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NEW X-MEN #116
"E is for Extinction Three of Three"
Recommended (8/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Frank Quitely
Inks: Dan Green & Mark Morales
Colors: Hi-Fi Design
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Mark Powers
Price: $2.25 US/$3.50 CAN |
I'm not going to sit here
and complain that this book is several months late. Others can do that. What I
will do is say that we're now three issues in to Morrison's run and it's looking
less impressive all the time. It's still good, but it's not the revolutionary
comic that everyone (including me) first thought it might be. For one thing, the
dialogue is snappy but almost ridiculously inhuman, and the pacing is wildly
uneven as well. The book is beautiful, of that there is no doubt, and it's full
of mad ideas, but as with just about everything else Morrison has written, I
keep feeling like there's a disconnect between what he sees in the book and what
I see, and that for every dozen ideas, characters or subplots he introduces, he
only ever manages to deliver on the promise of one or two.
Without the dialogue or plot, this book is
still a gem, just as a thing of beauty. The artwork is stunning, and well worth
the delays, from the opening scene of Beast employing some gallows humor to the
shocking imagery that comes from the brutal fight with the villain at the end.
While I think Quitely may have gone a bit far in designing Frost's implausible
costume (which apparently uses some sort of mutant super-glue to stay on), he's
bringing an energy and a sense of style to the book, living up to the tendency
the books have almost always had of having the hottest artists.
There are a lot of wonderful dialogue
moments in this issue as well. Beast's morbid sense of humor in the beginning
provides a nice opening note, Emma's arrogance and casual amorality are
intriguing, and Jean's "buff mind" comment was cute. While I think these folks
talk to each other like writers trying to impress one another rather than real
people, I can't deny that the interaction is fun to read, and while Morrison
doesn't pull off the hyper-real speak as well as Ellis or Millar did, he's still
able to pull me in.
For me, the story has always been where Morrison falls apart, and while this isn't as disjointed as New X-Men 2001, it certainly has its problems. The
villain is established as little more than Claremont's high-concept The Neo, and
we still don't get any more revelations about why she looks like Xavier other
than to have Jean Grey notice it before the inevitable final confrontation. I
enjoyed Morrison keeping her at a distance, making her an implacable and
thoroughly inhuman foe (aided by Quitely putting a creepy grin on her face
throughout), but she winds up being no more impressive than the thousands of
cookie cutter super-villains the X-Men have faced in the past.
This is a flashy, beautiful and wildly entertaining book, but it's turning out to be more empty calorie than Ultimate X-Men at its lowest points. Go in expecting
revolutionary comics, and you're bound to be disappointed. Go in ready to see
the X-Men at the most exciting level they've been at in years, and you should be
perfectly happy with the results.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
