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Crushing Comics S01E083 – X-Statix emerges from X-Force (+ X-Men, Diversity, & Acceptance)

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I’m down to just two books left to unwrap. I know exactly what they are, but not which one is which, so I’m 50% surprised to unwrap the massive X-Statix omnibus.

X-Statix is an indie-style, deconstructionist take on mutantdom that features ongoing themes of addiction, teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, and racial identity/discrimination. I talk a little bit about X-Statix’s story, but spend a lot of the episode discussing diversity and comics. If you reject a (great) comic for having a same sex relationship, then have you been paying attention to the X-Men in the first place?

(You might recall this story from when I originally told it on CK over half a decade ago; it is still one of my favorite posts of all time.)

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 83 features the X-Statix Omnibus, which is covered in the Guide to X-Force.

This Week In X: All-New Wolverine, Legion, & X-Men Blue

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It’s the ninth week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X we have an unusually light week of X-Men. There are just three new titles and three collections to cover, although one of those collections is a really big deal to me!

  • All-New Wolverine (2016) #31 is a fun-filled one-off team-up of Honey Badger and Deadpool.
  • Legion (2018) #2 is a comic book that does not star Legion nor appeal to his fans from any medium.
  • X-Men: Blue (2017) #22 finds some character moments in this symbiote space saga, but skimps on details.

Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and hear which ones I’d recommend picking up. Plus, learn what new X-collections are out this week, including Legion – Son of X, New Mutants, and Weapon X!

The Pull List: Avengers: No Surrender, Backways, Detective Comics, Maestros, Marvel 2-in-One, & more!

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The Pull List has grown a lot longer this week – 17 issues in all!

That’s due to catching up with another Marvel book (Thanos), several new indie #1s, and a few Image books I’ve read to the present in the past few weeks. Also, starting this week I’m running very short reviews of the X-Men books covered in This Week in X here, so that you can catch up on all the week’s new titles in one place!

Here’s what’s on my Pull List:

  • Abbott (2018) #1
  • Avengers (2017) #677
  • Backways (2017) #2
  • Detective Comics (1937/2016) #973
  • Dissonance (2018) #1
  • Doomsday Clock (2017) #3
  • Gasolina (2017) #5
  • Legion (2018) #1
  • Maestros (2017) #4
  • Marvel 2-in-One (2018) #2
  • Phoenix Resurrection (2018) #4
  • Raven: Daughter of Darkness (2018) #1
  • Thanos (2016) #15
  • Vinegar Teeth (2018) #1
  • Wonder Woman (2016) #39
  • X-Men: Blue (2017) #20
  • X-Men: Blue (2017) Annual 1

I hope these capsule reviews can help you decided what series you should add to your own pull list, or at least catch up with once they hit collected editions! And, remember, this feature is still new and evolving, so your comments and suggestions count a lot! [Read more…] about The Pull List: Avengers: No Surrender, Backways, Detective Comics, Maestros, Marvel 2-in-One, & more!

This Week in X: Legion #1, Phoenix Resurrection #4, and X-Men Blue #20 & Annual 1

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It’s the fourth week of new comics in 2018, and it brings a bumpy week of four X-Men titles that are all kind of average.

We have the debut of Peter Milligan’s Legion #1, the penultimate chapter of Matthew Rosenberg’s Phoenix Resurrection #4, Cullen Bunn wrapping up a major arc on X-Men: Blue #20, plus the kickoff of a new crossover with Venom in Bunn’s X-Men: Blue Annual 1.

As much as I abundantly loathe the time-displaced original X-Men, I couldn’t help but be thoroughly impressed with how Bunn reinserts some urgency and mystery into their title just as it his the 80-issue mark.

Top 12 X-Men Collections of 2011 – Reprinted Material

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Welcome to 2012 – I am still a comic book geek.

Specifically, the X-Men.

Yep. That’s a lot of comic books.

Specifically, I own something like 95% of every X-Men comic book ever reprinted.

