X:Men: Like Heroin

Dear Lord. I now get three X-Men books. I was curious to see what Mike Carey would do with his new tenure on the adjectiveless X-Men, and to my horror, liked it. Both his and Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men, along with Kirkman's equally superb Ultimate X-Men, remind me a fair deal of my heyday with the mutants, back in the mid to late Eighties. Damn their eyes!

Carey is now two issues into his Supernova storyline, which is focussing on a non-human, non-mutant team of assassins trying to cause a rift between humanity and mutantkind--by killing lots of people and augmenting video to make it look like the X-Men did it. They've even gone and rescued Northstar and Aurora from obscurity (some would say well deserved) to side with them. A Canada shout out. Yay!

Carey has an interesting X-Men team. Like Brubaker, he's eschewing the old tried and true team of Cyclops, Jean, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus. Good for him. His team includes Rogue, Mystique, Sabretooth (seen above--possibly Wolverine's dad?), Cannonball, Cable and Iceman. So, two villians who could turn at any moment. Nice. There is also a space substory, which ended with a Shi'ar ship being blown to hell by the usual Mysterious Force. Not sure if this ties in with Brubaker's space opera over in Uncanny or not.

A good read.



Civil War #3

I'm enjoying this, but only if I ignore the complete rewrites of main characters' personalities. I still don't buy Spider-Man selling out, and I don't buy Reed Richards not being overly concerned that his brother in law--the Human Torch--is in a coma because of anti-hero beating by a mob. And I really, REALLY don't buy the appearance of Thor at this issue's end--on the side of the government. That is almost as bad as Spidey becoming a Republican lapdog.

Still, Millar writes Captain America very well. I especially liked his turning on Spider-Man and asking him if his wife likes the fact that the Sandman now knows her zip code. The art is amazing, the colours are a delight--a good visual book, but I'm hoping everyone turns out to be mind controlled, or this is a Marvel Universe that I'm not sure I know--or even like--anymore.



Star Wars: Rebellion #4

Okay, we all know that nothing is going to upset the applecart with Luke, Leia and Co. in this series, set in between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.. But writer Rob Williams has introduced characters that can be messed over, like Deena the Neurotic Rebel Agent and Tank--Luke's buddy from Tatooine who signed up with the Imperials, and now sees Luke as a traitor.

This story involves Tank's revenge on Luke, which relies heavily on Luke being an idiot. Faking leaving the Empire, Tank has himself beaten and sends a message to Luke to please rescue him. Leia sees through it, and tells Luke to forget any rescue attempt. Luke--as usual--does what he wants anyway. The story ends with the Rebellion fleet in a small spot of bother, let's say. And Leia in need of a bacta tank.

Williams makes some good points, writing Tank as a very sympathetic character. Unlike Luke at this point, Tank has seen his fair share of battlefields, and is horrified by Luke's gloating over his destruction of the Death Star. Tank thinks of all the good men who died there--men who aren't necessarily evil,but are simply doing what they think is right, men who aren't sadistic or cruel, but signed up with the Imperials out of duty. As we've seen, Tank is a good man, tormented by the fact that maybe, just maybe, he signed up with the wrong side. We've seen him stop the rape of Rebellion prisoners, and we've seen him devastated by the loss of his men. Beside him, Luke does come off as a tool.

Oddly, we haven't seen Han yet, who may have offset Luke's warfare enthusiasm. Hopefully we'll see him soon. Some very nice art just makes this a very decent Star Wars book. Excuse me while I geek out. Or is it too late?