X-Mutants ( The "all -things- X" topic)

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I agree. Fraction has good and bad. His Punisher was godawful and his Uncanny run right now is meh.

But his Iron Fist and Iron Man runs are wicked.

[vynsane]

forgot about iron fist, hells yeah. i dropped the book when he left.

[Diabolical]

I'm taking the "Lucas/Prequel Stance" (a favorite on the internet) on this issue: Everything the man touches is pure shit.

[anarky]

I'm of the mind that he should know what he can and can't do, and keep himself from stuff he knows will be carp.

[vynsane]

I'm of the mind that he should know what he can and can't do, and keep himself from stuff he knows will be carp.

that's not the job of a guy who's looking for a paycheck. that's the job of an editor who knows who to hire for which paycheck.

[anarky]

Kinda yes, and kinda no.

Take the example of McDonald's. It's the job of the manager to put the best person on the Big Mac. Now, let's say there's a cashier who's AWESOME at working the register, and the manager puts him on the Big Mac line because he's doing so well at the register, and everyone makes sure they're in his line. But the manager doesn't actually check his cooking ability beforehand, and his Big Macs suck. They taste like dick rolled in shit and put on a bun. In this case, it's all the manager's fault, since the cashier has no incentive to make good Big Macs beyond simply keeping his job; he never even bothered to find out you're not supposed to dip your dick in shit and wipe it on the bun! He doesn't sign his Big Macs, so the customers don't know who makes them, but let's pretend he does. A customer comes in who's always been a Fillet O'Fish guy, but has heard great stuff about this guy making Big Macs. And he gets a dick-rolled-in-shit Big Mac. That's it! He's never getting anything from this Big Mac maker again! In a worst-case scenario, a guy comes in who's never been to McDonald's, gets a dick-rolled-in-shit Big Mac, and swears to never again eat at McDonald's.

Or another example. Let's say you're the governor of a state with less than half a million people. You've been in office about 18 months. Prior to that, you were the mayor of a town of 5,000 people. You may be the best fucking governor out there, but if your party's candidate for President comes to you and proposes you being his running mate because you'd appeal to a demographic where he's weak, you should have the presence of mind to politely turn down the position. After all, in this case, it is your reputation on the line, as well as the candidate's and the party's. No matter what your future plans are, it's going to make you look stupid when you admit you don't know Africa isn't a country, and there's no way to hide it.

In fairness, though, Fraction probably doesn't know yet that he'd suck on certain books until he's put on them. He may still not know he sucks until he's told.

[anarky]

Any thoughts on X-Men Forever, where Claremont is continuing where he left off X-Men in like 1991 in a new continuity?

I'd be excited, but the man has shown he has lost what greatness he once had. If you guys tell me it's the shit, I might check it out.

[anarky]

Okay, I'm guessing no one read it? If anyone did, is it worth picking up the trades? On the one hand, it's Marvel, in whom I have less than zero faith. On the other hand, Claremont pretending the last 18 years of shit didn't happen.

[Rollo Tomassi]

R.I.P. Kurt Wagner

At least, until you get ressurected like all other comic characters EVER.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I just read in the solicits for May, 12th Marvel is releasing Wolverine #900. Ummm....I'm trying to do the cursory math in my head, but I don't think Wolverine has had anywhere near close that number of solo issues. I realize they did it with Deadpool last year, but that character is an irreverent joke, so it works. 900 just seems like an arbitrary number doesn't it? Why not the 1000th issue?

[Rollo Tomassi]

As you may or may not know, I collected comics from 1987/1988 or so up until around 1995. It was in the middle of the Clone Saga and the fallout of Age of Apocalypse leading into Onslaught and Heroes Reborn. in other words, abyssmal.

I didn't start collecting again until 2003 when GIJoe restarted and Jim Lee was on Batman. I've continued unabated up until now, and part of that time has been spent filling in the gaps in my collection (thankfully at rock bottom quarter-bin prices) from those missing years.

But my X-Men and Uncanny X-Men runs were spotty and collected out of order, and many of the storylines bounced back and forth between the two titles, so instead of my customary rule of reading issues as I buy them and then filing them away, I decided to set aside all the issues until I had them all from both series between the time I left off, and started pickng up the new stuff.

