Review: Dark Reign: The List - X-Men
Wow! Can a fella get more punctuation in that title?
Yes, I am behind on my Marvel comics. Some books I prefer to let accumulate and read all at once. I'm insufficiently patient to wait for the trade paperback and insufficiently impatient to read them immediately upon coming out. Matt Fraction's Uncanny X-Men is one such book and even though this is in theory a one-shot, it's clearly tied to the Uncanny X-Men story.
So what did I think? Honestly, I was kind of shruggy about it. To be honest, the whole Dark Reign storyline doesn't do much for me. I'm having trouble buying that Norman Osborn winds up in charge of, well, pretty much everything and since that's kind of the foundational plot point of the entire Dark Reign storyline, it hasn't sat well with me. My other complaint is that whenever I read a Dark Reign book - and I have not read all of them by any stretch - it doesn't seem to be about the characters it purports to feature. This is the main thing that bothered me about Dark Reign: Young Avengers, too, and I love me some Young Avengers, but I'm saving my thoughts on that book for tomorrow.
More thoughts on Dark Reign: The List - X-Men after the jump!
I didn't find the story itself particularly touching but I did appreciate that it involved personal connections instead of just piling heroes and villains on the same plate and hitting them with a hammer (no pun intended). I'm not familiar enough with Namor or his back-story to be especially effected. I also felt like the characters of Uncanny X-Men were being used more as a setting than anything else. I mean, yes, they're in it, and they do some neat stuff, but this is really about the loin Norman Osborn gets every time he thinks about waxing some classic face or another. It's always nice to see a Fastball Special, don't get me wrong, but this isn't a story about the X-Men and their name on the cover is what landed this in my bag at the local shop.
Things I liked, though, include that reaction shot when the team see the monster for the first time: Cyclops catching flies, the X-Men assembled behind Namor in a way that communicated action and surprise extremely well. It was easy to get that they had basically run up to the edge of the water and then skidded to a halt when they saw what was out there. The art assists the reader in creating the action of the story, which is exactly the sort of collaboration a good comic book creates. I also enjoyed Fraction's dialogue when writing Osborn and H.A.M.M.E.R., for all that I just bitched about the Osborn storyline in general. Anyone who's read Five Fists of Science and Casanova can tell that Fraction is most at home writing mouthy science villains with zany ideas. He gets to do a little of that here, and it's enjoyable.
At the same time, while the X-Men are across various books clearly a welcoming place for storylines about science villainy, it made me wish there were simply more Casanova I could read instead. It's not that it's bad, it's that it didn't connect with me to make me feel like anything big happened. Yes, yes, the last scene, but still: I'm hardly surprised when heroes and villains make threats against one another. It was a beautifully drawn scene but for me it lacked emotional impact.
Overall, I deemed this book to have decidedly average writing but very enjoyable art.
However, even if it were lousy, there would be one thing that made it worthwhile: the last few pages are completely unrelated to the storyline but utterly adorable. You see, they reprint Matt Fraction's very first Marvel comic and it is, I have to say, utterly adorable. It's classic Wolverine, no doubt about that, but it's also a little cute and has a couple of moments of near-queer that made me smile. I don't know exactly what I found so charming about that utterly unrelated work - it could just as easily be seen as filler - but it did utterly charm me.
Fun fact: one of my fraternity brothers (yes, really) went to high school with Matt Fraction and says that at the time he was just a nice, creative, quiet guy who drew all the time. It's always good to see a creator be successful without being an egomaniac. That prejudices me somewhat, in that I am willing to give something with Fraction's name on it a try when I wouldn't otherwise, but whenever I'm thinking about a Fraction comic it inevitably occurs to me, halfway through, Wow! And he was a nice guy in high school, too!
Klarion
Posted to Review on 5 November 2009
· Comments (2)
I agree. A lot of these stories are centered around events. Very little to any character development has occurred in these pages. Harldy any character growth. The only ones who seem to get any ink are Emma and Scott and I'd like to know more about all the other mutants on this island.
I'd like to know more about all the other mutants
For real. Digital high-five. I find Emma way more interesting as a character than I do Scott but I don't want the All Emma Hour. That's kind of the beauty of the X-Men, isn't it? That they can tell so many kinds of stories with them?