Isaac’s Book
Young X-Men #4
Written by Marc Guggenheim
Pencilled by Yanick Paquette
Marvel Comics, 2008
I’ve heard a lot of complaints from people about New X-Men being replaced on the shelves with Young X-Men. They say Young X-Men sucks. Maybe they’re right. But here’s what I saw when I read New X-Men: a lot of characters. Too many for me to really keep track of who is who. The art was such that I couldn’t tell what was happening. And a lot of deaths.
A busload of students were blown up in New X-Men, a bunch of characters lost their powers from the House of M stuff, several more were hunted down by a mutant-hating religious group — and still, too many main characters to keep track of.
So with Young X-Men it’s like how it was when the X-Men first started out — a smaller group going on their missions, protecting a world that hates and fears them, and with a good chunk of them having chump powers. Come on, you don’t think it would suck to be Beast pre-super smart and Angel on a team with Iceman? Well, here we’ve got a team that includes Blindfold and Wolfcub — a precog and a weak Wolverine, respectively.
My main complaint with Young X-Men is how brown everything feels. There isn’t a vibrant palette of colours to excite the reader. This new character Ink gets his powers from his tattoos — so he can do anything that he has a tattoo of, which is kind of a problem but I’m not going to get into that — but all of his tattoos are just black ink that’s hard to see in the comic. He was a great opportunity to get some colour into this book, with a variety of cool designs on him, and they give him, what, three all-black tattoos? He just looks like a regular guy. I seriously don’t know what these guys upstairs are thinking. Just thinking about this is getting me all upset in my chest and brain area — it really is my biggest complaint and it overshadows the rest of the book.
And you know what? The rest of the book isn’t all that bad. They’ve got a classic X-Men story with traitors in their midst and the Hellfire club, and you don’t know who is on whose side. It would have been better if some of the revelations revealed had come sooner than issue four, but I’ve read far, far worse decompressed stories, so I won’t complain about that one.
But why isn’t Cannonball wearing the goggles? Is that not the source of his awesome power?
Actually they aren’t, I just like them is all.
Miles’ Book
Captain Britain and M: 13 #3
Written by Paul Cornell
Pencilled by Leonard Kirk
Inked by Jesse Delperdang and Scott Hanna
Marvel Comics, 2008
Not sure why Spitfire is a vampire on the cover of this issue. I know the two words rhyme really well, but is that reason enough? I should probably just be thankful that she doesn’t have a bumpy, Skrull chin that’s all the rage these days. The most boring rage in comic’s history.
There’s a lot of good buzz coming off this book — so I was pretty excited to read it — however, it didn’t fully live up to my expectations. First, the title character is only on the last page of this book and I was looking forward to seeing him in all his Union Jack glory. Second, his absence is never talked about, nor is his return ever explained in this issue. Or if it was I missed it. And third, a lot of this issue has to do with magic and magic in the Marvel universe is such a mishmash of broken story ideas that it has ceased to make sense. The Skrulls have magic and I’m not really sure what that means. I mean, I know it’s bad, but I’m not sure what is at stake in this story.
As a random book, this issue doesn’t really measure. But I’m guessing that taken in the context of the first two issues, or when the trade comes out, this will be a rocking chapter in the Captain Britain story.
P.S. What I totally loved was the nod to the 1981 Excalibur movie in this issue when Marvel’s Merlin showed up in the same metal skullcap. More wizards should have metal skullcaps.
