Astonishing X-Men

Long before Joss Whedon gave us the phenomenally successful Avengers movie he wrote for Marvel's other high profile team, the X-Men. It was a risk, for both him and Marvel. Despite the fact that he'd spent much of the previous decade showrunning juggernaut TV hits Buffy and Angel, as well as the decidedly less commercially successful Firefly, Whedon was an unknown quantity in comics.

There was no guarantee that his skills would transfer away from their televisual home. He was also brought in to follow on from Grant Morrison's run as the de facto lead writer of the X-Men, Astonishing replacing Morrison’s popular New X-Men. Whedon was and is a bigger name in the general media than Morrison, but Morrison's name meant more to comic book buyers and there was no guarantee Whedon's fan base would carry over with him.

The decision turned out to be a good one. Whedon’s experience with writing Buffy and Angel, both of which are ensemble pieces despite their misleading titles, meant he knew how to write a team book like X-Men. Under Whedon each character has a distinct voice and understandable motives. Wolverine, for example, is mostly depicted as liking a beer and being very comfortable with his reputation as an intimidating killer. Cyclops, on the other hand, is a boy scout with an inferiority complex. Both could run the risk of being unoriginal but Whedon’s spin ensures that’s not the case thanks to well-timed moments of humour and pathos.

Despite having big name characters like Wolverine, Cyclops and Emma Frost to play with it’s Kitty Pryde at the centre of much of the story. Whedon displays an almost Warren Ellis-level of obsession with the character (read anything featuring her written by Ellis to see what I mean by this). It’s annoying with Ellis because it comes off as fetishisation whereas Whedon seems more interested in doing something new with an established character and her power of phasing.

Whedon also devotes a lot of time, particularly in early issues, to Ord of the Breakworld. He’s an alien villain introduced as one of the central antagonists of the series. Anyone who’s watched Buffy (yes, another reference to that show, sorry) will recognise Ord as a Whedon villain: a big threatening villain who has an understandable motivation for his beef with the X team, who gets shown to be mildly inept after his impressive initial appearance. Whedon’s never afraid to send up his bad guys but he does so with love: Ord is far from a one note villain or a glorified gag.

All of Whedon’s screen output is known for its snappy dialogue. The knack carries over to comics well. If he found it a struggle to limit the amount of dialogue he could give his characters, because he’s limited by the size of the page, it doesn’t show. Everything flows very naturally and his trademark moments of humour are alive and well. He loves the funnies, does Joss.

Of course, John Cassaday’s artwork doesn’t hurt. His clean, crisp line work and instantly recognisable characters make reading the book a joy. Having an artist who’s just as good at action sequences as he is at quiet exposition scenes is of real benefit to a writer like Whedon. Had he been paired up with Ed McGuinness things would have been very different.

On the subject of exposition scenes it’s worth mentioning the use of the danger room and the “thought space” of various psychic characters. Sometimes these are used for sight gags (Emma Frost enduring a particularly bumpy ride through space in a tea room, for example) while other times they’re used to add some colour to what would otherwise be bland infodumping scenes. They’re nice touches.

Sadly all of the witty dialogue, great artwork and solid characterisation is let down by a somewhat disappointing story. Things start off well with a six issue plot detailing the development of a cure for the X gene and continue being enjoyable when the danger room becomes sentient and reveals its plan to kill the X-Men.

The third arc is where things begin to go wrong. At first we’re led to believe the Hellfire Club have returned. That’s revealed to be wrong halfway through volume three, the villain instead being revealed as Cassandra Nova, one of the main antagonists of Morrison’s New X-Men. The fourth and final arc falls apart almost completely, as the background plot from the previous issues takes centre stage and the X-Men head off into outer space alongside SWORD supremo Agent Brand for an intergalactic showdown on the Breakworld.

Personal taste is part of the reason for my dislike of the fourth and final arc: the Marvel universe has a large enough number of concepts as it is without introducing aliens too. This is not Whedon’s fault, aliens have long been a part of the Marvel Universe. It’s just that their inclusion tends to make me lose interest. My feeling is that if people want to write about aliens in comics they should simply set up a creator-owned piece somewhere. There’s plenty of material in Marvel with the various superheroes, fictional countries and the worldwide problem of the X gene. Aliens serve to muddy the waters and on some level just feel a bit lazy.

