in the culture were getting to Morrison as well in this issue, because he was channeling a host of them like a bad Death Wish movie. At least we got the great line about Bollywood, even if it buried in this mess.
Morrison killed off 16 million mutants in Genosha right around the time of the World Trade Center attacks. In issue 132 he tries to do a heartfelt tribute to that real world tragedy with mixed results. It ends with a silent page of the team crying for what has been lost, a heartfelt attempt, if a failed one. The very next issue opens up with Wolverine slaughtering Arabs in Afghanistan -- he gives one guy a chance to put down his gun (which cannot harm Wolverine, so they guy poses no threat), and when he does not, Wolverine cuts his hand off. So much for the sensitive treatment -- you will remember how I pointed out how this book cannot find any kind of coherent tone. Van Sciver adds a further ironic dimension to Morrison playing with real world events -- one guy has a "Van-Sci-Ver" gun. Wow that is not clever at all.
And that is not the end of Morrison using the X-Men in this issue to do the kind of ham-fisted "real world relevance / wet dream revenge fantasies" found in Cassaday's Captain America in the days following 9-11. Only pages later, Xavier and Jean are on a flight to India that is hijacked and they mind control the terrorists to put down their guns and talk like bad L.A. pop psychology self-help books, just as they did with "Animal" a few issue back. It is a pacifist version of Wolverine's violent revenge, but it is still a fantasy about brainwashing the 9-11 terrorists and turning them into idiots. Ironically, Xavier says they "talked" to these guys, but clearly he and Jean rewrote their minds with a force they could not resist. I expect a guy as smart as Morrison to be more interesting or subversive or SOMETHING with his fictional take on real world events. With all this stuff about mind control and punishment I do not know what to make of the fact that, when the terrorists attack, Xavier is reading an airport or in-flight magazine about HIMSELF with the words "mutant philosopher" in French and an image of him looking like the French theorist of discipline and power, Foucault. (This magazine was pointed out a while back -- whoever did it should take credit for the grab in the comments below).
Are we done with terrorism yet? No we are not, as, when Xavier lands, someone tries to take him out with a head-shot from a long distance rifle with a scope. It turns out to be Lilandra, still crazy from Nova, but still -- why does the only way she can think to kill him have to look like the assassination of an American president? I do not even know what to do with all these images, except be surprised that Morrison seems to be drawing on them in a fairly uncritical way. He is channeling the voice of the culture or something, and it is very depressing. I certainly do not know what to make of Xavier telling Lilandra that everything will be ok, and how maybe she should look on the bright side of Nova breaking her mind -- maybe Lilandra is not broken, but dissolved, changed to new form. It is ironic that Morrison's response to real world violence is to go back to standard revenge fantasies, and not new forms.
A fascinating female Arab mutant is introduced dressed in the traditional black covering of Muslim Women -- talk about a commentary on the sexy-leather uniforms Morrison introduced. (Jean, when she meets her, is wearing a Tee-shirt version of her Phoenix outfit, which is great -- Van Sciver draws her with a tremendous natural beauty in this issue, something he was not doing in issue 117). This new mutant can become dust and clean the flesh off men's bones with a storm, but all she ever says is "Dust." With all the idiot terrorist revenge stuff, this comes across like a breath of fresh air, an interesting new character who could go in so many directions. This is a character and an idea with a huge amount of promise -- a new character in the tradition of the around-the-world-team of Giant Size X-Men. Unfortunately, Morrison virtually never uses her again, which is just a stupid fucking waste.
My main point about Morrison's run as a whole is that it is uneven in the worst way, brilliant one moment, awful the next. So it is no surprise that this issue features on of my favorite bits in the run, A GREAT detail: We see a few more X-Factor and X-Whatever mutants working at X-Core India in the kind of superhero outfits common in the 90s -- because of Bollywood, they say, people love all the tassels and colors. What a FANTASTIC way to imaginatively salvage a bad moment in superhero costume history by finding a proper context -- there is the Morrison I know and love.
The issue ends with nonsense about the Phoenix hatching and how the planet has toxic levels of aggression and nature is dealing with the mutant threat through violence. Apparently the "toxic levels of aggression" in the culture were getting to Morrison as well in this issue, because he was channeling a host of them like a bad Death Wish movie. At least we got the great line about Bollywood, even if it buried in this mess.
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