Sunday Splash Page #342

 

"Sure, Why Not," in Marvel Team-Up (vol. 3) #18, by Robert Kirkman (writer), Paco Medina (penciler), Juan Vlasco (inker), Marte Garcia (colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer)

There was a second volume of Marvel Team-Up in the mid-90s that lasted about a year. I owned an issue at some point, where Spider-Man "teams up" with Man-Thing, trying to recover some gem for some mysterious guy. In the mid-2000s, Robert Kirkman got a crack at it. Kirkman tended to write 4 to 6 issue story arcs that swapped in and out heroes as they went, most of which tied together into some bigger arc. But his run is probably best known for the crossover with his and Cory Walker's character, Invincible, in issue 14.

I don't care about that, so the issues I have are 15 through 18, the "League of Losers" story, where a guy named Chronok travels back from 2099 to kill all the heroes using all the information the future has about them. If that sort of shit actually worked, it seems like Kang would have pulled it off years ago, but I guess Chronok attacks them in their homes, dispensing with whatever honor Kang pretends to have.

The only survivors are a bunch of heroes who were too unknown for there to be any solid intel about them. They sort of stumble into each other and manage to steal Chronok's device, traveling to 2099 to stop him before he puts his plan in motion. From left to right up there we've got Darkhawk, X-23, Gravity, Sleepwalker, Terror Inc., Speedball, Dagger, Mutant 2099(?), and Reed Richards' brain in a Ben Grimm robot-suit.

My initial thought was that Reed had hijacked Ben's corpse, but no. Arana was one of the initial survivors, but she got killed and Terror, Inc., is wearing her right arm, which grants him her weird exoskeleton ability.

The heroes triumph, but this is one of those stories where the rule is you just create a new timeline. So in their past, Chronok still succeeded and their world is ruined, but there's another timeline where he never made it back there, and versions of them already exist, so they just stay in 2099.

Kirkman gives Darkhawk center stage as the one who leads and rallies the others, and who ends up bringing down Chronok. Gravity and Sleepwalker seem like much heavier hitters, and Speedball and Dagger were both around for a long time before Darkhawk. It's weird seeing Darkhawk talk to Speedball like 'Hawk is the grizzled vet and Speedball the child, but Kirkman's playing pretty loose here anyway. I've never seen X-23 written the way he does, as having survived the initial attack on the X-Men because she got scared and ran, and eventually getting giggly and cuddly with Gravity.

I think the only time that story was ever referenced was the Deadpool/Great Lakes Initiative Summer Fun Spectacular, when Squirrel Girl uses Doom's time machine to try and retrieve this Speedball to replace the one in her present, who is calling himself Penance.

Sunday Splash Page #286

 

"Speech Balloon Tetris," in Jubilee #5, by Robert Kirkman (writer), Derec Donovan (artist), Transparency Digital (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

This was part of yet another, most likely half-assed, attempt by Marvel at reaching a younger audience. Jubilee leaves the X-Mansion to move back to Southern California and live with her Aunt Hope and go to school. So she's crushing on guys, earning the ire of said guy's girlfriend, dealing with authoritarian principals, hanging out at the mall, stuff like that.

She also meets another young mutant named Shane who can shoot lasers out of his fingers and has his own street gang. And Aunt Hope and her butler aren't what they seem to be either, so it isn't all everyday teen life in the big city. Wolverine of course shows up at the end of issue 5.

Is it any good as a book teenagers might be interested in? Hell if I know. It wouldn't have been my thing at that age, but Marvel already had my money, so no reason to give a crap about what I wanted. I'm guessing it didn't find a market, because it ends at 6 issues with Jubilee thinking her great-aunt is dead and moving back to Xavier's.

Where Marvel would fail to do much of anything with her. She got depowered by House of M,  became a vampire during that "X-Men fight vampires" thing. Then she adopted/stole a baby. I think they made her a headmaster in a new Generation X book, that was canceled almost immediately. The high point was probably Jubilee joining the supporting cast of Patsy Walker, aka Hellcat after Civil War II's dumbassery took She-Hulk off the field.

Again, A Wandering Post

So I'll start at the beginning. I've decided to part ways with Ultimate X-Men. I read the issue that came out last week, and despite all the potentially interesting developments, I was left cold. I did some thinking about that, and concluded that I don't really expect the ending to live up to the build-up. It's a problem I seem to be having with Kirkman's run on UXM. The reveal of who Cable appears to be hooked me, but for some reason the big fight scene between the X-Men and Cable's Wild Pack, culminating in Xavier's apparent death didn't work for me.

It isn't a new problem though, so maybe it's me. It was the one problem I had with Paul Jenkins' run on Peter Parker: Spider-Man. He'd do a multi-issue arc, building up the tension and the stakes, we'd get to the end and... blah. The endings weren't bad, they worked pretty well, didn't bollix up any characters, but they felt flat after everything that had led up to that point. So yeah, maybe it's me. I wonder if on a deeper level, the endless hype has affected me to where I expect that every arc really will produce some deep and awesome change (which I will probably not approve of), and when the arc only rearranges the board a little, to try and introduce some new ideas to build on later, I'm disappointed somehow.

It could possibly be my awareness of the impermanence of changes to comic characters in general. Sure Wolverine left the X-Men to find out about himself, but he'll be back eventually. They all come back eventually (in my head I'm trying to say that in the creepiest voice possible. No idea why).

Hmm, either possibility suggests I'm growing jaded in my later years. Well, Iron Fist is coming out this week (about time!), so that should bolster my spirits, don't you think?

Mistake Or Mistruth

To put it simply, Kitty's stated reason for leaving Xavier's school in Ultimate Spider-Man doesn't jive with the events as we saw them in Ultimate X-Men. In USM, Kitty says the school was getting crowded, and Xavier was displeased with her for demanding he wipe Aunt May's mind of "Peter is Spider-Man" knowledge, so she transferred. In UXM, we've seen that Kitty's been thinking about leaving for at least a couple of issues (spanning a few days), and that Xavier's death has made her realize that being in life-or-death struggles for mutants isn't really what she wants. She came to Xavier's to learn control of her powers, she can control them, so she's leaving.

Sadly, my first feeling on reading Kitty's explanation in USM was disappointment. I thought, 'Darn it Bendis, Kitty just explained her reasons in Ultimate X-Men last month! Pay attention!' I know most of the books in the Ultimate Universe just do as they please, which is probably a good thing, since I wouldn't want other writers to have to pay attention to Ultimates. But I kind of liked that USM and UXM seemed to at least keep in touch. So, a seeming continuity gaffe was disheartening.

Then I thought about it a little more. Does Peter know Xavier is dead? He wasn't at the funeral, and given the hectic pace of his life, it's possible he's missed the news broadcasts about it. So, perhaps Kitty's not being totally straightforward with Peter. It could be payback for Peter going back to MJ, but that doesn't really seem to fit. So why?

In USM, the last time we see Kitty and Xavier interact, Kitty's telling Xavier she hates him because he won't go to bat for her, because taking people's memories is wrong (though I could swear Xavier has done that kind of stuff to people before. They were evil people I suppose, so that makes it okay, maybe?). So I figure that it was shortly after that disagreement when Xavier bites the dust (pending current events in Ultimate X-Men). So Kitty feels guilty. Things between the two of them didn't end on a positive note, and now she's feeling remorse over that. So she changes the story to where she left, but Xavier is still alive, which means they could patch things up again someday down the line.

Personally, I'd much rather go with that line of thinking, rather than "once again Marvel books can't keep their stories straight", so I will. Good for me.