Comics, comics, comics

[selenak]

My local comicstore finally unhanded Astonishing X-Men #15. Which is as good a point as any to mention that in my quest to catch up on comicverse canon, I also read the legendary Dark Phoenix saga and the collected titled Imperial from Grant Morrison's run (which gave me some background on Cassandra Nova that was useful to have, as well as some great Jean and Emma scenes). Regarding the Dark Poenix collection, interesting not just because of the, shall we say, mixed result the movieverse take on it was but also because it very clearly influenced both Joss (see also: Willow) and JMS (see also: Lyta Alexander):



All in all, even knowing a lot of things in advance through fannish osmosis, this was good to read, though the detour near the end to a couple of Shi'ar trials made me sigh and think "Claremont, no fanfic writer would get away with this without getting flamed". Though at least there was something of a thematic connection because Jean did blow up a planet, and it's good to see the billions of people she killed while doing so weren't just ignored as colleteral damage. *sends resentful thought in direction of certain scriptwriters*

What works best about the whole thing is the Scott/Jean relationship, and it's fascinating that the image of Jean removing Scott's visors and telling him she can control his powers is about the only element important to that relationship which made it into X3, and of course showed up in the opening sequence of Astonishing X-Men 14, when Emma started to confront Scott with his memories. Scott's absolute faith in Jean and the fact she never stops being aware he loves her makes are the elements that make her come back, and you know, if I had read this in advance of watching s6 of BTVS I'd have known it would be Xander who brings Willow back. (Interesting, too, that Giles performs a parallel function to Xavier: he can briefly depower her, but he can't provide the solution.) Because for that to work, you need an established relationship that goes very deep and the type of character who can basically say "I don't care if you kill me, and I won't kill you, I'm here".

What, err, works not so well or perhaps I should say looks very much tied to its time: Jean's temperary seduction by Jason/Mastermind, unleashing her inner bad girl by offering her a nice black leather costume. Because she could have never thought of that on her own. Incidentally, now I know why Joss in no.13 lets one of the new Hellfire Club members snark that the original might have been little more than a glorified strip club. Speaking of stripping, I was somewhat amused that Emma for no practical reason at all had the X-Men (and -women, the whole thing seemed much centred on Storm) strip when she captured them. Emma at this stage and written by Claremont is very much a traditional one dimensional "FOOLS! Don't defy me..." villain; as the Morrison collection gives her the same wit Joss does, I can only assume this was something that came post-Claremont. As for Kitty Pryde, who makes her debut here, she's a fairly relealistic comics depiction of a teenager, but the fact she instinctively likes nice Ororo and instinctively dislikes evil Emma made me roll my eyes. Because you know teens are ALWAYS instinctively drawn to the good guys. Ah well. It lays the background to the Kitty/Emma relationship in the current Astonishing.

As for Imperial:



Now people kept telling me Morrison was great with Emma, and she's excellent there, but you know, the X-character who really stands out in this collection? Is Jean. Even more so than in Dark Phoenix, if you permit me the heresy against the golden Claremont years. Proving that good girls don't have to be perky (not thinking of Kitty here, no, I'm not, at all) or boring, here's the most interesting take on Jean I've found so far. My favourite section was the part almost entirely without dialogue when she and Emma went into comatose' Xavier's mind. It's a great graphic take on a three-way-telepathic communication via symbols and gets across both the acerbic and yet relying on trust in emergency relationship between Jean and Emma, and Jean's devotion to Charles Xavier. Oh, and the whole Cassandra Nova backstory, thanks for explaining, Morrison. I'd say only in X-Men do twins absorbed in embryonic state show up later in life to haunt their surviving twin, but I've read Stephen King's Stark - The Dark Half. Continuity-wise, and in comparison to Claremont's issues, I find it interesting that Jean refers to Xavier throughout as "Charles" - she's clearly his equal here, not his student anymore.

Most priceless exchange of dialogue:
Jean: Did you sleep with Emma when you were both in Hongkong?
Scott: No. She kept me awake all night.
(And because it's Scott, this actually isn't meant as a double entendre.)

I alsao read Origin, the Wolverine backstory, about which I only have to say: someone watched Fool For Love, did they? So, armed with this new background knowledge, I squeed at getting my hand at Astonishing X-Men #15.



The "Previously" text finally gives me the names of the new Hellfire Club team (other than Emma, Cassandra Nova and Sebastian Shaw, I mean). Who on earth created a character named "Nagasonic Teenage Warhead"?!? Anyway, the way Joss writes her, I'm reminded of Darkside!River. Not surprising that she ends up against Kitty, because if you ask me, two Jossian female archetypes he loves dearly are the Murderous Ophelias (sweet, lunatic, lethal - to wit, Drusilla and River) and the Perky Babbling Girls (Willow, Fred, Kaylee), and Kitty clearly is the second, but the Ophelias in direct confrontation tend to defeat the Perky Babblers.