The final arc lets itself down in other areas too. New characters are introduced at a rapid pace, making it hard to keep track of the plot. And scenes featuring Marvel’s large cast of regulars all crammed into an X book feels a little too self-indulgent for my taste. It’s as though Whedon’s decided that as this may be his only time working for Marvel (he was wrong there) he wants to use everyone he possibly can. All the positives of the early issues remain, but they’re not as prominent as they were.

Whedon and Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men is a lovely looking piece of work that demonstrates everything you’d expect from both an X-Men book and something written by the man who brought you Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Reading this it’s clear he’s a fan of comics and Marvel in particular. If you can put up with a fudged ending it’s well worth a look. If you’re already a Whedon fan then you won’t even be bothered by the ending: you’ll enjoy the series regardless.

Faction Paradox

I should probably preface this review with a brief explanation. Faction Paradox is a franchise-cum-brand that span off from the BBC’s line of Doctor Who novels in the early 2000s. They were a time travelling cult that, unsurprisingly, aimed to create paradoxes throughout time. They dressed in latex outfits with bones strapped to them and made blood sacrifices. The time travel bit’s the most important, but mentioning everything else helps give an accurate idea of what’s being dealt with.

The Faction was created by a guy called Lawrence Miles and were intended to be semi-recurring characters in that line of books. When other authors started, to paraphrase Miles, writing them wrong he withdrew them from the BBC’s line and established them in their own.

Doing that involved a fair bit of creativity on his part. While the Faction, its characters and their War were his intellectual property their surroundings were not. They were firmly a part of the BBC’s Doctor Who franchise, which would return to television to some critical acclaim a couple of years after Miles left. That necessitated Miles restructuring the bits of Doctor Who history pertinent to Faction Paradox (most notably Time Lords and TARDISes) so that he could use them.

That led to The Book of the War, a reference book for the Faction. That in turn led to a series of novels (only one of which Miles wrote before either becoming bored or falling out with the publishers) and audios. Those were followed by a comic book deal being signed.

All of this should give you an idea of how incredibly niche the Faction Paradox comic was. It was a spinoff of what was at the time an old, ropey BBC kids show that had first appeared in a handful of books. The number of people who would have even been aware of what Faction Paradox was when the comics hit the shelves was marginal. The number of those people who’d have cared upon recognising what they were looking at was smaller still.

Making things even tougher for the comic was the fact that no concessions were made for newcomers. It got cancelled after two issues due to horrendous sales. Those were surely the result of the generally impenetrable nature of the book and the tiny target market.

When I sat down to read the two issues I’d read only one or two of the BBC novels in which they originally appeared. I hadn’t read the reference book or any of the novels. I had however read various Wikipedia entries on them and several interviews with Lawrence Miles and was well-versed enough in Doctor Who mythology to cope with any references that could crop up with regards to that.

Even with this decent amount of knowledge I found issue one a tough read.

Clearly there would have been people out there more familiar with Faction Paradox than me and they no doubt would have understood exactly what was going on and picked up on every cryptic remark made by the seemingly endless parade of enigmatic mystiques. But those aren’t the people who should be written to. Even my relatively small amount of knowledge shouldn’t have been catered to.

The book failed because it didn’t start from scratch. Hints and teases should have been dropped in regarding the nature of Faction Paradox. Had the “time travelling voodoo cult” (the internet’s favourite, and largely misleading, way of quickly describing them) image been cultivated a little more and the Faction members been kept as mysteries in the background I think issue one could have done a little better. It was always going to be a book unlikely to gain success but its best chance at doing so would have been to give newcomers enough of a reason to be interested enough to pick up issue two.

The plot is fairly hard to sum up. In fairness this is partly because only two issues exist so there were likely things that would have come to light in issue three and beyond. The general shape of the story hints at something involving the Faction, the British Empire, the fledging United States and a time paradox being created. What exists is, to all intents and purposes, gibberish that gives nobody sane any reason to want any more.

