XHY #2: "The Ghost And The Darkness"


("Shot through the heart!")

Comments

This is definitely an improvement on the first issue, albeit a minor one.  At two pages, the recap is eight times shorter, and although the issue isn't much less po-faced, it does have some momentum to it.  Having Zelda, Vera and Candy form some kind of under-appreciated X-girlfriend group is a nice idea, and I'm genuinely interested to see how that turns out, given Candy alone knows what's really happening at Xavier's.

Points are also awarded for the priests working with Magneto; revealing that their cloaks are actually both hiding their true appearance and part of their true appearance is quite nice, and they look pleasingly strange and otherworldly.  Indeed, it reminds me a great of a Cockrum design for Giant-Size X-Men #1 that was ultimately dumped in favour of Nightcrawler.

It's entirely possible that this is coincidental, of course; I suspect any humanoid creature with bat wings is going to look very similar to every other one.

There's also a few shades of grey in here, which is good.  The natives attacking Cyclops and Beast are doing so because the X-Men have deliberately trespassed on their sacred ground, and the bat-winged priests are likewise, at least from the X-Men's perspective, entirely innocent.

It still badly needs a humour injection and and to pull itself out of the morass of nostalgia [1], but I definitely enjoyed it a little more. "Slaughter in the Savage Land" is a despicably misleading cover title, though.  Even the T-Rex makes it out alive.

Clues

This issue takes place over a single day.  From the narration over Cyclop's moping, and since Iceman has clearly spent the night in Zelda's apartment after quitting the X-Men, it seems clear that this issue is set the day after Xavier sends the team back to the Savage Land.

Date

Tuesday 24^th June, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+85.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 2.98 standard years.

(Iceman is 32 years old.)


"Uh-hrrr..."

Contemporary Events

Boris Kaufman, cinematographer of many famous films including On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men (a personal favourite of mine) as well as fighting against the Nazis in France during WWII, passes away aged 82.

Standout Line

"From our speed I estimate we have come many miles already from the embarkation point!" Really, Beast?  Your boat was in bow-range from the jetty just two panels ago.  That river must be breaking the sound barrier!  I guess that means the boat's going to need a... sonic boom?

BAM!

[1] I forgot to mention this yesterday, but another problem with this storyline is that we already know what happens.  It's one thing to know the X-Men will all make it out OK, one tends to assume that in any case.  But by starting this series off with dealing with Magneto's base in the Savage Land you're in a situation where you know not only will our heroes escape, but so too must the villain. Formulae that this mean you have to work even harder to generate surprises - you can't just give up on them entirely.

XHY #1: "Once More The Savage Land"


(Feels like hidden decades...)

Comments

Simply put: this is not a good start.

Over at MotCC, I've already laid out my cynicism regarding allowing artists, however highly thought of, to be given the job of writing comics.  Obviously, it can work out just fine, and there's plenty of examples where it's worked out much better than "just fine" (Maus, Cerebus and Palestine jump to mind immediately). 

At least with regard to Marvel, however, the end results are often problematic (Alan Davis suffered a marked deterioration of both writing and pencilling skills when he took on both jobs simultaneously in his late '90s/early '00s X-Men run), and occasionally disastrous (Whilce Portacio, Rob Fucking LieFuck).

On top of that, I'm also distinctly leary about the idea of '80s colossi returning to the books they shaped, after the best part of two decades have elapsed.  Claremont's deeply uneven return to the X-Men at the turn of the millenium is an obvious case in point, and it rather looks like Jim Bryne provides fuel for the fire in terms of this particular hypothesis.

After an astonishing sixteen pages of recap - because it's apparently really important we know the X-Men fought Sauron back in 1969 at that Sunfire was all up in their shit - Bryne sends the team back to the Savage Land to check that Magneto really is dead, because faking his own death is what he always does.  That's actually a nice idea (though it's not played with anything even approaching self-awareness), but, as I've mentioned with regard to First Class, there's a difference between trying to inspire nostalgia and trying to get away with reusing the same old ideas.  X1C manages to (mainly) stay on the right side of this line, even if it does get too close to being a Marvel U Who's Who at times, but whilst Parker's book merely flirts with The Past, Bryne's seems intent on propositioning The Past on The Past's wedding day whilst she's busy trying to make sure The Future gets to catch the bouquet.

There's something horrifyingly self-congratulatory about an artist from the '80s writing stories about the '60s a few months before the third millenium arrives.  It's like watching your grandfather play video games, and suddenly realising that not only does he entirely suck at Super Street Fighter: Space Streets Turbo Streets Fist (they must have made that by now, there's only so many nouns and adjectives in the English language), but that he genuinely can't process just how much things have changed since he was your age.  It's like giving a dinosaur a typewriter and asking it to turn in a 4000 word essay on earlier, crappier dinosaurs.  Just because dromiceiomimus can remember when abrosaurus was getting all the face time in Dinosaurs Monthly, it doesn't follow she'll be able to competently grasp the fundamental nature of what it is to be an abrosaur.  Or resist drinking all the ink.

I think all of this would be more forgivable if Bryne at least had some fun with the title.  It doesn't need to be X-Statix levels of self-referential fan-baiting, obviously, but if someone could just crack a joke or two, instead of being earnest and furrow-browed all the damn time.  I have absolutely no faith that Bryne understands the fundamental absurdity of the task he's attempting, and that makes me worried.

Clues

Part of this issue replays the final panels of UXM #66. The remainder of the story takes place over a single day, and the narration states these events take place three days after Xavier is healed by Banner's gamma device.

Date

Monday 23^rd June, 1980.

X-Date

X+2Y+84.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel year = 2.95 standard years.

(Iceman is 32 years old.)


"I don't talk, I do!"

Contemporary Events

The 1980 US heatwave begins.  By the time it ends in September, it will have claimed 1700 lives.

Standout Line

They're all rubbish.