Also, might I say Sebastian Shaw, letting himself be beaten up so he can absorb Peter Rasputin's kinetic energy and then calmly and with one move turns it against him is way more impressive a villain than he was in the Dark Phoenix saga?

As I have read Origin and hence am aware good old Logan used to be a sensitive boy named James (as I said, someone clearly liked Fool For Love, and no, not the other way around, because of the publication date) before his first amnesia and development of the Wolverine persona, I can see what Cassandra does to him, but what she does to Hank packs a whole more emotional punch. It's his nightmare, the reason why he was so tempted by the cure and what she already taunted him with during Morrison's run - being reduced to a beast and losing his human mind altogether. Cassandra, btw: creepy, but I can't help remembering that final image of the way she got defeated in Imperial by Jean, Xavier and Emma, stuck in an eternal classroom.

Again, we get just a brief glimpse to the ongoing subplot with Agent Brand, but it contains the new information that Danger is is still around, paying a visit to Ord. Clearly, we're heading towards a showdown that brings together threads from all three arcs. And of course, we're still not told who the world-destroying mutant is going to be this time. That Joss is a tease.

Lastly, Emma gets nearly no dialogue this time, but some of the most striking images of the issue. The opening sequence with her making herself cry that one tear showcasing Emma the manipulator, and the closing sequence, on the other hand, showcasing Emma's continued conflict. It has an incredibly cinematic feel to it, too, as we go from panel to panel, from one Hellfire Club member to the next as each of them gloats about their respective triumps while cutting back to Emma who doesn't say a single word and by that very silence, brooding in the shadows with each panel showing her closer up, is juxtaposed to the rest, and then, after the last close up to silent Emma (while The Murderous Ophelia With An Impossible Name finishes her gloat with the words "...the end of dreams"), we do get Emma dialogue, but it's Kitty remembering Emma's words to her from issue #2 all the way back, and wow, what a great pay off for that early conversation. What Emma told Kitty then - that Kitty is there because Emma requested her, and to be more specific - "Being an X-Men means a lot to me. It doesn't always agree with me. I wanted someone on the team that I hadn't really fought alongside. Someone wo would be inclined to watch me, if I..." - takes on a whole new meaning now.

Next issue, please! What do you mean, two more months?

Comments

[thesecondevil]

Negasonic Teenage Warhead was created by Grant Morrison and named after a song by the band Monster Magnet.

Astonishing #15 was a great issue for tearing the team down and I'm really looking forward to #16 and the eventual counter-attack. Presumably the bubbling plot with Danger, Ord and Agent Brand is going to be the grand-finale to Joss' run and judging by everything so far it's going to be a doozy.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Named after a song - that explains it. Thanks!

[thesecondevil]

You're welcome. :)

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

I skipped the first few reviews because I have all these books in the to-read pile -- but yay for Astonishing 15. I keep meaning to see if I can scan the issue to use that Emma panel for a "single perfect tear" icon. And I have to mention that, while I adore both Scott and Logan, I was rather amused that it took basically a whole issue for Emma to break Scott, it took a panel to turn Logan into a little girl boy. (Also thinking of Xavier's threat to Logan in X2 -- "I'll have Jean braid your hair").

I was particularly intrigued by the Emma stuff in this issue because I think it is ambiguous how much emotion there was in that tear. Going with the Wesley/Lilah parallel that this relationship has roughly tracked -- I wonder if Emma is now turning into post-"Calvary" Wes; that is, she seems to be making a lot more noise about how she loves Scott once she's reached the point of no return to betraying him. For Wesley, in a sense, it was a better narrative (to tell himself, if not for anybody else) to develop this idea that he really cared for Lilah and gave her up to go back to Angel. In the same vein, Emma has the choice of seeing herself as an utterly heartless bitch who manipulated and destroyed this man because she could, or of seeing herself as someone who stayed loyal to the Hellfire Club despite her Great Tragic Love. And she seems to prefer the latter narrative -- however she might have felt at the time is a side issue. Not to say she didn't have mixed feelings, but they've become a lot less mixed now that, well, what's done is done.

(And as I told inlovewithnight the other day, "how sad is it that part of my reaction here was, 'well, I'm pretty sure Scott's available now. Once he gets out of the coma.")

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I was rather amused that it took basically a whole issue for Emma to break Scott, it took a panel to turn Logan into a little girl boy. (Also thinking of Xavier's threat to Logan in X2 -- "I'll have Jean braid your hair").

He, and LOL. To be fair, Emma isn't a telepath on the same scale that Xavier and Cassandra are (I could be wrong, but I think only Jean in combination with the Phoenix force outranks them), and besides, Cassandra just warped Logan (and Hank) by sheer force, whereas Emma didn't use hypnosis or anything like that, she used trauma. I'm speculating, but it might be because as opposed to being under a direct telepathic command, Scott can come back on his own from this one. (And, might I add, with full access to his powers.)