On New Years’ Eve I said to myself, “You dashingly handsome scoundrel, how can you use your obsession to aid people who like the X-Men a normal, healthy amount – unlike you?”

The answer? I will count down for you the top twelve collected editions reprinting X-Men comics originally released before 2010. There’s a vast world of thousands of X-Men comics that have been released since 1963, and not all of them are readily available to buy in book format. These reprints mean that hard-to-get, or never-before-reprinted issues can be bought in handy collections with better reproduction of the line art than original issues.

(As for new X-Men material from 2011, that will require a whole new post to cover!) Read more…

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4. Uncanny X-Men Marvel Masterworks, Vol. 7 HC
Collects Uncanny X-Men #151-159, Annual 5, and Avengers Annual 10.

We’d be kidding ourselves if a new edition of UXM Marvel Masterworks didn’t make the list every year, but it’s for a good reason – these are premium quality, carefully preserved reprints of X-Men material that has rarely ever seen reprint in the past.

This edition sees the return of the amazing Dave Cockrum to art duties, and the return of the vicious Emma Frost to the rogues gallery. Plus, the X-Men return to space for the first time since Dark Phoenix, and Rogue makes her debut in the pages of the Avengers! (Not previously collected in full.)

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3. X-Men by Claremont/Lee Omnibus, Vol. 1 HC
Collects Uncanny X-Men #244-269, Annual #13, X-Men Classic #39

Take two parts Chris Claremont, the writer of ever X-Man tale for over a decade. Add one part the savagely beautiful detailed line-art of Marc Silvestri, and one part explosive newcomer Jim Lee settling in for his first lengthy run on an ongoing title. Lee is renowned as the best comic artist of a generation, and here you can see him grow by leaps and bounds with every issue – which seems to also inspire Silvestri to improve his craft.

Many fans have whined that this is really the Anti-X-Men – the book opens with the team dissolving, and it never truly comes back together in this edition. I say, shove it. This disparate group of stories served to lead into the amazing creative crescendo of Claremont/Lee spending an unbroken year churning out classic issues before both of them jumped ship and the X-line got hijacked by constant gimmick events. (Not previously collected in full.)

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2. X-Men Omnibus, Vol. 2 HC
Collects X-Men #32-66, Avengers #53, KaZar #2-3, and Marvel Tales #30.

While Stan Lee and Jack Kirby laid the bedrock of what it meant to be a mutant, it is this volume that presaged the amazing scope and drama of the X-Men stories that would be told over the next forty years.

Here the original five start to transform from teens to team, and we get the incomparable creative pairing of Roy Thomas with Neal Adams. While this was the period that lead to the X-Men going on hiatus, on re-read you can hardly fault the adventurous plots that ensue. (Also collected in HC and TPB Marvel Masterworks.)

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What could be more classic than Classic X-Men, and more beautiful than early Jim Lee? Well, nothing. But the this next book wins just about every other award there is for X-Collections in 2011 – Most Surprising, Best Complete Saga, Most Shocking, Best Run from a Single Creative Team, Most Mammoth – the list is nearly endless.

…and, my number one collection of the year is…

1. X-Statix Omnibus
Already SOLD OUT at Amazon in just two months – try Cheap Graphic Novels or Tales of Wonder. Collects X-Force#116-129, Brotherhood #9; X-Statix #1-26; Wolverine/Doop #1-2; Dead Girl #1-5; and material from X-Men Unlimited #41, I <3 Marvel, and Nation X #4. 

X-Statix is really weird. Do not think of it as an X-Men comic, or even a Marvel superhero comic, as it relies very little on foreknowledge of either.  It is an indie comic about a deadly and incredibly popular reality television show that happens to star a team of lethal mutants with short life expectancies. There are no “villains” to speak of, though the team certainly faces ongoing challenges.

Instead, think of it as something like Reality Bites or Chasing Amy – or even Hunger Games – a self-aware piece of fiction that constantly comments on the real world culture it is woven within. It is a comic dissecting the convention of superheroes, much in the tradition of Watchmen. Except, instead of a dystopian 1984 we get a celebrity-as-reality obsessed modern day with absolutely no overarching plot.

