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NEW X-MEN: E IS FOR EXTINCTION TP
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Frank Quitely & Ethan Van Sciver
Inks: Tim Townshend & Prentiss Rollins
Colors: Hi-Fi Design
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Mark Powers
Price: $12.95 US/$19.50 CAN |
Whether it's JLA or the Invisibles, trade paperback has always been the best format in which to read Grant Morrison, and X-Men is no exception. This collection cuts through the lateness problems that plagued the title and makes the whole story look a bit less disjointed, even with two artists on board disrupting the art continuity a bit. Morrison's run on New X-Men looks to be much the same as his run on JLA: over-hyped and over-rated, but still damn good, and as a bonus he's got solid artwork to back him up, something that JLA couldn't always claim.
The premise of the story is
built out of the familiar theme of mutant vs. human conflict, with the trappings
of anti-mutant sentiments, a genocidal and insane villain, Sentinels, a case of
telepaths swapping minds for dark purposes and various other elements that
defined the team down through the years. We've seen it all before. However, it
has never seemed this fresh and exciting, and that's down to the work these two
creators put into the book.
The trick with the
"over-the-top" approach is to keep it in that zone between inspired lunacy and
absolute silliness, and Morrison crosses back and forth over that line during
the story. For every silly exaggeration (the population of Genosha seems awfully
high, and the point would have been made even if it had been within reasonable
limits) there's a moment of sparkling dialogue ("feeling like a Hindu sex god")
or grand imagination (the astral meeting room), and so I'm inclined to forgive
the moments that made me want to chuckle more than gasp in amazement. Morrison
and Quitely have blended the darkness endemic to the X-books with a seemingly
incongruous sense of fun, and in so doing have truly redefined the book as they
said they would.
Morrison's writing is matched
by some fairly impressive artwork. Frank Quitely, the artist for the majority of
the book, does some frankly awe-inspiring work on these new Sentinels. He
creates incredible scenes of Sentinels of every size, from tiny crawling insects
to enormous city-killers, that give the robots more personality than they've had
in some time, while maintaining their cold robotic nature. For my money, though,
the really cool redesign was that of the Beast, with this more feline style
gives him a bit of class he's always lacked and also serving as a visual
indicator of psychological changes which have ramifications later in the book.
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
brings 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. Van Sciver rises to
the occasion as well, with imaginative designs for the students of Xavier's
school and some wonderful visuals of "barbarians at the gates," a Shi'ar
starship, the wooded areas behind the school and a brutal, horrifying conflict
in the sub-basements.
One of the complaints I had about Morrison's JLA was that his characters were often interchangeable. His X-Men run has so far
included a fair bit of characterization, whether it's the teaming of Wolverine
and Cyclops in the second chapter or the insight into Emma Frost, Jean Grey and
the Beast that comes in the latter half of the story. Morrison captures the
back-and-forth of Cyclops and Wolverine without making Cyclops a stiff, and both
characters play nicely into their usual niche while still retaining some
cleverness in their dialogue. Beast's morbid sense of humor amongst the ruins of
Genosha, Emma's arrogance and casual amorality and Jean's "buff mind" comment,
as well as her interaction with Wolverine and Cyclops, all give us a bit of
insight into the characters. The character work with the Beast in the closing
chapter of the book is particularly heart-rending.
This book runs the gamut of
Morrison's style, from quirky character interaction to widescreen destruction,
and sets up Cassandra Nova as a major villain. Marvel still hasn't worked out
all the bugs in their trade program ($13 for four issues works out to almost a
dollar more an issue), but the use of promo art as a cover is a better choice
than re-using a cover, and the addition of Morrison's "pitch" document and a
page of Quitely's sketches are a nice couple of extras. In addition, the whole
thing is printed on very nice paper and they seem to have avoided any weird
splits of splash pages. While a bit on the pricey side, this is probably one of
the "New" Marvel's best recent trades.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
