There are serious spoilers herein for Astonishing X-Men 4, Chosen 3, and Girl Genius 12, plus discussion of story details in other comics. You have been warned.
Astonishing X-Men 4: There are several thoughts which I'm not going to develop any further than reporting them here, since the book's not worth any more than that:
Chosen 3: Mark Millar is a hack. I will admit I hadn't seen the twist ending coming, if only because it was so obvious and trite. I mean, wow, the second coming of Christ turns out to be the Anti-Christ, how wonderfully ironic.
Pfui.
Ex Machina 3: No redeeming characteristics whatsoever. This book is now dropped.
Girl Genius 12: OK, so Agatha wasn't fried by the clank last issue, no real shock there. What remains shocking is how hard the Foglios have to cheat to pull it off; this ranks with the worst of the cheats in the Saturday morning serials. I re-read the end of #11 this morning and what they're saying happened now is possible, but only by negating at least three inferences that the sequence encourages by use of standard comics techniques (the clank picked up Agatha, that's Agatha's fried body, and everyone shouting "Agatha" isn't shouting it at the fried body). That's cheating.
But, at least, the inking (or reproduction from pencils) is a lot better this issue.
Promethea 31: Life continues after the apocalypse, just about like before. Moore opens up the door (Miracleman book 3 style) for a continuation by other hands (after next issue's epilogue, that is). Of course, whose other hands?
Moore's philosophical yammering is as measured by sophisticated scientific equipment less than 3 percent as interesting as his narrative, which makes it nice that there are only 11 pages of philosophical yammering in this issue. In an effort to keep that 3 percent, J.H. Williams III turns in several really amazingly beautiful pages.
Terra Obscura v2 1: Other hands, for example, being Peter Hogan, who's adequate if not inspiring. The Pantha/Strange section is oddly structured, for example. Still, the imagined leavings of Moore are such good soil that it takes some god-awful hackery for the result to be uninteresting, and Hogan is not a god-awful hack. I like the Golden Age-but-not-our-Golden Age basis of TO.
The Fighting Yank/Ms. Masque relationship is nothing but implausible fan-service, though that doesn't mean I want it to change.
Ultimate Fantastic Four 10: Another book that gets dropped this month. Ellis in four issues has turned in only one that gets into real Fantastic Four territory. And in this issue, he lets his comprehensive contempt for superheros in general and the trappings of the Fantastic Four in particular run free. If you're writing a superhero book called the Fantastic Four, which Ellis is, you can avoid using the phrase "Fantasticar" if you think it's stupid, but you don't spend three pages making fun of it. And if you think "It's clobberin' time" is a stupid catchphrase, you don't use it in order to make fun of it.
If your audience isn't aware of those trappings, then you're simply showing them that your characters are jackasses by having them do such things that get them so mocked. If your audience is aware of those trappings, then you're telling them that what they hold such affection for is stupid.
Who is the Ultimate line aimed at? If it's aimed at the same kind of early teenagers who were attracted to the Marvel Universe in the 1960s, then the gosh-wow stuff is necessary, not foolish detritus. To that audience--I was, and to a large part still am, in that psychological segment--"the Fantasticar" is a phrase that suggests something exciting and adventurous, a phrase that might well make me want to read more. Tom Swift Jr.'s Tri-phibian Atomicar certainly did.
Ellis is too cynical to write for early teenagers. If the Ultimate line is written for them, who is it written for?
We3 1: I am not nearly so enamored of this book as Marc is, but then I have little patience for reading pantomime. The level of craft here in both art and writing is as high as Marc says, though. I am lowbrow, and if I would prefer that Morrison and Quitely do projects like JLA: Earth 2, well, that's my problem, and it doesn't prevent me from seeing how well done something like this, which I don't like, is.
Posted by Greg at August 28, 2004 1:31 PM