Morrison's X-Men
Jul. 29th, 2005 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayWhen I was over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
43duckies place last Saturday, I borrowed the first five collections of Grant Morrison's run on "New X-Men". I had heard some positive reviews of these, and this was a cheap way to check them out.
43D had said that they "started good, but went downhill". I had rather the opposite reaction. The first two volumes I found to be rather poor. The over-arcing storyline involves Professor X's evil twin. Seriously. An evil twin plot-line. OK, so it was a *slightly* new-and-different take, but not enough to make up for the fundamental cliche. And the big "dramatic moment" is the destruction of Genosha, a community of 16 *million* mutants, the vast majority of whom die. When I was 15, that would have impressed me. Older and more cynical, I now can't halp but observe that the number of dead characters whose names I knew, and whom I might possibly care about, was exactly one. And that one was -- Magneto. Come ON! That guy's been through the Revolving Door of Death so often, I don't even *begin* to believe that he's in any state but "extended vacation".
Grant Morrison seems to share at least one important trait with Chris Claremont: his writing shines in direct proportion to the skill of his artist. With Frank Quitely or Phil Jiminez, the storytelling is really tight. The annual that was stuck in the middle of Volume 1, however, was an incoherent mess. I actually couldn't follow the plot, it was so bad. Also, it was sideways, for no good reason. Didn't you people get the memo? That trick was tried back in the '80s, and it didn't work very well then. It *can* be a useful tool, used in moderation, but there's no call to do an entire story in that format.
Morrison's wacky imagination serves the series well. Sentinels evolving in the wild; Nano-sentinels, invading the X-Men's bloodstreams; a human cult that tries to graft mutant parts to their bodies; lots of good stuff there. And he introduces lots of really interesting new characters. On the flip side, "lots of interesting new characters" is arguably the very *last* thing that the X-universe needs, being over-burdened with them already.
In Book 3, we spend some time visiting various "X-Corporation" outlets around the world, and this section is full of way too many characters, none of whom have enough sreen time to get useful characterization. One of them even gets killed, but, not having gotten any clear idea of who she had been when she was alive, it's not like I cared...
I did love the little sub-plot of Henry "Beast" McCoy coming out as gay -- just in order to challenge people's assumptions, since he actually *isn't*. The character has always had a decent sense of humor, but expressed in subtle ways, so I thought that this was excellently in-character.
Book 4 gets interesting, by giving Xavier a challenge that he hasn't faced before: students who honestly disagree with him, and think Magneto had the right idea. I found this to be a radically cool idea. Of course, Marvel being Marvel, the story had to make it clear that these students were Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. But to even raise the question in that context was genuinely cool.
Book 5 starts with a cool murder mystery, but doesn't fully resolve it by the end of the book. Instead, there's a long detour with Cyclops and Wolverine essentially having a "buddy movie" adventure. Good characterization there, though the action was only so-so.
I'm sufficiently interested that I might give Book 6 a look, especially if it has a decent artist on most of it. Of what I read, I can only really recommend Book 4. It's as stand-alone as an X-Men collection ever gets...
43duckies place last Saturday, I borrowed the first five collections of Grant Morrison's run on "New X-Men". I had heard some positive reviews of these, and this was a cheap way to check them out. 43D had said that they "started good, but went downhill". I had rather the opposite reaction. The first two volumes I found to be rather poor. The over-arcing storyline involves Professor X's evil twin. Seriously. An evil twin plot-line. OK, so it was a *slightly* new-and-different take, but not enough to make up for the fundamental cliche. And the big "dramatic moment" is the destruction of Genosha, a community of 16 *million* mutants, the vast majority of whom die. When I was 15, that would have impressed me. Older and more cynical, I now can't halp but observe that the number of dead characters whose names I knew, and whom I might possibly care about, was exactly one. And that one was -- Magneto. Come ON! That guy's been through the Revolving Door of Death so often, I don't even *begin* to believe that he's in any state but "extended vacation".
Grant Morrison seems to share at least one important trait with Chris Claremont: his writing shines in direct proportion to the skill of his artist. With Frank Quitely or Phil Jiminez, the storytelling is really tight. The annual that was stuck in the middle of Volume 1, however, was an incoherent mess. I actually couldn't follow the plot, it was so bad. Also, it was sideways, for no good reason. Didn't you people get the memo? That trick was tried back in the '80s, and it didn't work very well then. It *can* be a useful tool, used in moderation, but there's no call to do an entire story in that format.
Morrison's wacky imagination serves the series well. Sentinels evolving in the wild; Nano-sentinels, invading the X-Men's bloodstreams; a human cult that tries to graft mutant parts to their bodies; lots of good stuff there. And he introduces lots of really interesting new characters. On the flip side, "lots of interesting new characters" is arguably the very *last* thing that the X-universe needs, being over-burdened with them already.
In Book 3, we spend some time visiting various "X-Corporation" outlets around the world, and this section is full of way too many characters, none of whom have enough sreen time to get useful characterization. One of them even gets killed, but, not having gotten any clear idea of who she had been when she was alive, it's not like I cared...
I did love the little sub-plot of Henry "Beast" McCoy coming out as gay -- just in order to challenge people's assumptions, since he actually *isn't*. The character has always had a decent sense of humor, but expressed in subtle ways, so I thought that this was excellently in-character.
Book 4 gets interesting, by giving Xavier a challenge that he hasn't faced before: students who honestly disagree with him, and think Magneto had the right idea. I found this to be a radically cool idea. Of course, Marvel being Marvel, the story had to make it clear that these students were Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. But to even raise the question in that context was genuinely cool.
Book 5 starts with a cool murder mystery, but doesn't fully resolve it by the end of the book. Instead, there's a long detour with Cyclops and Wolverine essentially having a "buddy movie" adventure. Good characterization there, though the action was only so-so.
I'm sufficiently interested that I might give Book 6 a look, especially if it has a decent artist on most of it. Of what I read, I can only really recommend Book 4. It's as stand-alone as an X-Men collection ever gets...