For anyone previously aware of the spinoff franchise and desperate for anything related to it I imagine those two issues were a real treat and that the cancellation came as a blow. There was potential there for comics to be the medium that carried Faction Paradox forward. To anyone with a passing knowledge and interest, or no idea of what faction Paradox were at all, they’re a frustrating read. I’d suggest buying them on eBay if you’re a Faction Paradox fan, but the likelihood is that if you’re a fan you already own them and if you’re not you don’t want to.

Grant Morrison's Animal Man

I’d like to start by saying that Animal Man is very good. It’s quite possibly the best thing I’ve read written by Grant Morrison. I’ve noted before that he has a habit of going overboard when writing and that spoils his otherwise very interesting concepts and ideas. It happens here. He goes overboard just as much as he does in Doom Patrol or The Invisibles but nothing is spoilt.

Animal Man, as written by Morrison, was originally meant to be a four issue mini-series revolving around a character who hadn’t been used by DC for years. Those first four issues aren’t actually terribly enjoyable. Nor are they noticeably bad. They exist simply as perfectly average issues that, had they not been written by Morrison would be completely unmemorable. They tell a fairly convoluted story featuring an African superhero with the power to meld animals together saving a monkey from a science lab.

For whatever reason those in charge of DC’s Vertigo imprint were suitably impressed by that tale and decided to offer Morrison money in exchange for sticking with the character. It was after that initial tale wrapped up that Morrison became more experimental with the Animal Man and the comic in general, finally hitting his stride with the title.

There are two big themes running throughout Morrison’s Animal Man. The first is animal rights. It’s a subject Morrison felt very strongly about (and presumably still does). Writing a character called Animal Man was always going to make animal cruelty and related issues an obvious subject to tackle. Morrison does addresses the issues better than most would do in a comic.

We see the horror of scientific experimentation, the thuggish brutality of some of the more militaristic animal rights movements, and the full, titanic scale of the problems clumped under the “animal abuse” umbrella. The point is made more than once that it’s not just animal abuse that’s the problem, it’s humanity’s treatment of the planet in general. It’s a subject very well handled considering the space limitations of the medium, not to mention the fact that not all his time and energy are dedicated to the topics.

The other theme is what Animal Man is probably most well-known for under Morrison. That is the metafictional nature of his writing on the book.

Famously the final issue depicts a meeting between Animal Man and his then-current writer. During this Morrison admits that he feels their conversation is anti-climactic. He has so much to say and not enough space to say it. Towards the end the writer conjures up some humorous bad guys for Animal Man to fight so he can spend a page thanking artists, colourers, letters, and editors. He then takes the memory of the meeting away and sends Buddy Baker back to his fictional world to reunite with his resurrected family.

That final issue is the famous and obvious example of Animal Man being metafictional under Morrison but there’s so much more to it than that. Hints at what Morrison’s building to are dropped into his run very early. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere. You can go through and trace Morrison’s plan from the first collected volume of the book. This is not something you can praise his work with these days. Back in the eighties he was still conscientious enough to construct plots that could be followed by someone who doesn’t have a PhD in comics’ lore.

Morrison seems keen to look at the nature of readers’ relationship with fiction, and comics specifically. He looks extensively at the concept and rules of continuity, with the then-recent Crisis on Infinite Earths being referenced multiple times. Characters see the reader numerous times throughout the book and Morrison introduces a number of characters, both major and minor, who are aware of their fictional status. Sometimes these things are played as serious and sometimes they’re gags. It’s a fascinating idea and one that Morrison has returned to throughout his career. He has arguably never been as good at saying what he has to on it as he is on Animal Man.

As is always the case with Morrison his work is far from perfect. The plot falls apart briefly in the middle. Most of the second volume is a bit of a muddle at the start thanks to a multi-issue arc focusing on a trip to Africa. Part of the reason this doesn’t work is that Morrison spends most of the rest of his time on the book writing standalone entries with character led side plots providing most of the linking material between issues. It’s jarring when a story isn’t wrapped up in twenty-four pages.

