Saturday, May 15, 2010

The List #28 Part 2

New Mutants #13
Writer: Zeb Wells
Artist: Ibraim Roberson with Lan Medina
This issue Domino gets informed of the teleportericide that's going on, but Vanisher happens to overhear this information and before she can stop him he pops off to that brothel he likes so much. Except Bastion knows about it and he gets shot up, but manages to escape to elsewhere. Probs going to live.

With the New Mutants, Warlock is upset over having had to kill someone, and Sunspot, Dani, and Magma are going over what's happened to their beatup team. Meanwhile, Beast is staying at Utopia for the conflict, but he's pissed. And the Science team was sent to figure out the situation with a control tower which apparently is set to blow up. You can read about it in their upcoming one-shot even though I'm not because I know none of them are going to die, and that's the only happy ending I can think of for that irritating team.


Later on Dani gets up in Cable's face, Hope defends him and they get into a big ol' fight. Cyclops tries to break them up, but Cable stops him telling him he's keeping Hope in a bubble. Then Pierce blows up all the Blackbirds, so
no way to fly out via jet anymore. Then he speechifies. Even though we've had enough of Pierce since Young X-Men. Cyclops kills him which gets my whole-hearted support. Lastly, Hope's all, "I lied when I said I wanted to come back." Oh Noes! Who cares?!

Conclusion: Another wasted, bland chapter doing next-to-nothing. Pick this up if you're collecting all the rest. Now onto the more exciting review.


Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #1 (of 5)
Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Kaare Andrews
Let me start off by saying this mini-series is a breath of fresh air to a stagnating series, but it's also total playing to the fans. I'll explain why in a bit.

The setting is Africa and this opens to a guy running from some guys in gear with guns. And apparently this guy's worth shooting Aye-Aye's in the head for. So they catch up to him and he's like, "Don't make me do this..." Sorry, but just because you changed the setting doesn't mean this gets any less old.

Elsewhere, a baby is born and ends up blowing up part of the hospital. Moving to the X-Men's base San Fransisco, which I'm assuming is a post-Second Coming spoiler, Storm is receiving information on the situation from her husband, Black Panther. But not just any Storm. No. This is the Storm I've wished upon many stars for: MOHAWK STORM! This is playing to the fans part one, and I accept happily. So that's rad, and also in this scene she's seen doing something X-Men seem to rarely do: Eat. Except it's all sexualized because you'll quickly find out that Andrews just needs to keep it in our face every second. And if you look at the waists Andrews draws, th
en you have to figure that this is the first time she's eaten this week.

Storm informs the X-Men of the mutant births, Cyclops decides they go in. Him and Storm also have a private word about her being his consultant for when they're in Africa. Also, I enjoy how he refers to the team.
Except I believe Hisako is Chinese. And Hank McCoy, while originally white, is now Blue, so him, Mystique, and that family out in Kentucky make up that race. Also, thank you Ellis for remembering that Emma's faux-British considering everyone else seems to think she just speaks with a snob accent. Storm then asks Cyclops if that accent of Emma's bothers him and yet again, it's a sensual, she's-all-up-in-his-face situation.

Then the team suits up with Emma being the only one not wearing the standard uniform. Wolverine complains about it, and Emma responds that he can wear whatev
er he wants to when he sleeps with the team leader. First off, I hate that she uses a man to justify her individual costume. In New X-Men she was running around in a diaper and pasties because SHE felt like it, not because she was sleeping with then-Headmaster Professor X.

Next playing to the fans was this stupid costume where we can constantly see her underwear or her boobs are always too visible in-panel. Basically degrading her to a trashy slut.

Her new look is an attempt to going back to the New X-Men look with the long hair and platforms that I missed. Except the problem is New X-Men's Emma was weird and this look takes a wrong turn and ends up at trashy. New X-Men's Emma was Lady Gaga-ish in dress and behavior. Despite looking like a normal rich bitch, she tended to be pretty weird because she was always doing her own thing.

Anyway, everyone gets on the X-Jet and most of the of this issue happens on there. Cyclops does something nice for Storm by passing by the Serengeti so she can see her old home again. And Wolverine ends up turning xenophobic and bitches about everything African for awhile. Which has caused a stir with everyone it seems. Doesn't bother me because I never thought much of him in the first place.

What does bother me is that throughout these scenes Emma is moving around the plane and EVERY panel of her is emphasizing her ass or her tits. EVERY PANEL. It's ridiculous, I pretty much had Hisako's look on my face the entire time. Seriously, there's seductive like she's been in the past, and then there's straight-up trailer park trashy, which this is. And I know this is pandering to the many that hate her. But seriously, it's an asshole thing to do to her fans since it's not really "her", it's just taking a shot at her.

Also, while we're on the subject, my action figure of her has better proportions than how she's drawn. Seriously, her and Storm's waists are appalling, and while Andrews' art is fun and fresh, it's insulting when you get to the women's proportions.

Anyway, after those two scenes happened, the team arrives and it turns out they were expected considering the guns being pointed at them. Conclusion: This issue exemplifies the good and bad's of pandering to the fans. I'd say buy it just because it's the freshest X-Thing that's happened in awhile, and also it's basically a Storm story, so if you miss her dearly then here's something for you.


