28 july 2002

I was expecting to review Soldier X #1 this week, but Marvel have omitted to actually publish it. And quite honestly, I really can't summon up the faintest interest in westerns. So here's a miniseries no-one cares about, the tail end of a storyline that long since bored most readers into resigned submission, a Simon Bisley reprint book, and the annual Oni catalogue.

Let's start with the final issue of MUTIES, another of those X-Men miniseries which nobody pays much attention to. In fairness to writer Karl Bollers, this series has improved considerably as it's gone on, as later issues haven't had quite the same heavy-handed "social issue TV movie of the week" feel to them. Even though I don't consider the miniseries a success, I'm still quite pleased to have seen it publishsed - Bollers is obviously trying to stretch his range with this series, it's given exposure to some generally good artists, and if nothing else, it wasn't a safe and obvious thing for the X-office to commission. Of course, the nature of risky commissions is that quite a lot of them don't work, but it's for the best that Marvel were prepared to publish this.

The final issue brings back artist Salgood Sam, and takes us to Northern Ireland. It's a story about a mutant called Liam who has borderline controllable explosion powers, which is clearly very convenient for the local terrorists. They duly enlist him against his will, and you get the general idea.

Fortunately, we're spared most of the usual platitudes about the reasons why terrorism is a very bad thing. The focus is more on the kid being dragged into the campaign against his will than on the underlying merits of the cause. It's not too bad, taken on that level, but the issue suffers from a rather mangled version of Northern Ireland.

For one thing, the Irish accents are hideously overplayed. If I could ban one thing from comics for all time coming, it would be phonetic accents. I despise the things. They almost invariably fail to sound remotely like the accent they're aiming for (not least because they always assume that the reader has the same accent as the writer). And they invariably make every character sound like a complete twat. The story gains no authenticity whatsoever from having its cast wandering around delivering dialogue like "Oh me saints alive, if yer da' could see th' shenanigans th' two of yeh're up ta!" This does not convey Northern Ireland. This conveys Fairyland. (Oh, and by the way, "the gardai" is the Republic of Ireland's police force, not the north's.)

The motivations of the terrorists are also left a little obscure. I would assume that they're supposed to be trying to derail the peace process, which is why they're bombing their own community. But I have my doubts that this is going to be readily apparent to most American readers. I suspect that the obscurity results from a deliberate decision on Bollers' part not to set out clearly whether the terrorists are Catholic or Protestant, but he'd probably have been better off just choosing a side and sticking with it.

The art is impressive, though, and goes some way towards making the setting more convincing. Heavyhanded crucifixion symbolism aside, the last three pages are a very effective silent sequence.

It's really not so bad an issue, but the unrelenting Oirishness of the dialogue is a serious problem.

Meanwhile, X-TREME X-MEN finally concludes the alien invasion storyline.

I lost interest in this plot months ago, and nothing here rekindles my interest. The B-movie alien invasion has now been underway for over six months, which is just ridiculously long for a storyline like this.

I don't really have anything to add to what I've said about previous chapters of the storyline, since there isn't really anything new here. It's the resolution. The X-Men win. It's not desperately good. One for the hardcore Claremont fans only.

At least it's finished.

MAXIMUM FORCE #1 is a one-shot reprinting two previous Maximum Force stories as a trailer for an upcoming miniseries. This is a superhero book, but it's a superhero book by Dave Elliott and Simon Bisley, with everything that implies.

I've always been ambivolent about Simon Bisley's artwork. Bisley is one of the most insanely over the top artists you'll find, and of course that's largely the point of his work. His style doesn't really work for me outside absurd comedy stories, though. On stories that are trying to take themselves seriously, it usually strikes me as out of place.

In this issue, Elliot and Bisley are trying to have their cake and eat it. Much of it is gleefully absurd. It has a deliberately simplistic plot, it has the obligatory Bisley ultraviolence, and it has Blitz, The Manic Mandrill, a talking mandrill who hits criminals over the head with a wrench. Oh, and a demented cyborg Thor calling himself Max Carnage. It's a superhero book exaggerated to the point of lunacy, in other words.

On the other hand, the first story introduces a relatively sane subplot about the team being helped by one of Thor's old friends. And the second story seems to be taking itself more or less seriously, despite featuring extensive female nudity way beyond the point of making any rational sense.

The result is a book that doesn't work for me, and seems to fall between the two stools of being a real story, and a ridiculous exaggeration. Elliott and Bisley's fanbase will probably be happy enough with it, since it's nothing particularly unexpected from either of them, but I'll pass.

