I think I had less of a reaction to my second vaccination shot than the first. Better than having a worse reaction, certainly. Now I just have to wait another week or so and I'm free and clear, more or less. Although I really doubt all the people I see walking around with no masks are fully vaccinated, or vaccinated at all, given the state I live in.
Whatever. Humanity being fucked is not news. Here's a couple of first issues from Marvel. More pages than their average comic, but more money, too. Unless you buy one of them in less-than-perfect condition like I did.
Whatever the ultimate plot of this is going to be, at least for this first arc, seems to revolve around a place called "Sin-Cong", which seems to be sort of a stand-in for Vietnam. It's in French Indochina, it becomes a Socialist Republic, Flash Thompson went there while in the military (and saw Daredevil perform in a USO show, which is the most bizarre thing in this issue). It tracks.
Busiek starts in 1947, with a lady fleeing from the All-Winners Squad, then jumps forward several times from there. To Ben Grimm and Reed Richards (pre-rocket flight, and Ben looking taller than Reed, which seems wrong to me, although I think Ben's been getting drawn as bigger and taller for decades now) investigating a strange giant corpse, to Thor and Iron Man fighting a weird dragon out at sea. All the way up to the present, with Frank Castle killing some drug dealers (one of the few universal constants), and the entire building blowing up. Accidentally for once, when Frank's around. And there are some new characters around, watching and talking in vague and ominous phrases. As you do.
It's not exactly what I was expecting. Which was something more along the lines of the old Marvel Comics Presents. A bunch of short stories about different characters which would gradually interconnect. It seems like it'll still sort of be that, but probably done more seamlessly and less gradually than I was thinking. But Kurt Busiek's a writer I trust to pull off something like that more than most comics writers I can think of. Not likely to lose track of plot threads or get too lost in the weeds. No guarantee every thread will play out satisfactorily, but a solid chance.
Cinar and Isanove don't try to switch up their styles as the story moves through different eras. Even though that's a stylistic approach I like, they made the right call. Keeps the feeling of all these different events being part of the same larger story. Things look like they're all over the place, but they're all connected. Cinar's art is very classic superhero, probably descended from the Neal Adams style. Reminds me a bit of Bagley's (although that might be Isanove's coloring), but with a slightly heavier line. The character's are outlined against their surroundings strongly.
Isanove doesn't muddy things up, keeps them bright and clear without going too high-definition. Busiek says in a text piece at the end of the book that while Marvels was superheroes from the average Joes perspective, this series is superheroes from their own perspective. So things really shouldn't look too wild or bizarrely day-glo. Superheroes see weird stuff everyday.
All that said, this feels like the kind of book that might be better read in collected format. If it continues to jump around like it did in this issue. If it settles in and focuses on one or two threads in subsequent issues, where the reader gets something closer to a full story (that's part of something larger), then that's another matter. And again, that's the sort of thing I'd trust Busiek to manage better than most in these decompressed days.
So mutants have their happy, sentient island nation, but Nightcrawler's concerned. The younger mutants are daring each other to get killed because you have to experience resurrection. Pixie succumbs to peer pressure and lets a bigot blow her head off with a shotgun at point blank range. To think Nico Minoru missed out on being in a relationship with someone who has worse judgement than her.
There's also the whole bit where, if you were a depowered mutant and wish to be resurrected with your powers, you have to be murdered through brutal ritual combat first. When a young woman is asking Nightcrawler to do it because he's a kind one (meaning I guess he'd just teleport her head off), things are fucked. Unfortunately, Kurt doesn't understand what she's asking, so she ends up with Magneto cutting her to pieces with jagged metal and insisting they can't simply give that gift to people. Why the fuck not? You sure as hell resurrected Pixie in a hurry and she's clearly a fucking imbecile! Oh, and Chuck Xavier thinks his son is up to no-good. Well sure, why not? Maybe he'll make Chuck eat that stupid helmet.
So in theory, Spurrier's writing about Kurt's attempt to find some larger shared ideals Krakoa can believe in. Except it certainly seems to me they've already found them, namely this blind belief they've transcended normal human thoughts, even as they continue to do all the things human societies do. They're going to resurrect dead mutants, but Pixie gets to jump the line because she knows people, and precogs like Destiny or Blindfold get skipped over entirely. They say "kill no human", but then quickly disqualify all sorts of other life from that definition - like artificial intelligences or other genetically enhanced life - so they can kill it. You have to die horribly to get your powers back. Someone can be barred from resurrection for crimes against mutants and humans (Maddy Pryor), but Mr. Sinister and Magneto are walking around free as birds.
They have a faith already, and it's Apocalypse's. The strong survive. Or maybe the present day United States, where if you die because you can't pay your medical bills, it's your own fault for being poor. Which, to be fair, Dr. Nemesis says is what will happen if Kurt doesn't come up with something. No pressure! If I can't stick with this book, it's going to be because I want to see all these characters die horribly. Without being resurrected. Magneto especially. What a shithead. Someone make him eat that stupid bucket on his head.
Quinn's Nightcrawler is a thin, spends a lot of time with stooped shoulders. Even when he tries to lighten things by pranking Magneto, it ends with him slouched again. The coloring tends to shade his face darker, casting a cloud over him because he's troubled or depressed. A lot of characters shown as standing above or over Kurt - Xavier, Magneto, Legion, Dr. Nemesis. Either the ones making things happen while Kurt's stuck and indecisive, or just assholes. Mopey, Depressed Nightcrawler is not my favorite (and I still can't believe they didn't put Nightcrawler in Marauders. It's a book about X-Men being pirates and you didn't include the most pirate-obsessed X-Man of all.)
Also, those Krakoan file pages are straight garbage. They're so wildly different from how the actual drawn pages look that I kept thinking they were ads and skipping right past them. As it is, I could barely bother to go back and read them once I realized my mistake. Why would I want to read an organizational flowchart? I can do that shit at work, if I feel like making experience deep regret about my life choices.
Ultimately, I think both these books can get one more issue, but beyond that, I'm really not sure. I guess Way of X made me think more, but it may have simply crystallized a lot of issues I had with the current direction of the X-books as is. And it's entirely possible everything that bugs me is part of a plan, but do I trust the group of writers to not draw a frankly terrible conclusion. Probably not.
2 comments:
Yeah, my understanding is that Sin-Cong was invented as a generic Asian country to stand in for Korea, Vietnam and so on, when it became clear that you couldn't use the actual nations and still claim that the Punisher is young enough to get around without a walking frame.
So now Sin-Cong is where Tony Stark got hurt, where Frank Castle got PTSD, and I think where Charles Xavier got paralysed.
That's interesting, I didn't know it was actually a pre-existing creation. I figured Busiek made it up for this story, but I didn't realize they'd shifted those characters' backstories to other locations. As a workaround for the sliding timescale, I guess it works.
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