Before I finish, I want to address the poll results. This time's question was "Which X-Man do you want to see in X-Force the most?" The total number of votes came to 21.The winning vote went to Psylocke, who got 15 votes (71%), which I'm glad to see considering she's a favorite of mine as well. Next two were tied between Cable and Magneto who both got 2 votes (9% for each). Gambit and Other were also tied with 1 vote each (4% for each). And lastly, Deadpool got 0 votes (0%), but that's probably because someone brought up that it's likely that it's Fantomex on the teaser and not Deadpool. My bad, heh, but anyway, considering Dark Reign ended this past week, the next question now is, "Who was your favorite Dark Avenger?"

8 comments:

GPROA said...

MOHAWK STORM

Awesome.

Mr. Hellfire said...

Best part of the whole book, and considering the focus of the book seems to be on her, I think we'll get to see it lots of it.

Unfortunately for a lot of this issue she had it under a hat.

FSaker said...

Wait, Domino didn't know about the teleportercide?? How, if she was attending Kurt's funeral (she even left with the X-Force after Wolverine's last words at the funeral)?? Unless she wasn't supposed to be at the funeral and Dodson drew her there by accident...

As for Xenogenesis, I'm glad to see that Mohawk Storm is back (let's hope it's not just her mohawk haircut, but also her badittude)!! As for Emma, I actually like her new outfit (yes, it shows her underwear, but let's remember that she used to walk around ONLY in her underwear, so no big deal for me). But not her body proportions, she needs smaller breasts and hips. Emma may dress trashy (because she knows that her classy attitude compensates it), but her body figure should be more conservative.

And Ellis is correct, Hisako is Japanese. Maybe you thought she was Chinese because of her haircut or because in her first appearance she was wearing pyjamas that looked Chinese, but in Whedon's run he stated she's Japanese.

Mr. Hellfire said...

I didn't catch that until just now, but oh wow, that's a woops.

And yeah, it's like I said, it's the different between just weird sort of Lady Gaga costuming and just plain trashy. And yeah, her proportions would need to be reeled in. My bigger problem was the emphasis, every panel with her in the jet had her ass sticking out in between two people talking and it was just obnoxious.

Oh no, not because of her what she was wearing, it's back in like Astonishing X-Men #12 when she said something in another language someone had said what it translated to to me. I thought they had said Chinese, but it'd probably make more sense for her to be Japanese considering Logan's connection to Japan.

X-23 said...

I hate Emma's hips in this issue, i hate them very much. I always see Emma as Quietly drew her, thin, skinny, sexy in a way that makes you feel weird. She looked so weak and thin that I always wanted to protect her - and inside this little body was a woman of will and power I so adore. But this hips... they are so NOT aristocratic... She looks like a cow. Plus - she looks like Paris Hilton on the panel where the X-Men are moving towards the jet. BUT: I LOVE the wit of it. Haters should boil for all I care) To hell with them - that's our slutty queen, you can see a lot of skin but you can never touch. Love it.

Plus I voted for Bullseye, because I'm totally sexually attracted to him. Really, he's a lunatic, great body, many people forget how amazing he is at fighting (he could stand up to Daredevil AND Elektra almost with ease and beat the hell out of Black Widow, for example), love his costume, and if he grew his blond hair back I would totally be his sidekick and call myself Harley Quinn v2. I know he seems like an idiot, a muscle, but many people forget that he is very smart, a manipulator and insanely dangerous. He was visually compared to Hannibal Lecter twice ("Daredevil issue 84" and "Breaking Into Comics The Marvel Way 1"). Bendis doesn't know sh*t about him as he didn't about everyone else on the Dark Avengers team. So - totally in love with Bullseye, my vote is for him.

Mr. Hellfire said...

Mmm, I think there's been quite a few complaints on the proportions of Andrews' female character. And something I think is long forgotten by now is that Emma was never an average tan-skinned blonde (like Paris, ugh), she was pale with white-blonde hair. Like Draco Malfoy's promiscuous aunt.

And wonderful that you did because I enjoyed him a lot too, Moonstone just happened to be my favorite.
Yeah, I think he fell flat on his face in Dark Reign considering how serious a threat he was in Ellis' Thunderbolts. Bullseye as Osborn's secret weapon was just phenomenal.

FSaker said...

I agree with X-23, the problem isn't in Emma's new clothes (come on, Psylocke and Storm currently wear less clothes than that), it's in her oversexualization and in the size of her curves. I mean, even though Emma has a strong sex-appeal, she was never the kind of person to be gratuitiously flirtating with anyone or constantly putting her curves in everyone's faces. And as Mr. Hellfire said, her skin tone needs to be adjusted as well.

As for the poll, this one was quite hard for me to choose between Ares and The Sentry (actually I love the entire team, minus Venom and specially Noh-Varr; fortunately he didn't stay for long). But as much as I like The Sentry, he became quite a mess in Dark Avengers, and Ares was in his best game in the same title, so I had to choose our beloved God of War...

Had Victoria Hand been on the poll, however, it would be a very different story... (yes, she's not really a Dark Avenger, but she was a central character in the title, more relevant than the aforementioned Venom and Noh-Varr)

Mr. Hellfire said...

Mm, I have problems with Psylocke and Storm's current state of near-nudity as well because that's the starting point to T+A shots. Honestly, they could run around naked all day for all I care, but when it's taken into an objectified way, I start to go "Uh-uh, not right." My problem with Emma's costume is the too-short skirt that never covers up her underwear and the bra being shown in the boob window (because a showing bra is usually a trashy thing).

Yeah, I was considering putting her in, but I felt like I was already working with too many options so I cut it off who was technically a Dark Avenger. She'll probably land herself on a poll someday soon considering she's about to become more important in the MU.