Finally this week, the ONI PRESS COLOR SPECIAL 2002. Oni have been producing these things for a few years now. They're anthologies which usually combine a couple of comedy stories, and material spun off from a variety of their recent and upcoming series.

Warren Ellis, Phil Hester and Ande Parks contribute "Friday I'm In Love", which is nominally an Operation story but is actually this year's obligatory inter-character comedy crossover. Apparently there's going to be more Operation stories to come, although it's not clear from this whether it's going to be a comedy concept generally or whether it's just being played that way for present purposes. They come across here as a "Men in Black" type organisation monitoring weirdness around the world, which isn't the most original concept, but works quite well here when it's played for laughs. Hester and Parks play deadpan on the art, which is usually the best way with this kind of material.

Gail Simone and J Bone's story is a four-page comedy piece, "The Big Snobby Git." It's a neat jab at American Anglophilia - with obvious comics fandom overtones - and pretty much accurate, if you ask me. (Here in Scotland, Anglophilia is not a widespread problem.)

"One Plus One" by Neal Shaffer and Daniel Krall is a trailer, albeit for a miniseries which is actually on the schedules for September. Given the nature of these stories, it would probably have been an idea to put some kind of reference to the actual series at the end of the story itself - as it is, many of them read rather oddly if you're expecting them to work on their own. While this is very nicely illustrated, it reads like four pages randomly excised from the first issue, and it doesn't hold up all that well in isolation.

"Technorganic: Mechanized Fate" by Sabina Ex Machina and Steve Rolston is a vignette about a robot escaping its programming. I'm not certain whether this is a trailer for an upcoming series or not - it reads like one, but there's no mention of it anywhere that I can see. It's a cute idea, which doesn't feel like it's been fully explored here. Fine if it's a trailer.

Christine Norrie, the artist from the first Hopeless Savages mini, does a Kung-Fu Space Girls four-pager. Judging from her website, this seems to be a set-up for something bigger, although again it's not desperately clear from this issue alone. One of those "cross two concepts and produce something knowingly ludicrous" things, and I can see it making for an amusing mini. Norrie's art works well with the flat, animation-style colouring she's used here.

From Ted Naifeh, there's a prequel to Courtney Crumrin & The Night Things, which is one of Oni's titles aimed at younger readers. This is a nice little piece, which strikes the right balance between acting as a trailer and containing its own mini-plot.

Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston, the creative team from the rather good Coffin miniseries, produce "Vacant", a story about a homeless man who's largley abandoned his body in favour of astral projection. Quite a strong idea here, and excellent artwork. Probably the best thing in the issue.

Gary Phillips arguably misses the point of a colour special by producing a text piece whcih acts as a prequel to his Shot Callerz miniseries, with illustrations by Brett Weldele. As with the comic, it's not my sort of thing, and to be honest, I didn't finish it. It's good within its genre, but it's just a genre I'm not interested in.

Christian Gossett and Bradley Kayl of Team Red Star make a rather drastic shift of style with their story, a teaser for an upcoming Buddha Master & Angst Man miniseries. It's a proudly incoherent story, more about conveying the attitude of the series than actually making any sense. However, it's genuinely funny, and newcomer artist Aaron Horvath gives it a suitably exuberant and mock-innocent look. Promising, although the actual series isn't scheduled until 2003.

Finally, there's a two-page vignette from Bryan O'Malley trailing next year's Lost At Sea mini (which is a nice little monologue about blurred vision but doesn't really get enough space to make much of the characters) and a frankly cryptic one-page strip by Kelley Seda which soars gently over my head before colliding with the back wall in an ugly fashion.

Anthologies are inevitably a mixed bag, and the main negative with this collection is the inclusion of several trailer stories which aren't all that effective when you take them in isolation. And given that most of this year's stories is trailing books which haven't been published yet, it's not like I have much choice in the matter. It's also a mild irritation that it isn't immediately apparent which of these stories are trailer and which, if any, are supposed to be solely self-contained. Given that part of the point is to promote the miniseries, you may as well be obvious about it rather than relegate it to a page of "meet the creators" at the back.

Nonetheless, Operation, "Big Snobby Git", "Vacant" and the Team Red Star stories all hit the mark, and there are several others which make for interesting adverts. It's patchier than some previous years, but still a nice survey of Oni's wideranging output.