With no villains and no major arc, you might wonder: what is this 1000+ page book even about? Sex, sexual identity, racial identity, celebrity, drugs, suicide, ethics of pharmaceuticals – you know, the same things our lives are about. It just so happens that each struggle is framed in terms of what it would mean to be a superhero struggling with that incredibly common human condition.

(Previously collected as a series of HCs and TPBs.)

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That’s my countdown! Have I left off any of your major favorite reprints of 2011? Chime in with a comment, and tune back in next week (really!)  for 2011’s top 12 collections of new material.

DC New 52 Review: Red Lanterns #1

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As I’ve been writing these reviews I’ve been studiously staying away from everyone else’s reactions.

I don’t want to be influenced by other readers. This process is about my read as a DC newbie and dedicated X-Fan. I catch a single tweet review on Tuesday nights from @CheapGNsdotcom, and do some debating with @Matropolis over the course of the week, but otherwise I don’t peek at other ratings until I’ve set mine into writing.

On a few occasions (Batgirl being one), when I feet in my gut that a book was so incredibly amazing or awful, I can’t help myself but to check to see if everyone agrees with me.

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t.

Red Lanterns #1

Written by Peter Milligan, art by Ed Benes & Rob Hunter

Rating: .5 of 5 – Terrible

In a Line: “The universe’s rage… is my rage.”

#140char Review: Red Lanterns #1 is a nadir of #DCNew52 reboot, a bad 90s flashback to XTREME bad guys like Carnage headlining pointless blood-bathed books.

CK Says: Skip it!

I feel the need to caveat that I have never read a Rainbow Lantern book before and may have entirely missed the point of this entire endeavor.

Red Lanterns #1 is a comic full of interesting elements that work against each other as a whole. Peter Milligan can be terrific at manipulating oddball teams. The Ed Benes art was consistently awesome. Even the concept of a revenge-powered Lantern corps isn’t a turnoff for me.

The execution was simply off. Milligan’s been there before on his stultifying X-Men run. No amount of awesome art can save a badly conceived comic.

The opening torture scene can’t decide if it wants to be dire or comedic, and introducing a violent space-faring attack kitten with rippling muscles who is bleeding from his mouth would seem to peg this as a offbeat humor title, a la Lobo. The kitten continues to cough up blood all over its captors in what seemed like a mildly funny scene until it is saved in a display of over-the-top violence by a good (bad? (good?)) guy named “Atrocitus,” who proclaims, “What are you doing to my cat?”

Clearly a humor title, right?

Nay. Not when the unbearably lugubrious Atrocitus then launches into a totally emo inner monologue that takes up half the issue. It becomes obvious that this is not meant to be a laughing matter. Also, apparently all of the Red Lanterns exhale blood all the time, or blood-like red energy? That’s the impression I got when we saw a slew of them on panel, each more silly-looking than the last and all breathing blood. This includes a sexy blue-skinned babe with bone wings and a dental floss bikini bottom who can only speak in single word growls.

So, it’s a serious, violent, ultra-bloody, emo humor title with an unintelligible hot babe who craves only range and showing showing off her ass like it’s a trend? Well, they’ve got the pubescent boy demo locked down.

(The irony is that right now Marvel’s hands-down best book is the similarly-themed Uncanny X-Force, except there blend of brainy humor and continuity references alongside the blood, guts, and skin-tight outfits is done to dizzying perfection by Rick Remender. But, maybe a DC fan would hate it.)

Milligan’s scripting failures aside, Benes art is hard to deny – he’s really enjoyable throughout, especially on a tease of Hal Jordan in a flashback. However, the red on red on red color palette really begins to wear after a few pages with the RL gang. An Earthbound b-plot is a snooze, though I suppose it’s setting up an Earthling to be a Red Lantern.

DC returnees and longtime readers might really delight in the side-story behind Atrocitus, but without existing affection for the concept I think it really falls flat.