This is the first major work of Morrison’s career. Considering his status it would probably be worth looking at even if it was a complete mess. But it’s not a mess. It’s an incredibly well-planned, thoughtful, and creative book that shows how good Morrison is when he’s on form. It’s a book that anyone with an interest in comics as a medium should definitely make time to read.

Neverwhere

In 1995 the BBC announced they'd hired an up and coming young writer named Neil Gaiman to write a television series for them. Of course in 1995 Gaiman was not up and coming and was fast losing his claim to young. He'd been writing Sandman for Vertigo for six years at this point (it would conclude the following year when Neverwhere aired). He was a natural guy for the BBC to hire, but he was not a complete unknown.

Sadly several important people thought he was. That's what led to the decidedly slight budget Neverwhere received. And it was that slight budget that led to Neverwhere failing to live up to the hopes of its writer and his fans. The production just didn't have enough cash to make all of Gaiman's elaborate ideas into reality, which led to him keeping a notebook for all of the ideas he had that the show couldn't afford, jokingly telling the producer and director that he'd put an idea in the novel when he was informed of its omission.

Which is exactly what he did. If you've come across Neverwhere before it will almost certainly have been as a book. It's far more available, affordable, and well-known than the DVD of the series, aided I'm sure by Gaiman's status as a novelist who writes some TV as opposed to a TV writer who has dabbled in novels.

Both the TV series and the novel tell the story of Richard Mayhew, an Arthur Dent substitute who gets sucked into an unseen version of London (known as London Below) when he meets Door, a young girl who has the power to “open things”. The story mostly revolves around Gaiman taking the city's odd place names and reworking them, often into something more literal. This approach delivers an Earls Court that's an actual medieval court on a tube train; a street that heads straight down into the centre of the Earth and has an odd relationship with gravity; a bridge where it’s alays night; and an angel called Islington. It's the sort of thing Gaiman does quite often but because the novel was arguably the point at which he became a bankable name for publishers to associate with Neverwhere holds a special spot in his bibliography.

The comic version of Neverwhere is an adaption of the novel and not the TV series. This is because Gaiman feels happier with the novel as it contains all of his ideas. It is notably not penned by Gaiman himself. Instead his pal Mile Carey was roped in for the job, with Glenn fabry providing pencils, and Tanya and Richard Horie on colours.

This is a terribly faithful adaption, so much so that I was a little disappointed with it. Things are obviously cut from the plot in order to get the story into the nine issues (a peculiar number I thought) but for the most part the story remains intact.

It feels like a wasted chance. It's unlikely Neverwhere will ever get the comics treatment again (why would it, after being done once?) which means this was the one and only chance to build on Gaiman's creation with striking images and ideas that couldn't be afforded for the TV show or, crucially, were too outlandish to be described in prose. Gaiman writing this himself could have made it a must-read, his final iteration of a sprawling mass of concept and idea. That it is instead an adaption means that the focus is on converting ideas that already exist, rather than joyously throwing out new ones to add to an impressive creation.

The adaption has its moments though. Most are attributable to Fabry's art. He brings a sense of bustling wonder to the Floating Market, for example. The Earl, of Earl’s Court fame, looks satisfyingly ravaged by an excess of good living. Speaking of the Earl, there’s a lovely moment where a character leaps through a stain glass window in his court and comes crashing through a train window. It’s a minor moment, but one that could easily have gone wrong. The Abbey, Down Street, Islington, and the Beast and striking images too. His work is what makes the comic worthwhile in the first place. It feels like the art team are working together to emulate the work of Brian Bolland. If they weren't that's a good thing. If they weren't then it’s a happy accident.

Taken on its own terms Neverwhere is an enjoyable enough read. The artwork is excellent, so much so that it’s a wonder Fabry’s not had more work since. Ultimately, as good a comic as it is there’s little point to looking at it unless you’re a big fan of Gaiman or comics (or, I suppose, tie-in comics). It has things to offer, but don’t skip the book in favour of this. Do both.