Re: Wesley and Emma, yes, I can see that interpretation; in both cases, it would be internal (because Emma hasn't really talked about her feelings for Scott to anyone save that one single sentence to Perfection in reply to a direct question). Well, in Joss' run; in Phoenix: Endsong, she does talk with Jean about Scott, with no other witnesses, and presumably given that Jean is the superior telepath is not lying. (In Joss' run, we get independent corroboration by other people, interestingly enough: the cuckoos, who have a direct link to Emma no other telepaths have mention her "being horribly in love with Mr. Summers" and worried about him in the "Gifted" arc, and Cassandra taunts her about her relationship with Scott in the "Danger" arc (at that time still an unidentified voice). Re: Wesley parallels, KdS has an intriguing theory about Emma below, which would make her really Wesley in Calvary for another reason altogether...

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

I'm speculating, but it might be because as opposed to being under a direct telepathic command, Scott can come back on his own from this one. (And, might I add, with full access to his powers.)

And maybe she secretly wants him to? Or at least she wants him to have a chance, so the whole thing is kind of a test? (Which works in a beautifully fucked up way if she really is in love with him, and if it's all in her head). Now you've got me anticipating the big Emma/Scott showdown. . .

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Negasonic Teenage Warhead: In the first Morrison X-Men trade collection, "E Is For Extinction", Cassandra set a giant mutant-killing Sentinel machine on the all-mutant homeland of Genosha, killing 14 million people. Emma was working as a schoolteacher and was the only survivor. When found she was cradling the dead body of NTW, a telepath teenager in her class, insisting that she was still alive. At the time it was simply implied that this was Emma's delusion under the horror of the massacre.

There's no explanation from the Morrison run as to how NTW could be alive again here, and her presence as a member of the new Hellfire Club tends, to me, to support the theory which I saw on a message board that Emma has actually gone nuts and trhe New Hellfire Club members are all just projections of her hallucinations. They're a very odd range of characters who seem a bit implausible as team-mates (Cassandra is about as plausible as a member of a supervillain team as a combination of Caleb, Glory and Angelus in his Beast-stabbing-egomaniac mode) and it seems to me that they work very well as projections of guilt of various kinds which Emma might conceivably suffer from. Sebastian = the original Hellfire Club, Cassandra and NTW = survivor guilt over Genosha and a number of other occasions in multiple past runs when young proteges she's cared about have died horribly, and the mysterious hooded woman Perfection - think of the recently deceased woman who it's been sledgehammered Emma sees herself as not as good as.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

I have to say, this seems like a perfect Jossian thing to do.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That's a really intriguing idea, and it would tie with the very first scene of the current arc, which is a memory (or if your suggestion is correct a hallucination) Emma has of Genosha, and Cassandra offering her a chance of survival with the implication that if Emma doesn't accept, she'll just wipe her mind and leave her to be slaughtered with the rest.

Cassandra didn't strike me as a team player, no, in either "Imperial" or the current arc, and yes, I can see her symbolizing Emma's Genosha survivor guilt. After all, Cassandra and the other Hellfire members first show up when Emma is actually in Genosha, returning for the first time.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

It's really interesting to read your reaction to Astonishing #15 since the issue made me see how clearly Joss was playing with his types (and what I consider phoning it in) and how much I did not want to read the title anymore.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

not that you asked me, so sorry for jumping in, but while I agree with the description (playing with types) I don't see that as phoning in so much as having some fun in between the major angst-cakes of 14 and the high tragic drama that's sure to come. then (cf. "The Girl in Question," which I'll shamelessly admit is one of my favorite Angel eps). I think the keyword in your description is "play" and I think it's entirely a matter of taste as to whether that's what the writer ought to be doing. To me, it's working (I seem to be in the minority in thinking the third arc of the series is the best so far) -- but I'm also referring to it as "like reading Joss's fanfic". So I can see that being tiresome if, for instance, you're not interested in Joss's- personal-theory-of-Scott-Summers-as-thinly-filtered-through-Emma-Frost.

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

I wasn't clear what I meant by phoning it in. I meant lazy writing, in that it's not even at a caliber that I would expect for Joss' fanfiction (which I will totally agree that it is). It's more like the ficathon entry where he forgot about it and then wrote it at 1 a.m. the night before and was a day late as he had to get a last minute beta from someone who only gave grammar/spelling suggestions. Because the fic's by a talented BNF, it's good and gets lots of recs and feedback, but still isn't what it could be.

Largely, I think post-Serenity, I'm not to interested in Joss' view of the world anymore. *shrugs*

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Heh. I loved Serenity and I'm adoring these comics -- ah, well, different strokes.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

and this just hit me after rereading the first two books.

i'm probably way off base, as I usually am about such things, and i'm way behind on reading other people's theories. But is there any possibility Emma knows who the world-destroying mutant is (like maybe it's Scott?) and is trying to stop it in her own (weird) way. it doesn't seem like the Hellfires are actually trying to hurt anybody seriously or permanently -- i mean they did let beast-hank loose, and send Kitty plunging into the earth, but that's still more like dangerous mischief than "intent on destruction."