On Uncanny I had back tracked to issue 400 (and a bit before) already, and on (New) X-Men I had read backwards to issue 100, but that still left about 60 issues of each title. Last year, I finally tracked down the last of the missing holes (most of them concerning the "Twelve" storyline which I refused to pay $12 an issue for. I finally found them for cover price at a convention) but I didn't read them.

I waited because I was apprehensive about how bad the stories were going to be. Of the few issues I had flipped thru, this was the Dark Age of the X-books with crap like Marrow, Maggot, Joseph, etc and I just wasn;t looking forward to it. I had had a similar problem wading through JBTs atrocious Fantastic Four run when I filled that gap in and was putting off going through it again with these books.

But this last week I finally pulled them all out and started reading them...and while there was quite a bit of crap in there ( Onslaught was horrid, Operation Zero:Tolerance was weak and Steve Seagle should never write comics ever again) it wasn't a complete disaster. And the characters I thought I would hate, I really didn't. I mean, yeah Maggot has the absolute dumbest mutant power ever and he was a cipher for much of his time in the books (his only purpose was to be the mysterious mutant chasing Joseph the magneto clone for mysterious reasons that never really panned out) but then they got rid of him just as he got semi-interesting. Marrow was another character that surprised me. She started out as the generic "i hate everyone" archetype but each successive writer began to mold her into another interesting character. And finally Dr. Cecelia Reyes, the most reluctant "costumes and codenames are stupid" X-Men ever. There were memorable artist arcs by Joe Mad and Chris Bachalo and towards the end of the run, Alan Davis returned to plot and draw the books and Adam Kubert was also drawing.

So I have to admit, if I had stuck around for a few more months longer than I had, I might have been continuously collecting all those years. And in comparison to some of the stuff Chuck Austen and Joe Casey were spewing out after them, I really can't claim that it was the worst era in X-Men history anymore. Huh.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I almost take back the Wolverine 900 comment above. I was looking thru my Wolverine One-Shots that I have and looking at a list online of what has come out because I'm going to San Diego next month and if I can find some Wolvie issues in the dollar bins I'm willing to take a chance. And Sweet Bananzos, they've released a PANTS load of One-Shots in the last five years. I swear, it may as well have been another ongoing Wolverine series for as many have dropped. I don't know that there have been 900 issues of Wolverine, but the One-Shots do take a dent out of the 900. And since most of them are $3.99 to $4.99 a pop, I'll be glad if they show up in the dollar bins.

[jjreason]

Keeping on the Wolvie tip, I just re-read Claremont/Miller's 4 issue jobbie from the 80s after getting the trade from ebay. It's great. They also included 172 & 173, the wedding issue of Uncanny, so we can see this story come to fruition.... almost. So after reading the whole thing I'm thinking - did this continue? Do we get an explanation? Well lo & behold over the next 3 issues we find out that the same "main" villain from 175 (the 20th anniversary issue) is responsible for what happened at the wedding..... and I say "huh?". No flashback or anything to really explain how he/she influenced them, just kinda dropped in there to close off that thread or so it seemed.

Did I miss something? (And yes, I did try to write this to avoid spoilerizing anyone, I was kinda hoping someone might have read it recently and can help).

PS - and to reply to EP - Wolverine, it seems, ALWAYS must be in 2 team books, his own ongoing series and at least 2 "prestige format" (aka facking expensive as shit) limited series/special issues per month. Trying to collect his appearances would cause someone to want to punch themselves right in the balls. I said fuck it.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I've tracked down most of his one-shots all the way back to the 90s. I think I'm missing three or four. There's a HTF one called Son of Canada that seems to be the toughie on the list. The rest seem easy enough to track down, they just aren't high on my to do list. The same goes for a bunch of his minis like Xisle and Netsuke.

[jjreason]

For what it's worth, I was referred back to 173 by a user on another site - the art shows Mariko being influenced by an unknown stranger in her garden, she even comments about her memory being weird right after. After she tells Wolvie he's not worthy, the last page has a panel of Jason Wyngarde's lemmybearded & smirking face (well the bottom half anyhow) which I didn't recognize as Mastermind at the time. Sometimes I'm not good at "reading" the art.